Evil secrets and good intentions in the BPS

David Pilgrim posts….

In his eloquent appreciation of George Orwell, Christopher Hitchens addressed an unresolved set of questions about ethics and power (Hitchens, 2002).  One which stands out for our purposes on this blog was the need to discover the kind and extent of evil that typically operates secretly at the centre of any particular regime of power. Interpreting Orwell’s legacy, Hitchens offered a nuanced analysis. 

On the one hand, generally power is self-perpetuating and self-serving. Those who attain positions of power do so for many reasons, but once achieved it then tends to takes on a momentum of its own. People in power do things simply because they can. They enjoy the ride for its own sake and often do not want it want it to end. That is why, as Enoch Powell once noted fairly, ‘All political lives…end in failure…’ (though his focus might have been about himself).  In the case of the BPS, the old oligarchy (circa 1960-2000) became a self-regarding bunch of mutual back-scratchers (Allan, 2017) or self-confessed ‘BPS junkies’ (Miller and Cornford, 2006). Unchecked due to an absence of governance (i.e.no independent Board of Trustees), they enjoyed their time while it lasted. 

On the other hand, people initially may seek power with genuinely good intentions about the world and their fellows. The cliché from politicians is that they ‘want to make a difference’, which can be a zero sum game given that they are pulling in different directions ideologically and in practice. These contradictions have been evident in the workings at the centre of the dysfunctional and corrupt BPS. There have been deceitful and power-hungry operators but there have also been those who have tried to serve the interests of membership democracy and public accountability, rather than their own CVs and egos. There have been, and there remain, endemic conflicts of interest in the BPS and plenty of remaining spaces for personal opportunism. However, some people have really tried in good faith to alter the incorrigible organization for the better. In my view they are hoping to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, but their intentions are good. More on this later.

Fight Club at the top

By the turn of this century, with a governance vacuum still evident, the new class of managers entered the fray, so the BPS junkies and mutual back-scratchers had their wings clipped, but some joined the ranks of the New Public Management regime. Although that professional class of managers had been growing since the Second World War, it expanded in particular in size and power after the turn of this century in both the public and charity sectors (Ehrenreich and Ehrenreich, 1979; cf. Gruening, 2001). 

Over the past twenty years the Society not only failed to comply with the spirit and letter of the assumption of it being a properly governed charity open to public scrutiny and control. It also became a boxing ring without a referee. The power blocs of the old oligarchs and the new managers began to scrap it out in an organizational setting with no publicly agreed oversight, scrutiny or knowledge. Moreover, to paraphrase the secret pact of rock bands (‘what happens on tour stays on tour’), what has happened in the ‘Board of Trustees’ has broadly stayed in the ‘Board of Trustees’. Those slugging their way to dominance at the top of the BPS seemed to agree on one thing only: let us keep the dirty secret of this fist fight to ourselves. Very few people not privy to business of the ‘Board of Trustees’ or the Senior Management Team know the answers to many democratically warranted questions about the point scoring in this ‘fight club’ scenario. 

The secretive ‘Board of Trustees’

When we in BPSWatch lumbered, in our journey of discovery, from one evident misdeed or scandal to another, we could not put everything we found in our book just published (Pilgrim, 2023). We relied on leaks and leaps of interpretation. We had to, for the very reason that those at the centre never admitted bad news or apprised the membership or public of their business. The shamefully biddable role of The Psychologist is now beyond question. However, it is a symptom not a cause of the core problem: there is a cultural norm of secrecy at the centre of the BPS and it may signal its final decline and fall (Harvey, 2023). 

The editor of The Psychologist, like all the other senior employees of the BPS, knows that for personal survival it is better to keep shtum. As an employee he obeys or he resigns and alternative employment may not be available for him.  He has opted to stick it out and stay loyal. One consequence has been that members and public have been hoodwinked by radio silence. He has ensured that the public has had to look to local and national journalists (joined and encouraged by BPSWatch) to have any idea at all about the crisis at the centre. The Comms Team, and especially its Director, have been central to keeping the lid on the truth. Silence and censorship have been the name of the game from this part of the management team. This has made a mockery of the idea that the BPS is a learned organization, which respects academic freedom or truth seeking.

There has been an ingrained norm of not sharing information with either the membership or the public. Moreover, the SMT did their best to resist accountability to those on the ‘Board of Trustees ‘, who were internal appointees from the membership, who were usually the same recycled names over many years. Recent minor reforms of some fresh independent Trustees does not alter that fact that they are a very recent innovation and that even today most of the Board are faux Trustees, because they are BPS members from the sub-systems. A mantra of the SMT has been that operational details are nothing to do with the Trustees (authentic or faux), which of course is the inverse of how a well governed charity should function. Trustees should have access to any information about the organization – this is about proper scrutiny. The SMT do not want to be scrutinized and given the corruption and dysfunction evident this is an understandable evasive strategy.

Nigel MacLennan pushed for more accountability about this unsatisfactory state of affairs about a lack of independent oversight. As a result, his card was marked and his days were numbered. The legitimation crisis in the BPS was coming to head at this point (2020). At one point before his suspension in the wake of the fraud, the CEO went to the Board asking for advice about how to bat away an increasing flow of complaints by members. The fact that he made the request at all demonstrates his contempt for ordinary members (i.e. not his doubters on the ‘Board of Trustees’) as an irrelevance. Complaints might have been a source of quality improvement and they certainly came from a democratic constituency warranting staff accountability. The CEO had other ideas (bearing mind the major distraction for him of the fraud and its threat to his future). 

Repeatedly not answering letters, often multi-signed and sent to him from ordinary members not the oligarchs, with important and legitimate concerns, makes sense in that context. He had other fish to fry at the time. When Rachel Scudamore (‘Head of QA and Standards’ (sic)) used the collective noun, ‘we’ in an apology to a complainant three years after Sarb Bajwa had personally ignored it, she revealed another norm of evasion. As Hannah Arendt noted, the use of a collective apology for past egregious misdeeds is a convenient tactic to avoid pinpointing the named culprits involved. Bajwa not only ignored the complaint he got an underling to offer a bullshit reply after the event.  He was the culprit and she obediently offered the ‘we’ approach to apologies.

To be fair, the old oligarchs also had a poor track record about a genuine concern for ordinary members, but that failing seems to have intensified with the new managers. For the latter, when things went wrong (say the fraud or the arson) it was important that neither the membership nor the general public became aware of the facts. Silence became normative.  When the ‘Board of Trustees’ came to consider the suspension of the CEO, note after several months of the discovery of the fraud, neither the membership nor the general public were kept informed. The Charity Commission claim that the latter is a hallmark of good practice in any charity and it is a shame the oversight body has done little or nothing to challenge substantially the secretive norm in the ‘Board of Trustees’. The norm was for minutes to be heavily redacted (old habits die hard and this one has certainly continued). When the Finance Director did a moonlight flit, within a month of his suspension, he decamped to a similar role in the National Lottery Community Fund. This fact was not disclosed to the outside world, let alone the whys and wherefores of his move (presumably he received a glowing reference from someone inside the cabal). 

Ditto with the fraud. The jailed perpetrator had a previous criminal record of many similar offences. To this day nobody in the BPS has offered the public an explanation of who appointed her or how her offending, involving hundreds of signed off fraudulent expenses, occurred. As for the CEO who signed off those claims, he returned to his role after a year. Was he genuinely exonerated (i.e. was he actually innocent of any wrongdoing) or was his return to work based on a failure of the investigatory process? For now we do not know (because no one has explained what happened), though the legal fight back by the expelled President Elect, Nigel MacLennan, may soon force the facts of the matter into the public domain. Maybe most secrets eventually have to blink into the light of day. My hunch is that such a day will soon arrive: the manipulations of the SMT, driven by priorities set by the ‘Comms Team’, will be laid bare. Moreover those on the ‘Board of Trustees’ at the time should by now be very anxious about their legacy liability. 

The disparagement of MacLennan before he even had the time to appeal the decision to expel him was put on a YouTube video. Subsequently after protests, the BPS withdrew the scurrilous video, but the substantive script from it read out by the Acting Chair of  the ‘Board of Trustees’, to her shame, remains on record (McGuinness,  2021). Thus when the cabal took the risk of a public disclosure, they were not very skilled at it because they did it so rarely; and did it show in this case. They probably will rue the day when they ‘chanced their arm’, at this callow attempt at public grandstanding. The Comms Team spin merchants offered the ‘Board of Trustees’ very poor advice at that moment.

Why did those on the ‘Board of Trustees’ not suspend or sack the CEO the moment the fraud came to light? Why did his suspension take several months to be agreed? When he was suspended was this a unanimous decision or by majority vote only? An ordinary member would not know the answer to these important questions because the relevant Board minutes were either redacted or absent. Those sparring in the Board may have resented their enemy but they did fight together to maintain the traditional regime of secrecy and mendacity that has been at the centre of the BPS for decades. It clearly suited both of their interests. Sudden openness would risk the cat being out of the bag and amongst the pigeons about the dirty secrets of the ‘Board of Trustees’. 

MacLennan was the main risk to this traditional complicit norm of secrecy. But he was not the only one: the cabal lost control of another President (David Murphy) who for many years has been ‘one of their own”. He could bear the shenanigans no more, as his letter makes clear. The covered up fraud, the bloated staff costs and the fight club scenario prompted him to leave the scene, disaffected. The NCVO report and the withdrawal of its consultants, for fear of harm from the toxic culture in the BPS, vindicated the summary of Murphy about the dire culture he described being present in Leicester. Murphy was right and we can be grateful, on this occasion at least, for the democratic role of Twitter.

The will to power and the will to comply and obey 

A point raised by Hitchens, in his appreciation of the work of Orwell, was that the latter focused on the distinction between power elites on the one hand and those who obey them on the other. Those in power will abuse it if they are allowed, as the recent Covid Inquiry is revealing in gory detail. They will cover their backs and tracks by the use of information control (redacted minutes, the biddable silence of others, etc.). In particular, they will become adept at producing bullshit (Spicer, 2020). 

The ‘Comms Team’, with its censorship sub-department, is basically now running the BPS and all, including employees, are paying the price. Morale is low. Many are leaving or may be made redundant (possibly, over thirty at the most recent count). The NCVO report confirmed a toxic staff culture. Korn Ferry warned of membership depletion. The Society has lost money year on year. The ‘Change Programme’, all six million pounds-worth, has disappeared from view (bearing in mind it began with no clear performance indicators in the first place). In the meantime, the Teflon cabal have ploughed hundreds of thousands of pounds from membership fees into persecuting Nigel MacLennan with the legal costs accrued. The slow-mo car crash of a financial meltdown is still not over; we await the findings at some point in the future from a forensic accountant.

How do we make sense of this organizational disaster? Apart from the unresolved conundrum for human science, that for toxic leadership to exist there must be a supporting cast of toxic followship (Buchanan, 2023), we can also consider systemic inertia. Cultural patterns that connect through time can be stubborn and enduring (Dalton 2014). If this point is in doubt, look at how the new independent chair of the ‘Board of Trustees’, David Crundwell, has ‘gone native’.   

He was given a chance to cultivate a new regime of transparency. He could have insisted on an immediate look back exercise to answer the questions raised above about the scandal of the fraud and the appointment of the fraudster or MacLennan’s kangaroo court expulsion. He has done none of this. I invited him into a discussant role at the launch of the book but he refused the offer. He describes our claims on this blog and in the book as ‘accusations’. But if they are false then those leading the BPS should have no difficulty in disproving them. 

So where is their rebuttal for the world to consider from anyone on the ‘Board of Trustees’ or from the Senior Management Team? That response has been absent because our critique and its revelations are basically sound and Crundwell knows that very well. Blind optimism is a lazy substitute for a proper historical reckoning.  He has made it clear that he prefers to only drive forwards in a car with no rearview mirror. A failed MOT may well be on the cards but those inside will be happy shiny people. The psychotic norm of Pollyanna optimism continues unabated (cf. Carpenter and Bajwa, 2022).

When we turn to the toxic followship problem, a few subgroups can be discerned with differing or overlapping motives. A largely hoodwinked membership offer only a passive bystander role. There are some individuals who complain, get nowhere and simply leave (saving money on fees paid to a dysfunctional and unaccountable organization). There are those who exit in large groups with a common interest, tired of an incorrigibly dysfunctional organizational culture. Examples here have been the emergence of the Association of Business Psychologists and the Association of Clinical Psychologists. 

For those who stay as loyalists, they may have a sort of Stockholm Syndrome. They genuinely believe that the BPS is basically a sound organization and merely that the ‘wrong people’ have been in charge. They promote themselves or others as new virtuous leaders. However, virtue in its original antiquarian sense was not about being civil, benign, pragmatically amenable and nice to others, it was about courage, strength, candour and fortitude. The latter personal characteristics in the context of the dysfunction of the BPS have been punished, whereas being personable and biddable have been very highly rewarded. 

Being ‘nice’ in that context is a formula for conservative complicity, a quiet life and a CV tick. Instead of that passive collusion, what was required in 2020 was a clear and defiant challenge to the regime of power that had become ingrained in the BPS for over fifty years (Fromm, 2010). Those attempting this challenge from within (especially, but not only, MacLennan) were punished. Those on the outside of the centre of power (such as those of us in BPSWatch) were simply ignored. We were subjected to only tentative versions of sabre rattling about our conduct in relation to legal threats and possible disciplinary action against us. By and large, we have been dealt with by contemptuous non-engagement, which has been a clear and consistent policy from the cabal.

Other examples of this blanking strategy have been multi-signed letters of criticism, which were sent to the CEO but received no reply, even when prompts were sent to him. A ‘problem what problem?’ approach to life from the SMT (with some Presidential collusion at times) is like not opening the envelope of the final red warning before your electricity is cut off.

We have seen a strategic range, from optimistic amenability to robust candour and critique, in the many Presidential styles and efforts of new Board members over the years. Some have been complicit in their own oppression. For example, Nicky Hayes has simply accepted that her role as President will now be reduced to the ceremonial (personal communication). Presidents will no longer chair the Board but instead will now act only in an ‘ambassadorial’ capacity. This means an end to the prospect of turbulent Presidents, such as MacLennan or even the bean-spilling Murphy. ‘Ambassadors’ make poor candid critics for obvious reasons; the clue is in the title. This neutering of the Presidential role was agreed after the quasi consultation about changing the wording of the Royal Charter and Statutes, that process itself almost designed to ensure lack of engagement from the membership at large. So the most senior and potentially influential elected officer (i.e. the individual who is there to represent the whole membership) is reduced to a cipher.

As far as the mysterious old and reformed versions of the Board of Trustees are concerned we have more of the same. As we have noted often, The Psychologist rarely reports anything about the BPS but when it does it is always chirpy good news. In the most recent edition a glowing account is presented of two new appointees to the Board: one is the chair of the Practice Board and the second of the Education and Training Board (Rhodes, 2023).  Welcome though new blood is we must ask just how new it actually is. As with most appointments to office within the BPS, the selection process is opaque and secretive (even the results of the voting for President Elect are not published anywhere).

Appointing Trustees to the Board by default of their office-holding is a complete contradiction of the concept of independence – a key defining feature of the role.  Almost inevitably people who end up in these roles are long-standing members of the BPS and there will be a strong element of self-selection. They are insiders, drawn from the BPS sub-systems.  They and the other sub-system appointees, should be accountable to trustees they should not be trustees.  A process of unaccountability has been so ingrained since 1966 that those inside the BPS simply accept it as legitimate custom and practice, rather than an offence to charity law compliance. Cultural reproduction is ensured and public scrutiny is blocked out. 

We see then that the absence of an independent Board of Trustees has afforded this conservative tendency of sustaining the status quo and resisting disruption or challenge. The more it changes the more it stays the same, as those entering the reformed Board of Trustees are now showing in embodied form. The shock to the system of MacLennan’s challenge, when he first demanded proper governance and then moved to being a whistleblower was intolerable for the cabal and, with hindsight, his disparagement and expulsion were inevitable. 

The mess in the BPS continues and its future remains precarious. Meanwhile, to confirm the continuing insights of George Orwell about doublethink, those at the top of the organization include the key salaried roles of ‘Director of Knowledge and Insight’ and ‘Head of QA and Standards’. These preposterous grand titles are hilarious, given the bankrupt wreckage in Leicester. Eric Blair may well be spinning his grave. You really could not make this stuff up but, like Arendt, we are still interested in culprits not the bullshit offered by the ‘Comms Team’ and those obeying its daily party line.

References

Allan, C. (2017) Always cheerful and positive. The Psychologist, October.

Buchanan, G. (2023) The lure of the toxic leader. In D. Pilgrim (ed) British Psychology in Crisis: A Case Study in Organisational Dysfunction Oxford: Phoenix Books.

Carpenter, K. and Bajwa, S. (2022) From the President and Chief Executive. The Psychologist January 4-5.

Dalton, C. (2014) Beyond description to pattern: the contribution of Batesonian epistemology to critical realist research. Journal of Critical Realism 13, 2, 163-182.

Ehrenreich, B. and Ehrenreich, J. (1979) The Professional Managerial Class. In P. Walker (ed) Between Labor and Capital, South End Press, Boston.

Fromm, E. (2010) On Disobedience: Why Freedom Means Saying ‘No’ To Power London: Harper

Gruening, G, (2001) Origin and theoretical basis of new public management, International Public Management Journal4, 1, 1-25,

Harvey, P. (2023) Resisting the silence of the cabal:  resorting to social and alternative media. In Pilgrim, D. (ed) British Psychology in Crisis: A Case Study in Organisational Dysfunction Oxford: Phoenix Books.

Hitchens, C. (2002). Why Orwell Matters. New York: Basic Books

McGuinness, C. (2021) The Society is at a Crossroads The Psychologist June 34, 4-5. 

Miller, R. and Cornford, T.  (2006) Double top – Ray Miller in discussion with Tim Cornford: The Society’s new President in discussion with the Chief Executive. How do their roles work together, and where do they see the Society going? The Psychologist April, 19, 20-21.

Pilgrim, D. (2023a) (ed) British Psychology in Crisis: A Case Study in Organisational Dysfunction Oxford: Phoenix Books.

Rhodes, E. (2023) Meet the new Board Chairs The Psychologist November 4-5.

Spicer, A. (2020) Playing the bullshit game: how empty and misleading communication takes over organizations Organization Theory 1, 1-26