In my ignorance I had always assumed that the ‘Haldane’ of the Haldane Principle1 referred to the great and singular geneticist and physiologist JBS Haldane. Not true. JBS once remarked that God must have been inordinately fond of beetles because there are so many species of beetles, so with the Haldanes; (good) fortune is, it appears, inordinately fond of the Haldane clan. A relative of JBS, Richard Burdon Haldane — who did indeed come up with the Haldane principle — is the subject of a new biography by Philip Campbell, and a witty and sharp review in the FT by Philip Stephens.
Watching today’s politicians fall over their own mistakes as they fumble with the Covid-19 pandemic, it is easy to forget that securing high office once required more than a few years of dashing off political columns for a national newspaper. So the life and political times of Richard Haldane, the subject of John Campbell’s engaging biography, offers a fitting rebuke to the trivial mendacity and downright incompetence of the nation’s present administration.
Exaggeration, it is not. Haldane…
…an Edinburgh lawyer and philosopher-politician before becoming a minister in Herbert Asquith’s Liberal administrations, was an important champion of universal education and one of the founding fathers of the UK university system. He also found time to create the Territorial Army, and to have a hand in the foundation of the London School of Economics, the Medical Research Council and the Secret Intelligence Service…
As Asquith’s minister for war, he created the expeditionary force that saved Britain from defeat in the opening stages of the first world war. As Lord Chancellor, his judgments did much to set in place the federalist tilt of the Canadian constitution.
And if there is any doubt about his intellectual gravitas, the review is headed by an image of Haldane with Albert Einstein whom he hosted on the latter’s first visit to the UK in the 1920s. Just conjure up BoJo or Patel or Hancock when you read the above, or when you step on something unpleasant and slimy.
It also seems that Haldane might have performed slightly better across the dispatch box than some of the current irregulars. Clark McGinn writes
He [Haldane] is also one of the few men to have beaten Winston Churchill by riposte. Haldane was a portly figure and Churchill remarked on his girth by asking when the baby was due and what it would be called. Haldane retorted: “If it’s a boy it will be George after the King, a girl will be Mary after the Queen. But if it is just wind I shall call it Winston.”
- The Haldane Principle is the idea that decisions about what to spend research funds on should be made by researchers instead of politicians. It is named after Richard Burdon Haldane. For a recent take on the Haldane Principle see David Edgerton, The ‘Haldane Principle’ and other invented traditions in science policy here. ↩