Anthony Barnett (born November 1942) is a modern English writer and campaigner. He was a co-founder of openDemocracy in 2001.

Biography

Barnett was a student at Cambridge University, where he was active in the Labour Club,and lodged with Nicholas Kaldor. He did an MA Sociology at Leicester University, 1965-1967, where he worked with Norbert Elias. He was a member of the Editorial Committee of New Left Review from 1965 to 1983. He helped create and coordinate 7 Days (newspaper) 1971-1972. Its papers are part of the Anthony Barnett archive in the British Library. He was a Fellow of the Transnational Institute from 1974 to 1984 and remains a contributor Barnett has written for the New Statesman, The Guardian, Prospect. and Byline Times. Between February 1984 and December 1985 he wrote the New Statesman diary, using an early personal computer, under the name "Islander". His articles included The Last Good War (1939-1945) written in May 1985 and finally Islander's Farewell on 20 December 1985. He conceived the television film England's Henry Moore (1988), which concerned the sculptor's co-option by the British establishment. He was the first Director of Charter 88, from 1988 to 1995, and co-director of the Convention on Modern Liberty (2008–2009) with Henry Porter. Barnett founded openDemocracy, launched in 2001, with Paul Hilder, Susie Richards and David Hayes, and was its Editor and then its first Editor-in-Chief until 2007. He was a member of the Board of openDemocracy Ltd from 1999 to 2023. He remains a regular contributor to the website. Barnett is the author of several books, including Iron Britannia, Why Parliament Waged its Falklands War (first published by Allison & Busby in 1982, reissued by Faber Finds in 2012. In 2016, he serialised Blimey it could be Brexit! publishing a chapter a week in openDemocracy in the run-up to Britain's 2016 EU referendum about the forces behind the vote. His in-depth evaluation was published by Unbound in 2017 with the title The Lure of Greatness: England's Brexit and America's Trump. In 2022, Barnett published Taking Control!: Humanity and America after Trump and the Pandemic with Repeater Books, on the possibilities of a progressive future. Barnett was awarded an honorary doctorate from The Open University in September 2013, and an honorary doctorate from Goldsmiths University in 2019, when his speech to graduates concluded: "'In these dire times asking what you can do for others is the best way to reach out for yourself. This is what Martin Luther King was seeking when he called for the world to be governed by a love that does justice. Cooperation is harder but much more rewarding than competition. It means refusing both to be a victim and to make others your victim. It means sharing your feelings without being ruled by emotion; having empathy for the feeling of others when you don't share them. It means not closing down your identities, for we all have more than one, but allowing them to change and grow. It means using the facility of our digital age to be a co-creator of society and never just a consumer. It means always using the power of your intelligence, including your emotional intelligence, to make the call that matters, to ask what we can do for others – with love and justice." Barnett made a short film in 2022 on American politics: US Progressives on a Knife Edge and in August 2024 he wrote an article about the dangers of surveillance in The Washington Spectator entitled Switch It Off!

Personal life

Barnett lives with his partner Judith Herrin; the couple have two daughters, the singer Tamara Barnett-Herrin and Portia Barnett-Herrin.

Introductions and Forwards

Essays