Transforming Power, Politics and Governance

A Life of Looking Beneath the Surface

Each chapter taught me another part of the same lesson.

1. Early life

   Born into the aftermath of war

   I was born a British citizen in Germany shortly after the Second World War, to a British father and a German mother, into the devastation of Hamburg and Berlin, so brought up with family stories of the pain of war. Later, the Cuban Missile Crisis showed that humanity had acquired the power to destroy not just cities, but much of civilisation itself. In the 1960s, the terror of nuclear weapons was palpable.

   In the late 1960s I flew to New York with an invitation to meet the then UN Secretary-General, hoping to support the control of nuclear weapons through the emerging Non-Proliferation Treaty — and drove down Route 66, following the music of the time.

   How do we prevent systems of power from producing catastrophic outcomes?

2. Engineering

   Thinking in systems

   I studied electronics and became fascinated by the invisible structures that make visible things happen. I repaired early computers, when memory still meant physical components wired together by hand. It taught me to think in systems.

   When something fails, the visible fault is not always the real cause.

3. Transforming buildings and property

   Diagnose, envision, agree, transform

   I moved into architecture and surveying, became a Chartered Surveyor, measured and restored old London houses, and eventually became a property developer. A building teaches a systems lesson: you diagnose the failure, draw up a new vision of possibility, develop a specification, obtain agreement and organise the work. I increasingly see governance in much the same way.

   You cannot repair a leaking roof by arguing with the rain.

4. Healing people and conflict

   “Is this all there is to life?”

   Traditionally successful from property development before the age of forty, I turned my attention from buildings to people. I explored psychology, personal development, religion, bodywork and the deeper dynamics behind human behaviour and conflict. I came to see that beneath many external conflicts lies an internal one.

   Fear, projection, identity — and the division between us and them.

5. Societal Risk

   The societal risk nobody owned

   Living close to Heathrow, I became involved in aviation and development issues and produced an assessment of aircraft crash risk affecting London for the Heathrow Terminal 5 public inquiry. Different organisations each fulfilled their own responsibilities while a major societal risk fell between them, because nobody was responsible for the whole system.

   Who is responsible for the risk to humanity as a whole?

6. Global governance

   “We the Peoples” at the United Nations

   In 2004, after 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, at an intergovernmental conference on nuclear weapons, I realised the world could not rely on governments alone to solve catastrophic risks like nuclear weapons. There was no parliamentary representation of “We the Peoples” at the UN, so I became a co-founder of the Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, launched around the world in 2007 (UNPAcampaign.org).

   That work brought me into the room for the 2017 adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, for which the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons won the Nobel Peace Prize, and for the start of the annual UN process on a Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone in 2019, with a draft outcome treaty produced by the group I was working with.

   What transformation of perspective would make better institutions possible?