Do speak to strangers! Why Speakers’ Corner

Like most Londoners, I do not generally talk to strangers – especially  on public transport.  However, if I want to speak to them I can go to Speakers ‘ Corner in Hyde Park.  It is an area where anyone can speak on any subject they want whilst others listen, debate or just heckle.  I remember going there as a student to hear everyone from Christian evangelists to Trotskyite proselytisers. The speakers I liked the most though were the ones who were  happy to discuss their own ideas.  Good ones challenged me to think anew about subjects such as Britain’s history in Africa. The best ones got a debate going with the crowd around them.  OK, some of them involved conspiracy theories about aliens!

I may be a Londoner, but I am also a diplomat and it is essential for me to talk to strangers.  For diplomats to be effective, we need to go beyond talking just to elites. We need to explain our ideas more widely and we need to hear more widely what people think about them.  Tom Fletcher, the British Ambassador in Beirut is leading the way in my Foreign Ministry on how to do this.  My colleagues at the UN in New York are also helping to demystify multilateral diplomacy through their extensive tweeting (MLG and UKMIS NY).  It is a worldwide trend. Here in Brazil, the Itamaraty (Foreign Ministry) have launched a website  to engage the public on the crucial issue of UN reform .  If you want to find out more about ‘digital diplomacy’ I would recommend both the FCO’s digital diplomacy blog and this interview with the US pioneer Alec Ross.

So with this blog we want to talk to strangers.  I mean that in the nicest way (!!!) to refer to people we at the British Embassy do not usually have contact with. Like good speakers at Speakers’ corner we will want to challenge you with our ideas on foreign policy. And like a good session at Speakers’ Corner we will want you to talk back to us. Tell us what you think of our posts or if there are other issues you want us to cover. How far should you go? English case law has a great definition that can guide us in our virtual Speakers’ Corner. Freedom of speech could not be limited to the inoffensive but extended also to “the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome, and the provocative, as long as such speech did not tend to provoke violence”.  Well that is a good list to start with!