The
Aims and Origins of the SDRS
The sole aims of the SDRS are as follows: first, the
promotion of random selection as a complementary method of
election; secondly, to facilitate political and cultural
understanding between persons who share this democratic
aspiration.
The genesis of the SDRS may be traced to 1994. That year
the Labour Committee on Democratic Accountability of Secret
Services (LCDASS) held a fringe meeting at the Labour party
conference and proposed that organisations constituted to
monitor the activities of the secret services should
incorporate the principle that some of their members be
chosen by random selection from the general electorate,
similar to the way in which juries are selected. The use of
random selection in the appointment of these bodies is the
best method to ensure that influences of political
factionalism do not jeopardise the impartiality or
operational security of the intelligence services. The
problem of factionalism is however not confined to the
question of intelligence oversight: it also affects
virtually the entire representative democratic system.
Against this background the LCDASS advocated the promotion
of the Athenian form of democracy - random selection not
only as a method of selecting juries but also as a general,
complementary method for electing democratic
representatives, including members of parliament.
Constitutional reforms facilitating this purpose could also
serve the ultimate purpose of incorporating the use of
random selection in regard to oversight of the intelligence
services.
In 1998, Anthony Barnett, a Senior Research Fellow at
London University, wrote a pamphlet in connection with the
ongoing reform of the House of Lords entitled The Athenian
Option, in which he advocated random selection as a method
of election to the new upper chamber. At the Labour
conference held in September that year the LCDASS hosted a
fringe meeting to promote this proposal with speakers
including Anthony Barnett, the former deputy leader of the
Labour party Roy Hattersley, and the Guardian journalist
and author Jonathan Freedland. Throughout 1999 and 2000 the
LCDASS organised and conducted a series of focus group
meetings using canvassing methods incorporating the
principle of random selection to find out how the general
public would respond to this proposed constitutional reform
for the House of Lords.
Most of those who attended these meetings approved of the
use of random selection as a means to elect some peers to
the newly reformed upper chamber. They also agreed that an
organisation should be formed to promote random selection
as a complementary form of election, and in June 2000 the
inaugural meeting of the SDRS took place comprised mainly
of those individuals who had been contacted using random
canvassing methods. That is why even though a Labour party
organisation was involved in the formation of the SDRS most
of its members are not in the Labour party and it is
correspondingly independent of any political party. The
SDRS incorporates random selection methods in its own
internal practices and constitution. Canvassing methods
undertaken by the SDRS also incorporate random selection
techniques.