JOHN STUART MILL CHOSEN AS GREATEST BRITISH LIBERAL

Liberal Democrats have voted for the philosopher John Stuart Mill as the greatest British Liberal in
history.

Mill (1806–73), a philosopher, economist, journalist, political writer, social reformer, and, briefly,
Liberal MP, is one of the most famous figures in the pantheon of Liberal theorists. His masterpiece,
On Liberty, emphatically vindicated individual moral autonomy, and celebrated the importance of
originality and dissent; it is the symbol of office of the President of the Liberal Democrats.

Liberal Democrat delegates at the party’s autumn conference in Brighton, together with
subscribers to the Journal of Liberal History, took part in the poll, which ended at the Liberal
Democrat History Group’s fringe meeting on the last night of conference.

At the meeting, leading Liberal Democrats and historians presented the case for each of the four
candidates on the final short-list:
• For John Stuart Mill: Richard Reeves, former journalist and biographer of Mill.
• For William Ewart Gladstone: Paddy Ashdown, Liberal Democrat leader 1988–99.
• For David Lloyd George: Lord Morgan, Labour peer and historian.
• For John Maynard Keynes: Lord McNally, leader of the Liberal Democrats peers.

The result was announced to the Liberal Democrat conference just before Menzies Campbell’s
speech on Thursday 20 September.


Notes

The Great Liberal contest was organised by the Liberal Democrat History Group, which aims to
promote the study of Liberal, Liberal Democrat and SDP history. The Group publishes the quarterly
Journal of Liberal History and a series of books (the latest of which is Brack and Randall (eds.),
Dictionary of Liberal Thought (Politico’s, 2007)), organises discussion meetings and maintains the
website www.liberalhistory.org.uk as a resource for students of Liberal history.

The Great Liberal contest was inspired by the BBC’s ‘Great Britons’ exercise in 2002. The criteria
for candidates were that the individual must have been active in the Liberal Party, or its
predecessors (Whigs, Radicals, etc.) or influential on Liberal thinking; they must have been British,
or active in Britain; and they must be dead.

The poll took place in two stages. In July, Journal of Liberal History readers voted from amongst a
long-list of fifteen candidates chosen by the History Group’s executive. Write-in candidates were

encouraged. The fifteen original candidates were: H. H. Asquith, William Beveridge, Violet Bonham
Carter, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Richard Cobden, Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Charles
James Fox, David Lloyd George, W. E. Gladstone, Jo Grimond, Roy Jenkins, J. M. Keynes, John
Locke, John Stuart Mill and Lord John Russell.

The full results of the vote from amongst the final four were as follows. The election was conducted
by the alternative vote (a form of proportional representation) in which voters number their
candidates in order of preference. The candidate receiving the smallest number of first-preference
votes is eliminated and their votes transferred to the other candidates according to the second
preference – and so on, until one candidate achieves more than 50 per cent of the vote.



John Stuart Mill (1806–73)

Philosopher, economist, journalist, political writer, social reformer, and, briefly, Liberal MP, John
Stuart Mill is one of the most famous figures in the pantheon of Liberal theorists, and the greatest
of the Victorian Liberal thinkers.

Eldest son of the Scottish utilitarian philosopher James Mill, John Stuart’s works have had far more
lasting interest. In Principles of Political Economy (1848) he voiced his unease concerning the
excessive power and influence of the state; people understood their own business better than
government did. However, he acknowledged a clear role for the state, for example in regulating
natural monopolies.

He is best known for his masterpiece, On Liberty (1859), which emphatically vindicated individual
moral autonomy, and celebrated the importance of originality and dissent. Although generations of
Liberals have used his arguments to oppose state authoritarianism, in fact Mill devoted most of the
work to arguing against middle-class conformism, which stultified opposition and a critical cast of
mind.

In Considerations on Representative Government (1861) Mill expounded his doctrine of
democracy, emphasising the importance of local government. Putting his beliefs into practice, he
served as Liberal MP for Westminster from 1865 to 1868, where he argued for proportional
representation and the extension of suffrage to women householders – a stance he developed in
The Subjection of Women (1869), which remains the only feminist classic written by a man. He
maintained that social reform, rather than repression, was the cure for civil unrest in Ireland, and
argued for the impeachment of the brutal Governor Eyre of Jamaica. Mill’s defence of civil rights
and racial equality helped to lose him his seat in 1868.

Mill’s intellectual achievements were unmatched in Victorian England. His defence of individual
liberty can still set the terms of debate today, for example over freedom of speech. This helps to
explain why On Liberty is the symbol of office of the President of the Liberal Democrats – and,
what is more, the symbol of liberalism itself.