Episode 11 The Big Questions

The route to happiness, and forgiving the people who hurt us.

Good morning, I'm Niki Campbell, welcome to The Big Questions.

Today we're live from the Michaelston Community

Welcome, everybody, to The Big Questions.

This week the Dutch held a general election.

Geert Wilder's far-right Party of Freedom won 20 seats and was only

beaten by the centre-right People's Party, led by

Prime Minister Mark Rutte, which gained 33 seats.

But Mr Rutte had to emulate some of the populist sentiments espoused

Next month the Front National's leader, Marie le Pen's

anti-immigration and anti-Muslim ideas will be put to the test in

Polls predict she will go through to the second round in May.

And in September Alternatif fur Deutschland, the German far right,

will challenge Mrs Merkel's reign as Chancellor.

Populist parties and policies have been gaining ground here too,

with the Brexit vote and, in Wales, Ukip's seven seats

The idea that ordinary people have been exploited by a privileged

liberal elite seems to have taken hold across the continent.

Are Europe's powerless taking control?

David Goodhart, you have written an interesting book about this. You can

expand some of the ideas. It is the dispossessed, be ignored, the

neglected, the marginalised, the powerless kicking back. What are

they kicking back against? It is true, but not a single Populist

party is in government across Europe, unless you include Poland

and Hungary, as some people do. Populism does represent a partly

legitimate reaction to the over domination of our politics by quite

a large group of people, most of them perfectly decent people, in my

book I call them The Anywheres. They tend to be well educated. They have

been to a good university and so on. They have dominated the political

agenda to a certain extent. The expansion of higher education and

the less good options people who don't take the higher education

path. And the Middle status jobs that people used to enjoyed that are

not there so much. Large-scale immigration, have freedom of

movement, people can take advantage of it if they are highly educated.

You are a lawyer and you can go and work in Berlin for a couple of

years. One third of all people working in food manufacturing come

from Eastern Europe and that has happened in the last ten years. You

see it as a threat and competition. What about the social agenda, social

progress that has happened? Most people in some ways, go along with

that. Some people might call it a contradiction in terms, but

something I call decent populism. If you look at the rise of

liberalisation on race, gender and sexuality, the vast majority of

people in this country, including the more subtle communitarian, go

along with those changes. There is some pretty hard-core authoritarian

populism represented by Geert Wilders, extreme anti-Islamic agenda

and then you have more mainstream and decent populace, I will include

Ukip in that. But the argument now is how we give the somewhere is a

legitimate voice. They feel and have been to some extent, excluded from

the political agenda. But the big thing among society, the The

Anywheres, and you can see an argument going on between those who

say, we have screwed up and got this wrong. We have not been representing

the views and interests of the large part of our population. And those

who say no, these are the Barbarians. The outcome of the

debate and the future of politics depends on it. You mention Ukip,

John Rees-Evans, who are the people left behind, why are they

antipathetic to the liberal consensus? Frankly because the elite

liberal, highly educated people who think they represent the ordinary

people and who often campaign this fiercely to help ordinary people,

frankly don't understand ordinary people. You do? I think Ukip is most

in touch with the ordinary people and that was proved on the 23rd of

June last year. On the 22nd of June, three quarters of our allegedly

representative elected people in parliament came out in favour of

remaining in the European Union. The next day, we proved quite clearly,

the majority of people in this country want people out. You've got

kicked in the backside in Stoke? That is obvious. How would you

characterise the beliefs of the ordinary people who are at odds with

the liberal elite, what do they believe, what do they think? They

want to be left alone to work hard, to support their family, run their

own country and not be interfered with by, you know, foreign agendas.

The ordinary British person respects other nations, is friendly to

foreigners coming here, wants to treat people decently, but believes

our elected representatives whose salaries they pay and who they

elect, have a primary responsibility, and moral

responsibility to look after the interests primarily of the people of

this country and not the people of other countries. Do you want to come

in here? I agree there is a disconnect between political elite

and everyone else, and I think that has happened over the years, but the

answer isn't to say, they are wrong, they are right and this division

between the elite and everyone else is to say, what is underlying that

isn't an understanding of immigration and what is happening,

but economic anxiety, what has happened is you call them a liberal

elite and they focus on a progressive agenda in terms of gay

marriage and equality, which is a good thing, but they have ignored

issues of economic equality. They have ignored that they have

continuously cut taxes for corporations, they are hitting the

poorest the most. Why are some people who are uncomfortable with

changes in our society, why are they uncomfortable, why haven't they

adapted and gone on with the general flow? Faiza Shaheen, do you want to

answer that? Some people are not comfortable, we need the

conversation. What is the conversation? People say this to me,

I am worried about immigration and I think it is taking jobs. It is

understanding why it is. My answer is, tell me about your workplace,

what has happened? Tell me about your neighbourhood, what has

happened? Sometimes the isn't a story about immigration, sometimes

there is. A very often, these people are coming in and undercutting

wages. But when you look at who is allowing that to happen, it is the

bosses. It is a misplaced anger. Are they misinformed? It was the bankers

that crashed the economy, we have to remember why this stuff has

happened. It is because of an economic liberal elite, not just

progressive. John, come back in. Say you have a company and you are

competing in your industry against your competitors and you have this

situation where the government has allowed our labour market to be

massively oversaturated, driven down wages. You have got to compete, you

want to drop your operating costs. You may be the most patriotically is

on in the country, but it is deliberately possible to pay more to

a local person than it is to be someone from abroad. The government

has said we will control immigration, not oversaturated the

job's market. I didn't get a chance to make my point. Patriotically

employers... Patriotically employers? Patriotically employers,

the type that Faiza Shaheen is saying the cause of the employment

of foreigners rather than locals, if the government controlled

immigration we would be on a more even playing field. You cannot blame

the bosses, they don't control immigration. We are setting the

debate up in an narrow way, but there is only one answer, the

dispossessed taking control? No, they are giving more control over to

those who have fundamentally exploited them. The election of

Donald Trump in the United States of America is about many things. Is he

going to drain the swamp, make circumstances better for the

American worker or is he going to self and rich? Is the exploitative?

Creme De La Creme he is exploitative. When we remove

political economy from the arguments, we make it about

constraining the circumstances of the debate. Are people being conned?

People are frustrated they exist in a precarious existence. There are

much greater problems they face and they look to the wrong arguments.

They look to the wrong causes and they look to symptoms of their

exploitation, they don't look to the global financial crisis. People are

being fooled, people are being conned and people are being

exploited? People like this gentleman here. You can put your

hand down now. A couple of years ago a Tory MP was sacked more or less

for calling somebody a pleb. Why don't people talking like this just

call us plebs, because I am a populist. The way people are talking

like this, that I have lived through some halcyon world for the last 50

years of my life since I started voting. It hasn't been like that.

These politicians, they have led us down roads from the very beginning.

It started in 64 when I voted to join the Common market and I was

told a pack of lies then. It carried on with Harold Poulsen further on,

the pound in your pocket when the pound was being devalued. Do you

think they are lying to you? Of course they are, the way they talk

down to, it is unbelievable. David Goodhart, that has distilled how

people feel? A lot of people that run the political parties, the

openness of the kind that has evolved over the last 20, 25 years,

much more globalisation, European Union, freedom of movement, all of

these things work for some people and don't work so well for other

people. What Faiza Shaheen saying about employers, perfectly

illustrates the rise of populism because people on the left say to

people know, you don't feel that, look at this. They keep wanting to

change the subject, which is why people think the centre-left parties

don't represent them. You are right about employers. The national social

contracts in employment have become disregarded. The amount of money

employers spend on training in the last 20 years has fallen by one

third. There is a reserve army of labour they can just take from

continental Europe. Do you realise how many construction

apprenticeships began last year? Just 8000. We are meant to be

building millions of houses and we are not educating and training

people to do it. We have moved from the situation in the 1970s where we

had a trade surplus of 20 million and now we have a trade deficit of 5

billion. To tell people we are not seeing decline, people are seeing

it. But are they blaming that decline on the international

financial markets? Are they blaming it on the super-rich who are

exploiting them? Or, are they blaming the people close by? We all

want to buy cheap goods that are made elsewhere? Of course we should

be doing something about globalisation, but the story that

has emerged is about those people that have lost, turning against each

other. When we talk about the pilots, it is not just the white

working class, the white working class is multiracial. Cleaning,

caring and those are low paid jobs. Instead of this group coming

together and saying, we want more representation, we want to make sure

policies of their two protectors and we don't have zero hours

contracts... We have taken so much out of politics.

We're doing an enquiry into the growth of technocracy. So many

things have been taken out of the... Technocrats are inevitably anywhere

people. People with the instincts of the highly educated, the preferences

of the highly educated. This has not a democracy. People are saying, we

want some of it back. We mention Trump. What is it you like about

Donald Trump? The fact is, what you said... I would like to ask about

Donald Trump? What she said is correct, what Faiza said is correct.

We are not looking at the real enemy and we are arguing amongst herself.

Organisations like Gideon's educates people about this. I have read a

couple of his white papers. What they teach is that one of the causes

in the reduction in employment is the automated tendency, this is

about Trump. OK. He has an automated tendency. What is it you like about

him? We have not got a lot of time. Because he wants to reduce

regulation. If you take away regulations, you're harming the

people, that is what people think. That is nonsense. You take away

regulations and you give small businesses the opportunity is to

compete. Does he represent the ordinary man and woman? He is

fighting for them. He knows how to create jobs and make money. You do

not have to like the man. But you have to acknowledge she knows how to

create jobs. He knows how to make money critically affect -- pretty

effectively as well. Michael is over here. I do not think Trump's

admissions are promising. We have international economies and national

politics. One camp is to make things at the level of the nation state, to

return power to politics. This is the Trumps, the Ukips of the world.

The power is no longer there. Trump's solution, opening coalmines

again, that is the past, not the future. We need to be more

imaginative if we want a better tomorrow. This gentleman, hello.

People like Trump and Theresa May to an extent in this country, Theresa

May has seen an opportunity with a very weak opposition in the Labour

Party, the votes have been haemorrhaging to Ukip. She is trying

to take over the reins from Ukip. Her rhetoric is about trying to

increase the Tory vote might rather than what is good for the

dispossessed. She talks about the just about managing. The black

T-shirt. Good morning. We have heard a lot about misplaced anger. I agree

with those sort of sentiment but how do we deal with this? We have heard

about all these facts and figures, alternative facts, fake news as it

is called, bandied around. I am a teacher. I think the key to this is

to get young people to think critically about what they're

hearing and seeing. I have brought some of my students here today. That

is what we do, we think critically, so they are resilient to some of the

so-called facts and figures. It a vital lesson. Absolutely.

APPLAUSE Have people been lied to? I think

that we should trust people to be able to think critically about what

they are being told. But the idea that the solution is education, that

somehow if we just educate children to be able to see through the other

side, which is all lies, and Arisaig, which is the truth, that we

will solve the problems. Your point is important. We have depoliticise

the massive range of what used to be the bread-and-butter of politics.

And older left-wing idea was that any cook can govern, there is this

idea that politics and economic sets something that every day people

should be able to understand. Now we have outsourced those questions to

technocrats. That is not enough people any more. Instead of

understanding that, the left has dumbed down. The conversation is

about symbolic things, about language. It is not speaking to

everyday people. I completely agree. Lots of these questions, any

economics and politics, it has been siphoned away from people. We're not

having that conversation in. I would agree about the lack of

representation among MPs from people from working-class backgrounds.

Black communities are heavily underrepresented in government. I

think we agree on that point. My point is that this narrative of

divide and rule, blaming the immigrants, is not helping. We need

to think about how we come together. The left would say, Syriza are good,

Kadima are bad. It is the wrong sort of populism. I do not speak for the

left. The left is lots of different people, as is the right. My point is

we do not have the political leaders that will come forward and really

tell us the story of how we can work. And we do work. This is the

world you do not see. Working-class people are growing up together,

going to school together, people are marrying each other. That is not the

Liberal elite. We see that in working-class communities as well.

It is about the pace of change. Those people who feel comfortable

with change, because they have achieved identities, done well at

school, they have successful careers. They can deal with it. Lots

of people see rapid change as a kind of loss. What kind of change the

scene, not just economically, social change? This is not so much about

material things. This is about no longer feeling your valued by

society. All the value has gone on the cognitive elite, people who well

in exams. It is also about group attachments. People do not feel

gripped attachments. They do not play such a high value a national

citizenship because they do not need it so much. For a lot of people, it

is part of the security and familiarity that people want. Is

this generational, because disproportionately older people

voted for Brexit? I do not think so. James Tredwell. Surely it is about

both. We are having these old comparisons of left and right. One

of the themes about the left, the political left and right, is how

close together they have become. Where is the political

representation for what would have been the old side of the left to

say, what we need is national investment, we do not need

austerity, we need a different set? Even now, to represent old-style

social democracy, the welfare state, it is made out as if it is from

North Korea. There has been an absolute conversion that makes

neoliberalism and neoliberal capitalism the only economic system.

Is there a way back? It is not neoliberalism. When investment has

happened, it has not necessarily connected to the people who should

have benefited. That is where Faiza is right, it is the level of

understanding that our politicians have of meeting the needs of the

people they are serving. The last word. There are real issues for us

to be grappling with. People do not like the changes that are coming in

the future. Tony Blair was on the Andrew Marr programme this morning.

Is there a way back for the Blairite Centre? I hope not.

If you have something to say about that debate,

log on to bbc.co.uk/thebigquestions, and follow the link to where you can

We're also debating live this morning in Cardiff: Does

Get tweeting or emailing on those topics now or send us any other

ideas or thoughts you may have about the programme.

Tomorrow, it's International Happiness Day.

Don't worry, being happy is not being made compulsory...yet.

But governments are increasingly interested in measuring

their nation's happiness levels and probing why some countries

Denmark tops the league table of happiest countries.

The UK is 23rd out of 157 nations, beaten by the Scandinavians,

the Dutch, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Ireland, the North

Americans and even some South American countries.

And the UK itself has happiness high and low spots,

with the Welsh borough of Blaenau Gwent, here

in South Wales, having one of the biggest gaps between people

Liverpool, Sunderland and Rotherham are similarly miserable.

Well, researchers have found that the regions in Britain

with the highest "wellbeing inequality" were more likely

This will link to first debate. Michael, when you're talking about

happiness, you said earlier run, it is a positive conscious state. The

easiest way to understand happiness is anything which feels good to you.

Unhappiness is anything which feels bad. Elation and contentment are

different types of positive states, anger and fear are different kinds

of unhappy states. We all have those at different times of the day. I

like being with my family, walking the dog, playing my guitar. It makes

me happy. When I am playing my guitar, the rest of the family are

not happy. Yes, we should be looking at how to maximise happiness

overall. How do you do that? Where we can really start is by trying to

understand what happiness is, and how it works. The standout fight

from the happiness literature, we have been collecting data on this

for the last 60 years. The most surprising thing is that happiness

has not increased. Self-reports of how satisfied people are with their

lives, it has not increased. It has not the crease? It has not

increased. It has stayed flat. Despite the fact we are much richer,

much healthier, we live longer, despite what you might read in the

daily Mail, we are safer than ever before,

we have better technology. We have everything which we think should

make life better, apart from happiness. That should prompt us to

as questions about what is going on. What do we do about this? The

government are taking this seriously. They are setting out

think-tanks, they are going into schools, they are talking about

mindfulness in schools? Allgood? It sounds really good, and that is part

of the reason we are talking about it now. Who's going to say, we

should make everybody miserable. No one say that. I find it interesting.

You would almost take the boxes of the claims that people make. I have

wrote a book about it. Why have they become so powerful and why are they

made in the same over over? One of those is the so-called paradox of

prosperity. Happiness levels has stayed the same in spite of

increased technology, all these things that should make us happy,

increased wealth. But they never say, in spite of the fact that in

the United States blacks can drink out of the same water fountain,

still no happier, women have more freedom, still no happier. They do

not make that argument. Why do we always choose those particular

things? It reflects the fact we do not have a positive vision for

society any more. We are disoriented from those things that used to be,

wealth, well for the population, it will set people free, generalising.

That is something that the left and right used to agree on. Could

capitalism deliver the goods, that was the disagreement. Now it is

difficult to think of a left-wing position that sees wealth in a

positive way. The debate about prosperity becomes a bipartisan

thing. Most people can agree on it. It depends on this view of

happiness. Acquired characteristics? My parents got an eight on the

happiness scale. I was born in the 1980s, so I should be and nine.

Absolutely not. Everyone is born into a world that is new to them.

You do not build on the happiness level. Does GDP have something to do

with it, the wealth of the nation? People get over obsessed with GDP.

In the 1960s, Robert Kennedy said, GDP measures everything except the

things that make our existence worthwhile. It is not a big-screen

television, it is a work in the forest? It as a whole range of

things. When we are constructing policy, we try to compartmentalise.

People do not existing categories. People'slives are diverse. A whole

range of things make you happy, the impact on the quality of your life.

Are obsessive focus on GDP, the figures we need to increase, the

numbers go up and everyone will be happy, of course, it is about the

economy, but not just about the economy. There is this

disorientation towards what that actually means. It reflects the

depoliticisation of the economic ground. Leave that up to the

technocrats. You worry about your family and your little microcosm.

GDP really does matter. People trying to deflect attention from

that, when the economy does not grow, who pays? It is not the only

thing that matters. How can we construct public policy

that recognises that nuances? It is an impossible dream, something that

makes one group content will make another pretty miserable? If you

limit the use of motor cars, a lot of environmentalists would say, yes,

get in there. People trying to get to work, people on the school run,

petrol heads would be very arrestable. Indeed. I was hoping we

would stick to your guitar playing. Relating to what was going on, we

can think about GDP, a big picture measure of how society is doing.

When we can think about the distribution of happiness in it. You

began by talking about Denmark, routinely top of the world happiness

index. What is it about Denmark we don't have. Denmark is one of the

most equal countries in the world. So you are talking about something

which you can reliably say people have a stake in. And traditionally

thinking about public goods and the kind of society they are, which is

more collectivist than ours has now become. Denmark has a way of

thinking about a shared project, it is not trouble-free, it doesn't iron

out your difficulties, but it is more meaningful to talk about

happiness in Denmark because it's not so unequally distribution

culling distributed in society. In Wales, why do people feel like they

have been left behind or get a raw deal? Because they live in a

society, firstly where there are huge disparities in wealth between

them and others at the other end of the scale. There is a very poor

public conversation. Is it pretty much coveting what other people

have? It will feel relative, you will be happier in a society where

you are in the same game as everybody else. But somebody who is

not in the same game, but happiness has gone? It is about a society that

places a huge amount of emphasis on your individual success being tied

to your place in the consumer marketplace. If you fail to have the

latest items, you don't have a value. That creates a continuing,

nagging dissatisfaction for people, they continually feel that... I

don't think that is a problem. We Prodl attire is the dissatisfaction

and the feelings. Happy people quote Karl Marx, house might be great or

small, as long as other houses are equally small. Then people were in a

castle and then it is reduced to a halt and we say, Karl Marx says

don't covet other people, but what Karl Marx is saying is that cattle

could be yours, go out and take it. The happiness people, I love that.

Where would we be without sadness as well? We would have no arts, where

would Marcy B. Liz, I know you want to talk, you work in companies to

try to get people to focus on well-being, content must

unhappiness? I will be accused of being part of this happiness people

think. I agree with the fact that GDP will focus on economic growth

per se, we need economic growth when growth is needed, there is a

brilliant economist who say, we have an economy grows whether or not we

thrive. We an economy where we thrive, whether or not it grows. It

feels like a small shift, but it is huge. At the moment, everything we

do, health, economy, the private sector and the public sector is

judged on whether or not it contributes to economic growth. In

some spaces we need economic growth, in Blaenau Gwent, people desperately

need growth in economy that benefits them. But we should all be judging

ourselves, each other, our businesses and politicians by

whether or not they are doing the sorts of things that help us to

thrive as individuals or communities. It is an everybody

thing. We need to make that shift. Gideon, there are people who think

this is a load of... Careful what word I use here, baloney, they think

it is a bit mind-numbing. If this can raise our content levels to

Denmark, that is a good thing? Broadly, I would agree. We have to

be careful on how simple we think that is. What we did to promote one

group's happiness will be at the expense of another. It is not a

fluffy thing. What it recognises is that actually we have a piece of

legislation in Wales which recognises well-being. Don't talk

about happiness per say, but happiness and well-being is

intrinsically linked. We have the well-being of future generations

act. We have to think about the social, economic and environment and

cultural situations. So you can put that in public policy-making terms.

You cannot legislate to make your inner being happy, but you can take

decisions in a way... What do you want to do that he cannot do now to

make is happier? If you think about the way we construct towns and

villages. Will we do it in a way that will build a whole load of

concrete monstrosities that don't have access to public space

facilitate community interaction or engagement. Which don't have

environmentally friendly public transport links. Or, will we

construct them in a way that thinks about those different facets and

relate back to well-being and happiness. That is what they were

doing when they built Milton Keynes. The lady on the back row, it is

great to be in Wales, a lot others Celtic people are not happy unless

we are sad. Good morning. Are you one of the happiness people? I think

I am a pragmatist, a realist. Whilst people don't have employment, food

on the table and people don't feel safe and they don't have any meaning

in their life, when communities are destroyed and weak into fourth

generations... People are starving in East Africa? Blaenau Gwent, there

are the food banks, Cardiff, all over South Wales, austerity is

biting really hard. You cannot have happiness, you cannot have happiness

if your fundamental basic human needs are not being met and that is

a political issue. John Rees-Evans, what about this idea of people

feeling they stifled. I know you say political has gone mad. What

concerns me about this conversation, that is we are looking at

circumstances as the cause of whether or not people are happy.

Circumstances are important, but what is much more important is

relationships. I know of somebody who has said that if he divorced his

wife, he would be ?3500 better off each year. I think it is incredibly

upsetting to me. This is because of government benefits and whatever.

Legislation doesn't do anything to encourage people to stay married.

The traditional values of this country what I believe have been

responsible for our success, our prosperity. Family break-up... Is it

same-sex relationships, relationships in communities. What

is the type of relationship most people can identify with? Most

people like marriage. Having positive relationships, healthy

relationships is what makes us happy I merrily. Circumstances become a

distant second. My have difficulty with the definition of happiness. An

averaged out positive feeling, over a long period of time, I could

understand. But maintaining relationships requires us to do

things we don't feel good about. Doing our duty, working late at

night to make sure we finish a project... Is a traditional marriage

the bedrock of society... I thought you might respond like that.

Relationships are important and do affect our happiness at an

individual level. Well-being, taking it alongside measures of economic

growth, it reminds us what it is for. Policymakers forget what it is

for. It is not just about growing and it's not just about a segment of

the population getting more money, it is about thinking overall what is

happening. Are we creating the right environment for all people to

flourish and have the chance of happiness? Last word, Michael. Are

you happy with that debate? It has shown some of the things which are

significant. There is this thought that if you focus on happiness, in

means you are not caring about misery and people'slives. Stepford

wives? What the literature is meant to shine a light on, you get a story

of how inter-personal relationships are important, employment and

unemployment is a driver of unhappiness. Open spaces? Yes, what

comes out significantly is not the material things of the interpersonal

relationships, it is mental health, so our relationships with ourselves.

Not sidestepping anything of what she is talking about. That is the

danger, it redefines inequality as a subjective things. And that is the

debate over. Thank you very much indeed.

You can join in all this morning's debates by logging

on to bbc.co.uk/the big questions and following the link

Or you can tweet using the hashtag bbctbq

Tell us what you think about our last Big Question too ?

And if you'd like to apply to be in the audience at a future show you

We're in Oxford next week, Brighton on April 2nd,

Some of you may have heard or seen Thordis Elva and Tom Stranger

discussing their book 'South of Forgiveness' on radio

During a teenage romance in 1996, Tom, then 18,

Now they both want people to understand the shame, blame,

silence, and suffering they each went through and the difference

forgiveness, decades later, has brought to each of them.

Natalie, could you forgive, in that sense, in that way, somebody who has

raped you? I think, the first thing is, in your introduction you said

about the shame and the pain they both went through, which immediately

says the pain of the rapist on the pain of the person who was raped are

equal and something we should be caring about equally, when one has

inflicted that on another. We have to be aware of that. Incredible

thing about their story, the reason it has airtime, is not sadly about

Thordis and her choices, for once a man has said I raped somebody and

saying up -- standing up and saying that. We shouldn't be applauding

that, it is horrific. Do you respect him for that? No, he is a rapist.

One of the big issues, women are socialised to be forgiving, be kind

and caring and not have anger. One of the things that is liberating for

women is anger, rage and fearlessness. What I would say, my

personal experience is, I did forgive. You were in an abusive

relationship? Yes. Why and how did you forgive? When I talk about rage

and anger, women are not given access or permission to rage and

anger. We are socialised into having to forgive and socialised into

saying, that is what you should do. We see women who forgive and kind

loving and a better class of women and that is how this story has

panned out between Thordis Elva and Tom Stranger. That is not a model I

want to put out. Forgiveness can be liberating, but actually forgiveness

can be a tool or weapon. For the majority of women it becomes a

weapon to further perpetuate the suffering they have been subjected

to. But it can be liberating. In my experience, it has been liberating

but I wouldn't want to make it a model for how I live my life. What

does it mean in your experience to forgive? Do you communicate that

forgiveness to the other person, or are you internalising something, now

I will move on and deal with it in a certain way? When I was with my

ex-husband I thought forgiveness was accepting what ever he did to me,

accepting his behaviour and then it will change if I love him enough.

For a lot of women, that is the journey they have been none.

Forgiveness for me, understanding forgiveness started by owning how

terrible what he did to me was over a period of four years. Saying it is

horrendous and it will affect me for the rest of my life and making it

visible, the pain of that. Forgiveness is a form of denial.

We need to be looking at them or longer term thing. Forgiveness is

not nullifying quantities -- the consequences of someone's behaviour

towards me. There are consequences. It is not about me communicating

that he is forgiven, it is about me not wishing him harm, but putting

safeguards in place to prevent him from hurting me. Finn, you are

nodding. Do you agree? Could you forgive someone in the same way that

Thordis has? The story of Thordis Elva is her own personal, individual

journey. She states that in some ways that has helped her to feel

more free. I suppose I am also interested in how we can free the

whole of society from epidemic levels of male violence against

women and children, because an estimated 80,000 rapes every year

take place, over 400,000 sexual assaults, two women every week in

this country murdered by a violent male partner. Forgiving is about

self-help. It is a journey of self help. We should support women to do

that and feel in control of themselves and their lives. I do not

agree with scrutinising women even more than they are already

scrutinised. As well as self-help, we need help from society, we need

to heal the problems and fractures in society that cause these

horrendous crimes in the first place. Why is there this epidemic as

you put it? Because women are unequal. And men are socialised to

have entitlement or women's bodies, to be allowed to do that, and that

is perpetuated by a wider societal structure, which undermines women's

sense of agency. That is what Tom Stranger said. He felt that as a

man, it was a victory for him, he had a right over his girlfriend's

body because he was dating her. They had been out on a night out, they

had been drinking alcohol, and he would not be a proper young man if

he did not have sex with her at the end of the night. He said himself he

felt pressured, that he did not enjoy it greatly, but he felt that

is what he was supposed to do, and it was what he deserved, as if the

body of that woman was his birthright. That was his own words.

Society allows that to happen. If you look at the other things that

are defined as hate crimes, disability, race, misogyny is not a

hate crime. On a daily basis, all of the women in this audience will have

encountered some form of sexism, whether that is catcalling,

something going on in work, a whole range of things. Is that not quite a

leap from what we are talking about? THEY ALL SPEAK AT ONCE

It is not. Could you forgive a terrorist? I also believe in

rehabilitation, giving people chances. I agree with Tom Stranger

speaking about what he has done. Can I picked up on that point. Peter,

you were chief executive of the prison Fellowship. You visit people

in prisons. Could you forgive someone who killed your child? It is

a question I have asked myself a lot. I work with people who go into

prison who have forgiven people who have killed their children. I think

of a couple. They have been on this programme. They are amazing people.

We kept a week, they have managed to go on that journey of forgiveness. I

think they do it, because when we forgive, we look at the future, and

we say, the past is the past, it needs punishing and dealing with, we

do not see it did not happen, but we look to the future and say, I do not

want to hold the sense of revenge in my heart. Does it not

leave the person that you forgive, let them off the hook? It does the

opposite. You cannot forgive unless you first admit that something that

needs forgiving has happened. You must never minimise or try and take

it away, say it did not matter in any way whatsoever. You say, this is

horrible, but I will still choose to forgive. It requires a degree of

remorse from the individual, as well. Not necessarily. We will come

back to you in a minute, Peter. It requires a degree of remorse? In

order to make that step towards forgiveness, someone needs to say, I

have also done something pretty spectacularly wrong. I will hold my

hands up to that. As a criminologist, I come across a lot

of offenders and not all of them are willing to do that. I have concerns

when you have government saying, we will force offenders to say sorry.

That takes away the self recognition. Do you get fake

remorse? I think you do. Some people are incredibly good at playing the

system. A famous example, an Austrian serial killer who had been

convicted of murder and came out. Who was it? He was an Austrian

serial killer. He expressed Morrison became a famed penal reform

correspondent. When he was doing that and talking about the level of

the Morsi showed, he went on to kill more women before taking his own

life. He built his reputation in part, at least, by expressing fake

remorse. That is one of the problems. It is very difficult to

subjectively get the extent with remorse, whether someone believes

what they are saying. You have to define terms. Forgiveness can come

in different ways. In the Christian faith, you talk about divine

forgiveness, someone asking forgiveness from God, and that is

freely given in terms of love. What you're talking about is a two-way

restorative relationship. That is good. It affects the other person

and gives them a chance to move on in their life. You can also forgive

without ever talking to somebody. It is not a transaction? No. With a

violent relationship, someone who has been hurt badly, that maybe the

best thing. Is forgiveness the right for that?

THEY ALL SPEAK AT ONCE Yes. That is the thing, a

recognition that is for the individual. Forgiveness is to give

and receive. I would say reconciliation is what you're

talking about, when both parties come together. Forgiveness is about

an attitude to that person. Go on. I am a counsellor. I have a

wide-ranging age group of clients but I mainly work with children who

have been victimised in some way. The key for them to start moving

forward is to recognise that the event that happened, and no longer

see themselves as a victim. Once they have given up that role, the

person who carried out the act is no longer the perpetrator of their

status. Maybe after that we can start looking at forgiveness if it

is going to help them to move on. APPLAUSE

Self-definition. Anyone else? The removal of shame is important. If a

victim feels shame or responsibility themselves, that is bad for them. I

totally take on board that. There is a process that you have to

necessarily go through that recognises that you're not

responsible. Whether that requires you to forgive the individual that

has perpetrated a crime? What is wrong with saying that

someone has been victimised. We need to take the stigma away from lots of

crimes and especially sexual violence. If someone can go into

work in the morning and say, I was mugged the other week, I had this

amount stolen, that is terrible, I hope it goes all right. We would not

say, I am not a victim. Friends of mine, they have been debating this,

who have been sexually abuse, they do not want to be called victims.

They are survivors. Yes, they live to see another day, they are

survivors. We also need to acknowledge that they are victims of

crime. We need to remove the stigma that surrounds that. The shame that

women are meant to feel is part of the burden that they alone have to

carry. It takes away from their happiness. What about children of

whatever gender who are abuse? I agree. Anthony, we heard from Peter,

a man who is inspired by his faith. He was talking about the forgiveness

of Jesus. Jesus forgive. Yes, but it is far more complex than we have

been saying. The issue is not just about gender. It seems to me that

forgiveness is overrated. Most people would quote the words of

Jesus on the cross, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they

do. That is a great example of unilateral forgiveness, they would

argue. It is not an example of forgiveness, it is an example of

Jesus claims -- Jesus praying for the good of those who were telling

him. He did not pray for anyone. He prayed that in the course of time

God would forgive. It is a prayer that lays aside Justice in terms of

what God is doing. But divine forgiveness, as with human

forgiveness, is always proceeded with repentance, genuine sorrow that

is lived out. As has been rightly said, how do we know what genuine

repentance is? There is a fantastic book by an American, it is called

Faking It, in which the author describes how clever people are in

faking repentance. Repentance has to be demonstrated, it has to be

appropriate, it has to be modelled over a long period of time. Within

that context, there can be a movement towards forgiveness. You

mention justice. Too often people do not see justice. If we are talking

about women and children and the difficulties they face in taking

cases forward, the low numbers we have for rape convictions in this

country, Justice holds people back, not just as individuals, but the

whole of society is held back by not giving justice to who have been

victimised. How would you increase the number of rate convictions in

this country? I would improve the police. -- rape convictions. There

are problems around the number of people who report rape. There has

been problems with the police designating rapes as no crime. The

CPS does not take cases forward based on stereotypical assumptions

about women's sexuality. What was she wearing, had she been drinking?

We are still dealing with these stereotypes. You have been listening

with great interest. What do you think? I think there is an issue

right now around moral panic, all around rape. Do you understand the

definition of that? Yes, and I am really sorry. How do you come up

against that? What do you mean by moral panic? I think there is a

tendency now to suddenly, I do not disagree that rape is a horrible

thing, but there is a tendency to make the barriers around what

constitutes harassment fuzzy. We build up this idea that there is a

massive epidemic of male violence, but what has been defined as male

violence is a little funny. That is because there is an epidemic of male

violence. THEY ALL SPEAK AT ONCE

Excuse me, everybody. Ashley. That is why I was afraid to

say anything. When I was a teenager, walking down the street in the days

of Britney Spears, with the tummy tuck, ID cards would go by and

whistle. One of my friends turned around and said, thank you. I said,

you're not supposed to like that. There is a little bit of bad faith

around these things. We are supposed to be really offended by male

attention, but actually, some women in male attention. You have changed

what you're talking about. Ladies and gentlemen, what I need to do, I

need to try and get in touch with the BBC and get an extension on this

debate. We have just entered some fascinating territory but we are out

of time. Thank you very much indeed for your contributions this morning.

As always, the debates will continue online and on Twitter.

Next week we're in Oxford, so do join us then.

But for now, it's goodbye from Cardiff and have a great Sunday.