St James Church in Oxfordshire

British Politics

Down to the 1930 in Britain political theorizing of one kind and another occurred not merely in an academic context; it was virtually a national sport of British intellectuals of all ideological and political complexions. It was engaged in not just by political philosophers and by practising statesmen, but by economists, historian, scientists, doctors, clergymen, social workers, soldiers, businessmen, labour leaders, fellow travellers and a host of others who saw themselves as having a finger in the pie of body politics. This academic and popular culture of political thoughts produced a good deal of sometimes amiable, sometimes nauseating rubbish; but it produced also many serious and systematic attempts to analyse the role of the state and other political institutions, in a context of advanced capitalism, urban conglomeration, and modern mass democracy.

Church and Nation after 1918, OUP