'Calm Down Dear' - How Angry Should Politics Get?

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 5 April 2019

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What does it mean to feel that your political position is righteous? At a time of rising tempers among electorates, should we all “calm down - or harness our rage? Kehinde Andrews is Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University. His books include Back to Black: Retelling Black Radicalism for the 21st Century and Resisting Racism: Race, Inequality and the Black Supplementary School Movement. He writes for The Guardian, Independent and Ebony Magazine. Dr Fern Riddell is a historian and New Generation Thinker whose latest book Death In Ten Minutes, is about the Suffragette bomber and birth control activist, Kitty Marion. She writes for The Guardian, Huffington Post, Times Higher Education, The Telegraph and BBC History Magazine and was a consultant for BBC’s Ripper Street, Decline and Fall and ITV2’s TimeWasters. Will Davies is a political economist at Goldsmiths, University of London and co-director of the Political Economy Research Centre. His books include Nervous States: How feeling Took Over the World and The Happiness Industry: How the government & big business sold us well-being. He has written for The Guardian, The New Statesman and The Atlantic. Jo Anne Nadler is a political journalist and former producer/reporter on BBC Political Programmes. She has been a Conservative councillor in the London borough of Wandsworth and her books include William Hague - In His Own Right and Too Nice to be a Tory. Producer: Luke Mulhall

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?
0:23.3	It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music
0:27.0	when it's out of ice cream.
0:28.8	Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.
0:41.8	If you were my husband, I'd poison your tea.
0:47.2	Is allegedly what Lady Nancy Astor, the first British woman to take her seat in Parliament,
0:53.9	once told Winston Churchill. To which he report retorted, Madam, if you were my wife, I drink it. Tempours can fray in the political
0:57.0	arena. Calm down, dear, was David Cameron's infamous response to Labour MP Angela Eagle in an
1:03.6	argument over the NHS in 2011. But what about the rest of political life? How effective is Fury as a form of public protests? Does rage have a place in rational debate? And are we entering into a new age of anger? Here to discuss is the political economist Will Davies, who has been writing about how feelings have been taking over the world. Journalist Joanne Nadler, the biographer of the Conservative politician William Haig,
1:31.3	the sociologist Kayhinde Andrews, who's been thinking about the politics of black radicalism
1:36.4	and academic Fern Riddle, whose history of suffragette protest includes accounts of arson and rioting.
1:43.7	Let's start here with you, Fern and Cahinda.
1:46.2	There is an argument that the most furious debates in politics at the moment are about
1:51.8	identity, about being British or European, about being unequally treated on the basis of your
1:57.7	sex or your race.
1:59.4	Cahinda, in your book, Back to Black,
2:01.9	you write about the history of radical black political movements.
2:06.8	How far has anger been a part of that political history?
2:11.0	I mean, anger has been the driving force of radical politics,
2:14.3	but all radical politics,
2:15.8	because it is the anger that comes out of frustration,
2:18.0	of being oppressed, of being harassed by the police, of being poor of poverty, of all these
	...

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