ABSTRACTS

Stuart Eagles. Political Ruskin: the influence of Ruskin’s political ideas and social experiments in Britain circa 1870 – 1920. PhD Diss., Oxford University, 2008.

This thesis argues that the influence of Ruskin’s political ideas and social experiments in Britain circa 1870 to 1920 inspired a wide range of individuals, gathered in a number of key institutions, to engage in social action designed to ameliorate the worst excesses of industrial capitalism. These progressive political thinkers and social activists shared a conscious indebtedness to Ruskin, not merely a coincidental affinity of ideas. Ruskin paradoxically considered himself ‘a violent Tory of the old school’ and yet also a ‘communist’. He often disparaged attempts to alleviate conditions in the cities, yet he financed the pioneering early housing experiments of Octavia Hill in London, and established a museum for working men in Sheffield.

Difficult to categorise politically, Ruskin nevertheless challenged his contemporaries to see the ugliness and corruption of Victorian society, and to reject the hypocrisy of the utilitarian philosophy of political economy which underpinned it. Many of the ideas which had proved controversial to Ruskin’s exact contemporaries became, for a younger generation, not merely accepted, but inspirational. Whilst Ruskin’s utopianist Guild of St. George failed to achieve any lasting changes, its significance lies in embodying his social challenge. It was an extension of his personality. On a very small scale, it served both to help educate the workman, to recultivate land and to revive traditional crafts.

Ruskin’s teaching of Oxford undergraduates, and in particular the Hinksey road-diggings he encouraged some of them to engage with, helped to inspire many of the key participants in the foundation and running of the university settlements movement. Others, including clergymen, nonconformist ministers, lawyers, academics, and middle-class spinsters and housewives, collected together in reading guilds and societies to study and to promote Ruskin’s work. Many helped to effect local civic reforms and the organisations themselves were part of a social network engaged in national political debate.

Many of the pioneers of the nascent Labour movement cite the pivotal role of Ruskin’s writings in the development of their own political consciousnesses, attracted by his originality and his exposure of social and economic injustices. Separately, these different aspects of Ruskin’s influence contributed to the broad progressive consensus of the period. Most of these aspects combine and cohere in the life and early career of Ruskin’s foremost disciple of the period, John Howard Whitehouse, Guild companion, Ruskin society and university settlements secretary, parliamentarian and innovative educationist. Ruskin sought disciples who would find their own solutions to the challenges he presented. For many of the most significant contributors to social engagement and progressive politics at the turn of the century, Ruskin was a common and conscious influence and inspiration.