The Haldane Principle

Hello,

The Observer is reporting today that the Arts and Humanities Research Council will spend a 'significant amount' of its research budget on work into the 'Big Society'. The Government, its correspondent writes, has 'clarified' the Haldane Principle of 1918 which says that researchers should decide on research spending.

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/mar/27/academic-study-big-society).

Cue the outrage.

(See a number of entries when you type 'Haldane Principle clarification' into Google).

If this is true, then yes, it is outrageous. The amount that the AHRC has already been almost entirely slashed. To then refocus its priorities for political gain would be a fragrant abuse of Government's powers. However, matters are not as simple as the article first suggests.

For a start The Observer's case is quite hypocritical. This weekend they have also run a piece in their 'Review' section on the Anglo-German socialist intellectual Ernest Schumacher and the influence of his philosophies on the Coalition's 'Big Society' idea.

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/mar/27/schumacher-david-cameron-small-beautiful)

Even The Observer would admit therefore that there are quite strong philosophical routes to some of the main points that the Government is pursuing.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the initial article is not entirely accurate about the Haldane Principle. The idea that the Principle has been an inviolate part of British academic-scientific life since the 1910s is debatable at best. David Egerton, a British historian who concentrates on technocracy (the bureaucracy of technology), has argued that the Principle only really existed from the 1960s, as part of a Conservative attempt to upset Labour's 'White Heat of Technology' drive under Harold Wilson.

(http://www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-88.html).

Can I also refer you to the following:

http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/science-technology/101220-Letter-from-David-Willetts-MP-Haldane.pdf

This is a letter from David Willets to Andrew Mitchell, chair of the Commons Science and Technologies Committee, dated 20th December 2010. In it Willets is responding to a previous letter from Mitchell, which admits that there is some ambiguity over existing Government policy. Willets argues that 'Ministers have a legitimate role' to play in the allocation of funding process. However:

'it is for the Councils to decide on specific projects and people to fund. In all of these decisions, Ministers should take account of advice from a wide variety of expert sources'.

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wms/?id=2010-12-20a.138WS.0 is a written Hansard statement backing up the content of Willets' letter.

So what, you might ask. If a week is a long time in politics, four months must be an eternity. Well, this link is to a table of intended research spending the Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) department put out last month:

http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/corporate/docs/m/ministerial-statement-on-the-allocation-of-the-science-and-research-budget-201112-to-201415.pdf

I leave you to make your own judgement there (not least because I'm not very good with figures).

This meanwhile is a link to an article by Professor Peter Mandler, Vice-President of the Royal Historical Society. Though critical of the new version of the Haldane Principle (with good reason for most of the cases he brings up), he notes that the Labour Party were not above 'bribing' Research Councils with extra funds

'if these bodies responded to the government agenda by themselves reserving some of their research funds for government priorities'.

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150170942349951

As Professor Mandler argues, there are several reasons to be justifiably critical of the new proposals. Nevertheless I'd suggest that there's an argument to be made that in fact the new proposals are at the moment somewhat of an improvement on the older ones. They clarify the existing ambiguity between the Haldane and Excellence Principles, for instance, and move the Government's presence in this field onto a de facto footing.

There's a longer, and considerably more profound, argument that needs to be had about the relative balance of power between the bodies like the AHRC and central government. The one that The Observer is trying to spark off isn't it. It's taken me around an hour to research and write this blog post out in full, with nothing more than a laptop and a Google link as my resources. What appeared in the newspaper today is sensationalist, if for understandable reasons. We need to calm down, take a deep breath, and discuss what needs to be said with that sort of thing.