Wow. What a whirlwind of accusations and revelations we have been treated to in the last 24 hours. What with Andrew Rawnsley ’s allegations that Gordon Brown is prone to nasty hissy fits, followed by the extraordinary remarks of the boss of the ‘National Bullying Helpline’ indicating that Downing Street staff had called for help and all the attendant twittering and analysis, it is hard to know where to start.
Issues raised:
Character of PM, workplace bullying, breach of confidentiality of callers to helpline, potential dodgy dealings of said helpline, poor journalistic practices by BBC who ‘broke’ helpline story.
My thoughts:
GB’s fiery temper has not been a secret (see Private Eye). Is he a bully or ‘demanding’ and ‘passionate’? Depends if you believe the journo or the spin. At this stage I don’t suppose we will ever get a clear picture. Obviously workplace bullying is vile but there are many vile practices that take place in politics that wouldn’t be tolerated elsewhere. Witness jeering and sneering of MPs in the House of Commons, hardly ideal workplace practice. It’s also interesting to contrast the attempts of Mandelson on TV yesterday to spin GB’s ‘volcanic’ behaviour into something admirable with attempts to portray him as a romantic family man.
The weighing in of Christine Pratt of the National Bullying Helpline is bizarre and disgraceful, in my opinion. This by the Guardian on Ms Pratt and the NBH makes interesting reading and the twittersphere is full of murky ‘facts’ about the dubious nature of their charitable status and conflicts with for profit services. But even if we disregard all that and take her statement at face value (that she was so angered by Downing Street denials she had to speak up), the shocking betrayal of confidentiality beggars belief. One board member has resigned over it, and Ann Widdecombe (a NBH patron) has criticised her actions, and rightly so. She has damaged the relationship between agencies who seek to address bullying issues and those they seek to help, and for what? You have to kind of consider John Prescott’s theory that ‘lt’s all been a publicity stunt for her company’ since she is all over the news media today and of course now Nick Clegg and David Cameron are weighing in, calling for an enquiry amongst other things. Urgh. And they wonder why the electorate are turned off by politics.
It’s interesting that all this should come up because I was thinking of writing something on bullying after having read this blog post about how we should talk to our children about dealing with bullies. The advice tends to be to ‘talk to a trusted adult’, something that I have said to my own daughter when she tells me soandso doing suchandsuch in the playground. The sticky part is how do they know who to trust? Often simply ‘telling the teacher’ can be seen as telling tales and young children may not always be able to articulate what happened clearly enough that the teacher realises the seriousness of what is going on. As for parents, it seems hard to get a realistic picture of what is happening at school with often only a garbled child’s version of events to go on. This makes it very hard to know when and how to speak up on your child’s behalf.
Obviously, communication is key and I try to regularly talk to my children about playground incidents, good and bad. For the school’s part, one key to combating bullying is for teachers to develop a relationship of trust with their pupils as well as a sense of community in the classroom. In this kind of environment, getting to the truth of potential bullying episodes is going to be an easier task.
Its not like bullying is confined to the younger generation though and it seems dealing with it doesn’t get any easier either. With workplace bullying for example, who can you trust? The betrayal demonstrated by the NBH is hardly going to help the situation, is it? It’s also a shame that the electorate won’t get a realistic picture of what is or was going on in Gordon Brown’s office now the warring parties of journalists and spin doctors are muddying the waters. I suspect that bullying of one kind or another is endemic in politics. It makes me want to send the whole pack of them to the Headteacher’s office.
I was agog at the National Bullying Helpline revealing the information about the calls to them- how dare they!! I heard that Pratt woman on Today this morning and she was awful- totally denying that her actions were wrong- and as for the helpline offering to put people in touch with her husband’s business!! Beggars belief!
This whole story is a bit too Malcom Tucker, for me to take it seriously- we’re never going to know the truth, and to be honest, I’m not sure we should. What should have happened is that the complaints (if they ever happened) should have investigated in private under the proper procedures, as they should be within any organisation.
Oh boy. What can I say? Far from turning me off, this incident has got me spitting mad. First and foremost, I’m angry with the BBC for shoddy, lazy journalism. They claimed to have looked into possible political connections of the NBH, but clearly they didn’t look very hard. One political journo/blogger managed to turn up lots of relevant information with a few simple searches: http://torytroll.blogspot.com/2010/02/who-are-national-bullying-helpline.html
I followed all the links on that page and I believe that they are very revealing and would not have been hard to find. And like AdamB, I thought the story sounded fishy as soon as I heard it. The most disturbing information though came from this link: http://thebullyinghelpline.blogspot.com/2009/08/why-not-to-ask-for-independent.html . If this blogger is to be believed then it’s a lot more than just conflicts of interest and breaches of confidentiality that we need to hold this company accountable for.
I’m very disappointed in the BBC for running with this story. I expected better from them. I am disgusted with the audacity of this Christine Pratt and her dodgy charity. Finally, I’m fed up with the opportunistic vultures who want to have a field day with this. David Cameron had better be careful as he weighs in here. It could end up a very bad association. And please, please, let’s not allow news organizations to get away with such bad reporting.
I really think this deserves more than 2 (now 3) comments.
Well, maybe people are just fed up of the whole thing? Here is an interesting article re bulllying in the news media:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/23/andy-coulson-now-bullying-payout
Great post and agree with every word. It certainly wouldn’t surprise that leading politicians shout and scream in private – it’s hardly surprising and pretty much common knowledge anyway. I’m sure that Thatcher, Churchill and Wilson would all be seen as ‘bullies’ in the modern age. That’s not to condone it – but like you say, politics is hardly typical and we see politicians being bullied and jeered on a daily basis in the House of Commons.
What really appals me is, as you say, this Pratt woman. I’ve worked in the voluntary sector and the NHS, I know all about client confidentiality – and her behaviour simply beggars belief. I can remember painstakingly drawing media case studies together, checking every step of the way that a client was happy to share their story and that they weren’t too vulnerable to expose to the media. Informed consent was the name of the game and if you didn’t have it, you thought very carefully about what you revealed – certainly not details that could expose the client’s identity.
How many people in Downing Street work closely with the PM? A handful. Their identity will now be known for certain to their colleagues, which is a gross betrayal. It’s so unprofessional that I think their charity licence should be withdrawn. They cannot claim to be a confiential helpline now.
As for Cameron and Clegg – opportunistic and cynical response from them both. To be expected and sad to say we’d probably have got the same from Labour under similar circumstances – can’t someone rise above this petty point scoring?. Fair play to Ann Widdecombe for unusually sensible comments. The charity’s credibility is in pieces.
I wouldn’t say I’m fed up with it, but I just don’t think it’s going to be much of an election swinger. I thought it was well known that Brown had a temper, just like it’s well known that Mo used to chuck her wig across the room in annoyance during the peace talks in NI. I picked up a copy of the Standard the other day which for me is usually a barometer of ‘how others think’ as it rarely represents what I think, and even they were kind of saying ‘well, he gets a bit stroppy, so what?’.
I must caveat with saying, I don’t think people should feel bullied at work, and people shouldn’t shout and lose their tempers at work. I agree with you that all the goading and sneering is bullying in itself and certainly not something we’d tolerate in even very small children.
As for Christine Pratt, well WHAT a prat. Her trustees much be furious.
[…] What about the other incidents of Gordon Brown’s bad behaviour? I complained in my earlier article about this of the impossibility of finding out the truth once spin doctors and journalists start in […]