Ramsay Muir | |
|---|---|
 Portrait of Muir | |
| Born | John Ramsay Bryce Muir (1872-09-30)30 September 1872 |
| Died | 4 May 1941(1941-05-04) (aged 68) |
| Occupation | politician |
John Ramsay Bryce Muir (30 September 1872 – 4 May 1941) was a Britishhistorian,Liberal Party politician and thinker who made a significant contribution to the development ofliberal political philosophy in the 1920s and 1930s through his work on domestic industrial policy and his promotion of the international policy of interdependency.[1]
Muir was born atOtterburn, Northumberland, the oldest of five children of aReformed Presbyterian minister. He was educated privately inBirkenhead, then atUniversity College, Liverpool, where he gained a first in history and then atBalliol College, Oxford, where he gained firsts inGreats and modern history.[2]
In 1898, Muir became an assistant lecturer in history at theUniversity of Manchester[3] and the following year he was appointed lecturer in history at Liverpool. From 1906 until 1913, he was professor of history at Liverpool when he resigned to take up a visiting lectureship at theUniversity of Punjab in India (1913–14). On return to England he became professor of modern history at the University of Manchester. Between 1917 and 1919 he was a member of a commission investigatingCalcutta University and Indian post-secondary education. He ended his academic career in 1921 and embarked full-time on political work.
While at Manchester, Muir had become active in the Manchester Liberal Federation and this sparked his interest inindustrial, economic andsocial reform. He published the bookLiberalism and Industry in 1920 and in 1921 he was one of the founders of the Liberal Summer Schools,[4] an annual, week-long, residential school to promote interest in the party and to develop innovative policies. The schools were held in alternate years atCambridge andOxford until 1939. The schools produced the Liberal ‘coloured books’ on industrial and social questions, most famouslyBritain's Industrial Future (the "Yellow Book"), and were a source of ideas for progressives in politics. Muir was also a prominent Liberal writer contributing frequently toThe Nation and theWeekly Westminster. During the 1930s, he edited theWestminster Newsletter, a weekly commentary on Liberal Party affairs.[5]
Muir stood forParliament eight times in all in the Liberal interest between 1922 and 1935.[6][page needed] He was elected at the1923 general election asMember of Parliament (MP) forRochdale inLancashire, having been unsuccessful in that constituency at the1922 general election However he was defeated at the1924 election. He stood forParliament again at five further elections, without success:
Muir was also a leading figure in theNational Liberal Federation (NLF), being its chairman from 1931 to 1933 and president from 1933 to 1933. He was a driving spirit behind the party reorganisation of 1936, and briefly (in 1936) acted as vice-president of the new Liberal Party Organization (LPO). From 1936 until his death he chaired the education and propaganda committee of the LPO. He was a key contributor to the Liberal policy review of 1934 and principal author of its report ‘The Liberal Way’. Although Muir was associated closely with the progressive ideas coming out of the Liberal Summer Schools, the radical solutions for unemployment, industrial and social reform which were inspired byMaynard Keynes,Lloyd George andWilliam Beveridge, he was also something of a classical Liberal too. He was particularly constant overFree Trade, which he always supported, and took a paternal view of Imperial and Colonial questions,[7] in which Britain's duties to its colonies took centre stage with an emphasis on trusteeship.
During theSecond World War, Muir was a volunteer writer and lecturer for theMinistry of Information. He never married or had children and died at his home inPinner,Middlesex, on 4 May 1941 aged 68.
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forRochdale 1923–1924 | Succeeded by |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Chairman of theNational Liberal Federation 1931–1933 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | President of the National Liberal Federation 1933–1936 | Succeeded by James Meston as President of the Liberal Party Organisation |
