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| Affiliation | Independent |
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| Name | Bertrand Russell |
| Address |
, England , United Kingdom |
| Email | None |
| Website | None |
| Born |
May 18, 1872
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| Died | February 02, 1970
(97 years)
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| Contributor | Thomas Walker |
| Last Modifed | Craverguy
Sep 14, 2009 06:57am |
| Tags |
Welsh - Divorced - Married - Convicted - Imprisoned - Agnostic - Atheist - Straight -
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| Info | Bertrand Russell was born in Trelleck, Gwent in 1872. His parents died when he was very young and he was brought up by his grandmother, the widow of John Russell, the former Liberal Prime Minister. At Trinity College, Cambridge, Russell obtain a first-class honours degree in mathematics and philosophy.
A visit to Berlin after university led to his first book, German Social Democracy (1896). This was followed by two extremely important books on mathematical logic and philosophy, The Principles of Mathematics (1903) and Principia Mathematica (1910).
In 1907, a group of male supporters of votes for women formed the Men's League for Women's Suffrage. Bertrand Russell joined and, as well as making speeches and writing newspaper articles for the cause, stood unsuccessfully as a Suffragist candidate at a parliamentary by-election at Wimbledon.
Russell was a member of the Fabian Society, where he met the pacifist Clifford Allen. Soon after the outbreak of the First World War, Russell, Allen, and Fenner Brockway formed the the No-Conscription Fellowship (NCF), an organisation that planned to campaign against the introduction of conscription.
Russell was also a founder member of the Union of Democratic Control (UDC), the most important of the anti-war organisations during the First World War. Other members of the organisation included Joseph Rowntree, Ramsay MacDonald, E.D. Morel, Charles Trevelyan, and Norman Angel. The UDC argued for a foreign policy that was under parliamentary control. The UDC called for immediate peace negotiations and warned that if the war continued and one side was defeated, the victorious nations should not impose harsh conditions on the defeated nations.
The passing of the Military Service Act in January 1916 had made every man between the ages of eighteen and forty-one liable for military service. With the introduction of military conscription, the No-Conscription Fellowship concentrated its efforts on persuading men to refuse to be called up into the armed services. Russell's activities in the the NCF resulted in him being sacked from his post as a lecturer at Cambridge University.
When Clifford Allen and Fenner Brockway were imprisoned for refusing to be conscripted, Russell became chairman of the Non-Conscription Fellowship. Russell worked closely with military officers who were now having doubts about the war. In July 1917, Russell helped Siegfried Sassoon draft a statement of protest against "this evil and unjust war".
Russell was also the editor of the NCF journal Tribunal. The authorities took exception to an article that Russell wrote in January 1918 criticizing the American Army for strike-breaking. Russell was arrested and charged with making statements "likely to prejudice His Majesty's relations with the United States of America." He was found guilty and sentenced to six months in Brixton Prison.
While in prison, Russell wrote Political Ideals: Roads to Freedom. In the book, he attempted to explain why he was willing to suffer for his political beliefs: "The pioneers of Socialism, Anarchism, and Syndicalism, have, for the most part, experienced prison, exile, and poverty, deliberately incurred because they would not abandon their propaganda; and by this conduct they have shown that the hope which inspired them was not for themselves, but for mankind."
Russell had originally welcomed the Russian Revolution. He defended the use of violence because unlike pacifists, Russell believed that violence was morally acceptable if it removed "bad systems of government, to put an end to wars and despotism, and bring liberty to the oppressed." After the war, Russell visited Russia with Dora Black and, after meeting Lenin and Leon Trotsky, wrote a book, Theory and Practice of Bolshevism (1919), that was very critical of communism.
When they returned to England in 1921, Dora agreed to marry Bertrand. Over the next few years, Bertrand became increasing interested in the subject of schooling and, in 1926, published his book On Education. In 1927, the couple opened their own progressive boarding school at Beacon Hill in West Sussex. The school reflected Bertrand's view that children should not be forced to follow a strictly academic curriculum.
In 1926, Russell became involved in the international campaign to save the lives of the two American anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who many believed had been wrongly convicted of murder. Russell wrote: "I am forced to conclude that they were condemned on account of their political opinions." His efforts were unsuccessful and the men were executed on 23rd August 1927.
In 1931, Bertrand succeeded his elder brother as 3rd Earl of Russell. He used the forum of the House of Lords to promote his views on pacifism. He also created controversy with his book Marriage and Morals (1932), where he advocated free love. Later, Russell was sacked from his post at City College, New York, because he was considered to be an enemy of "religion and morality".
Both Bertrand and Dora continued to have sexual relationships with other partners. This resulted in Dora having two children with the journalist Griffin Barry. In 1935, Bertrand Russell left Dora for one of his students, Patricia Spence.
Like his friend Clifford Allen, Russell ceased to be a pacifist in the late 1930s with the rise of Hitler in Germany. Russell was rewarded with the restoration of his fellowship at Cambridge University. Acceptance by the establishment was reflected by being asked to give the first BBC Reith Lectures in 1949. The following year, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
In the 1940s and 50s, Russell published a series of important books, including An Equiry into Meaning and Truth (1940), History of Western Philosophy (1945), Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948) and Why I am not a Christian (1957).
Russell became increasing concerned about the major powers producing nuclear weapons and in 1958 joined with Dora Russell, J.B. Priestley, Fenner Brockway, Victor Gollancz, Canon John Collins, and Michael Foot to form the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). In 1961, Russell was imprisoned for his part in a CND demonstration in London.
In his final years, Russell lived with his fourth wife, Edith Finch, in North Wales, where he wrote three volumes of Autobiography (1967-69). Bertrand Russell died in 1970.
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