Episode 1 My Favourite Political Thinker

On row upon row of shelves in libraries like this one

in the heart of the House of Commons, there are books

on philosophy, society and politics.

But there are only a very few authors who have managed to combine

all three disciplines and seen their ideas adopted

and sometimes put into practice.

Working as a political journalist at a time when politics is

viewed with such scepticism, we asked some famous faces to

choose those political thinkers they think really are worth celebrating.

In this programme, we're going to look at those who have laid

the very foundation stones of our British political system.

We're actually going to start in a different library,

locked in on some very old manuscripts.

John Locke, whose portrait is behind me,

was an early Fellow of the Royal Society.

He joined in 1668, before Isaac Newton did.

Here in the library of the Royal Society in Pall Mall, I have

in front of me letters that Locke wrote back to the Royal Society.

One here from Montpellier, 1678,

Observations Of The Moon, that he just thought would be interesting.

Here, in Paris, a letter written back, Observations

On A Medical Quirk, a boy who appeared to have been growing horns.

Here, a constitution for part of colonial America.

Things like this became

the foundation for the American Constitution.

This is a man with varied interests and interesting things to say.

Today we'd call him a polymath.

But I am off to meet a Labour MP who thinks his philosophies

of politics are what make him really relevant and relevant to today.

So let's start at the very beginning.

Lisa, we have come to a nursery, which might seem a bit odd,

but of course it is one of Locke's big theories, the tabula rasa,

that we are all born a blank slate and accumulate knowledge.

But when you were learning about Locke, what was it that excited you?

That theory made a huge splash at the time, but actually what

excited me was the theory of equality that Locke puts forward.

We are in this nursery, surrounded by children,

all of them with very different characteristics.

But what Locke argued was that, for the purposes of political

representation, none of those differences matter, we are all equal.

So when I first picked up these books at university

and found this radical idea in the middle of what is really quite

an establishment figure in his thought, I thought

this is a guy who is really worth reading.

Those radical ideas get him into trouble with the establishment.

I want to take you to the scene of what may or may not have

been a plot he was involved in but certainly causes problems for him.

Brilliant, let's go.

Lisa, this is Rye House.

Well, it is just the gatehouse now, the rest of it is gone.

But in 1683 Locke is implicated in a plot to kill Charles II,

who is King, and his brother James, who will become King,

will become James II. Locke has to flee, to the Netherlands.

He doesn't come back to Britain until the Glorious Revolution

and William is installed on the throne, William of Orange.

It seems to me that Locke is adapting to those people

who are in power

cos they happen to believe the sort of things that he believes.

Actually, Giles, I think

you are looking at this the wrong way round,

because Locke was writing for those

people in positions of power, people who had the ability to change things.

At times this makes his philosophy seem inconsistent,

perhaps even a bit incoherent when you take it as a whole.

The really exciting thing about Locke is that he wasn't just a thinker,

he was also a doer.

He lives through these tremendous times, huge religious turmoil

and this battle for power between King and Parliament.

His argument about the limits of power on the Sovereign changed

what was to happen next.

Dr Elizabeth Frazer of Oxford University is clear,

not only does Locke affect what happens next here

but abroad too, by making a simple argument.

Locke is the great theorist of anti-patriarchy.

He set out to argue that patriarchalist theory,

which was very common in the 17th century,

the idea that political power is the power of the father

over his sons, it is the power of the husband over his wife

and that is what the King's power is.

He set out to show that that is false.

So, Lisa, this is All Saints, High Laver in Essex,

where Locke worshipped for the last 13 years of his life.

He lived in the area and he is buried in the churchyard.

But church is quite important to one of his principal philosophies,

the separation of powers between church,

government - in the form of the King - and the judiciary.

The important thing about Locke was that he was

concerned with the limits of government power.

Instead of seeing the monarchy as ruling by divine right

handed down to them by God, he saw power as resting with the people.

It was this idea that paved the way for the American War

of Independence and for the French Revolution.

If you look at the American Constitution, you can

see Locke written into every line of that document.

It is surprising, really, that this most

conservative of philosophers should end up pushing forward ideas that

were tremendously radical and would have such a revolutionary impact.

Speaking about the church, he is very interested in religion,

isn't he?

That's right, he writes this profound defence of religious toleration.

Locke might have been doing that for political reasons

but the impact was to launch the first sustained

campaign for religious freedom from inside the Church of England.

Let's see if we can go and find his grave which is in the churchyard.

I think, if I am right... Yep, there he is.

There we go.

The plaque here was actually put together by the American

and British Commonwealth Association.

So clearly, they understand the importance that he

has in the American political system,

but what relevance has John Locke got to us today?

I think he is hugely relevant today.

His defence of toleration, which was aimed at religion but set out broad

principles which matter so much with the far right sweeping Europe.

But there is something more than that, Giles,

that I think he will really be remembered for.

He set out the foundation of Western democracy,

this idea that government only derives its legitimacy

from the will of the people.

With trust in politicians at an all-time low and people really

dissatisfied with politics as a whole,

we could do so much worse than to revisit

the writings of a man from the 17th century to find answers

to some of the really challenging problems that we face today.

50-odd years after Locke died, Edmund Burke arrived in London.

It's fair to say the 18th-century political philosopher

Edmund Burke, who lived in this street, wouldn't recognise it today.

It is in the heart of London's Chinatown.

But he would recognise the British political system as it is today

because, according to a Conservative MP and his biographer,

he is the man who shaped it.

Burke didn't start out in politics

but studied law at the Middle Temple, mainly to please his father.

Jesse, how are you? Good to see you.

So we are here in this magnificent Middle Temple Hall, which is

where Burke lands and arrives in London studying law.

Why do you like Burke?

I love Burke because he is a wonderful writer,

he is an extraordinary political thinker

and he is a terrific campaigner against social injustice.

In short, he kind of writes the textbook

for what a really good MP should be.

He is also, of course, the first Conservative, if you like.

Yes, he is.

He is the first man who really moulds Conservatism into a coherent

-body of thought.

-He studies here, he studies law, like lots of MPs.

But he doesn't really like it.

No, he loves the law but he is not keen at all on the Middle Temple.

He seems to have found it a very narrow, dry education.

He has got a lovely simile here where he says,

"He that lives in a college, after his mind is sufficiently stocked

"with learning, is like a man, who having built,

"rigged and victualled a ship, should lock her up in a dry dock."

I think he felt locked up in a dry dock himself

while he was in the Middle Temple.

He is very keen to get out into London

and explore an expanding London, but he finds some important friends.

Yes, London is going through a phenomenal artistic,

cultural and indeed sexual revolution.

He is very keen to get out and explore.

-Why don't we go and see one of the houses?

-Excellent idea.

Ah, so Dr Johnson's Withdrawing Room.

What has Johnson got to do with Burke?

Johnson is Burke's ticket to the centre of literary London

and it is an amazing moment where Britain is kind of exploding

with talent and thought.

You've got Adam Smith revolutionising economics,

you've got David Hume in philosophy,

you've got Johnson himself in every branch of literature

and then Burke is determined to leave his own imprint on politics.

So what does he come up with?

He comes up with the first theory of representative government

and of party politics and of the duties of an MP.

What is extraordinary is he doesn't just talk about it,

he really puts it into practice himself.

There is a great moment where he says to his constituents,

"I am not going to kiss your boots,

"what really matters is that I act on your behalf according

"to my best judgment and not simply on your instructions." And that

has become the kind of great doctrine of the way an MP thinks today.

But doctrines fall when compromised

and Burke treats two different revolutions in two different ways.

At the time, Burke was horribly criticised by people who felt

very let down by him

because he had a reputation of being a reformer,

as being progressive and his reaction to the French Revolution

was simply reactionary. Very, very extreme.

He went from one extreme to the other and people were shocked.

We have come to Brooks's Club, just in the heart of St James's.

Burke becomes a member here, he is very pleased about that.

But I have a confusion.

Burke is in favour of the American Revolution

but not in favour of the French Revolution.

Burke becomes a member of Brooks's in 1782, he is

an Irishman from the wrong side of the tracks so he's absolutely

thrilled by that and by the social acceptance that it means to him.

Now, what is so fascinating about it is that Brooks's is the home

of the reformers, the Whigs.

Burke really believes in reform and not revolution

and the reason why he supported the American colonists is

because he thinks their way of life needs to be

preserved against Crown imperial power.

The reason he is against the French Revolution is

because he thinks society is being overturned by a violent upheaval

and that is what he opposes so strongly.

Reform is important because we don't have a revolution.

No, in Britain we don't have a revolution.

We come close to one in the 1810s and '20s but we never have it.

We have the Great Reform Act in 1832 and then the Second Reform Act

in 1867.

Those are the two great steps towards modern parliamentary democracy.

Speaking of that, let's go to the heart of modern parliamentary democracy

and find out what his relevance is today.

We started in a magnificent hall.

We are ending in one - this is Westminster Great Hall.

Why have you brought us here, why Burke?

Well, it is a very important place for Burke

because it is in this building that Burke drags back the Governor General

of India, Warren Hastings, in the mid-1780s.

They have been filling their boots in the East India Company

and he is determined to put them on trial for public accountability.

What relevance does Burke have to what happens in the chamber today?

It is really Burke who is driving the line between a state intervention

we can't afford and cutting markets loose in a way that damages society.

So it is through Burke we understand social renewal.

Without him, we really can't understand modern politics at all.

If you have Burke then you really also have to have Thomas Paine.

You know, there can't be that many political philosophers that

end up with a beer named after them.

But they like Tom Paine here in Lewes,

largely because he lived here, alongside New York and Paris.

But the local MP likes him, not just because he was a resident,

but because Paine's heady mix of reason,

rights and justice is very much to his political taste.

Paine was sent to Lewes as a customs and excise man

so it seems apt to meet outside the house he made his own

for six years, whilst Norman Baker explains Paine's appeal.

I admire Thomas Paine tremendously. He stood for what he believed in,

he wasn't prepared to bend with the prevailing wind.

He stood for rights, for justice.

As he put it himself, simple facts, plain arguments and common sense.

He was a citizen of the world, an absolutely inspirational concept

for people who want to be free of nation states.

His theory is a theory of rights

and the theory of rights that he bequeathed to us is basically

the one that we now have in our human rights institutions.

Lewes may look chocolate-box pretty

but it's always had a character that made town and man a perfect match.

Lewes has always been rather a bolshie place,

which I rather like about it.

It has always been prepared to challenge the establishment.

Go back to the Battle of Lewes in 1264, which led to the first time

the power of the King was checked and the first parliament established.

You've got bonfire celebrations here in Lewes.

Tom Paine suited Lewes and Lewes suited Tom Paine.

With almost Lewesian logic, Thomas Paine,

our great political thinker, thinks politics has a very limited role.

For Paine, politics and government has one role only

and that is to uphold the rights of individuals.

It has got no business anywhere else.

So here we are at this fantastic bowling green, which has been

here for centuries. Unique to Lewes.

And of course, Tom Paine himself was a member,

would have bowled from here.

-Right, OK. On this very spot?

-It could even be this very spot.

Go on, then, give it a go.

What do you think Paine is telling us in his works?

I think he is saying that we should base what we do on freethinking,

on reason and respect the individual and not be hemmed in

by the tramlines of established orthodoxy which applied...

That's an excellent shot!

And does he get into trouble for saying all of this?

Yes, because most people would bend and go with the flow. He didn't.

Despite an immense contribution to the French Revolution

and to the US Constitution, he ended up a pauper.

-Just six people at his burial.

-Think you won that one.

-I think that is bang on.

-It is bang on!

His ideas inspired revolution and a constitution in America and later

in France, where he was so involved he was even elected to the assembly.

But relentless focus on rights does have its drawbacks.

By the rights of man, he definitely meant the rights of MEN.

Women's rights and feminist rights have been a problem

theoretically and politically ever since.

There is also just a more general problem with

the idea of rights which is that it treats us as individuals,

it can be seen to put us into competition with one another,

it can be seen to lead to a litigious society, and Paine is

accused of having ignored community, the relationships between us.

But in the town pub where Paine drank and debated, there is

an argument that his thinking still resonates today.

Actually, it is of huge relevance because he was very modern

for his time, which perhaps was an oddity then.

But what he is talking about is very relevant today.

He didn't like governments, he called them a necessary evil at best,

intolerable at worst.

He wanted to make sure the balance between the state

and individual was framed towards the individual, which is a very

modern way of looking at things.

He was very suspicious of unelected bodies, the House of Lords,

the monarchy.

We're still wrestling with the House of Lords now, aren't we?

-Here's to Tom Paine.

-Cheers.

From Paine's Rights Of Man,

we turn to Mary Wollstonecraft's rights of women.

It is unusual, isn't it?

A very modern, daubed-on-a-wall style portrait

of an 18th-century philosopher.

But this is Mary Wollstonecraft, a campaigner for women's rights,

equality and education, who was well ahead of her time.

I am here in London to meet an MP who was a fan of hers long before

her party made her a spokesperson on just those kinds of issues.

For someone who questioned

so much about the norms of the society they lived in, it is odd

we should start her story in a church that she regularly attended.

So, Gloria, here we are in the pew she sat in, in the church she

worshipped in, that boasts itself it is the birthplace of feminism.

I guess it is a bit of a no-brainer,

but why do you like Mary Wollstonecraft?

I remember first reading about Mary Wollstonecraft

when I was an undergraduate at university.

She was the first feminist, the first person to say,

"Actually, no, women are not inferior to men."

And remember, she was saying this at a time, in a century,

where political thinking, political writing, philosophy,

totally dominated by men.

She was a pioneer in a man's world.

You know, I work in politics

so I know about what it is like to speak out in a man's world.

Thank you, Mary Wollstonecraft, you started us off.

She is a very important philosopher of education

and if we think of the field that we now know as cultural studies,

opening up that question of the relationship between culture,

society and state, it is all there in her book.

Gloria, I brought you to London's oldest brick terrace

but there is a reason.

At the time Mary Wollstonecraft is living in Newington Green,

this is the home of the minister of the church where we were at,

Richard Price.

But he also hosts loads of

great Enlightenment thinkers at this house.

Of course, Mary Wollstonecraft writes her seminal work,

the Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman,

just a year after Thomas Paine has written his Rights Of Man.

And he was talking about the rights of men.

As you say, this was the Enlightenment.

An age where thinkers were turning their back on religion,

tradition, folklore and saying,

"Actually, where it's at is science, it's reason, it's logic."

Mary Wollstonecraft's point was that, if reason is where it's at,

how can women be confined to their traditional roles?

They should be able to use their talents in the same way as men.

However, they're not, because they're not educated, and she said,

"I want them to be taught to think."

On that, she practised what she preached.

It was just around here that she set up a girls' school.

There is a plaque just over there which commemorates it.

It was during her time at the school where she writes her first book.

Ah, yes, Thoughts On The Education Of Daughters.

Yes, which peculiarly was a kind of guide to female manners.

Nonetheless, she earned £10, she was very pleased about this.

In fact, in letters which have been published subsequently,

there is a letter to her sister which she wrote a year after,

saying, "I hope you have not forgot I am an author."

Whatever Mary thought of herself,

what others have thought of her has changed over time.

She was vilified as a feminist.

She was then sainted as a figure of the radical Romantic movement.

She was understood to be the founder of liberal feminism with her

emphasis on rights.

I now think we are coming to a point where scholars and historians

are able to get to grips with the complexity of her work.

Gloria, this is the memorial to Mary Wollstonecraft.

She is not actually buried here.

She dies tragically young, 38,

11 days after giving birth to Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.

But what seems to be really sad about her is her reputation

gets buried with her.

Her reputation was trashed as some kind of immoral fanatic.

That is because of the decisions she made in her personal life.

She had an affair with a married man and she knew he was married.

She had a child out of wedlock, which was big news in those days.

Those things were kind of used by some, many in fact,

as a stick to beat her with.

That attitude seems to last for almost a century.

It is relatively recently that academics have gone back

and said, "Hang on, let's just go and look at what she was saying."

The issues in her personal life, which she wrote about too,

are still the challenges that we talk about as women today -

earning a living, having a career, falling in love, raising children.

Still the very same challenges we face today.

And that makes her pretty special.

She knew she was special, she knew she was exceptional.

In fact, she once said, "I was not born to walk in the beaten track."

She wasn't short on self-confidence.

That's very true!

So far our thinkers have been pre-19th century,

but not so JS Mill.

One of the biggest political debates of our time is

freedom of speech, what are we at liberty to say and think?

In the context of that debate,

I have come to Kensington Square to talk to a commentator

and journalist about why he thinks now is the right time to

visit the works and thoughts of the philosopher who lived here, JS Mill.

-Morning, Toby.

-Good morning.

-Foul morning, but this is Mill's house.

Why do you like Mill so much?

JS Mill was the first political philosopher I read,

aged 17, as part of preparing for my Oxford interview.

I was a punk anarchist at the time and Mill very clearly articulates

these principles which circumscribe the limits of state action.

As a teenage anarchist, I found that really appealing.

That's you as a teenager being educated, but of course

Mill's education is very important as well.

Yes, Mill had a very unusual education. He was taught Greek

at the age of three, was reading Plato in the original aged 10.

His father, who home-schooled him, James Mill,

was a disciple of Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism.

James Mill also co-founded University College London.

Mill completed his education by attending lectures

as a teenager at UCL.

At least that's inside, so let's go there now.

JS Mill's theory of freedom is cogent and powerful and readable.

He was courageous,

he stood up for the rights of women in a hostile environment.

He changed himself, getting over an unhappy childhood.

And here's why he's really important today,

he did that by educating himself, or re-educating himself.

For him, education is absolutely central to life.

Toby, you mentioned Jeremy Bentham, and there he is, that really is him.

His skeleton, at least.

They had to remove his head because it was a bit gruesome,

and put the waxwork on. But he is the founder of utilitarianism.

Mill's father is a disciple of his but JS Mill has

a sort of crisis about it. Tell me what happens.

At the age of 20, Mill had what he described as a nervous breakdown.

He'd had this difficult experience

in his childhood of being brought up in a household in which

his father and all his father's intellectual companions were

completely beholden to this man.

I think one of the reasons Mill devoted his life to resisting

intellectual oppression in all its forms was because of

the intellectually oppressive atmosphere in his childhood home.

So that of course is Bentham,

let's go and have a look at JS Mill himself.

This is Temple Gardens, along the Embankment.

It has to be said, you have to have a good look around.

There are loads of statues, it takes some finding.

But there he is, JS Mill.

They have put up a statue to him, but what is his great claim to fame?

Well, he wrote a number of celebrated essays on subjects

like utilitarianism and representative democracy.

He was an MP. He was the first MP, I think, to call for votes for women.

But his great claim to fame is his essay entitled On Liberty,

in which he articulates what has become known as the harm principle,

which has become one of the touchstones of libertarianism.

The principle is that the only justification for restraining

an individual, for the state interfering in an individual's life

and preventing him from doing something against his will,

is to prevent harm to others.

Over his own mind and body, the individual should be sovereign.

Mill wasn't just a philosopher but also an MP,

though he wasn't as radical a politician as he was a thinker.

For Mill, politics is just as it is.

He accepts the politics of his time, which is striking in someone

who is so unconventional

and who refuses to be hidebound by the values of his day.

So, Toby, he is a Victorian political thinker.

Does he have any relevance to us today?

One of the points that Mill made most forcefully is that democracy

and liberty don't always go hand in hand.

Indeed, they are often in conflict.

There ought to be certain carefully defined spheres

into which the state shouldn't be able to intrude.

And part of that sphere should obviously be free speech.

The harm principle is quite useful when it comes to delineating

the limits of what the state's power should be.

When it comes to, for instance,

whether we should ban Page 3 or prohibit

the expression of misogynistic points of view on Twitter,

we should ask ourselves, will banning

and prohibiting that behaviour cause more harm than allowing it?

I think Mill's answer is that yes, in almost every case it is.

I think it is important to remind Parliament of that,

particularly now.

Speaking of freedom of speech,

I feel free to say, thank God it has stopped raining!

Next time, we will look at those who built on these foundations

to make a modern contribution to our political world.