About
Titus Alexander has been described as a one-man think tank and practical radical. He works on a wide range of issues, from animal welfare, community development, family learning, schools and self-esteem to climate change, democratic reform and global governance.
He is committed to making the world a better place by helping people learn how to use power for good.
Read more about themes of Titus’s work by clicking on the about menu above or clicking themes Themes.
See also papers o ResearchGate
Current work
Titus runs Leading Change, an advanced apprenticeship in campaigning, free for levy-paying organisations, just 5% of cost for others
Titus also work with campaigns on political literacy, learning for democracy and reform of global governance.
Titus keen to work with students, teachers and campaigners to develop education for change and practical politics in mainstream education at all levels.
Titus developing a thesis on the power of social models, seeing institutions as “theories” of social science, embodying collective understanding and practices of how to deal with specific social issues. The Greek word thesmós (Θεσμός), meaning an institution, social custom or practice, describes an institution’s role as a social model, as distinct from theo̱ría, a system of ideas to explain something. The concept of thesmós means social scientists need to work closely with practitioners to develop and test their ideas in practice. It has the potential to transform social conditions, in the way that natural sciences have transformed material conditions.
Track record
I have worked with grassroots communities, schools, universities, local authorities, national governments, international agencies and trade unions to influence change at every level:
- Founding member of the Community Resources Centre, Westhill Community Centre and other local projects in Brighton & Hove (1975 – 81);
- Creator of the Popular Planning Project in Clapham & Battersea in London (1982-86)
- Convened and facilitated national campaigns to support family learning and parents/carers as a child’s first and most enduring educator (1992 – 2005)
- Founded the UK Self-Esteem Network and joined the International Council for Self Esteem with Jack Canfield, Nathaniel Brandon, Gloria Steinem, etc
- Developed and promoted ‘citizenship schools’ as model for democratising schooling (2001-5)
- Wrote Unravelling Global Apartheid, a comparison of globalisation with apartheid South Africa, which influenced Thabo Mbeki and others (1996)
- Organised a benefit concert for The Other Economic Summit (TOES) at Hackney Empire, with Ben Elton, King Masco, Ken Livingstone, Bishop of Durham and many others in 1991, getting TV coverage for TOES
- Launched Charter 99, a campaign for accountability in global governance, which influenced the UN Millennium Summit and reform in many international agencies through the Global Accountability Project (1999 – 2004)
- Worked with the Global Commons Institute and Action for a Global Climate Community to promote the Contraction & Convergence (C&C) model of equal emissions rights, from the first UNFCCC conference in Berlin to high level meetings in India and Europe (1994 – 2009)
- Ran a national road show across England on building capacity for campaigning (2009)
- Founded Democracy Matters, an alliance for learning practical politics (2009 – )
- Ran a UK programme on constitutional change as an ESRC Knowledge Exchange Fellow (2015)
- Was lead facilitator for the Citizens Assemblies on devolution (2015)
- Published the first textbook for teaching practical politics and accredited apprenticeship in campaigning (2017)
- Created courses to support learning for social change in each of these areas.
I have worked with ministers and officials in the UK Departments for Education, Environment, Cabinet Office and International Development in successive governments, influencing policy and practice on citizenship education, community development, family learning, climate change and global governance.
Titus’s story
I was born in 1952 in Germany and spoke German until about four, when my parents moved to Edinburgh to teach. My two younger brothers and I went to primary school, where I was taunted for being a Hun – it was 12 years after the war, comics were full of battle stories, children played war games in overgrown bomb shelters. Food rationing had ended just four years earlier and money was tight.
My parents were downwardly-mobile intelligentsia. My father grew up in a big house with servants near Newcastle. He had studied philosophy and now taught at a small primary school in a mining village. My mother’s father was a labour judge in Hamburg, living in a big house with servants, who was sacked by the Nazi’s and lost almost everything. My parents met studying philosophy in Germany. They never had much money, nor cared for it, but we lived in a big house in Morningside and rented rooms to doctors from Africa. My mother taught German and kept the home together.
We were sent to the Steiner school, where my parents had taught, to get away from bullying and for its creative approach to education. We learnt drawing, sewing, cooking, gardening and making things, as well as German, French, maths, history, geography and stories from ancient civilisations. We learnt about farming, fishing, building and other industries, with visits and practical activities.
In upper school I produced a monthly nature newsletter, occupied a classroom to get a student common room, wrote a play on the life of Dr Semmelweis (performed by my class), organised a benefit concert and book auction for Shelter, got a student subscription to the Times, attended a Quaker youth group and went on demonstrations against the Vietnam war.
I wasn’t happy. My father lost his temper and could be violent, my mother long-suffering. This gave me an enduring commitment to women’s empowerment and liberation, parenting education and self-esteem as foundations for social change.
I travelled a lot, spending summers with grandparents in Germany or camping on the west coast of Scotland. I started hitch-hiking in Europe from 14, usually sleeping rough. Lots of long conversations with drivers about diverse beliefs, life stories and adventures.
I learnt to see the world through many different eyes as a result of English as a foreign language, our educated African lodgers, the Steiner school, intellectual parents, reading, a constant stream of visitors at the dinner table, and hitch-hiking.
University
I went to university in 1970 to study maths and physics because I wanted to learn about reality (inspired by a brilliant math’s teacher at school). I was attracted by Sussex university’s philosophy of education (and because it was as far from home as I could go). But I felt I was being taught natural theology rather than the pursuit of science, mathematical methods rather than meaning. I was inspired to learn more about the history, philosophy and social purpose of science by Brian Easley, and switched to Intellectual History with German. In the first year we boycotted the Prelim exams (getting them abolished), and I stayed from the curriculum, reading Marx (young and old), systems theories, Gregory Bateson’s Ecology of Mind and more.
I played drums in a band, set up a Brighton Festival Fringe Society, wrote plays, got onto the National Student Drama Society committee, put on my play about Aubrey Beardsley in Brighton Library and the Edinburgh Fringe. Lots of adventures.
I spent 1973-4 at Marburg University, Germany, studying Vygotsky’s origins of language and researching a comparative study of the origins of Freud’s thought from 10am – 10pm, then dancing at Milli Vanilli till the early hours.
I developed a theory about the social origin of ideas and concluded that our individualistic, exclusive university education was damaging students and society.
Back in England I set up ie Sussex (ideas in education for Sussex) with other students, using a hand breaking out of a shell as a logo. Together we launched many educational initiatives, including:
- Student-led study circles
- A magazine folder full of articles about education
- A ‘Street Library’ to which students lent books for others to read (it became an anarchist meeting place)
- ‘Learning in the Real World’, a project-based counter-course
- A skills exchange on campus and in Brighton
In 1975 I decided that taking the final exams violated everything I believed about the damaging effect of university on society, although I had done all the work and my tutor said I was likely to get a first.
The main thing I learnt was that universities are about status, not knowledge. When trying to persuade me to take the exam tutors said things like “We know exams don’t mean anything, but they justify our funding to taxpayers”, “Students would climb drain pipes if it was part of the degree”, and “I won’t read your thesis and give you feedback unless you do the exams”. That nearly persuaded me, because I dearly wanted feedback, but it confirmed my belief that academia was about status (and a comfortable life on campus), not ideas, scholarship or knowledge.
I stayed at Sussex for two more years, working for the Students’ Union on ie Sussex and then as a part-time research assistant, developing and then teaching my course on Learning to Learn. I also worked with the national student community action network, who published my Know University alternative prospectus. I was the sole member of National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) on campus and the anti-cuts trade union committee, while becoming increasingly active in the local community.
Community
I had read Saul Alinksy’s Rules for Radicals and concluded that enabling people develop their power from the bottom-up was the best way to bring about social change. This became my main commitment for the next 35 years. In Brighton I helped start the Community Resources Centre, Westhill Community Centre and Brighthelm. The Resources Centre fostered a thriving network of local projects, the Anti-Nazi League and new wave music in the vault. I ran courses about tackling unemployment, transport and other issues with the Friends Centre and Workers’ Educational Association, influencing the County Council to set up cycle lanes and contributed to the lively local communities.
In 1982 I was employed by Alan Tuckett, principal of Clapham Battersea Adult Education Institute in London, to set up a Popular Planning Project, funded by the radical Greater London Council (GLC), to support learning for change. We worked with over 30 local initiatives, described in Value for People.
After the GLC was abolished by Mrs Thatcher’s government I got a job running adult and community education in central Islington, part of the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA). When Mrs Thatcher abolished ILEA I got a job as a local authority community education adviser and schools inspector, where I worked on community use of school premises, environmental education, philosophy with children, circle time, parenting education and a wide range of project. Then Mrs Thatcher abolished the service to create Ofsted, a national inspectorate in 1994. Although I qualified as an Ofsted inspector I felt the new system was harmful and went freelance.
International solidarity
Every since I learnt about the Spanish conquistadores, slave trade and global poverty at school, as well knowing doctors from Africa, I felt solidarity with far away people. The Vietnam war and threat of nuclear annihilation increased my sense that an interconnected world needs justice and good governance. I joined demonstrations about Vietnam, apartheid and the 1973 coup in Chile, but didn’t get directly involved until, for some reason, I formed an alliance of international development organisations, called Brighton Union for Development (BUD). In in 1980 we organised a conference on the Brandt Report, North-South: A Programme for Survival, joined a demonstration about it in London, and worked on local cooperation.
In 1981 I flew to New York and hitched hiked to Oakland California to earn money to visit Latin America. I worked in a call centre in the morning, raised funds door-to-door from the afternoon and cleaned a pizza parlour late at night. I spent three months in Mexico, travelled by bus through Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, saw bodies of people murdered by death squads, and witnesses poverty, lawlessness, kindness and beauty in America’s backyard. I spent four months in Nicaragua, travelling widely and talking with people, got imprisoned in a remote conflict zone, and saw the Sandinista revolution grapple with expectations, inequality and emerging counter-revolution.
When I returned I got involved in various solidarity movements and education about global issues. Although not a Christian, I was invited to chair a development education committee for Christian Aid for many years. I led two study tours in the Soviet Union, visited Cuba as an independent traveller and was later invited to communist China as part of an EU adult education delegation.
In 1984 I visited African and Indian friends in South Africa, as apartheid was beginning to unravel. It was as like seeing the “first world” on top of the “third word”, separated by law rather than geography, which I then research for a book on the politics of global inequality.
I tried to do my bit for international solidarity by chairing Westminster United Nations Association for several years, working with the Development Education Association, promoting the Global Commons Institute’s model of equal emissions rights (Contraction & Convergence), launching Charter 99, supporting the One World Trust’s Global Accountability Project and assisting Action for a Global Climate Community’s initiative for the EU and India to develop an equitable approach to climate. I persuaded Clare Short, Secretary of State for International Development (DfID) to run stakeholder forums to inform and support her strategy. I have lobbied MPs, Ministers, heads of government, officials and diplomats at numerous international conferences, the UN and in their offices, seeking support for specific proposals to make global politics more accountable, open and fairer.
My biggest lessons are that organisations with a clear objective, persistence and ability to develop relationships with people in power do make a difference; that wider public understanding and support makes change easier, but is not sufficient; and that elected politicians have a decisive role.
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
WhatsApp
Our History
08March2017
Joined the Business Lounge Family
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum non dolor ultricies, porttitor justo non, pretium mi.
14February2017
New York Office
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum non dolor ultricies, porttitor justo non, pretium mi.
23April2016
Partnership with ABC Bank
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum non dolor ultricies, porttitor justo non, pretium mi.
01May2015
Founded
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum non dolor ultricies, porttitor justo non, pretium mi.