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We started Andidote three years ago with the aim of raising the issue of emotional literacy in the political sphere. Our argument was that public life required, in addition to economic and social analyses, an understanding of the role emotions play within it. Everyone recognises that emotions are central to the way we organise our ideas and conduct our life - how we constitute our families, pursue our goals, whether we feel good or bad about ourselves. What often goes unrecognised, by contrast, is how a lack of emotional literacy can degrade our public life, because it leads to political decisions being shaped by unaddressed emotional tensions, and to emotional decisions taking the place of political thinking. When the four of us who started Antidote first came together, it was in an atmosphere of despair about our society's capacity to renew itself. Fifteen years of a naked market economy may have invigorated aspects of British culture, but it had stripped public life of consensus, and of the capacity to create shared values. In place of understanding, there was blame, scapegoating and attempts to marginalise one group after another. Politics had become a sparring ground. There was no longer a place where the very real difficulties facing Britain could be confronted as we tried to negotiate a place for ourselves in a world dominated by global corporations with the power to undercut national government and cultural values. |
Antidote wanted to initiate projects that would enliven and reinvigorate political debate and public life, by insisting that the issues facing Britain needed more than the old solutions. An extra dimension of thinking was needed, one that would employ tools often thought to be outside the political sphere. Antidote wanted to initiate projects that would enliven and reinvigorate political debate and public life, by insisting that the issues facing Britain needed more than the old solutions. An extra dimension of thinking was needed, one that would employ tools often thought to be outside the political sphere. We were joined by academics, management consultants, diplomats, environmentalists, lawyers, all people who were excited by the notion of pursuing an agenda that brought emotional literacy to the public debate. But despite this prestigious raft of supporters, the idea of Antidote and of emotional literacy made some people very uneasy. They could sense that we were saying something valid, but it was just that bit out of reach. We were teased in the media, misrepresented as wishing to bring therapy to MPs and to turn parliament into a therapy group. It was clearly far easier to alight on an agenda that wasn't ours than to discuss the realms in which emotional literacy might help to transform Britain. Three years on, Antidote has established itself as an organisation on the cutting edge. The agendas we highlighted have now become those that everyone recognises need addressing. The events of last May and September have allowed Britain to think of itself with both a new confidence about what kind of society we want emotionally, politically and socially, and with a humility about the kind of tasks we have ahead of us if we are to transform and enrich our society. In the three years we have been going, we have achieved rather a lot on very little. We have the sense now that, everywhere we speak, people are reaching for a new agenda, one that speaks to them in their hearts and allows them to address their political and social concerns, not denuded of their feelings but with an understanding of them. Speech given at a Private Reception on March 11, 1998. |
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