Professor Joad sees his play at the Theatre Royal, Northampton

I braved the heat today, went into town and called at the market. I came a way with a book called Repertory at The Royal: Sixty-Five Years of Theatre in Northampton 1922–92. As you would hope, there's plenty about this blog's heroine Freda Jackson, but this post is about C.E.M. Joad.

Joad was once a substantial public figure, chiefly as a member of the panel of the wildly popular radio programme The Brain's Trust. There he allowed himself to be called "Professor Joad" when he was no such thing, which riled his fellow philosophers. They also, whether from jealousy of his fame or impartial study, regarded his writing as either eccentric or plagiarised.

According to hero of the blog Bryan Magee:

He was an engaging but essentially fraudulent character. His popular books on philosophy thick-skinnedly recycled Russell’s work without acknowledgement; asked once to write a recommendation of a book by Joad, Russell replied: 'Modesty forbids.'"

While Ludwig Wittgenstein once said, in a meeting where Joad had delivered a paper criticising the form of analytical philosophy popular at Cambridge, that "naturally a slum landlord would object to slum clearance". In other words new thinking was clearing away the sort of stuff that Joad still came out with. 

The Magee quote is from an article by Richard Symonds that tries to rescue Joad's reputation as a philosopher, while the Wittgenstein quote is from Wikipedia entry on him.

Reading that Wikipedia article on Joad, you get the impression that he embraced just about every nutty theory going in the first half of the 20th century. He was a thumping sexist, though some of his braver views on social issues are now widely accepted. You may think the law of averages means he was bound to be prescient sometimes.

Anyway here's the story about Joad from my book on the Theatre Royal, Northampton. There it is credited to a manuscript in the county record office written by a theatre manager called Stephen Sylvester – presumably this Stephen Sylvester – and Alex Reeve was also on the management side of the theatre.

Northampton stuck to its commitment to new plays. In March 1946 Crackling of Thorns by C.E.M. Joad the philosopher and radio Brains Trust personality attracted widespread interest for its first professional production.

The substantive scenes, for which locations included a youth hostel and a national school, advanced the author's ideas on the reduction of the nation's population. These were interspersed with duologues between Mr .Playwrite and The Critic (Mr James Aggravate – alias for James Agate) discussing the craft of play writing.

Joad attended the first night, but although he had lent Alex Reeve, making one of his rare stage appearances as Mr. Playwrite, one of his suits he was less than enthusiastic about the identification of the character with himself:

Being the same size as Joad he [Reeve] was able to make himself up to resemble him, beard and all, and when he imitated Joe's squeaky voice the impersonation was very funny. Jude was a famous public figure ... and the audience quickly recognised the character and fell about. 

When Joad came to see the show his lack of amusement was positively Queen Victorian. In the bar afterwards he told Reeve, "I'm sure I don't speak in that squeaky voice." He said this in such a squeaky voice that we thought he was being funny, and laughed. But he wasn't, and in his subsequent radio broadcasts it was noticeable that his voice had gone down quite a few semitones.

You can hear Joad in the video clip above. If you watch the whole thing on YouTube you may form the opinion that he was a bit of a poseur. And an article on Herestical will give you the reason for the sudden end to his radio career,

Still, such was him fame that he got a mention in Shirley Bassey's first recording, which was banned by the BBC for being too sexy. Do watch it if you've not seen it before: she's wonderful. 

Conrad Russell on Bertrand Russell (with a pinch of Carly Simon)

In the 1 September 1988 issue of the London Review of Books, Conrad Russell reviewed Alan Ryan's "political life" of his father Bertrand Russell.

Here is a little personal reminiscence from that review:

My father’s situation in 1918 was not an enviable one: he was 46, and had just lost his job, suffered imprisonment and social disgrace, and was facing the failure of his marriage. He had, in effect, no inherited money left, and, it must have seemed, a very bleak future indeed. 

Many men have broken under stresses no greater than this, and that the writing which came out of it should sometimes have been done for effect is no more than, reasonably, we should have expected. 

His situation in 1941 was no more enviable: he was trapped in the United States by the outbreak of war, unable to get himself into England or his money out of it, again dismissed from an academic job in disgrace, and in difficulties even for money to pay the fare into New York to meet a publisher. 

I can still remember the day when Simon and Schuster came to lunch (and my own bewilderment that they turned out to be a single person), and the overwhelming relief in the household when they happily departed. The result was The History of Western Philosophy.

The whole review is worth reading. Conrad names the two greatest changes of his father's last time as the way it became safe not to be a Christian and the relaxation of sexual morality.

On a more trivial note, the publishing firm of Simon & Schuster was founded in 1924 in New York. The Simon was Richard L. Simon, who was the father of the singer and songwriter Carly Simon, but I don't suppose it was he who called on the Russells.

Bertrand Russell: "First they fascinate the fools..."

Embed from Getty Images

When asked how fascism starts, Bertrand Russell replied: "First they fascinate the fools. Then they muzzle the intelligent."

I have seen this tweet several times in recent days. As ever with quotations posted on social media, you have to ask if its genuine,

The answer is that there's no evidence of Russell having a conversation like that, but he did write something similar.

Quote Investigator alerts us to an essay - Freedom and Government - that Russell contributed to a collection complied by Ruth Nanda Anshen. It was titled Freedom: Its Meaning and published in 1942.

There Russell wrote:

The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.

This technique is as old as the hills; it was practised in almost every Greek city, and the moderns have only enlarged its scale.

So Russell didn't say that, but he did write something very like it.

Wittgenstein's Poker: The Movie

Not many books about philosophers become bestsellers, but one that did was David Edmonds and John Eidinow's Wittgenstein's Poker, which came out in 2002. Now there are plans to produce a short animated film inspired by it.

The book tells the story of a famous encounter between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper:

On 25 October 1946, Sir Karl Popper (at the London School of Economics), was invited to present a paper entitled "Are There Philosophical Problems?" at a meeting of the Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club, which was chaired by Ludwig Wittgenstein. 

The two started arguing vehemently over whether there existed substantial problems in philosophy, or merely linguistic puzzles—the position taken by Wittgenstein. In Popper's, and the popular account, Wittgenstein used a fireplace poker to emphasize his points, gesturing with it as the argument grew more heated. 

Eventually, Wittgenstein claimed that philosophical problems were non-existent, in response, Popper claimed there were many issues in philosophy, such as setting a basis for moral guidelines. Wittgenstein then thrust the poker at Popper, challenging him to give any example of a moral rule, Popper (later) claimed to have said:

Not to threaten visiting lecturers with pokers

upon which (according to Popper) Wittgenstein threw down the poker and stormed out. 

Wittgenstein's Poker collects and characterizes the accounts of the argument, as well as establishing the context of the careers of Popper, Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell. This meeting was the only time the three were in the same room together.

The story grew with its telling over the years, particularly when Popper told it, and I don't suppose it was as violent as the video above suggests.

Nevertheless, I am delighted by news of the plan to make an animated film of the encounter. You can read all about it and support it on the film's Kickstarter page.

If you want to know more about the background to the encounter between Popper and Wittgenstein, which the book uses to open up the history of philosophy in the 20th century, then I recommend a video of David Edmonds speaking at a book event in the US.

At the start, he talks about tracking down the other people who were present at that meeting of the Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club.

One of them was the philosopher Margaret Masterman, who was one of Wittgenstein's inner circle of students. I must have come across a paper of hers when I was at York, because I can remember reading the book in which it was included: Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, edited by Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave.

Later Masterman worked on the problem of teaching computers to understand everyday human language. Her work here has been influential and she deserves to be better known than she is.

And, wonderfully, she was the daughter of my favourite Edwardian Liberal, Charles Masterman.

The Joy of Six 1151

Peter Oborne reminds us that British Muslims were the first to suffer from bank account closures, but nobody protested.

The Pipeline looks at the decision by Shropshire Council to grant planning consent to a local housing development in the near setting of the nationally important Old Oswestry hillfort.  It fears that by raising the bar on what constitutes “harm” to the setting of a heritage site, the decision puts every such site in England at risk from insensitive developers.

"Why should Dartmoor remain the only place in England where wild camping is (lawfully) possible? If we accept that being able to rest in modest comfort is an essential feature of open-air recreation, then that implies that this right should apply to all our national parks (whose statutory purpose is partly to provide exactly that) – at bare minimum." Jon Moses says we need a national right to roam.

The late Dorothy Rowe chooses five books on lying and dispenses much wisdom in the process: "If you understand that all you ever see or know is the constructions of your brain and that everything is a guess, then you can’t escape uncertainty. You could be wrong and that is frightening."

Simon Perks has finished c

"It wasn’t just about the liquid itself, but the experience. The feeling of being in the presence of someone who really cared about the heritage, the orchards, the fruit and the story the drink told. It was utterly magical." Gabe Cook celebrates role in the revival of traditional cider and perry.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Sporting on its shore in animal skins

Back in 2004, before Tony Blair had won his third election, I blogged:

Conrad Russell died last week, an irreplaceable loss to the Liberal Democrats and to Liberalism in general. There were worthy obituaries in the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian. I remember his saying once, rather overgenerously, that I did for the party what Matthew Parris does for the country. 

I also remember his asking me, as his wife had always wondered, why Lord Bonkers talked about Earl Russell and his Big Band. I explained that as there were band leaders called Count Basie and Duke Ellington... When I was studying philosophy as an undergraduate, I never dreamed that I would have this conversation with Bertrand Russell's son.

And if you read the whole post you will find that there really was an Earl Russell, Big Band, or at least an Earl Russell Orchestra.

Saturday

How splendid to have a Russell on the Liberal Democrat benches in the Lords again! Earl Russell won the by-election among hereditary peers, casually giving a member of the Lloyd George clan one up the snoot in the process. 

My only worry is that he has mentioned more than once his dream of getting his father’s big band back together and asked if I know what became of them. 

It happens that I gave them sanctuary on an island in Rutland Water after Conrad’s death. From time to time I see them sporting on its shore in animal skins and playing upon rude instruments, and I know Meadowcroft rows out for the occasional jam session, but few others know of their presence. 

Will they thank me if I shatter their idyll? Can I continue to change the subject when my newest colleague broaches the matter?

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Earlier this week...

• The other animals would lay their disputes before the kangaroos
• One of Violent Bonham Carter’s boys
• Ofwat, Ofgem, Ofthis, Ofthat
• Charabanc trips to the coast have been booked

Like Bertie Wooster, Bertrand Russell had a formidable Aunt Agatha

Bertrand Russell was married four times. He wed his first wife, Alys Pearsall Smith, in 1894, but decided he was no longer in love with her during a bike ride in 1901. Cambridge dons are like that.

The couple first separated in 1911, while Russell conducted an affair with Lady Ottoline Morrell ("As most people did in those days" - Lord Bonkers), and Alys allowed him a divorce in 1921 so he could marry his second wife Dora.

Like Bertie Wooster, Russell had an Aunt Agatha. And she proved to be of similar mettle in 1926 when Russell complained that she still had a picture of Alys on her mantelpiece.

Quirkality quotes the letter she sent in return:

You owe her everything since the separation. But for her, Dora would be Miss Black, and your children illegitimate – the slightest spark of gratitude in you would acknowledge what you owe to her since you left her, in so many ways that I cannot write of. Her conduct has been noble since the separation – I am very far from being the only one who thinks this…

It would have been more manly and chivalrous of you to write me not to withdraw friendship from the woman you brought into the family, the woman you once loved and had forsaken, though her love was unchanged… 

You now in these later times always speak of "pain to me", "giving me pain", etc. – Do you ever think of Alys's suffering – from her love for you… Yet she always speaks beautifully of you, wishing only for your happiness. 

Do not imagine for a moment that I ever forget, and did not feel most acutely, your own unhappiness… but to those who truly loved you, it is heart-breaking that you have not grown nobler, stronger, more loving and tender through suffering, but in every way the reverse.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Quirkality goes on to say:

Russell’s biographer, Ray Monk, notes that while Alys remained helplessly in love with Russell, following his public activities closely, and keeping a scrapbook of cuttings about him, Russell for his part scarcely gave her a thought. 

As for Aunt Agatha, Dora dismissed her as a "malicious old lady", Russell’s brother Frank labelled her an “acid old spinster” and Russell, the great humanist philosopher, hardly noticed her at all.

Bertie Wooster claimed his Aunt Agatha (not to be confused with his more genial Aunt Dahlia) ate broken bottles, wore barbed wire next to the skin and was strongly suspected of turning into a werewolf at the time of the full moon.

But I think Russell's Aunt Agatha was in the right here.

Russell, however, would probably have agreed with Wooster:

"It is no use telling me there are bad aunts and good aunts. At the core, they are all alike. Sooner or later, out pops the cloven hoof."

GUEST POST Why am I a Liberal Democrat?

Simon Beard explains, with help from Edmund Burke, John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Clarkson.

It seems to me that Liberals have a peculiar obsession with self-justification. Keynes first posed the question "Am I A Liberal?" (he was) in 1925, and many have asked it, or something like it, since.

Indeed, Bertrand Russel felt called to provide two justifications "why I am not a communist" and "why I am not a Christian", while even Margaret Thatcher's favourite Liberal Fredrick Hayek wanted to explain to his readers "why I am not a conservative".

This is hardly surprising. Liberals are, after all, in favour of the individual, while Liberalism is a social movement. We are not natural joiners we Liberals, and so many of us feel the desire to consider ourselves apart.

Yet still, we recognise that what we believe in is worth believing, and what we fight for is worth defending. I think this may be part of the reason why so many 'ordinary people' claim not to know what the Lib Dems 'really believe’. It is not that we do not believe in things; but we feel slightly awkward about it and would really rather discuss something else.

So why am I a Liberal?

First and foremost, I think I am a Burkean. Edmund Burke is often held up as the grandfather of British Conservatism, but that is a load of piffle. Burke was a radical of his day who fought against empire and privilege. He simply did not accept the justification being offered for the French revolution, and that meant he was disowned by other radicals of his day.

Burke's philosophy is not easy to encapsulate in a few words, but let me try. Burke believed in government by agreement and consent; he was a proponent of the social contract. However, in contrast with the doctrine of the time, he saw this agreement as not primarily between the rich and the poor, that would be manifestly unfair. Instead, he proposed a contract between the generations.

Each of us, in turn, takes the place of a dependent child, an independent adult and a supportive elder, and Burke thought that we should view society in this light. He also believed that what the social contract was fundamentally about was building and maintaining institutions that allowed people to get along. However, ultimately, these were only means to the end of a fully flourishing society. As he wrote:

To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and to mankind.

When the state takes it upon itself to disregard these institutions and reorganise society around one big idea (as the French revolutionaries tried to do) Burke believed that the social contract was violated and society would fall apart. Now, of course, we might make the same point about our stewardship of the environment, and I think Burke would have agreed.

Finally, Burke believed that when we engage in politics, we do so person to person, not thought to thought or idea to idea. Thus, we should choose MPs who we trust to act wisely, not those who would merely represent some pattern or ideal that we share.

Burke was not quite a Liberal in the modern sense of the term, but he certainly was never a Conservative. He was a passionate social humanist, and one of the most profound thinkers our country has produced.

To Burke, I owe my distrust of those (like Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn) who seek to remake our country according to their own designs and who view the institutions we have built up as mere obstacles to be overcome.

Secondly, I am a utilitarian. In my heart and soul what I most believe is that any policy, any choice, must be justified on the grounds that it will benefit the people affected by it, by making their lives fuller and better and contributing to their wellbeing.

However, I am a utilitarian of the school of John Stewart Mill, who saw so clearly that happiness could not be bought or sold or counted or controlled, but had to be cultivated. Our joy, he wrote, will 'come like the air that we breath', but only when we are liberated, supported and empowered, with good health, education, work, a nourishing environment, social connections and a flourishing culture.

I was part of the Federal Policy Committee on Wellbeing and Quality of Life, and one of the things I wanted to say in our report was that government has a huge role to play in supporting people's wellbeing, but that so often people's experiences of the state where that it made them unhappy, by forcing them into a social straitjacket or failing to deliver on its promises.

To the utilitarians, and especially to Mill, I owe my belief in an empowering and enabling state whose job it is to provide people with education, healthcare and financial support, but also to allow them to be who they most want to be. A state that cultivates everyone's garden, but allows their flowers to bloom as they will.

The Liberal Democrats are consistently the party who plan to give most direct support to the poorest in society - while the Conservatives choose to ignore them and Labour focus on implementing their grand schemes - that is as it should be.

Thirdly, I am a Georgist and a Social Liberal. Power, as well as wealth, is distributed incredibly unequally throughout our society, and in so far as we need reform, it should be primarily aimed at removing the blockages built up over centuries to preserve this status quo.

The philosophy and economics of this get terribly complicated; even I struggle with the level of cultishness that can surround them (and that's before we get to the School of Economic Science, an actual cult).

However, two key points are 1) that we pay far too little attention to the distribution of the ownership of land (nature) and its implications on how our society is structured and 2) that corporations are given the same, if not more, protection in how they act than ordinary people and are allowed to get away with massive corruption, even though are without emotions, social connections, family ties and love for humanity and the world around them.

This is not merely about redistribution; it is about calling out the inconsistencies and hypocrisies that lie at the heart of government policy, making it serve the interest of a tiny fraction of the population. Every classical Liberal, from Smith to Mill, envisioned a market of free individuals trading fairly, while every new Liberal, from Green to Beveridge, understood that the distortions of land and corporate power meant this had never been realised.

Yet, somehow people still feel able to describe the deregulation of markets as if it made them freer, rather than more totally controlled by a few special interests.

To the New Liberals, I owe my support for the voices of the small, for small business against big business, for renters against landlords, and for communities against developers. I also owe them my commitment to introducing Land Value Taxation and stronger restrictions on corporations.

These things matter even more than redistributing money, yet they are routinely overlooked by other parties. I think this is also why I am so glad the UK still manages to maintain a third party of national significance and wish we would introduce an electoral system that did not reduce everything to a binary choice, because there is always another perspective on any argument and it needs to be heard.

Fourthly, I am a supporter of human rights. In that old Liberal phrase, I believe that everyone is created equal and endowed with inalienable rights, and I mean everyone and I mean inalienable. Asylum seekers, single mothers, convicted criminals, disabled people, even straight, white, older men, all have the same fundamental rights.

Among these are the right to exist, publicly and as themselves, to pursue their own lifestyle and to play as full a part as possible in society. We must give prisoners the vote; we must give asylum seekers a decent level of support; we must allow gang members to express themselves culturally; we must ensure that everyone can walk the streets safely at night and that people can have a reasonable expectation of being able to get away with making mistakes.

Why? Because we are all human, we are all persons, we fundamentally have more in common than what divides us. And at heart, as those who first codified human rights after the second world war realised, these rights are ultimately protections against the power of others, and in particular the power of the state.

Rights should always stand outside the law and hem it on all sides. From these thinkers, I take an instinctive horror of anyone who sets up groups in opposition to each other, or who adopt dehumanising language for anyone – be they terrorists or billionaires.

Finally, I am an internationalist. Of course, that means I believe in nations, in groups of people who share a culture, a social ideal and a way of life. The hard-straight lines of the state must always be made to bend around the people it claims to serve.

However, it also means I believe that the boundaries of nations and peoples are flexible and fluid and that we realise the best in ourselves when we are open, tolerant and diverse and when we work with others to form a closer international union.

I understand that for many, we need to stay in the EU for economic reasons, for its social and environmental protections, or for peace and security; and I value all these things. However, ultimately, I am with Jeremy Clarkson, of all people, who said:

Whether I'm sitting in a railway concourse in Brussels or pottering down the canals of southwestern France or hurtling along a motorway in Croatia, I feel way more at home than I do when I'm trying to get something to eat in Dallas or Sacramento. I love Europe, and to me that's important.

I love Europe too (though I also love America), and I love what it stands for. I love my village, and my county, and my nation, and my country but I also love that 28 countries have joined together and are trying to form something bigger than themselves. I cannot give up on loving that, and nobody has any right to tell me to do so. Our party cannot give up on loving it either, and that is why I love it too.

This recent election really got me down; not just because of the result (though that was terrible) but because of the way everything seemed to get lost in the question of who could win or who could stop Brexit.

Please Liberal Democrats, do not forget who you are and why you are like that. Do not give up on your history and values and fall into the lie that this was simply a numbers exercise in tactical voting.

We are Liberals, and we have every right and reason to be so. Jeremy Corbyn is not, nor is Nicola Sturgeon. That does not make them bad people, but when it comes to fundamental questions of politics, philosophy and economics, I think it makes them wrong and I feel perfectly justified in saying that!

Simon Beard has a PhD in philosophy and works at the University of Cambridge's Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. He has twice stood as the Lib Dem candidate for Dartford and tweets @simon_beard.

Bertrand Russell remembers the terror of playing host to Mr Gladstone as a 17-year-old

I knew Bertrand Russell's younger son Conrad, who was an inspirational figure in the early years of the Liberal Democrats.

I am therefore three moves from Mr Gladstone - and almost anyone of importance between him and the Second World War.

Lord Bonkers on the great philosophers

At dinner this evening I asked Lord Bonkers about his recollections of two of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century. This is how he described them:

Bertrand Russell - "Terribly Clever."

Ludwig Wittgenstein - "Terribly Clever but Rather Hard Work."

Earl Russell and his Big Band

Can it really be almost nine years since Conrad Russell died?

In October 2004 I wrote:

Conrad Russell died last week, an irreplaceable loss to the Liberal Democrats and to Liberalism in general. There were worthy obituaries in the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian. I remember his saying once, rather overgenerously, that I did for the party what Matthew Parris does for the country. 

I also remember his asking me, as his wife had always wondered, why Lord Bonkers talked about Earl Russell and his Big Band. I explained that as there were band leaders called Count Basie and Duke Ellington... When I was studying philosophy as an undergraduate, I never dreamed that I would have this conversation with Bertrand Russell's son.

I also recall that David Boyle found the exchange inordinately amusing.

My reason for recalling it - apart from urging anyone who has joined the party in the last nine years to read that Guardian obituary - is that today I discovered there really was an Earl Russell and his Big Band. Or at least an Earl Russell Orchestra.

Harlan Online recalls:

In the 1940s, swing dancing was sweeping the nation. With people flocking to dance halls, bands began springing up, including the Earl Russell Orchestra. Led by George Stoltz, the Earl Russell Orchestra, made up of people primarily in the Shelby County area, played big band and swing music throughout Iowa and parts of Nebraska.

And thanks to that website for the loan of the photograph above.

Bertrand Russell goes to Bollywood

Open Culture explains the existence of this unlikely film clip:

The year was 1967. Russell was by then a very frail 95-year-old man. Besides finishing work on his three-volume autobiography, Russell was devoting much of his remaining time to the struggle for peace and nuclear disarmament. To that end, he sometimes made himself available to people he thought could help the cause ... So when he was asked to appear in a movie called Aman, about a young Indian man who has just received his medical degree in London and wants to go to Japan to help victims of the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Russell said yes.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Meet the Russells

Meet the Russells

If there is a family to rival the Attenboroughs (who have always struck me as a talented version of the Dimblebys) for fame, it is the Russells. I think first, of course, of my old friend Bertrand, author (with Norman Whiteside) of Principia Mathematica; if I were to be asked to sum up his character in a phrase, I should say that he was “Terribly Clever”. Then I think of dear Conrad: Liberal theorist, historian of the Civil War and leader of his celebrated Big Band.

There were, however, other Russell brothers who were remarkable men in their own right and deserve to be celebrated. I speak of ‘Hotel’ Russell, who went into the catering trade, and Russell Russell, who travelled in paper bags for many years.

Yet it is the youngest Russell brother who, as Liberal Democrat MP for Colchester, has achieved the highest eminence of all; indeed, he has just been knighted. Here he is, only the other day, replying to a constituent who had written to him questioning the idea of buying a new Royal Yacht:

Are you serious? Don’t you have more important things in your life to be worried about without bothering me with this? I am not sure if you have actually read the wording of the Motion, but if you had you would have seen that I am one of the Sponsors. Thus I was one of those who was behind it being Tabled in the first place. And I am very proud that I was able to. I have pride in our nation’s history and its maritime heritage. A new Royal Yacht would be in Britain’s national and international interests. Are you not capable of understanding this?

If anyone deserves a knighthood, then Bob Russell does. Or, to put it another way, if Bob Russell deserves a knighthood then anyone does.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West 1906-10

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Diary...

• The fall of David Attenborough
• Welcoming Ruth Davidson

I am fed up with being preached at by atheists

My religious position is clear enough: I am a High Church atheist. I like church music and church architecture, but that doesn’t mean God exists. You could say I was Anglican by temperament but not by belief.

I had many good friends when I was doing my first degree, but in those days I was something of a professional atheist. I saw it as part of my job as a Philosophy student. In particular, I found the arguments of the Christian Union (CU) simplistic and its habit of appealing to the emotions of lonely or immature young people unattractive. Interestingly, in view of what follows, my impression is that the majority of keen CU types were studying science subjects.

Over the years, though I find the Evangelical style of Christianity that the CU represented distasteful to this day, I have lost my enthusiasm for arguing with religious people. As you get older you come to realise that we all live by beliefs that we cannot possibly prove – in politics quite as much as religion.

And even when I was at university and sending for humanist publications, I resented the idea that if you were an atheist then you automatically embraced a whole range of predetermined positions on social issues – what you might call today ‘the full Evan Harris’. Then and now I had more doubts about the morality of abortion than are fashionable amongst Liberal atheists, though today I am a stronger support of assisted dying than I used to be.

Times moves on and I find the modern proselytising atheist movement unattractive – unattractive in the way that I used to find the CU unattractive, and often for the same reasons.

The version of atheism that attracted me as a student had Bertrand Russell and David Hume as its leading figure and it shared its best qualities: it was wise, witty and sceptical. This philosophical atheism gently but firmly pointed out that Christians were making claims about the universe that they could not begin to prove.
Russell was certainly an atheist, whereas Hume probably believed that there was a deity of some sort, but that there was little we could sensibly say about him. This philosophical form of atheism, you will see, was a broad church.

Today’s atheism is different. It does not deal in scepticism but in certainties.

I do not underestimate the brilliance of Darwin: everyone should read The Origin of Species, if only for the quality of the prose. Why isn’t scientific writing like that now? I suggest it is because of the emphasis on ‘publication’: papers are written to be published, not read.

And Darwin was a wonderful liberator of human thinking. If you read William Cobbett, an intelligent but not conventionally academic writer from the early 19th century, you will see that he cannot make sense of nature without God. (I remember using a quotation from Rural Rides in an essay on miracles to make just this point. Some linguistic philosophers would see the cry “it’s a miracle”” as an expression of joy but to Cobbett – I was rather proud of this phrase – it was an explanation, not an exclamation.) But after Darwin we could explain nature without God. The world looked different.

Yet somewhere this modern scientific atheism has hardened into a dogma. Just take a look at Twitter, where the stars of the movement spend their time mocking those who do not share their views and their acolytes send them links giving new names to laugh at. It does feel remarkably like a religious movement.
Such an approach does not accord with the view of science I learnt from the works of Karl Popper, where what characterises it is precisely a willingness to see its hypotheses refuted. The modern atheist does not entertain the possibility that he or she may be wrong.

Take the recent court case involving prayers before meetings of Bideford town council. Our modern atheists have rejoiced over this: to me it looks like an unreasonable demand that everyone else must share their views.

The strongest argument against prayers at such meetings is that they may discourage people from standing for the council in the first place. But I am not convinced.

I became a member of Harborough District Council at the age of 26 and a year later found myself part of a sizeable Liberal Alliance group with two member who were younger than I was.

Not surprisingly, we found many of the council’s ways of doing things stuffy and old fashioned. Some we tried to change (successfully or not), some we put up with, some we ignored and some we came to see the wisdom of.

In all of this, the existence of prayers at the start of full council meetings was the least of our concerns. But if they had worried us we would have sought to change things in Harborough, not looked for outside help to fight a court case in London.

And that is at the heart of my distaste for modern atheism. My Liberalism is sceptical and thus is happy to tolerate local difference: philosophical atheism could live with that, but I am not sure this new scientific atheism can.