DOCSLIB.ORG

Hugo Young Lecture What Are Newspapers For? Alan Rusbridger

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Hugo Young Lecture What Are Newspapers For? Alan Rusbridger Hugo Young Lecture What are newspapers for? Alan Rusbridger Sheffield University, March 9h, 2005 It’s now 18 months since Hugo Young died, leaving a really gaping hole, not just in the Guardian, but in British and European journalism generally. Many journalists have some of the things Hugo had - keen intelligence, avid curiosity, a deep knowledge of the subject matter he tackled, an astonishing range of contacts, a prodigious memory, a clarity and toughness in his ability to think and in his writing – but very few journalists have them all. We miss him – colleagues, readers, friends, family – here in Sheffield and elsewhere. It’s particularly good that Hugo’s mother, Diana, is here tonight. It is great honour to be giving this inaugural lecture on journalism in his memory. Hugo died just before a significant moment in recent journalism in this country: the decision of the Independent - and, within weeks, the Times - to change shape, breaking the traditional link between broadsheet size and a certain style of quality journalism. That change in size brought increased circulation for the two papers and demanded a response – if only a defiant refusal to change – from the three remaining broadsheet dailies. And this moment happened at a time of unprecedented change, challenge and churn everywhere within the newspaper business. - Newspaper publishers, alarmed by falling sales, were increasingly experimenting with free newspapers, produced by much smaller teams of journalists, some of them relying largely on agency copy. - The Internet effect was finally felt in boardrooms as well as newsrooms, with readers and advertisers drifting – sometimes rushing – online. The future reading habits of the younger members of this audience are of deep interest to newspaper publishers. - Some of the biggest, most respected news organisations in the world – including the NYT, the BBC, le Monde, CBS and USA Today – were hit by scandals or controversies about journalistic methods and ethics. At the Guardian we were - directly or tangentially – affected by all these squalls or storms. The Independent and Times were taking some of our readers, especially those journeying to work on cramped public transport. Some of them undeniably found the tabloid size altogether more convenient. The London Metro – a quick, free read on the way to work - was taking some more. We were thrilled to find our website amongst the most popular in the world – with 10 million unique readers a month. The Guardian was now, as they say, a global brand, one of the biggest. But, along with that excitement and success, there gnawed away a suspicion that the internet Guardian was to some extent cannibalising the core print 1 product. And the big ethical journalistic debates raging elsewhere found an echo in our own newsroom, as in all others. As we considered our response we found ourselves having some very fundamental debates about what, in a crowded media hypermarket, a newspaper was for? What task should it set itself? And how should it measure its success? For generations there had been a quiet understanding about what newspapers were for. They were there primarily to tell a society about itself, to act as a pollinator of information. To be a conduit between subjects and rulers, citizens and legislators, legislators and citizens, citizens and citizens. The Enlightenment brought with it an understanding that decent liberal democracies relied on having a sufficient number of adequately, or reasonably informed citizens. The contrary was also true: that it would be difficult to maintain a liberal democracy - in all its subtlety and with all its finely-tuned balancing acts – if the people were ill-prepared, ill-informed, or, worse-still, mis-informed. Of course, newspapers sought to entertain as well. And they were also there to challenge power - to hold it to account. And, in this country as elsewhere, there has for 200 years or more, been a tradition of robust, unfettered comment. Some papers worked harder than others at the separation of comment and fact. But – in the story we told to others in our attempts to win our freedom of speech, not to mention additional privileges and protection - there was at its heart the civic value of news-telling. Just recently decent, thoughtful, liberal voices have begun to question that unfettered freedom. In her 2002 Reith Lectures, and since, Professor Onora O’Neill has questioned whether freedom of speech deserves its sacred cow status. Why, for instance, should there be a freedom to mis-inform people, she asks? Is there not a vast gulf between protecting small voices threatened by powerful institutions – monarchs or despotic governments, for instance – and protecting vast, wealthy and powerful modern media organisations, which may be as much concerned with entertainment and profit as informing citizens about the society in which they live? Other legal scholars have begun to ask whether entertainment speech deserves the same protection as political speech. There are some clear amber lights out there if we want to see them. But what if the citizens don’t want to be informed? Or, rather, that there’s a level of surface news-grazing which is enough for their purposes? News is all around – the radio headlines in the morning, a 10 minute scan of Metro on the way to work, text alerts for breaking headlines, the internet, numerous 24-hour news TV channels. That’s fine for more and more people, it seems. How much more do I honestly need to read to be informed enough? It’s all very well to talk about the compact between citizen and legislator, but voting doesn’t seem to change much. And the real power in the modern world – and the real problems - lie way beyond my ability to do anything about them. Please tell me: why do I need to know all this stuff? The apathetic voter is a cliché of modern politics. Perhaps we’re now facing the apathetic reader? As with politics, the apathetic reader may not be apathetic about everything. They’ll have their own passions, obsessions and causes. But it’s just possible that the internet does passions, obsessions and causes better than newspapers. People can bury deeply into their own subjects, engage with communities of other equally engaged people. And, as for the rest, well, a 10 minute skim will do. What should an editor do, faced with legions of apathetic readers? 2 - One reasonable response is to say, we’ll give them what they want. If they don’t want difficult stuff, we won’t give them difficult stuff. - Another response might be to turn the volume up. Make the news seem more exciting, striking, pumped up. Try to shock and energise them out of their apathy. - A third avenue is to paraphrase the BBC producer who said, “Don’t give the public what they want. They deserve much better than that.” So what does an editor do? Is there still some notion of duty that goes with the privilege of mediating the news and the argument? Or is that for the birds? Do we have any kind of responsibility to tell our readers things they may not think they want to know? Would it matter if all newspapers started turning up the volume..to shout, rather than talk? Would public debate be improved, or become impossible? If readers don’t have the time, or appetite for much complexity, does that mean we shouldn’t give it to them? Running a health service in 2005 (or an Army, or a police service or a large public company) is intricate, complicated and – except to those involved – perhaps not very interesting. Not many people on their ride to work are going to want to bury themselves in the difficult detail. So, shall we pension off the correspondents who know these subjects inside out? And if we did, what would that do to the political process? Would we end up reinforcing a pattern of ignorance, or carelessness about things that actually matter to us all, when we choose to think about it? How would that affect the political process? At its mildest it might simply frustrate politicians, unable to get their message across. Or it might create a breed of politicians who felt they could get away with more or less anything because the main medium of political communication had abandoned the territory. Is any of that our business? Or do we just concentrate on the task of selling more copies? These are big, challenging questions. And, as we’ve sat down and grappled with them over the past 18 months we’ve been struck by how muted the debate was out there, in society at large. Most commentators within the industry saw an increased circulation figure at the papers that had shrunk or gone partly free and made a straight correlation with success. And, of course, the monthly ABC figures are one important measure of how a newspaper is doing – not least because they can affect the price the paper charges for its advertising. No editor minds selling more copies. No editor likes selling fewer. If market forces were all that mattered, that would be the end of the story. But, of course, there’s a part of us that knows that, where the media is concerned, figures alone can actually be dangerous indicators. The most trusted and serious newspaper in Britain – the Financial Times – sells easily the fewest copies. The Sun and the News of the World sell the most. The BBC’s least admirable periods have, in many minds, been when it’s chased ITV for eyeballs. Newsnight and C4 News are the best there is in current affairs journalism.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • New Labour, Old Morality
    New Labour, Old Morality. In The IdeasThat Shaped Post-War Britain (1996), David Marquand suggests that a useful way of mapping the „ebbs and flows in the struggle for moral and intellectual hegemony in post-war Britain‟ is to see them as a dialectic not between Left and Right, nor between individualism and collectivism, but between hedonism and moralism which cuts across party boundaries. As Jeffrey Weeks puts it in his contribution to Blairism and the War of Persuasion (2004): „Whatever its progressive pretensions, the Labour Party has rarely been in the vanguard of sexual reform throughout its hundred-year history. Since its formation at the beginning of the twentieth century the Labour Party has always been an uneasy amalgam of the progressive intelligentsia and a largely morally conservative working class, especially as represented through the trade union movement‟ (68-9). In The Future of Socialism (1956) Anthony Crosland wrote that: 'in the blood of the socialist there should always run a trace of the anarchist and the libertarian, and not to much of the prig or the prude‟. And in 1959 Roy Jenkins, in his book The Labour Case, argued that 'there is a need for the state to do less to restrict personal freedom'. And indeed when Jenkins became Home Secretary in 1965 he put in a train a series of reforms which damned him in they eyes of Labour and Tory traditionalists as one of the chief architects of the 'permissive society': the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality, reform of the abortion and obscenity laws, the abolition of theatre censorship, making it slightly easier to get divorced.
    [Show full text]
  • Chapter 3 50 Years Arguing with Neighbours: the UK's Complex
    Chapter 3 50 years Arguing with Neighbours: The UK’s Complex Relationship with the European Union Anne Wesemann Abstract 1969 determined the UK’s fate as an European Union (EU) Member State. Finally, with the ‘cock’ who crowed ‘NON’ twice making way, the route was clear for the UK to join the then European Community. The UK became a Member State in 1973 but it was neither smooth sailing to get to that point nor has it been since. The early years of membership were marked by doubts over the nature of the developing communities and the role the UK would be playing in that development were it to leave or remain. This led to a first UK referendum in 1975 on membership which confirmed the UK government’s decision to join. Forty-one years later, a second referendum decided the UK should leave and paved the way to a slow exit. In between lay numerous economic crisis and domestic as well as international political challenges. As the last full year of UK EU Membership, 2019 marks an end to a struggling ‘ever closer’ relationship. This chapter will shed some light on the 50 years of struggle between the what is now the European Union and the UK. It will draw on historical, political, economic and legal perspectives in examining the relationship. It will present an overview of the humble beginnings of the EU and the UK’s role in that, and the relationship’s stormy youth, when the world faced a global economic crisis. This chapter will examine whether the UK was being led or was leading in key matters of EU policy and law; in doing so it will consider arguments around sovereignty, or rather what there was to gain back after 2019.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction: Propaganda and Political Marketing
    Notes Introduction: Propaganda and Political Marketing 2 Stanley Kelley, Professional Public Relations and Political Power (1956) p. 210. 2 Hugo Young and Anne Sloman, The Thatcher Phenomenon (1986) p. 94. 3 Ibid., pp. 94-5. 4 See especially New Statesman's election edition, 10 June 1983. 5 For an account of the programme, see The Listmer, 16 June 1983. 6 Wendy Webster, Not A Man To Matcll Her (1990). 7 Philip Kleinman, The Saatchi & Saatchi Story (1987) p. 32. 8 Campaign, 30 November 1990. 9 Martin Harrop, 'Political Marketing', in ParliamentaryAffairs,July 1990, 43(3). 10 Interview with Peter Mandelson at the Labour Party conference, Black- pool, October 1986. 11 'Party Presence', in Marxism Today, October 1989. 12 Harrop, op. cit. 13 The £11 million figure is quoted in Eric Clark, The Want Makers (1988) p. 312. For a full account of the GLC campaign and its success in shifting public opinion, see Robert Waller, Moulding Political Opinion (1988). 14 Obse1ver, 24 December 1989. 15 Richard Rose, Influencing Voters (1967) p. 13. 16 See Michael Cockerell, Live from Number 10, pp. 280-1. 17 Quoted in HJ. Hanham, Ekctions and Party Management: Politics in the Time of Disraeli and Gladstone ( 1978) p. 202. 18 Serge Chakotin, The Rape of the Masses: The Psychology of Totalitarian Propaganda (1939) pp. 131-3. 19 Ibid., p. 171. 20 Ibid. 21 See Max Atkinson, Our Masters' Voices (1988) pp. 13-14. 22 Quoted in Michael Thomas, The Economist Guide to Marketing (1986). 23 Michael J. Baker, 'One More Time- What is Marketing?', in Michael J.
    [Show full text]
  • European Commission a Testimony by the President
    European Commission 2004 – 2014 A Testimony by the President with selected documents JOSÉ MANUEL DURÃO BARROSO European Commission 2004 – 2014 A Testimony by the President with selected documents JOSÉ MANUEL DURÃO BARROSO Content European Commission 2004 – 2014: A testimony by the President ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������11 On Europe - Considerations on the present and the future of the European Union Humboldt University of Berlin, 8 May 2014 ������������������������������������������������������������������������� 63 Speeches Building a Partnership for Europe: Prosperity, Solidarity, Security 3 Vote of Approval, European Parliament Plenary Session Strasbourg, 21 July 2004 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 91 Messina, 50 years on: turning the crisis to our advantage 50th Anniversary of the Messina Conference Messina, 4 June 2005 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 99 France and Europe: a shared destiny French National Assembly Paris, 24 January 2006 �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������105 Seeing Through The Hallucinations Third Hugo Young Memorial Lecture London, 16 October 2006 �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������109 A stronger Europe for a successful globalisation
    [Show full text]
  • Citation: Webster, CS (2018) Turning the Tables: Media Constructions of British Asians from Victims to Criminals, 1962 to 2011
    Citation: Webster, CS (2018) Turning the Tables: Media Constructions of British Asians from Victims to Criminals, 1962 to 2011. In: Media, Crime, Racism. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, pp. 11-32. ISBN 978-3-319-71776-0, 978-3-319-71775-3 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71776-0 Link to Leeds Beckett Repository record: https://eprints.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/id/eprint/4008/ Document Version: Book Section (Accepted Version) The aim of the Leeds Beckett Repository is to provide open access to our research, as required by funder policies and permitted by publishers and copyright law. The Leeds Beckett repository holds a wide range of publications, each of which has been checked for copyright and the relevant embargo period has been applied by the Research Services team. We operate on a standard take-down policy. If you are the author or publisher of an output and you would like it removed from the repository, please contact us and we will investigate on a case-by-case basis. Each thesis in the repository has been cleared where necessary by the author for third party copyright. If you would like a thesis to be removed from the repository or believe there is an issue with copyright, please contact us on [email protected] and we will investigate on a case-by-case basis. Turning the Tables? Media Constructions of British Asians from Victims to Criminals, 1962 to 2011, in Bhatia, M., Poynting, S. and Tufail, W. (eds.) (2017) Media, Crime, Racism, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Colin Webster Introduction: British Asians, the media and the race-ethnicity ‘problem’ Our story really begins with the criminalization of Asian immigration to Britain in 1971.
    [Show full text]
  • The Religious Mind of Mrs Thatcher
    The Religious Mind of Mrs Thatcher Antonio E. Weiss June 2011 The religious mind of Mrs Thatcher 2 ------------------------------------------- ABSTRACT Addressing a significant historical and biographical gap in accounts of the life of Margaret Thatcher, this paper focuses on the formation of Mrs Thatcher’s religious beliefs, their application during her premiership, and the reception of these beliefs. Using the previously unseen sermon notes of her father, Alfred Roberts, as well as the text of three religious sermons Thatcher delivered during her political career and numerous interviews she gave speaking on her faith, this paper suggests that the popular view of Roberts’ religious beliefs have been wide of the mark, and that Thatcher was a deeply religious politician who took many of her moral and religious beliefs from her upbringing. In the conclusion, further areas for research linking Thatcher’s faith and its political implications are suggested. Throughout this paper, hyperlinks are made to the Thatcher Foundation website (www.margaretthatcher.org) where the sermons, speeches, and interviews that Margaret Thatcher gave on her religious beliefs can be found. The religious mind of Mrs Thatcher 3 ------------------------------------------- INTRODUCTION ‘The fundamental reason of being put on earth is so to improve your character that you are fit for the next world.’1 Margaret Thatcher on Today BBC Radio 4 6 June 1987 Every British Prime Minister since the sixties has claimed belief in God. This paper will focus on just one – Margaret Thatcher. In essence, five substantive points are argued here which should markedly alter perceptions of Thatcher in both a biographical and a political sense.
    [Show full text]
  • A Weightless Hegemony
    susan watkins Editorial A WEIGHTLESS HEGEMONY New Labour’s Role in the Neoliberal Order he Centre Left governments that dominated the North Atlantic zone up to the turn of the millennium have now all Tbut disappeared. Within six months of Bush’s victory in the United States, the Olive Tree coalition had crumbled before Berlusconi’s Forza Italia. The autumn of 2001 saw Social Democrats driven from office in Norway and Denmark. In April 2002 Kok’s Labour-led government resigned over a report pointing to Dutch troops’ complicity in the Srebrenica massacre. The following month, Jospin came in a humiliating third behind Chirac and Le Pen in the French presidential contest, and the Right triumphed in the legislative elections. In Germany, the spd–Green coalition clung on by a whisker, aided by providential floods. Though the sap retains its historic grip on Sweden it now lacks an absolute majority, and Persson was trounced in the 2003 campaign for euro entry. In Greece, where pasok has only been out of power for three years since 1981, Simitis squeaked back in 2000 with a 43.8 to 42.7 per cent lead. Within this landscape, Britain has been the conspicuous exception. In the United Kingdom alone a Centre Left government remains firmly in place, its grip on power strengthened, if anything, in its second term of office, and still enjoying a wide margin of electoral advantage. Both features—New Labour’s survival against the general turn of the polit- ical wheel, and the scale of its domestic predominance—set it apart within the oecd zone.
    [Show full text]
  • Margaret Thatcher's Falklands Crisis Benjamin F
    Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont CMC Senior Theses CMC Student Scholarship 2015 Climbing the Mountain of Conflict: Margaret Thatcher's Falklands Crisis Benjamin F. Waldman Claremont McKenna College Recommended Citation Waldman, Benjamin F., "Climbing the Mountain of Conflict: Margaret Thatcher's Falklands Crisis" (2015). CMC Senior Theses. Paper 1112. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/1112 This Open Access Senior Thesis is brought to you by Scholarship@Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in this collection by an authorized administrator. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CLAREMONT MCKENNA COLLEGE ‘CLIMBING THE MOUNTAIN OF CONFLICT’ MARGARET THATCHER’S FALKLANDS CRISIS SUBMITTED TO PROFESSOR LILY GEISMER AND PROFESSOR ILAI SALTZMAN AND DEAN NICHOLAS WARNER BY BENJAMIN FINE WALDMAN FOR SENIOR THESIS FALL 2014 & SPRING 2015 APRIL 27, 2015 This page intentionally left blank. 2 Acknowledgements This project required the help of more people than I can thank here, especially those friends forced to sit through countless white board lessons on the Royal Navy’s fleet of jump jets or the various intricacies of British politics, which seem to fascinate only me. Professor Ilai Saltzman provided terrific help as a reader, ensuring I answered an actual question in my thesis. Naturally, I am inclined to compose a work entirely of interesting but loosely connected anecdotes, and he was instrumental in guiding me towards something more significant. Professor Lily Geismer deserves acknowledgement far beyond her incredibly helpful work as an adviser for this project. She has been the most significant academic influence on me in my four years of college. Any competency I’ve achieved as a writer, I owe to her years of dedicated teaching.
    [Show full text]
  • Euroscepticism and the Anglosphere: Traditions and Dilemmas in Contemporary English Nationalism
    bs_bs_banner JCMS 2015 Volume 53. Number 1. pp. 123–139 DOI: 10.1111/jcms.12207 Euroscepticism and the Anglosphere: Traditions and Dilemmas in Contemporary English Nationalism BEN WELLINGS1 and HELEN BAXENDALE2 1 Monash University 2 Oxford University Abstract British participation in the historical process of European integration has been persistently framed as a policy dilemma of the highest order. This dilemma was itself coloured by the existence of policy traditions that oriented Britain away from Europe and towards political communities tied to a historical interpretation of British nationality. Euroscepticism is symptomatic of these traditions and dilemmas while at the same time sustaining them. But Eurosceptics face a dilemma of their own. What serious alternative do they propose? The notion of the ‘Anglosphere’was adopted on the Eurosceptic right of British politics as an alternative to European integration. As a politics of disengagement by the Cameron government played out in Europe, a policy of re-engagement began with Britain’s former Dominions. Here was a response to a political dilemma that not only used historical consciousness and political tradition as its point of departure, but as its place of desti- nation too. Introduction As a politics of disengagement by the Cameron government emerged in Europe, a policy of re-engagement with Britain’s former Dominions was also observable. Similarly, the rise in vocal Euroscepticism within the Conservative Party after 2010 was preceded by a decade of discussion about the existence of the so-called ‘Anglopshere’ as a viable alternative to the UK’s involvement in the processes and politics of European integration.
    [Show full text]
  • Plenary Panel Protecting the Homeland and Honoring Civil
    Plenary Panel Protecting the Homeland and Honoring Civil Liberties: How Can the Constitution Guide Us? Federal Bar Association 2017 Mid-Year Meeting Saturday, March 18, 2017 10:30 AM – Noon Capital Hilton Hotel, Washington, D.C. Background Materials Background Materials …………………………………………………………………….. 1 Program Overview……………….…………………………………………………………. 3 Sahar F. Aziz, Professor Law, Texas A&M University, Fort Worth, TX .. 4 Gwendolyn Keyes Fleming, Esq., Former Principal Legal Advisor (General Counsel), U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Immigration & Customs Enforcement, Washington, D.C. ……… 22 Michael M. Hethmon, Senior Counsel, Immigration Reform Law Institute, Washington, D.C. …………………………………………………………… 31 Executive Order 13780 of March 6, 2017. Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States. 82 Federal Register 13209 (March 9, 2017) ………………………………………………………………… 34 Sahar F. Aziz, Rethinking Counterrorism in the Age of ISIS: Lessons from Sinai, 95 Nebraska Law Review 307 (2016) ………………………………. 45 Sahar F. Aziz, Losing the 'War of Ideas': A Critique of Countering Violent Extremism Programs (February 8, 2017). Texas International Law Journal, Forthcoming ………………………………………………………………… 105 Patrick J. Charles, The Plenary Power Doctrine and the Constitutionality of Ideological Exclusions: An Historical Perspective, 15 Texas Review of Law & Policy 61 (Fall 2010) …………………………………………………...... 129 Congressional Research Service, Executive Authority to Exclude Aliens: In Brief, January 23, 2017 ………………………………………………………………………. 171 Symposium
    [Show full text]
  • How the 'Plumber' Became a Problem: the United Kingdom, Polish Immigrants, and the European Union, 1945–2014
    HOW THE 'PLUMBER' BECAME A PROBLEM: THE UNITED KINGDOM, POLISH IMMIGRANTS, AND THE EUROPEAN UNION, 1945–2014 Rachel C. Pawlowicz A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS December 2019 Committee: Douglas Forsyth, Advisor Neal Jesse © 2019 Rachel C. Pawlowicz All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Douglas Forsyth, Advisor This thesis examines the critical role that the Polish immigrant community has played in recent British history. A large influx of Polish migrants settled in the UK in the years immediately following World War II. The British government pressured the Poles to repatriate or settle elsewhere, due in part to the post-war scarcity environment. By the early 1960s, against the backdrop of Commonwealth immigration—many of whom were non-white—the Polish immigrant community was extolled for their ability to adapt and assimilate with comparative ease. When a second wave of Polish immigration began in 2004, it was as a result of Poland’s accession to the EU. The UK did not limit Polish immigration between 2004 and 2011; it was one of three member states that did not. By the end of 2011—when the other member states lifted their restrictions—Polish was the second most commonly spoken language in Britain, behind English and ahead of Welsh. As a result, the Polish community became a focal point for Eurosceptics, who argued that the UK’s inability to limit the number of Poles seeking employment in the island nation threatened not only low-paid, unskilled British labor but also the integrity of British society.
    [Show full text]
  • Thatcher Fucked the Kids’: a Reflection on Gender, Generation and Trauma
    JOMEC Journal Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies ‘Thatcher Fucked the Kids’: A reflection on gender, generation and trauma Heather Nunn University of Roehampton, London Email: [email protected] Keywords Thatcher Thatcherism Gender Generation Misogyny Trauma Abuse Abstract This essay is a reflection on Thatcher and Thatcherism and the ways in which both the persona and the political ideology have been linked into accusations of cross- generational social damage through an articulation of gender, trauma and childhood. In short, it considers how ongoing political and social damage becomes rendered as psychic and sexualised abuse and the problems inherent in this transposition. In doing so this essay aims to offer a pointer for future debate and analysis; signalling how political culture and social damage can be critiqued, assertively and even with the language of invective, but without the unhelpful demonising and sexualisation of the political persona. This essay makes the case that the current difficult experiences of living through an economic period of neoliberal failure and the ensuing exigencies of austerity require us to deploy something more considered than the easy jibe or joke and the deflection of blame to the recently deceased Prime Minister. Overall the essay argues that while Thatcherism should be critiqued and so should Thatcher herself for her part in the launch of the neoliberal project we should also bear in mind that over the long haul the neoliberal project is one in which we have all played our particular parts. If we are to move on we should perhaps consider not only our resistance to neoliberalism but also our complicity.
    [Show full text]