 Welcome. My name is Graham Furness and I'm the Pro-Director for Research here at SARS and it's my very great pleasure to welcome you to the first school of law annual inception lecture to be given by David Lambie MP. If I may, I'm going to start with a few housekeeping matters. Could I ask you first of all to turn off your mobile phones or put them on silent at the very least? In the case of fire evacuation, you'll hear an insistent alarm and we have to leave the lecture theatre promptly by the two exits on either side. Now let me give you a quick picture of the running order for this evening. I am going to introduce the head of the school of law, Professor Maschoud Badarin, who is going to come and introduce to you our speaker for this evening, David Lambie. After that, we will have a question and answer session which I will chair with David and then when that is completed, I'm going to ask Maschoud to make a small presentation of a commemoration to David of this event. And then I'm going to ask Professor Lynn Welchman to come up and say a few words in a vote of thanks on behalf of the school of law. And then at that point, probably at about 7.30 or slightly before, I will invite you all to come to a reception in the Brunei suite immediately above. And then the whole event we plan to be finished complete by about 8.30 this evening. So having explained to you the sequence of events, can I again welcome you all to this first inaugural event? And I'm going to ask Professor Maschoud Badarin to speak to you now about the school of law, about the nature of this event, about the alumni and about David Lambie. So if you will forgive me, or we will allow me, I'm going to say to him Alla si gafod yma y laf, cwzaka i ddwca i mws yma gana. Thank you very much, Graham. Graham called me to the podium in Hausa language. I'm an expert in that language and I also speak that language too. Now it gives me great pleasure to welcome you all to this first school of law, a school of law inception lecture. I'm not going to take much of your time. I'm going to say a few words about the school of law and a few words about the aim of these inception lecture series that is starting today. And then I will say a few words about David Lambie and then call him to give his lecture. Now the school of law here at Sours started as a department of law established in 1947. That is about 31 years after the establishment of Sours. Although I mean law had been taught at Sours in the Department of Oriental History and Law for about 16 years before then. Now the department initially started post-graduate legal studies that LLMs and also higher research. Now it started, it's you, your undergraduate legal studies LLBs and BAs in 1975. The important point I want to make is since Sours started, that is the law school or the law department started, it has been a unique law school, a unique law department that has taught law in a global context. That is even before the concept of globalization was established. Law was taught here in a very global context and the school of law has developed in that direction since then. To the extent that today we pride ourselves as a law school with an unrivaled concentration of specialists in the laws of Asian and African countries. With additional areas of expertise in areas of comparative law, human rights law, transnational law, commercial law and legal methods in that regard. Now so as I said, Sours has really been, I mean the law school has really been a special law school that prepares our students for the world. Not only in the conventional English legal system, I mean long before globalization has said, our students have been well groomed in that regard. In that respect perhaps, I mean I need to acknowledge the presence of some of the past heads of department who had kept the law school going before me. The oldest head of department, Professor James Reed, is not able to be here today and he apologizes highly for not being able to be here. I also want to appreciate the presence of one of our old heads of department, Peter Sling. Peter Sling, who was head of school from 1990 to 1994, is here with us today. The good work that they have done to sustain the law school, we are grateful for. Also I want to acknowledge the presence of Martin Lau and Professor Lyn Welshman, who was the head of school before myself. Now about this program, that is about the law inception lectures. Now the annual inception lecture series of which this is the first is aimed at celebrating our alumni. Because as I said, since the establishment of Sours law school, I mean people have graduated and have gone on to great heights. We have a cream, a cream of notable alumni. For example, the president, the Ghanaian president, was a graduate of the law school here and also people like David Lambie, who will be speaking to us today. Professor John Atta Mills, he was a PhD law student here in 1970 as president of Ghana. Then we also have people like His Excellency Francis Amibutagira, who was previously the permanent representative of Uganda at the United Nations. I mean also we have had legal luminaries like the former Chief Justice of Nigeria, that is Justice Idris Koutigee, who did his LLB here at Sours in 1964. There are a whole lot of them including David Lambie. Now David Lambie graduated from the Sours School of Law with an LLB hon's degree in 1993. He was called to the British, that is the England and Wales bar in 1994, and went on to do an LLM at Harvard Law School where he obtained his LLM in 1997. He practised as a barrister of law from 1997 to 2000 and from there he was elected to Parliament in 2000 as an MP for Tottenham. He is still an MP up to the present times. Now he has held a number of ministerial posts while Labour was in government, including Minister for Culture and Minister for Higher Education. I am happy to say that he is also a global, one of the global ambassadors for the School of Oriental and African Studies. We are lucky to have him also for this academic session. In the first term, he will be teaching a course with Professor Alan Stone from Harvard Law School, a unique course, Law Psychology and Morality and Exploration through Film, which we are all excited about. So we are very happy to have David Lambie MP opening our Inception Lecture Series today and also being with us for the academic session. Now that I want to take much more of your time, please permit me to invite David Lambie MP to give his lecture. I'm still here. I can't tell you how humbling it is to be back at SOAS. I came here, I was a lot slimmer in those days. I had very big hair and this was long after Michael Jackson has lost his wet look. I still had it. I remember coming into SOAS for the first time, I was wearing a suit that was far too big for me. It was my older brother's suit. I was very, very nervous coming for an interview. I sensed here, I couldn't put it into words, but the most incredible community. I had three wonderful years and I took with me some great friends who were still great friends. This is a very, very special institution. Very special. Absolutely, Gem. It felt important then. One can never predict the future, but my God how important it is now with the nature of the challenges in the world that we have. So I'm just so wonderful to be here. In SOAS I found the perfect place to help me grow, to challenge me, and to help me develop my ideas. Obviously I've been a government minister, which is not always easy. If you didn't like some of the decisions that I made, I say to some of the lecturers that are here, it's your fault. But absolutely, I can think of some central debates that have been had in Parliament and in wider public life, going on at the moment and is absolutely SOAS that informs some of my perspective on that. Most recently actually sitting in the debate on Libya at the outset of that war and thinking about what the position of the African nations, no-one had raised that in Parliament at that point and raising it and thinking about that context, thinking about what it means to live in a country like Libya with bombs raining down on you and bringing that to bear in discussion. Really, were it not for SOAS, I'm not sure I would have been able to bring that to bear in Parliament in the same way. So I'm hugely, hugely grateful to my time here which developed my own worldview, which of course was shaped very much from my experiences growing up in Tottenham during very tough economic times for the whole of Britain, but felt most fiercely in communities such as my own. It also of course shaped me in a world in which discrimination and prejudice and racism were very, very real things. It's where the struggles against them, I think for me, were forged. SOAS offered me a take on democracy and systems of law, not just Western or Eurocentric in their orientation, but at the time bringing very different canons of experience, of consciousness to bear right across the spectrum. I think back on looking at Vedder texts with Martin Lauer at the age of 18 and I can't quite imagine that I was able to do that and that's probably why I didn't do very well in my first year. Confucius and some of the ideas and the basis for thought in China particularly. All of that, absolutely staggering and hugely important. So I'm speaking here tonight, of course, as a student of law, but also as a politician by profession. Very fitting for a university, it seems to me, which has always championed interdisciplinary study. My time here was made much richer thanks to that cross-pollination of ideas that came when I found myself amongst not only fellow law students but also artists, musicians, anthropologists, philosophers, people doing all the varied disciplines that you find in this institution. I was here during turbulent times. I was here when the US invaded Kuwait. I was here in Trafalgar Square during the Poltax protests or riots, depending on who you asked at the time. I was an eager law student following the controversies at the Supreme Court, watching the trials, thinking about the Guildford IV, the Birmingham VI and in particular the Tottenham III. I remember celebrating as a British citizen when Thatcher left office as I was walking out of a law lecture. But also celebrating when Mandela took office again whilst at this institution. All of these experiences helped to shape my view of the world and my understanding of my own position within it. Questions of democracy and direct action were always, in fact, at the forefront of my thinking during these times. I studied law at SOAS because I wanted to change the world. I subsequently learned that lawyers on the whole changed things case by case. So my desire led me to politics where I have subsequently learned that politicians change things policy by policy. It's perhaps for that reason that I'm coming back to SOAS to get back to changing the world and beginning my lectures on Friday. I was asked to give this lecture a year ago. I chose the title in the context of the explosion of unrest in the Arab world as people there took direct action to claim freedoms that many of us take for granted here in Britain. Since then, of course, we've seen a growth in direct action in this country with students mobilising against tuition fee rises and groups like UK Uncut protesting against tax avoidance. Here I don't suggest that the struggle in Syria and the protests in Parliament Square are comparable. Our students are being charged more, not murdered. The point I'm making is that at home and abroad direct action is on the rise. History has taught us that economic downturn leads to increased unrest, both productive and destructive. I believe that to help us understand events of the last year and those that are still to come, it is important that we understand the role of direct action located in a democratic system in need of some renewal. In order to examine the relationship between democracy and direct action, we must of course start with the examination of democracy itself. This is something that I don't think we do often enough in Britain. Talk about our democracy and its health. What does it mean? Why is it desirable? And how well does it work in practice? The word democracy is often used to mean two things. Sometimes it refers to an ideal democracy coming from the Greek word democratia, which translates as rule of the people. And it's derived of course from the word demos, meaning people and kratos, meaning many people. For people power then to be a reality, democracy has come to encompass wider principles and rights, upholding the rule of the people. For Aristotle, a good democracy works on the assumption that all people are equal and that all should have the freedom to live as they like. As this second point is unrealistic without some qualification and because unity is needed within any society, he accepts that there can be some regulation of action as long as it is decided by all for the common interest. This is the intellectual heritage then of what we know as liberal or western democracy, which holds at its heart principles of liberty and equality, upheld through the rule of law and sovereignty of the people. This of course is a Eurocentric view of democracy and don't worry, I haven't forgotten, I'm speaking to a so-as audience. I'm trying to use the language to access ideas of democracy which go deeper than simplistic definitions to speak about ideals which apply in some way to many different cultures because democracy is about more than procedures of governance, it's about the people, how they feel, how they come together to create society and to achieve change in the political sphere and in their everyday lives and interactions. Liberty and equality are the ideas that in the west that help us understand what principles are both the prerequisite for a healthy democracy and is desired at outcomes. But democracy is not only an ideal, it's also a living, breathing political system or systems made up of institutions, rules, processes and entrenched relationships and modes of interaction. Here I'm speaking more specifically about western democracy, of course. Different systems have emerged at different times and different places each with a unique historical development but each bearing some relationships to those original principles of democracy. And some adherence to the notion set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that the will of the people shall be the basis of authority of government. If rule is not by the government then it is at least dependent on their consent. The emergence and development of these systems has been driven by popular demands for democratic ideals, understood as self-determination. It is naive to claim that the way these systems were designed was always to maximise these ideals. In fact, they are often designed to keep the people at arm's length, to minimise and mitigate the impact of the crowd. Why else might democratic systems and institutions be desirable if not for the furtherance of democratic ideals? It is evident through comparison with other systems. A glance at countries without democratic institutions immediately makes democracy look appealing, whatever its limitations. I believe that democratic institutions can offer the best means for people to run their societies. They're not the only offer but they can offer the best means. We also recognise their limitations and I think we need to talk about their limitations more often. Western democracies have become complacent about their own health. Part of this stems from comparisons distorted and entrenched by the Cold War. Another appeal of democracy is its association with peace between democratic countries and internal stability. Democracy, it looks like, does bring stability, or so the theory goes. This is not to be laughed at, of course, in an unstable world. These views have substance but too often they preclude conversations concerning the state of our own democracy. Those conversations have made us complacent about the depth and health of our own democracy and stability has also meant a degree of stagnation. We have forgotten, as Martin Luther King reminded America, that true peace is not merely the absence of tension. It is the presence of justice. We have forgotten that democracy should be about that idea. It is not a question that can be solved and then forgotten about. It is not just a mechanism or an electoral process, it's about outcomes, what it produces and the impact of the process on its human participants. Does it enable us to live in a good way with people in our society? Recent history has taught us that the dangers of fixating on European democracy as a blueprint that can be forced on others is just that, dangerous. When we only concern ourselves with institutions, we forget the thriving democratic ideals behind democracy as a constant work in progress. The well-constituted laws and institutions enable and facilitate social growth and harmony, but equally they can become a block to human flourishing. Our democracy here is not then a finished product. It never will be. It is a process in constant need of renewal. We cannot really understand our democracy, both as an ideal and as a system of government, without acknowledging the role of ordinary people in taking direct action. But what is direct action? Is it DIY politics? Not asking for change but making it happen? Either by influencing the political sphere or bypassing it to create something new? It is the politics of ordinary people, it seems to me, withdrawing consent from what one does not believe in and standing up for what one does believe in. It therefore has the potential to be a politics of justice for individuals wishing to be heard and of the social change that they wish to see. There's a certain degree of consensus concerning the role of direct action and people power in bringing democracies into existence. As a teenager and as a student, I saw in the death rows of both as government in South Africa, that government brought to an end by the actions of the ANC and the hundreds and thousands of South Africans joined by people across the world. Their direct action inspired people all over the world and, of course, were supported by people here. British students dug up sports pitches to support visiting South African sports teams from playing on British soil, a move which later led to the international sporting boycott, my generation campaigned for a cessation of economic ties between our country and South Africa. And though Margaret Thatcher ignored us, we helped shape public opinion against the treatment of black people in South Africa. In the last year, we've all watched with amazement the rapid developments of events in countries across the Middle East. We've watched and cheered as repressive regimes have fallen, one after the other in the face of people coming together. The Arab Spring was direct action on a mass scale. Now, I'm not an expert on the Middle East and I'm not trying to engage in a deep analysis of these events. The grievances behind those mobilisations are surely complex and defy it seems to me easy classification. I also don't want to overly romanticise outcomes. We'll have to wait some time for the dust to settle before we can have a better idea of what's changed really in Tunisia or in Egypt. But locating the Arab Spring in the context of this discussion about democracy and direct action helps us redefine, reimagine and renew our own democracy. Watching the unfolding of events in Tunisia and Egypt and across that region, I wasn't thinking, look at those people fighting for what we've got. I was thinking about the lessons that what I was witnessing could teach us. Their actions remind us that people always have a voice even when we cannot hear them. They also remind us of the truth from our own history that people in power do not give it up voluntarily. That freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed. Most people acknowledge the role then of direct action bringing about the birth of democracies. Try arguing against it. You find yourself up against the likes of Pankhurst, Gandhi and Mandela. But we're not quite as good at recognising and understanding the role of direct action in helping democracies to evolve and develop. We can agree on the significance of the role played by the suffragettes in gaining universal suffrage and contributing to the creation of our welfare state. But they certainly weren't seen as heroes at the time. Nobody apologised to them afterwards for the injustices that they suffered and that they were put through. This is often the case for people who take part in direct action. Their actions are not always recognised when finally they win. It's rarely acknowledged, in fact, the role that was played until many years later. Emily Pankhurst is a heroine now but was not at the time. This is partly because the people who hold power never like to admit that they were ever wrong, that they were ever opposed to those changes, which quickly became common sense. But it is so important that we do not forget how our freedoms were won, because when we do, we become, it seems to me, complacent. In this country we have a very rich history of direct action to draw on. Direct action has fed our democracy. This applies equally to its procedural and qualitative elements. Without the direct action of the women who marched on Westminster, who demanded a voice by protesting and blowing up post boxes, who took the punishment of being imprisoned and who withstood the humiliation of being force fed, half of the people in this room would not have the right to vote. Democracy does not begin and end, of course, with suffrage. Direct action has given our democracy death. Our public services were won by people who protested, who shouted, who withdrew their labour, who occupied, who built new political parties, and, yes, smashed windows. Direct action helped bring about changes that make our society more humane, more human. Perhaps the best example of this comes from the changed legal and social status of gay, lesbian and transgendered people. It is absolutely not come about because people in power suddenly realised after a manelia of persecuting gay men and women that this was wrong. It was because of the hard work of people like Peter Tatchell and of ordinary people who fought to change the law and other people's ideas. In 1965 a few dozen people held the first ever gay pride celebration in central London. The people who turned out on that day were mercilessly beaten by the police and arrested. But within their lifetime, in the same place, because of their actions, there's now a yearly gay pride parade. So big that it brings central London to a standstill, attended by thousands of people. We have gay men and women in civil partnerships. The age of consent is equalised. Politicians, soldiers, people who now support, relate to and are growing the community of understanding about what it means to be gay. If people find it hard to acknowledge the role then of direct action in the history of our democracy, they find it even harder to acknowledge and understand the role of direct action now. In the continuing renewal of our established democracy, direct action is an essential prescription of our democracy. It can help us to remember the ideas which make democracy so powerful. One reason that direct action is criticised is that it poses a challenge to the law. It operates in the gap between law and justice, exploring the tension between the two. We're too quick to see things as black and white. You either abide by the law or you break it. You either accept things in their entirety or you reject them entirely. You either are with us or you're against us. But this view assumes that our democracy is all that it can be and that any threat to the laws that uphold it are a threat to all good things in our society. In truth it is not one shared on either the left or the right in politics. The left stands in solidarity with workers who withdraw their labour when they feel that they are being exploited. The right hails metric martyrs refusing to adopt new measurements set down by the European Union. Both sides actually understand the value of protest in raising the profile of issues that matter to people who are ignored by people in power. Democracy is a work in progress which means constantly challenging and pushing boundaries. This means holding the law to account as well as being held to account by the law. Direct action challenges unjust laws in order to make just ones. It also highlights the hypocrisy of a democratic society's undemocratic ways of dealing too often with protest. Last December, when Parliament was voting on the government's proposal to treble the level of student tuition fees, tens of thousands of students were kettled in Parliament Square overseen by the statues of Mandela, Churchill and Lincoln. Thousands came with the intention of lodging a peaceful democratic process but were treated like criminals. Meanwhile, a policy was nodded through that had not featured in the manifesto of either party in the coalition, one of which had promised precisely the opposite. So I'm sure that I don't need to tell this audience that there is something wrong with that picture, that those who caused that damage that night, of course, made their choices and must face their punishments, but the willingness of government ministers to tar all demonstrators with the same brush reflected a political establishment more interested in writing off young people than listening to them. The truth is that direct action is a useful lens through which to view questions about the rules governing our democracy. What purposes are laws are serving? Are they in place to facilitate social improvement or to maintain order regardless of justice? So often the responses from the media and the politicians to protest is that it breaks the law. As if this alone invalidates the arguments involved, equally the things that people are protesting against are not always illegal and therefore not deemed to be a problem. That category includes corporate tax avoidance, the misuse of parliamentary expenses and the actions of bankers that brought about the global financial collapse. Sometimes we mistake the role of law. In a totalitarian state, the law might be intended to determine morality, but in a democracy it should be informed by it. Its function is to provide a framework within which civil society can operate and can debate the rights and wrongs of actions. So far I've used direct action as an umbrella and examined through the lens of justice that it's often how observers see it and that the action can be justified. But for actors involved in direct action it's not just about justice. It's also about pragmatism. I remember listening to people arguing about the ANC. Mandela was either labelled a terrorist or a freedom fighter. These arguments often revolved around whether his actions were justified. But for him this was not the question. Of course they were justified. The point was were they expedient? It was a practical question. The ANC used sabotage to keep their own people on side as much as to undermine the white totally racist state that they were in. At his trial in 1965 Mandela described how Africans were increasingly resisting white rule with violence. Each disturbance he said pointed to the inevitable growth among Africans of the belief that violence was the only way out. I came to the conclusion that violence in the country was inevitable. It was unrealistic to continue preaching peace and non-violence. Their use of violence was not random. It was an attempt to show the strength of their rejection of the current system without making a future peaceful and democracy impossible. Direct action is a tool used by people to whom other means of accessing democracy can seem closed. It is used because people have no other option. It can also work, of course, and it is a tool of achieving change, a tactic. It's manifested in different ways in different places shaped by its context. It provides a voice for people who otherwise do not have one, who therefore need to use what resources are available to them. When different tactics are available it's a question as to which is the most effective. Direct action may have been justified in calling for change by any means necessary, but this famous slogan would have been better understood as by the best of those means available. Direct action is shaped by the political system and the culture within which it operates and takes place. The type of political action in a society has something to tell us about that society. Thus direct action is a critique, both in the sense that it directly challenges existing laws and practices, and because it is illuminating, revealing things about the context which shapes it. This understanding of direct action as the best means available to people outside of institutionalised politics helps us understand instances of direct action past and present. It helps us understand the events of the Arab Spring in societies where the political process was completely closed to ordinary people. It helps us to connect to the streets in the hundreds of thousands by bypassing the political process that bypassed them. The only resources were their numbers and the illegally accessed social media which allowed them to connect with each other and spread the message to the outside world. Young people were at the forefront partly because they were so marginalised by existing regimes but also because they understood the tools available to them and because often it is young people who have the power to dream and imagine change. This understanding of direct action as a tactic arising from circumstance and therefore a tool of analytical critique can also tell us interesting things about our own democracy. So what does direct action mean here? How do people here engage with our democracy? This year we've seen the emergence of UK uncut, a loose affiliation of groups and individuals who mobilise and coordinate using social media. Many of the people who take part have not been involved in politics or protested before. They have led the opposition to the government's arguments that they are no alternatives to swinging cuts and austerity. But they haven't protested outside of government buildings. They haven't taken their protests into the stores of tax dodging corporations and into the branches of the banks that caused the financial meltdown. The type of action undertaken shows an understanding of how to get the public's attention. When done in the right way, creative stunts allow activists to access the media so that their messages can reach a wider public. These things are necessary as too often our democracy is deaf to other forms of protest. Critics of direct action ask why people cannot restrict themselves to forms of protest that fit more comfortably within the democratic structure such as voting or signing a petition. But it is precisely because those actions are institutionalised that they sometimes have to be put to one side. Handling in a petition at Downing Street complaining about tax avoidance or even waving banners outside of Parliament often only get you so far. But flooding shop stores and putting up stand-up comedy suddenly gets the news and gets attention. Writing letters to your MP about cuts to public services helps to keep the pressure up. But demonstrations that turn bank branches into mock libraries, post offices, schools and hospitals makes the point, frankly, to a wider audience. Protesting about tuition fees in Parliament fits within an established groove, launching a protest inside of Milbank or the Conservative Party's headquarters is harder to ignore. As someone who's witnessed violent unrest in my own constituency in recent weeks, however, I need to caveat this a little. There is a difference between a sit-in at Vodafone and smashing up a store. There is a difference between demonstrating in the lobby at Milbank and intimidating the people who work there. There is a difference between creative protest and simply lashing out at the police. There were mistakes that should be learnt from by those involved in some of the direct action that we've seen over the last while. They should not, however, be allowed to be used to discredit a group directly. For the most part, from what I've seen, UK uncut has been creative and successful at getting tax avoidance back onto the political agenda through peaceful methods. In doing so, they have helped demonstrate that just as it's a false choice to seek to categorise direct action as either right or wrong, it's equally fruitless to feel that you have to choose between protest and formal politics. Demonstration and legislation. You only need to look at how Parliament has held the media accountable through Hatgate or through the Trafficura scandal that's exposed because of parliamentary privilege to see that, done right, popular protest can drive and energise formal politics. Although change is driven from the bottom, it is codified and enforced through Parliament. That is how we achieve change and it's how we secure advances. In our system, that's how groups like UK uncut can get what they desire. They draw attention to an issue, push it up the political agenda in a way that cannot be ignored. Giving sympathetic politicians an opportunity to act and forcing hostile ones to reassess their position or account for their position. That's how it should be. Change driven by people implemented by their representatives in Parliament. As a Member of Parliament, it's worrying that people feel the gap between the Westminster village and their own priorities. Many are alienated by the political class in this country that they feel they cannot identify with and which they feel doesn't identify with them. When I first took up my seat at Westminster, I too felt like it was a long way from my own experiences. Tottenham might look close to Westminster on the tube map, but culturally and emotionally it felt very, very far away indeed. I think that the responsibility lies primarily with our political class to bridge that gap, in fact, because creative civil disobedience is not the only manifestation of social unrest or tension in our society. It's not the only popular response shaped by our political system. The relative stability of our democracy is periodically punctuated by more violent outbursts from frustrated peoples. Riots and direct action have some shared characteristics. Both highlight that there is something wrong with the way in which our society and democracy function. But we should be wary of blurring the line between the two. For one thing, I can remember from the poll tax protests that the difference between a demonstration and a riot can be the point at which the police decide to start swinging their trunches. People on the right are often quick to label direct action as a riot, and people on the left are too quick to label a riot as direct political action. The intentional confusion of political protest and criminal acts undermines people's political voice. Some of the most articulate and creative voices from within the student movement are turning towards, I think, counterproductive black block tactics as demonstrations. If you're concerned with cuts to EMA, if you're concerned with rises to tuition fees, with the cutting of our vital public services, then I'm with you. But think about how your actions are perceived by your fellow citizens. Direct action wins people to a cause through its arguments and its moral integrity. Criminal damage alienates people and ensures your message will not be heard. If you're concerned with inequality and unemployment, or with racial profiling, or stop and search powers, or insensitive police forces within communities that they're meant to serve, then of course believe me I'm with you. But burning your neighbour's home, or business, or brutalising your own community does not help anyone. Some of those who cause terror and chaos in recent weeks believe that they have made their voices heard. They are wrong. In 1965, Martin Luther King visited Watts in Los Angeles four days after there had been rioting over a protracted period. Walking the streets he met a young man who came up to him and said, we won, we won. King asked him what he meant. And the man replied, nobody paid any attention to our problems, but now they have to listen. What Martin Luther King understood, but the young man did not, is that getting the spotlight is not the same as being heard. That inflicting damage on your neighbours is no way of helping you, or them, or your neighbourhood. Riots are a blank canvas onto which commentators, journalists and politicians project their own ideas and prejudices. And that's what we've seen in Britain over the last few weeks. The rhetorical backlash after an event can be just as violent and socially damaging as the horrible things which took place within the riot. Riots are essentially disempowering. The false empowerment of doing what one wants is transitory. They do not help the individual or the society to grow. The result of a riot is to reinforce social exclusion, economic marginalisation and prejudice. Direct action done well will always challenge these things, because direct action is not only people changing laws and institutions, it is also direct interaction between peoples. Laws alone do not shape social behaviour. Social attitudes are shaped by the actions and the attitudes of individual. Power in society does not only operate vertically, it absolutely operates horizontally. When Rosa Parks took her seat on the bus she was challenging an unjust law and perhaps most importantly she was challenging every individual on that bus to question their personal ethics and reactions. Racism in this country did not disappear with the introduction of the Racialations Act. It is kept at bay by people standing up to racists wherever they are. So while we should recognise the role of direct action in changing laws we should also see how it makes sure that those laws are more than just words on a paper. This applies to the political problems we face now, the harm caused by greed and excessive self-interest that can be prevented only if citizens instead of relying on politicians solely themselves stand up to this. This is not to say that we shouldn't of course have an active state, but that we need a more active state. Direct action is not just about shaping one society, it's also about the individual. Taking part in direct action ffosters a sense of personal empowerment, the sense that you matter and that you deserve to be heard, which is important. Let me just give you two quotes. The first is Margaret Thomas, a suffragette, writing about her experiences. Action had come like a drought of fresh air into our lives. It gave us a release of energy. It gave us that sense of being some use in the scheme of things without which no human being can live in peace. It made us feel that we were part of life, not just watching it. It gave us hope of freedom and power and opportunity. The second is from another young woman, a student talking about her anger at the government's changes to higher education. And yet this anger is transformed into something like pride at the moment that you find yourself marching to the beat of 100 disparate voices and sound systems united, not by complex ideology, but by an immediate and intuitive sense of rightness. Isn't this a much better response to social problems than throwing your hands in the air at all the misery in the world, or restricting your political action to reading the newspapers and ranting at all the bad news? Direct action says I matter, that I am responsible, that I will be heard, and these are the things that make our democracy live and breathe. Thank you. I kindly agreed to take some questions. We are 10 past 7, and so I'm going to suggest that for about 10 minutes you're free to ask a question. If you'd be kind enough to say who you are and then put your question to David, or indeed, of course, to Mushud also, I can see one hand raised, I can see another, I can see three, four, five, I can see quite a lot. I'm going to start with the man at the back. Sorry, there's a microphone coming. My name's Jason Grant, I'm from London. That was an absolutely fantastic lecture, it gave me a real history lesson into law and politics and stuff, and I thought it was really fascinating. But my question is, you mentioned there was a difference between rioting and direct action. I wanted to kind of explain a little bit about that difference, and do you not think that the rioters were not interested in politics? They realised that politics is meaningless at this current time, and it's not representative of their directly lived experience. I don't know what to put in, is that you're doing these lectures in SOAS, wouldn't it be better to go to Tottenham and do it in the Burnley Grant Community Centre? I mean, I think on the last point, on the last point, there are lots of different audiences, and actually SOAS and our institutions of higher education located in lots of different places are very important arenas. And actually also, I have to say, there are some students from Tottenham that are at SOAS. But equally, you're absolutely right. Of course, you've got to be having discussion in the Burnley Grant Centre in Tottenham and lots of other places, and there's only me, I think there's Diane Abbott as well, we try and get round, but you'll understand that's one of the limitations of our democracy that's not a lot of us who would have these views and feel a bit informed by these views. Look, I think that I'm informed and it's a powerful thing. I can't tell you the feeling on election evening, waiting to see if you're going to be the MP and watching the ballot papers going sometimes to your opponent, but most often in my case to me. But I'm still nervous right up to the moment that I become elected. But I make it my determination to represent absolutely everybody. I am never ever going to get pushed into a place when I just represent one element strand of my constituency ever. And so you know what? I feel for those people that were rioting, and we can get to that in a second, but I'm also going to stand up for the 20,000 young people in Tottenham that were at home. I'm going to stand up for people who have not got lots of money that were standing only in their nightclothes after their houses were burnt to the ground, all those wedding photos and children's photos, your own children with nightmares. I'm going to stand up for largely the immigrants in a community like Tottenham that get up early in the morning, go to bed late at night, run their own business and work damn hard and then see it reduced to rubble. And I'm going to say to those that do this, there is a moral choice, there is a moral choice and guess what? The reason why I'm not coming with any kind of excuse here is because I had to make that choice once. I had to decide at the age of, or teenage years, whether I would go with the small crowd and throw a petrol bomb. And I made my choice and I'm not going to 30 years later re-analyse that and change my position. So yes, of course what we have seen in the context of a riot must always challenge society because what one sees is clearly people who don't feel they have a stake in that society. And I am particularly concerned about unemployment in an area like Tottenham which has the highest unemployment in London. But I'm not prepared to withdraw the responsibility. And let me just say this in a very intellectual room, I'm going to get into that sort of. I believe that we are living in post-liberal times. The two great liberalisms of the 20th century, economic liberalism has led us to global collapse and huge inequality in our society. But it is not clear to me that the other great advances, the social liberalisms, that of course bring me to this stage as a black man, that the freedoms and the rights easily provide us with all of the answers. And what I mean by that is I'm not sure that it's about more rights. There is a place at which the Guardian and the Telegraph meet. It is a concentration on the individual and you see the socialist gets the collective. And so that's the tension sometimes between the direct act, which in a sense is a collective act, it's a mobilised act to stand up, and the individual act to torch, to burn, to loot, to lose the plot. And often I'm afraid, attached to that, some criminal elements. Hold on a second, there's a microphone coming. This is Parisa, I'm obviously not from the UK, I'm American, so I'm kind of... Although you've had a little protest in New York. I just want to make two little comments. First of all I agree with you that the economic liberal approach that has led to globalisation and the rise of corporations has led us to this collapse of great inequality. And I think that for government there's an imperative, I mean not just the UK government, but the government of the United States of every country around the world has to kind of move away from that and stop kind of supporting the rise of this corporate greed and the corporatisation of everything in our life, higher education, our food supply, the list goes on. But I think the other thing to prevent and empower individuals is to reassess the way that government approaches every aspect of the services that it provides. For example I read an article a couple of days ago that might be... Do you have a question you want to... I'm just basically saying, do you feel that the government is really going to change its policies to empower individuals, for example its education and all that and actually listen to people instead of making statements and going on about this in a way that just kind of maintains the status quo? I would hope at self-evident that I have very little faith in this government. Very little faith indeed. But I'm also not in a place where I want to excuse my own government when Labour Party was in power. Let me give an example of this. I have raised for parts of my community and I want parts, emphasis on parts the issue of fathers that do not seem to want to accept their responsibility because I believe that human progress has taught us broadly speaking that if you conceive you probably ought to stay around for at least 18 years to help nurture and lead a child to independent life. Some people have said to me, well why are you raising this? This is not relevant. I think it is relevant. So it comes back to the other liberalism that I want to serve here. But in answering the question I come back to your economic concern. You see in a constituency like mine if you're a single mum and you're working to make a living wage in London you're probably working two jobs. You're working as a home help and a dinner lady and a security or a cleaner. So how are you going to be there for your son in terms of time? So you see that's a classic example of where the nature of our economic settlement that can leave so many people not even able to make the grade in terms of enough coming into the home to be family causes such tremendous problems. So I agree with you. And does David Cameron understand this? We will see. Thank you. I have another question over here gentlemen. Could you just hold on a moment there's a microphone coming and if you could make it brief and a question. I hope we can go to Ahmed Shabani from Libya, a cyber rebel. Can we go to half past on these questions to get more people in? And maybe we'll ask three at the same time so that I can get more people in. Fine, let's do that. Just to draw from your previous answer on the issue of moral stance and writing is people's power. I'm quite astonished that not one single revolution has, sorry, one single demonstration anywhere in Europe has come out in support for the Libyans, nor the Syrians, nor the Yemenis, nor the Bahrainis. We know in Libya that NATO came not because of ethical moral grounds but primarily for the oil. So I would love you to shed some light on this. Thank you. I'm going to take a second and a third question. The lady down here, could you bring the microphone, sorry, thank you here. No, you in the front, yeah. Hello, I'm Jean-Fierre Palmer. I'm a second year LLM student. As you rightly mentioned, people who have the power don't give it up easily and what we have is a representative democracy. So our system naturally creates a political class and that political class has a tendency to hold on to power and how exactly would you therefore suggest that we move to maybe a more direct democracy with more influence on how or how exactly do you propose that the power is taken from that political class that we currently have, for example, a Notting Hill set and all that sort of thing that we've seen in the UK. Thank you. I'm going to take this lady here. Hi, my question is in context of India because you're saying that direct action is actually a lens through which you can see and you can hold law accountable and be accountable by the law. In India there was a huge movement and it's still going on about the anti-corruption thing as a lawyer and as a politician. I'm curious to know what your stand is on because a lot of people say when there is a huge group of people and as every element that you mentioned are you holding the government to ransom because the laws are to be made by the parliamentarians and you're undermining the constitutional ability of the parliament or do you feel that direct action because you yourself said that if something is unjust you have to have direct action to have just laws. So I'm just curious to know because you're a politician and a lawyer so how does that play? How much is too much? I think on that one I'm going to come back to you, David. The question's got a lot harder. You asked for three at a time. I was deeply concerned, I think, at the intervention in Libya. I was very uncomfortable. He took the view that this felt very civil in nature in terms of the nature of the dispute within the country. So I have found what is unfolded problematic. I also find it very, very hard. I frankly representing one of the poorest seats in the country to sanction the billions of pounds that have been spent at a time when I just don't really believe that our economy needs it. So what I tried to do in my contribution was recognise the different context in which people take to the streets and I was very careful not to equate what has happened in parts of the Middle East directly with what's happened here because the context, the environment is very different. The environment, it seems to me, in Libya is a civil war perhaps is the environment, it seems to me which are always complicated contexts and usually stretch out for some length of time. In fact, one of our, in quotation marks, greatest democracies, America was born from a civil war. That somehow plays out over and over again on our streams particularly around the race issues. So I wouldn't want to minimise the complexity of that. One of the things that's deeply problematic which of course so as an institution is expert on is the way in which these are then conveyed to the wider public at large. I have to say I have been hugely disappointed in the way that the majority and the mainstream conveys the minority and the more to the fringe. What I mean by this is in this country the way in which the majority media, white middle class talk about my constituency and the kids in it has hugely depressed me. In a similar fashion, some of the analysis of what is happening in the Middle East and certainly what is happening has been poor, it has been caricature, it has not leveled up to the huge responsibilities I think that journalists particularly have to inform and educate. And it's often very sad. There was a moment when night after night the Middle East was on the news, you were getting some analysis, then you get the invasion of course and then it all comes off the screens. And so you get 24 hour news, you have all this news but the analysis is so poor. This business of flying in and flying out. So there are real issues. That's the subject of another lecture. You might invite a journalist to come and talk about the nature in which so many of these arguments are obscured, caricatured, stereotyped, kept at bay. And actually as a consequence of that direct action is so often inevitable it seems to me. Your question was spot on. I would describe myself as progressive in every sense in relation to our own democracy. So if it's AV, proportion representation I tend to be keen to have those implemented. If it's primaries, I don't want MPs selected by 200 people in a room, I want to open it up and have far more direct participation in the nature of that democracy. I'm deeply concerned that we still really relative to the size of ethnic minorities in this country have really only a handful of ethnic minority MPs. I do like the idea of being able to recall Parliament. If my constituents don't like my response to the riots then recall me, kick me out. Fortunately I don't think that's the case but I think that we have to examine in our democracy better ways of making us representative. And the secret in this is actually how often do people come up to me and say you're my representative, very little. What they say is you're a politician. Politics, the art of debate and other things in Parliament this business of you representing my interests I think is getting lost and we do need I think to shake the system up with all sorts of institutional and process changes. Your question is phenomenally difficult because I can't be the arbiter of what is and what isn't. I can only observe that history tells me that direct action has a place and that at its most effective it works and that if it's a just cause obviously with hindsight where it's about challenging oppression it's usually self-evident. You're pushing at a door that in time must open even when you can't see it and that's why I chose the protest by gay men and women back in 1965. I'm sure they couldn't see it but my God what they opened up was necessary. So I can't be the judge of the action and I certainly can't be in relation to countries a long way from here but I think that the understanding that it is part of our democratic process and that in a country or countries with huge inequalities at a time at the dawn of this new century where we have had this has been let's be absolutely clear about this has been a challenging first decade of the 21st century. We had the bombings September the 11th the 7th we've had a global meltdown this has been a tough tough first period against this backdrop but direct action is a part of the scope and obviously my challenge to the democratic politician is also to challenge those that might think the more considered of them that riot or anarchy is the answer because I am a democrat and I want to stand up for the democratic process in all of its forms but I am suspicious of those that want to shrink the democratic process to being just about Westminster and politicians that is not helpful I want to open up the sphere of where and how democracy works Ladies and gentlemen it is half past seven I am going to have to draw the questions to a close I can sense very strongly that David would be very happy to talk through until at least 10 o'clock if not midnight but I'm going to have to stop him I'm afraid I'd like if I may to ask Professor Moschewd Baderin to make a small presentation to commemorate this event if I could ask you Moschewd Yes Thank you very much David I hope we all did enjoy your speech Now as I said this is the first of the series in the annual school of law inception lectures and we hope that this will continue annually so we are commemorating this with this presentation to David and I'm just afraid what's on it for us I mean it has the SOAS logo School of Oriental and African Studies University of London First annual school of law inception lecture 2011 Delivered by David Lammy NP Direct action and necessary prescription for democracy 5th October 2011 and at the bottom the SOAS School of Law Inception lecture is an annual public lecture delivered at the beginning of each academic session by a notable alumna or alumna of the school addressing a topical subject of general public interest which relates to the role of law in society in a broad sense The inception lecture is intended to serve as an inspiration for our students contribute to public debate and enhance our academic environment so we hope that this would be the beginning of great things to come and also greater heights for the school of law so on behalf of the school of law I am very privileged to present this to David Lammy as the first speaker to tell you how bizarre this is I mean you know I was not a model student and you know Simon Coldermore Professor Menski will tell you and I really enjoyed myself at SOAS sometimes too much so I am so I mean I would never have envisaged this and I feel so I hope that I have lived up to what you hoped for your first lecture and I shall come to others and probably hope in years to come that I did better