2009 and 1939 – How do we avoid political crisis after an economic crash?

Saturday 4th April 2009 | 4pm | Garden Marquee

• Watch our YouTube Channel
• Shortlist Debate: Are political parties bankrupt? Economic emergency and the next election
• Buy Coming Up for Air

The seventh of the Orwell Prize's events at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival 2009.

'I see it all. I see the posters and the food-queues, and the castor oil and the rubber truncheons and the machine-guns squirting out of bedroom windows. Is it going to happen? No knowing. Some days it's impossible to believe it. Some days I say to myself that it's just a scare got up by the newspapers. Some days I know in my bones there's no escaping it.' Orwell's 1939 novel, Coming Up For Air, was written with war looming, a war created in part by political tensions that were the shrapnel of a global economic crash. With a credit crunch and global downturn now upon us, will political crisis follow? Is it going to happen, or is there some way of escaping it?

• Chaired by Professor Jean Seaton (Director of the Orwell Prize)
• Dr Patricia Clavin (Jesus College, University of Oxford)
• Will Hutton (The Observer, Executive Vice Chair of the Work Foundation)
• Mark Thompson (author of The White War and A Paper House, editor of Television Across Europe: More Channels, Less Independence)

Part 1

 

Jean Seaton and Patricia Clavin

Part 2

 

Mark Thompson

Part 3

 

Will Hutton

Part 4

 

Will Hutton

Part 5

 

Discussion

Part 6

 

Discussion

Part 7

 

Discussion

Part 8

 

Discussion

Part 9

 

Discussion