Norman Gash: Political Historian

• Published in: Parliamentary history Vol. 43; no. 3; pp. 338 - 358
• Main Author: Gaunt, Richard A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01-10-2024
• Subjects: Adam Smith Institute; Benjamin Disraeli; Conservative Party; Institute of Economic Affairs; Lord Liverpool; Lord Salisbury; Margaret Thatcher; Norman Gash; Robert Peel; University of St Andrews
• ISSN: 0264-2824; 1750-0206
• DOI: 10.1111/1750-0206.12766

This article commemorates the 40th anniversary of the publication of Lord Liverpool by Norman Gash (1912–2009). It considers Gash as a historian who both wrote about 19th‐century politics and expressed political views of his own. These views became increasingly prominent in the 1980s, during Margaret Thatcher's period of office. Thatcher's unexpected public endorsement of Lord Liverpool was reflected in Gash's open support for Thatcher's economic policies in the face of internal party critics, including those who appealed to the legacy of Benjamin Disraeli. Far from being uncomfortable about Thatcher's radicalism, as is sometimes argued, Gash used a series of newspaper interventions to accommodate Thatcherism within Conservative Party history. This drew favourable analogies between Thatcher and Liverpool, but more especially with Sir Robert Peel. Gash did not abandon academic scholarship for public commentary during the 1980s, but at no period in his life was he as willing to join in contemporary political debate as the years in which he was writing and researching Lord Liverpool.