Bernard Crick

From Philosopedia

Crick, Bernard (Rowland) (Sir) (16 December 1929 - 19 December 2008 )

Professor Sir Bernard Crick was a political writer, polemicist, democratic socialist, and emeritus professor of politics and fellow of Birkbeck College, London. He died peacefully in his sleep on Friday, December 19, 2008, at the St. Columbus Hospice in Edinburgh, after a long battle with cancer.

Sir Bernard's books included the widely translated In Defence of Politics (in print for over 40 years) and George Orwell: a Life (the first complete biography of the author). For many years he was joint editor of the Political Quarterly and also theatre correspondent of the Times Higher Education Supplement.

He began his teaching career as a Teaching Fellow at Harvard, taught at McGill a year before returning to teach at the London School of Economics from 1956 to 1967, and was professor of Politics at Sheffield from 1967 to 1973, thereafter at Birkbeck.

The 1973 Voltaire Lectures include his Crime, Rape and Gin (1975).

Crick in 1976 became an honorary associate of the British Rationalist Press Association - others have been Sir Hermann Bondi, Noam Chomsky, Sir Fred Hoyle, and Bertrand Russell. Crick was a Humanist Laureate in the Council for Secular Humanism’s International Academy of Humanism, and he was Vice-President of the British Humanist Association. He signed "Secular Humanist Declaration" and "Humanist Manifesto 2000."

He and 1962 Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick were not related.

In 1984, Crick moved to Scotland, was active in the devolution movement. and in 1997 became chair of a committee whose 1998 report, "The Teaching of Citizenship and Democracy in Schools," led to citizenship becoming part of the curriculum in England.

A bee-keeper and theatre critic, he had edited Machiavelli: The Discourses (1971) and Political Thoughts and Polemics (1989).

For many years editor of The Political Quarterly, Crick was joint founder of the Study of Parliament Group, first president of the Politics Association (teachers) in the 1970s, and had headed the Association for Citizenship Teaching. A Vice-President of the Political Studies Association, he holds four honorary degrees.

In 1994 an essay by Crick, “A Humanist Perspective for Britain,” was included in Challenges to the Enlightenment, Essays in Defense of Reason and Science.

He was knighted in January 2002 “for services to citizenship in schools and to political studies”. He later worked as a Home Office adviser on citizenship, chairing the “Living in the UK” advisory group on language and citizenship education towards naturalisation. Crick headed the Advisory Board on Naturalisation and Integration, an independent public board, until his resignation in March 2005.

Crick worked as an occasional broadcaster and journalist, drawing on the experience of his political travels in Northern Ireland, South Africa and the Middle East.

“My mother was a thrice yearly Christian: Christmas, Easter, and Armistice Day,” he wrote, adding that, “I still like the language and liturgies of the Church of England. . . . But the absurdity of it began to dawn after the closing words of the Bishop of Croydon’s last confirmation class: ‘Remember boys, when the Archbishop’s hands descend on your head you are one with God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost - and no hair oil.”

Like Koestler, Crick has stated, “I am a ‘pious atheist.’ Our ever-ready anti-God does sometimes seem a little old-fashioned. We get nowhere if we blame the revival of militant religious fundamentalism on religion. It is how we behave to each other that matters more than what we believe. Is this heresy or humanism?”

Trevor Smith, describing the self-proclaimed polemicist who produced four books of great importance, said Crick "stood in the tradition of the publicly concerned scholar as exemplified by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, R. H. Tawney, Harold Laski, and G. D. H. Cole, though at a time when it was a much less fashionable role."

His three marriages ended in divorce. He was survived by two sons - Oliver and Thomas.

Selected Works

In Defence of Politics (Continuum)

George Orwell: a Life (Penguin)

Essays on Citizenship (Continuum)

Essays on Citizenship (Continuum)

Crossing Borders: Political Essays (Continuum)

Democracy: A Very Short Book (Oxford University Press)

{SHD; British Humanist Association;David Blunkett, The Guardian; Trevor Smith, 19 December 2008, The Guardian; The New York Times, 22 December 2008.}