Ramsay Muir

(John) Ramsay Bryce Muir (30 September 1872 – 4 May 1941) was a British historian, Liberal Party politician and thinker who made a significant contribution to the development of liberal political philosophy in the 1920s and 1930s through his work on domestic industrial policy and his promotion of the international policy of interdependency.

Muir was born at Otterburn, Northumberland, the oldest of five children of a Reformed Presbyterian minister. He was educated privately in Birkenhead, at University College, Liverpool, where he gained a first in history and then at Balliol College, Oxford, where he gained firsts in Greats and modern history.

In 1898 Muir became an assistant lecturer in history at the University of Manchester and the following year he was appointed lecturer in history at Liverpool. From 1906 until 1913, he was professor of history at Liverpool when he resigned to take up a visiting lectureship at the University of Punjab in India (1913–14). On return to England he became professor of modern history at the University of Manchester. Between 1917 and 1919 he was a member of a commission investigating Calcutta University and Indian post-secondary education. He ended his academic career in 1921 and embarked full-time on political work.

While at Manchester, Muir had become active in the Manchester Liberal Federation and this sparked his interest in industrial, economic and social reform. He published the book Liberalism and Industry in 1920 and in 1921 he was one of the founders of the Liberal Summer Schools, an annual, week-long, residential school to promote interest in the party and to develop innovative policies. The schools were held in alternate years at Cambridge and Oxford until 1939. The schools produced the famous Liberal ‘coloured books’ on industrial and social questions and was a source of ideas for progressives in politics. Muir was also a prominent Liberal writer contributing frequently to The Nation and the Weekly Westminster. During the 1930s, he edited the Westminster Newsletter, a weekly commentary on Liberal Party affairs.

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