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I was on a panel at an illuminating debate at Queen’s School, Bushey near Watford run by the Institute of Ideas and came away very depressed. It was dominated by ideologues seeking conflict. Old style socialists spoke of the British airways cabin crew as an oppressed class of workers fighting for justice. Young men shouted hate against Israel and America. The more hostile the rhetoric, the more applause came from the audience. I hope it didn’t reflect sentiment in most of our schools.
2 Responses to “Old ideas, new generation”
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March 21st, 2010 at 2:14 pm
That’s not really fair, Humphrey. You make it sound as if it was “dominated” by old-style socialists (the five panellists being a Conservative candidate, yourself, a Sunday Times journalist, a Muslim activist, and a civil rights lawyer. Since you are probably talking about the last person, his defence of “rights” would seem to be an “old-style” issue, for you).
As a point of information, no-one spoke of the BA workers as an “oppressed class of workers” as everyone on the panel was keen to state that they knew little about the nature of the dispute. However, even Lord Digby Jones (ex-CBI) defended, in principle. the “right” (although not the practice) of BA staff’s to strike on the radio this morning. It was, however, interesting to have a panel reflecting both sides of a two-sided debate, which gave me – and the audience – a perspective on the conflicting attitudes in the actual industrial dispute..
In terms of “seeking conflict”, wasn’t “Question Time on TV (at least, in the past) supposed to be about conflicting views of key issues of the day. Otherwise it would be boring indeed. The point about conflicting debate is that you don’t agree with the other point of view. But as I said to the audience on the night, that’s tough.
The “young men shouting hate” appears to a reference to a few in the audience who, unbeknownst to anyone else, seem to follow the Conservative candidate around making his speaking engagements difficult. (Or so he told me afterwards). However, rather than “shouting”, they were muttering incomprehensibly for most of the evening, and several times were told to shut up by me.
Disapproval of America and Israel, is a mainstay of British public debate, I’m afraid. I agree that it is not always the most useful, accurate, helpful or nuanced position to take on international affairs, but that is something that most of you on the panel countered very well, I thought.
Anyway, I’m sorry that you seem not to have liked it in retropect (you told me that you had enjoyed it immediately afterwards… although you might have been being polite). I guess it goes to show that these are really, important, difficult, edgy, dodgy issues that need more of an airing… and the type of robust responses that came from you and your fellow panellists.
Hopefully, we’ll speak again soon
Austin
March 22nd, 2010 at 12:13 am
Thanks, Austin. I enjoyed the evening enormously because it was such an eye opener and I get a kick about being suprised. The depressing element came from my inability to identify new ideas coming forward. At times I felt we were simply slipping back into issues I (and probably you) had grown up with — violence in the Middle East and trade union action — thirty years or more ago. My comments were in no way a reflection on the Institute of Ideas which — as I have said in previous reviews — should be commended for raising these edgy issues among the young. I suppose I was looking for young voices to tell both the Islamic activists and the old socialists to at least sing a new song and I didn’t hear it — in contrast for example to the array of voices at the weekend in London last October.