Brown and the Importance of Being British Gerry Hassan Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy Winter 2008 There is a golden thread which runs through British history, of the individual standing firm against tyranny and then of the individual participating in their society. It is a thread that runs from that long-ago day in Runnymede in 1215, on to the Bill of Rights in 1689 to not just one, but four great Reform Acts within less than a hundred years. Gordon Brown, Hugo Young Memorial Lecture, December 2005 ‘Come on,’ he said.’ ‘It’s not a trick question. Just

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A short history of the future: the story of the beginning of the break-up of the UK Gerry Hassan Chapter in Mark Perryman (ed.), Imagined Nation: England after Britain, Lawrence and Wishart 2008 I think the unravelling, should it come, would probably be a protracted nightmare. It would be a divorce, a division of the spoils on a kind of epic, spectacular scale. If we think of such issues as the army, things like British embassies overseas, Britain’s permanent representation on the United Nations – all of these things would have to be unravelled and negotiated and fixed somehow.

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A Scottish Spring for Independence? Gerry Hassan Sunday Times, November 18th 2007 In a week in which it became quicker to get from London to Paris by rail than Edinburgh to London it is not surprising that Scotland and England are beginning to feel more like separate worlds. Alex Salmond this week made the prediction that Scotland will be independent by 2017 and set out to woo the wavers he needs to achieve this. He has made these sort of predictions before, but this time things are different with the SNP in power in Edinburgh and the Union slowly cracking

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The Dreaming City: The First Step To A Better World Is Imagining One Gerry Hassan Soundings: A Journal of Politics and Culture 'Tales of the City' Special Issue WInter 2007 Thinking of the future is one of the characteristics of being human through the ages and different societies. Imagining different worlds can be seen in the novels of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne and in the modernist visions of films such as Metropolis and Minority Report with their urban utopian/distopian worlds of flying cars and isolated individuals. However, these powerful public images are far removed from the world

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Glasgow 2020: Final Project Paper Gerry Hassan, Melissa Mean and Charlie Tims Glasgow 2020, a 'project of mass imagination' - which  shows how new media, and community outreach, could be combined to generate and sustain this new culture of seriousness. Pat Kane, The Democratic Interact, 2007 1. Introduction This project paper covers the following areas: •    The idea of ‘the official future’ •    The importance of story •    Learning from the process •    Learning from the content •    Glasgow possible futures •    Assemblies of hope •    Lessons for public agencies •    Dissemination Continue Reading Glasgow 2020: Final Project Paper

THE STORIES OF THE FUTURE GERRY HASSAN Glasgow 2020 set out with a belief in the power and importance of story - of story as a way to develop mass imagination, to contribute towards the reimagining of Glasgow and the articulation of a non-institutional view of the city, and to further the understanding and practice of futures literacy. There are numerous ways of developing creative discussion and dialogue. Many of these are used in scenario planning, forecasting and strategic corporate decision-making. Such techniques include the idea of the ‘strategic conversation’ which in the words of Peter Schwartz is based on

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THE OPEN CITY When the mood of the music changes, the walls of the city shake. Late 1960s slogan, attributed to Plato INTRODUCTION The first step to a better future is imagining one. Glasgow 2020 has been a practical experiment to find an alternative to the closed city by opening up Glasgow’s future to the mass imagination of its citizens. This chapter shares the storylines generated for the future of Glasgow and explores what it and other cities can learn from the process. It then asks how bottom-up storylines can be turned into action and begins to map

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Changin’ Scotland No.  10  March 16-18th 2007 Phil Hanlon on health and well-being, Peter Lamont on the psychology of magic, Zosia Fraser and Ola Witkowska on the Polish experience in Scotland, David Pratt on the Palestinian intifada, Neil MacKay on ‘the war on terror’, the film ‘Shooters’ about young people in the Highlands with Jenny McBain. Music from the Burach Band and with an extra attraction on the Thursday nite Michael Marra.

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After Blair, After Socialism and the Search for a New Story Gerry Hassan Introductory Chapter in Gerry Hassan (ed.), After Blair: Politics after the New Labour Decade, Lawrence and Wishart in association with Compass 2006 The historian’s puzzle is why the Labour Party lasted so long: what could more perfectly illustrate the principle of social inertia? Like democracy itself, the Labour Party was a reaction against the feudal tradition. It arose out of the old working class as it was called, which had such solidarity because its name belied it: it was not so much class as caste. Michael

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Labour, Britishness and concepts of ‘nation’ and ‘state’ Gerry Hassan Chapter in Gerry Hassan (ed.), After Blair: Politics after the New Labour Decade, Lawrence and Wishart in association with Compass 2006 Introduction The Labour Party for most of its history has not thought very much about the concepts of ‘nation’, ‘state’ and Britishness. It has tended to assume these as a given and unproblematic. Labour has never mounted a plausible and persuasive counter-story of what the UK and idea of ‘Britain’ means. Instead, it has adopted a narrative of the British nation and state which has been shaped by the

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