Comments on: Thursday, 20 May 1909

By: Airminded · Post-blogging the 1909 scareships: thoughts and conclusions

Airminded · Post-blogging the 1909 scareships: thoughts and conclusions — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:11:31 +0000

[...] separate sightings of the airship took place in South Wales — by dock workers at Cardiff and the Punch and Judy showman on Caerphilly Mountain — that Liberal papers such as the Manchester Guardian started reporting it.1 It seemed that [...]

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Tue, 26 May 2009 13:31:34 +0000

Thanks, I can see where you’re coming from now. But then why didn’t High Church Anglicans/Anglo-Catholics start a competing movement to emulate the Italian state?

By: Erik Lund

Erik Lund — Sun, 24 May 2009 18:00:33 +0000

Brett, the thing about ‘German efficiency,’ and I admit that I might be stretching, is that I see it ultimately coming out of the Prussian “coordination” of the Lutheran and Reformed churches in 1819. I’m saying that that looks like a model to the Anglican Left (Broad Church, Low Church, whatever), and sort of hardens into a wide critique of British society, since practically anything the church does, must be done better in Prussia/Germany on account of its more advanced state church.
So the whole idea of comparing Britain to Germany (and the United States), has a great deal to do with left ecclesiastical politics to start with.

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Sun, 24 May 2009 11:26:38 +0000

It seems to me that the idea of ‘German efficiency’ was employed by both Liberals and Conservatives to suit their favoured causes: tariff reform, conscription, navalism on the one hand, education reform, welfare reform on the other. Here the possibility of an efficient German airship wasn’t appealing to Radicals because it bolstered the case for increased military expenditure and hence went against disarmament and retrenchment.

By: Erik Lund

Erik Lund — Wed, 20 May 2009 17:48:57 +0000

“The statement is… an exceptionally foolish one.” If only Lord Haldane had lived to see the Internet –telegraph networks aside.
And it seems that Liberals believe in some private inventive genius (no doubt a Nonconformist, his mind untrammeled by Established church schools), while Conservatives believe in German scientific efficiency. Which is interesting, because insofar as I get this, the whole “German efficiency” thing is also part of the mid-nineteenth century progressive critique, Low Church brand as opposed to Nonconformist.
Analyzing this as political evolution on the British Right, it is disappointing to see the way that xenophobia leads former Disraelites towards Thatcherism, where Correlli Barnett can emerge as the mass retailer of obsolete Radicalism and imagine himself a conservative ideologue.

By: Airminded · Friday, 21 May 1909

Airminded · Friday, 21 May 1909 — Wed, 20 May 2009 15:42:57 +0000

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