Bertrand
Russell was born in Trelleck, Gwent in 1872. His parents died when
he was very young and he was brought up by his grandmother, the widow
of John Russell, the former Liberal
Prime Minister. At Trinity College, Cambridge,
Russell obtain a first-class honours degree in mathematics and philosophy.
A visit to Berlin after university led to his first book German
Social Democracy (1896). This was followed by two extremely
important books on mathematical logic and philosophy The
Principles of Mathematics (1903)
and Principia Mathematica (1910).
In 1907 a group of male supporters of votes for women formed the Men's
League for Women's Suffrage. Bertrand
Russell
joined and as well as making speeches and writing newspaper articles
for the cause, stood
unsuccessfully as a Suffragist candidate
at a parliamentary by-election at Wimbledon.
Russell was a member of the Fabian Society,
where he met the pacifist, Clifford Allen.
Soon after the outbreak of the First World War
Russell, Allen and Fenner Brockway formed
the the
No-Conscription Fellowship (NCF), an organisation
that planned to campaign against the introduction of conscription.
Russell was also a founder member of the Union
of Democratic Control (UDC), the most important of the anti-war
organisations during the First World War. Other
members of the organisation included Joseph
Rowntree, Ramsay MacDonald, E.
D. Morel, Charles Trevelyan and
Norman Angel. The UDC argued for a foreign
policy that was under parliamentary control. The UDC called for immediate
peace negotiations and warned that if the war continued and one side
was defeated, the victorious nations should not impose harsh conditions
on the defeated nations.
The passing of the Military Service Act
in January 1916 had made every man between the ages of eighteen and
forty-one liable for military service. With the introduction of military
conscription the No-Conscription Fellowship
concentrated its efforts on persuading men to refuse to be called
up into the armed services. Russell's activities in the the NCF resulted
in him being sacked from his post as a lecturer at Cambridge
University.
When Clifford Allen and Fenner
Brockway were imprisoned for refusing to be conscripted, Russell
became chairman of the Non-Conscription Fellowship.
Russell worked closely with military officers who were now having
doubts about the war. July 1917 Russell helped Siegfried
Sassoon draft a statement of protest against "this evil and
unjust war".
Russell was also the editor of the NCF journal Tribunal.
The authorities took exception to an article that Russell wrote in
January 1918 criticizing the American Army for strike-breaking. Russell
was arrested and charged with making statements "likely to prejudice
His Majesty's relations with the United States of America.".
He was found guilty and sentenced to six months in Brixton
Prison.
While in prison Russell wrote Political
Ideals: Roads to Freedom. In the book he attempted to explain
why he was willing to suffer for his political beliefs: "The
pioneers of Socialism, Anarchism, and Syndicalism, have, for the most
part, experienced prison, exile, and poverty, deliberately incurred
because they would not abandon their propaganda; and by this conduct
they have shown that the hope which inspired them was not for themselves,
but for mankind."
Russell had originally welcomed the Russian
Revolution. He defended the use of violence because unlike
pacifists, Russell believed that violence was morally acceptable if
it removed "bad systems of government, to put an end to wars
and despotism, and bring liberty to the oppressed." After the
war Russell visited Russia with Dora Black
and after meeting Lenin
and Leon Trotsky
wrote a book, Theory and
Practice of Bolshevism (1919), that was very critical
of communism.
When they returned to England in 1921 Dora agreed to marry Bertrand.
Over the next few years Bertrand became increasing interested in the
subject of schooling and in 1926 published his book On
Education. In 1927 the couple opened their own progressive
boarding school at Beacon Hill in West
Sussex. The school reflected Bertrand's view that children should
not be forced to follow a strictly academic curriculum.
In 1926 Russell became involved in the international campaign to save
the lives of the two American anarchist,
Nicola Sacco
and Bartolomeo Vanzetti,
who many believed had been wrongly convicted of murder. Russell wrote:
"I am forced to conclude that they were condemned on account
of their political opinions." His efforts were unsuccessful and
the men were executed on 23rd August 1927.
In 1931 Bertrand succeeded his elder brother
as 3rd Earl of Russell. He used the forum of the House
of Lords to promote his views on pacifism. He also created controversy
with his book Marriage
and Morals (1932) where
he advocated free love. Later Russell was sacked from his post at
City College, New York, because he was considered to be an enemy of
"religion and morality".
Both Bertrand and Dora continued to have sexual
relationships with other partners. This resulted in Dora having two
children with the journalist, Griffin Barry. In 1935 Bertrand
Russell left Dora for one of his students, Patricia Spence.
Like his friend Clifford Allen, Russell
ceased to be a pacifist in the late 1930s with the rise of Hitler
in Germany. Russell was rewarded with the restoration of his fellowship
at Cambridge University. As acceptance
by the establishment was reflected by being
asked to give the first BBC Reith Lectures in 1949. The following
year Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
In the 1940s and 50s Russell published a series of important books
including An Equiry into
Meaning and Truth (1940), History
of Western Philosophy (1945),
Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948) and Why
I am not a Christian (1957)
Russell became increasing concerned about the major powers producing
nuclear weapons and in 1958 joined with Dora
Russell, J. B. Priestley, Fenner
Brockway, Victor Gollancz, Canon
John Collins and Michael Foot to form
the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).
In 1961 Russell was imprisoned for his part in a CND demonstration
in London.
In his final years Russell lived with his fourth
wife, Edith Finch, in North Wales, where he wrote three volumes
of Autobiography
(1967-69). Bertrand Russell
died in 1970.
(1)
Beatrice Webb, diary entry (July, 1901)
Bertrand
Russell is a slight, dark-haired man, with a prominent forehead, bright
eyes, strong features except for a retreating chin, nervous hands
and alert quick movements. In manner of dress and outward bearing
he is most carefully trimmed, conventionally correct and punctiliously
polite, and in speech he has an almost affectedly clear enunciation
of words and preciseness of expression. In morals he is a puritan;
in personal habits almost an ascetic, except that he lives for efficiency
and therefore expects to be kept in the best physical condition. But
intellectually he is audacious - an iconoclast, detesting religions
or social conventions, suspecting sentiment, believing in the 'order
of thought' and the order of things, in logic and in science. He is
a delightful talker, especially in general conversation. He dislikes
bores and hates any kind of self-seeking selfishness or coarse-grainedness.
He
looks at the world from a pinnacle of detachment, dissects persons
and demolishes causes. And yet recognizes that as a citizen you must
be a member of a party, therefore he has joined the Fabian Society.
(2)
Dora
Russell, The Tamarisk Tree (1975)
My first impression of him (Bertrand Russell) was that he was exactly
like the Mad Hatter. The thick and rather beautiful grey hair was
lifting in the wind, the large sharp nose and odd tiny chin, the long
upper lip were outlined against the sky; of middling height, lean
and spare, he moved with impetuous energy, but jerkily, not with the
grace of an athlete.
(3)
Bertrand Russell was a pacifist who campaigned against the war. On
15th August, 1914, he sent a letter to the magazine The
Nation.
A month ago Europe was a peaceful
group of nations: if an Englishman killed a German, he was hanged.
Now, if an Englishman kills a German, or if a German kills an Englishman,
he is a patriot. We scan the newspapers with greedy eyes for news
of slaughter, and rejoice when we read of innocent young men, blindly
obedient to the world of command, mown down in thousands by the machine-gun
of Liege.
Those who saw the London crowds, during the nights leading up to the
Declaration of War saw a whole population, hitherto peaceable and
humane, precipitated in a few days days down the steep slope to primitive
barbarism, letting loose, in a moment, the instincts of hatred and
blood lust against which the whole fabric of society has been raised.
The friends of progress have been betrayed by their chosen leaders,
who have plunged the country suddenly into a war which must cause
untold misery, and which an overwhelming majority of those who voted
for the present Government believe to be as unwise as it is wicked.
No man whose liberalism is genuine can hearafter support the members
of the present Cabinet.
(4)
Bertrand Russell, letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell
(18th November, 1914)
It
is clear the Socialists are the hope of the world; they have gained
in importance during the war. What I can do further in philosophy
does not interest me, and seems trivial compared to what might be
done elsewhere. I can't bear the sheltered calm of university life
- I want battle and stress and the feeling of doing something.
(5)
Bertrand Russell, letter to Herbert Bryan about joining the Independent
Labour Party (6th July, 1915)
I
have been for some time in two minds as to joining the I.L.P. I agree
most warmly with the attitude which the I.L.P. has taken up about
the war, and that makes me anxious to support the I.L.P. in every
possible way. But I am not a socialist, though I think I might call
myself a syndicalist. I hardly know how much I commit myself to in
joining; it is always difficult to sign a declaration of faith without
reservations. Perhaps my hesitation is unduly scrupulous; perhaps
it will cease; but for the moment I do not quite feel as if I could
join you.
(6) After attending a Non-Conscription
Fellowship Convention in April 1916, Bertrand Russell wrote a
letter to The Nation about the organisation's members.
Like
William Blake, they had seen a vision; they wished to "build
Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land". Let the authorities
make no mistake. The men in that Convention were filled with a profound
faith, and with a readiness for sacrifice at least as great as that
of the soldier who dies for his country. If persecution is to be meted
out to them, they will joyfully become martyrs.
(7)
Bertrand
Russell wrote a letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell
after meeting E. D. Morel, the secretary
of the UDC, who had just been released from prison (27th March, 1918)
His
hair is completely white (there was hardly a tinge of white before)
when he first came out, he collapsed completely, physically and mentally,
largely as the result of insufficient food. He says one only gets
three quarters of an hour reading in the whole day - the rest of the
time is spent on prison work, etc.
(8)
Bertrand
Russell, Political Ideals: Roads to Freedom (1918)
The
pioneers of Socialism, Anarchism, and Syndicalism, have, for the most
part, experienced prison, exile, and poverty, deliberately incurred
because they would not abandon their propaganda; and by this conduct
they have shown that the hope which inspired them was not for themselves,
but for mankind.
(9) Crystal
Eastman, Children:
The Magazine for Parents (March, 1927)
Bertrand
Russell is one of the most important men writing in England today.
He has his place in the scientific world as a mathematician and philosopher;
to the general reader he is known and valued as a student of the problems
of government and a writer on social reconstruction. But, at the moment,
what engages the mind and heart of this mathematician-philosopher-reformer
above all else is the growth and development of his two children,
John, aged five, and Kate, aged three.
What more
natural than that he should turn his active and brilliant mind to
the problems of the parent and the teacher? What more valuable thing
could he do than what he has done - produce a book On Education,
Especially in Early Childhood - a book so tender in its understanding
of childhood, so practical in its grasp of the difficulties of parents,
so able in its exposition of the aim and practice of the so-called
"nursery school," that it would be hard to equal it in all
the literature of modern education.
(10)
Bertrand
Russell led the campaign in Britain against the conviction of Nicola
Sacco and Bartolomeo
Vanzetti.
I
am forced to conclude that they were condemned on account of their
political opinions and that men who ought to have known better allowed
themselves to express misleading views as to the evidence because
they held that men with such opinions have no right to live. A view
of this sort is one which is very dangerous, since it transfers from
the theological to the political sphere a form of persecution which
it was thought that civilized countries had outgrown.
(11)
In
his Autobiography published in 1967, Bertrand Russell wrote
about how people in London reacted when they heard that the war was
over.
They
commandeered the buses, and made them go where they liked. I saw a
man and a woman, complete strangers to each other, meet in the middle
of the road and kiss as they passed. I watched the crowd, as I had
done in the August days four years before. The crowd was frivolous
still, and had learned nothing during the period of horror, except
to snatch at pleasure more recklessly than before. I felt strangely
solitary amid the rejoicings, like a ghost dropped by accident from
some other planet. The crowd rejoiced and I also rejoiced. But I remained
as solitary as before.
Available from Amazon Books
(order below)
