Artículo The Economist, 23.08.2018 Peter Francis, director y curador del Gladstone’s Library
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The giant of Victorian politics would be a humanitarian, a Remainer and a firm believer in experts, says Peter Francis, director of Gladstone’s Library
William Gladstone dominated 19th-century British politics and helped shift government away from the preserve of the aristocracy to something approaching a meritocracy. In a career spanning seven decades, he pursued an ethical foreign policy, extended voting rights (to men), proposed home rule for Ireland and freed up the economy by removing duties and tariffs. He was prime minister four times between 1868 and 1894 and served in Parliament for 62 years.
Gladstone brought liberal values to public policy. He sought to “rescue and rehabilitate” prostitutes; tried to establish a new university in Dublin open to Catholics and Protestants; and punished unfair landlords—which millennials living in London can only cheer. Sadly, his liberalism didn’t extend to the wholehearted abolition of slavery. (He abhorred slavery and saw it as a taint against the whole British establishment, his own family included, but he spoke in favour of compensation for plantation owners, which at first sight seems illiberal but arguably helped to end slavery somewhat quicker than in America.) Yet in other areas, he was an arch-champion of individual liberty.
What would “GOM” (his nickname, for “grand old man”) champion today?
His first concern would be humanitarian, both overseas and at home. Gladstone would demand action over the appalling treatment of the Rohingya Muslims by the Myanmar government. He would advocate support of those suffering in Syria and Yemen.
Each life, said Gladstone, is as “inviolable in the eye of Almighty God as can be your own. Remember that He who has united you together as human beings in the same flesh and blood, has bound you by the law of mutual love; that that mutual love is not limited by the shores of this island, is not limited by the boundaries of Christian civilisation; that it passes over the whole surface of the earth, and embraces the meanest along with the greatest in its unmeasured scope.”
These words, from a foreign-policy speech in 1879 (the “Midlothian campaign”), are resonant today, not only for overseas atrocities but for justice at home.
Gladstone would find it hard to believe that food banks are needed in such a wealthy nation. He would be appalled at tragedies like the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 or the Windrush immigration scandal, which underscore gulfs between rich and poor, the powerful and the powerless. In his own day, he personally risked ridicule for his work to help London’s prostitutes and to ensure health care for their children.
After humanitarian causes, next on Gladstone’s modern policy agenda would be free trade. In the era of Trump’s tariffs, it is worth noting that Gladstone’s budget of 1853 (one of 12 he delivered as Chancellor of the Exchequer) repealed or reduced duties on 250 goods. And in his budget of 1860 he removed nearly all remaining protectionist duties.
Gladstone was known as the liberator of the “people’s breakfast table” because he removed duties from so many daily essentials. That is why tens of thousands lined the banks of the Tyne to cheer him when he visited Northumbria in 1862 and he was thereafter hailed as “the People’s William”.
Yet most of Gladstone’s opprobrium would be aimed at Brexit. He set down a template for co-operation in Europe for the sake of peace, rule of law and democracy. He worked for co-operation between the six major European powers (Britain, Germany, France, Russia, Italy and Austria-Hungary) and almost seemed to suggest something akin to the modern process of European integration.
“The ground on which we stand here is not British or European, but it is human. Nothing narrower than humanity could pretend for a moment justly to represent it,” Gladstone proclaimed in the Midlothian campaign. The fracturing of Europe would be anathema to him.
Gladstone would be disheartened by the lack of evolution in our democracy. He was a man who constantly reformed democratic institutions and would be perplexed as to why this was not happening today. His parting shot to the House of Commons after more than six decades on its benches was to bequeath to his successors the necessity of reforming the House of Lords.
Looking at the lack of willingness to vote in Britain, he would be alarmed and ashamed at our apparent indifference to politics and politicians. He certainly wouldn’t dare to say that the 37.4% of the voting population who voted for Brexit expressed the will of the people. Rather, he would set about evolving our democracy for the present age.
Above all, whether in politics, economics, foreign policy or humanitarian causes, Gladstone believed in experts and research. Facts and knowledge mattered to him and could not be dismissed. His research was based on his reading of pamphlets and books, of which he read over 22,000 in his lifetime, and voluminous correspondence with intellectuals and experts. It is striking how often, in the light of evidence (usually through his own deep research), he was prepared to change his mind or alter his perceptions.
Finally, Gladstone would be calling for religious tolerance and freedom of belief. His own spiritual journey started narrowly in an almost fundamentalist Christian household but widened by the end of his life to embrace all Christian denominations, all religions and ideologies—even expressing his sorrow that the Unitarian James Martineau could not be made Archbishop of Canterbury and defending the atheist Charles Bradlaugh’s right to sit in the House of Commons. He was also careful (as we should be) to distinguish between the Ottoman atrocities of the 19th century and his admiration for the ethics and discipline of Islam.
An open society was important to Gladstone. He would despise the “drawbridge up” and protectionist mentality that causes people to fear other faiths and other nationalities. As he said to his friend and biographer, John Morley, “I was brought up to hate and fear liberty. I came to love it. That is the secret of my whole career.”
