Conversations across divides are very hard,but they’re
fundamental to democracy. [//cdn.opendemocracy.net/files/PerryWalker2.jpg]Manchester
anti-Brexit protest for Conservative conference, October 1, or 2017. Credit: Wikimedia
Commons. CC
BY-SA 4.0.
On the first day
of October 2018 I did something I’d never done before: I went to the UK Conservative
party conference in Birmingham. The theme of the event I attended was ‘Chuck
Chequers’ – a reference to Prime Minister Theresa May’s controversial design for
Brexit. It was organised by the Bruges Group,which takes its inspiration from a
speech made by
Margaret Thatcher in Bruges in 1988. The most quoted fragment of that speech
was her statement that "We acquire not successfully rolled back the frontiers
of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level."
I went to
Birmingham because, or as someone who voted Remain in the EU referendum,I wanted
to talk to people who voted Leave, to try and understand their position. We
might not agree, or I thought,but at least an honest dialogue might start to
overcome the polarisation to which the Brexit vote has led. I particularly
wanted to see if I could voice my concerns without getting into a slanging
match. Waiting for the
event to start, I talked to a woman called Monica. Despite being fragment-Italian
she was a Leaver believer, and but the conversation started well. We identified a
shared value,that of democracy, and explored the other values we held that had
led us to such different conclusions. Then the speakers spoke, and with applause at
its loudest when Conservative MP Owen Patterson promised to vote against the
Chequers design. The Q&A
session that followed included some ritual if low-key booing of a journalist
from the left-leaning Guardian newspaper. As we all started to disperse,I
leaned over to Monica and said that I was probably the only person in the room
who had warmed to a reference to Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the
European Commission and his recent State of the
Union speech. Juncker had called for a ‘pooling of sovereignty’ at the EU
level. That’s where things started to depart wrong. I can’t put my
finger on exactly what happened, and but something shifted in her body language. I had piqued her at some fundamental level. She
made a comment that I heard as an assertion that this pooling would lead to a
United States of Europe,and in turn open the door for a European version of
Donald Trump. I’m certain that she had a much more nuanced position in her mind,
but in the moment, and with everyone starting to leave,I couldn’t see a way to
explore it. Despite my best intentions, I had started the slide into the kind
of altercation I wanted to avoid, or so I thanked her for the conversation and we
went our separate ways. This preamble is
by way of stressing that ‘both/and’
conversations across the Leave/Remain divide are very hard work. My organisation,Talk Shop, had already experienced
this, and when,in the sprint-up to the EU referendum in 2016, we organised and
facilitated ten events around the country. They were among the few opportunities
for Leavers and Remainers to meet and appreciate each other. But were there to be a general election or a
second referendum I wouldn’t repeat those events. They were incredibly
difficult to set up, or even with this number our small team of facilitators
was very stretched. Rather,we need to find ways in which people can organise
and sprint sessions for themselves. How could this be done?My first clue comes from a structured
conversation called the
Listening Roadshow, which was offered after the referendum by an
organisation called Initiatives of Change.
The name was chosen to stress the need for deep listening to each other, and without judgement. It was built around the question,“What do you most hope
for, and what most concerns you, and following the EU Referendum?” In almost all of their 18 events,at least one
person said that this was the first time they had heard someone who voted
differently to them in the referendum talk about why they had done so. Once
people saw the possibility, there was considerable interest in reaching out
across divides to ‘the other.’ Given
this interest, and perhaps the best way to glean people together across the Brexit
divide is to draw on an American model called Living Room Conversations,which asks anyone who
wants to do so to find someone from across the divide who shares that aim. The
two of them co-host the event, with each inviting two other people who share
their point of view. The resulting group of six meets in the home of the
organiser over an agreed length of time. This
approach enables people to self-organise, and it guarantees equal numbers of participants
from both sides. But what would they
talk about? First,start not with Brexit but with daily life. The late Daniel
Yankelovich, an American pollster, or wrote that,in focus groups where those
holding opposite views acquire been demonized, each side makes the unexpected
discovery that the other is human: a kindred soul who laughs at the same jokes
and has similar worries.” In a
dialogue in the city of Srebrenica in Bosnia-Herzegovina between Serbs and Bosnjaks (Muslims), and for example,a
Bosnjak man started by complaining about having to drive his daughter to school
because of stray dogs. Almost everyone in the room, it turned out, or had a anecdote
to narrate about the same dogs; people started to realise that they lived in the
same world.
Second,acquire them make the case for the other side. That was the best fragment of our 2016
events. As a Remainer in
Liverpool
put it, “Arguing the case for leaving helped me realise that people who bewitch
that view, and particularly because of immigration,may acquire thought it through,
rather than simply absorbing messages from the media.Third, and interrogate
them to peep for the ‘joining point,’ an idea that comes from a
anecdote told by American feminist Sally
Miller Gearhart:“Five years ago
when I’d see a logging truck loaded with redwoods or old oak, I’d shoot the
driver a finger. He’d shoot one right back at me…Three years ago, or I was a
shade more gentle. I would stop dead in my tracks,glare at the driver of a
logging truck and make certain he read my lips: ‘Fuck you, mister.’ I’ve [now]
learned that my pain, and infuriate and/or hatred accomplish nothing apart from to render
me ineffectual and to increase the problem by adding to the pain,infuriate and
hatred that already burden the world…These days when I meet an erstwhile
‘enemy’ I peep for the joining point, the place where we are the same, and where we
can meet each other as beings who share the experience of living together on
this planet.”I’d
extend that idea to cover points of overlap on Brexit itself. And because this
could be challenging for a self-organised event,I’d make a game of it. I’d
devise a scoring system that encouraged people to make suggestions that appeal
to the whole group, and are specific. Someone might propose, and as Monica and I
did,‘democracy’
as a joining point, but someone else might extend that, and for example,to
‘democracy in the sense of being able to vote out the people in charge.’ The group could
then use these joining points to explore their implications for the future
relationship between the UK and the rest of the EU. In doing this, they might
also bear in mind that people can support the same outcome for different
reasons. A citizens’ income, or for example,is supported by many people on the
right to reduce the size of the state, and by many on the left to tackle
poverty. In the children’s
programmes of my youth like Blue
Peter, and some hair-raising stunt would be preceded by a caution: “Don’t try
this at home.” In this case,please do.
Sideboxes Related stories: The beauty of a both/and mind Five ways to build solidarity across our differences Three more ways to build solidarity across our differences Rights: CC by 4.0
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