Vignettes of Progress

1. In 1779 construction began on the world's first cast-iron bridge. It's in England and spans the Severn Valley. English Heritage is doing it up at the moment. Here's something I've learned from English Heritage's magazine:

What was possible for the UK in the 1770s is not possible today.

2. The Royal Society was formed in 1662 as the "Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge". It is the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence. In1665, it published the first issue of Philosophical Transactions, the world's longest-running scientific journal.

Nature published an article in its 8 March 2018 edition on the role of women in the Royal Society and its publications. As you might imagine, it is not an altogether happy story.

But my attention was drawn to this detail:

It seems that data on the Royal Society's editorial records from 1662 to 1990 is readily available because it was written down on paper, but from 1990 it is inaccessible because it has been put on computer.

3. Here is the beginning of an agenda I recently received because I am an elector in the ward of Farringdon Without, part of the local government of the City of London.

Cracking stuff, eh? Oyez! Wardmote! Holden here this day!

The agenda covers the usual kind of local government stuff ...

... before ending in the style it started:

Thanks Beadle! You can be sure that thereof fail shall I not.

Is there a serious point to all this? I think so.

Some people regard these traditions as harmless fun, like the Royal Family: it's something for tourists, a chance for fancy dress, a little bit of tradition, doesn't mean anything, does it?

On the other hand, some people get quite worked up about things like the Royal Family. They see them as symbols of an irrational adherence to feudal traditions that fetishizes class divisions and unjustified deference; something that reveals a deep-seated love of the past, a sick kind of nostalgia for 'happier' days of the Empire, Glorious Isolation (don't mention Brexit!) and so on; in short, something that holds Britain back. If we didn't have 'beadles' and 'wardmotes' with people shouting 'oyez' and 'God save the Queen' then perhaps we could reality in the eye, and turn our attention to real achievements like iron foundries, science and progress for women.

I think those people are on to something. I think they are wrong, but they see a little more of the truth than people who just treat the whole thing as harmless nonsense.

It is not stupid to think that one of the reasons that the Royal Society was a big deal from its founding and has continued as a prestigious organisation to this day is because it is precisely that, i.e. Royal. And perhaps the UK's ability to make vast iron arches would have been maintained if there were a Royal Iron Works. The patronage of royalty - and all the other manifestations of tradition - sprinkles a bit of stardust onto human endeavours as diverse as cutting edge scientific enquiry and hearing updates on the progress of Crossrail.

Or imagine having a relaxed evening with a few friends, in a Pizza Express or Nandos or what have you, and at the end of dinner someone stood up and said, in all seriousness, "Ladies, Gentlemen: the Queen!". It would be incongruous precisely because toasting the Queen - and the Queen herself and the whole edifice of royalty - comes laden with a certain gravity, unearned or not, that changes the dynamic of everything it touches. A toast like that can anger republicans - it could be a provocation. It's not just words or something for tourists.

So, given that that stardust and gravity exists, I don't think it is stupid to think that that it might be working to retard a country rather than advance it. It's an idea explored in the Gormenghast books, perhaps inspired by the Forbidden City. It's an empirical question.

However, the evidence, it seems to me, supports royalty, beadles and all the rest of it.

Let's take local government. The City of London is clearly doing something right. The successors to Dick Whittington mayor themselves over the world's most attractive financial centre ('despite Brexit').

And constitutional monarchy seems to work too. There are about 200 countries in the world, and Wikipedia tells me that there are 43 monarchies and it lists 36 constitutional monarchies. Which are the most successful countries? Disproportionately, they are constitutional monarchies. Of the top 20 countries in the Human Development Index, most are constitutional monarchies, including both number 1 (Norway) and number 20 (Luxembourg). In fact, the exceptions to the 20 countries are the interesting ones. They are, in order, Switzerland, Germany, Singapore, Ireland, Iceland, the US, Hong Kong, Korea and Israel. Of those, 4 were under the British Crown and one was under the Danish Crown within living memory. Moreover, if you look down the list you will see some indications that monarchies have the edge generally. Take an area of the world, the Caribbean, say, or south east Asia: you might reasonably prefer the Bahamas and Thailands of the region to the Haitis, Cubas, Vietnams and Myanmars.

In short, it is extraordinarily difficult to maintain a successful republic on any scale for any great length of time. The US and Switzerland are often regarded as pretty odd places by outsiders: I'd suggest that they have to be in order to manage the mere feat of surviving.

Is there then a trade-off between political progress and social progress? Is there any reason to think that if your country has an unusual degree of interest in who is related to a man who won a great victory at Hafrsfjord (near Stavanger, if you're interested) in 872, or in the exact words used by some Englishmen writing a constitution in the eighteenth century, then it might also be more interested in gender equality and healthcare reform? I don't know, but perhaps there is. Progress requires a stable platform to build on, we might say, or maybe a sense of familiarity and comfort provided by tradition gives people the confidence to experiment in other areas of life. Sometimes what seems to be progress is a 1990s computer system that isn't as good as pen and paper.

At least, let us agree that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Fix the Iron Bridge and the Royal Society's attitude to women, by all means, but don't throw them away. And hereof fail not!