Trust and Terror

The Reith Lectures

BBC

Society & Culture, Science

4.2 • 770 Ratings

🗓️ 10 April 2002

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This year's Reith Lecturer is Onora O'Neill. She became Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge, in l992 and has chaired the Nuffield Council on Bioethics and the Human Genetics Advisory Commission. She is currently chair of the Nuffield Foundation and she has been President of the Aristotelian Society, and a member of the Animal Procedures (Scientific) Committee. In 1999 she was made a life peer as Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve, and sits as a crossbencher. She has written widely on political philosophy and ethics, international justice, bioethics and the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.

Onora O'Neill examines the search for justice in conditions where the basis for trust, is threatened by violence and intimidation. Trust often is reciprocal and when it is, we have virtuous spirals. However, trust can also open the door to betrayal, and betrayal leads to mistrust which in turn creates vicious spirals. In the most extreme situations where danger and terror undermine trust, it starts spiralling downwards and we might lose it all together.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Ruth Lectures.
0:04.4	This lecture in the series A Question of Trust given by Onora O'Neill was originally broadcast in the year 2002.
0:15.1	Good evening and welcome to Belfast, a city which is familiar to our lecturer,
0:20.0	Onora O'Neill, the principal of Newham College, Cambridge.
0:23.6	She was born here in Northern Ireland into a family with a long-standing tradition of political service.
0:29.6	Now a distinguished philosopher, she knows at first hand how the breakdown of trust can blight a community.
0:36.6	Her subject tonight is trust and terror. Terrorism,
0:41.1	of course, is the antithesis of trust, the deliberate use of fear to undermine, to weaken and to
0:47.3	destroy. But as the peace process here has shown, there has to be trust if divisions are to be
0:53.3	healed. But how do you build it? The people of
0:56.1	Northern Ireland have wrestled with that question for more than 30 years and since September
1:00.8	the 11th of last year, the world has joined them in their anxious debate. People from many walks
1:07.3	of life in Northern Ireland are here to share their views with us this evening, community workers, politicians, business people and academics, as well as some whose lives
1:16.5	have been directly affected by the breakdown of trust in this province. We hope to hear from
1:22.1	many of them this evening, but first, ladies and gentlemen, would you please welcome our
1:26.5	Reith Lecturer 2002,
1:28.7	Anora O'Neill.
1:43.6	Thank you, Sue. It's a pleasure to be back in Belfast and to speak about trust here.
1:49.0	All of us first learned to trust and what it takes to be trustworthy as small children from family, friends, neighbors.
1:58.0	And I first learned about trust in the Braid Valley where I was born and spent
2:02.9	large parts of my childhood in my grandparents' home. Despite the political tensions that all families
2:09.8	in the North know, trust was strong. Doors were not locked. Questions were answered honestly.
	...

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