Why debating matters…more than ever

Posted by Dennis Hayes -

In another of our Letters on Liberty series, Dr Mo Lovatt will argue that, ‘debating matters because ideas matter’.

‘We need to reject the idea that any moral and political question has become a settled fact,’ she says. ‘In fact, it’s important that successive generations have the opportunity engage in the process of democratic persuasion, discussion as well as the chance to consider and freely debate ideas for themselves.’

Using formats like Debating Matters, we must defend the idea that ‘young people should cultivate the cognitive muscles required for dealing with the complex challenges of the adult world. The freedom to debate is the freedom to develop your own moral conscience… Rather than shying away from controversial or difficult topics, we should embrace them and encourage young people to do the same.’

Buy or download her Letter on Liberty on the Academy of Ideas website: Why Debating Matters

About Mo

Mo is also national coordinator for Debating Matters, a debating competition for sixth-form students run by the Ideas Matter charity. She is also the co-convenor of the Buxton Battle of Ideas Festival.

Mo read PPE at the University of Oxford and has a doctorate from Northumbria. She is a lecturer, public speaker and a commentator on TV and radio where she regularly reviews the newspapers or comments on topical issues for GB News, Sky News, Times Radio, Talk TV and BBC Five Live.

Date, Time and Venue: Thursday 22 May at 19.00 in the Brunswick Inn, Derby.

Tickets £3 (plus fee) on Eventbrite.

Why are parents looking for Catholic education for their children?

Posted by Dennis Hayes -

In a recent column for the Telegraph Ella Whelan discussed why parents will lie and pray to get into church schools. She believed it was because these schools maintained a tradition of knowledge, values and behaviour and that it wasn’t all about God. There is nothing new about parents looking for the best for their children, but something has changed. There is an international revival going on. New Catholic Schools are being established at primary and secondary level. There are even new Catholic universities level.

It is often parents who are the driving force behind these schools. They feel that secular schools no longer value the best that has been known and thought and that they uphold no worthwhile values, if any values at all. They also believe true values must be based-in religious belief.

The secular tradition that sticks to the view that the position of religion in education should be the same as that of snakes in Ireland remains strong. But is it increasing challenged. Are we seeing the beginning of an educational and religious revival?

‘Say what you like about faith schools but there was no way I was going to shout back at my teachers in my Catholic primary, least of all out terrifying nun headmistress. The structure of Angelus prayers, weekly Mass and assemblies with moral tales and hard line Irish dinner ladies whipped us all into shape. As a result, the school took inner-city London children from all kinds of tough backgrounds and turned us into a decent bunch of kids.’ (Ella Whelan, Telegraph 23/1/25)

Speaker (s) TBC

Date, Time and Venue: Thursday 20 February at 19.00 in the Brunswick Inn, Derby.

Tickets (£3 plus fee) on Eventbrite.

Photo Credit: Dennis Hayes (Statue of Our Lady of Walsingham) December 2023

Defending Christ and the Prophet: Free Speech versus Blasphemy

Posted by Dennis Hayes -

January 2025 sees the tenth anniversary of the massacre at the Paris Headquarters of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. The Islamist attackers wanted bloody revenge for alleged blasphemy against Islam. Twelve people died but the world rallied in support of freedom of expression around the hashtag #JesuisCharlie. Others said that Charlie Hebdo went too far, and they rallied around the hashtag #JenesuispasCharlie. Charlie Hebdo satirises Christianly as well as Islam and nothing is safe from their biting criticism and cartoons.

Blasphemy laws were abolished in the UK in 2008 and in Scotland in 2021. The UK government promised no return to a blasphemy law after a Labour MP called for the reintroduction such a law. Can we be sure that there will there be no return to blasphemy laws?

In our first East Midlands Salon of 2025, Dr Don Milligan will open a timely discussion of ‘blasphemy versus free speech’.

About Don

Dr Don Milligan has been a gay activist, trade unionist, and a member of the communist movement for many decades. He is the author of The Embrace of Capital (Zero Books, 2022), The Politics of Homosexuality (Pluto Press, 1973), Sex Life (Pluto Press, 1993), and co-author of The Truth About the Aids Panic (Junius, 1987).

He writes Off The Cuff columns at www.donmilligan.net

Date, Time and Venue: Thursday 30 January at 19.00 in the parlour of the Brunswick Inn, Derby.

Tickets (£3 plus Fee) on Eventbrite.

Photo Credit: Toulouse rally in support of the victims of the 2015 Charlie Hebdo shooting. Pierre-Selim (2015) under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0.

Katy Morgan-Davies In Conversation

Posted by Dennis Hayes -

For three decades Katy Morgan-Davies had been imprisoned within a South London cult. She could count the number of times she had been ouside of the property on her hands. Then she made a brave and daring Escape…

She wrote about her life in a best-selling book The Girl in the Shadows: My Life in a Cult.

Katy has been interviewed in the press many time about her life. At the December East Midlands Salon we will have a more intimate ‘in conversation’ discussion with her about her past, her future and her love of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

Katy is an active defender of free speech and a member of the Academics For Academic Freedom Advisory Board.

Date, Time and Venue: Thursday 5 December, 19.00, in the Brunswick Inn, Derby.

Tickets £3 (plus fee)on Eventbrite.

Riots and the Role of Culturalism

Posted by Dennis Hayes -

At our November Salon – A Battle of Ideas Satellite – Dr Andrew Calcutt will discuss how ‘culturalism’ undermines agency.

‘Culturalism’ is a set of policies/reforms of institutions such that British people are called upon to renounce agency ( a truncated and ineffective version is monopolised by the state and its proxies). Instead, they are nudged into the pursuit of meaning as a whole way of life. This means that identity politics becomes a sectarian government policy, drawing on precedents from the counterculture via New Labour’s Creative Britain. But whereas it’s a safe pursuit when realised through the excavation of minority cultures and their seemingly innocent traditions, when the working-class majority excavates its traditions…suddenly there are too many skeletons to contend with. Thus, the recent riots were anti-immigrant but also a violent reaction to the lack of agency even on the part of government. They were also an expression of frustration at the promotion of identity politics from which the white working class is barred as soon as it enters into it.

About Andrew

Former classicist, bassist, journalist and Living Marxist, Andrew’s first book was Arrested Development: pop culture and the erosion of adulthood (1998), followed by Beat: the iconography of victimhood from the counterculture to Princess Diana, Brit. Cult an A-Z of British Pop Culture and more. He has been writing and publishing ever since. His PhD was a study of ‘the re-mediation of social relations in Britain’, a logical reconstruction of the socio-political shift from labour movement to ‘Cool Britannia’. His talk picks up where this study left off.

Date, Time and Venue: Thursday 14 November at 19.00 in the Brunswick Inn, Derby.

Tickets available on Eventbrite. (£3 plus fee)

Image Credit: Reflective Motion (2024) by LimeSpiked uder a Creative CommonsAttribution 2.0 Genericlicence.

Is technology the problem?

Posted by Dennis Hayes -

Timandra Harkness’s new book, Technology is Not the Problem, challenges the frequently expressed view that technology IS the problem. This is understandable because smartphones have become almost ubiquitous in modern society allowing access to social-media services, which have billions of users worldwide.

Few technologies have seen such rapid adoption. Some commentators have pointed to this new technology as an important cause of several social problems that have come to the fore in recent years. But in this case, does correlation really equal causation?

One problem is how we discuss social and political issues. Social media has democratised political debate. But that debate seems increasingly polarised and toxic.

The rise of AI, particularly the ease of making ‘deep fakes’, has complicated matters further, making it harder for voters to figure out what candidates really believe or potentially stirring up conflict.

There are also worries – most prominently expressed by Professor Jonathan Haidt – that spending so much time looking at devices has damaged children’s mental health, sense of independence and concentration spans.

Come along and join in the debate!

Date, Time and Venue: Thursday 19 September, at 19.00 in the Brunswick Inn, Derby.

Tickets for this event are available in advance via Eventbrite (£3 plus fee).

Copies of Timandra’s book will be on sale at the Salon but it is available on Amazon.

Visit Timandra’s website to find out more about her work.

Is democracy under threat?

Posted by Dennis Hayes -

Although we are ‘enjoying’ an election, many people are questioning whether democracy is worth defending. In a year when 4 billion people across the world are voting, the democratic spirit should be thriving, but many people are thinking “none of the above” is the only attractive option.

Meanwhile our elites fear democracy – pointing to the dangers of populism and scoffing at the views of the uneducated, unwashed masses. They increasingly look to work around democratic structures with direct action on climate change, the use of judicial reviews and acceptance of rules made by supranational bodies.

Is a faith in old-fashioned democracy waning despite the fact that real political questions are widely contested? Are our democratic instincts being frustrated by our current institutions? Are citizens’ forums or frequent referendums part of the answer? How can we rescue democracy?

 

About our speaker

Hilary Salt is standing in the general election for the SDP in her home constituency of Wythenshawe and Sale East. She has recently retired from First Actuarial, a business she co-founded 20 years ago that now employs nearly 500 people across the UK. Her legacy in the pensions field is the development of the ground-breaking CDC pension scheme with the Communication Workers Union and Royal Mail. She is a member of the Council of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. Hilary has two grown up sons, a lovingly tended garden, a VW campervan and a season ticket to Old Trafford.

Date, Time and Venue: Thursday 20 June, 7 PM in the Brunswick Inn, Derby.

Tickets £3 (pus fee) on Eventbrite.

Picture Credit:  La Liberté guidant le peuple by Delacroix (1830) Public Domain. 

The truth about assisted dying

Posted by Dennis Hayes -

The call for assisted dying is usually made in terms of humanity and compassion for the suffering of the terminally ill.

Writing in The Times in March, Matthew Parris was blunter: We can’t afford a taboo on assisted dying. The old and sick simply cost society too much.

Compassion versus Cost: What is the truth about assisted dying and the claims made for it?

About our speaker

Kevin Yuill is emeritus professor of history at the University of Sunderland. His books include Assisted Suicide: the liberal, humanist case against legalization and Richard Nixon and the Rise of Affirmative Action. He has written academic articles on assisted suicide and euthanasia, as well as on the history of affirmative action, race relations, and gun control.

Kevin has also published on assisted suicide in the Economist, Telegraph, Independent, Spectator (Australia and UK) and regularly contributes to spiked.

He is currently the CEO of the Humanists Against Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia project.

Follow Kevin on Twitter: @historykev

Date, Time and Venue: Thursday 23 May, 19.00-21.00, in the Brunswick Inn, Derby.

Tickets £3 (plus fee) on Eventbrite.

(Illustration: Rubens The Dying Seneca (1613) In the Public Domain)

The Case for a Classical Education

Posted by Dennis Hayes -

At the March East Midlands Salon, Dr Nicholas Joseph (University of Derby) will put the case for a classical education. Richard Harris (Oxford alumnus) will respond. The discussion will focus on “Why do we need a classical education in the 21st Century?”

What is a Classical Education?

Classical education is a rigorous system of education that is content-heavy and based on an appreciation of the best of human culture from Socrates to David Hume and Shakespeare to Goethe. This classical approach has been followed by generations of people, from Ancient Rome right through the rise of industrial society and beyond. The knowledge-based curriculum assumes that a child needs to know the facts about their world before they can develop their critical faculties. Classical education trains children in the foundations of human knowledge and understanding so that, as they grow and mature, they can develop their ability to observe, analyse and question, compare their understanding with others, and engage in dialogue and debate.

About the Speakers

Nicholas is a Salon regular. He has a PhD in medieval European history and has just edited and contributed to a recent book: New Studies in theHistory of Education(Routledge, 2023).

Richard has an MA in Philosophy and Religious Studies from the University of Oxford. A qualified lawyer, he is active in case work involving teachers and lecturers. He is a member of the Academics For Academic Freedom advisory board.

Readings

A short and clear exposition of classical education is available on the new St Alban’s Classical Primary School website: What is Classical Education?

A Newham School is also offering a classical education

Martin Robinson’s book Trivium 21c is essential reading.

And you might like to find out about Minimus and if you are interested in what schools are doing, visit Classics For All.

Date, Time and Venue: Thursday 21 March, 19.00-21.00 in the Brunswick Inn, Derby. Tickets (£3.00 plus fee) on Eventbrite.

(Image: Plato’s Academy, mosaic, Pompeii. In the public domain)

Self-Censorship: what daren’t I say?

Posted by Dennis Hayes -

Is self-censorship a growing threat to democracy and the search for truth in academia?

According to a survey by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, 83% of US students self-censor, but is this just an acceptable feature of academic life?

A study by King’s College London found that:

  • 51% of students think the climate at their university prevents some people from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive, while 30% disagree that this is the case.
  • 80% of the UK public overall think that the climate in UK society inhibits some people from speaking their minds, compared with 17% who disagree.

Nearly half of Americans self-censor and some studies show that self-censorship is on the rise and it is harmful psychologically and politically.

It seems that holding your tongue and keeping stum is the new normal in universities, the workplace and in social life.

We will begin our discussion by asking, “When are you afraid to speak up?”

Date, Time and Venue: Thursday 29 February at 19.00 in the Brunswick Inn, Derby

Tickets £3 (plus fee) on Eventbrite.

This event is being held in conjunction with the East Midlands AFAF branches at Derby, Nottingham and Sheffield Universities – and with Leeds University AFAF.

(Photo Credit: Jennifer Townsend by Jenifer Townsend)