Inequality
Date and venue: 10 December, Bradford University (Norcroft Centre)
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Speakers: Chris Creegan, Ferdinand Mount, Jeremy Seabrook
Respondent: Atif Imtiaz
Chair: Robert Maxwell (Chair)
“We need a democracy where our individual aspirations for a better life for ourselves and our shared aspirations for equality are not seen as mutually exclusive.”
Chris Creegan
“How are we to give the condemned and excluded a real stake in society, a genuine sense both of participation and self-worth? Is not equality of treatment often easier and more effective than carefully targeted benefits?”
Ferdinand Mount
“… while extravagant rewards are now reaped at the top, those at the bottom live at a level of deprivation which makes inequality as unacceptable as the poverty of the majority at an earlier time.”
Jeremy Seabrook
Chris Creegan argues that until we can reconcile the problems of individualism, consumerism and greed at the heart of contemporary society, life opportunities will continue to be lost, limited and wasted.
Ferdinand Mount takes a wide view of the causes and possible cures of injurious inequalities, looking at five overlapping types of inequalities and how to remedy them.
Jeremy Seabrook argues that, in the face of extraordinary imbalances in society, the myth that accumulating wealth is the supreme human purpose needs to be replaced before any improvement will occur.
Chris Creegan
Chris Creegan is Deputy Director of the Qualitative Research Unit at the National Centre for Social Research where he has worked since 2006. He leads research programmes in the areas of social inclusion, equality and diversity and recently directed a project to elicit the voices of marginalised groups on social evils as part of JRF’s public consultation.
Prior to working in social research, Chris was a full time trade union official at the public sector union Unison where he was Deputy Director of Equal Opportunities from 1996 -1999. Chris has held numerous positions in public life, having been a local councillor in Tower Hamlets between 1998 and 2002. He currently chairs the boards of Tower Hamlets Homes and the Scottish Adoption Association.
Ferdinand Mount
Ferdinand was the Political columnist of the Spectator from 1977-1982, head of the No.10 Policy Unit from 1982-1984 and the editor of the Times Literary Supplement from 1991-2002.
He is a prolific author whose work includes ‘The Subversive Family’, ‘The British Consitution now’, ‘Mind the Gap’, ‘Cold Cream’ and eleven fiction novels. He is married with three grown up children.
Jeremy Seabrook
Originally teacher and social worker, Jeremy has been a writer for 40 years, including works for radio, TV and theatre.
Among recent publications are ‘Children of Other Worlds’, a comparison of child labour in 19th century London and contemporary Dhaka; ‘Travels in the Skin Trade’, an examination of why western men go to Thailand for sexual encounters; ‘Freedom Unfinished’, Fundamentalism and Popular resistance in Bangladesh, ‘A World Growing Old’, Consuming Cultures – globalization and local lives; the ‘No-Nonsense Guide to World Poverty’, and this year, ‘The Refuge and the Fortress – Britain and the flight from tyranny’.
Robert Maxwell
Robert was appointed as a Trustee in 1994. Educated at Oxford, Pennsylvania, Tromso, and the London School of Economics, his background lies in the field of public health policy and administration. He has served as an Administrator of the Special Trustees of St. Thomas’s Hospital, as Director of several NHS Trusts, and was Secretary and Chief Executive of the King’s Fund from 1980 to 1997.
He is the author of books on the future of NHS administration. Robert has recently retired as Chair from the Gloucestershire Partnership Trust which runs NHS mental health and learning disability services.
Robert is a member of the JRF Investment Committee, Bradford Strategy Group, Place Strategy Group and Poverty Strategy Group.
Atif Imtiaz
Atif Imtiaz has been involved in community activism since the late eighties, completed a thesis on Muslim identity politics in social psychology at the London School of Economics.
Atif is now working as an Equality and Diversity manager in the Bradford and Airedale Teaching Primary Care Trust.