Vehemently disagreeing comes naturally to many of us, and the fraught times we live in often make it seem easier to find divisions than bridging points. But as noble as it is to stand up for our beliefs, there’s also a wearing quality in being defined by our disagreements. From Brexit to the endless culture wars, these spats and blame games are easier to start than to end.
Like a lot of columnists, I have been booked for many pro-and-con debates on the “classic” dividing lines over the past decade. So since 2018, I have taken a break from the weekly wrangles over rights and wrongs to do something a bit different on the summer airwaves.
Across the Red Line on BBC Radio 4 came about because myself and the show’s producer, Phil Tinline, felt that many public formats of debate were frustrating, even stultifying. It was easier to get locked in your own worldview and seek a volley of ammunition to fire at opponents than to get to the reasons why reasonable people can end up in a bubble of the like-minded. A joke about needing conflict resolution experts sparked the idea of a show that would focus on why people hold the views they do, and what it might feel like to have convictions very different from our own.
We would ask participants who are often defined by what they stand for or against to be guided by our experts in “active listening” techniques – I am blessed with two wonderful conflict resolution practitioners, Gabrielle Rifkind and Louisa Weinstein – in order to explore the roots of the other side’s convictions, and then (the fun part) swap positions to express the opposing view.
This season, we’ve covered immigration, with two speakers who both have migrant family backgrounds but diverging views on how much of it is good for Britain. Previously, we’ve abolished (or not) the monarchy and tussled about taxation. And we’ve also tried to get to the root of subtler themes that shape our time – has poor old “centrist dad” had his Blairite day? And is it a blessing or curse to seek fame?
I remember in our first episode, Hugh Muir (now the executive editor of the Guardian’s Opinion section) and Charles Moore, the high Tory commentator and former editor at the Telegraph, addressed whether it is OK to be wary of those from different backgrounds. Muir used to work at the Telegraph and he said Charles really hadn’t realised what it was like for a young black man to work in an all-white newsroom, or to venture out into un-diverse villages for reporting assignments.
The breakthrough for me was hearing Moore reflect, after the role-swapping part, that if he had had Muir’s experiences, he would think differently on some things: a simple recognition, but one that doesn’t always come about automatically. It’s not about a “mea culpa” so much as an “I see better where you are coming from”. Watching two very convinced people trying out each other’s way of thinking puts a different lens on why we clash and how we can still communicate. A listener wrote that she liked the sense of people “working hard at their disagreements”.
I remember Polly Toynbee worrying about the part where we ask the participants to express the view of the other person. She worried that if someone switched on halfway through the show on assisted dying when she was attacking the practice, she might be mistaken for her opponent. But taking the other side is a key method in conflict resolution – and very hard to do well. Listening back to parish councillor Jackie Weaver, of lockdown Zoom fame, swapping sides to argue the boomer case against Conservative Home’s Henry Hill on the topic of boomers v millennials, the airwaves crackled.
Has the format worked its magic on me? For sure. I hear more of the areas now in debates where there could be commonality or understanding. I recognise better the “cliff edge” points of our arguments – where we know we are on crumbling ground and prefer not to interrogate our flaws or defaults. And the way formative experiences or moments in our life stories have a long tail in forming opinions we might think of as strictly rational. And listening, it turns out, is a muscle we need to exercise if it isn’t just going to be about waiting for your own chance to speak.
In our episode this week, we had Peter Tatchell defending disruptive protest as a veteran of the clashes over apartheid and clause 28. He was talking to Bruce Anderson, who thinks that his own time as a firebrand protester in Northern Ireland created more strife than it resolved. They didn’t always see eye to eye. But my sense is that they left with a better idea of why someone opposed to their opinion feels so strongly. That’s a small leap forwards.
Anne McElvoy is executive editor of Politico. Across the Red Line is available on @BBCSounds
