The Social History of the Machine Gun

"I read The Social History of the Machine Gun fairly recently as the result of a recommendation. And it does exactly what it says on the cover – it describes the development of the machine gun and its impact on warfare, which was dramatic, both within states and between states, and its effect on the fabric of society all over the world. The author speaks about Britain, Europe, India, South Africa. Once again, rather like my choice of Daniel Deronda , although this is a much more recent book, it is a parable for our times, applicable to our own dilemmas. No society can prevent the invention of potentially lethal material. What it can do is ensure that it is dealt with within an ethical framework. I think this book shows that the invention of the machine gun and its deployment was rather badly handled and it has lessons for us. What is one of the greatest threats to our time? Nuclear proliferation, which we are still debating how to deal with. I am of an age never to have been called up for active military service and never have had to fight in a war in Europe (there have been no European wars outside the Balkans). One answer to the question of why this is so could be nuclear weapons and the stand-off between the old Soviet Union and Europe. As Professor Bernard Williams once said, nuclear weapons cannot be disinvented. They are an extraordinary invention which has been taken into the civilian world to some advantage in my view. “There is something hypocritical about everyone who is very moral. There is something of the selfish and egotistical in the altruistic.” The lessons of the machine gun apply not only to nuclear non-proliferation but also to the use of nuclear materials for generating electricity. Also to the use, within an ethical framework, of genetically modified crops. In fact to any other similar analogous issue. I think the lesson we learn is the importance of a proportional balance between progress and progress being misused – the balance between a Dr No -type scenario of antisocial use of an invention and the safe use of genetically modified crops to feed millions of hungry people is a very delicate balance. I don’t subscribe to the view that you shouldn’t take the risk of trying to find that balance. And the notion in this book, which is that something that can be hugely lethal can also bring about good, is one that we have to recognise and embrace. So my lesson from this book is that when something like the machine gun appears on the horizon – and the machine gun changed battlefields because however many men were charging toward you with swords or muskets, it could mow them down before they came anywhere near you – whenever we see that kind of invention we have to look at whether it can be put to good use, rather than simply saying, ‘Let’s ban it.’ It is one of the fundamental disagreements that I have with my own party, the Liberal Democrats – and I’m not the only one in the party with a lot of political experience to take this view – that they indulge in too many calls to ban things. I’m against banning things if at all possible, because I’m a liberal, but I’m in favour of putting things to imaginative use, or persuading people that they should be used in a way that is safe and effective. The price of wheat has gone through the roof, partly because speculators who used to buy money now are joining the futures market and distorting it, but the other reason is that there are an awful lot of hungry people in the world. To feed China, India, and particularly some of the poorer countries in Africa, they are going to have to embrace genetic modification. Whatever campaigners say, the reality is that these developments are taking place, so controlling not banning them is the trick. We should be there in the vanguard of the ethical debate about how the technology is used. This applies also to stem-cell research and other scientific developments."