The Liberals, a warning from history.

Recently I've been reading the novelist, historian, soldier, sportsman, diplomat and politician John Buchan's excellent auto-biography: 'Memory Hold-The-Door'.

Buchan, has long been regarded as the prototype for Richard Hannay, the hero of his adventure novel 'The 39 Steps.' written in 1915 and hugely popular in the trenches of World War One. The dynamic of a wrongly accused man-on-the-run story is now a Hollywood staple and has been for the past 75 years.

This recollection of his life, completed just a few short weeks before his death in 1940 is full of incredible anecdotes about historical figures and places ranging from Asquith to the Zambezi and illuminates history in a way that today's historians simply aren't capable of emulating. The language and philosophies are redolent of a tantalisingly recent, but forlornly bygone age.

This stoical 'son-of-the-manse' grasped at every opportunity of education. By his mid teenage years he had read more story-tellers, poets, philosophers and essayists than I'll wager anyone who reads this has. A prodigious writer, in his lifetime Buchan produced over 30 novels, 7 short story collections, and nearly 100 works of non-fiction. Among them best selling pieces of popular fiction and critically acclaimed works of history on such diverse subjects as Julius Caesar, Cromwell, Raleigh, Montrose and Augustus.

Coming from a family of modest means he was dependent on winning scholarships to Glasgow and Oxford Universities. At Oxford he came into his own, becoming President of the Union and supplementing his income by becoming an author and publishing some six novels. His fame as a Scot at Oxford seemed to have sent a benchmark for those to follow. 

Buchan's description of how he came to join the Tories is quite illuminating and highly relevant for today. When I first read the passage below, I immediately thought about the hegemony that Labour have held over Scotland and how Buchan could be foreshadowing what many Scots feel about the Labour Party today. However, since last weeks 'Leader's Debate' and Nick Clegg's ascendency to sainthood in the polls, I think the message is equably applicable to both of these Unionist parties.

'I came of a Liberal family, most of my friends were Liberals, I agreed with nine-tenths of he party's creed. Indeed, I think that my political faith was always Liberalism-or rather "  liberality"  as Gilbert Murray has interpreted the word. But when I stood for Parliament it had to be the other side.
Now that the once omnipotent Liberal party has so declined, it is hard to realise how it was in 1911--especially in Scotland. It's dogmas were so completely taken for granted that their presentation partook less of argument than of tribal incantation. Mr Gladstone had given it an aura of earnest morality, so that its platforms were also pulpits and its harangues had the weight of sermons. It's members seemed to assume that their opponents  must be lacking either in morals or mind. The Tories were the "stupid" party; Liberals alone understood and sympathised with the poor; a working man who was not a Liberal was inaccessible to reason, or morally corrupt, or intimidated by laird or employer. I remember a lady summing up the attitude thus: Tories may think they are better born, but Liberals know they are better born.' 

I dare say many will dismiss Buchan's words as that of a typical Tory grandee slamming the opposition, indulging in the same petty politics we see and hear every day in Scotland. They would be wrong. I consider Buchan to be a thinking politician unlike any other we've seen in Scotland. He was a man capable of taking all arguments, collating them and then once digested deciding on his own viewpoint and how that might help his fellow Scots.  Before judging him too hastily consider these words, taken from a speech he gave in the Houses of Common in 1932. 

"  I believe that every Scotsman should be a Scottish nationalist. If it could be proved that a separate Scottish Parliament were desirable, that is to say that the merits were greater than the disadvantages, Scotsmen should support it. I would go further. Even if it were not proved desirable, if it could be proved desirable by any substantial majority of the Scottish people, then Scotland should be allowed to make the decision."  John Buchan