Sir Bernard Crick, the political philosopher, who died on December 19 aged 79, was best known as the author of The Reform of Parliament (1964), in which he argued that the workings of Parliament needed to reflect the dominant role of political parties in the constitution; he was also the biographer of George Orwell.
The Reform of Parliament arose out of Crickâs interest in the links between politics and freedom. As a post-graduate student at Harvard he had been influenced by the debate between those American scholars who wished to make political studies more objective and scientific, and those who argued that it was impossible to divorce fact from value.
Crick was firmly of the latter view, and in an earlier book, In Defence of Politics (1962), had argued that politics could exist only in societies in which the facts of diversity of opinions and interests were accepted as permanent and legitimate. Politics, according to Crick, is by its nature messy and complex, and requires some tolerance of differing truths and a recognition that government is best conducted amid the open canvassing of rival interests.
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