Institute of Ideas

LM network resources Core elements: Institute of Ideas | Spiked | List of all pages on the network Key People: Frank Furedi, Michael Fitzpatrick, Claire Fox, Helene Guldberg, James Heartfield, Mick Hume, Phil Mullan, Brendan O'Neill, Keith Teare, James Woudhuysen, Publications: Living Marxism | LM Contents | LM Commentaries | Frank Furedi: List of Publications | Confrontation | The next step Precursors: Revolutionary Communist Tendency | Revolutionary Communist Party Companies: Junius Publications | Informinc (LM) Limited | Cyberia | Easynet | CScape | Academy of Ideas Background: Bibliography | Chronology | Images and logos | Scribd document archive

The Institute of Ideas: an LM project. Image from the LM website @ www.informinc.co.uk circa 2000 promoting the first Institute of Ideas event in June/July 2000

Institute of Ideas, at the core of the LM network

The Institute of Ideas is a London-based think-tank established in March 2000. It forms part of the libertarian anti-environmental LM network which is dominated by figures affiliated with the defunct LM Magazine (formerly known as Living Marxism, the publication of the defunct Revolutionary Communist Party).

Only an organisation which is carrying out research at the highest level or a professional body of the highest standing may legally register as an incorporated institute. The Institute of Ideas is a trading name of the Academy of Ideas and is thus not subject to this restriction.

Origins and Activities

The Institute of Ideas (IoI) says its mission is "to expand the boundaries of public debate by organising conferences, discussions and salons, and publishing written conversations and exchanges." Papers arising out of its events have been published in book form as part of a series called "Debating Matters". Among the titles are "Science: can we trust the experts?", "Designer Babies", and "Compensation Crazy". Its principal projects are the Battle of Ideas annual festival and its satellites, the online review Culture Wars, the school debating competition Debating Matters, the government funded Global Uncertainties Schools Network, the Institute of Ideas Fora, these being: Postgraduate students in the humanities and social sciences, the Book Club, Education, Culture Wars, Emerging Economies, Parents, Science and Health, Current Affairs, and Social Policy, and the locally based Salons are 'inspired' by the Institute. In 2011, the Institute announced the first of what is planned to be an annual three day residential event. Held in July and named The Academy, the event is described by the Institute as reflective and educational, with the focus of the event being history, classics and the development of human consciousness. Attendance is restricted to IoI associates/ members.

Personnel of the other entities associated with the LM Network will typically write for or appear at events of the Institute of Ideas and its projects. The Institute has been successful in drawing in to its events not just well-known names but leading British cultural and scientific institutions, like the Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Institution. It has been equally successful at drawing in commercial support from major corporations. A Genes and Society Festival in London in April 2003, for example, was held "in association with Pfizer", the biotech/pharmaceutical giant. Also thanked for its assistance was CropLife International - a "global federation" led by BASF, Bayer, Dow, DuPont, Monsanto and Syngenta. Biotech/pharmaceutical giant Novartis has also been mentioned as a source of funding (see below).

The IoI was launched in the summer of 2000 by Claire Fox, the sister of Fiona Fox, the director of the Science Media Centre. Shortly afterwards, Helene Guldberg, who with Claire Fox had co-published the magazine LM, helped to launch the IoI's sister organisation, the online "magazine" Spiked. Both claim to be about encouraging free speech and a much more open-minded approach. In his statement announcing the closure of LM magazine in spring 2000, LM editor Mick Hume promised that “The LM-initiated Institute of Ideas, a series of events planned to take place from June to July, will go ahead in partnership with major institutions in London, including the British Library, the Royal Institution, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Society of Arts, Tate Modern, and the Union Chapel Project. A new company, the Academy of Ideas, has been set up by Claire Fox to coordinate these events.” He also stated that “As for the post-LM future of magazine publishing, watch this space”. Mick Hume was the first editor of Spiked, launched shortly afterwards.

IoI operates out of LM's old offices in Smithfield in London. LM, in turn, was a reincarnation of Living Marxism, the monthly review of the Revolutionary Communist Party(RCP). Both Fox and Guldberg were leading members of the RCP.

While IoI claims to be about opening up public debate and taking it beyond "contemporary orthodoxies" that "narrow discussion", in reality its events are carefully crafted to create an appearance of free and lively debate as a vehicle for communicating LM/IoI's own narrow orthodoxies.

The construction of the events follows a set pattern. Well-known figures, who will help to draw in audiences, are invited to take part in events designed to promote the LM agenda. Invitations to speakers are sometimes made via third parties. The news broadcaster Jon Snow, according to a Guardian article, withdrew from an event to which he had been invited by the Royal Society of Arts after realising the IoI's involvement. Snow felt there was a lack of transparency. "I didn't have a clear idea of who they were," he said. This lack of transparency affects almost every aspect of IoI events, as the article notes: "From the platforms and the floor, the LM line is assiduously promoted by the magazine's supporters and contributors - often without clear attribution of their affiliations."

In the book of the debate of Compensation Crazy, for instance, we get the views of one of the contributors, Tracey Brown, presented simply as those of a 'Risk Analyst'. There is no disclosure of her long-term involvement with the political network behind LM/Spiked and IoI, to all of which she has contributed over the years. Moreover, the views Brown sets out as her own in the debate coincide exactly with the 'LM line' on the issue. The members of the network never go beyond their own orthodoxy.

Another example of how the IoI engineers events to promote its agenda is provided by its Genes and Society Festival in April 2003, an event organised by the IoI's Science and Society Director, Tony Gilland, assisted by Ellen Raphael, the Assistant Director of Sense About Science, amongst others.

Of the main contributors to the two-day event, around 15-20 are known to be part of the network behind LM/IoI. There was nothing in how they were presented, however, to alert either their fellow contributors or the audience to this. This is significant because those behind LM/IoI are fervently opposed to any restrictions on GM crops, cloning or other genetic technologies. But this shared vision is made to appear to the audience to be coming from a series of independent commentators presented as diverse individuals - a GP, a Professor of Sociology, a disability policy analyst, a science writer - or as representatives of diverse organisations - the Genetic Interest Group, Sense about Science, Cyberia etc.

IOI's Director, Claire Fox, said in an interview in The Times, "The only explanation that some people can come up with for, for example, why I'm a relatively enthusiastic supporter of GM (genetically modified) food must be that I'm in the pay of the multinationals. It couldn't possibly be that I have intellectually decided, having looked at the evidence, that GM might be a way of solving some of the problems of the developing world, might be at least something that should be looked at. It's as though nobody believes any ideas any more. You must only have them because you've been bought off."

When, however, she was asked in the same interview to name an IoI sponsor, she came up with, "Novartis". Asked who they were, she replied, "Pharmaceuticals, I think. I don't know who they are. That's not very good for future sponsorship, is it?"

But corporate sponsorship aside, Fox's support for GM crops is not, as she suggests, the result of independent intellectual enquiry, but simply the LM "party line". The same Times article reports that, 'When it comes to her defining her current principles, Fox talks vaguely about "challenging orthodoxies" and promoting "the idea of the active subject". These should not be mistaken for Fox's attempt to articulate a personal credo, they are simply the slogans of the LM network to which she and IoI belong. Fox's "current principles" have all been coined by the group's policy guru Frank Furedi.

IoI Pledges for Progress

The IoI's pro-business agenda is explicit in elements of the statement of its policies it posted on its website for the 2010 UK general election.

21 PLEDGES FOR PROGRESS 2010

Policy ideas that would make candidates worth voting for; positions that voters should argue and campaign for.

Re FREEDOM

1. Repeal hate speech legislation, in the interests of free speech, with no ifs, no buts.

2. Repeal the UK's libel laws, in the interests of free speech, no ifs, no buts.

3. Stop bureaucratic CRB checks and vetting of adults who come into contact with children and vulnerable adults, in the interests of free association between generations and countering the climate of mistrust.

4. Repeal any equality legislation that interferes with the freedom of private organisations like churches and political parties to act on their beliefs, in the interests of free association.

5. Revoke unnecessary and nonsensical health and safety rules and guidelines in the interests of countering today's risk-averse, safety-first climate of fear.

6. Allow pubs and clubs the option of permitting smoking, and get rid of the new 'no drinking zones', in the interests of countering the over-regulation of public spaces.

7. Scrap the 'database state', including the ContactPoint database which holds information about every child in the country and the DNA database which includes details of criminal suspects without convictions, in the interests of civil liberties, the privacy of families and the principle that we are innocent until proven guilty.

8. Limit the police's power to detain people without charge to 24 hours rather than 28 days, in the interests of civil liberties and due process.

9. Declare an amnesty for all illegal immigrants presently in the UK, whether asylum seekers or economic migrants, in the interests of recognising the positive aspirations of those who seek to improve their lives by moving countries.

10. Open the borders, revoking all immigration controls, in the interests of the free movement of citizens.

Re CONSTITUTION

11. Get rid of police Tsars and unelected 'experts' from government decision-making in the interests of parliamentary sovereignty and democratic accountability.

12. Abolish the monarchy and the House of Lords in the interests of a fully elected legislature and executive.

13. Hold a referendum on the EU constitution and any subsequent treaties, in the interests of a national democratic mandate.

Re ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

14. Direct state expenditure into infrastructural projects such as power grids and telecommunications, increased facilities for road, rail and air travel, in the interests of productive economic growth.

15. Build new nuclear power stations across the country in the interests of ensuring we have more than sufficient energy to power a new round of economic growth.

16. Reduce the onerous regulation of new scientific and technological developments such as GM technology and biomedicine in the interests of increasing R&D and encouraging innovation.

Re PUBLIC SERVICES

17. Stop excessive centralisation and bureaucratic control of public services, enabling professionals to make judgements in the interests of those using the services rather than artificial targets.

18. Scrap the 'impact statement' demands on university research in the interests of valuing knowledge for its own sake and academic freedom from policy outcomes.

19. Support the arts financially, for their own sake, in the interests of liberating them from ever more prescriptive and politicised instrumental demands.

20. Direct state funding of health to biomedical research into cures, the latest drugs and equipment, rather than punitive campaigns to change individual behaviour, in the interests of public health and good cheer.

21. Direct state funding of schools into providing universal access to the highest standard of education in academic subjects, rather than politicised cross curricular themes like sustainability or citizenship, in the interests of passing on real knowledge to our children.

Personnel

• Claire Fox is the director and founder.
• Tony Gilland is the Science and Society Director
• Tiffany Jenkins is director of the arts and society programme
• Dolan Cummings is research and editorial director
• Ellie Lee participates in Debating Matters
• Geoff Kidder is the membership secretary
• Shirley Dent is Communications Director
• Helen Birtwistle is press officer
• Justine Brian is the administrator
• James Gledhill – Postgraduate Forum
• Richard Reynolds – former intern and associated with the Battle of Ideas
• Maria Grasso – former intern and associated with the Battle of Ideas

Source

Contact, References and Resources

Contact

Website: www.instituteofideas.com

Address: Academy of Ideas Ltd, Signet House, 49-51 Farringdon Road, London, EC1M 3JP.

Tel : +44 (0)20 7269 9220 Fax (0)20 7269 9235

Email: academy@InstituteOfIdeas.com

Facebook page: Institute of Ideas

Resources

• UK Department of Trade and Industry description of IoI
• Institute of Ideas profile, GM Watch, accessed December 2003.
• Jenny Turner, Who Are They?, London Review of Books, Vol. 32 No. 13 -- 8 July 2010.