In a long career in the UK media, I’ve lost count of the bullies I’ve known.
The senior executive who targeted a journalist who was having a clandestine affair, repeatedly calling him out in front of his colleagues. The editor who would say one thing and was overheard but would then deny she’d said it and harangue a hapless colleague for not doing what she claimed she’d demanded. The proprietor who would bawl people out and throw things at them. The deputy who liked to wait until most people had gone, then find an empty office in which to shout mercilessly at his victim, usually a junior female reporter.
On it went. The news editor who took delight in publicly telling a reporter they were “heading for the departure lounge”. An editor who liked to award fake military medals to staff, except they were for some perceived weakness – poorest copy, worst mistake, even some physical difference – at a ceremony over the Christmas lunch. We laughed – we felt we had to – while giving thanks that we were not the ones being singled out for ritual humiliation.
Prior to newspapers, I worked in the City of London and it was the same: doors slammed followed by shouting; colleagues screamed and sworn at; inevitable tears; objects hurled; juniors made to stay late, night after night, doing the most minor of tasks and then ordered to redo them, over and over.
We were upset and annoyed, of course we were. For those on the receiving end it was worse. Some left, never to return – presumably they were also scarred.
What we did not do, ever, was complain. Partly it was regarded as “normal”, standard for those pressure-cooker environments, a rite of passage. More than once we were told if we could not stand the heat … Partly as well, we were too scared, believing if we did, we would be marked down, our prospects finished. Occasionally someone would produce a sick note, saying they were off due to stress and follow it up with a lawyer’s letter seeking redress, but they were rare.
For some of us, especially those who had been to boys’ schools, it was ingrained in us from an early age. The prefects did on to us, and when we reached the top of the school, some of our number did on to those below – and so the pattern was repeated across the years and generations.
Recently, though, such behaviour has been deemed unacceptable. It always was, but now it has been cited as such. MeToo, social media, online employee forums – they’ve contributed to a new awareness and encouraged the “outing” of bullies. Media, the City, other institutions, they have what passes for “everyday rough and tumble” but they also have defined lines that cannot be crossed.
All, that is, except Westminster and Whitehall. We’ve been treated to a string of bullying and abuse allegations, perpetrated by politicians and senior figures against public servants. Dominic Raab, the UK’s Deputy Prime Minister, has resigned after two of the eight claims against him were upheld. We’ve seen similar accusations laid against Priti Patel when she was home secretary, Gavin Williamson, minister without portfolio, Alok Sharma, the government’s Cop ambassador, Dominic Cummings, the ex-prime ministerial adviser and John Bercow, the former Commons speaker.
Unlike the sort of bullying that occurs elsewhere this is driven by a cultural and ideological schism, of Conservatives (Mr Bercow was a Tory MP) laying into public servants for not, as they see it, doing their jobs properly. Britain’s senior civil servants, those holding direct ministerial reporting lines, by and large, tend to be of an intellectual, liberal persuasion. They do not share the blinkered approach of either political party, preferring to err on the side of balance. That’s how they see it.
They also regard themselves as a grade above, cleverer than the people they answer to. Mr Raab was always on shaky ground, struggling to impose authority and command respect, after he made the comment that he did not realise the Dover-Calais route was so economically important.
Given that the Tories have been in power for the past 13 years, it’s inevitable that it should be their members who are coming under attack. It’s worth remembering that bullying charges were made of senior figures in the most recent Labour administrations.
Matters have not been helped by the Conservative shtick that Britain’s public services are populated by shirkers and timewasters, and the taxpayer is not being afforded maximum value for money. Take charge with that prevailing belief and the battles lines are drawn.
Then, too, there is the constant sore of Brexit. The Tories are probably correct in their conviction that civil servants tend to be Remainers. They take this further and maintain officials will use every trick and device in their canon to stall Brexit, to make it appear unworkable. One of the Raab cases that was upheld entailed just this, with him believing someone was deliberately dragging their heels and bullying them for it.
The senior officials are able to call on an active, expertly managed trade union, the First Division Association. It represents only the top civil servants and has a total grasp of detailed Whitehall procedure – something that ministers, new to that Byzantine world, do not.
It’s also the case, however, that practices regarded as usual in the ministerial departments would not pass muster in the private sector. Officials continued to work from home en masse long after their workers elsewhere had returned to their desks. Long backlogs persist in areas of government, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency and Passport Office, to name two, that have yet to return to pre-pandemic working.
Perhaps senior Tory figure Jacob Rees-Mogg was too sarcastic and inflammatory when he went around rooms in Whitehall leaving Post-it labels telling the occupants of empty chairs they were missed, but he had a point.
One of the moans about Mr Sharma was that he was in the habit of calling officials at home outside office hours. It may be that he was doing so needlessly, to provoke and upset, to gain a response, but even so. As a reporter I would be phoned by my bosses at all hours, well into the night and at weekends, and woe betide if I so much as hinted it was not an appropriate time.
There is a difference between abusive and abrasive behaviour. Much of what has occurred and may well still be occurring, I suspect falls into the latter category. It’s unpleasant but it’s not bullying. It’s possibly no coincidence that Ms Patel, Mr Williamson, Mr Raab, Mr Cummings and Mr Bercow would appear high in rankings of Westminster’s recent most self-confident, sharp-tongued characters.
I find myself sympathising with Mr Raab, something I never thought I would write. But only because what he is meant to have done, and worse, I’ve observed on numerous occasions in places I’ve worked. That does not make it allowable, however, and nor should it.
Hopefully, his going should serve as a warning to others. The civil servants, for their part, should realise they are in danger of losing public confidence if they carry on wishing to be treated with kid gloves.
No one should want to be hailed a bully but neither should they relish being called a snowflake.
