I do not believe the feigned astonishment of Business Minister Kwasi Kwarteng re the claims of Tory bullying and harassment. These things go hand in hand with the leadership of inadequate people.
Grant Shapps (the creepy train guy) resigned in 2015 amidst bullying claims but has found much favour in Boris
Johnson’s government. Priti Patel (current Home Secretary and migrant botherer)
was found guilty of bullying and remained in Johnson’s cabinet. It’s a sign of
weak leadership – and corrupt leadership –and incompetent leadership – when
your willingness to suck up to a leader is literally all that counts. The flip
side of that ultimately insecure position, for those who begin to suspect the
Emperor (world king) is wearing no clothes, is that ‘other’ methods have to be
found. Bullying. Intimidation. Threats.
It may be that the 2019 intake – many from what are
described as Red Wall constituencies, ex- Labour seats – suffer from not growing
up with the public school fagging system so are shocked that such tactics are
regarded as acceptable to the true blue Tories. However, it is also something
that takes hold when the person in charge is simply a control freak or has got
used to running a feudal system such was the case when I was elected the first
black woman councillor to Newcastle City Council in 1988.
While I have little sympathy for Christian Wakeford,
(he has an appalling voting record but
he can count and defected to Labour to save his seat) – the episode of the
bullying and intimidation he reported brought back very unpleasant, upsetting,
hugely painful memories.
I was tagged as a trouble maker for, among other
things, vociferously supporting those campaigning against the Poll Tax - even
though Newcastle City Council was supposedly a Labour council. Access to the
press was strictly controlled by the same system of feudal favours exerted over
the rank and file councillors and there was of course no social media alternative.
When I openly protested the excesses and abuses of
the councillors' allowance system, over a decade before the MPs expenses
scandal, leader Jeremy Beecham (now in the lords) who had already ostracised me
over the Poll Tax threatened to remove the whip. Tony Flynn – his loyal side
kick - even phoned my then husband, who had no involvement in politics, to get
me to 'behave'. Subsequently, Beecham sent one of his 'boys' to try to get me
deselected prior to the second election I stood in and won. And when a school
in Beecham’s patch was 'saved' from closure after a failing Ofsted report by
sudden, inexplicable and hugely damaging amalgamation with the school where I
was chair of governors, I made a fuss along with the headmistress Sheila
Clement-Jones. It got a very nasty. On
one occasion I received a threatening late night phone call from a union
activist, parent governor of the failing school and gob shite. I alluded to the
incident at the area meeting the following day - saying if it happened again I'd
go to the police. Though I had little hope of that as I’d once approached the
police about an anonymous racist letter I’d received to my home and got a
can-do-nothing response.
Realising, among other things, that many of the real
decision were made by THE BOYS in the pub and the committee meetings that took
up so very much of my time were a waste – I ultimately resigned. Following the illegal invasion of Iraq I also left the Labour party which I'd been a member of since my student days.
IT is important to say that the majority of
Newcastle city councillors (many of whom were old enough to be my grandparents)
could not have been nicer to me, were in fact incredibly kind.
I learnt a
huge amount and had insights into the workings of THE SYSTEM that few are privy
to but resigning was a decision I never once regretted.
The thing is – there is all the difference in the
world between the bullying control of inadequate men who seek and increasingly
seem to attain power and real leaders. We need, as a society, to learn to tell
the difference.
This is the scary young black woman (23 when this pic was taken) who made the bully boy's piss their collective pants.
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