News

27 Sep 2007

Adversarial discussion fails to reach agreement but is well received!

This month at the London School of Economics, CEDR held its first annual Adversarial Principle panel discussion on the adversarial nature of our society at which the celebrated line up of speakers were Greg Dyke (former BBC Director General), Lord Evans (Government Spokesperson in the Lords), Baroness Kennedy (Barrister and Broadcaster) and Alan Rusbridger (Editor of The Guardian). The panel, whose co-chairs were Lord Hurd (former Foreign Secretary) and Eileen Carroll (Mediator and Deputy Chief Executive of CEDR), addressed an audience of selected guests from the worlds of civil justice, politics, the media and academia.

Each of the speakers offered their quite different views on the current reliance on adversarialism in British society to settle arguments and disputes, in particular as played out in the world of politics and the media. Using topics as diverse as the electoral system, litigation, blogs and electoral reform, the discussions looked at the different elements within the question of why we, as a society, fight instead of collaborating and in what circumstances this may or may not be the right approach to deciding issues and resolving disputes.

Following are extracts from each of the speakers’ addresses:

Lord Hurd:

"We are much more than any of our ancestors, I think, prone to be swayed and to make our choices on the basis of entertainment. We have now a media system, not just in this country but in most developed countries, which puts a very high opinion on entertainment as opposed to instruction or improvement or other things.

"So the fun or lack of fun is crucial.  This is not a frivolous point.  It is a serious point and often neglected."

Greg Dyke:

"I'd start by saying that I believe our current political system, based as it is on the adversarial principle, is outdated, ineffective and damaging to our democracy.  So you can see I'm sitting on the fence on this one.

"Let me begin by a couple of examples. The major issue facing our society today as to be global warming and what we do about it. It is clear that there are no easy answers.  It is clear that it is a very difficult issue. Yet our adversarial political system encouraged, I would say, by the media not only requires political parties to come up with easy answers but it also requires them to come up with different answers so that one party can claim to have a better solution than the other."

Lady Kennedy:

"What people don't want either is the jello of everybody agreeing with each other, of there being no politics, of there being nobody to vote for because there doesn't seem to be very much difference. They are equally dissatisfied with the idea that what they are getting is some sort of wodge of centrist nothingness politics where everybody agrees around everybody and it is just about managerialism.

"That also is deeply dissatisfying to people – one of the reasons they are not engaging and don't want to go to the polls. They feel that belief and a trust in people is disappearing because so much of it is phoney."

Lord Evans:

"I think the question I'd ask at the outset is to what extent the adversarial individual creates adversity in political life.  To put it another way: is it the system that creates the adversarial activity or is it created by the people who are attracted to it? 

"I spent most of my working life in publishing.  As Douglas said, the last five years as Junior Minister in the House of Lords.

"The first thing I want to say is that publishing is much more collaborative than politics.  So the adversarial principle is less of a feature.  The reasons for this are absolutely clear. There's very little money in book publishing." 

Alan Rusbridger:

"Some of this debate I think is distorted by the last ten years, which I think are rather exceptional. It is pointless here to get into whose fault this is.  I think the fault is - let's say the fault is 50-50 - but you have had a Government, as has been said already tonight, that was highly manipulative, that attempted to control the news agenda and I think - I mean, my personal feeling is that it does come down to the personality of Alastair Campbell who is a news editor. I think he news-edited the Government. Tony Blair went along with that. Too often, they started off with the headline that they wanted, or the story they wanted to read, and those engineered the Government back from the story they wanted to achieve. That was a highly questionable process."

Eileen Carroll:

"I think the adversarial system that we experience as lawyers and mediators often is quite phoney. You have seen a libel trial with 50 boxes of pleadings, and you cannot see the wood from the trees. You have leading QCs that write the same text books on the subject. They don't disagree with anything.

"It is only when you get the clients in the room, you put the debates on the table, then and only then do you work out is there a way."

Following the addresses there was a very illuminating discussion between the panellists and then the panellists and the audience, drawing out many of the themes. The diverse nature of the discussions’ threads reflected the permeation of advesarialism into our traditions and current society.

An Adversarial Principle discussion is being planned for 2008.

A 78 page transcript of the event is for sale at £60 (plus VAT), please contact Rebecca Murphy on rmurphy@cedr.com or 020 7536 6048.

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