Sir Bernard Crick (born 16 December 1929) is a British political theorist and democratic socialist whose views are often summarised as "politics is ethics done in public". He seeks to arrive at a "politics of action", as opposed to a "politics of thought" or of ideology.

Career

Bernard Crick was an advisor to British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock during the 1980s. Crick, in 1997, was appointed by his former student, David Blunkett to head up an advisory group on citizenship education, which led to the introduction of citizenship as a core subject in the national curriculum.^[1] He was knighted in the 2002 new years honours list for "services to citizenship in schools and to political studies".^[1] He authored the 2004 Home Office book Life in the United Kingdom: A Journey to Citizenship, which forms the basis for the new citizenship test required by all people naturalising as British citizens.

He taught for a number of years at Birkbeck, University of London. He is a Vice-President of the British Humanist Association. His oldest son Olly is an educator and drama practitioner, who among other things has written a well-received book on Commedia Dell'Arte.^[2] His younger son Tom works in international conflict resolution.^[3]

Work on George Orwell

In 1974 Crick started work on a biography of George Orwell with the help of Orwell's second wife Sonia, in partnership with the publishers Secker and Warburg. He decided to use the rights to the hardback edition to set up a grant in conjunction with Birkbeck College to help fund projects by new writers that would have interested Orwell. In 1980 just before the book was published David Astor a friend of Crick agreed to match the grant. Over the years there were contributions by Richard Blair, Orwell's adopted son and also the Observer newspaper, among others. Due to a lack of discernible projects though, after 5 years the fund was diverted to produce an annual memorial lecture, at Birkbeck College and the University of Sheffield and also to provide small departmental grants. In 2000 the lectures and grants were discontinued for financial reasons.

In 1993 Crick set up the Orwell Prize with sponsorship from The Political Quarterly to honour political writing. Two awards are given out each year - one for political journalism and the other for a political book. The first awards in 1994 went to Anatol Lieven for his book The Baltic Revolution and to The Independent on Sunday journalist Neal Ascherson. Crick was on the judging panel up until the 2007 awards.

Ideas

According to Crick, the ideologically driven leader practises a form of anti-politics in which the goal is the mobilisation of the populace towards a common end—even on pain of death. Mao Zedong of China said, "Power grows from the barrel of a gun," and Joseph Stalin of Russia said, "The Pope? How many battalions does he control?" Such views, in Crick's estimation, are anti-political, because the speaker seeks to overcome any ethics of his constituency with the threat of violence.

The "political virtues" were an important feature of Crick's classic book, In Defence of Politics; he saw them as an alternative to "ideology" or any "absolute-sounding ethic". They included but were not limited to:

• Prudence
• Conciliation
• Compromise
• Variety
• Adaptability
• Liveliness

Publications

Crick's works include:

• The American Science of Politics (1959).
• In Defence of Politics (1962).
• Political Theory and Practice (1963).
• The Reform of Parliament (1964).
• Parliament and the people (with Sally Jenkinson) (1966).
• Essays on Reform (1967).
• Crime, rape and gin: reflections on contemporary attitudes to violence, pornography and addiction (1974).
• Essays on political education (with Derek Heater) (1977).
• George Orwell: A Life (1982).
• Socialist values and time (1984).
• Socialism (1987).
• What is Politics? (with Tom Crick).
• The Labour Party's aims and values: an unofficial statement (with David Blunkett) (1988).
• Essays on Politics and Literature (1989).
• Political Thoughts and Polemics (1990).
• To make the Parliament of Scotland a model for democracy (with David Miller) (1995).
• Education for citizenship and the teaching of democracy in schools (aka The Crick Report) (1998).
• Crossing Borders: Political Essays (2001).
• Democracy: A Very Short Introduction (2002).

He is currently writing a book on The Four Nations of the UK and a history of the journal Political Quarterly.

edited by Crick:

• The Commons in transition (with A.H. Hanson) (1970).
• The future of the social services (with William Robson) (1970).
• Protest and Discontent (1970).
• Taxation Policy (with William A. Robson) (1973).
• The Discourses by Niccolò Machiavelli (1974).
• Political education and political literacy (with Alex Porter) (1978).
• Unemployment (1980).
• National identities: the constitution of the United Kingdom (1991).
• Citizens: towards a citizenship culture (2001).
• Education for democratic citizenship (with Andrew Lockyer) (2003).

References

1. ↑ ^{a b}
2. ↑
3. ↑

External links

• Online version of Crick's Biography of Orwell
• Orwell prize website

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