Baroness Beeban Kidron: “Democracy is no longer representative. It is bought.”

0:02This is a global production. TV, broadcasts, newspapers, whatever. We've handed it all over and now we don't have a public square, we've got a private square. You encountered a young girl who just said, how do they know I like red trainers but they don't know I'm 12? The public anger about AI, the parental anger about social media, the fury of young people about where their jobs are going. You have been warning about the dangers that are now in the papers every single day for well over a decade. All this growth in tech is not growth, it's transfer.

0:44Beban Kidron, welcome. Baroness Kidron, no less. Welcome. Thank you for having me here. It's lovely to see you. I mean, it's hard to know. We'll start, we'll begin at the beginning because there's nowhere else to begin. but you have worn so many hats in the course of your life and your career that um i don't know which one we're going to end up focusing upon more so we'll begin at the end in fact and say that your new book uses how big tech took control and how to fight back is i mean it's interesting for a whole bunch of reasons but it did strike me that you must be torn between oh better late than never everybody and a sense of vindication because you've been on this mission on this crusade since well at the very least the beginning of the last decade yeah well listen i'm i do have that moment i go what took you so long yes and the thing that irritates me the most is when a minister comes to the dispatch box and says we couldn't possibly have anticipated or we don't know enough or we have to see how this rolls out and i go no we don't we understand we've known for a long time.

1:50It's political. It's not practical. Stop pretending it's practical. And so actually, I really welcome this moment. I really celebrate the moment. I think that the public anger about AI, the parental anger about social media, the fury of young people about where their jobs are going. I think that's really proper. It's really important. And I would say right from the get go, that's where my book ends up. It says we have to take democratic control back. And you know what, guys, that means you, you who are listening, not people like me who have this privileged place in parliament. So I say bring it on.

2:34But you have been warning about the dangers that are now in the papers every single day for well over a decade. I have. I have. I walked into my kitchen 2012 was the moment when a smartphone became the price point that an adult might give one to a child. I walked into my kitchen and there were four 15-year-old girls not talking. And I just thought, why aren't they talking? I mean, I've never seen four 15-year-old girls not talking. and then I realized they were looking at the phone and I had this thought I just it just popped in my mind and it and I thought oh I wonder what it's going to be like to grow up here like in my kitchen here and there and then I went where is there and that idea that idea that there was another there at the end of the phone that I didn't know I didn't know what it was that changed my life because at that point I was a filmmaker I was a film director I lived between UK and Hollywood I was having a great time thank you very much but I picked up my camera asking myself the question where was there I made a film about teenagers and the internet in real life and by the time I got to the end of that year because I spent hundreds of hours with kids in bedrooms and doing whatever it was they were doing but but somewhere along there I realized that that there was an absolute generational injustice and it was wrong it came out in 2013 just to just to sort of keep thumping this drum about you having been at the very very vanguard of the warnings and you did you immersed yourself in the lives of these young people some of the things that you unearthed in that film and that you broadcast in that film were um I mean almost unbearable you know talk about child sex abuse videos circulating in a primary school we learn about some of the things that parents had absolutely no idea that children were being exposed to some parents of course still don't and then sometimes i can't remember whether it was in that film or not sometimes it's quite a an outwardly innocuous aperçu that that cuts to the heart of the issue when you you encountered a young girl who just said how do they know i like red trainers but they don't know I'm 12.

4:57Yeah, yeah. Whoa, that's the problem right there. I think that is the problem. It's like, it's like there's so much sort of denial. Yeah. And then at the same time, promise. And you suddenly realize that they're promising this is really personalized. And then they're denying that they're having a go just at you. And you kind of go through through that again and again and again. And, and one of my favorite ones of those is actually, you know, a lot of us who are a bit older absolutely love the internet, you know, in its previous 1.0 form. And we really did believe, you know, that it was going to be, you know, a place where people could actually get rid of the gatekeepers and communes, you know, in a broader way.

5:47And we'd have access for all, all of that. And then it was a kid. I mean, this is, you know, out of the mouths of babes. You know, it was a kid who said to me, I don't know why they keep on looking for technical solutions. Couldn't they just turn that shit off? And actually, that has been at the heart of my political practice ever since that a lot of what's wrong with the internet is the things that they do to make it commercial. And they could, guess what? Just turn it off. They don't have to introduce, you know, a grown man like you to primary age children. You could just stop doing that. You know, you don't have to send notifications all the way through the night, keep people awake.

6:34Like sleep deprivation is torture in war. Sleep deprivation is a norm in our society now. Think about that. They could just turn it off. and I just think that's really really important to think about when we hear our politicians saying oh not now it's quite uplifting as well when you when you look at the size of the mountain and think that it's too high to even bother trying to scale when you think that getting this genie back in the bottle is a fool's errand actually some of the solutions that you have come up with and continue to come up with are relatively straightforward like you say just flick that switch they're not going to do it voluntarily so pass legislation that compels them to do it I think that's right.

7:15And I mean, I do remember, you know, six months in, you know, I'd been to every school showing the film as much as I could, you know, doing that thing. Because I thought if I said it loud enough, the world would understand, not realizing at that point, just how much lobbying went on, how much, how bought off our politicians were, etc, etc. et cetera. And my husband sat me down and he goes, he goes, I just want to check one middle aged woman against Silicon Valley. And he goes, are you sure? And I actually did turn around to him and I went, you know, pain of consciousness, love. You know, once you see something, you can't unsee it.

7:58And it is true that I didn't absolutely decide to put down my camera and become a campaigner and a politician but that's what happened and and i say that because i i find that really important you know in these david and goliath situations actually you just need good people to start walking forward and doing the bit they can and and i think that the answers are a bit more simple than they'd have us believe there are obvious parallels with some other issues aren't there like i suppose climate change most obviously tobacco the effort that's put into persuading people that things are fine versus the the often self-funded or or fringe figures who are like sort of standing in the middle of the crowd going no no no they're really not they're really not and then you just have to hope that the crowd gets bigger um it makes your first sort of acclaimed film carrie greenham home That brings it into a kind of perfect perspective, really, that you're joining in with people and being inspired by people who were doing precisely that, who were standing in a crowd of borderline consensus and going, no, no, this isn't good.

9:12But we'll come to that. We'll back up first all the way to the beginning. North London, 1961. I mean, it's almost if this was in one of your scripts, you would probably send it back for being too implausible. North London Jewish Marxist theorist father a mother involved in radical publishing this is straight out of central casting people I know and it's funny people you know often go you know what what is your heritage and I can just I can say I I own everything you've just said in that last sentence I love it and I'm proud of it and um but my brother and sister are very very different And they didn't, in a sense, take the lessons I took.

9:55But the thing that I took from that upbringing was my father's chant, which was live in the world as if it was a better place than it is and as if it was the place you wanted it to be. and for whatever reason that is like through me like writing in a stick of rock if I am disheartened if I am told that I'm an absolute idiot that nobody's ever going to listen to what I have to say I kind of go no this is me living in the world the way I want it to be and I am going to put everything, strenuous everything, into making it the world I think it should be. And I'll be honest, I get a lot of pleasure from that.

10:49I get a lot of pride from that. And do you know what? I get a lot of thanks. And I feel like I'm the lucky one, not the brave one. How did he enact that mantra? How did he live that life? so my dad he was you know he was a really clever man and he he was a political theorist as you said he started a political party he started a publishing house he but he actually was always interested in everything so he he was the first person to start publishing the whole of the play you know uh at the theater so the royal court they used to publish the program but the whole of the play. So the playwright got their words out.

11:33He did something called the Little Red Diary, which was diaries on different subjects. And in the various days of the day, you'd find out what the suffragettes had been up to, or what the eco warriors have been up to and so on. And I think he saw culture, politics, you know, and fairness, you know, and reordering the political economy, all as one big thing and I think that's maybe something that I took from him. I misread the notes when I was swatting up earlier. It was described as a household shaped by books, debates, ideas and a belief that the world could be changed. I read it as a household shaped by books, diabetes, ideas and a belief that the world could be changed.

12:19No diabetes in our house. No, I'll be to clarify, but you moved to Hull fairly young, where your dad took up a post in Hull, and that involved transporting the whole family. Yeah, and we actually lived in a farming village in the East Riding. And I think we were, you know, we were definitely the first Jews in the village. We were the out, you know, we were the incomers. and my mother started up a nursery school in the village hall and that became a centre for many of the women on the farms and many of the families in the village. And we ended up, even when we moved, because we then went to Pakistan and then we went to London again, but even once we moved, we still had a very long-term relationship with the people in that village, I mean, for decades.

13:14So from the very beginning, then, that there was very little border between the theoretical and the practical. But both of your parents didn't just think about and pontificate. They did as well. Yeah. And I actually think that that's something that's quite important in the political tradition. And people can't quite put I'm a crossbench peer. I'm not aligned to any party. And I work with colleagues right across the piece. And I actually work with Americans on both sides of the aisle. And people are quite surprised because I come from this progressive background. And I go, no, I'm really sorry.

13:51My politics are the politics of making life better. And whoever wants to put their shoulder to that wheel, I'm in, you know. And it does make for some uncomfortable decisions sometimes. but I think that one of the things that is wrong with politics is we're so much about what everybody said we're not half tough enough about what they did and I think that's something that we've actually got in a loop about and we should just calm down about what everybody's saying and start judging them on what they're doing and I think they're coming up short yes well you don't think and I was going to argue with that.

14:30So primary school in Hull, in Pakistan and in London, or how did the ages? Primary school in the Next Door Village, so a village. So near Beverley? Yeah, outside Beverley, Lockington it's called. And then we went for a year to Pakistan where my father was working on a political theory of the permanent arms economy. That was basically the idea that Pakistan was giving up all its grain to buy arms from America and was continually impoverished by that idea. And it's commonly held now, but at the time it was a very radical idea. So you're seeing a pattern here. Yes, I am.

15:21And when we were in Pakistan, we didn't really go to school. Right. um uh it was we he was working for the fourth foundation which is a big think tank and somebody came in and and didn't really teach us anything but we had a wonderful time and then uh and then we came back to back to north london for the last year of what were you like as a young as a child in in primary school in lockington what i mean did you engage did you enjoy it um i was shy I was a bit chunky. I was a bit grumpy. I think I wasn't actually very well suited to being a child at all sorts of ages. I am one of the few people who has enjoyed every decade I've got older, has been better and better.

16:13And so I actually embrace the fact that I do get older and this is the last third of my life. But I do think that it was very important to my understanding of the world that I've lived in a village. I've lived in a place where I stood out because of my color and the hair and so on, where I was other. And I've lived in a big city where it was a real medley of people. and I think that does change how you see communities and what you value.

16:58Did you find children flippant? No, I found them a bit scary. Okay. You know, they all seem so certain of themselves. They're not though, are they? No, of course not. They just seem that way. Same with adults. Yeah, really, really. funnily enough when I do a lot of work with children now I've done workshops for the last 15 years talking about tech um and one of the things I say to them is just remember all adults are anxious too and and I think that they grow about six inches when I say that yeah I add a line to that actually I've got a very similar mantra when I'm in schools but I always add in the ones that aren't are sociopaths which is probably more your style than mine but it's excellent um what about friendships did you form friendships it's tough to be peripatetic yeah no i did and in fact one of the reasons i used to go back to yorkshire was my friend carolyn who was my best friend um uh who and we learned to ride together and She is now runs a farm with her husband in Humberside still.

18:13And we remain friends for a long time. And I have friends from really right back at the beginning of my life when I first, you know, when I was born. And the first few years before we went to Yorkshire, we all were looked after in different houses by various people. And my best friend now, I remember her being born because I was friends with her older sister at the time. So I do. I have very long-suffering friendships. Not loads. Sure. But very, very important for me to feel that I have seen other people's lives as I've gone on my journey. and I often think about it like, you know, when you come back from the beach and you've got the sand, all the different colours in a jar.

19:05And I think having a friendship, a long-term friendship, is a bit like that. You can see all the colours in the jar and sometimes you kind of wake up and you go, God, I'm not sure we'd be friends now. But that jar is really important, that knowing and being known. It's a very visual way of thinking about friendship, isn't it? Did it become clear quite early on? And I think you were late diagnosis dyslexic. So did it become, were you aware quite early on that you had a more visual brain than others? And that held you back maybe at school? So I had this really extraordinary thing, which is, you know, I was born with a cleft palate.

19:45And I had to have an operation when I was about 11. And I literally couldn't speak like this when I was 10. So that's another othering in a way or another outsider experience. That was huge. And in fact, I write about that in the book. And I think that people have been very moved by it because it was then that I was given a camera. And it was through that camera that I saw what I describe as power. I see who got to speak, who had to listen, who was excluded, who was included. And somehow, that moment never passed. And because I took pictures from the age of 10. Because you weren't allowed to talk for a while while you were recuperating.

20:29For a year. Yes. I couldn't speak. And so when I arrived at secondary school, I couldn't speak. I had like this, I had like a Harpo Marx. Little horn. Little horn and a pen and a little notebook to write things down. And it was miserable. I mean, it was miserable. or everybody tried to make it okay, but it was just miserable. But you see, here it is. You know, I was given a camera. You know, by 10 years later, I'm going to be in Hollywood. You know, it's amazing. So it's an outsider experience, but also an acute observer of human behavior. I think so. And I think that's a roundabout way of answering your question about visual, which is I think you can see and hear in lots of different ways but the one thing you've got to do is pay attention.

21:31You've got to really pay attention. And I think that, you know, when we get on to all the problems of the tech world, that's one of the biggest things. They've stolen our attention. So we're not really seeing each other. We're not really hearing each other. And we're not really noticing. there's there's too much noise and it's too distracted and we're drawn away into this other place and so for me the seeing the hearing the noticing the taking pictures the making films the politics oh god that's all just one thing and everybody who looks at my life and goes why did you give up being a film director to be a politician i see it all as the same yes yeah and some of the interplay is providing a voice to the voiceless telling stories yeah yeah in in politics in documentary and in fiction you can do those three things and in drama was it Faye Godwin who gave you the camera was that the first one Faye Godwin gave me the camera and she taught me how to develop films and print them and that made me very popular at school because I could take everybody's photo and give them a print.

22:48And this at a time when, you know, you'd have to go to Boots otherwise, wouldn't you? Or you'd have to take them in. It's not like now where you can get a camera, get online and do it through your phone and just pop in anywhere and print them. But I'm interested in that moment because there's three things going on here, isn't there? There's the attempt, you're not being alienated. They're trying hard to involve you in life, which is a nice thing. but you are by definition going to feel isolated and and and and and removed and it is the photography it is the camera that i think gives you your first real sense of completeness i don't think you'd engaged much in school i don't think you found school easy on an academic level no no and in fact um yeah i think that's a really good way of putting it actually i might steal that from if you don't mind completeness um i think the other word that i might use is purpose yes yeah and so you actually see that you can be other and useful and i think that that's a very you know empowering thing because uh you know over the years you speak to lots of people and they feel very disempowered and actually or they feel like they're not the right kind of person or they feel they don't have the skills.

24:12And I think one of the things, and I can tell from what you've already said, you go to a lot of schools, I go to a lot of schools, I speak to a lot of young people. I think one of the jobs of people like you and I who have some, you know, a seat at the table, as they call it, is really to persuade people that everybody has a seat at the table. You don't have to be in a bright spotlight. And I think having the camera and being shy and not having a voice, but actually being able to contribute something that no one else could do at that time was very emboldening. Did mum and dad worry about you? Did they worry about your lack of academic prowess at this point?

24:58I don't really think so. I think they were too busy, you know, they were too busy wanting to change the world for themselves. There is this expression that some of the Americans have that had similar backgrounds to me and they were called red diaper babies. And it was basically, you know, your parents were never off a CND march, you know, and you're making toast at home. And I don't want to put any idea out there that I was in any way deprived. But absolutely, that was not that was not their concern. I do remember my father saying to me, he said, so long as you travel and you read, you will educate yourself.

25:43And I thank him for that because I actually ended up leaving school just around my 16th birthday. Just before that, though, there's quite a seminal trip to Portugal, isn't there? Oh, yeah. With the camera in place. This is the stuff of legend, this. I love this story. So my father, as we've already established, was, you know, a sort of a theoretical Marxist. But as the Portuguese revolution was bubbling up, the comrades from Portugal rang him up and said, you know, Mike, will you come here and give us some teachings? And so we and this is this is so typical of my of my childhood. So we ended up going on family holiday to a pre, you know, to a bubbling Portugal.

26:35And my father's in, you know, talking. We're on the beach. And then suddenly it is the day and the revolution breaks out, as it were. I'm there with my camera. Did you rush towards the action? Did you know what you were doing? Absolutely. I want to be in the thick of it. Well, as night fell, literally all the farm workers came in to Lisbon on their trucks with their pitchforks and fires were starting everywhere in the city. And everyone congregated in front of what must have been a parliamentary building. I have a vision of it in my head still, but I don't know what it was. And I started taking pictures because that's all I ever did.

27:19I mean, that's all I ever did from when I had a camera until, you know, well into my teens. That's all I ever did. You were 13. I was 13. 13 years old. I was 13 years old and I had the pictures of the revolution in Lisbon. And because my parents were publishers and because there was a lot of magazines and journals at that time, a lot of them asked me for the pictures. And so at the age of 13, I was not only the girl with the camera, but I was published. How did that make you feel? Oh, I mean, gorgeous. Yeah. Gorgeous. Yeah. And again, it's something that I try and discuss with children and young people.

28:03And I go, you know, it's really very often the bad stuff that gets you to the good stuff. And so when you're in trouble, you've got to turn it around and go, what's the advantage? I mean, you know, I was born with a cleft palate. I had an operation I was given a camera it defined the rest of my life it's a good life next stop the photographer's gallery in London you're still barely 14 but the photojournalist Eve Arnold um is impressed by what she sees of your work and you have to tell her that you're far too young to work for her I think at this point it was honestly that was that was probably the most eventful day of my whole life.

28:49And there have been some. There really have. But the reason that I say that was, you know, she lived in, she actually lived in Mayfair, although she was American. She lived right in the attic. So you had to go up like eons of stairs. And she stood there like this famous vision at the top of the stairs. And I went panting up. And And when I got to the top, she said to me, you know, if you're going to be a photographer, you can't be fat. Can you imagine that now? You know, anyway, she looked through my things and she said, do you want to work for me? And I went, well, I've got to go to school tomorrow.

29:25I'm going to be 14 tomorrow. And she howled. I mean, she howled. But on my 16th birthday, she rang me up. She said, this is Eve Arnold. Would you like to come and work for me? and I left school that day. What do you think she saw? No modesty allowed? No modesty allowed. I think she saw that I was curious and I think she saw that I was looking at the world in my own individual way. Yeah? And I think, you know, those two things. it's really hard because she did I mean I worked for her for a couple of years I went travelling I came back I went to film school all of that but I remained a really close friend of Eve Arnold until she died at the age of 99 and so she is so important to me I don't know what she saw that day versus what she saw the rest of our relationship but what I will say to you is what I learnt from her which is the things that have really, really been the crutches for the rest of my life.

30:43So I learned from her that the work was never done. And she used to make me stay sometimes. If we were working late, she'd put out a bed on the sofa. And then next morning, we'd start back again. I'm 16 years old, working like a dog. But I saw pictures of China before it was open, from Russia when it was still Soviet in its thing. You know, I saw pictures of Marilyn Monroe that nobody else has ever seen. I had an experience of work that was so inspiring and so sort of enlivening. That's what I thought work had to be. And she also taught me how to travel light and pack a bag. And she always used to say, because I had to pack her bag for her, she said, I carry heavy cameras, so I want light clothes, but I always need something to eat at a palace and to run from a mob.

31:43Wow. Yeah? Wow. That's how I pack my bag. I absolutely love that. That's sensational. Sensational. To eat at a palace and run from a mob. It's a sort of foreign correspondent. Yeah, actually, that's really true. That's wild, isn't it? That's right. She also used to say something else, but it involves a swear word. You're allowed to swear, Beban, but I appreciate you may not want to. She was also instrumental, I think, in moving your focus slowly or quickly, I don't know, from still photography to movies. Yeah, she was. She looked all the time I was working for her. She insisted I took pictures of my own and she worked me so hard.

32:23I sometimes used to say, when am I supposed to? She said, that's your problem. but um she used to look at my pictures and she said listen there's one observation i'm gonna make you take series of pictures and you keep on adding captions in my view that's film okay and and that was it that was all she said but you know she she was uh i think it i think she was five foot i'm not sure maybe she wasn't even quite five foot but she was the scariest woman you'd ever meet and all she needed to do was say that and you knew what she meant

33:04so the next stage becomes fairly i mean it's not easy to get into the national film and television school particularly for a woman at that time but um that was next a camera woman that was next and and i will um ever be grateful to the uh film school in fact um the application had three pages of education because it was a postgraduate course and then a statement. And so I wrote a letter and I said, I'm not filling in your form because I have no education and it'll show me up badly. I said, but this is why I want to come. And I was given a pre-interview because I said so many things in my statement that they just wanted to know if They were true, that those were experiences that I'd had and so on.

33:52And they told me in retrospect that I absolutely got in from that moment. But I had to then go into a whole process. Go through the motions. So if I'd met you then and I said, what sorts of films do you want to make when you graduate? What would you have said? I would have probably said documentaries. I would have probably said things that, you know, really made the world different. And I think I would have probably said, you know, to make sure that everybody has a voice. And in fact, it was when I went to film school and the first term, and I was absolutely shocked that there were loads of people who wanted to go into advertising.

34:37and there were some other people who wanted to kind of make Bond. Nothing wrong with a Bond. I love a Bond, but, you know, not my thing. And I was the only woman in the cinematography department and they all seemed to have come out of the womb with a camera in their hand because I didn't know what I was doing. And it was all of those things that drove me to Greenham. I met someone in the canteen and I said to Amanda Richardson, who then became a very eminent documentary filmmaker in her own right. But I met Amanda and I went, listen, I'm going to Greenham Common for the weekend. Will you do the sound?