EIBF: In Search Of A New World Order

I can’t quite believe we’re more than half way through the book festival, it’s almost a sobering thought! I still haven’t been to an Unbound event, I still haven’t snuck into the Yurk and tried to chat up the writers, and I still haven’t cornered Allan Little armed with a stack of business cards and a CV... 

Nevertheless, this year’s Anna Politkovskaya Event kept me happy and content for an hour or so. The annual event is in memory of the outspoken Russian journalist and human rights campaigner who was assassinated in October 2006. The panel featured Masha Karp, a Russian-born journalist based in London, and Arch Tait, translator of the posthumous collection of writings by Anna Politkovstaya- Nothing But the Truth.

This new publication, Tait claims, is a way of delivering Anna’s personality to her readers. The dispatches included are both political and humourous, grave yet passionate, journalistic yet charismatic. Although Anna was pessimistic about Russia’s predicament, she was a romantic at heart, as Karp points out that her thesis was written on a Russian poet.

What was most strikingly argued in the discussion that ensued, however, was how Putin’s regime is systematically dismantling the cobbled democracy which Russia had achieved under Yeltsin, through gross violations of human rights, and control of information. This is a government that is largely on good terms with Western democracies. The panel agreed that the way in which to best honour Anna and her brave work is to pay attention to her writing, to what she was saying about Russia, and to continue her legacy – it’s our turn to write about her.

This event was followed by the last installment of the New World Order debates chaired by BBC journalist Allan Little. The panel comprised of Bradford-born Muslim journalist and writer Zaiba Malik, and Scottish musician, writer and play theorist Pat Kane.

This plenary session had no real agenda, but aimed to tie up the various strings from past debates, allowing the panel to interpret the “New World Order” however they wished, and address the issues that seem most pertinent to them. Much of what was talked about was the rise of militant Islam, and on a broader spectrum, the role and nature of national or cultural identity.

The other issue that cropped up was America as a superpower, and resulted in no conclusive predictions for whether it would remain so.  The other point Kane rose, particularly was the question of sustainability, how our lifestyles will be forced into alterations, and how we will inevitably have to develop what he termed a “post-consumerist model”.

Drawing the event to a close was the tireless Nick Barley who thanked Allan Little for his equally diligent chairing of the series, and remarked upon the success of this new format of events. 

Nick Barley, I concur!