The End of Membership Democracy in the BPS?

The campaign in the self-serving bunker at the centre of the BPS continues unabated. Its main character, which we have documented in our posts in the past few months, includes a number of strands. Some reflect the tactics of evasion and secrecy. They include complaints being ignored, as well as concerns (that are not complaints) being turned into complaints and sent into a rabbit hole.  The complicit non-reporting of the crisis in ‘the magazine of the British Psychological Society’ has been a trusted management mechanism to keep members in the dark. Dictates have been sent out by ‘Trustees’ to Senate members to demand their silence in a comical pantomime of control freakery.

Other tactics have involved clear projection: a bullying and high-handed culture of management has accused its critics of being the bullies. The power asymmetry here between the parties is ignored but that acknowledgment would require a capacity for honest reflectiveness. Journalists just doing their job in a democracy have been threatened with legal action. By any standards of common sense and fair judgement, this precarious regime of power has had a probity bypass. 

The most egregious example of this has been the ‘investigation’ and subsequent expulsion of the President Elect. His sin was to be open from the beginning about reforming the governance arrangements in an organisation which, for years, had flouted the normal expectations of charity law and good practice guidelines offered by the Charity Commission.

What price membership democracy?

The literal price of being in the BPS is known to its membership. For now, some of those fees are maintaining the high salary of a CEO who is still ‘out of the office’, so remains unable to fulfil his duties. Those in the bunker have told us nothing, so members are left to speculate. 

In the few days that have elapsed since the expulsion of the President Elect was announced (in a scripted account – crafted by whom?), matters have deteriorated further. The unprecedented video from the ‘Interim Chair’ of the Board of Trustees was a callous public disparagement of the President Elect. Speaking from an office and role that, under Statute 20 of the Society, she still has no right to hold, her personalised career-threatening attack upon him remains on Youtube for the world to see.

This scandal now has worsened.  A rapid election is to be held to replace the summarily deposed President-Elect before his appeal has even been heard. From well before he took office there were overt intentions to obstruct him wherever possible. We believe that there is evidence to support this that will be made public. Like the ‘investigation’ of the allegations against him this is a travesty. History will judge those responsible for deposing him, so this faux process of justice will peter out to its discreditable conclusion.

In case members are getting too excited about choosing someone new and untainted by what has gone before, they need to be prepared for a disappointment. This is the score. Only candidates from the current Board of Trustees or Senate members will be permitted to stand. This is the very group under whose ‘oversight’ the Charity Commission has become involved on an ongoing basis. There is an active police investigation into an alleged major fraud (watch this space next month). The self-same group from which the Vice-President resigned,  citing issues about “…governance oversight, escalating expenditure and lack of openness and transparency…”, which he communicated to the Charity Commission.  Former President, Professor Peter Kinderman, informs us that several years ago “…When I was President, I was routinely excluded from key decisions, was threatened with legal action over ‘fraud’ (I was completely exonerated, of course) and forced to resign (as Vice-President) for advocating for what is now effectively BPS policy…” .

What sort of real choice are members now given?   

The candidate will be drawn from a pool of complicit individuals. They assume that everything in the garden is rosy and the much-vaunted £6 million Change Programme will supercharge the BPS, when the membership to date have been shown no substantive evidence to support this wishful thinking. 

Meanwhile, for now, any vestige of membership democracy has been placed on indefinite hold. We can only hope that needed legal proceedings, active media interest and decisive action from the Charity Commission will, between them, resolve this sinister and shameful demise of the public face of psychology in the UK once and for all. 

BPSWatch – Editorial Collective