Mal questioned what kind of a public face climate change is developing and asked to what extent, and if would we like, to consider it a mainstream issue or not. Phrases such as ‘environmentally pigeonholed’ were banded around whilst the actions of pressure groups such as 10:10 were considered. The reasons for mass apathy, he said, in the UK are to be challenged, as climate change develops into an issue that should transcend political affiliations, class and age.

Using his experience at 10:10 (though not representing, he hastened to add!) Mal brought up issues including the accessibility of climate change in attempting to win voters, questioning the ethics of inviting far-right parties to become part of the debate or whether taboo companies such as arm traders should be allowed to display climate-friendly logos on their websites.

Debate was rife, and enjoyment high; a jolly good and productive time for all!

“They have been, without doubt, the most wonderful thirteen years of my life,” she told me during a visit to York to speak to the New Generation Society. “I’ve loved every minute of it”. The Duchess of Kent smiles frequently, but speaks slowly and forcefully. She certainly looks younger than her 76 years, and there’s a steeliness to this lady who, with the very slightest of northern twangs, insists that I call her Katharine.

Katharine Kent was born in Yorkshire and educated at Queen Margaret’s school near York. It makes sense, then, that her vocation lead her back to the North. But it was in East Hull, far from the confines of Hovingham Hall, her childhood home, that she found her ability to teach music.

“Now Hull was an extraordinary story”, she began. “ I’d been working with UNICEF, and a great friend of mine who had just moved to the city said I’d be absolutely fascinated by what she’d found there and to come up and see it.” Katharine’s friend was right. Although the deprivation in East Hull was not, she made clear, “similar” to the deprivation she had seen in India and Africa with UNICEF, what grabbed her attention in the UK was “just as worrying” . And it was all “on our own doorstep”.

Katharine Kent has always been musical. She studied music for five years in Oxford after leaving school. But  how did she get involved with teaching music at a school in Hull? Katharine replied: “I went to see a governor’s meeting at Wansbeck Primary School in East Hull, taken there by the friend who had just moved there. I heard the head teacher – who has now become a great friend – saying we could so do with a music teacher, and I just said, ‘I’ll do it’. And I did.” She laughed, adding, “I couldn’t really say no after that.”

It was this snap decision that eventually led to “Future Talent”, a music charity dedicated to finding, funding and nurturing exceptionally talented young musicians in the UK, founded in 2004. While teaching music at the school, Katherine encountered some of the most deprived children in the UK, and it became clear to her that music could help improve their education, that learning music “raises self-esteem in a big way”.

What was it like introducing the children at Wansbeck to music?, I asked. “I have to say, I’ve laughed more at school than I’ve ever laughed in my life. I remember saying to this group of children who’d left just the reception class, ‘What does music mean to you?’ They replied: ‘Nothing’. So we did a few rhythm games – matching words to a rhythm and so on (what the children call ‘rap’) – and they I put my keyboard on. I asked the first group to perform while the other children listened. I turned round and suddenly four of them had sat on four little seats, and one of them was pretending to be Simon Cowell and judging the other children’s diction! You have more fun with them, and it’s a lovely way to teach, to move into their world of music.”

I asked Katharine if she enjoyed leaving her Royal title at the gates of the school, and just becoming Mrs Kent, the music teacher. She looked a little bemused by the question, replying: “I absolutely swear to you, there’s a most extraordinary innocence about these children. It’s like being on an island. Their world is television and the Longhill estate. I never had to pretend to be different. I was just ‘Miss who does music’.”

How about the other teachers? Were they surprised to have a Duchess on the staff? “No”, she said. “Not even remotely. It just worked. Which is probably what made me so happy there. I absolutely love teaching – I think it’s one of the most rewarding vocations there is. It should also be rewarded more.”

Although Katharine was happy to introduce the children to pop music, and a bit of jazz, she also didn’t shy away from teaching them a more challenging repertoire. A Catholic convert, she once heard the boys of the Westminster Cathedral Choir singing “How beautiful are the feet…” – a Handel aria. “They were singing it in a wonderfully swingy way, and I thought, ‘my children could do that’. So I taught it to them.” The children, she told me, also sang Schubert and in Latin. “People were asking why these children from Hull were singing this kind of music, and I just said, ‘Why not?’”

It was through teaching the children at Wansbeck that Katharine saw talent which, without exceptional teaching and nurturing, would go to waste. “I must have taught at least 20 children within all this time that were incredibly gifted. And there are no stepping stones for them. Yes, if you’ve got money, you can get into King’s College School or wherever as a chorister. If you haven’t there’s really nothing. Future Talent is trying to provide those stepping stones.”

Future Talent will be five years old in November, having been founded in 2004 by Katharine and Nicholas Robinson, the Headmaster of King’s College School, Cambridge. In this time, it has attracted some noteworthy patrons, including Sting and Lesley Garratt. At the moment the charity provides individual sponsorship to musically gifted children and also supplies specialist music teachers to schools where they are most needed. Later this year, the charity will launch the Coombs scholarship – named in honour of Lucy Coombs, the inaugural administrator of Future Talent who died after an illness in 2007, aged just 26.

I asked Katharine if she thought that music should take priority over other subjects, such as PE, or even Maths and English. She replied: “No, but it can have a powerful influence on all of those subjects you’re talking about.” At Wansbeck, she used music to teach maths – even just by asking the children to add up the musical beats in a bar. Lessons on Geography and culture could be intertwined with music, too. “If we learnt a Polish folk song then on that day the children would learn about Poland,” she said. But, Katharine conceded, normal teachers don’t have the time to dedicate themselves to this, which is why an outside specialist must come in. Most teachers haven’t learnt music as part of their teaching qualification and even the bravest teachers are “like jelly” when forced to stand up in front of a class to teach it.

Putting music specialists into schools is one of them most expensive things Future Talent does, so how do they afford it? I asked Katharine if any members of the Royal Family support the charity. “No”, she smiled, “not one of them”. There are instead a number of trusts which donate the charity, as well as individuals. Save the Children also helped to set up the project in Hull.

Katharine feels strongly that the government has long been taking the incorrect approach to education for a long time. Speaking as a primary school teacher, she said: “We feel absolutely forgotten and misunderstood. We feel as if we’re being preached to from on high by the almighty, namely the government. No one ever comes down to our level and says, ‘What do you actually need in your school?’ We are told: ‘You need that’. Well, no we don’t – we need this. We need understanding and co-operation… we need to guide you, not you guiding us. Sometimes I feel absolutely let down by people.”

It was clear listening to Katharine speak that she feels a keen devotion to the children that she has taught – “my children,” she called them. It is plain, too, that she feels especially drawn to Hull,  borne out by the fact that she still visits Wansbeck at least once a term. “It still feel as if I’m going home when I get out at Hull station,” she said. “I’ve grown incredibly fond of the families there. No, I don’t pretend to understand deprivation entirely. But I know a lot more about it than I did when I started.”

By Will Heaven

York Discussion Group – October 2008 – Mark Rusling (The Young Fabians)

At the beginning of the Autumn Term Mark Rusling, Chair of the Young Fabians, hosted a Future of the Left discussion group at York University. What follows is NGS York’s responses, ideas and new thinking.

(The comments in the discussion are not the opinion of Mark Rusling or the Young Fabians)

Mark Rusling: Introductory points:

• The whole discussion depends on the results of the US elections which are likely to change the global ideological order to a huge extent.

• The far left believe that any friend of the USA is an enemy. This is unhelpful and impractical.

• The far left have adopted a very narrow world-view, allowing US neoconservatives to ‘adopt’ traditionally ‘left’ ideas such as the importance of human rights.

• The Far Left are the biggest threat to the Left because they have lost track of traditional leftist values.

• The UK has swung right economically over the past few years, and there is no broad coalition on the need for redistribution

• The left should be standing for “equality of autonomy”, supporting people’s capacity to have control over their own life, and autonomy over their decisions, including their opportunity, and the outcome of their ideas.

• The Left are best placed to solve the current economic crisis because the solution must involve state intervention, traditionally a policy objected to by the right

• The Left must get together and ask themselves “What are we for?”

Discussion soundbites:

“Labour have taken the left away from their traditional supporters and roots.” James Thompson

“New Labour has never won on a Left wing platform.”
Mark Rusling.

“The British Left do not exist. The Labour Government is centre right.”
Participant 1

“Labour have had 12 years in which they could have changed the conservative British constitution. However, they have failed to do so. Why are they discussing policies like 40 day detention when they should have been standing for leftist ideas of freedom?”
Michael Shaw

“The white working class has been abandoned rhetorically by the British left.”
Mark Rusling

“Labour have encouraged anti-leftist extremists with the 42 day detention discussion. Their attempts to promote liberty are superficial.”
Vasant Chari

“The divide between New Labour and the Socialist Left is the biggest problem for the Left in our generation.”
Vasant Chari

“The problem of the Left is a problem of communication.”
James Townsend

“Their original ideology causes many people of the left to be uncomfortable with being in power. Labour for example, was formed as a party for outsiders.”
Mark Rusling

“We need a Left Wing force which can critique the structure of society. Labour have now just been dragged into it.”
Sean Glass

“Economic Equality is a good bed-rock idea, but its hard to enact economic policy which enshrines this, given the globalised nature of neo-liberalism.” Liam Paul

“Labour treats the electorate like children. The Left need to talk about race, and about immigration, because if they don’t the BNP will.”
Michael Appleton

Post discussion thoughts:

Participant 1:
Before we draw any conclusions on the future of the left, I believe it is first important to distinguish between its different “factions” and their respective goals.

Sadly, Britain is one of the few countries that I know of (other than the US) where the term socialist is considered an insult, by many if not most a synonym of soviet totalitarianism, so some clarifications and definitions are necessary, simplistic as they may seem.

And to reply to some points..

“Stop the war coalition: The far left believe that any friend of the USA is an enemy. This is unhelpful and impractical.”

What the left and the Stop the War coalition really believe is that, as its chair Tony Benn has put it, “there is no moral difference between a stealth bomber and a suicide bomber”.

They believe that wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism. That, if the death of 3000 innocent American civilians is a despicable act of terror, which it undoubtedly is, then what can be said of the death of more than a hundred thousand innocent Iraqi civilians? Collateral damage or a crime against humanity?

The real question here is our clear inability to apply the same standards to ourselves that we so eagerly apply to others.

“The Far Left are the biggest threat to the Left because they have lost track of traditional leftist values”

No matter what one says, it was not the “far” left (the term being applied in a relative manner, clearly) that bloodstained the Gulf stream, that made education a privilege, that planned to limit basic freedom with supposed “anti-terror” laws, that wasted billions in an illegitimate war against an abstract noun while being a mere witness to the record-breaking wage inequalities, now worse than under the time of Margaret Thatcher.

This is what losing track really means.

By extension, the biggest threat to the left does not come from parties that hardly anyone supports in the first place, but rather from those who hold the monopoly over the left’s name, and use it in ways that only demonstrate a very flawed understanding of its most basic principles.

“The British socialist left is dead”

It is a fact that the democratic liberal left in this country, ideologically describing a significant part of the population especially among the new Generation, has been left with virtually no representative in the political arena. Labour is undoubtedly well to the right of what it is supposed to stand for, and the statist radicals of Respect et al can hardly provide a realistic alternative to cover for this clear democratic deficit in British politics.

The issue now is not how to secure the Labour Party another term, or hope that “communication” will mitigate its (according even to Nick Clegg) right-wing agenda. The fact of the matter is that communicating with parties that have so different goals, not just different means of pursuing them, can only but result into a pointless search of a lowest common denominator.

The real issue is how to revive the democratic socialist left; and considering that the current systemic crisis requires a drastic reform of many fundamentals of our economy, that the environmental destruction renders the way we do business as completely unsustainable for much longer, that a new New Deal is necessary to pull us out of this mess and that “a new age of American leadership” is at hand, we can be confident that this is becoming increasingly realistic by each passing day.

And as we’ve seen, so is the gradual replacement of the failing neoliberalist rhetoric by a new era of a new post-Keynesian left.

“The left should be standing for equality of autonomy, supporting people’s capacity to have control over their own life, and autonomy over their decisions, including their opportunity, and the outcome of their ideas.”

That is all very well we’re all for any kind of equality, but before we even talk about “equality of autonomy” we’d first need equality of opportunity. Until this precondition is met, which it hasn’t by a very long shot, then “the control and autonomy of people’s own lives and decisions, including their opportunity and the outcome of their ideas” simply refers to the conservative “self-reliance” and social Darwinism rhetoric.

Michael Shaw:
Some thoughts on the future of ideology in modern Britain:

External factors have become the defining points of government in modern times, not ideology. The New York and London bombings have, to paraphrase Tony Blair, changed the rules of the game with regards to foreign policy. An ageing population combined with new discoveries relating to areas such as mental health and genetics have reshaped the NHS, environmental protection has risen up the political agenda, a policy area which (philosophically at least) claims no territory on the left-right axis.

We can no longer talk of the future of the left in terms of governing with a totally leftist ideology. Governance strictly obeying an ideology on the left-right axis will never effectively deal with the real challenges we face, partly due to the international agenda being dominated by specific issues as opposed to ideology, but particularly as new problems emerge which have never before been aligned to either the left or the right.

People themselves constantly remind political commentators that they feel no affinity with a political party – yet people feel very strongly about individual issues. And these issues do not necessarily coagulate at one particular end of the linear left-right spectrum. It is very difficult to pigeonhole dealing with environmental change as a left-wing or right-wing issue. The left have tried to claim it as their territory, yet preservation of the countryside and ‘Beautiful Britain’ have been for years Conservative principles, drawing from their large support base in rural England. Similarly a surge in population has left the issue of immigration control without a natural home on the left-right scale. Controlled immigration is seen as inevitable, albeit for different reasons, on all sides. We have even seen the traditional right take up the baton for those affected by the axing of the 10p tax band.

What will win elections in the future is not positioning oneself on the two-dimensional linear axis, but providing solutions and opportunities for the problems and hazards, which will affect the population in years to come. The liberal democrats are widely criticised for not having an ideology, yet they have become the government and the opposition’s favourite think tank when it comes to borrowing ideas for new policies.

Provided our fundamental freedoms are entrenched, our equality of opportunity is ensured, and our institutions are just, ideology should no longer matter when it comes to governing. Our society is too diverse (as too are it’s challenges) for one ideology to adequately provide the solutions we need.

Participant 1:
A question about Michael’s last paragraph:

Aren’t equality of opportunity, social liberalism and distributive justice left wing ideas? Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think I know many conservatives dedicating themselves to those causes; those that I know are usually too busy trying to convince us that the world is fair and that there is a superior moral justification for selfishness.

Also, the left is not “one ideology”, it is a term describing a variety of political beliefs with exactly those values that you described at its forefront. I resent the belief that the left has a fixed, rigid agenda that makes it collectively incapable of realistically dealing with today’s issues. We do not believe in panaceas, what we do believe is the kind of policies, whatever their form, adhering to the principles you described.

As for the environment; has it not been the left calling for a drastic reform of our production models even when the cheerleaders of the free market were trying to pretend that there is no such thing as man caused climate change? Take a look at American politics for example where this farce continues. At least in Europe, the overwhelming evidence has changed the position of our governments towards our direction. But that does not in the least cancel out the clear ideological connotations surrounding the issues of sustainable development and capitalist growth. On the contrary, the gradual shift towards the former can only be considered as one of the most major victories of the left.

So, in my humble opinion, it does matter a whole lot who is governing. Had it not been for the wider left, the NHS and free national healthcare in general wouldn’t have existed in the first place, the same with social security and the welfare state, not to mention the feminist and civil rights movements, as well as the liberation struggles of the former imperial colonies.

We can’t just nullify everything that has been achieved just because we take it for granted. The world will not be running short of problems any time soon, so I think it is necessary that we try to solve them in a principled manner, a manner that puts the public good before private profit. Which is what the left is all about.

Episode 1 – Tim Hastie-Smith at Thinking and Drinking

The NGS Podcast

Some suggestions —

“Shouldn’t primary school education be the priority, not secondary?”

“We need better resources in schools – books, computers, etc”

“Offer students who are clearly not academically-inclined more vocational learning and job opportunities earlier on. Also persuade more companies to offer more apprenticeships”

“It is wrong that the Government are trying to get 50% of all into university education – many are clearly not suited to it, and furthermore, it devalues the quality of uni education for those that do deserve to be there”

“Throughout all schools there should be setting based on ability, so the most able can be challenged and the least able better helped”

“Is raising the education leaving age to 18 a good idea?”

“National Service for teenagers who don’t go to university or do A-Levels?”

“Money isn’t enough – if there are problems at home grades will not be enough to help students achieve. Solution – maybe all students need one meeting per term with a tutor to check on their well-being?”

“Good schools = good leadership. It’s about finding the individuals to turn failing schools around: we need more good teachers”

- Tom Harding, Thinking and Drinking Coordinator

Problem / Issue –

With the rise of Internet journalism the media is freer than ever – but how far should journalism move on to the web? Are we ready to see the end of the newspaper?
And what are the ethical consequences of such a free media?

Argument —

- The internet is a force to be utilised, not to fear.

- A freer media is a better media.

- The media has a large responsibility to the public – not the government.

Your “New Thinking” solution —

- Multi-media news experiences.

- Encourage the growth of “amateur” media.

- We dictate the media we want.

Questions to be posed to the group to be discussed —

- Are we ready to see the end of the newspaper?

- How free a media should we have?

- What responsibilities does the media have and to whom?

Some sugestions…

“Life is too fast, no time for newspapers anymore”

“Environmental reasons: wasting paper”

“newspapers sometimes carry grotesque images: should we censor them?”

“Is there anything we can do to draw a line between completely free press and the welfare of the people?”

“If paparazzi is affecting someone, there should be something in place to protect them before all-out harrassment”

“The media twists things out of all perspective – the responsibility is on the reckless editors”

“In schools children should be taught what sources they read are likely to be accurate and which ones lack correctness. At the moment children assume the media must be true”

“Surely the way things are going, it is inevitable that the media will become more and more free”

“The huge power of the media to influence people, eg, Sun readers in general elections – a huge threat to democracy?”

“Newspapers – still retain their intellectual status”

“Legislation? Difficult to put in place, especially the internet”

“Journalistic protection for bloggers?”

“If we cannot legislate effectively, it may be beter not to legislate at all”

“If celebrities bring paparazzi on themselves by going out and getting drunk, do women bring rape on themselves by going out in a short skirt?”

- Tom Harding, Thinking and Drinking Coordinator

The common perception of sweatshops as evil institutions, is totally wrong, and further, that sweatshops are both economically and ethically a good thing. Sweatshop labour is not ‘exploitation’ by any reasonable definition because the workers voluntarily agree to work there. As a consequence of the voluntary nature of sweatshop labour, the labour is likely to be the best deal available to the worker. The empirical evidence illustrating this point is overwhelming, and sweatshops tend to be more and offer better conditions than other alternatives. Good examples of this are maligned firms like Nike and Fruit of the Loom. I then looked at the effect of boycotting sweatshop-made products. Following from sweatshops being the best available alternative, it seems that when they are removed by consumer -pressure, the consequences for the workers are far worse than if the sweatshop were there. The only thing worse than being exploited, is not being exploited. I related this to York Student Union policy of boycotting sweatshop-made produce, and whether we as individuals and members of a union should be supporting this policy.

Some ideas suggested by people at the T & D meeting following the presentation and discussions:

“All hinges on deifnition of ‘exploitation’”

“Is undeniable that they birng jobs to those who otherwise don’t/wouldn’t have them”

“Would boycotting them force the workers into worse jobs, or make the companies increase wages/improve conditions?”

“If the extremes of promoting or boycotting sweatshops are undesirable how can effective regulations be put in place, and properly carried out, to prevent things like whipping of workiers, conditioning of children to work in sweatshops (China)?

“There is no black or white; sweatshops are inevitable – but they must be constantly supervised under clear definitions and regulations”

“The idea of an ethical product coding system, like the healthy eating traffic light system, giving each product an ‘ethically produced’ code so people know what they’re buying and can decide which product they prefer”

“When you buy clothes, you thinks of style, colour, price, but how much do you think about the ethics of what you are buying? Education is the answer”

“1. Don’t boycott them; 2. Cancel Third World Debt; 3. Reform insititions such as the World Bank and IMF, so that they really act in the countries’ interests, not their own; 4. Give more financial aid”

“Persuade businessmen and entrepeneurs to want to invest more in the Third World”

“Impose some sort of minimum wage level like we have in the UK”

“Sweatshops are outsourcing’s negative extreme. Outsourcing benefits developing countries, so sweatshops should be tolerated. The alternative would be setting minimum wages, but companies would move to foreign countries. Eventually the workers will have to fight for their own rights”

- Tom Harding, Thinking and Drinking Coordinator

First, to take religion out of society would be to lose the myriad of positive benefits religion brings. In a world of conflict, it is surely helpful to have institutions preaching love, tolerance and sharing? All major religions provide this, as well as bringing a community together to do ‘good’ work – think of the many religious charities providing unqualified aid to people around the globe.

However this is not the religion we see on our news bulletins. That is a much less attractive, frightening and often repulsive distortion of religion. Surely the extremist fanatics must be included in any discussion of religion? Of course, and they for my second reason to oppose abolishing religion. Mankind naturally tends towards religious practice, and there is nothing we can do about that. By removing religion from the centre of our Society it will not simply go away, but be pushed to the extremities. Therein lies the danger. Without the scrutiny of being in the full public eye, and without regular moderate figures, the fanatics at the fringe can distort religion into the violent and divisive thing that causes so much suffering around the world.

My solution to this dilemma? We must embrace religion. Much like a boxer might hug his opponent so close that he cannot be hit, we must bring religion right to the centre of our lives. This will be a hard pill to swallow for many people who take a valid and respectable position as atheists, but it is a remedy to many of the things they find most repugnant about religion.

Some ideas suggested by people at the T & D meeting following the presentation and discussions:

“Fear of religion – lack of understanding; need education about different religions”

“It’s like multiculturalism. It’s difficult. We don’t understand it”

“We must get ban parental religious indoctrination”

“Have an oath of loyalty said towards Britain, not a faith”

“Religion is being replaced by consumerism”

“If you are encouraging religion, then all religions need to be encourage equally”

“Religion is uniquely a powerful justification for extreme actions”

- Tom Harding, Thinking and Drinking Coordinator

The proposal is to bring back an exam similar to the eleven-plus, whereby students will take an exam and it will decide which school they attend. There will be tiers of schools, at local, regional and national levels. The top scoring students in the exam will go onto their top local school. The top at those schools will go onto the best regional schools. And the top of the top students will go onto three or so national boarding schools.

This system will benefit everyone. A culture of competition will emerge in all schools, where presently none exists. This element of competitiveness will encourage high and low achiever alike to do their best. The exams will be repeated each year till the child is 16 so they can be moved according to their ability to the appropriate level of school.

This idea will hopefully reform the education system to create a truly meritocratic society.

Some ideas suggested by people at the T & D meeting following the presentation and discussions:

“Scrap education completely. Replace it with nothing”

“Stream on the basis of learning methods, not ability”

“Schools for ages 14-18, and then people can decide more on their route, i.e., different schools for different careers”

“Make greater use of sets in schools. Provides social stability while a form of academic streaming”

“Funding”

“Local Government to have greater control over options for schools in each area, with an overarching education policy on a local level”

“Educational apartheid?”

“More funding for schools with more pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds”

“Education should be about innovation and flexibility, rather than being elitist. Less testing and more about personal development”

“If you were a bright kid, would you stay down by purposely doing badly to stay with your friends?”

“Maybe the competition would drive the students to work harder?”

“To get better students have more after-school activities that generate interest in school”

“General consensus with the points. Emphasis on damaging confidence and kids not wanting to change schools every year depending on their test results. Also though higher-tiers would attract better teacher thus depriving the lower tiers. People do not develop intellectually at the same time – tests at 10/11 exclude late-developers. Removing elite from a school will damage lesser able pupils who would benefit from their being there”

“Students with lower academic achievement demotivated all the way through, no competition. Movement between schools every year detrimental to social skills of students and reversing element of competition”

“Going to many different schools during your teen years would disrupt your education and friendships”

- Tom Harding, Thinking and Drinking Coordinator

Argument: The fundamental basis for the 21st Century modern feminist is that, quite simply, it no longer focuses primarily on equal pay and exasperating the physical and emotional differences between men and women. Rather, it would be more viable to claim that feminists are now challenging the traditional social labels of “masculinity” and “femininity”, so that, in essence, a woman could easily be a good firefighter if she has the necessary skills and physical strength required for that particular line of work, and a man could be quite successful as a nursery nurse or cleaner. The main premise is that social stereotyping needs to be overturned; that we accept feminists are a part of our social fabric, even if they are unhelpfully represented by the media as “bra burning lesbians”.

Originality is indeed needed for feminists to radically update their argument for the 21st century. This might include getting rid of the label of male and female altogether, so that we focus on the individual’s assets rather than the physical body they are born with, or, perhaps more convincingly feminists being seen to represent equal rights in general, rather than on the myth instinctively associated with “women’s issues”.

However Feminism does still have a vital role to play in the politics of today’s multi-cultural society. Women are still being unfairly treated in the Third World; there are high levels of domestic violence, women being stoned to death just because they fall in love with an unsuitable person whilst the man would be let off with a verbal scalding…This is entirely unacceptable and needs to be highlighted more reverently, and if you believe that any kind of violent act is intrinsically evil, feminist or not, then we should support the media campaigns and demonstrate on the streets until all primitive misogynistic urges are thoroughly stamped out.

This is, I believe the future for 21st century feminism, and long may it continue to be controversial, radical and individual!

Some ideas suggested by people at the T & D meeting following the presentation and discussions:

“Is there such a thing as a ‘woman’s issue’?”

“One would be hard pressed to find any great causes, issues, or problems brought up in the presentation. Rather that despite relatively few issues remaining, feminism is not irrelevant, despite being so”

“There is no need for feminism. All that is needed is for people to be original, then it is down to individual choice, which we shouldn’t change”

“Feminism is not the same thing as either equality or individualism”

“Sweden is clearly the way forward”

“Legislation cannot alter social attitudes; we need more than equal pay laws”

“We need an equality movement, which is more inclusive, rather than exclusive feminism”

“You do not need to be a member of a particular socio-economic group to champion its rights. Male feminists are the future!”

“State intervention is a greater evil than gender inequality”

- Tom Harding, NGS Thinking and Drinking Co-ordinator