The Meddling Professor: Bernard Crick's Active Defence of Politics

Abstract

It's now fifteen years since the death of Bernard Crick. His contribution to modern scholarship and political writing continues to be recognised largely with reference to ‘the book’ and ‘the biography’, namely the ‘mere essay’ In Defence of Politics and his major work on George Orwell. The central contention of this article, however, is that Crick's corpus of work continues to have a wide contemporary relevance that reaches far beyond these two central reference points. Crick's arguments about ideology and political cultures remain hugely significant to anyone seeking to understand or contest the emergence of populism. Populism has, in recent years, reaffirmed its status as a highly effective mode of political galvanisation. Crick saw populism as the most urgent threat to politics and his concerns are widely echoed in academia and beyond. This article uses some of Crick's political ‘meddling’ in his final years as a lens through which to examine Crick's active defence of politics. These include Crick's deep engagement with Scottish political life, and manifestations of his truculent moderation and intellectual pluralism. It argues that Crick embodied a positive faith that, though powerful and serious, threats to politics could be disarmed and repelled.