>> i am happy to see you in boston, what louisa considers her home town. see spent her first seven years here as a little girl. chick fil-a frshe fell in a fro rescued. she played in ash heaps with little children. whenever she could she grew to boston and wanted to spend time here. she described it with great affection. and also not great affection for congress by the way. as an only woman living alone in concord it wasn't a great place for a single woman.

is this better? yes. taking care of her family where she was an independent soul in boston. i got into lousia may alcott through my mother who gave me the little women book and i became interested partly because my mother did and she told me it was actually much sadder than "little women" was. when i came to this area from california one of the first things i did was go to the orchard house where she lived at the time she wrote "little women". she wrote most of it there but she finished it here in the bellevue hotel across from the state. not many people know that. when i went to orchard house and

i saw where she wrote "little women" which was no bigger in area than this, probably smaller, a half circle, about this diameter, a little piece of paper and an inkwell and her father built this the tween two windows and i felt taken by her. she seemed to rise and there was suchbetween two windows and i felt taken by her. she seemed to rise and there was such a connection with her. the journals were published for the first time and some of the thrillers from her secret literary life, some of them were coming out. i was working at w gb h so i was always talking to my friend nancy porter and directing the film we made together. i went to nancy and said this, that and the other and she said

let's make a film like judy garland. so 20 years later we completed this film which will be seen on american masters on december 20th at 9:00 p.m. and you will see a little bit of it here. so a way to introduce louisa is to show you the opening, a little clip of our film and you will see what a woman she was and how many aspects she had to her life. then we can talk about the bookmark. i wanted to write a book about lousia may alcott for a long time but didn't have the credentials at that point. when we started doing the film i had read everything she wrote. she wrote over 200 works. if you count them singly, from

600 works, there had not been a biography written in 30 years so nancy and i had the freedom to make our own interpretation of louisa. very often and nancy has made a lot of films for public television and often you find a recent biographer who informs the whole thing, informs the film. should we start with this? ♪ >> this program has been provided by the national endowment for the humanities because democracy demands. >> i scrambled up to childhood filled with a crash into girl would --girlhood and continue

falling over trees and over fences, up hill and down stairs, shot up into the topsy-turvy woman. >> for many years people believed lousia may alcott was just a writer of children's books. then people discovered she was deeply interested in the darker side of human character and emotions. >> i enjoy it right in more for the young because it pays well. >> louisa wrote poetry, short-story and published 2 dozen books but she became famous as the author of "little women". "little women" is spoken across cultures and generations. >> translated into over 50 languages. television, movie agitations. >> adaptations from high to low

culture. >> ballet, anime, quite a lot of merchandise. after louisa died her sister and trusted a family friend to right louisa's official biography. >> lousia may alcott's works are revelation of her life. it is impossible to understand them fully without knowing her life story. fortunately i can let her speak for herself. >> in her biography, chain at made lousia may alcott an uncomplicated figure. >> as you going to the other stories she wrote and the fact that her life, she was an immensely complex woman. >> when you think about her heroines who struggled with their temperament and discipline you get a sense of a writer herself.

>> i have lots of troubles so i right jolly tales. >> is this better for the microphone? raise your hand if you're not hearing me because i tend to mumble. sorry about that. if you have any questions and might take a question or two. anybody at this point? yes? >> the credential to write about it, what credentials do you think you would need? >> i don't have a ph.d.. i am not a scholar or an academic. that is what i mean.

when we did the film i acquired the credentials because i read it all and i wrote the script and we have all the top scholars to draw upon because they were the advisory board for the film. and the interest was there and we were able to get this biography of the ground. i feel i had a real advantage not having that approach and having the approach of a film maker. having to figure out what these people work and what they ate and working in the orchard house i became very familiar with. fruit land was another place and emerson's spouse. louisa was a writer. people don't know that. she ran nearly every day. at one point she ran twenty miles. we need to figure out what did

she wear when she was riding and how did she wear red? that was the kind of details that gave me a strong sense of her material reality. if i had any goal in the film it was to see a living people in 0 -- breathing woman -- as a very modern movement, radical views on abolition which her family was very active, and women's right to vote and she pulled them into these struggles. she grew up as the daughter of bronson alcott who was a philosopher and educator. what he did not have a great knack for earning a living. he had a school in boston that was very -- he invented recess.

socratic teaching really is what he did. in an era when it was all wrote memorization. he made his classroom beautiful and comfortable in hard benches with no backs and he respected children and thought people should listen to what they had to say. he actually flirted with sex education it was said. a book was written about his classroom and a literal conversations, as a biographer to have the actual text of what the student said and what he said in the classroom. it was felt he was coming close to sex education and newspapers raised a scandal that he lost most of his people and to top it off he admitted a little black girl into his house. this is 1837. this is 25 years before the end

of slavery. there were moms in boston, william lloyd garrison not long before. after that he was not employable as a teacher and his principles made it impossible for him to earn a living as anything else. he became a socialist and was not going to work for wages. people wanted to give him money, that was fine. she was extremely poor. she grew up very poor. if you read "little women" you know in a large families a live in genteel poverty. they have -- the alcotts subsisted on bread and water diet for a longer period of time. sometimes they would have an apple with their water with their bread and water. louisa was going to rescue her

family from poverty and she did. she cannot multimillionaire eventually with "little women" and the other books she wrote which is very difficult. is difficult living as a writer then or now. that was her achievement and really what she wanted to do with her life from a very young age. from about the age of 9 or 10 was a period when you see why she is doing it and she makes a statement in her journal. i was rich, i was good and we were a happy family. she set out to make that come true. i think i should move up -- she was really home schools. her father's best friends were what ralph waldo emerson and henry david thoreau. emerson taught her about literature and henry david thoreau taught her about nature.

she went on walks with henry david thoreau and could drop into emerson's library any time and ask what he thought she should read and she had a front row seat to what was happening to the most important movements in her life. she knew all of the abolitionists. she knew frederick douglass and harriet tubman and john brown. her story is fascinating. i tried to put it in context of her time. early years she was living in that transcendental world and she came out of it fearfully practical because she saw how much they suffered from her father's idealism and then came the civil war and they had been abolitionists, in childhood. the underground railway. she had several anecdotes about

teaching one man to write his name and various other parts of the abolition movement. when the civil war broke out the abolitionists were very glad. they thought it was a great day and the big question was going to be settled. but of course she couldn't join the army. she would have if she could have. she decided instead to become a nurse. when she turned 30 she enlisted in the sanitary commission it was called. she had no american training whatsoever. no one did. she carried cups of tea up to her sister who had died a few years before. i am going to read you part of the book about her service as an army nurse. at this point she has come into

these union hospital in washington, the farthest she has been from home alone and within days she is in this situation of assisting an amputation without benefit of either. this was a terrible time. the time of the battle of fredericksburg. the george town hospital was a mile behind the lines. she could hear the cannon fire on her runs in the morning is. she was there. something like 10,000 wounded at the battle of fredericksburg. she was always trying to take care of 400 men who managed to make it to this hospital and what passed for care. nothing they could do but amputations and many of them died of disease because of poor sanitation. she realized sanitation was important from her father. he was a fresh air advocate and she went around opening windows trying to get people to watch --

wash. she was there the night of and and -- emancipation in 1863 and she describes in this book about her experience going to the window and waving handkerchiefs and seeing the men singing the low and all the black people especially and joining in with them. in this period in the book she is working the night shift for the first time. can you hear me? louisa liked being what she called the night side of life. to be up when sleet and death have the house to themselves. the hospital matron admired

louisa and gave her the responsibility of finding a patient and her three room ward, appropriate quarters according to their conditions. the duty room housing wounded. the pleasure room was a recovering soldiers whom louisa entertained with games and the imitation of dickens's books and her sister lizzie. the pathetic room of hopeless cases as a place to bring teapots, lies, constellations and sometimes a shroud. the sleeping man often broke the night silence of the ward talking, crying, making all kinds of noise. the reticent soldier by day became wild and caddy at night. a drummer boy saying sweetly. sometimes louisa looked out at the moonlit church fire across the way, going down the potomac river. all that river water could not

watch out the blood stains on the land but what had been washed away was hurt night a n --naive --naivete. she was at the bedside of the new jersey man reliving the horrors of battle. he cheered on or cry out to fallen comrades duck incoming shots and grabbed louisa's armed to pull her from imaginary bursting shells. the man's ratings were impossible to restrain. in the meantime, legged soldier propelled himself through the ward like ghosts. with no orderly louisa was helpless to stop these two men and the situation deteriorated when sobbing broke out from the 12-year-old drummer boy. it was the death of the wounded soldiers who carried him to

safety. this tempered louisa, much shorter and replaced her book knowledge of behavior with real-life experience. her liberality, her parents notions of human character, they were idealists, especially her mother who did not see people for who they were so much as how far they well short of where they should be. louisa wanted to know life in all its variety and she was getting her chance. john story was a virginia blacksmith leaders released from anniversary her own age. he had a wound in his back he could not see and had to lie upon in order to breeze. he sat propped up in a bed that had been extended to accommodate his frame, looking around with a ready. never making a request for complaint. when he slept and louisa spent several nights watching him

sleep, like a woman, she thought. when he was awake louisa was afraid of the man. and sure how to respond to his manly strength and dignity he hung back, she wasn't needed or wanted. from her admiring description and hospital stitches the book louisa created from her letters home, it is obvious she loved john story but whether it was a worshiper's of, women's desire or another emotion is hard to discern. thoughtful and often beautiful mild when watching the afflictions of others as entirely forgetful of his own. she described his eyes as a child's eyes. he seemed to cling to life as if it were rich in duty and delight and he learned the secrets of content. she asked the doctor which man suffered the most and was shocked to hear him named john because he was so strong, the

doctor predicted a long and painful death. not the slightest hope for him and you better tell him so before long, he instructed. women have a way of doing such things so i leave it for you. charged with this awesome responsibility louisa stayed close by as the doctor carelessly dressed the terrible wound. the first time she thought years slipping down john's cheeks, is silent endurance of pain and terrible loneliness. my fear vanished the chris dimarco and wide and i took him in. gathering him in my arms as freely as had he been a little child i said let me help you. never on any human countenance have piscine so swift and beautifully look of gratitude, surprise and comfort which entered me more eloquently than the whispered thank you, ma'am, this is what i wanted. louisa held john and he squeezed her hand to relieve his pain.

when the ordeal was done she eased against the pillows, smoothes his brown hair and sat a flower by his bedside. she felt his hand raised her skirt. another day she put a heliotrope on his pillow. finally he said this is my first battle. do they think is going to be my last? i am afraid they do, john. it was our hardest question i have ever been called upon to answer, doubly hard with those clear eyes fixed on my enforcing a truthful answer by their own truth. to the end he held my hand close, so close that when he was asleep at last i could not drive it away. then the orderly helped me because the warning as he did so it was unsafe for dead or living flesh to live so long to get a. my hand was cold and stiff and four white marks remained across

his back even when warmth and, return elsewhere. she helped prepare john's body for burial. his widowed mother had given him to wear this in battle and cutting a few lots of -- a last letter from his family arrived before his death but was not brought until an hour after. louisa placed the unread letters in his hand to bury with him as a signifier of loved ones at his bedside. farewell to a good nineteenth century death. louisa have always considered herself immune to elvis. when she developed a bad coffee -- despite colleagues warning she wrist pneumonia. after three weeks of bad food, fetid air and constant exposure to infection louisa's defenses

gave way to typhoid pneumonia. a doctor found her on a staircase too dizzy to stand, coughing uncontrollably, afforded so hot she was trying to cool it on an iron banister. when the doctor ordered her to bed she didn't argue. sharp pain in the side, fever and dizziness, pleasant prospect for a lonely soul 5,000 miles from home she said before she succumbed. versus laughter with the same tenderness she showed her patients. the mercury compound that was used to treat everything. she revised her opinion of them sharply upward. louisa understood their concern. the matron had been diagnosed with typhoid pneumonia and was not expected to survive.

the solution and constant pain, louisa wrote letters home every day. hours got confused. people looked on. clear face is haunted the room and the nights were one long site of pain. at times she was incoherent. even in sleep she never lost sight of the perils she was in. she was awake and refreshed, think of home and wonder if i am going to die here as mrs. ropes is likely to do. before collapsing mrs. ropes wondered the same thing about her. she sent an urgent telegram asking someone come immediately to take louisa home. she had served six weeks. bronson left concord the same day to boston and traveled to washington to or arrive by january 16th. louisa, determined to serve out her stint rejected every suggestion to go home.

her father's appearance made real her grave condition and the impact on her family if she were to die. the room was swarming with people making recommendations. one of them was dorothy dix who wanted louisa taken to her own quarters. louisa want to stay where she was. bronson doubted his daughter could regain strength or spirit in washington but the doctors felt she was not strong enough to travel. restless and anxious but forbidden to stare at his daughter's bedside bronson made the rounds of louisa's patients and with disabused of any romantic ideas about the struggle. about horrid war hero in his journal and hospitals as anywhere. on the nineteenth he visited the senate and finding a seat near president lincoln studied his face at close range and found him, your than the papers and portraits had shown and his manner impressive. i wish to have had an interview

but am too anxious about louisa and without time to seek it. on the 20th of january misses ropes died. the next day louisa agreed to let her father take her home. that is part of her experience. you might have recognized the name of dorothy dix. she founded the sanitation committee which was the forerunner of the american red cross and was active in prison reform and reform of institutions for the mentally ill and she served bronson alcott as a teaching assistant. he had very distinguished group of teaching assistants. he had margaret fuller in the nineteenth century as his assistant and peabody hawthorne, talented artist and his sister elizabeth peabody worked with bronson at the temple's school. that died out because of the scandal. what else do i want to tell you?

there is so much to say. >> what about she didn't know before, something that was oh, really caught you by surprise and gained insight into her that you weren't expecting? >> that she was a runner kind of surprised me. i knew she had written these thrillers. some of her religious ideas at the end of her life she said she believed in reincarnation. when you look back at her other writings you can see she was a i wish i was a horse in a former state. i love to move so much. i found her very admirable. she really stuck it out with her family. i was surprised how talented she was at an actress and how serious she was about acting. she was a professional level

actors and performed in the amateur stage a great deal. after she became famous she was asked to perform an impression of a character from dickens, a cockney kind of character and wax museum and was very pretentious and funny. she would perform this and raise thousands of dollars. she would have liked to go into the theater. she wrote a number of plays but things didn't get off the ground and there is some thought she might have performed as an actress professionally but it hasn't been proved. there's a little intriguing piece of data that indicates she may have. she worked at every job. i didn't really know how hard things were. she worked at every job that was available to women of her time. she was a seamstress. she liked selling more than the

others because it gave time to think of her stories and write them down on sundays. another surprising thing about her was she was always telling herself stories sometimes for years and had false stories in her head that she was working out. she worked as a laundress which is the lowest job. think of what you do to do laundry in that period. make a fire, boiled water and heavy tub and stand over a steaming cauldron. she did that. she with the governess. she was a teacher. she hated teaching. she didn't have the patience for it. she went to work as a household servant and wrote a story about it. she was sexually harassed in this experience. we thought you would like to see what we did about the civil war which is the same piece that i

wrote about. the script of the film is all first-person dialogue. anything anybody says is something that they wrote. it is in journals and letters. emerson, everybody, bronson, her mother. the book was an opportunity to tell in my own words what i thought the story was. i hope you get to see the film. is a different approach to it. >> the only participation in the war that was formal with a brand new occupation called nursing. up at 6:00, run through my ward, throw open windows as if life depended upon it. a more perfect pestilence i never saw. i am often homesick, heart sick and worn out. i like it.

>> she arrived on the eve of one of the bloodiest battles of the civil war. in the battle of fredericksburg, 10,000 wounded and as many killed. it took several days. >> entering my ward, no arms. ♪ >> the surgeon began the

amputation. he regarded a dilapidated body the way i would obama and. >> this alcott found the very and intense human life she had longed to know. >> no dying statesman was full of more dignity than this virginia blacksmith. >> i hope so. there is not the slightest hope. i leave it to you. >> she writes his last letter for him to his mother and everyone in the ward weightait. >> let me help you. >> thank you. this is my first battle and i

think it is going to be my last. >> i'm afraid they do, john. >> she writes about him and one gets the sense of yearning. but it cannot be. >> to the end he held my hand so close i couldn't draw it away. it was unsafe for dead and living flesh to live together. my hand was strangely cold and stiff and four white marks remained across its back. >> only weeks after being there she contracted typhoid fever. louisa was treated with a form of mercury that was used for

tuberculosis, typhoid, melancholia and depression. they threw down everything they could. >> we may be thankful she is away from that infected place. >> she left us a brave handsome woman. >> i will never forget what taunted me. i had married a handsome spaniard with soft hands continually saying i still, my dear, threatening me all might

long. a mob at baltimore breaking down the door to get me. burned, stoned, maltreated, to join dr. winslow and two nurses worshiping the devil. spending millions who'd never died. >> i thought that would be an interesting demonstration of how you treated the incident in different media. i wanted to say that the book was based on all work and knowledge from scholars but we found some things that word

news. one of the things in the book is we cracked the mystery of what louisa died from. or rather the two british doctors. we saw one of them in that shot briefly. louisa thought she died from mercury poisoning but a couple of english doctors went through the journals and wrote down all her complaints and symptoms that she had and concluded that it wouldn't be mercury poisoning and they went through and came down to six categories. one possibility was she had six different ailments each of which explain the symptoms but a more likely answer would have been an autoimmune disease and they rejected syphilis. it didn't seem likely louisa's case and they wondered about lupus. but that is difficult to diagnose even today. is dr. went to visit orchard

house and there was a very realistic painting of louisa painted by george healy one who was well regarded as painted the presidents and it was a mark of her standing that he asked her to paint her and he looked at the portrait and he saw this rash on her cheeks called a butterfly rash. that is a characteristic rash that can indicate lupus and it can come out after someone has been in the sun for a few days. it went back to the journal and she had been in northern italy in the sun for a few days. these are very realistic painters so it had been there. she had complained about the portrait saying it should be hung behind a door. he said her cheeks were as red as the chair she sat in. it looks like she died of lupus. i am very glad she never knew

that because she felt she sacrificed her health. she was never healthy the rest of her life. she had sacrificed it in a very good cause. sometimes it is better not to know. they couldn't have done much for her anyway. another question that i had concerned her niece. louisa raised her niece the last eight years of her life and everybody is asking what happened to her? i have a clue. i read a book called the alcott biography by madeleine fidel. she described going to visit lulu in switzerland where she was living and was 96 years old. live the only a few more months and interviewing her. very vivid description of this scene but the interview doesn't appear in the book because it is

the first volume of a set of volumes and she makes it to louisa being 12 years old. madeleine came down with cancer and died so where did they interview go? i ask one of the scholars and none of them had thought about it. i didn't know what to do. i got down to calling in the phone book, calling someone named fidel asking if they knew of madeleine. eyewall as always buying secondha books about louisa because -- at one point i saw a copy of the alcott biography of the family and i found a letter that was a carbon copy on the onion skin a letter written by madeleine herself written to the travel editor of the new york times,

michael stern who later became famous for writing about roadside food. she was proposing a story about all the places louisa lived in boston. at the bottom of the letter was an address in brooklyn. i called that number and there was madeleine's widower 25 years later. he moved a few months later. he would not have been there had i not found this at that point. i asked what happened to the papers and he said he had given them to a scholar or a writer who was planning to write about made alcott, louisa's sister. she had not done anything with it. we took her out to lunch with this writer and talked her into saying she would give as the papers because she was going to be moving anyway sunoon and it

would be easier -- she agreed to that. we call her. she did not answer our phone call or reply to our e-mails. she just disappeared and we were afraid she was going to move and take the pictures with her and they would never be seen again. we had to do a little campaign to get these papers out of her claws. she was very eccentric. she wrote books about victorian architecture and decoration mostly. every room had six wallpapers. that was something new, to find out what happened, some interesting things happened to louisa's fortune after she died.

that information comes in the epilogue of the book. questions? >> i just wondered, to recall louisa clearly and give you a sense what she might have been like at home and as a mother. >> she described her older sister who was the model for meghan in "little women" who helped to raise her. and interesting portrait of both of them. [inaudible] >> she was in some sort of old age home. madeleine was discouraged from coming to switzerland because they said lulu didn't remember anything and would not be able to talk. but as often happens they have very good recall of early lives.

very intriguing of the things she said. a little bit of a saga in itself about lulu. >> i read a couple autobiographies of louisa may alcott. i am very impressed by the richness. i don't remember from those others, not just the secrets of lulu but did you focus on different pieces of what was there and create a different picture of her? one biography was an older one, an old-fashioned thing that almost recreated her and in the 70s she was very feminist. i don't know what yours is like. it seems rich and dramatic in detail that i didn't know was

there. the other biographies chose not to present it as you did? >> yes to a great extent. when we were working on the film, what a perfect motif for if film because the film moves. i spoke to the advisers we had. the editor of her journals and letters and i said what do you suppose she wore when she ran? she said she ran -- wasn't something he picked up but if you look in the journal she says i have time only to eat, sleep and take a daily run. go for the daily run. that is all i have time to do. there are many referencess to running. why did she run? >> did you find out what she wore? >> she wore her regular clothes and flat brown shoes which she would have ward anyway. she tied up her skirts.

was called tilting. you have seen pictures of this. petticoats' are showing at the top level is hiked up and fastened around her waist. that is what we did in the film and to the best of our knowledge, our desire was very conscientious. you must have read her father's commune in harvard, massachusetts. when she was 9 her father founded utopian community. this is the time of the mennonites and the shakers and a lot of intentional communities so her father built one around himself. they only grew vegetables, they would not grow potatoes because they wanted vegetables that aspired to hire -- it is

impractical. they wouldn't wear clothing made of cotton because it was the product of slave labor. they would wear wool because it was the product of sheep labor. if they had been able to afford film they would not have warned that because they were exporting the worm. they were very conscientious. they wore clothing of lyndon. i talked to the costume designer. these clothes are roughly described. there seem to be tunics over bloomers. a man's shirt and the woman's dress over bloomers. bloomer's had not been invested -- invented in the sense we think of them, they were invented again. i asked the costume designer, these clothes must have been very simple. they cut out one piece in the

front and one piece in the back and so them together. and she said they wouldn't have done that because that would have been very expensive. would have been a waste of fabric and they didn't do that. they would have and insects leave. you could lay out the dress with less fabric. it was very interesting to worked in those terms and come up with something. she based the outfits on french agricultural workers clothing of the time. she went to california and what was used in the series deadwood on tv, that was exactly the same period. of clothing. there was another biography two years ago called eden's outcasts:the story of louisa may alcott and her father. jon madison was one of our advisers and is in the film.

it wasn't reviewed anywhere. i sent him two reviews leaders and one for the british guardian and one for the dealer and out of nowhere as surprise for his book. it is a very fine book. on the relationship between bronson alcott and louisa which in the book you mentioned about the feminist point is a pretty heavy-handed, based upon the thrillers and a lot of battles of the sexes. he seems to be a villain. if you take it literally which she did. and actually now as martha saxton, went too far in the direction that she took it. madison's book is a more subtle exploration of her relationship with her father. she was born on her father's birthday. he was 33 and she died two days

after he died without knowing he had died. they were very closely tied. i go into it in the book but didn't center the book on it because madison had written this fine book not long before. her father was a scientist. he recorded his children's activities from the date of birth. we know what louisa was like at 4 months old and at 2 she waged a campaign for dominance over her 3-1/2-year-old sister and won. she took a advantage when her sister had a cold and hurt her ankle. there's so much material that is fascinating. like bronson alcott's journals which amount to 52 volumes. so the sources were really rich and i enjoyed it very much.

i liked the journals and letters more than anything else. she wrote quickly and only for money and never revised and it shows. they are not carefully perfected. the book she liked the most was a novel called moods which she worked on for 20 years and without success in my opinion. some scholars hold it in high esteem but i didn't. it is intriguing because the apps is louisa may alcott's character. she marries a man exactly like emerson. look at a photograph of emerson and read a description of jeffrey more, his description is emerson and the other man,y action is henry david thoreau. it is intriguing.

you have a question? >> what relationships do we know of? significant romantic relationships that we know of? >> significant romantic relationships that we know of. she decided not to marry. she was afraid to try it. she did have flirtations. she had huge crushes on henry david thoreau and emerson and friendships with younger men. to feel on the same level. a younger man with an older woman was more equal. wouldn't dominate her. she went to europe as the lady's companion. on her trip she main a man named snevs snevsky. a polish musician who was an

exile as chopin once --was. she used him as the basis for the character lori in "little women," the character public wanted her creation. for all 3 go in "little women" wanted her to marry laddie and she didn't just to spite her fans in a way. she quit her job as a lady's companion and went to paris and spent two weeks in paris in the company of this young man. this was another thing scholars never thought could be anything to be a romance. two week alone, and chaperoned in 1965 in paris, sings to her of swedish shares and describes him in a romantic way and remained in touch with him

throughout her life time. when she got back and wrote about the trip she wrote one and 3 that started with the words a little romance and it went on and said a little more. then she went back to this entry and scratched out whatever words there were so hard she almost went through the paper. there was no erasure of any other kind in her journal like this. she wrote over this space couldn't be. in the romance with wacky --l d --laddie couldn't be. she wrote the shortest dear john letter in history. mister, that, have decided it would be best to me not to lack of your proposal. in haste, louisa may alcott. we figured out that was.

we think he was a maker of hats. she had suitors but wanted to be a free spinster and peddle her own canoe. she had a lot of passengers in that the new and paddled very hard to pay back the debts that they owed. it took years to pay them off. she paid her sister's final dr. bill ten years after her sister died. any other questions? >> do you have descriptive excerpts in the book about what she thought of henry david thoreau and emerson and frederick douglass and harriet tubman after meeting them and talking about them? >> there was some.

she doesn't say anything about harriet tubman. she describes john brown's widow and daughter who came to board with the alcotts after john brown was executed. she talked about sitting between mr. and mrs. frederick douglass at a funeral for one of the great abolitionist of boston. shea talked-about theodore parker who was a well-known clergymen who lost his congregation because of his radical views. she talked about charles sumner. she worshipped the ground he walked on. and would go to a little soiree. they had won every sunday afternoon. oliver wendell holmes sr. looked at her and said you have how many sisters? she said four. and all as tall as you? he was a very short man.

a lot of anecdotes and descriptions of people. she knew henry david thoreau's character several times. after his death she brings him up as the favorite writer of a young man and boosts him because henry david thoreau had been forgotten. emerson and louisa may alcott tried to keep him in public view throughout their lifetime and eventually he was appreciated but he died with 700 copies of merrimack river in his room because he hadn't sold them. he was quite neglected for years. there's an essay called henry david thoreau called walking which is one of the more famous ones. the companion he is describing has to be louisa. read it and see if you agree. from everything the companion

says and what he describes as their conversation it feels like it must be louisa to me. another question? >> what would you say were her biggest regrets? >> she purposely didn't have regrets. she didn't go back that way. there was always a duty to be followed and that was her motive to go on. can't think of any regrets whether she -- the civil war cost her her health. she made that sacrifice. she regretted she couldn't control her temper her whole life. she was very turbulent. she would go in them and comments to her younger self in

her journals. at 12, i am not going to lose my temper with my sister and i know i will. you see this. all along is protesting and that she would be better. going to get patients. at 50 she still never got it. these annotations to her own earlier self. you have a question? >> i read in the book during the civil war she developed like many people and opium dependency and wondering how that would change her life. is that true? was she able -- in your opinion how did that affect her personally?

>> she used it in her writing. it gave her material. she took opium to sleep and periodically she would go off of it. people must have been aware of its dangers even though it was available and not expensive. was the only painkiller at a time. she had horrible headaches and low periods we would call depression. there was a six months period where she did nothing but sit in her room and eat. there was no remedy for headaches. she also took hashish for recreation. 01 default story about a young woman who is very much like her and in love with a young man but afraid to admit that she feels that way. of bunch of other young people having a picnic down around

plymouth and one medical student says i got this hashish candy so they take it. she take on the sly. she and the guy who is in love with her go out in a boat to find another member of the family. there is a big story that comes up and they can sense their love and are rescued by a lighthouse keeper and sailed back the next day. she says i don't want you to say i took hashish but tell me why you took it and she said i am tired of being a lonely statue. i want to be soft and lovable like other women and they fall

into each other's arms. heaven bless hashish if it ends like this. she uses it in a novel also and says no one who have not experienced this can describe what it is like. she was addictive at various times. any other questions? i think we should wrap it up. last question? thank you very much for bearing with me. [applause] ..

>> british prime minister david cameron was in his constituency today talking about the riots in london and other cities. this is 45 minutes.

>> thank you very much. good morning, all. and really, really warm welcome to you all here today. on behalf of of the young people, the staff and trustees of base 33, it's good to see you. and we are really glad on such a beautiful sunday morning you may the time to come here, especially toward young people who i know all received a phone call this point to make sure you are awake and here on time. thanks ever so much for turning out. it's my great pleasure and my privilege to ask you to welcome the prime minister, the right honorable david cameron. [applause] >> thank you. thank you very much. it's great to be back at base 33. i can see it hasn't got very tool or since i last made a speech in here. but it's great to be your. great for you to come. thank you. i.t. believe it is time for a country to take stock.

last week we saw some of the most sickening acts on our streets. i will never forget talking to maurice reeves whose family had run the furniture store for generations. this was an 80 year-old man who had seen the business he had loved, his family had built up for generations, simply destroyed and burned to the ground. 100 years of hard work burned to the ground in just a few hours. but last week we didn't just see the worst of the british people, we saw the best of them, too. the ones who call themselves, headed down to the hardware stores to buy brooms and start to clear. the people who linked arms together to stand and defend their homes and businesses. to please men and women, the fire officers who worked long, hardships sleep in corridors and then going out again to put their lives on the line for the rest of us. of where i've been this last week, a people of every

background, color and religion come have shared the same moral outrage and hurt for our country. because this is britain. this is a great country for good people, whose thugs we saw last week don't represent us and they don't represent the young people in our country either. and he will not drag us down. at now the fires have been put out and the smoke is cleared, the question hangs in the air, why? how could this happen on our streets and in our country? first we must oversimplify. there were different things going on in different parts of the country. some of the anger was directed at the police. there was some organized crime, attack on the forces of law and order. what we know for sure is that in large parts of the country, this was just pure criminality. so as we begin the necessary processes of inquiry, of investigation, of listening and

learning, let's be clear. these riots were not about race. the perpetrators and victims were white, black and asian. these riots were not about government cuts. they were directed at high street stores, not part of it. and these riots were not about poverty. that would insult the millions of people, would've hardship, would never dream of making others suffer like this. know, this was about behavior. people showing indifference to right and wrong. people with a twisted moral code. people to complete absence of self-restraint. i know as soon as they were like behavior and moral, people will say what gives politicians the right to lecture us? of course we are not perfect. our marriages and relationships in families break down. we get things wrong. but politicians shying away from speaking the truth about behavior, about morality, this is actually help because the social problems we see around us. we've been to one wedding, too long, to talk about what is

right and what is wrong. we are too often avoid saying what needs to be said about everything from marriage to welfare, common courtesy. sometimes the reason for that our noble. we don't want to insult or hurt people. sometimes the ideological reasons. sometimes there are just human reasons. we are not perfect beings ourselves and we don't want to look like hypocrites. so you can't say that marriage and commitment are good things for fear of alienating the single public. you don't deal with children repeatedly fair in school because you are worried about being accused of stigmatizing them. you rarely talk about those who never worked and never want to work. encased you are charged with not getting it comes with being middle-class, being out of touch. and is risk-free ground, moral neutrality, there are no bad choices, just different

lifestyles. people are the architects of their own problems, the victims of circumstance. live and let live becomes do what you please. actually what largely was shown was this moral neutrality, it is not going to cut it anymore. one of the biggest lessons of these riots is we have got to talk on the say about behavior and then act because bad behavior literally arrived on people's doorsteps and we cannot shy away from the truth anymore. so this must be a wakeup call for our country. social problems has been festering for decades and exploded in our face. just as people wanted criminals removed from our streets, so they want to see the social problems taken on and defeated. our security fight back must be matched by social fight back. we must fight back against the attitudes and assumptions that are brought parts of our society to the shocking state. we know what's gone wrong. the question is do we have the determination to make it right.

and we have the determination to confront the slow motion that has taken place in parts of our country these past few generations. irresponsibility, selfishness, behaving as if your choices have no consequences. children without fathers, schools without discipline, reward without effort, crime without punishment, rights without responsibility, communities out of control. some of the worst aspects of human nature, tolerated, indulged. sometimes incentivize by a state and its agencies that in part have become literally demoralize. so do we have the determination to confront this and turn it around? i have a very strong sense that the responsible majority of people in this country not only have the determination, they are crying out for the government to act on it. i can assure you i will not be found wanting. in my very first act as leader of this party, i said to my

personal priority to mend our broken society. that passion today is stronger than ever. yes, we had an economic crisis to deal with, clearing of a terrible mess we inherited and we're not out of those woods yet, not by a long way. but i repeat today as i have on many occasions these last few years that the reason i am in politics is to build it bigger and a stronger society. stronger families, stronger communities, a stronger society. that's what i came into politics to do, and the shocking events of last week have renewed in the that drive. so i can announce today that over the next few weeks i in ministers across the coalition government will review every aspect of our work to mend our broken society. on schools, welfare, families, parity, communities, on the cultural and legal bureaucratic problems in our society, too. from twisting and misrepresenting of human rights, to the undermine personal responsibility to the obsession with health and safety that has in many ways the road peoples

willingness to act according to common sense. government can't legislate to change behavior, but it is want to thank the state is a bystander. because people's behavior doesn't happen in a vacuum. it's affected by the rules government says and how they are enforced by the services government provides and how they're delivered. and perhaps above all, either single government sends about the kinds of behavior that are encouraged and rewarded. so yes the broken society is back at the top of my political agenda. first and foremost we need a security fight back. we need to reclaim our streets from the thugs who didn't just spring out of nowhere last week, but it in making peoples lives misery for years. i know that been questions in people's minds about my approach to law and order. nothing in this job is more important to me and keeping people safe. and it's obvious to me that you do that we got to be tough, we've got to be robust, we've got to score a clear line between right and wrong for

every street in every community. that starts with a stronger police presence, pounding to become deterring crime, ready to regroup and crackdown at the first sign of trouble. let me be clear. under this government we'll always have enough police officers to scale up our deployment in the way we saw last week. to those who say this means we need to abandon our plan to make savings and police budgets, i say you're missing the point. the point is what really matters in this fight back is the amount of time the police can spend on our street. for years without a police force suffocated by bureaucracy, officers the majority of their time filling in forms, stuck behind desks. pumping money in and keeping things basically as they have been. as the home secretary would explain tomorrow, it will be fixed by completely changing the way the police work, scrapping the paperwork that holds them back, getting them out on the streets where people can see them. our reforms being the police

will answer directly to the people. if you want more tough, no-nonsense policing, you want to make sure to please spend more time confronting problems in your neighborhood, less time beating targets by stopping motorists, patrolling the streets instead of sitting on their desks, elected police and crime commissions are part of the answer. they will provide the direct accountability so you can finally get what you want when it comes to policing. the point of our police report is not to save money, not to change things, but to fight crime. we aren't giving measures to dispersal orders, toughening curfew powers, giving police hours the power to remove rioters. rarely get giving them more power to confiscate property. over the coming months we will see much more. but it is time for something else. a concerted all-out war on gangs and gang culture. this isn't some side issue. it is a major criminal disease

that has infected streets and states across our country. stamping out these games should be a new national priority. last week i set up a cross government program to let every aspect of this problem. the last front in this fight is punishment. onorato last week that ended one of the young men who have been looting in manchester. he said this. he said i'm going to carry on until i get caught. this will be my first arrest, he said. the prisons are already overflowing so he would just get a pass and you can live with it. we've got to show to him and everyone like him, the party is over. i know when politicians talk about punishment and tough sentencing, people sometimes roll their eyes. yes, last week we saw the criminal justice system deal with unprecedented challenges, courts sat through the night and since with different justice. we saw the system was on the side of the law-abiding majority. the conference in the system is

still too low. and believe me i understand the anger with the level of crime in the country today and i'm determined we sort it out and restore faith that if someone hurts our society, if they break the rules in our society, and society will punish them for it. we need much more than that. we need a social fight back with big changes right to our society. let me start with families. the question people ask over and over again last week was where are the parents, why are they keeping the rioting kids indoor? tragically that was followed in some cases by judges rightly lamenting why do the. even turn up when their children are in court? you have a clear idea of why some of these young people who behaving so badly. either there was no one at home, they didn't much care, or they lost control. families matter, and i don't doubt many of the rioters out last week have no doubt at home. perhaps they come from one of

the neighbors where it's normal for young men to grow up without a male role model, looking to the streets for the father figures. tilled up with rage and anger. so if we want to have any hope of mending a broken society, the family and parenting is where we've got to start. i've been saying this for years, since before i was prime minister, since before i was leader of the conservative party. so from here on i want a family test applied to all domestic policy. if it hurts families, if it undermines commitment, tramples over the values that keep people together, or if it stops families from being together, then we shouldn't do it. more than that we've got to get out and make a positive difference to the way families work, the way people bring up their children. and we frankly have got to be less sensitive to the charge that this is about interfering or naming. we're working on ways to improve parenting. i want to work accelerate, expanded as quickly as possible.

we need more urgent action in the families that some people call problem or others call trouble. the ones everyone in the neighborhood knows and often avoids. last december i asked him if harrison to develop a plan to get these families on track. it came through to me earlier this year that as can so often have an income of those plans are being held back by bureaucracy. so even before the rights have and i asked for an explanation. as the rights of happen, i will make sure we clear away the red tape, the bureaucratic wrangling and put rocket boosters under this program. i have a clear ambition that within the lifetime of this parliament we will turn around the lives of the 120,000 most troubled families in this country. the next part of the social fight back is what happens in our schools. we need an education system which reinforces the best, but if you work hard, if you play by the rules, you will succeed.

this isn't a distant dream. it's already happening in schools like woodside high, in hackney, many schools in his constituency. they have spent high standards from every child and they don't make excuses. expecting to work hard. they provide alternative to street function how anyone can get up and get on. kids are now going to top universities thanks to schools like this. we need many more which is why we're creating more academies, and by the people behind these success stories are now opening free school inside the state sector. and why we pledged to turn red at 200 weakest secondary schools and the 200 weakest primaries within the next year. but with the failures and education system so deep we can't just say here our plans, we believe in them, let's sit back while they take affect. i want us to push further and faster. are we really doing enough to enjoy these great new schools

are being set up in the poorest areas to help children who need them the most? and why are we going up with a big scandals in schools being allowed to fail year after year? if young people of less schools are not able to read or write, why shouldn't that school be held more accountable? just as we want schools to be proud, we want everyone to feel proud of the committee. we need a sense of social responsibility, the heart of very community. yet the truth is for too long the big boss the bureaucratic state has helped train the responsibility away. it has usurped local leadership. and as frustrated local organizers with its rules and regulations. and it has denied local people out we'll see about what goes on where they live. so is it any wonder many people don't feel they have a stake in their community? this has got to change. we are already taking steps to changing. we are training an army of organizers to work at our most deprived neighborhoods because

we are serious about encouraging social action and giving people a real chance to improve the community where they live. we are changing the planning rules and giving people the right to take over local assets. the question i want to ask now is this, are these changes big enough, the sense of belonging we want to see? that's what would be looking at over the coming weeks. but one of the biggest pass is the social fight back is fixing our welfare system. for years we have a system that encourages the worst in people, that insights laziness, that the road self-discipline and discourages hard work. and above all a drink responsibly away from people. we talked about moral hazard in our financial system when banks think they can act recklessly because the state will bail them out. this is like moral hazard in our welfare system. people thinking they can be a responsible because the state will always bail them out. we are already addressing this, but i'm not satisfied that

they're doing all weekend. i want us to look at toughening of the conditions for those who are out of work and receiving benefits and speeding up our efforts to get all those who can work back into work. work is out the heart of a responsible society. so getting more of our young people into jobs, up and running their own businesses is a critical part of how we strengthen responsibility in our society. our work program is the first step. local authorities, charities, social enterprises, businesses, all working together to provide the best possible help for people who want to get a job. and this leaves no one behind. it includes people, i see this myself, who have been on welfare for years he are not getting the chance to work. as we consider these questions of attitude and behavior, the signal that government since, the incentives that it creates, we inevitably come to the question of the human rights act and the culture associated with it. let me be clear. in this country we are proud to

stand up for human rights at home and abroad. it is part of the british tradition. but what is alien to our tradition, and now exerting a corrosive hager and morality, is the twisting and misrepresenting of human rights in a way that undermined personal responsibility. we are attacking this problem from both sides. we're working to develop a way through this by creating our own british bill of rights. and we'll be using our current chairmanship of the council in europe to seek agreement for changes for the european convention on human rights. that all this is frustratingly slow. the truth is the interpretation of human rights legislation has exerted a chilling effect on public sector organization leading them to act in ways that often fly in the face of common sense, and that undermined responsibility. it is if you like the same was%. were regulations have been twisted and into a culture where the worst health and safety are

trotted out to justify the source of actions and regulations that damage our social path. i want to make something very clear. i get it. this stuff matters. and as we urgently review the work we do in the broken society, judging whether it is ambitious enough i want to make it clear there will be no holds barred out and that includes the human rights and health and safety culture. many people think the answer to some of these questions of social behavior is to bring back national service. in many ways i agree with that sentiment and that's why we are introducing something similar, national citizen service. it's a program that captures the spirit of national service. it takes 16-year-olds from different backgrounds and gives them to work together. they work in the communities, even younger children who play football, or visiting old people at the hospital. it shows young people that doing good can feel good. the real thrill is for building

things up, not tearing them down. teamwork, discipline, duty, decency. these words might sound old-fashioned but they're part of the solution to this very modern problem of alienated angry young people. restoring those values is what national citizen service is all about. i passionately believe in this idea. it's something we have been developing for years, years before i became prime minister. thousands of teenagers are taking part this summer. that plan is for 30,000 to take part next year. but in response to the riots i say this, it should be, a great national effort. let's make national citizen service available to all 16-year-olds as a rite of passage. we can do that if we worked together. businesses, charities, schools and social enterprises. and in the months ahead we will have renewed effort into making that happen. today i've talked a lot about what the government is going to do. but let me be clear, the social fight back is not a job for government on its own.

government does on the businesses that create jobs and turn lives around. government doesn't make the video gangs or print the magazines or produce the music that tells young people what is important in their lives. government cannot be on every street and in every state and still in the values that matter. this is a problem that has deep roots in our society. and it's a job for all of our society today. so in the highest offices, in a plush as boardrooms, the most influential jobs, we need to think about this example we're setting. moral decline in bad behavior is not limited to a few of the poorest parts of our society. in the banking crisis with mps expenses, in the phone hackings can do we have seen some of the worst cases of greed, irresponsibility, and entitlement. the restoration of responsibility has to cut right across the country because whatever the arguments, we all belong to the same society and we all have a stake in making it

better. there is no them and us. there is only us. we are all in this together. and we must ban then our broken society together. thank you very much for coming and thank you for listening. [applause] >> now we have some time for questions, if anyone wants to kick off. say who you are, where you are from. there is a microphone coming over to you. >> thank you very much, prime minister. on the specific of dealing with these problems, your secretary has talked about two specific things that one is sort of intervention by police and gang leaders, knocking on their doors every day. not taking benefits from those convicted in the riots. do you agree with those ideas? and also if i may, you made a very big pledge in that speech

to turn around the lives of everyone of 120 of the most troubled families. you said for the general election. how can you hope to achieve that and how will we know if you have achieved it or failed? >> let me take a second question first. the fact is if you look at the facts on the ground and figures, there are around 120,000 a very dysfunctional, very troubled families in our country. they already caused huge amount of money and they are intervened with a huge amount in different ways. they are the ones that are getting visits from social services, from the police, from probation. they are in touch if you like with many organizations of the state. but what we find is that actually no one is really, they are working on the sims but they're not working with those families to turn them around. and some councils have done excellent work of actually getting people into those homes and trying to turn those families around by actually solving the underlying problem in those families. what i'm saying in this speech

is we should be doing those things on all of the 120,000 families. we must not be put off by allegations or interfering, these families caused huge trouble for the rest of society. but they also have huge problems for themselves. and so we shouldn't stand back and just accept that they'll have the odd that they'll. no, get right stuck in with your sleeves rolled up and we can help return some of them around. he has my full support. one of the reasons i asked him to sit with the home secretary on this task force on gangs is that before he came back into the front line in politics, he spent a lot time with a criminal, with the social justice commission, looking at how we get to family breakdown, with societal breakdown and with getting specifically. ..

>> prime minister, could you tell me how much of the constrained lower social spending will be in conducting social buybacks and secondly when the united states is completing leaders and what do you say that that may import our problems even more with representation from primarily ethnic minority communities? >> on the first question i think the idea that the way you solve

problems is throwing money at them, the answer to every problem is open the taxpayers' checkbook a little wider, we have proved that is not the case. if these riots were about money we would be having the debate today about money spending here and there to make a difference. they were about behavior. they were about moral breakdowns. some of these things cost money. we have excellent police forces in this country and we can get more out of what we have by freeing these people from the back of this by cutting the paperwork. we ought to be looking at non many solutions to our problems. there are more behavioral problems. in terms of advice from overseas

we should recognize different countries have done different things. some have succeeded and some have failed. what are the good examples of practice and can we learn from that? if we look at the united states we have huge challenges of crime and terrible situations with cities and gains but in dealing with these problems for longer we look at the inspirational police chiefs in the u.s. with the right to learn from them and to see what they have to offer and that is what we will be doing and i don't think anyone should worry about that. >> my question is to the young people here have any questions? they are presumably -- >> good question. being good in taking people with their hands up first. let's have the lady here.

>> you said about families. the ones that hold them are in trouble, teenagers have problems. >> the point about families is that is one of the things that we can address people's presence. every family has massive challenges dealing with each other's behavior. the thing about families is it is the first line of defense getting people to behave better and understand your behavior has consequences. a lot of people don't have a supportive family and is important to have other ways of helping people which is why schools need to do better dealing with behavior. we have youth clubs like this where if you are not getting what you need you have another setting with adults working to try to talk about behavior.

family is not the whole answer because people don't have the support of and loving family we want everybody to have. it is not good enough for politicians to say families will get on with it, we will talk about the other things we do in parliament like foreign affairs and defense. we have to get bold in these arguments or too many people will fall through the net. >> the more you undermine families troubles, the more they feel they can act troubles and their self-esteem is running slightly good. more than they will feel the they will make the efforts. >> what we're trying to do to make these interventions into families is not just criticized them. you are trying to get in and and figure out what the problems

are. let me give you -- one of the things she says is in some families there is no tradition of actually sitting around and eating together and talking about problems. everything is just on the go, never actually talk about the problems in a family. part of it is giving people the chance to live their life in a different way when they consult problems and deal with them. you can't really expect the hard-pressed social worker who has problems with children that might need to be taken into care because of child abuse. it is difficult for social workers to have the time to really spend with the family and work out how to deal with things better or help spend time together and deal with problems together. we find a lot of these families have contact with the state. the social worker here and there

and a lot of contact but no spending time trying to help rearrange things to deal with their problems. in a different way to think about it, quite old-fashioned. released to do more when there was less paperwork and less bureaucracy. they could spend more time with the family. we have got to do that. what i heard about, where they are spending time with the family, it is important in every family and every community, finding those things and applying what works elsewhere. it has got to be done if we are going to deal with these problems. >> you were talking about going to top schools but how do you do that if you can't afford it? >> absolutely right. the problem is we haven't had good enough schools in the state

sector. one of the things this government is changing is saying just because it is a poor neighborhood and poor communities shouldn't have a really great safe school. we got some good schools in witney and oxfordshire. go to the inner cities they don't have any good schools. that should be the case. that is what the academy program is about. putting more money into those schools, putting great head teachers in charge of those schools and the preschool program is saying if you have a great idea for running a new school you should be able to set that up in the state sector and if you are going to attract the people you get the money. what i see as leader of the opposition and prime minister there are schools in the country and inner-city areas that get better results than the schools well off oxfordshire.

it can be done but it needs real rocket boosters to make sure we are getting those good schools in every part of the country. it shouldn't depend on being able to go private and spend the money to get better education for our children. it should be really good education in the state sector that is good and competitive. at its best there's a lot more. one more question. the gentleman over here. >> you talk about this, obviously -- [inaudible] -- one of the problems seems to be the state did not know about the jobs in ireland that they intended to do in a way that was significant enough. i hope something can be done. >> very fair question that was discussed in the house of commons. my response was to say when it first started there weren't

enough police on the streets quick enough. the taxi commission didn't work. i said that because that is what police officers and other officers told me. that is right. we have to be fair to the police. they're doing a good job. they are confronting -- they don't initially know what the model is doing. whether it is political protest or a riot or the police or looting stores. it is easy for everyone else to say it is obvious you must do this or that. the police are on the front line and having to adapt and change their tactics as it is happening and that is what they did and they did it successfully with political support in the government through the cobra emergency committee. they moved in essence determining we were going to learn them through reviews and inquiries and the rest. but we have to be careful not to

be unfair to the police to do a good job on our behalf and it can't be said strongly enough that officers -- imac many in the last week -- they showed extraordinary bravery. we ask them every day to go on the front line and put themselves between us and problems and risk their lives. it didn't all get as soon as it should have done. lessons will be learned exactly the way you suggest. i thank you for coming and for hosting me. glad to be back with you. maybe we can have even more questions and on will answer as many as i can. thank you very much indeed. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible cover stations] >> british opposition leader ed miliband spoke today about the riots. he was in his constituency in north london. this is 20 minutes. [applause] >> thank you very much. can i say what a privilege it is and a pleasure to be back at my old school, haverstock. i want to pick tribute to the fantastic young people of haverstock and fantastic teachers who taught me like mickey hayden who we have with us today. it brings back great memories to

be here. i am delighted. haverstock give me a great education. at haverstock i grew up with people from all walks of life. there is no substitute for that education and experience and i wouldn't be standing here today as leader of the labor party is it not for the education and values of haverstock for me. everyone here has a personal story about last week's riots and the feeling we have about what happened. mine is a week ago near the route that i walked to school for seven years and just saw the bike shop and other places. there was rioting, windows were smashed and stuff was taken. no part of london and no major

english city is immune were safe from what happened. this week i did what politicians don't do enough the rest of the time. i went out onto the street and listened to people who came up to me and talked about their experience and feelings about what happened. people told me their stories. their personal powerful stories. i want to bear witness to them today because it is only with the voices of the people that we can begin to understand and solve the problems we face as a society. less than 12 hours after the leading finished i heard from a young woman who made her way to university and walking home the previous night who feared for her safety and said something has to be done about this. i heard from an old man is that the problem is government and politicians have deserted our young people.

wednesday i saw the fury of people in manchester and the spirit of a thousand people who came out to show the spirit of manchester was something else and they cleaned up the streets of manchester after the rioting and looting. on friday i w÷ people were

saying to me we don't say it enough. i heard some people got their businesses attacked and searching for answers. i have seen and heard as i am sure you have anger, grief and fear and hope, bravery and determination as well. from almost all of that i heard nothing but condemnation. no excuses or justification

because nothing can justify and that is why tough punishments are being handed out. you must have heard something else. the deep desire to understand, the deep need to explain what happened. what we first said twenty years ago we need to be tough on crime, that speaks for what people have been saying on the streets and everywhere i have been people are discussing the same thing. why did this happen? what does it say about our country? what can be done now to prevent it happening again? there is an easy predictable path for politicians. it might even be the more popular in the short term. i heard some people demand on the streets. the riots are criminality pure and simple. if others wish to tread this

path that is a matter for them but not for me. i will tell you why. it is not strength. it is abdication of responsibility to victims, community and the country but if we follow that approach we run the risk of it happening again. the former l.a. police commissioner said you cannot arrest your way out of this problem. there's another part. simply to blame others, blame the parents and the police, we have seen a lot of that. our police force being undermined by the number of officers undermined further and the attempt by government to take credit operation decision that went right and blame the police for those that didn't work out. and blaming others, so

simplistic. instant judgment in response to these events brings bad solutions. the public says we want quick action but a new policy, knee-jerk gimmicks not thought through are not going to solve the problem. let's be honest about the politicians instinct. appoint a new adviser. that won't meet the public demand for real and lasting solutions. we heard it all in the last few days. water cannons, difficult, barely not out the door, and more gimmicks. the answer was to hug a woody. now the answer is to write health and safety laws. crisis like this tells something about our political leaders. day-by-day of the prime minister has revealed himself to be reaching for shallow and

superficial lancers, not -- answers. a strong response to restore order must be followed by real change but to do that we have to answer the most basic questions. why are there people who think it is okay to. and --loot and vandalize their community? everything to gain and nothing to lose from doing things like this. the small minority who did this are not one race, one 8 group or one community. they are british people from britain to they ulster and manchester. to answer what happened i say this. the most inconvenient of all, people are responsible for their actions but we better share of responsibility to what we

create. government, labor conservative as, powerful business and media and all of us, me and you as well. only by starting with this can we get to the honest answers our country deserves. i am here today at haverstock because the national conversation must start with the communities affected. every place i have been too there is enormous support for the problem and overwhelming desire to be heard. also heard the suspicion, the legitimate suspicion that this will be another example of politicians arriving at the scene of trouble and melting away when the world moves on. people have seen the way my profession works before and are understandably cynical. can we be different this time? that is the challenge. only if we give people who have

been affected by this the chance for the point of view to be heard, every major disturbance that we had in our history we had a commission to look at the causes. we must have this one as well. a genuine national conversation. not a group of and ps focusing on policing as the government proposes or review of government policy from civil servants were standard judicial inquiry made of elites. we need an answer from people themselves, listen to the victims build on their own experience. if the prime minister wants to know the solution he should come to these communities that have the humility to listen. he should have nothing to fear from the truth and the people leading this commission of inquiry, the young people we talked about. those people with experience of being in gangs or across the

community. and the hearings should not happen in whitehall but areas that experience the riots and those that did not. what are the issues for this national conversation? i am looking forward to your questions about this. let me put it on the table. let's start by asking what values we stop from the rioters? agreed, selfishness and immorality. the irresponsibility is not confined to those who took part in the riots. there is personal responsibility too. 5 was appalled to hear about parents who did not turn up in court when they're 14-year-old was charged with looting. someone said to me angry about parents not taking responsibility. when the riots began i made sure my kids were at home. why weren't other parents doing that?

the reality, the truth behind this was not simple. the vast majority of single-parent surge doing a brilliant job and some are not doing a very good job. some people say -- there are rich families who are unable to control their kids and the vast majority of poor families who do control their kids. we must avoid wheeling out the old stereotypes and prejudices in this debate that suits one party or another. and lead to questions about what causes this irresponsibility. why some parents are not teaching their children the difference between right and wrong or setting boundaries. i heard on the streets a lot of times people saying you can't tell your children anymore. i ask the question who is telling parents they can't tell off their children anymore?

certainly not me. we need to ask why young people don't have role models to put them on the right path in life. we need to understand something else as well which we don't tend to talk about. the link between problems in our society and the economy in britain. we need to ask what we can do about the economy. children don't see enough of their parents because they are working 60 or 70 hours a week doing not just one job but two or three and not there when their kids get home in the evening. the solution won't be simple either. one of the most important things government can do to back families up with programs like family nurse partnerships or help parents do their duties. as we talk about what happened in the riots we have to be honest with ourselves. children's ideas of right and wrong don't just come from their

parents. we can't honestly say the greed, selfishness and irresponsibility we saw is confined to the looters or even their parents. it is not the first time we have seen this kind of me first take what you can culture. destroying people's savings, greedy, selfish and immoral. the people who have phones at the expense of 4 victims, greedy, selfish and immoral. people who talk about sick behavior of those without power should start talking about the behavior of those with power as well. let's not pretend a crisis of values in our society is confined to a minority only at the bottom. we see the morality of millions of hard-working people under siege from the top as well. let's talk about what that does to our culture.

too often we send a message from the top to bottom of britain's society that says anything goes. you are in it for yourself as long as you can get away with it. we hear lots of talk about role models for the community but what role model has been provided by the elite in britain in the last few decades? the crisis is not confined to the underclass in britain. the country is held back by irresponsibility wherever it is found. it can only be solved by addressing the issue across our society from bonuses the benefits. so the culture of our society does matter. just as those on the left to dismiss arguments about culture are wrong so are those on the right to dismiss the importance of opportunity and hope. is true as some people say is that people from comfortable backgrounds took part in the riots. lack of opportunity cannot

explain all of what happened. come on. just because it can't explain everything doesn't mean it can't explain anything. this is where the leader of the opposition needs to speak frankly. not everyone grows up the deprived neighborhood turns to crime just as not everyone in a rich neighborhood stays on the straight and narrow. individuals are responsible for their actions and every individual has a choice between doing right and doing wrong. there are connections between circumstances and behavior. these are actually my words. they are the words of david cameron whose speech five years ago taught that culture and deprivation matters but last thursday he said in the house of commons this is not about poverty. it is about culture and he repeated again today. i don't understand why he changed his mind. he has accepted a false choice

between health-care and opportunity. not because his view of the world has changed but his view about what would make him popular has changed. and to explain not to excuse. if we refuse to explain what happened we will condemn ourselves to repeat it. ..

>> some kids see the choice, and say, the gang offers them money, protection, and, status. and, some people believe, some young people believe, that there isn't that choice available to them, from another route. just as we need tough action against gangs we need to show young people there's another way and that is harder when support has been taken away. i'm more interested in letting one government or one policy or defending one government and i'm proud of what the labor government did, to advance young people's chances, the new deal, the minimum wage and rebuilding our schools and these changes at vans the call of young people, and, high school standards, narrowing the gap in educational achievements. and getting more people into university, and building for the future. and we didn't do everything right and didn't reach everyone we should have done. but, let's debate as a country. in the aftermath of