Sir George Edward Gordon Catlin (26 July 1896 – 7 February 1979) was an English political scientist and philosopher. A strong proponent of Anglo-American co-operation, he worked for many years as a professor at Cornell University and other universities and colleges in the United States and Canada. He preached the use of a

natural science Natural science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeatab ...

model for political science. McMaster University Libraries holds his correspondence archive and the body of some of his works. He had two children, one of whom was the politician and academic Shirley Williams.

Early life

Catlin was born in Liverpool, the son of Edith Kate (Orton) and George Edward Catlin (1858–1936), an Anglican clergyman. He was educated at St Paul's School, and

New College, Oxford New College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1379 by William of Wykeham in conjunction with Winchester College as its feeder school, New College is one of the oldest colleges at th ...

. It was here that he converted to

Roman Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwide . It is am ...

after his wartime hiatus. He volunteered for military service in the early months of the First World War, but was rejected, and spent most of the war working for the liquor traffic department of the Central Control Board. However, he became a soldier in the last months of the war, fighting on the

Western Front Western Front or West Front may refer to: Military frontiers *Western Front (World War I), a military frontier to the west of Germany *Western Front (World War II), a military frontier to the west of Germany *Western Front (Russian Empire), a majo ...

in Belgium.

Academic

After the war he received his M.A. at Oxford and won three major prizes, including the Gladstone Prize and the Matthew Arnold prize in 1921 for his essay on the political thought of Thomas Hobbes entitled ''Thomas Hobbes as Philosopher, Publicist and Man of Letters''. He took up the relatively new field of political science. This was better established in the USA and at the invitation of the historian

Wallace Notestein Wallace Notestein (December 16, 1878 – February 2, 1969) was an American historian and Sterling Professor of English History at Yale University from 1928 to 1947. He was married to women's educational pioneer Ada Comstock. He was a member of th ...

he began lecturing at Cornell University where he had the close association of Carl Becker.'' The Politics of George Catlin''
by Francis D. Wormuth, The Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Sep. 1961), pp. 807–811. At JSTOR. There he completed his doctoral thesis, published in 1926 entitled ''The Science and Method of Politics''. This was followed in 1929 by ''A Study of the Principles of Politics''. He was an Assistant Professor of Politics at Cornell by the age of 28 and subsequently twice Acting chairman. In 1926 he was appointed to be the director of the National Commission (Social Research Council) to study the impact of

prohibition in the United States In the United States from 1920 to 1933, a Constitution of the United States, nationwide constitutional law prohibition, prohibited the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages. The alcohol industry was curtai ...

. His conclusions were subsequently published as a book.

Politics

Catlin was a strong proponent of

Anglo-American Anglo-Americans are people who are English-speaking inhabitants of Anglo-America. It typically refers to the nations and ethnic groups in the Americas that speak English as a native language, making up the majority of people in the world who spe ...

co-operation, even to the extent of advocating an organic union between the two countries. He published ''Anglo-Saxony and Its Tradition'' in 1939. He also had ambitions to be directly involved in British politics through the Labour Party. Between 1928 and 1931 Catlin was attached to the personal staff of

Sir Oswald Mosley Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet (16 November 1896 – 3 December 1980) was a British politician during the 1920s and 1930s who rose to fame when, having become disillusioned with mainstream politics, he turned to fascism. He was a member ...

. This was a period before Mosley had made his final break with the Labour Party to become openly fascist. In 1929 he assisted H.G. Wells, Arnold Bennett, and others in establishing '' The Realist'' magazine. Catlin was an unsuccessful

Labour Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

candidate in two general elections: 1931 in Brentford and Chiswick, and 1935 in

Sunderland Sunderland () is a port city in Tyne and Wear, England. It is the City of Sunderland's administrative centre and in the Historic counties of England, historic county of County of Durham, Durham. The city is from Newcastle-upon-Tyne and is on t ...

. From 1935 to 1937 he served on the executive committee of the Fabian Society. During the 1930s Catlin travelled extensively. He visited Germany, where in 1933 he witnessed the trial of Dimitrov for allegedly setting the

Reichstag fire The Reichstag fire (german: Reichstagsbrand, ) was an arson attack on the Reichstag building, home of the German parliament in Berlin, on Monday 27 February 1933, precisely four weeks after Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of ...

, a forewarning of what Nazism was to become. He went to Soviet Russia for a prolonged examination of the newly established Communist regime there and to Spain during the height of the Civil War. During this period Catlin wrote a large number of articles as a journalist, mostly for the '' Yorkshire Post''. He served on the campaign team of Presidential candidate Wendell Willkie during 1940 and his subsequent book, ''One Anglo-American Nation'' appeared in 1941. He was an early advocate for the

independence of India The Indian independence movement was a series of historic events with the ultimate aim of ending British Raj, British rule in India. It lasted from 1857 to 1947. The first nationalistic revolutionary movement for Indian independence emerged ...

, after meeting Mahatma Gandhi in 1931 in London. He visited India in 1946 and 1947 and published a tribute to Gandhi after his assassination, ''In the Path of Mahatma Gandhi'' (1948). In 1947 Catlin lectured in Peking. He served as Provost of Mar Ivanios College in India for 1953–54 and as chairman and Bronfman Professor in the Department of Economics and Political Science at McGill University between 1956 and 1960. He was a founder of the Movement for Atlantic Union, which was established in 1958. He drafted the constitution of the Paris-based Atlantic Institute, founded in 1961. He was also a member of the Pilgrims Club of Great Britain. His autobiography, on which he had worked sporadically since the end of the First World War, was finally published in 1972 as ''For God's Sake, Go''.Biography of George Catlin
at McMaster University. Retrieved June 2008

Honours

In the

1970 Birthday Honours The 1970 Queen's Birthday Honours were appointments to orders and decorations of the Commonwealth realms to reward and highlight citizens' good works, on the occasion of the official birthday of Queen Elizabeth II. They were announced in supplemen ...

, Catlin was knighted for services to Anglo-American relations.

Private life

Catlin married the English novelist Vera Brittain in 1925 after a courtship that began as a correspondence. She was pursuing her own career as a writer in Britain and the marriage endured many Atlantic-wide separations. They had two children: John Edward Jocelyn Brittain-Catlin (1927–1987), whose memoirs, ''Family Quartet'', appeared in 1987; and the Liberal Democrat politician Shirley Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby (1930–2021).Vera Brittain, autobiographies, ''Testament of Youth'' (1933) and ''Testament of Experience'' (1957) After Vera's death in 1970, Catlin married Delinda Gates (1913–2002) in Chelsea, London, in 1971. He died in Southampton, Hampshire, in 1979 at the age of 82 and was buried alongside his father at St James the Great Church, Old Milverton, Warwickshire.

References

External links

McMaster University Libraries
''The Function of Political Science''
Paper published 1956 by George Catlin * Paul Berry and Mark Bostridge, ''Vera Brittain: A Life'' (1995) {{DEFAULTSORT:Catlin, George 1896 births 1979 deaths Alumni of New College, Oxford Converts to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism Cornell University alumni English Roman Catholics English autobiographers English political scientists Labour Party (UK) parliamentary candidates McGill University faculty Members of the Fabian Society People educated at St Paul's School, London Academics from Liverpool 20th-century English philosophers British expatriates in the United States 20th-century political scientists