Cecil Delisle Burns

From The Times, January 23, 1942

Dr. Cecil Delisle Burns, who died at Edgehill, Deepdene Park Road, Dorking, yesterday, excerised a wide influence on the constructive side of the Labour movement.

Born in 1879, son of Mr. J. Burns, treasurer of St. Christopher-Nevis, and grandson of Mr. Patrick Burns, Auditor-General of the Leeward Islands, he was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, and in Rome. He was a D.Lit. of London University. After five years as a University extension lecturer he devoted himself during the last war to adminstrative work. He was a member of the staff of the Ministry of Reconstruction from 1917 to 1919, was for a short period assistant secretary of the International Organizing Committee of the International Labour Office, and during 1919 and 1920 worked in the intelligence Division of the Ministry of Labour. He became in 1921 assistant secretary to the Joint Research Department of the Trades Union Congress and Labour Party, and held that position till 1924.

Burns's interests were speculative rather than practical. By nature resourceful and constructive, he was an efficient and trusted officer of the departments which he served, while he valued the opportunity which his duties gave him of observing from the inside the working of different kinds of social machinery. His personal bent, however, was towards the life of the teacher and student. From 1924 onwards he was able to follow it. He held two posts in the University of London, first as lecturer in logic and philosophy at Birkbeck College and then as lecturer in social philosophy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Finally, a post even better suited to his special gifts, as it allowed him more leisure for writing, came his way. The Stevenson Lectureship in Citizenship had just been established at Glasgow University, and Burns was appointed to it in 1927 for five years, and the appointment was renewed for a second term of five years in 1932l. Illness, however, did not allow him to complete more than two years of the latter term, and he resigned the lectureship in 1935.

As a lecturer and teacher Burns had remarkable gifts. Widely read, and with an unusual power of lucid exposition, he made his subjects live, and kindled in his hearers the same vivid and enthusiastic in the problems of the modern world that he felt himself. The lectures on democracy, citizenship, and industrial questions which he delivered in Glasgow were a brilliant success, and made the Stevenson Lectureship an important contribution to the intellectual life of the city. The majority of his books were devoted to subjects of the same order - international questions, problems of government and industry, and political theory. They were marked by the qualities of insight and lucidity which characterized his lectures.

In 1912 he married Margaret Hannay, a gifted painter and etcher, who survives him. They had two sons.