William George Stewart Adams (8 November 1874 – 30 January 1966) was a Scottish political scientist and public servant who became principal of an Oxford College and a leader in the fields of voluntary service and rural regeneration.
Background and education
George Adams was born in Auchingramont Road, Hamilton, the younger son of John and Margaret (née Stewart) Adams, by whom he was given "an intellectual and somewhat evangelistic upbringing".Hamilton Advertiser, 14 November 1874; John Turner, Lloyd George's Secretariat (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 21. His father was Rector (headmaster) of St John's Grammar School and had founded Gilbertfield House School, both in Hamilton. His mother came from a Glasgow mercantile family and was a niece of the social activist John Murray.George Haynes, Dictionary of National Biography, 1961–1970 (Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 4.
Educated at St John's (where he was School Dux in 1891), Adams proceeded to Glasgow University with a Dundonald Bursary in Philosophy."St John's Grammar School Centenary 1836–1936" (The Hamilton Advertiser, 1936). Adams's sister Annie had been Girl Dux in 1884; she was a linguist (LLA, St Andrews) whose translations of Fournier's Napoleon I: A Biography (1911) and Erich Brandenburg's From Bismarck to the World War, 1870–1914 (1927) have not been superseded. At Glasgow he was Blackstone medallist in Latin and Sandford scholar in Greek and obtained a first-class degree in Classics (1897). He afterwards went up to Balliol College, Oxford, with a Snell Exhibition, and gained Firsts in Greats (1900) and Modern History (1901), taking political philosophy and political economy as his special subjects. He was president of the Arnold Society and rowed for his college.The Scotsman, 14 November 1938; Balliol College Register 1900–1950 (Oxford University Press, 1953); Haynes, Dictionary of National Biography, 1961–1970 (Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 4.
Early career and Irish appointment
Following a year as a tutor at Borough Road Teacher Training College, Isleworth, Adams briefly lectured on Finance and Colonial Policy in the University of Chicago's Department of Political Economy (1902) and afterwards spent three months in the United States and Canada studying the work of governmental and educational institutions. Returning to Britain in 1903, he became Lecturer in Economics at Victoria University of Manchester, where he was also secretary of the university's educational outreach initiative.Oxford Times, 12 February 1910; Brian Harrison, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004).
In 1904 he accepted Sir Horace Plunkett's offer of the position of Head of Statistics and Intelligence at the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland, of which Plunkett had charge.Margaret Digby, Horace Plunkett, An Anglo-American Irishman (Basil Blackwell, 1949), p. 96; Haynes, Dictionary of National Biography, 1961–1970. He remained in post for five years, obtaining close insight into both the workings of the civil service and matters of central and local government administration and becoming both the "right-hand man"A. V. Dicey, "The Extension of Law Teaching at Oxford", Harvard Law Review, Vol. XXIV, No.1 (November 1910), p.4. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1324642] and close personal friend of Plunkett, who inspired in him a lifelong concern for rural welfare.Adams considered Plunkett "the greatest man" he had ever met (Adams's Introduction, p. xii, to Margaret Digby's Horace Plunkett, An Anglo-American Irishman). Plunkett considered he had "no truer friend than Adams"; on learning Adams might leave his Department, he recorded it as "a great loss to Ireland and me": diary entries, 8 April 1929 and 10 January 1910 (Sir Horace Plunkett Papers, National Library of Ireland, MS. 42,222/49 and /30). The annual reports Adams issued while in Ireland were "more than mere statistical tables ... each was a valuable economic treatise on the trade of the country",Irish Independent, 31 October 1910. and in 1909 it was suggested that his work on the Irish economy during the previous five years "has done more to stimulate practical patriotism than all the political speeches of the last decade".Irish Times, 12 June 1909.
In 1911 he was appointed to the Irish Financial Committee, which was established, under the chairmanship of Sir Henry Primrose, to examine financial relations between Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom and to consider how revenues should be allocated in the event of Ireland being granted home rule.Daily Telegraph, 8 April 1917. Adams's belief that a federalist approach was key to resolving the Irish Question was reflected in the committee's recommendation that a future Irish Government should have full control over Irish revenues, but H. H. Asquith's administration declined to adopt this approach in the Third Home Rule Bill.Patricia Jalland, "Irish Home-Rule Finance, A Neglected Dimension of the Irish Question, 1910–1914", in Reactions to Irish Nationalism 1865–1914, ed. Alan O'Day (Bloomsbury, 1987), pp.2 98–308.
Political science at Oxford, 1910–1918
By the time of his membership of the Primrose Committee, Adams had resumed an academic career. The Oxford University Endowment Fund had financed a three-years Lectureship in Political Theory and Institutions to which Adams was appointed in early 1910.Yorkshire Post, 7 February 1910. The Warden of All Souls College, Sir William Anson, intervened to procure conversion of the Lecturership into a Chichele Readership further endowed by a Fellowship of All Souls, to which Adams was elected on 15 June 1911. It has been suggested that Anson knew little about Adams and wrongly assumed his appointment would serve the Unionist cause in Ireland, but the selection was generally well-received and Adams proved an able lecturer and effective organiser.Green, "Warden Anson, All Souls College, and the Curious Creation of the Gladstone Chair of Political Theory and Institutions at Oxford". Dicey thought Adams was "as well acquainted with the law and the practice of what one may call administration as any man who could have been appointed... In none of the many places he has occupied has he disappointed those who relied on his energy and talent", while the Oxford Magazine of 28 November 1912 appreciated his "knowledge, personality and zeal". A. L. Smith considered "For the union of thinking power with practicality there is no-one in Oxford to come near him" (letter, Smith to Thomas Jones, January 1917), while George Parkin reported it as "the universal view at Oxford that he is our best man – one of the best men in Britain" (quoted by Frederick W. Gibson in Queen's University: Vol. II, 1917–1961, McGill-Queen's Press, 1983, p. 14).
In 1912 his Readership was, with the benefit of further endowment by the Committee for a National Memorial to W. E. Gladstone, upgraded to the Gladstone Professorship of Political Theory and Institutions, and Adams became a member of the university's Hebdomadal Council.The Times, 11 December 1912; Norman Chester, Economics, Politics and Social Studies in Oxford, 1900–85 (Macmillan, 1986), p. 16; Who Was Who, 1961–1970. "Few men – before or since – can have risen so quickly up Oxford's academic ladder subsequent to so little exertion on their part" – Green, "Warden Anson, All Souls College, and the Curious Creation of the Gladstone Chair of Political Theory and Institutions at Oxford", p. 61.
Adams took a leading role in rationalising Oxford's research and teaching facilities for social and political sciences, first as secretary of the Association to Advance the Study of Social and Political SubjectsGreen, "Warden Anson, All Souls College, and the Curious Creation of the Gladstone Chair of Political Theory and Institutions at Oxford", p. 61. and then as a promoter of the Barnett House initiative. In 1913 he, Sidney Ball and A. L. Smith agreed to buy a house in central Oxford in order "to make it a centre of social economic studies and interests with a good specialist library" and to be named after Samuel Augustus Barnett.George Smith, Elizabeth Peretz and Teresa Smith, Social Enquiry, Social Reform and Social Action: One Hundred Years of Barnett House (University of Oxford Department of Social Policy and Intervention, 2014), p. 307. Barnett House was formally opened on 6 June 1914, when Horace Plunkett, who was visiting Adams, spoke on the need for research into rural matters.Letter, Adams to Plunkett, 2 December 1913, Sir Horace Plunkett Papers (Correspondence), National Library of Ireland, MS49,803/2. The original idea for Barnett House came from Rev. (later Bishop) George Bell, Adams taking it up enthusiastically and involving Sidney Ball and others in progressing it: Helena Deneke, Grace Hadow (OUP, 1946), pp. 88–89. Besides becoming an important resource for the university, the House provided a range of services to Oxfordshire's rural communities, including circulating books to schools and village halls in outlying districts.
The paucity of access to books across the nation's rural communities was highlighted in the comprehensive survey of public library provision which the Carnegie Foundation's UK Trustees had engaged Adams to undertake in 1913.The Scotsman, 23 December 1913. His Report, published by the Trustees in 1915, argued that such provision should be part of an overall State system and that its administration and funding at county rather than borough level could correct the imbalance between urban and rural facilities.The English Public Library 1850–1939, p. 3 ; H. E. Bracey, English Rural Life: Village Activities, Organizations and Institutions (Routledge, 2013), p. 194; W. H. G. Armytage, Four Hundred Years of English Education (CUP, 1970), p. 224; Alice Evans, A History of Children's Reading and Literature (Elsevier, 2014), p. 142. The Adams Report has been described as "of outstanding importance",Henry Adolphus Mess, writing in 1948, Voluntary Social Services Since 1918 (Taylor and Francis, 1998), p. 173. resulting in fundamental change to the Carnegie Trustees' library policyThomas Kelly, A History of Public Libraries in Great Britain, 1845–1975 (The Library Association, 1977), pp. 118, 211 ff. . and paving the way for the Public Libraries Act of 1919, the evolution of the County Library Scheme, the creation of the Central Library for Students (later the National Central Library), which became a clearing house for interlibrary loans, and developments such as university education for librarians.Kathleen M. Heim, Library Co-operation in Great Britain 1915–1972 (US Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 1976, pp. 4–5 ; Anne Welsh, The Education of Librarians in the UK , pp. 47, 53–54; and see Wayne A. Wiegand and Donald J. Davis, Encyclopedia of Library History (Routledge, 2015), p. 370. The legislation of 1919 also reflected the deliberations of the Education Reviewing Committee (established as a sub-committee of the National Reconstruction Committee), of which Adams was Chairman from 1917: Geoffrey Sherington, Education, Social Change and the War, 1911–20 (Manchester University Press, 1987), p. 92; Alistair Black, Simon Pepper, Kaye Bagshaw, Books, Buildings and Social Engineering: Early Public Libraries in Britain from Past to Present (Routledge, 2017), p.40.
In May 1915 Adams successfully proposed to the Hebdomadal Council that a committee be appointed to evaluate establishing an Oxford degree course in Political Economy, Political Science and Public Law. The committee (of which he was a member) recommended the institution of such a course for post-graduate study leading to a degree in Civil Science. The recommendation was accepted and the committee prepared an enabling statuteChester, Economics, Politics and Social Studies in Oxford, 1900–85, pp. 24–26. but further progress languished under wartime constraints.
The Political Quarterly