Demos (UK think tank)
Encyclopedia
History
Demos was founded in 1993 by former Marxism TodayMarxism Today
Marxism Today was the theoretical journal of the Communist Party of Great Britain and was disestablished in 1991. It was particularly important during the 1980s under the editorship of Martin Jacques...
editor Martin Jacques
Martin Jacques
Martin Jacques is a British former magazine editor and academic. He was born and raised in Coventry. He was an undergraduate student at Manchester University, where he graduated with a first-class honours degree, and subsequently studied for a PhD at King's College, Cambridge.He was editor of the...
, and Geoff Mulgan
Geoff Mulgan
Geoff Mulgan is Chief Executive of the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts and Visiting Professor at University College, London, the London School of Economics and the University of Melbourne...
, who became its first director. It was formed in response to what Mulgan, Jacques and others saw as a crisis in politics in Britain, with voter engagement in decline and political institutions unable in their view to adapt to major social changes. Demos was conceived as a network of networks which could draw together different sources of ideas and expertise to improve public policy.
In the run up to the 1997 general election
United Kingdom general election, 1997
The United Kingdom general election, 1997 was held on 1 May 1997, more than five years after the previous election on 9 April 1992, to elect 659 members to the British House of Commons. The Labour Party ended its 18 years in opposition under the leadership of Tony Blair, and won the general...
it was seen as being close to the Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
, in particular its then leader Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
. It defines itself, however, as independent of any political party. Geoff Mulgan went on to work inside Downing Street
Downing Street
Downing Street in London, England has for over two hundred years housed the official residences of two of the most senior British cabinet ministers: the First Lord of the Treasury, an office now synonymous with that of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and the Second Lord of the Treasury, an...
in 1997. At that time Demos was seen as central to New Labour's vision for Britain.
Between 1998 and 2006, under Director Tom Bentley
Tom Bentley
Tom Bentley is an author and policy analyst based in Australia. Bentley was born and educated in the United Kingdom where he gained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Oxford....
, it moved away from being just a think tank and an increasing part of its workload was described as 'public interest consultancy'. It also did an increasing amount of work internationally. Demos works with a number of partners including government departments, public sector agencies and charities.
Madeleine Bunting
Madeleine Bunting
Madeleine Bunting is an English journalist and writer who is an Associate Editor and columnist on The Guardian.Born in Oswaldkirk, North Yorkshire, Bunting was educated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where she read History, and won a Knox postgraduate fellowship to study Politics and teach...
, previously a columnist at The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, was appointed Director of the organisation in 2006, but resigned shortly after taking up the post over differences with the trustees concerning the direction of the organisation. She then returned to The Guardian and was succeeded as Director by Catherine Fieschi. Catherine Fieschi stepped down in July 2008 and was succeeded by Richard Reeves, a former economic journalist, Director of Research at the Work Foundation and biographer of John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, economist and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of...
. Reeves also co-presented the 2005 BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
programme "Making Slough Happy", a social experiment to improve the well-being of residents of a British town.
On August 9, 2006, British Home Secretary
Home Secretary
The Secretary of State for the Home Department, commonly known as the Home Secretary, is the minister in charge of the Home Office of the United Kingdom, and one of the country's four Great Offices of State...
Dr John Reid
John Reid (politician)
John Reid, Baron Reid of Cardowan, PC is a British politician, who served as a Labour Party Member of Parliament and cabinet minister under Tony Blair, most notably as Defence Secretary and then Home Secretary...
gave a speech at a Demos conference stating that Britons
British people
The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
"may have to modify their notion of freedom
Freedom (political)
Political freedom is a central philosophy in Western history and political thought, and one of the most important features of democratic societies...
", as a result of his plans, claiming that freedom is "misused and abused by terrorists."
Over the summer of 2008 Demos cut back its workforce (from 23 full time staff in January 2008 to 17 by September 2008) and did not attend any political party conferences, leading to speculation that it was in financial difficulty.
Following his appointment in 2010 as Special Adviser to the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, Richard Reeves stepped down as Demos' Director and was replaced by Kitty Ussher
Kitty Ussher
Katharine Anne "Kitty" Ussher is a British economist and former Labour Party politician.After training as an economist, she was elected Member of Parliament for Burnley from 2005 until 2010, succeeding Peter Pike. Ussher formerly held the position of Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury in Gordon...
.
Current projects
As of 2011, Demos has several core research programmes: Capabilities, Citizenship, Security, Economic Life, Progressive Austerity, Extremism and Open Data. They also run two political research programmes; an investigation into progressive Conservatism and a project on the future of the Left called OpenLeft with former MP James PurnellJames Purnell
James Mark Dakin Purnell is a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament for Stalybridge and Hyde from 2001 to 2010. He is currently the Head of the Open Left project at the left leaning think tank Demos...
.
Demos has an open access policy which means that all its publications are available to freely download under a Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
licence.
Demos is unrelated to the US think tank of the same name.