R. H. Tawney
Richard Henry Tawney (R.H. Tawney) (1880 - 1962) was an English writer, economist, historian, social critic and university professor and a leading advocate of Christian Socialism.
Born in Calcutta, India, Tawney was educated at Rugby School and Balliol College, Oxford where he studied modern history.
He joined the executive of the Workers' Educational Association in 1905 serving as the WEA's president in the 1920s and remaining with the organisation until 1947. He lectured at Glasgow University in the years leading to World War I and became a lecturer at the London School of Economics in 1917 where he remained for the rest of his career becoming professor of economic history in 1931. In 1926 he helped found The Economic History Society with Sir William Ashley, amongst others.
He supported the Republic during the Spanish Civil War among other political causes.
Among his books are The Acquisitive Society (1921), Secondary Education for All (1922), Education: the Socialist Policy (1924), Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926) and Equality (1931).
He twice ran for a seat in the House of Commons for the Labour Party without success.
Quotes
In Keeping Left (1950):
- "Democracy is unstable as a political system as long as it remains a political system and nothing more, instead of being, as it should be, not only a form of government but a type of society, and a manner of life which is in harmony with that type. To make it a type of society requires an advance along two lines. It involves, in the first place, the resolute elimination of all forms of special privilege which favour some groups and depress other, whether their source be differences of environment, of education, or of pecuniary income. It involves, in the second place, the conversion of economic power, now often an irresponsible tyrant, into a servant of society, working within clearly defined limits and accountable for its actions to a public authority"