Editorial

Citation

Coleman, J. (2001), "Editorial", European Business Review, Vol. 13 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr.2001.05413dab.002

Editorial

Edited by John Coleman

Deputy Editor Aidan Rankin

Editorial

It is very hard to be truly modern without understanding the past. Without searching into history it is easy to jump to conclusions which turn out to be false and to fail to see the bad side-effects of policies which superficially appear to be attractive. This is especially so today when getting the popular vote has acquired overriding importance. As Froude has pointed out and as Burke has emphasised through his advocacy of representatives rather than delegates, many decisions which have not in the first instance attracted popular support have come to be seen as the wisest for the general welfare of the people of a nation. This seems to occur only when people have trust in their leaders. Today this trust seems to be most conspicuously lacking. Quite rightly people tend to resent it when leaders merely prescribe what they say is good for them. Trust is the key element, and that it is clearly absent is shown by demands for – the modern buzz words – transparency, registers of interests and so forth. People feel they are voting for the best of an unsatisfactory lot.

The idea of "understanding backwards" might well mean learning the lessons from the mistakes and successes of the ancient world, particularly of the Roman Empire on which so much of later European civilisation has been based. The British Empire looked back towards Rome and in fact most of European history has been coloured by the experience of Greece and Rome. Rome began with men who despised the pomp and power of the Empire and only later became the monster that collapsed in the fifth century AD. But even before that happened there were emperors who came to see the futility of it all. After Diocletian had split up the Empire and gone back to live in his own village, Gibbon tells us:

When Diocletian was solicited to resume the reins of Government and the Imperial Purple, he rejected the temptation with a smile of pity, calmly observing that if he could show Maximilian the cabbages he had planted with his own hands at Salona, he should no longer be urged to relinquish the enjoyment of happiness for the pursuit of power.

James Anthony Froude was another historian who rejected the values of his times. The lengthy passages quoted depict a drama which England played out on the European stage in the nineteenth century. The short passage from Sir Trevor Lloyd-Hughes in The Times surely shows that it is mirrored in the European drama being acted out today. It seems that balance of power is still the game. For the moment, actual war in Western Europe seems more or less excluded and surely no one in their right mind would argue that this was not a huge advantage. However the ambitions of the large-scale players, driven by grand designs like Harold Wilson's to be "master of Europe", are in the end no less dangerous than the immediate horrors of war. St Augustine of Hippo commented on the final days of the Roman Empire and the parallels with today are self-evident. In his City of God, he wrote:

The world would be most happily governed if it consisted not of a few aggregations secured by wars of conquest with their accompaniments of despotism and tyrannic rule, but of a society of small states living together in amity, not transgressing each others' limits, unbroken by jealousies.

Ted Dunn who also opens his article with a reference to St Augustine tells us that the concept of Natural law is "based on a combination of values, morality and a sense of justice". It can be good or bad, depending on whether the society in which it grows is sick or healthy. He stresses the important distinction between world government and world governance.

The report by Judith Ryser about a conference on "revolutionary resource use", organised by the Department of Trade and Industry and the Green Alliance (not quite so surprising when one takes into account the part played by Demos and the Foreign Policy Centre) and touches on one of those issues which has been frequently considered in this journal: Taking into account the cost of pollution and the true value of non-renewable resources.

Niall Flynn's report makes two important points. It "confirms what management in all organisations has surely believed for years: if something goes wrong, it is not their fault". The other point is Warwick University economist Marcus Miller's view that Alan Greenspan is the cause of the trouble in the US stock market. Bob Woodward's book The Maestro is very interesting in this context.

All five pieces in this issue should be seen in the light of Kierkegaard's admonition that we should think forwards but understand backwards.