Bernard Crick
Bernard Crick | |
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Born | England | 16 December 1929
Died | 19 December 2008 Edinburgh, Scotland | (aged 79)
Academic background | |
Education | University College London (B.Sc.) London School of Economics (PhD) |
Academic work | |
Institutions |
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Sir Bernard Rowland Crick (16 December 1929 – 19 December 2008)
Career
Crick was born in England, the son of Harry Edgar and Florence Clara Crick, and educated at Whitgift School.[3] He read Economics at University College London, obtaining a first, before transferring to the London School of Economics for doctoral study. While working on his Ph.D.—published in 1958 as The American Science of Politics—he was a Teaching Fellow at Harvard, 1952–1954; Assistant Professor, McGill, 1954–1955; Visiting Fellow, Berkeley, 1955–1956).[3] Returning to the United Kingdom in 1956, he obtained his Ph.D at the LSE and was appointed to an Assistant and later a Senior Lectureship, 1957–1965.[3]
During his period at the LSE, recollections of which appear in his contribution to My LSE,[4] Crick craved for greater recognition than his Senior Lecturership signified. LSE's promotion system was notoriously slow at the time. When appointed Professor of Political Theory and Political Institutions at Sheffield in 1965, Crick told Beaver, the LSE student newspaper, that he was "going to a better place from the point of view of teaching students".[5]
Crick was an advisor to British
He taught at the University of Sheffield (1965–1971).[3] and founded a Department of Politics and Sociology, later the Department of Politics, at Birkbeck College, University of London in 1972.[9]
Crick co-authored, with
Crick made many other contributions to Scottish political life, from participating in his local Labour Party, to defending Glenogle Baths from closure, to, in his last weeks of life, penning a humorous Op-Ed for The Scotsman on the chaos caused by the tram line delays in Edinburgh.[13]
Private life
Crick died from prostate cancer at the age of 79, in St. Columba's Hospice, Edinburgh.[14] It had been diagnosed about fourteen years earlier.[15]
Awards and legacy
Crick was awarded four honorary doctorates. He was made a vice-president of the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom (PSA), which also gave him a lifetime achievement award on its 50th anniversary in 2000.[16]
The PSA also created the Sir Bernard Crick Awards for Outstanding Teaching in honour of Crick and his work. Two awards are made at the PSA Annual Conference, the Main Prize, and a New Entrant Prize for early career academics.[17]
Crick was knighted in 2002.[18]
After his death, the University of Sheffield established the Sir Bernard Crick Centre. The centre aims to 'Bridge a number of gaps that appear to have emerged in recent decades (if not before). The first gap concerns the relationship between the governors and the governed in democratic countries.'[19] The centre also aims to communicate social science to the public – or the social implications of 'hard' scientific advances – without, in doing so, losing those elements of scholarship that provide depth and context.
Glasgow University also recognised Sir Bernard's contribution by establishing an annual memorial lecture series.[11]
Work on George Orwell
In 1974, Crick began working on a biography of
In 1993, Crick established the
Ideas
According to Crick, the ideologically driven leader practises a form of anti-politics in which the goal is the mobilisation of the populace towards a common end—even on pain of death.[22]
Anti-behaviouralism
Crick's first book, The American Science of Politics (1959), attacked the behavioural approach to politics, which was dominant in the United States, and little known in Britain. He identified and rejected their basic premises: that research can discover uniformities in human behaviour, that these uniformities could be confirmed by empirical tests and measurements, that quantitative data was of the highest quality, and should be analysed statistically, that political science should be empirical and predictive, downplaying the philosophical and historical dimensions, and the value-free research was the ideal, with the goal of social science to be a macro theory covering all the social sciences, as opposed to applied issues of practical reform.[23]
Publications
Crick's works include:
- The American Science of Politics (1959)
- In Defence of Politics (1962, and five subsequent editions, the last in 2002)
- Political Theory and Practice (1963)
- The Reform of Parliament (1964)
- Parliament and the people (with Sally Jenkinson) (1966)
- Essays on Reform (1967)
- Crime, Rape and Gin: Reflections on Contemporary Attitudes to Violence, and Addiction (1974)
- Essays on Political Education (with Derek Heater) (1977)
- George Orwell: A Life (1980; revised 1982; revised and updated edition, 1992)
- Socialist Values and Time (1984)
- Socialism (1987)
- What is Politics? (with Tom Crick)
- The Labour Party's Aims and Values: an unofficial statement (with David Blunkett) (1988)
- Essays on Politics and Literature (1989)
- Political Thoughts and Polemics (1990)
- To Make the Parliament of Scotland a Model for Democracy (with David Millar) (1995)
- Education for Citizenship and the Teaching of Democracy in Schools (aka The Crick Report) (1998)
- Crossing Borders: Political Essays (2001)
- Democracy: A Very Short Introduction (2002)
- The Commons in Transition (with A. H. Hanson) (1970)
- The Future of the Social Services (with William Robson) (1970)
- Protest and Discontent (1970)
- Taxation Policy (with William A. Robson) (1973)
- The Discourses by Niccolò Machiavelli (1974)
- Political Education and Political Literacy (with Alex Porter) (1978)
- Unemployment (1980)
- National identities: the constitution of the United Kingdom (1991)
- Citizens: Towards a Citizenship Culture (2001)
- Education for Democratic Citizenship (with Andrew Lockyer) (2003)
References
- ^ Haroon Siddique (19 December 2008). "Sir Bernard Crick dies aged 79". The Guardian.
- ^ Bernard Crick, In Defence of Politics, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2005, p. 118.
- ^ a b c d Who's Who 2007, London : A. & C. Black, 2007 : 519
- ^ Abse, Joan (ed)., London: Robson, 1977.
- ^ Beaver, 1965.
- QCA. Archived from the original(PDF) on 27 March 2009.
- ^ "Ten Years after the Crick Report". Hansard Society. 19 November 2008. Archived from the original on 6 January 2009.
- ^ a b "Blunkett names 'Britishness' chief". BBC News. 10 September 2002. Retrieved 20 August 2008.
- ^ "About us", Department of Politics, Birkbeck. University of London.
- ^ Making Scotland's Parliament Work, John Wheatley Centre, 1991.
- ^ a b "Stevenson Trust for Citizenship: Sir Bernard Crick". University of Glasgow. Retrieved 20 July 2015.
- ^ "University of Glasgow - Schools - School of Social & Political Sciences - Research - Research in Politics & International Relations - Stevenson Trust for Citizenship - About the Trust - Sir Bernard Crick Memorial Lectures".
- ^ Crick, Bernard (18 November 2008). "Day of the bollards, when traffic stood still". The Scotsman. Retrieved 20 July 2015.
- ^ Mark McLaughlin; John Gibson (7 January 2009). "Jazz band helps Sir Bernard's funeral go with a real swing". Edinburgh Evening News. Retrieved 25 March 2009.
- ^ Bernard Crick: "Big Brother belittled", The Guardian, 19 August 2000.
- ^ "Professor Sir Bernard Crick". The Scotsman. 22 December 2008. Retrieved 20 July 2015.
- ^ "Bernard Crick Awardsfor Outstanding Teaching" (PDF).
- ^ "Sir Bernard Crick" (obituary), The Telegraph, 21 December 2008.
- ^ "About the Centre". The Crick Centre. University of Sheffield. Retrieved 20 July 2015.
- ^ "Grayson Perry goes north to help make Britain whole again". The Guardian. 19 November 2017.
- ^ Crick, Sir Bernard (8 November 2011). "Orwell as Comic Writer (2008)". FinlayPublisher (extinct). FinlayPublisher. Retrieved 3 September 2020.
- ^ Kel Richards, "Language" Spectator Australia (17 September 2022)
- ^ "Crick, Bernard," in John Ramsden (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century British Politics (2002), p. 174.
External links
- Bernard Crick: "Big Brother belittled", The Guardian, 19 August 2000.
- Online version of Crick's biography George Orwell: A Life
- The Orwell Prize
- Trevor Smith, "Sir Bernard Crick" (obituary), The Guardian, 19 December 2008
- Sir Bernard Crick Archive