Interview with: Professor Lord Richard Layard
When economist Professor Lord Richard Layard wrote Happiness – Lessons from a New Science he was unsure about the scale of influence it might have.
It was a road map towards a society more at ease with itself, and suggested a fundamental re-assessment of social values, putting support for others at least on par with personal advancement as a signal of contentment.
Speaking during a visit to the University of York to deliver a lecture, co-hosted by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the School of Politics, Economics and Philosophy, Layard admits that his initial doubts about the efficacy of the book were swiftly dispelled. More than 1,000 people contacted him after its publication to ask: ‘Are you forming a movement?’
Now, six years later, the movement is becoming reality. With the help of like-minded souls Geoff Mulgan, Chief Executive of the Young Foundation, and Anthony Seldon, the Master of Wellington College, the Labour peer is launching Action for Happiness this spring.
Layard says: “Our hope is that it will be a mass-movement for cultural change mainly at the personal level. It’s getting away from the idea that the aim in life should be to do the best for yourself, but rather that you should be contributing towards the happiness of others.”
Initiating such a campaign appears like a natural progression for the Labour peer. He has been a member of the House of Lords since 2000, and is a keen advocate of making people’s well-being a central objective of government. He is an Emeritus Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, where he was the founder-director of the Centre for Economic Performance, and now heads its Programme on Well-Being.
His enthusiasm for Action for Happiness is palpable. It is, he said, part of a noble tradition stretching back to Jeremy Bentham, continued in the early 1970s by “brave social scientists putting questions in surveys to gauge how happy people are”. It will draw on new science to achieve its aims.
“People who join will be invited to make a pledge – the core aim will be to produce more happiness and less misery. There will be an extensive website which will suggest 50 things that we can all do to bring about a happier society,” he says.
“Our hope is that we shall have thousands of groups all over Britain who will have this common vision.”
In the months before the launch, Layard and his two collaborators had already secured offers of help from more than 4.000 people from 60 countries.
“The scale of it has surprised me – really you don’t have to do any publicity on this. There’s a real hunger out there. People feel that their lives aren’t as happy as they could be.” he says.
There’s a real hunger out there. People feel that their lives aren’t as happy as they could be.
Professor Lord Richard Layard
Layard is no stranger to mass movements – he helped to organise a campaign against unemployment in the 1980s. But he has discovered how technology has transformed the logistics of mass protest in the intervening years.
“I’m very IT illiterate but I became very aware how infinitely easier it is to run a movement these days than it was 30 years ago. It is an IT-based democracy,” he says.
He suggests that people now regarded their lives as unduly stressful because society has embraced an ideology where efficiency and productivity is everything. He likened people’s appetite for working long hours to an “arms race”.
He is no admirer of the Thatcherite tradition of self-interest that has prevailed in the UK for 30 years, gloomily recalling a visit to the Labour Party Conference in Harrogate in the 1990s.
“The idea that getting ahead should be the most praiseworthy objective is a disaster. I remember going to a Labour Party conference in Harrogate when Tony Blair made a speech. He said: ‘If you want to get ahead then we are the party for you.’
“I thought this was terrible. It was even more shocking when I met a Labour supporting businessman afterwards and he said that it was the best part of the speech. This tough-minded approach has brought unnecessary pressures into lives.”
Though Layard insists that he applauds hard work, he feels it should be tempered by a broader perspective. He is convinced that actionforhappiness.org can help society to achieve that wider view.
Further information