You looking at me?
Current attitudes to scrutiny do campaigners and the left no good.
Note: I write these posts throughout the week, and started this one before the tragic death of Sir David Amess MP. I may share thoughts at length about this and the wider implications when more is known and my response is sharper. For now I simply offer my sincere condolences to all who knew him.
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This is a post about scrutiny and what the left’s attitude to it should be. This is not a post about gender, or Stonewall or the BBC or the Metropolitan police - though the post has been influenced and is in response to discussions of all of these and more. It’s not a post about Claudia Webbe, Jared O’Mara or Fiona Onasanya - though a better approach to scrutiny may have saved considerable Labour blushes in each of these cases.
There will be many who will simply see the topic of this post and decide that I am taking a stance on certain issues or am angling for factional advantage. Furthermore, instead of actively scrutinising any stance I do take (which is generally nuanced and complicated and not as simple as people shouting at me from either side would like it to be) will simply assume my stances for me. Usually, as they may differ from theirs to some degree, they will assume they are 100% against me without further investigation. I will be written off as a TERF or a centrist cuck not because of anything I believe or don’t believe, but because of my willingness to ask questions; to not believe in anything unthinkingly.
This is precisely the mindset I seek to challenge here.
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I used to work as the Head of External Affairs for a think tank and one part of my role was recruitment for any of the comms roles - from interns to events managers - that would periodically come up. At all interviews, I would ask what we called the ‘Daily Mail question’: “You’re in the office on your own and the phone rings. It’s the Daily Mail and they ask how you’re funded - what do you say?”
The answer we were looking for, but very rarely got, was simply to say “All of our funding sources are on our website and published in our annual report”. We were completely transparent - proudly so - as an organisation.
But the question was usually met with a sense that it wasn’t that person’s role to give out that information. That was why we asked it. Not to fluster them or catch them out. But to stress from the very beginning of any working relationship that this was our approach. We welcomed scrutiny of our organisation, our funding and our research.
We welcomed scrutiny. What an odd sentence that seems to be now. Not in the think tank world (where openness still remains a pretty central value to the more respected organisations) but almost anywhere else. Scrutiny has become a bywords for criticism and criticism of anything purporting to be for a good cause has become verboten.
Take the response to the recent Stephen Nolan series on Stonewall, which is what has prompted this post.
I’ve listen to the series (which I wholly believe to be significantly more than many of its loudest critics have done). I’ve appeared on Stephen Nolan’s show many times in the past to discuss current affairs and politics. He’s a robust journalist and has a strong no-nonsense streak which sometimes can be helpful and sometimes can feel a little iconoclastic. The series itself raises some interesting questions. This isn’t going to be a full review of the show or the points raised, but I would say that the wider questions it raises that are pertinent to this discussion are about what happens when charities become monopolies, what happens when they are both awarders of status as well as provider of commercial services designed to improve status and most significantly, what happens when lobbying is done behind closed doors, secretively and with little or no public record.
The series actually isn’t all that critical of Stonewall. It points out repeatedly that Stonewall have done an exceptional job as a lobbying organisation in getting themselves into this position of power. There is question of its model and how they can separate the commercial and charitable parts of the organisation - but this is more a question they believe their recipients and funders should be asking - rather than an explicit criticism of Stonewall.
What the programme does criticise is how the recipients of Stonewall’s lobbying as well as paid for training, diversity schemes and advice are taking too much at face value and are not questioning what they are hearing, seeking alternate points of view (or often simply acknowledging such points of view exist) or properly scrutinising their internal commercial and non-commerical relationship with the charity.
These are not unreasonable questions. Nor is the existence of such questions an attack on Stonewall or its position on gender.
I don’t want to go too far into detail of the philosophical, biological and sociological arguments around gender that are examined throughout the programme. Many people have many different views and while I know my own are nuanced, I also know that even being nuanced itself is considered by some to be a betrayal close to transphobia or homophobia. That is hurtful for me personally, but far, far worse it derails all and every debate that even begins to touch on this area. Well meaning people of good intention are forced into ever more polarised corners and we all lose out on so much common ground.
What I do want to talk about is the concept of ‘no debate’ that has sprung up around the question of gender, but also about many other current important and popular causes. I am deeply concerned about how badly this is affecting not only our ability to make and win progressive arguments but even more importantly, how it is eroding the quality of what should be progressive organisations endangering their ability to perform their basic, core functions, jeopardising their future standing and even existence and most of all letting down the very vulnerable people they seek to represent.
A rather spurious argument that comes up when we talk about surveillance culture is the old canard “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”. Many of us know how utterly untrue this is on a personal level. Women, people of colour, LGBT people all know the vital importance of personal privacy and freedom.
However, the same cannot and must not be brought over into organisations.
The left believe in regulation of organisations to ensure good working practices, an ability to challenge discrimination and oversight to ensure that consumers are getting a good and fair deal. We champion the Living Wage (and living wage employers) Fair trade and consumer rights. We believe in better oversight - that’s why one key demand we have made repeatedly of the private sector is to put workers on boards.
Why then are we so squeamish about oversight of charities and campaigning organisations?
We have seen numerous examples of late where a lack of such oversight has led to disastrous consequences. Sexual harassment and abuse scandals in organisations as diverse as Save the Children, Oxfam and the GMB. There are also significant questions being asked about potential financial misdealings in Unite. The highest profile case was probably Kids Company which combined accusations of abuse and appalling financial mismanagement.
Most of these were only surfaced - and only started to be dealt with - after external examination - particularly from the media. Many times there was a sense from the supporters and champions of these organisations and their missions that any such scrutiny was politically or ideologically motivated and done in bad faith. When scandal is found to have happened, it is seen as isolated. The individual organisation may learn lessons but the culture of defensiveness continues unabashed.
Of the organisations named above, only Kids Company was closed down. the others continue to do the work they were set up to do. Scrutiny has not ended that work - it has vastly improved it.
There has been a tone in the defence of Stonewall that to be critical - or even questioning - of the organisation is to be homophobic & transphobic or at best to side with homophobes and transphobes. This has a chilling effect on scrutiny - no one wants to be seen as anti gay or anti-trans.
But it is not homophobic or transphobic to want the organisation that is there to support LGBT people to function well or to question how it functions. It is equally not homophobic or transphobic to ask about lobbying arrangements with government and public funded bodies and to expect these to be publicly scrutinised.
Rules that exist for everyone should be applied to everyone - not just to organisations whose missions we happen to agree with. If Stonewall have unprecedented access to government and are at the same time marking their homework, selling them services and lobbying them to make changes there do need to be questions about how that works and how either side are avoiding obvious conflicts of interest.
This is the case both becuase we want the rules to be rigorous for the next organisation that comes along (one whose values may not align as well with our own) but also because it will help the people Stonewall purport to support. If a good mark can be achieved not be good actions, but by buying Stonewall training - whatever the outcome - that doesn’t help vulnerable LGBT people. It actively harms their ability to question anything in their 'Stonewall champion’ rated workplace. This is why such schemes need to be closely watched and monitored by outside eyes - both regulators and press.
Defensiveness is a natural human instinct. But we put scrutiny, regulation and monitoring in place for the simple reason that our personal natural human instincts can frequently lead to bad practice.
It is essential for the left to welcome scrutiny into the organisations whose work we champion - be that the BBC, Stonewall or the Labour Party. It is essential for the left to listen to reasoned criticism and arguments and engage with them on their merits and not as an attack they are not intended to be. The more we shut ourselves off to reasonable criticism, the more likely we are to miss real and important problems.
If that happens, all we do is set these organisations and their causes up for bigger and harder falls. In doing that, in protecting those who may be letting us down in the short term, we let down those who need help, support and championing.
So when someone - an individual, a journalist or a regulator - raises concerns or even just questions about an organisation you care about don’t dismiss them, listen to them. Engage with those concerns and questions. It may be that they are unfounded. It may be that there are good answers. But unless you look into that those questions and concerns will not be answered and they will fester. That closing down helps no one - least of all that which you think you’re protecting.
What I’ve been up to
Well mostly I have been on holiday. Myself and my friend (also called Emma) walked over 50 miles in four days across a range of sites in North Norfolk. We were up for breakfast by 8.30 and in bed by 10 every night. A very different kind of holiday from that which I’m used to!
The last of my Guayaba pieces on the party conferences was published this week - this time on whether the Tory conference - for all it’s outward confidence - offered solutions to the multiple crisises we find ourselves in.
I was also an interviewee on the Champagne Comedy podcast, talking about early 90s Australian comedy programme The Late Show’s ‘whinging pom’ sketch.
Reading List
This response to the killing of David Amess from Alison McGovern MP is superb. Heartfelt, meaningful, reflective and offering wider lessons without reducing the sense of the tragedy.
Questions, comments and arguments are very welcome. Insults will get you summarily blocked on every platform that no longer hosts Donald Trump. I’m at emmaburnell@gmail.com or on Twitter (far too often) at @EmmaBurnell_.