Theatre Uncut Research

The Theatre Uncut website says that 'Theatre Uncut was created to encourage debate and galvanise action around political issues that affect all of our lives. Anyone can get involved, anywhere.'
They began through a reaction to the cuts happening in the UK after the ecomomic downturn. They launched 8 new plays in March 2011which anyone could download and perform. These were performed in schools, universities, pubs, in the streets and front rooms. The playwrights for 2011 were Clara Brennan, David Greig, Dennis Kelly, Lucy Kirkwood, Anders Lustgarten, Laura Lomas, Mark Ravenhill and Jack Thorne.
The movement also wants to allows dramatists to experiment with theatre and different ways of producing theatre.
In order to get one of the plays, you can send an email to the company saying where you want to perform the piece, your plans, permission and agree to the terms and conditions. I think this is an interesting way of spreading the plays and globally because almost anyone can put it on anywhere. This means they'll be different performances of the piece all over the world.

Evaluation of our Performance

As an ensemble, I feel we engaged well with Brechtian techniques and they were successful at getting the audience to question the society they live. When we were rehearsing I was concerned that we didn't know the lines properly, especially the lines we said together, but I think it got better and snappier in the actual performance.

The fact we performed inside rather than outside made projecting our voices and clarifying meaning to the audience easier. However, I think having the physical distance from the audience added to getting them step back from the piece. When we did it inside, I feel the audience may have felt more immersed in the piece, and this would not have encouraged the audience to want to change things in society.

I think we dealt with the change of space very well because we went through the piece quickly and made changes to the blocking, collectively coming up with ideas. In a sense, even this was Brechtian and I feel this shows we had all learnt about Brecht's technique and it helped us create good theatre.

The Brechtian elements we used were successful in our piece. The signs that said things like 'Stop being so emotional' helped the audience step back from the action because they were confronted with a message outside of the play that addressed the factual content of the piece rather than the emotional content.
The human microphone was Brechtian because chorally speaking made the audience directly confront the idea that these ideas weren't just held by the parent and child in the piece, but by the masses. It is also a very unnaturalistic way of speaking, so this also distances the audience from being emmersed in the emotion of the words.
The part when Shannon came out of the action and repeated the line to the audience out of character was Brechtian because it reminded them that what they were saying is commenting on society and their emotion is not important in this case.
The images we created with our bodies to express what was said and the dynamic that was presented by the parents on stage was an effective technique to use because it allowed the audience to stand back and analyse what is going on the picture like looking at a photograph or a painting.

However, I think our piece focused very heavily on keeping to the text and I feel we could have experimented with the text and the issues risen in the text. With Sarah Goodhall's group's I feel that they looked at real people in society and created short sketches about them that was outside the context of the actual play but helped the audience draw similarities to the world of the play and reality.

I thought Catherine performed well because she learnt the lines well and had clearly developed the gestus of her character which we worked off in the ensemble by copying the gestures she made. She also referred to the parents when she spoke which reminded the audience of the masses the argument were representing. She also got incredibly angry and she let this fuel how she moved around the stage, which was engaging to watch.

I thought Josh also made interesting choices with his voice that worked really well inside for the actual performance. He did the American accent well and really played with the sarcastic parent stereotype in his facial expressions and small sharp movements he used to clarify aspects of what he was saying.

I think I performed well in the piece because I engaged with the parents as I spoke and I made clear character choices in how I spoke and the physicality of my character who had her arms folded because I felt this presented the defensive parent stereotype in society I wanted to explore.

We could have looked at other situations where the parent-child argument has happened in the past in the audience's reality. There was a moment in the play when the Parent spoke about the ancestors of the past and the amount of effort they put into going to see places in comparison to the child. I feel this moment was lost because we didn't look at the images we could create from this part of the text with our bodies like other moments in the play.

Occupy - Noam Chomsky Book

I read Occupy by Noam Chomsky, which is a series of lectures that he gave between 2011 and 2012. The videos above are from the first lecture in the book, which he gave in Howard Zinn's Memorial, an American activist and historian.
Noam Chomsky is a Professor at MIT in America, but he actively supports movements like this an gives talks expressing his ideas.
He did not start the Occupy movement, nobody specifically did, but his Lectures have been used by many people in the Occupy movement as a source of motivation. He talks in his lectures about what changes need to be made and how.

However, a like many people in the Occupy movement, he's not entirely concrete in his knowledge of how. He leaves this for the masses to decide. But is this a strong enough base for the masses to make a difference? In the past change has come about as a result of having a strong leader - Ghandi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. Although Occupy's way of working is democratic because there is no leader, what way are they going to get their ideas for change heard if they're all saying different things at the same time. The Occupy movement talks about all the things that are wrong with society but there's been no say of how we can change them. Even Noam Chomsky can't answer it and that's what I think makes this movement weak - until it has something or someone that can embody the force of the changes wanted. But, I think that also makes the movement interesting - to see what change arises from it.

From reading this book, I feel like I understand my character's confusion, anger and desperate defensiveness at the child going out to the protest because this protest isn't concrete. They're fighting for many things but don't know how they want those things to be changed.

Protest Systems born from the Occupy Movement

Hand Signals

The occupy protests created a fair and democratic way of sharing ideas and listening and not interrupting. These were in hand gestures that indicated if people wanted to speak and how they felt about what was being said.

Human Microphone
As amplification at the Occupy Wall Street wasn't allowed, the protesters used the Human microphone to amplify what someone was saying. One person would speak and the people who could hear closest to them would repeat what they said so that the people furthest away could hear.
It is a very democratic way of getting across ideas because
However, it can be seen as a more time consuming way of getting across ideas because the human microphone can only remember a short phrase and longer words can be missed or garbled.

13/11/2012 - Solo Protester Exercise - Exploring Gestus

1. Look online for a protester's transcript explaining what they're protesting about.
2. Consider the following: What are they protesting about?
What social strata are they - what do you think their inclass are they in?
3. Create a social gesture that fits your character - do they play with their hair? Assert specific words in a certain way

This exercise is helpful to help characterise when devising a piece. You could apply this to any stereotype of a person in Brechtian Theatre or where you think it applies. If you're going to play a politician you could look at how the politician's gestus and develop it to suit your character.

British Political Theatre in the Early 20th Century

Royal Court

Stanley Houghton

In 1903-1907, The Royal Court was run by Harley Granville-Barker who encouraged producing political plays from playwrights such as George Bernard Shaw and Cicely Hamilton, who more namely produced plays concerning the Suffragette movement in 'The Pioneer Players'.

Some other influential playwrights of the time that wrote for the Royal Court came from the Manchester School of dramatists - Harold Brighouse and Stanley Houghton who wrote 'Hindle Wakes' in which the main characters were working class. This play was moved to the Playhouse Theatre in the West End after a very successful showing in Manchester in 1912.

Socialist Theatre
Co-operative societies around the UK ran drama groups producing political theatre to try and promote socialist concepts in the local community. In 1912 the National Association of Carlton Dramatic Clubs established People's Theatre in Newcastle. Across the region, more socialist theatre groups sprang up as a result. These companies were amateur dramatic societies which were a result of people wanting to induce some kind of change in their small communities.

Worker's Theatre Movement

The Workers' Theatre Movement
In 1926-1935, the Workers' Theatre Movement wanted to protest for social change through producing theatre that engaged with issues they felt needed addressing. The company were an amateur dramatic group that dealt with promoting Communist ideas. They developed an 'agit-prop' (Agitation Propaganda) style of theatre that involved performing songs and sketches in a similar way to Music Hall, which was still a popular form of Theatre at the time. It was street theatre that engaged with the working class audiences they wanted to invigorate a sense of wanting to create change in. In Salford theatre were the Red Megaphones and in London there were the Hackney People's Players. They developed some physical theatre to reflect the machine-driven industrial age they were looking at in their plays, such as 'Masses and Men and The Machine Wreckers' by Ernst Toller and 'RUR' by Karel Capek which looked at how machines and robots replace the working class in a futuristic age.

'Agit-prop' is simply spreading ideas through explaining them, creating excitement and therefore initiating change. It is a Russian term associated with the Bolshevik ways of initiating change amongst the masses and starting revolution.

Actresses' Franchise League

The Actresses' Franchise League
Founded in 1908, the League supported the suffragette movement in the work they produced. They organised events and readings and wrote their own plays which they put on. Some key influential members are Cicely Hamilton, Ellen Terry, Elizabeth Robins, Edith Craig and Sybil Thorndike. By 1914 the group had 900 members in all the major UK cities. Some of the key plays they produced are 'How the Vote Was Won' (1909) by Cicely Hamilton and Christopher St. John and 'Diana of Dobson's' by Cicely Hamilton.
The group also later supported the war effort in creating the Women's Theatre Camps Entertainment Group which toured military bases around the UK.

Edith Craig and Ellen Terry

Pioneer Players
Founded by Edith Craig and Ellen Terry (members of the Actresses' Franchise League), the group's plays dealt with current political, moral and social issues. They were above all a Feminist group wanting to spread feminist ideas in their work. Ever since 1773, theatre that was put on was controlled and censored by the Lord Chamberlain, so he was legally allowed to stop any play from being performed and prosecute anyone that did. In order to avoid this, the group performed their plays at Little Theatre which was a Club Theatre. Club Theatres worked so that you became a member and payed a small subscription rather than an entrance fee. This made them private, and therefore censorship was avoided.
Some of the groups plays were 'In the Workhouse' by Margaret Wynn Nevinson, 'The First Actress' by Christopher St. John and 'The Verge' by Susan Gaspell, when the heroine rejects social norms in pursuit of creativity.

'Waiting for Lefty' by Clifford Odets

Unity Theatre
Sprouting off from the Workers' Theatre Movement, Unity Theatre started on 16th February 1936 as a reaction to developing anxiousness during the depression. With hunger marches, the republican struggle in Spain, the rise in fascism under Hitler in Germany and Mosely's Blackshirt's (British Union of Fascists) in the UK, the group wanted to expose and try and promote change surrounding some of these issues.
They began based in Kings Cross but moved to an old chapel in Camden near St. Pancreas, renovating the building themselves voluntarily and putting plays on voluntarily too.
The company made it's name with 'Waiting for Lefty' in 1938 written by Clifford Odets (1906-1963). It tells a story of a group of New York Cabbies wanting to take strike action for a better living wage. In this production, the fourth wall was broken as the Cabbies recognised the audience and talked as if it was a meeting not only with the people on stage but with the audience. The action cut between the meeting and the personal stories each Cabbie told like a film. The story affected the audience so much that when the leader of the strike was shot in the first performance they joined in the Cabbie's 'strike, strike, strike' chants and rushed onto stage with them.
Along with this, they developed a new form of theatre: devised documentary in their 'Living Newspapers', satirical pantomimes which challenged Lord Chamberlain's censorship and was the first company to present a Brecht play.

From my research, I have found it really interesting the different Theatre movements that were happening and the different ways Theatre companies were trying to promote changes and ideas. It really has shown me the importance of Theatre in England and the same time as Brecht was making theatre. It also reminds me of the way Theatre Uncut works because they open the plays to anyone that wants them and that means amateur theatre companies can help make a difference in the community in looking at issues in the plays in a variety of different ways.

What is Political Theatre? Research

Arguably, all theatre is political. It will look at elements in our society that we recognise and critisises them or comments on them. For example, Macbeth and others of Shakespeare's plays make comments on the way society was at the time.

Political Theatre has been a way of promoting change.Through presenting faults in societies workings in everyday life and in higher society and government.

Some playwrights who write political plays are David Hare, Alan Aykbourne, Caryl Chuchill.

This is an interesting article that I read about Political Theatre. It talks about how broad Political Theatre is genre because so many plays can count as a political piece. But the writer also argues that theatre should be more political than it is because it is more valuable for society as a whole. In a way this is a similar view that Brecht would have held when making his theatre because he lived in an age when he valued being part of the theatre industry as being an active part of society.

13/11/12 - Gestus

What is Gestus?
Socially encoded expression that is consciously employed. Brecht came up with the idea inspired by Charlie Chaplin as he expressed socialised behaviour in his characters. He developed this because he felt that psychological theatre focused too heavily on facial expressions and it meant gesture dried up and had a lack of importance within the performance. He wanted people to investigate the body language of a class and their habits, manners and customs. He wanted to look at how the things the characters did in a play was influenced by society and the gestures were a way of showing this.

13/11/12 - Protest Improvisation Exercise (Gestus)

1. Investigate stereotypical aspects of your character - do they speak a certain way according to where they've been brought up? Do they have a facial expression embodies their personality?

2. Think of a gesture your character would do that is stereotypical - find this through improvising walking round the space and experimenting with these different movements

3. Get into groups of similar characters and say what you want to the opposing group and let it build to an argument - work as a protestor version of your character.

4. Layer your gesture in to what you say and how you say it

13/11/2012 - Brechtian advice to actors

Brecht was part of a generation and society of workers that did things because they were part of a society. So being a director, or an actor meant that the work you produced had to make a difference in the world. Spectacle and outcome is what matters to Brechtian theatre and is what puts him at the heart of Political Theatre acting.

The first time that Brecht put on Mother Courage, the audience were too sympathetic towards Mother Courage, which was the opposite reaction to what he wanted - for the audience to observe and investigate Mother Coarage. He then developed, through rehearsals, this form of acting, so that the audience were clearly distant from the actors and the play. He believed in the human ability to question and investigate themselves and each other and he wanted to expose that in his theatre.

Brecht wanted his audience to focus on the progression of the story rather than how it's going to end. In  order to create this reaction, he made his actors remove emotion and focus on textual specifics and gesture. He believed that political theatre mustn't be emotional because it created this barrier where the audience couldn't be informed. He took away the emotional depth that naturalistic plays had to make way to content that informed the audience on the world. He wanted his audience to read human nature rather than get lost in it. He made his actors, in a way, portray stereotypes for this reason.

An example of doing this in 'In the Beginning' is the action we will be performing will be performed in a way that will clearly define that we are telling a story - clearly defining gestures and our lines to show that they have a meaning in creating an intellectual search in the audience for similarities in society rather than in our emotional reactions to things. In this sense, Brechtian theatre is content lead theatre.

When you narrate what is happening in a scene through singing whilst the actions are happening, this is a way of distancing emotions from the audience and getting them to observe. However, to the actor it feels robotic and unnatural. But what is important about Brechtian acting is that it is to begin an intellectual conversation in the audiences minds to allow them to make an informed decision as to what they believe. Naturalism informs an emotional reaction that is instinctual, rather than intellectually thought out.

Some ways in Brechtian acting of distancing your character from the audience is big gestures with your hands as you speak - like you are quoting the action from what you saw and heard before and in the way you speak the lines. You are an actor, consciously telling a story -  you have no emotional attachment.

6/11/2012 - Different types of Protest

Passive                                                 Direct
Petitions                                                Strike
Silent Protests                                       Sit ins
Blogs                                                    Demonstration
Soap Boxing                                        Lobby
Displaying Signs                                  Occupation
Hunger Strikes                                     Lock Down
Distributing Flyers                               Break the law
Boycotting                                           Organise March

Neil Labute Research

Neil Labute is an American film director, screenwriter and playwright. He is described as 'famous for his brutal characters and shocking plotlines' in an Independant report. I think, in a way the ending of his play, is quite shocking because the parent gives in very quickly and it feels almost sarcastic and comical in this way. His work is also described as work with 'bad behavior with a twist', so he works with challenging issues.

Some of the concepts he has looked at has been beauty and the way body shape is percieved in society in works such as 'Fat Pig' and 'reasons to be pretty'. He specialises in Black Comedy, one example of this sort of work is 'In the Company of Men'. 

12/11/2012 - Initial Thoughts on In the Beginning by Neil Labute

I think the parents seem really passive and it reflects the way politicians are, and really, politicians can be our parents - they represent another of the generations.

The way the child is with the parent reminds me of the unspecified anger and mob-like mentality that was present during the riots where there wasn't much conviction on a specific topic but a general feeling to go and do. The occupy movement seems to be a movement where there are so many beliefs they encapsulate that it is difficult to create any change because the protests are about general concepts and there are no ideas on how to change things.

It really reflects the ongoing misunderstanding in the world between parents and children and the anger we all feel towards things that are going on in the world. Inequalities we want to solve but don't know how.

There were interesting choices of switches between who was passive and winning. It felt like a debate happening about our world but through the means of conversation which felt human.

I think an interesting way we could stage it is that it could be in an office and the parent could therefore represent the bankers, who are also parents and the people running the country.

12/11/2012 - Introduction to Brecht

- Brecht used different characters to represent different parts of society

An Introduction to Brechtian Theatre

Brecht was trying to grapple with truths in his work. He wanted to encourage the audience to be politically active. He wanted to create belief and disbelief in his work at the same time. He didn't want his audience to sit comfortably.
The costume he developed for people working behind the scenes was not trying to make them blend in with the background, it was used to make the audience aware that it was a play because they can obviously see the makers. He wanted to create a sense of alienation through exposing members of the set team. He used lighting and abstract sounds to further distance the audience.

Brecht on Stage

His work was dialectical so that it was challenging for the audience. He created a critical distance from the theatre so that the audience could question what was happening, making it political. He aimed to make his work so that the audience could see what could be changed up. He wanted to create images that told a story. He used the lighting and abstract sounds to make the audience step back from the action. His way of working involved creating images and then in the rehearsal process manipulating them over and over until the actors and crew were satisfied with the images created. He also worked with the scripts so that they created the desired reactions from the audience. He liked to provoke reactions from the audience. He liked the physicality to comment on the language used in the piece. He was constantly democratic in his way of working.

Initial Thoughts on the Occupy Movement and Occupy Wall Street from Research

From what I've looked into the Occupy movement, it seems like it has arisen from a global feeling of dissatisfaction with capitalism, the economy and lack of equality in money. But what's interesting about it is that it has been difficult to pin exactly where it has started because people have been protesting and being actively involved in these sorts of ideas around the same time.

It has had a collective start up across the world but the first Occupy movement was Wall Street. From this, other Occupy movements have happened in London, Spain, around Europe and more recently an Occupy Sandy Movement has arisen due to the slow relief effort for people who're victims of the Hurricane's devastating effects. Volunteers are giving aid to help with basic needs.

A lot of what the people were saying in the interviews were differing but had similar themes like money and equality. It was interesting to see how all these people just wanted to get out to Wall Street and protest about what they believe in and I think there's an undeniable strength in that. But I also think, what change will come of this? A lot of the people who spoke were angry about the financial situation their country was in but they had no ideas as to how they could solve it, which I think is the only way that change will ever happen. But I think this movement is definitely a large representation of the dissatisfaction and anger that these people have against the way their government is running their country and a way to get the government to begin creating some action.

Occupy Wall Street Interviews by David Perkins

Transcription from beginning:

Jason: Hi, I’m Jason Ivy and we’re here at Occupy Wall Street, it’s Saturday October 22^nd, 4pm, we’re here to talk to the protestors, we’re gonna find out who they are, what their views on capitalism are, socialism.

_________________________________________________________________________________

(What does ‘House Elves’ mean)

Woman 1: Erm, it’s a Harry Potter reference. House Elves are slaves that have to like, literally everything their masters tell them and if they go against their masters they have to punish themselves. And that’s the relationship our government has with big corperations.

Jason: So you want to get the Government out of Private Industry, is that right?

Woman 1: Other way around, I wanna get private industry out of our government: no more of their money in our politics.

Man 1: The goals in the Tea party and the Occupy Wall Street Movements are really at their heart, if you come from the rhetoric, their really the same. So, what I’m trying to send, is that if we can get behind the issue of the Fed, the Fed reserve is a private bank it’s the way that Wall Street controls the government. It’s actually two sections, there’s a private bank which is the Federal Reserve system, and then there’s the Regulatory Agency, which the Federal board of governors. So the board of Governers are supposed to regulate the banking system. They stack with Member executives from the member banks. So they don’t actually regulate themselves, they regulate the 99%, so they regulate their competition, so Goldman Sachs and Chase deny their Sermons and Brothers bailout money using their political influence to put their competition out of business and they regulate the rest of the economy, but they never actually really regulate themselves.

Jason: So you do think that all people that make up the 1% are really bad people?

Man 1: Oh no, not at all. I think individually it almost doesn’t matter, I think many of them are people of conscience, they’re good people, they may even care about social justice, the environment and given their massive amount of resources, they may even dedicate some percentage of that towards those goals, but individually that doesn’t matter. Institutionally, it’s monstrous and destroying this country and the planet, so…

Jason: So you’re not against, say, individual entrepreneurs -

Man 1: No not at all

Jason: Getting rich –

Man 1: No, I’m not against corporations or capitalism in the abstract. What I’m against is sort of a… is sort of corporate capitalism as it’s currently practiced in this country and exemplified specifically by the financial institutions and the banks in this country have gone completely out of hand – their corrupt, their fraudulent, their felons, eluded the American economy to the tune of several trillion dollars and they should be prosecuted.

Jason: What percentage of the Federal Budget consists of military spending?

Woman 2: You can see it right here (holding a sign) 60% - it’s huge – it is true.

Jason: According to the Federal Budget, it’s in it’s 20s. They said it’s about 23%.

Woman 2: Well that’s because you’ve included the social security. If you take it – Oh yeah, if you take social security, take it in put it out for social security.

Jason: But social security and military spending, how do they relate?

Woman 2: The discretionary budget, this is our tax payer’s dollars and we’re spending well over half of them on the military.

Jason: But that’s purely discretionary spending

Woman 2: Right, that’s the way it should be. The social security, we pay it in in order to get it out later – it’s not to pay it in –

We’re not paying it in to spend it on the military or anything else.

Jason: So, but I think you’re wanting to count that as a separate budget almost –

Woman 2: Of course it is.

Jason: But I don’t think our federal government count it as –

Woman 2: No, because they don’t want it to look as if were spending this enormous amount on the military. They wanna hide that behind the social security.

Jason: But the Fed has played a role in stabilizing the currency over the years?

Man 2: No, they have played a role in destabilizing. Intentionally destabilizing the currency, absolutely.

Jason: Why would they intentionally do it then?

Man 2: Because the top percent of Wall Street makes money, whether you’re in up or down market. They don’t care about market cycles, they create the market cycles, but what they do is during down cycles, they suck the wealth out of the middle class through bailouts. All year, no matter what cycle it is, it’s sucking wealth out through crony capitalism through contracts, sweetheart deals, five hundred dollar hammers, etc. And then in down markets, they get bailouts and subsidies and tax credits and all that. They use the Federal reserve system to socialise loss and then they privatize their gains, sending off for sure.

Man 3: For me, the mere exsistance of a central bank suggests that the government feels that it has the right to meddle in the market. That it has the right to pick winners and losers.

Yeah, I fundamentally believe in the capitalist system, except for the idea, I mean, it stops being capitalist once my tax dollars bailout a bank. The flip side of capitalism, the only thing that makes the market work, is that if you take too much risk, you might get rich, but then if you fail, you fail. I believe in property rights, I believe in freedom and free will and free markets, but it seems to me that the banks have sort of hand their cake and eaten it too in terms of picking the parts of capitalism they like, and then picking the parts of socialism that they like.

Jason: Then, why do you want to prosecute Ben Bernanke?

Man 3: At best his monetary policy is inflationary, at worst it may be hyper inflationary. We don’t know yet, we haven’t seen the full effects, sort of unfold, and I would argue that weakening the dollar, weakens the country, weakening the country strengthens our enemies and to me that’s close enough to be treason.

Jason: What do you hope this movement will accomplish?

Man 3: Either massive, from the ground up, political reform or revolution.

Jason: If Andrew Jackson were alive today, would you be a Republican or a Democrat?

Man 3: The thing is, I don’t even agree with that division ‘Republican’ or ‘Democrat’. If I would pick the four or five politicians who I’d most support, we have Bernie Sanders, who is an Independent, we have Ron Paul who is a Libertarian, you have Alan Greyson who is a Democrat. What ties them all together is that they are all fundamentally moral people who really really care about their country. 

The World Tomorrow: Occupy

Short Transcription from beginning:

Julian Assange (interviewer)

Marissa Homes and Alexa O’Brien – Occupy New York

Aaron Peters – Occupy London

Naomi Coleman – Occupy London

David Greybor

Julian: I want to understand how Occupy came to be. Sort of, people who were involved and the political background for organizing it and conducting its affairs and spreading it. And then look into where it’s going to go. David, where do you think this movement came to eventually cause the Occupation of Zuccotti Park and spread out to the rest of the United States?

David: Well, I think there’s been a sort of global movement that, I mean, I guess it started in Tunisia and sort of swept across the Mediterranean, Greece, Spain so sorely the same movement but in America. There are a lot of people from Greece and Spain that were involved in the very early days and even before the Occupational Zuccotti Park, we were coming together. So I think there’s a global format.

Julian: Alexa, you were involved in this US day of rage, back in May 2010, but do you see that as the time of going into sort of this transition from cyberspace to meet space or is there some earlier analog?

Alexa: I think definitely, I mean, I look at Odd Bart and other smaller swarm activist activities. Social media and the transformation and the organisation of media also has played a role in the last year in Occupy Wall Street.

Julian: Clearly, there was a feeling emerging from the Arab Spring.

Brian: I mean, this is very rarely alluded to, 2008 Egypt gets the World Bank’s number one, kind of, reforming country in the developing world. And in terms of liberal reforms, Egypt was unbeatable in North Africa and the Middle East - from the World Bank and the IMF’s point of view. The bigger, kind of, phenomenon that’s gone on here is that after the Second World War, the nation state has broadly seen as a repository of democratic accountability. Now, since the late 1970s that has been going away.

In some places it never exsisted, right? but that now is a global phenomenon and we now recognize that public policy outcomes aren’t happening at the national level and that 'policy makers' aren’t actually the ones that are a national parliament, their elsewhere. And the ones who are are dictating policy aren't in any way accountable and their not democratic representatives and that's a global phenomenon, and that's in India, that's in China, that's in the US, that's in the UK. 

Alexa: We don't just have a global financial crisis, we have a global political crisis because our institution's no longer functional.

David: And this is one of the points of the Global Justice Movement, which is there are these newly created, administered, global, planetary mechanisms.

BBC Report on the way rape is dealt with within the police

Page last updated at 15:00 GMT, Monday, 15 March 2010

Stern review calls for focus on care of rape victims

Moment of contact: Review looked at how victims were treated A new approach is needed to give greater priority to the care and support of rape victims, a major review in England and Wales has said. The review's author, crossbench peer Baroness Stern, said debate had been too focused on rape conviction rates. Her recommendations include offering every rape victim a specialist adviser to help them recover after an attack. The report acknowledged attitudes and practices had improved but said implementation had been patchy. During her five-month study, Lady Stern talked to more than 200 people, including rape victims and police officers, to find out how police and prosecutors deal with complaints of rape. GABRIELLE - A CASE STUDY Seven years ago, Gabrielle reported an attempted rape. It was 688 days before her attacker was convicted. Her treatment by police and authorities left her feeling like "a piece of evidence, not a person". She said although the initial police response was quick and the offender arrested promptly, there were failings. The police medical officer did not carry out an internal or lower body examination and she had to identify her attacker using a system which showed only his head and neck. At one stage, her attacker was jailed for robbery and the police asked whether she still wanted to continue her case. She said she felt she was "at the bottom of the pile". Her case officer said she was because her attacker was already behind bars. Gabrielle tried her local MP and even Met Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens before her case was properly pursued. Her attacker was convicted on a lesser charge of serious sexual assault. From a BBC Today programme interview It follows the conviction of two high profile sex attackers - London taxi driver John Worboys, who drugged and raped his victims, and Kirk Reid, thought to have sexually assaulted dozens of women in south London. Lady Stern, a prisons reformer, said support and care for victims should be given as high a priority as prosecution and conviction of perpetrators. It was also "completely unacceptable" for police and prosecutors to lose interest in a victim whose complaint was not going to lead to a conviction, she said. "The obligations the state has to those who have suffered a violent crime, and a crime that strikes at the whole concept of human dignity and bodily integrity, are much wider than working for the conviction of a perpetrator," she said. "The victim must be treated as a whole person. With rape, it is always going to be difficult to be sure that you'll be able to prove it to the jury beyond reasonable doubt. "I talked to a lot of victims and they accepted that. What they felt was really important was not in the end if they could get a conviction; what they said was, we still feel we want to be believed." Lisa Longstaff, from campaign group Women Against Rape, said police must focus on justice. "Women do not go to the police to get care, they go to the police to get protection and justice. In 2010, respect and sensitivity for victims should be a given." Solicitor Debaleena Dasgupta, who deals with mishandled rape cases, said good care was as important as getting a conviction. She added that an arrest and conviction "can be very helpful to a victim because they need to know the authorities are taking the matter very seriously and are putting together the best case possible". 'Abysmal' treatment Other key recommendations outlined in the report include: • A network of independent professional advisers to support a victim after she or he comes forward. Their role would be to explain police procedures, provide a link between the victim and detectives, and support the victim in court. Similar schemes have been piloted in some parts of England and Wales • Forensic medical evidence should be gathered by the NHS, not the police • The expansion of Sexual Abuse Referral Centres (Sarcs) to every police force in England and Wales by 2011. At these centres, victims receive counselling and other help, including medical examinations, without having to speak to the police • Consideration of proposals for victims to have their own special lawyer in court, alongside the prosecutor and defendant's representative The report said the claim only 6% of rapes lead to a conviction was misleading because it was based on all complaints to police, not all complaints brought to court. Nearly 60% of those charged with rape are convicted. Lady Stern was also critical of the treatment victims of alleged rape received from police and prosecutors. She said while victims in some areas received the best possible support, in other areas they were treated abysmally. One woman called Gabrielle, who reported an attempted rape in 2003, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I was treated worse than something you accidentally tread on. "Victims need to be treated as a human being first and a piece of evidence second." Another woman, who spoke to the BBC anonymously, said the police did not seem interested when she told them she had been raped by a man she was in a relationship with. "I felt I was a thorn in their side. They did not really want to bother with you because it was too difficult. They would much rather deal with the crimes that they can quickly tick the box and move on." 'Dignity and respect' For the government, Solicitor General Vera Baird said much had already been improved in combating rape. "Public perception of the way rape complaints are handled lags behind reality," she said. She welcomed the report's acknowledgement that significant improvements have made since 1997, but said work remains to be done. "We want all victims to feel confident that when they come forward and report rapes it will be taken seriously and they will be treated with dignity and respect," she added.