Gender, Governance, Identity Politics

Going undercover at the BPS…

AdminBPSWatch

Below is the full text of James Esses’s blog post which we are publishing with his permission. The link to the full post is here which will allow you to view the videos and see comments.

In our view this shows the full extent of the misgovernance, lack of proper oversight and organisational capture within the BPS. This is no way for a learned society to act. Surely its job is to be the place where open, honest, evidence-based discussions are encouraged and supported – it’s not part of its job to be an “ally”. Ultimately, the BPS is failing the public, particularly in relation to child safeguarding. The BPS is increasingly dysfunctional as is shown in our recently published book.

Lunatics Running The Asylum: Going Undercover at the British Psychological Society

The British Psychological Society (BPS) was founded in 1901 and currently acts as the representative body for well over 60,000 psychologists.

I first became concerned with ideological capture in the BPS when I saw that they were actively promoting Mermaids to vulnerable patients (this is the same Mermaids under investigation by the Charity Commission for safeguarding issues, including sending breast binders to children behind parents’ backs).

So, when the opportunity presented itself last week to go undercover to an internal BPS webinar, I took it. The purpose of the webinar was to “shine a light on the history of the LGBT+ community’s experience of receiving healthcare”.However, this was far from a mere talking shop. The BPS stated that the webinar “aspires to equip psychologists with actionable insights and recommendations to implement systemic change”.

It is clear from this blurb that the BPS sought to impress recommendations upon their members.

Before attending the webinar, I looked up the speakers. They included:

·       Dr Adam Jowett – Chair of the BPS EDI Board, who has led research for the government on their proposed ban on ‘conversion therapy’

·       Penny Catterick – A ‘trans’ member of the BPS Human Rights Advisory Group

·       Dr Heather Armstrong – Academic at the University of Southampton

·       Dr Katherine Hubbard – Academic at the University of Surrey

·       Dr Rob Agnew – Clinical psychologist and Chair of the BPS Section of Gender, Sexuality and Relationship Diversity

Clearly, the BPS were bringing out the big guns.

The webinar began with panellists’ thoughts on the current state of play regarding ‘trans healthcare’ in society. The audience were told that “LGBTQ people face huge medicalisation”. This statement was ironic, given that the BPS support puberty blockers, hormones and surgery for those with gender dysphoria – the very definition of ‘huge medicalisation’.

The usual dollop of scaremongering was quickly added. We were informed that we are living in a “precarious and serious time”. Dr Katherine Hubbard, on the theme of patients feeling anxiety and distress, said: “Of course you feel anxious and distressed…look at the world you’re living in and the way your being is being pathologised”.

This is a worrying sentiment from a senior psychologist who appears to impose her own narrative and worldview on vulnerable patients. Rather than seeking to explore potential causation and co-morbidities of gender dysphoria, she simply views anxiety and distress as evidence as to why someone should transition.

However, the most concerning statement of the session came from Dr Rob Agnew (remember, he is a Chair within the BPS).

Agnew began with what can only be described as a rant, claiming that we have allowed “socially sanctioned discrimination” from people who can “hide behind other protected characteristics”.

It is clear who Agnew is referring to here – those of us who hold ‘gender critical’ beliefs, which, as we know, are protected under the Equality Act 2010. How would gender critical members of the BPS feel listening to this?

However, the worst was yet to come. 

Agnew went on to refer to a recent statement from the United Kingdom Council of Psychotherapy (UKCP) as being “transphobic”. This statement was off the back of litigation I had pursued against UKCP and it recognised explicitly that psychotherapists are both professionally and legally entitled to hold ‘gender critical’ beliefs.   

Agnew stated that we should clamp down on therapists with gender critical beliefs “in the way we wouldn’t expect a female client to accept therapy from an incel or a misogynist”.

To compare clinicians who believe in biological reality with incels or misogynists is beyond disgraceful. Shockingly, not a single panellist challenged Agnew on this statement. Remember, these panellists are purporting to speak on behalf of the entire BPS. 

I wrote an anonymous question into the Q&A box, challenging what Agnew had just said. Unsurprisingly, my question was ignored.

Up next was a dose of identity politics from Penny Catterick, the ‘transwoman’ who told viewers that he has “55 years of track experience”,whatever that means.

Reflecting on recent attempts to introduce self-ID in Scotland, Catterick claimed that Scottish women are suffering from “minority stress”, on the basis that they are “living in nested minoritisation in the UK”.Truthfully, I don’t even know what this means…I think Catterick was trying to suggest that because Scottish people are not the majority nationality within the United Kingdom, that this is innately stressful for them…

Catterick, a man identifying as a woman, went on to say that we are “living in a patriarchy”.That he could not see the irony in this statement is truly worrying.

At this point, Dr Rob Agnew chimed in again with more random ranting. He chastised paramedics who “assume a person is a man because they have a beard…putting them in a situation in which they have to out themselves”.

He went on to question: “how relevant is it if they were assigned male or female at birth?”

In the world of emergency healthcare being provided by paramedics, extremely relevant.

But Agnew, blinded by his devotion to gender ideology, cannot even see this. He then said that “social background” is more important that “biological background” and expressed hope that one day we will live in a world in which clinicians can “engage with non cis het people” without needing to know their “personal history”.

This is complete and utter madness being spouted by the association of psychologists – a profession operating within a framework of medicine and science. Or at least they used to.  

I was particularly concerned to hear a recommendation from the panel that “WPATH psychologists should be recognised by NHS”and that “recognition and promotion of WPATH practices by BPS practitioners could likely benefit psychological treatments in the UK.”

This is the same WPATH recently under intense spotlight, following the publication of the ‘WPATH Files’, demonstrating that their clinicians are clearly aware of the serious damage that can be caused by puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery, in the name of ‘gender affirmation’. This is the same WPATH which recommends breast and penis removal for children as young as 9 years old and has even advised that ‘eunuchs’ are recognised as a distinct gender identity.  

Towards the end of the webinar, the panel engaged in a highly unprofessional and deeply disgusting attack on the ongoing Cass Review – the independent, government-commissioned review into gender services for children.

Dr Rob Agnew said that we should not have a “cisgender person deciding what trans youth services are going to look like” and instead “should have someone we can have faith in”.

To attempt to raise doubt, suspicion and paranoia over the work of Dr Hilary Cass, solely on the basis that she is “cisgender”, is utterly abhorrent and incredibly dangerous.

He went on to claim that there are “risks of explorative therapy” and that explorative therapy is “tied very strongly to conversion therapy”.To allege that therapists who seek to explore issues with clients (a bedrock of psychotherapy) is a form of ‘conversion therapy’ is simply beyond words.

The webinar finished with ‘transwoman’, Penny Catterick, saying that people have always told him “what a courageous person” he is for ‘transitioning’. He then, dramatically, paraphrased Franklin D. Roosevelt, telling his fellow trans people that they have entered the “Theatre of Critics” and reminded them that they are on a “hero’s journey”,even if “people in the cheap seats do chuck stuff at you”.

The webinar finished with a statement that “trans affirmative healthcare is the right side of history.”

I closed my laptop, feeling like I had just come from a Stonewall rally, rather than a professional, psychological webinar.

The lunatics are well and truly running the asylum. This should be of great concern to us all.

"The Psychologist", Board of Trustees, Governance

Has anything really changed?

AdminBPSWatch

One of the functions of BPSWatch is, without wishing to be too grandiose, to hold those in senior positions at the BPS to account and to give them an opportunity to provide us, and hence the wider membership, with information about what is actually going on in the organisation. It should be the case that we are unnecessary, that the BPS was actually keeping its recent promises about openness and transparency. This is not happening, so we plod on in a so far vain attempt to ensure that the organisation that we all have contributed to over the years really does become one of which the discipline of psychology can be proud.

Below are copies of recent correspondence between David Pilgrim and David Crundwell, the Chair of the Board of Trustees (BoT). These are presented unedited and open for you, the reader, to allow you to draw your own conclusions. A brief opinion follows.

David Pilgrim’s email:

Dear Mr Crundwell,

A few weeks ago I invited you to be a discussant at the book launch on December 8th of my edited collection British Psychology in Crisis: A Case Study in Organizational Dysfunction. You declined, arguing that you only wished to look forwards and not backwards. You said that the book contained “accusations” and I argued that these were empirical claims for you to admit to or refute with evidence. Your refutation about the critique in the book is still awaited and may be impossible to fashion because you know very well that broadly our claims about misgovernance are completely valid. Now the BPS staff are vindicating our warnings in this regard.

In the past couple of weeks two important events have highlighted your lack of wisdom in refusing to learn from history. Sadly you appear to have reinforced a pre-existing cultural norm of toxic positivity. The two events exposing your error are a. the need to make a fifth of the workforce redundant and b. the incipient vote of no confidence in the SMT from the BPS staff. Their concerns confirm what we in BPSWatch  have been warning you about for the past three years. The BPS is heading towards a state of both financial and moral bankruptcy. 

On the financial front you are making hardworking staff redundant, while at the same time pouring more and more membership fees into defending the inexcusable (i.e. the contrived expulsion of Dr Nigel MacLennan). His imminent Employment Tribunal will, in its evidence taking, expose far more damning detail than we have been able to publish in the book, on our blog and on our X account about corruption and cover up. You are now drawing down reserves which are not unending. The Society has been in financial deficit year on year recently. Finance directors have mysteriously disappeared in haste.  Members are leaving in a state of disgust and exasperation. 

On the moral front, transparency remains absent and the wool is pulled over the eyes of members and the public as a matter of course, seemingly with no regret or shame from either the SMT or the BoT. The obvious channel to keep members informed should be The Psychologist. Instead it offers an assured biddable silence.

So, an open discussion about the deepening crisis will continue to rely on journalists and us in BPSWatch reporting events. 

The Charity Commission will soon become aware of the failure of the BPS leadership to mend its ways over broken governance. Do you think that a U-turn might now be wise for you and others on the BoT about this ongoing silence? Why not just admit that the truth about the crisis and those culpable for its emergence need to be named and explained properly to members and the public?

We look forward to you answer to these important questions. 

Dr David Pilgrim on behalf of BPSWatch

David Crundwell’s reply:

Thank you for your note, and apologies for any delay in replying – Christmas and all that. It is worth me clarifying a couple of points.

I, and three other new trustees from outside, volunteers all, joined the BPS a year ago now in response to the change in board, and goverance, structure agreed by members in 2022. 

You are of course correct, and it is a matter of public record, that the organisation has operated in deficit for a number of years now, clearly that is not something that can continue. Hence, drawing down on reserves is not new as you suggest – reserves have always funded those deficits, also a matter of public record. The board of 2023 was set the challenge, by the board in 2022, of returning the organisation to a balanced budget and this is a priority. This can only be done responsibly alongside creating a sustainable, scalable, operating model.

A balanced budget will give the BPS opportunities to build on key areas such as research; and new ways to support those interested in all aspects of psychology enjoy a lifetime’s journey within the BPS.

The board is the ultimate decision maker on strategy and so too the finance envelope; it then operates in partnership with the executive team to deliver on those goals. It is not, and should never be, the other way round. Substantial progress has already been made in 2023 through improved focus and taking tough decisions. Tough decisions which are not taken lightly. Our progress to date will be clear with the publication of the audited accounts later this year.

As you are aware the employment tribunal judgment last summer is being appealed by the plaintiff. I do not feel it appropriate to comment while the case is still underway. Though I have read the initial judgement, as I am sure you have, with interest.

Equally, while the organisation is in consultation with a number of staff, it again would not be appropriate to comment on that legal process. Suffice to say in line with my observations earlier we are doing our best to shape the organisation for the future.

Our actions in 2023 reflect an organisation learning from the past, and using good data, good governance, and best practice – rather than emotion – to move forward with focus and purpose.

Turning to The Psychologist magazine, this exists to serve as a forum for communication, discussion, and debate on a range of psychological topics. This is its clear mandate as is explained on the BPS website https://www.bps.org.uk/about-psychologist The Editor of The Psychologist is independent of the Board of Trustees and the Senior Leadership Team regarding the publication’s content. As they should be. He is free to publish within the law and his remit – whatever he wishes. 

He works closely with the Psychologist and Digest Editorial Advisory Committee on content and consults with them regularly on editorial direction as well as individual editorial decisions. The Psychologist is not there to report on the organisation itself, that is outside its remit. Communicating with members about the organisation takes place through a variety of channels – messages direct from the President, through discursive forums such as The Senate, member groups, and a wide range of other communications channels including the website, “X” and the like.

On the issue of corruption, you imply you have detailed information. I am of course aware of the fraud case, and the details of that investigation. Are you referring to any other issue or incident which I may not be aware of? I would be grateful if you could provide details. It is important that any new allegations can be investigated and substantiated, otherwise there is potential for the defamation of innocent individuals. The board would take any defamatory statements seriously, as we have done in the past, as a responsible organisation.

As I said when we first corresponded, I was happy to meet with you all in person, alongside the CEO, The President, and the President-Elect. The opportunity was to discuss your concerns and take a rounded view with all key stakeholders present; an offer that was declined.

Finally, I have referenced twice in our past correspondence my dislike of online bullying and trolling. Online bullying is an insidious byproduct of social media and cannot be acceptable at any level. It is one of the most corrosive aspects of modern society. Constructive dialogue quickly becomes futile in such an atmosphere. Something I am sure you would as a group, and individually, be prepared to agree with me on?

2024 is an important year for the organisation. Our work continues both on the finances and to build a sustainable, scalable, operating model. We will be doing this by focussing on what matters, while highlighting more of the world class work, and mature debate – based on quality research – that members can be proud of.

Bests,

David 

Commentary by Peter Harvey, Blog Administrator.

On the plus side, David did at least get a reply (a significant and welcome change from previous administrations). And, yes, it was a detailed response to most of the points that he raised. But (you couldn’t have imagined that there wouldn’t be a ‘but’ sooner or later) let’s look at some of the content in more detail (and in no particular order).

The reply is a good example of corporate-speak – the verbal style of a comms team rather than a person. It is essentially complacent in its tone – “Yes, there are problems (unspecified) but we have it all under control”. 

There is a serious mismatch between the seriousness of the financial problems and the sparse and skimpy information that has been given to the membership. Indeed, bland statements available in the highly redacted BoT Minutes suggest that the overall financial situation is positive [see my previous post here]. There is no sense of an impending crisis – and proposing over 30 redundancies is as serious a crisis as it gets.

There is not a trace of empathy for those staff whose heads will roll. As I have said before [see here], I doubt whether the redundancies will be at the very well-paid top of the hierarchy. It will be at the level of member services, the very people on whom those in senior positions rely on to do the everyday key tasks on which the membership (and the future of the Society) depend.

Mr Crundwell states that The Psychologist is not there to report on the organisation itself. Sorry to contradict, but I quote from The Psychologist Policies and Protocols document, published in March 2021, Section 3.2 which states that The Psychologist is expected to fulfil the following roles 

  • as a source of information about the views of the Society; 
  • as a place to publish Society news and business, and to reflect the Society’s member-voted policy themes and current priorities; 

Mr Crundwell argues that there is a multiplicity of other sources of information. This view compares unfavourably with my experience of another organisation of which I am a member – the Royal Photographic Society (RPS). In their Journal there is always a full narrative report of their Board of Trustees meeting; there are regular updates on RPS activities; the President writes a regular column. And there is still room for the main content. I guess that the RPS see their journal as an important archive which records the formal activities of the Society.  The problem with Mr Crundwell’s sources is that they are uncoordinated and transient – and, of course, more easily edited or ‘lost’.  In my view, a key function of the Society’s house journal is to act as a Journal of Record (similar to a Newspaper of Record) so that there is always an accessible and permanent record of the Society’s activities. It would not take that much space. It would also be a lot more accessible and member-friendly than the increasingly impenetrable post-£6 million Change Programme website. It’s almost as if the BPS doesn’t want its history recorded.

As so to the sly references in Mr Crundwell’s response to “bullying”. It’s Interesting to note how often that word has occurred in our collective correspondence with the BPS. It’s almost as if there is a little bit of code in the word-processor that recognises our names and automatically boilerplates a phrase about bullying and/or harassment. For me bullying has to include intent to harm (both ACAS and the Anti-Bullying Alliance include this concept in their guidance). ACAS also invokes the abuse of power as a factor. I think we can put that to one side – unless I am seriously misreading the situation, the power of a large, wealthy organisation which could, at any time, revoke our membership trumps that of a small group of malcontents. So, to intent, m’lud. We have always made it clear that our intent in all of our activities is to prevent damage to a discipline of which we are proud. In our view the BPS has, in recent years, failed singularly and particularly to represent psychology in all its many and varied forms in a responsible and professional manner. When we (and many others) have tried to engage senior members of the Society (whether elected or paid) we have been fobbed off, blocked or simply ignored. Because the amount of important and relevant information about the workings of the Society is so hidden from public view, we will often have to repeat requests. This is not “harassment” or “bullying”. It is a reaction to an unresponsive, defensive and secretive organisation. As a further observation, at no stage has the BPS felt the need to correct any of our statements or assertions when given the opportunity either publicly or privately. To reinforce this we are more than willing to publish any statement from the BPS without editorial interference.

He also refers to “trolling” which, according to the UK Crown Prosecution Service is

“…a form of baiting online which involves sending abusive and hurtful comments across all social media platforms.”

We would like to see the evidence to which this implied accusation relates. In our public statements, whether here or elsewhere, we focus on the behaviour of the organisation and the behaviour of office-holders in their role  – we clearly do not target individuals personally with abusive communications. We raise legitimate questions about the Society which is accountable to its membership for its actions. I would challenge Mr Crundwell to show us and the wider membership concrete examples of any malicious or abusive communications from any one of our contributors. As with many public statements, accusations are made without supporting evidence and hence are slurs and smears which cannot be refuted.

Mr Crundwell is right in stating that we refused a meeting with him and key stakeholders. Our reason for that is simple. We have argued long and hard that the Board of Trustees is not fully independent of the BPS – and paid staff are clearly not. What we asked for – and continue to request – is a meeting at which we can speak freely to one of the only independent trustees who has no vested interest (legitimate or not) in protecting their position within the Society. 

Enough of my ramblings. As Mr Crundwell notes, 2024 is an important year for the Society. It will be spending even more of members’ money on legal fees; will probably waste members’ money on consultancies and outsourcing; be evermore in thrall to whatever “social justice” bandwagon it feels the need to jump on; and generally fail to be the organisation of which members can be proud.

"The Psychologist", Board of Trustees, Governance

Evil secrets and good intentions in the BPS

AdminBPSWatch

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

Board of Trustees, Change Programme, Governance

The Spirit of Christmas Present?

AdminBPSWatch

Peter Harvey posts….

I was truly shocked by the news, reported in Third Sector, that the BPS is considering making some 32 people redundant.

From any perspective that clearly demonstrates a hugely dysfunctional organisation. This is a minute from the Board of Trustees (BoT) meeting of 15 September 2023

Finance – the August 2023 management accounts showed that the positive trend from July was continuing. The current operating deficit is REDACTED better than
budget. The overall bottom line is significantly better than a year ago, although this improvement was largely driven by improvement in the value of investments. Membership network subscription income is now REDACTED ahead of budget. 

Now I’m no accountant but that doesn’t strike me as an overly downbeat assessment of finances, yet just over two months later these draconian measures are proposed. There are hints, though (from the same minutes)

Trustees discussed the proposed drawdown from reserves. Trustees were asked to approve a drawdown of up to REDACTED. It was hoped that a smaller amount, REDACTED, would be needed. The drawdown is for general expenditure rather than specific items and relates to the need to balance cash flow through the end of the year. Most membership income is received in January and February. 

The overall financial objective is to achieve break-even by the end of 2024. Further work will be needed on cost reduction, to keep the plan on track. The proposed drawdown would leave reserves close to the prudential level approved by Trustees of 9 months’ income

Delving back to the BoT meeting before that, we read

A number of financial indicators are positive. The apparent increase in direct income as at April 2023 is linked to a systems/anniversary issue causing a gap in recorded income in early 2022. Accurate figures are now available. It is too early in the year to predict the full year outcome for 2023 but early indications are satisfactory.

and

Trustees noted progress on plans to increase income and reduce costs. 

Again, no acknowledgement (except that bland phrase “…reduce costs…”) that there is any problem.

From the minutes of the BoT for 21 April we read

Trustees discussed whether the organisation is making sufficient progress in improving the financial position. It was noted that headcount and discretionary spending are areas that organisations often look at when seeking to cut costs in the short term. There are currently 8 vacancies, albeit not a blanket freeze on recruitment. The SMT review staffing on an ongoing basis, balancing the financial demands on the organisation with the need to continue to provide core member services, and ‘extreme’ cuts may be more harmful in the long term. 

So, within the space of two months the BPS has to “reduce costs” by pushing thirty two people out despite this phrase in the extract above 

and ‘extreme’ cuts may be more harmful in the long term.

It raises serious questions about the financial management and reporting systems in the BPS – yet again. How much have the Trustees been told? After all they are legally responsible for the financial health of the Society. Why is there a sudden need for such major cost savings? It must seem a bitter paradox that the BPS has blown £6 million on the Change Programme (to what effect?, the interested reader may well ask). Why are members being deprived of critically important information (note the redactions) about the future viability of the Society which they pay for? These are not ‘commercially sensitive” data nor does it relate to named individuals. It is yet another example of the wilful and deliberate withholding of key information from the membership. Let’s have some honesty, please.

Will it be any of those 18 staff members, with their grandiose (and largely meaningless) job titles whose combined salaries are around £1.5 million? After all, it is these people who must take the overall responsibility for the operational management of the Society. Call me an old cynic but my guess is that they will stay and, as in all organisations, it’s the “poor bloody infantry“ that bears the brunt.

It is just those people on whom the BPS is absolutely dependent. Without them the Society simply would not work. Remove the odd highly paid Director of [fill in your own ostentatious new management-speak title here] and I doubt would we would notice the difference. Note that during the 12 month suspension of the CEO the BPS still functioned (presumably he was still paid during his gardening leave). But lose those hard working and committed people who do the donkey work and where are you. Without a paddle and hopefully not up a creek managed by Southern Water.

Back in the day (OK nearly 25 years ago now) I held three posts in turn (Chief Examiner, Chair of the Board of Examiners, Chair of the DCP – and no, I am not a BPS junkie) which had a degree of responsibility. They also made serious demands on my time – and, no, I am not asking for your sympathy here as I gave that time willingly and freely. But the point of this is not to self-aggrandize but to emphasize that I simply could not have done these jobs without the helpful, willing and kind people in the middle ranks of the BPS bureaucracy. Not only were they well-versed in the reality of how the organisation worked in general and their subsystems in particular, they often gave much more than their position and salary indicated. They were tolerant of my naivety, subtle in their advice and always, but always, had the best interest of the membership at the centre of what they did. Sometimes, I think that their close identification with their particular sub-grouping with the BPS meant that they attracted management censure for having (to use a politically and culturally inappropriate phrase in these post-colonial times) “gone native”. 

So, if this is where the axe will fall, then who is going to guide and support those volunteer office-holders which the BPS so desperately needs? Who will provide the continuity, the hidden knowledge that the manuals don’t include? Who will provide the services that members pay their (soon-to-be-increased) subscriptions for? Who will do the actual day-to-day work?

But this is a selfish perspective. I write this at the start of December – three weeks or so before Christmas. Thirty two people – and let’s not distance them by calling them members of staff – these are real people with real families, real mortgages and energy bills to pay, real mouths to feed – will be facing the festive season with dread and foreboding. Their New Year will be uncertain, unpredictable, filled with fear as to whether they will be able to find another job or they will be subject to the cruel vagaries of the benefit system. Uncertainty about your job is bad at any time but there is cruel irony about the timing of this news.

Perhaps the BPS, rather than spending its time and scarce resources chasing whatever current cause triggers its need to virtue signal, might spare a thought for those people on whom it depends. But perhaps it simply doesn’t care.

Uncategorized

An invitation

AdminBPSWatch

Peter Harvey, Blog Administrator, posts…

The blog has been quiet of late, partly due to legal restrictions on discussing Nigel MacLennan’s expulsion. One of the reasons for this is that, until recently, little has changed with the BPS and frankly, it gets disheartening to keep on saying the same thing and getting no reaction. Our heads can take only so much banging the brick wall.

However, things are on the move. We have our book launch next week (sorry, no more tickets available – the event has been fully booked) but copies are available for those of you yet to get a copy – and we have a couple of new posts due this weekend. 

But I am sure that we are not the only ones in despair about the state of the BPS – certainly, informal feedback from the blog and the Twitter (X) feed suggest that lots of you agree with us. Heartening though that is it would be good to get some contributions from a wider group than the same old malcontents.

So, if you have something to say that you think might be of interest then please get in touch. We have a light editorial touch (unlike some publications I could mention) and we are firm in our commitment to confidentiality and respecting anyone’s right to choose anonymity.

It would certainly make for a more varied read if we had some new voices.

Contact us at at bpswatch@btinternet.com if you would like to discuss a possible contribution.

"The Psychologist", Academic freedom and censorship, Gender, Identity Politics

Puberty blockers and Conversion Therapy – BPS in the dock

AdminBPSWatch

Pat Harvey posts….

Today’s (22 October 2023) Observer editorial appears in timely fashion as the NHS England consultation on puberty blockers reaches its deadline and there has been government confusion regarding a ban on “conversion therapy” (see here) for people experiencing gender incongruence.

As the British Psychological Society puts together, behind its opaque glass door, its response to the puberty blockers consultation, this succinct yet astonishingly comprehensive Observer editorial must signal to the Society that its ideological/social justice approach to the psychological phenomenon of gender incongruence and its pharmacological and surgical medicalisation must now be radically revisited.

Until now, there has not even been a pretence of balance on the subject. Like many other professional bodies, the BPS has been totally trans-ideology captured. It has colluded with those social movements rushing to affirm to unhappy children, often dealing with their adolescence alongside other trauma and difficulties, that it is their “gender identity” that is the problem which can be fixed with affirmation, medications and surgery. The BPS’s track record on this is deplorable. This is demonstrated by:

  • The BPS’s confirmation that affirmation is the default approach to gender incongruence in its 2019 Guidelines, led by a trans activist, which are still extant.  This has actively discouraged and undermined the confidence of psychologist practitioners to engage with children early and in local service settings. As the Observer notes  “An independent review for the NHS highlighted many mental health professionals are already reluctant to treat children with gender distress because of pressure to adopt the affirmative approach”. This has had serious consequences for many children and families. There is little sign that any review of those guidelines will be addressing services to children, a cowardly avoidant strategy by the BPS.
  • The BPS house publication The Psychologist, by its own admission, commissioning and facilitating a highly contentious article by a trans activist ideologue and resisting or refusing to print a number of critical responses by members and removing comments below the article. The BPS has actively censored publication of other material which questioned the trans activist ideological stance (Singer, J., Pilgrim, D., Hakeem, A. et al. Constraints on Free Academic and Professional Debate in the UK About Sex and Gender. Arch Sex Behav 52, 2269–2279 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-023-02687-3).
  • The BPS offering a less than positive response to Cass, focussing on referral overwhelm rather than service model failures.
  • The BPS repeatedly resisting demands that it should recognise the huge pitfalls of an unsophisticated “virtue signalling” campaign to ban the ill-defined and therefore legislatively hazardous soi-disant Conversion Therapy. The Observer article notes that” “…a government-commissioned study found no evidence that trans conversion therapy happens in the UK beyond a methodologically flawed self-report survey...”. A key leader of that “methodologically flawed” research has been increasingly influential in the BPS, originally within the Sexualities Section and now Chair of its recent Equality Diversity and Inclusion Board.

The appearance of the Observer article now shows, in a carefully crafted, justifiable and easily understood argument, how crucial it is in terms of professional responsibility to remove the trans ideological social justice perspective from matters of clinical services for distressed children. It states: “The chilling effects of criminalising exploratory conversations between a therapist and a young person that could be perceived as denying their identity will only make the holistic therapy recognised as critical by the Cass review even harder to access. Campaigners will have no qualms about misrepresenting unclear law to tell clinicians, therapists and parents they may be committing a criminal offence and subject to “conversion therapy protection orders” unless they immediately affirm a child as trans.” Increased pressure to seek and to prescribe puberty blockers would be a likely result, alongside continuing reluctance of practitioners to work in this service context.

The British Psychological Society must now be made accountable for the serious shortcomings of its positioning on gender.

"The Psychologist", Board of Trustees, Change Programme, Expulsion of President-Elect, Financial issues, Governance

Junkies, Fraud and Spin Doctors: The BPS Kakistocracy

AdminBPSWatch

David Pilgrim posts…..

Editing a book on the crisis in the BPS was in one sense easy. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. The Society is so dysfunctional and corrupt that the facts just spoke for themselves. I did hit some problems though. I had to lose some important contributions for reasons of sub judice. This was not because the claims to be made were untrue and without an extensive evidential basis. It was because the victim of a gross injustice, President-Elect Nigel MacLennan, was pursuing his legal right to redress, which I could not jeopardize by going public too soon with every damning fact known to me and other writers in the book.  

In continuing their own desperate defence of past actions, the BPS leaders will take even more money from a currently uninformed membership. The latter deserve a detailed list of the costs involved in the campaign to persecute MacLennan. We are probably talking not tens of thousands of pounds, as was the case in relation to the fraud perpetrated by the PA of the CEO (see below) but hundreds of thousands, with the bill still mounting. Whose interests exactly have been served in this expensive campaign of disparagement of an individual, who was acting in good faith to improve governance in the BPS? When the dust settles on his case the costs to members entailed should be made known, given that to date the leaders have been coy about their accounting practices. 

In my view, looking at the arc of this story and the evidence we have, it was because MacLennan was an incipient whistleblower that the cabal went out to get him, a process that had started early on in his tenure. The SMT and the Board of Trustees spotted a troublemaker in their midst, who might spill the beans on what was wrong in the Society and whose moral and legal culpability might be exposed.  He was probably seen initially as an agitator for governance reform (his candidate statement for President forewarned them). When he moved from agitator to whistleblower (with Charity Commission interest becoming more evident) then his days looked numbered and his expulsion could soon be contrived. Whistleblowers blow the cover on dubious practice and there was much of this waiting to come out.

The problem of opaqueness and the cant in the BPS about its claimed ‘transparency’ have recurred in our critique of the BPS culture. Although the facts do indeed speak for themselves, secrecy and spin, ensured by the censorship role of the Comms Team and the silence of The Psychologist, meant that they were by no means all that easy to either come by or broadcast (Harvey, 2023). 

When writing my history of the BPS across chapters in the book, I cautioned that the full details behind our criticisms were still patchy and shrouded from view. We may have got it wrong in whole or part: who knows for certain? The long standing organizational malaise in the BPS could all have been a set of innocent human errors, made by people of good will. On the other hand, the Machiavellianism could be much worse than even we have described. Indeed it is because leaders in the BPS have covered their tracks with such assiduous effort that we may never know, for certain, what has really happened in the Kafkaesque Leicester HQ. 

We await a rebuttal of the arguments in our book from BPS officialdom but no effort has been made to date to offer a celebratory history of the Society, maybe for very good reason. Where would that celebration start exactly? How about the twice President and dodgy eugenicist Cyril Burt during the Second World War? How about the failure to set up an independent Board of Trustees in 1966 and missing a second bite of the cherry in 1988? How about the crash down of British empiricism and positivism in the wake of the postmodern turn in the discipline during the 1980s and 90s? How about the departing CEOs and other senior officials in the wake of financial crises, after the turn of this century? How about the New Public Management model and its consequences for a bloated economy in the Society? How exactly would this sow’s ear picture be turned into a proud silk purse for posterity? Spin in the present understandably does not welcome historical candour. 

The spin is what has been said but the main strategy to keep members in the dark has been silence, ‘Keeping schtum’ has served self-interest at the top well.  Call it what you wish (‘cover up’ ‘mystification’ ‘spin’, ‘bullshit’) the outcome is the same: the BPS is not and has never been transparent. Its ordinary members and the general public have been shielded from anything other than good news stories. 

The surviving and still extensive contributions in the book were certainly damning enough. They demonstrated that the BPS has never had a fit-for-purpose Board of Trustees since it was recognized as a charity in British law. That lack of independent oversight has ensured organizational dysfunction, a lack of membership democracy, a lack of transparency, recurrent policy capture, the abandonment of freedom of expression and academic probity at the altar of modish identity politics, as well as of course financial mismanagement and then the corruption, with a prison sentence eventually attached. Thus, the lack of proper governance has triggered more than financial concerns alone. 

I expand this point now more by looking at junkies, fraud and Pollyanna spin doctors as symptomatic aspects of the BPS organizational malaise. Together they have constituted a ‘kakistocracy’. The ugly but apposite term comes from the old Greek ‘kakistos’ meaning ‘worst’ and ‘kratos’ meaning ‘rule’.  

BPS junkies

When then President Ray Miller quipped that he was a ‘BPS junkie’ we will never know why; the claim was fair comment but his motive for making it could reflect guilt, pride, either or both.  The context was important though. He was in conversation with an early representative of the New Public Management approach, the CEO Tim Cornford, flexing its muscles at the turn of this century (Miller and Cornford, 2006). These two leaders of the organization ‘in conversation’ reflected a tentative hand over of power between the old regime of oligarchs and the new managers. Many of them, as was to become apparent, were not psychologists but some were. Together they shifted the organizational emphasis from academic values to those of a managed bureaucracy; a wider feature in the UK in the 1990s. (Third sector organizations, like those in the public sector, became both more marketized and more bureaucratized.) 

With a shift from the traditional power of oligarchs with their recycled names to the controlling role of new management class with their invented new Orwellian titles, a struggle for who was top dog ensued. The controversial ‘Change Programme’ and the spiraling costs at the centre of the organization were symptoms of an insidious shift to unaccountable managerial power and financial profligacy. Fifteen years after Miller’s confession, President David Murphy made much of this popping financial bubble in his resignation letter, placed for all to see on social media. Seemingly, in his eyes, not only the crooked PA had been on a self-indulgent spending spree (see below).

Miller may have confessed his guilty secret but he was by no means the only recycled name at the top. Some, such as Ann Colley, upstaged him by being both the BPS President and CEO. Some took on the sinecure of ‘Honorary General Secretary’. Grand in its title, what it was, when the payment for it stopped, and for what reason, are like many things in the BPS lost in the haze of time.  Hypnotized by personal cunning plans or seduced by old fashioned vanity, so much still remains unknown about these recycled names. Maybe they did it just because they could and it would always look good on their CV. ‘Junkies’ may be a metaphor for personal addiction to bureaucratic status and power in this context. However, the governance vacuum created by a lack of an independent Board of Trustees opened the door very widely to such personal craving and it then rewarded addicts. The latter could readily rationalize their overly-long involvement as service, but who were they serving? 

One lesson we have learned in our campaigning is that some senior colleagues with long term involvement in the Society we have spoken to manifest degrees of ‘Stockholm Syndrome’. They counter our criticisms by arguing that if only this person rather than that took over as the Chair of this or that sub-system, or could join the faux Board of Trustees, then the BPS dysfunction would soon be rectified. Another aspect of this quick ‘fixit’ mentality is the idea that a quiet private word with individuals at the top will ensure that a particular grievance or inefficiency will soon be resolved. We should stop our negativism and look on the bright side, curry favour with those in power now or prospectively, and it will all be OK. This theme of a new world coming in a BPS with bushy tailed innovators recurs over and over again (see below). 

One ex-President we contacted was shocked by our sleuthing saying that she thought that she had, like Hercules, successfully ‘cleaned out the stables’ during her tenure. She accepted what we said but really believed that she had fixed the problem. Such defences of the old regime by senior colleague are, to put it politely, highly irrational. How precisely would individuals in their efficiency and integrity singlehandedly solve a structural problem? This naïve assumption could be a function of psychological reductionism and vain individualism but we know that other organizations can be oligarchical and lacking in insight. The shock here though is that psychologists are expected to at least reflect on their problems; they are allegedly experts on that reflection about individuals and groups. In practice this reflexivity has been notably absent in the culture of Leicester. 

Fraud

Even today I meet BPS members who are unaware of the major fraud in the BPS. This is because it was not reported in The Psychologist or announced by the SMT or Board of Trustees. It was reported though in the Leicester Mercury (as was an arson attack at BPS HQ). So if a member wants to understand their professional organization they would do well to take this local newspaper rather than rely on BPS statements and publications. 

The gist of the unedifying main story is that a woman who had numerous previous offences of the same type had used the BPS credit card for over £70K of spending (on amongst other things a cruise and Jimmy Choo shoes).  After the fraud was eventually discovered and reported the offender was tried and sent to prison for 28 months. In court she reported that it was like being a ‘kid in a candy shop’.

A naïve outsider faced with this picture may well assume that those responsible for appointing her would be disciplined or sacked. They might also assume that as she was the PA of the CEO, the latter would have signed off fraudulent claims. They might also assume that oversight of financial probity would be the responsibility of the Finance Director.  They might also assume that as well as the end-point offender being held to account in a court of law, that the legal liability or ethical culpability of other key players would be under scrutiny. These are all fair assumptions. So this is what happened in practice.

News of the fraud was buried in a line or two of the annual accounts as a minor irrelevance. No report of the organizational background to story was supplied to the membership. The CEO and Finance Director were suspended and placed under investigation. The former stayed suspended for a year and then returned and is still now in post. The latter went off to be employed by the National Lottery Community Fund within a month of his suspension (presumably with a reference dutifully given by someone in the BPS). He remains employed there. To date no one in a leadership role has offered a transparent (that word again) account to the world of what went so badly wrong about financial probity. Thus the only disciplinary consequence on public record has been the imprisonment of the PA. None of this drama has been reported or discussed in The Psychologist or any other BPS outlet. Silence has been the main cover-up tactic. 

Here are the loose end questions that members and the general public may be interested in. Did the ‘Board of Trustees’ discuss the termination of employment of the CEO and FD? Were they unanimous in their decision to suspend them both? Did they examine the evidence related to the CEO’s sign offs of multiple fraudulent claims and the due diligence of his FD in overseeing those sign offs and confirming their legitimacy? Did they put in place plans to investigate who was responsible for the appointment of a convicted fraudster? Did the BoT suspend the two senior employees at once or did several months elapse between the fact of the fraud being known and their eventual suspension? If so why? Did the CEO return to post after a year because he was totally and unambiguously exonerated of any negligence or wrongdoing? Instead might his retained role be explained by another reason? Why have the members been given no answers to these questions? Does that silence reflect a norm of mystification in the BPS, which it turn reflects a failure of governance over decades?

And there is more. If the FD and CEO have had their salaried posts and reputations left unscathed by the fraud, what of the parallel drama at the time of the expulsion of Nigel MacLennan?  Did he commit a criminal offence or was any form of illegality committed instead against him in relation to employment law, personal disparagement and his human rights? Soon we will find out the answers to these questions but not before the BPS leadership will pour even more into the legal costs sustaining their attack on MacLennan. Where will that money come from? (That question is rhetorical not open.)

Where is the evidence that he actually did anything wrong? Why did the video about his expulsion appear as an act of deliberate public humiliation on YouTube, fronted by the Acting Chair of the BoT, before MacLennan even had the time to appeal the decision (McGuinness, 2021)? Were those appointed to investigate the charge against him truly independent of vested interests in the BPS leadership? Do they today stand by their decision and approve of the YouTube posting?  Any fair minded outsider would surely smell a rat about this scenario, unless all of the questions I posed above were answered in a convincing manner (rather than being spin or bullshit). This cues the next and final section.

Pollyanna spin doctors 

The unreal culture of the BPS is fascinating. On the one hand its ‘officers’ send po-faced letters marked ‘private and confidential’ about minor bureaucratic details pertaining to an investigated complaint, which has typically run into the sands, as if they are gravely concerned about standards.  On the other hand, they are quite happy to publicly trash people like Nigel MacLennan with impunity, as I have just noted. What ethical ‘standard’ was being applied precisely in his case? On the one had they say that complaints against individuals are not investigated by the BPS but on the other hand they deploy self-declared BPS junkies to pursue such an investigation, when it suits the interests of those in power. On the one hand they boast that ‘transparency’ is a key value of the organization and on the other hand they fail to report any event that might get in the way of the narrative that everything in Leicester is just fine and, if it is not, then improvements are just around the corner.

Whistling in the dark and pretending everything is fine and under control have attended the demise of the BPS in recent decades. Silence in The Psychologist and the weasel words of the anonymous apparatchiks of the Comms Team have always been on hand to maintain this madness with its underlying method or aim, but there are other key players. One group are those manifesting variants of ‘Stockholm Syndrome’, noted above. However, at the top of the pyramid are the SMT and the Chair of the Board of Trustees. The latter used to come with the job of being the President. That is no longer the case as the role has now become merely ‘ambassadorial’. 

This tweak might have passed the average member by but it is important. Now we have a new and independent chair and three independent colleagues. At last there has been some sign after years of Charities Commission pressure of a shift for the first time towards an independent Board. For now the majority are still old school appointees from the sub-systems, there by Masonic-style nod and a wink trickery. They still have conflicts of interest but this new picture is at least a start. A fully independent BoT would be a necessary but not sufficient condition for confronting the gross mismanagement and misdemeanors of the past, but note that it is a necessary condition.

Under this shift towards independent scrutiny, the old habit of Pollyanna spin from the SMT and Presidents is potentially now open to challenge. Maybe the stop button on the BPS bullshit generator might at long last be pressed by these newcomers. Sadly that is not what appears to be happening. The neophytes seem to have ‘gone native’. I have been in correspondence with David Crundwell, the new chair and he has been polite and he has replied at length. (This is an improvement on being totally ignored or threatened with disciplinary action, which was the stance of the SMT in recent years since BPSWatch emerged.) 

I sent Mr Crundwell a copy of our book, at his request. He was concerned to anticipate what he called ‘accusations’ and I preferred to call ‘empirical facts’. I asked him to report any factual inaccuracies about the claims being made in the book but he declined on the grounds that it was all before his time. This is a bit odd, given that any of us can offer a view about anything that has happened in the past and drawn to our attention now in evidential detail (that is how the jury system works). I also asked him to join a panel at a launch of the book but he declined the invitation. Nobody from the SMT or BoT have yet complained about the facts recorded in the book, which is relevant for the historical record. Their silence is telling and a full debate with them would be intriguing for any listener.

On the positive side, Mr. Crundwell has agreed that the high rate of redactions still common in BPS Board meetings is incompatible with a spirit of transparency. He truly appreciates that claiming transparency and being transparent are not the same thing, which was an insight clearly lost on the old regime. And a certain degree of caginess is understandable, given that he has had to work with a dysfunctional leadership which was not of his choosing. However, sadly that caution has now tipped over into Pollyanna spin and so is compounding, not challenging, old bad habits.

Reasons to be cheerful with no rear view mirror

Ian Dury’s long shopping list of ‘reasons to be cheerful’ was tempered at the end by the wise caution of ‘perhaps next year or maybe even never’. Pollyanna managers are less sophisticated about the complex relationship between past, present and future. Patterns connect through time and old habits die hard.  Stock-taking about the legacy of the past for naïve optimists is threatening to them because it gets in the way of their current rhetoric of shiny future prospects. It is dangerous for them because they are wrongheaded and so they will be prone to mismanage and be exposed for their folly. It is dangerous for others because it is misleading about unrecognized risks for the general good. 

‘Reasons to be cheerful’ rhetoric means not having to deal with the grim reality of what has been inherited but living instead in a comforting imaginary world. Who can object to good intentions even if they may risk paving the way to hell? They sound plausible and are an example of the power of positive thinking but they are actually profoundly illogical at times.  In Peter Barham’s poignant account of psychotic patients going ‘over the top’ in the First World War, oblivious to the dangers they were facing, being out of touch with reality meant making their vulnerable lives more, not less, risky (Barham, 2004).

A theme in my correspondence related to Mr. Crundwell’s preference not to look in the rear view mirror (his chosen metaphor not mine). In response I noted that a car minus a mirror will fail its MOT. My metaphor seemed to cut no ice. He wanted instead to look only optimistically to the road ahead. He even invited me to get in the car and enjoy the ride with other BPS members about ‘exciting prospects’ envisioned but not elaborated in any detail. 

What Mr. Crundwell does not seem to understand is that in the rear view he is choosing to ignore, there are not only shocking past events but also impending and foreboding consequences.  The reality of the past and the present and the future are bound up together in all open human systems. Any manager ignoring that truism is, to say the least, unwise. I did point this out to Mr. Crundwell (boringly and repeatedly) but my view was ignored. ‘Line drawing’ is just magical thinking. Forget complexity and focus on comforting future fantasies. The contempt this shows for the importance of history is jaw dropping.

Of course we have heard this ‘drawing a line’ sort of argument recently from Crundwell’s new colleagues. It came from the CEO and the then new President installed as a safe pair of hands to replace the expelled MacLennan, following the nifty imposed rule change that only allowed Senate members to be candidates. Carpenter and Bajwa (2021) then were singing the same refrain as Crundwell is now. I have no idea whether they coached him in a ‘party line’ or he came to the same unwise stance with no help from them (our correspondence was polite but not a mutual confessional).

The ‘drawing a line under the past’ management cliché undermines three linked imperatives for a healthy organization. The first is justice. Justice requires truth. Without truth there can be no redress for, and reconciliation about, historical wrongdoing. Hiding the detailed facts of the fraud or MacLennan’s kangaroo court expulsion helps few, other than those with the self-interested need to cover up the evidence of their past culpability. 

Second, when those in power go into hiding, then trust is broken in them. If the BPS leaders do not report adverse events to members, why should the latter have any trust in them? When that trust breaks down some members stay and fight (as we have done), some become passive cynical onlookers and some resign in contempt for their professional and disciplinary body. New psychologists will be wary of joining a discredited organization. A measure of this in applied psychology has been the formation of others splinter groups (the AEP, ABP and ACP), where greater trust is invested. Another has been that now most psychologists registered with the HCPC are not BPS members.

Third, future improvements only come about as a result of organizational learning. That is why I have attacked the BPS for being an ‘organization without a memory’ (Pilgrim, 2023a; cf. Donaldson, 2002). A necessary outcome of that contrived amnesia is its need to produce organizational bullshit (Pilgrim, 2023b; Spicer, 2020).  For example, those working in the NHS understand from painful experience the importance of critical incident reporting and constant reflection about lessons learned. When that duty (and it is a duty) of learning is evaded about the past, then we tend to have unnecessary deaths in the future. The consequences for critical incidents in the BPS may be less dramatic but they still implicate risks to the public, as we know in relation to policy capture.

Conclusion

The BPS is a kakistocracy. Those addicted to status, those using it as a cash cow and those expert at spin and bullshit to defend the indefensible, have aggregated in its culture in the past decades. They have been joined by a self-interested expansive management class. None of these have had any inclination to come clean about all of the matters that we in BPSWatch have insisted on unpicking in the past couple of years. 

The next phase of decline, and maybe fall, awaits with leaders driving with no rear mirror. Tailgating the jaunty BPS car is a juggernaut of legal reckoning and the prospect of a scattering loss of those psychologists who have simply had enough of an implausible charity and professional body that has lost academic credibility. Any members left behind will continue to fund the antics of the kakistocrats. They would do well to ask for a detailed receipt.

References

Barham, P. (2004) Forgotten Lunatics of the Great War New Haven: Yale University Press.

Carpenter, K. and Bajwa, S. (2021) From the President and the CEO The Psychologist November.

Conway, A. (2023) BPS Policy Capture (2): selective ‘memory science’ and the betrayal of victims of abuse. In D.Pilgrim (ed) British Psychology in Crisis: A Case Study in Organizational Dysfunction Oxford: Phoenix Books.

Donaldson L. (2002) An organisation with a memory. Clinical Medicine Sep-Oct;2(5):452-7

Harvey, P. (2023) Resisting the silence of the cabal:  resorting to social and alternative media. In D.Pilgrim (ed) British Psychology in Crisis: A Case Study in Organizational Dysfunction Oxford: Phoenix 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) An organization without a memory? In D.Pilgrim (ed) British Psychology in Crisis: A Case Study in Organizational Dysfunction Oxford: Phoenix Books.

Pilgrim, D. (2023b) BPS Bullshit In D.Pilgrim (ed) British Psychology in Crisis: A Case Study in Organizational Dysfunction Oxford: Phoenix Books.

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

Board of Trustees, Governance

SWEEPING CLEAN OR UNDER THE CARPET?

AdminBPSWatch

David Pilgrim posts….

The new independent chair of the faux Board of Trustees, Mr. David Crundwell, and his three colleagues from outside the BPS face a task which is, to use the preferred management euphemism, ‘challenging’. He and the other newcomers have been parachuted into a dysfunctional and corrupt organization. We do not know who sent them or how they were chosen for their ‘challenging’ jump. Was it the Charity Commission directly or did the cabal itself choose them for their particular crisis management skills to placate the demands of the former? As with most of the decision making about, and within, the BPS this matter has been kept hidden from the scrutiny of members and the public.

Despite this opaqueness, which immediately becomes pure cant given that the Society has a purported core value of ‘transparency’, something might still happen for the better. Small changes in systems, even in relatively isolated ones like the BPS, can potentially at least trigger larger improvements. Family therapists know this about their chronically ‘stuck’ clients. However, the objective character of that closed culture, embedded for over fifty years, is still worth recalling because any measure of success must use it as a yardstick. Whatever ‘perspective’ (that great postmodern fudge) we take on the legitimation crisis of the BPS, it remains a legitimation crisis. The facts we keep restating about corruption and dysfunction remain the facts.

What is the ‘challenge’?

This is the score. The BPS has never had a proper Board of Trustees. The group calling itself by that name was initially a self-perpetuating oligarchy. Those on it at any moment in time not only tended to hang around for years on end but when it became a ‘slow open’ group, newcomers were let in by grace and favour. Sometimes chairs of other Boards and Divisions waited their turn, like status obsessed MPs in the queue to enter the House of Lords. This quasi-Masonic tendency was neither democratic nor transparent. 

Newly appointed ‘trustees’, in exchange for a taste of power or influence, were expected to toe the line. If they did not, then they risked punishment. The latter claim has been evident in relation to the one sub-group of ‘trustees’ with any sort of democratic mandate: the Presidential triumvirate. However, although this three person steer at the top was elected by the membership, even they were still not proper Trustees, according to the expectations of charity law. They were not members of the public, who could at any time walk away from the role without career, financial or status implications.  Moreover, the elected Presidential role has now been neutered, with those elected by the members only having an ‘ambassadorial’ role, instead of becoming the Board Chair.  Let us be honest, who would now want be an ambassador for a banana republic?

Outsiders create proper oversight. Insiders, even at their benign best, act out their conflicts of interest. We have witnessed this over and over again, especially in relation to two matters: the struggle to sustain sub-group interests and the opportunities for policy capture. An example of the first was when the third Divisional departure emerged in 2017, with the formation of the Association of Clinical Psychologists; prior splinters away were the Association of Business Psychology and Association of Educational Psychologists. These schisms reflected the struggle of groups of applied psychologists to escape both the shackles of oligarchical control and the iron cage of bureaucracy.

Examples of the second, which we have explored at length on this blog, have been the capture of policies on gender by transgender activists and the alignment of the BPS policy on memory and the law with that of the British False Memory Society. Governance failure has meant that these biases have accrued, and other legitimate voices from within the Society have been systematically excluded. This culminates in an organization that is not learned but captured. It has become a legitimizing policy platform for activists with particular vested interests. The latter displaces full and proper academic reflection with propaganda. That process has been aided and abetted by the ‘Comms Team’ and The Psychologist, as well as a recent cultural proclivity in the BPS for censorship.

Facing this ‘challenging’ scenario

Given the above, how will the new small broom start to discharge its onerous responsibilities? This is an unenviable but interesting scenario for anyone. Remember that Mr. Crundwell and his colleagues are the very first genuine Trustees of the BPS, so this is a recordable historical moment. Will they take stock and then opt to distance themselves from the past chicanery and bullshit, which we have documented extensively on this blog? Will they demand full transparency for the membership about the fraud, the arson and the kangaroo court expulsion? 

However, before jumping in with those blunt questions, there are the information gathering advantages for them to consider about very cautiously engaging with the extant ‘leadership’. The newcomers need to gauge the scale of damage of the organizational wreckage and its realistic prospects of repair. A watchful period might also allow the new broom to hold the old guard to account for their sins of omission and commission, before telling the story of that experiment publicly and without resorting to redacted minutes (O to be fly on the wall of the current ‘Board of Trustees’ meetings!)   For the newbies there are clear grounds then for a ‘wait and see’ engagement stance. However, the very real risk is that it becomes quickly routinized and the new broom is then rendered completely ineffective. At the time of writing, Mr. Crundwell and his colleagues are on the cusp between wise caution and mistaken collusion. This is a tricky time for them.

Their cultural absorption would be a replay of the pattern of incorporation we have seen so often in the past. The more it changed the more it stayed the same. What impact did some well-meaning new Presidents have? The answer is very little. Did the New Public Management model lead to a rectification of organizational inefficiency? The answer is that it led to at least one major fraud and a profligate £6 million ‘Change Programme’; ‘changing from what to what?’ we might all well ask. This shambles culminated in a fiscal crisis, summarised well in the resignation letter of Vice President David Murphy, we previously re-printed in full. 

Since then, the highly redacted minutes of the ‘Board of Trustees’ are beginning to hint at an impending meltdown; what more is there to hide from an already hoodwinked member audience? The answer may well be ‘quite a lot’. Neither the old oligarchs nor the new managers, since 2000, with their poor understanding of academic values, prevented the fraud. Who in either group has taken responsibility for that scandal? The answer is ‘no one’. Who has apologized for the kangaroo court expulsion of Nigel MacLennan? The answer is ‘no one’. Given this lack of evidence about personal integrity or a culture of learning from experience, the old guard has no legitimacy or ‘rational authority’, to use an old notion from Erich Fromm. 

In light of these points, we have approached the new Chair to open up a channel of communication with him. This offer of free highly researched, albeit highly critical, feedback to date has not been taken up fully by him. The relevant context of our offer is that we have had no fancy fees like the management consultants and lawyers paid out from members’ money by the SMT, to save their skins. We have zero ambition for power within the BPS but as career-long members we can see it for what it is, warts and all. 

Faced with our guerilla campaign, the SMT have ignored us hoping we might give up or die (both of course might have happened, so from their tactical position it was worth a try). But our presence or departure is not relevant to what we have been drawing attention to about corruption and dysfunction, which is either true or not true. We were just the messengers to be shot or ignored. Accordingly, the newcomers with their fresh eyes and lack of loyalty to the old regime might be wise to take what we are saying seriously. That is their choice. 

Our elaborated case is set out in the just published British Psychology In Crisis: A Case Study of a Dysfunctional Organisation from Phoenix Books. I have arranged for a free copy to be sent to Mr. Crundwell, at his request. He will use his own judgement about its contents, in comparison to the obfuscations, rationalisations and silences likely to be heard from his advisors from the SMT, depicting us as a small disaffected and unrepresentative minority. As Robert Thouless noted in his classic 1930 text, Straight and Crooked Thinking, the strength of an argument, which mixes logic and evidence, is not how many people say it but whether or not it is more plausible than competing arguments. The path less taken is sometimes the wisest one.

Mr. Crundwell has written back very politely to us recently. Knowingly brief (he is a communications expert according to a click on Google), he is keeping his cards close to his chest about his appraisal of the organizational madness so far. But at least he replied, which is more than was the case so often in the past, when a host of members sent letters of concern and complaint to the ‘leaders’ of the BPS and were blanked. This culture of contempt, when letters and complaints were systematically ignored by the CEO and other senior managers, is a norm that the newcomers may be wise to disrupt and eschew. 

So Mr. Crundwell has replied quickly and politely, albeit guardedly. He has invited us to meet with him and the CEO. Maybe he wants to nail the CEO to his side to make him face the music. However, our interest was in talking directly to the new and authentic Trustees about their oversight role, not having meetings with employees. This lack of administrative separation, even today, of the CEO and the Chair is highly problematic. All communications to the Chair still go through the office of the CEO. In a well-run Charity a Chair should be interested in feedback from any source (minority or not). Given that the CEO and the SMT have been the focus of substantial disappointment for BPS members, there ought to be an opportunity for Mr. Crundwell to listen to voices of concern about them from anywhere. How can that happen with the remaining norm of administrative enmeshment between the CEO and the Trustees, including the Chair? This does not augur well for a new regime of oversight.

Moreover, why would any BPS member trust a CEO, who was suspended for a year on full pay and who then returned with no explanation for the world about how his fraudster PA, with past convictions, ended up stealing members’ money with impunity and is now, once again, in prison? However he was using his time when not replying to members concerns, it was clearly not on hiring and managing his own subordinates to ensure financial probity.  Teflon tactics of leaders may lead to personal survival, even if temporarily, but they rarely provide the survivors with genuine and historically vindicated credibility or the respect of others. This leaves just a few stalwart loyalists to defend the indefensible. Our Boris Johnson zeitgeist is permeating more than the culture of Westminster. Applying this point to the BPS, why would any member any longer want to talk to the CEO – what is the point given his track record?  

Conclusion

The BPS is under immediate existential threat. Poor governance, financial corruption, policy capture, censorship and academic incoherence point to an organization that may now be fatally wounded. The current CEO has no legitimacy as its most senior manager. The ‘Board of Trustees’, now reformed for the better, is still a sham. It needs to be scrapped fully and a new one installed, where every single member is truly independent of the operational aspects of its staff and its competing membership interests. The resolution of tensions between the latter now require careful and separate reflection, given that the discipline of psychology remains so contested in terms of its theories and methods. That matter of academic hygiene, underpinned at all times by academic freedom, has been lost in an organization in which secrecy and censorship have become management norms. A truly independent Board of Trustees could oversee the rectification of these signs of both organizational and academic malaise. For their part, psychologists must take collective responsibility for dealing with the latter.

If the Society is now on the brink of extinction then the current reforms at the top are a start but they are not enough. Finishing where I began with the unique historical installation of proper and so credible Trustees, and to use another managerial cliché, ‘our door is always open’ for them. However, whether they listen to us or not, maybe the BPS is going to collapse from its own contradictions about poor financial control and grossly inadequate governance. New leaders, even if well-meaning, honest and open to feedback from all-comers, may be doomed to fail because maybe the Society is now doomed to fail. Hero innovators may only now be offering palliative care rather than a cure.

"The Psychologist", Board of Trustees, Change Programme, Charity Commission, Financial issues, Governance

The demise of the British Psychological Society, preparing for the autopsy

AdminBPSWatch

Pat Harvey posts….

A bloated, incompetent, arrogant discredited learned and professional body is determinedly destroying itself. This post will assert that the BPS has passed a point of no return. It suffers from severe and seemingly intractable organisational dysfunction. There have been many signs of the body’s “organ failure” but much has also been hidden in the recent decade. What follows are some hints of what we know and what we have yet to find out. If and when there is an autopsy, hindsight will no doubt allow a fuller picture than members were ever able to piece together, and key players who have been silent may spill some beans.

Two and a half years ago I was one of the three alarmed colleagues, supported by a recently formed network of similarly frustrated long term members, who formed BPSWatch.com. We have posted nearly 70 blog articles examining instances of BPS dysfunction. We were immediately threatened with legal action when we reported something all subscribing members were entitled to know – that the CEO was suspended. The Head of Legal and Governance who made that threat to us formally in writing is no longer in post and has removed all reference to their employment by the BPS from LinkedIn. There is a back story there that cannot yet be told, but hopefully will emerge from the “wheels of justice that grind exceeding slow”.

There is another, as yet untold, back story as to why the CEO was subsequently able to return after a year’s gardening leave to his very highly paid post with apparent impunity. This was somewhat surprising since his Executive Assistant, appointed via expensive recruitment outsourcing, happened to be a fraudster with numerous previous convictions. They hadn’t done the checks. She proceeded to sneak through under his nose over a thousand fraudulent uses of a credit card for which he was responsible. Misconduct or gross misconduct on his part? Apparently not. She, however, was jailed. Thanks are due to the Leicester Mercury for reporting all this, since we were never given the basic facts by the BPS, let alone any lurid details of her £70k+ spoils of underwear, Jimmy Choos, hairdos, cruises and a new kitchen. The newspaper noted: “The prosecutor said it led to others being criticised for not correctly following procedures that may have prevented the fraud.”. Astonishing. And has there been any recompense sought from the clearly incompetent recruitment agency? We should be told.

It was also the Leicester Mercury who had previously reported that the BPS Offices were subject to an apparent arson attack being investigated by the police. Members were not told of that, neither by the tight-lipped BPS website nor by the treacly, sycophantic Fanzine that is The Psychologist. BPS News in the Round has been covered beyond local press by sporadic articles in The Times, The Telegraph and Third Sector, all behind paywalls, but it has required more regular updates from social media on my @psychsocwatchuk to give members some continuity of ideas about what is going on. I had to circumnavigate the suspensions of our first attempts at Twitter accounts owing to complaints that we were “impersonating” the BPS (truly LOL). So we have an active feed that puts out almost daily content to a following which is evidently much larger than the 1000+ prepared to be visible. Despite frequent appeals, The Psychologist has refused to remove its petty, petulant pointless block, which only serves better to make our case against its raison d’être. Frustrating. Silly. Childish.

This is just some of the very recent evidence of individual frailty and incompetence. But there are so many other back stories that members do not know about. These we will endeavour to pursue as the BPS heads towards the self-destruct coded into what can be read from the recent highly redacted minutes of the Board of Trustees. The stories are interesting because they demonstrate core psychological concerns about personality, motivation and group processes/dynamics.  Obviously in play are power, ambition, defensiveness, hubris. Maybe a reductionist would be citing the three pillars of Money, Sex and Status.  Here are some more of the back stories we have mused upon.

The tempting BPS credit card

  • Credit Card Story (1) – the really lurid tale of the first CEO. “Shush, we don’t talk about this”. Was there a non-disclosure agreement?
  • BPS Credit Card Story (2) – unbeknown to the Board of Trustees, someone senior leaves under another cloud, not long before…
  • BPS Credit Card Story (3) – the extraordinary spree of the fraudster whose card-work evaded not only the current CEO but also the Finance Director (FD). What fancy footwork was involved in this latter jointly suspended senior officer moving swiftly on and out of his suspension by the BPS, directly into a finance post in – wait for it – the National Lottery Community Fund? The same person who reassured the Board of Trustees that greater safeguards were in place after previous concerns.

“A kid in a candy shop” was the term used by the fraudster to describe to the court the temptations of laissez-faire easy access to credit card sprees. CEO and FD appear to have suffered no financial or status detriment.

Democracy Discomfited – undermining member-elected presidents

There are the untold stories of a number of presidents (and a DCP chair) that we know about over the last decade. These volunteer leaders, who were undermined, even threatened with legal action, had been forced to resign early and latterly one was expelled. The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO), recruited as consultants, recoiled and ran away from a toxic climate where there was serious conflict between senior managers and post-holding volunteer psychologists. Status and power battling it out?

Lashing out on lawyers

Members will be aghast if they ever finally find out how much has been spent on Betsan Criddle, Elena Misra, Newby Castleman etc, and how much is still being, and will be, spent on litigation relating to silencing and defaming a publicly expelled would-be reforming elected President. Costly defensiveness turbo-charged?

The Change Programme (heavy irony)

Or how to squander £6 million. The back story is how this was procured and how real benefits for members have NOT resulted. Suspicious?

Bloating

The back story here is how reckless overstaffing/salary escalation was achieved and how presidents were thwarted in questioning this. Resigning Vice-President David Murphy (he cites “rising staff costs resulting from increases both in staff numbers and senior staff salaries”; “staff costs risen by 73%”; “operating deficit”; “approved budget will be higher than the total income from basic membership and member network subscriptions combined”) has sounded the alarm on this to no apparent avail. A story lies behind the changing profile of more staff, less members, more political activism, less core concern about psychology. Narcissistic grandiosity?

Outsource, Outsource, Outsource

Get in consultants willy nilly. In some instances, get heavily criticised by them (NCVO, Korn Ferry). Get more defensive. Make heavy use of the Comms approach. Back stories will reveal how spin, denial and obfuscation trump reflection and learning. Transparent lack of transparency. PR Rules – OK?

Problem, what problem? Complaint, what complaint?

We have heard dozens of similar back stories from individual members who have persisted with concerns and have been ignored or worse – ominously threatened with having Member Conduct Rules used against them if they persist with “bullying and harassment”. DARVO is the acronym which describes what happens when you complain and the tables are turned against you. Deny. Attack. Reverse Victim and Offender. In 2020, the Charity Commission wrote to me “We are currently engaging with the society over a number of issues and have found deficiencies in some areas of operation. Whilst I would expect the charity to have a robust and well managed complaints process, this may have not been the case in the past.”. When I challenged the BPS with this, they complained to the Charity Commission about their response to me. They DARVOed the Charity Commission.

Clearly there is also a back story of why and how the BPS subsequently revised the complaints procedure the way they did, so that now they will not investigate complaints about the content of a Society publication, a Society policy position, a Society decision to take, or not take, a particular course of action. A great society if it were not for the nuisance of members?

Not “sticking to the knitting” and becoming a society focussed on activism

There will be many back stories about policy formation when we come to understand in hindsight how loss of core purpose and defining philosophy took the BPS into trans activism, false memory campaigning and demands about the amount of Universal Credit the government should be giving to poor people.

Meanwhile, as indicated above, you won’t have been able to make a formal complaint about the political stances the Society took. Fundamental core purpose and philosophy of the BPS subverted? 

Evidence leaking out – the Board of Trustees’ recent minutes

Members who understand the serious deficits in governance of the BPS may be holding out hope that the recent changes which have brought an independent chair of the Board of Trustees and 3 new independent trustee appointments will rein in the worst of organisational dysfunction and resultant cronyism and capture. Will those independent leaders be able to resist the machinations of the cabal still in residence, perceive and undo enough of the mess referred to above. Or is it too late?

If you are a BPS member you can read the minutes of the Board of Trustees but you will discover that they are remarkably like documents wrested from Whitehall, redacted on the grounds of national security. Members of our network who are/have been trustees of other charity organisations say that the level of redaction is extraordinary and clearly unjustifiable because there are usually clear and very limited grounds for deciding what needs to be redacted. 

Taking the last two sets of minutes available since the independent chair was appointed, it is ascertainable (despite multiple unexplained redactions) that there are now being considered matters which should, in the current situation, raise very serious anxieties about the viability of the BPS. Below are listed some of the non-redacted matters from those minutes:

  • Well-being of volunteers.
  • Risk appetite: Operational, Legal, Property, Finance, Reputation.
  • Consultant use; some implication of less engagement and more judicious use than previously.
  • Contentious policy issues. How the society should engage with contentious issues on which “there will be strongly held divergent views among members and beyond”. BPS doesn’t always have to take the lead in order to reduce its risk, i.e. take cover with others?
  • Reputational Risk referred to and clearly related to the above
  • Poor customer care: concerns from members 
  • Sustainability of the Organisation: Responsibilities to staff (implies overstaffing at the level it is now?)
  • Membership loss: membership down significantly
  • Finance: “October management accounts show an income shortfall of £1.26m (13%) against budget. Over 90% of this is due to member subscriptions. Costs are being tightly controlled. Operating deficit at year end is expected to be about £1.9m. Overall deficit is currently £3.9m. Investments are currently £10.6m after withdrawal of £1.7m to repay the CBILS loan and realised and unrealised valuation losses of £1.1m.”. Not healthy at all. David Murphy’s resignation letter had sounded the warning.
  • Possible HQ Property Sales: maybe London office because they refer to Peldon Rose, a specialist London firm. Minutes refer to “the need for a ‘visible and physical presence’ for the organisation, and that the future of the properties should be seen as part of a wider coherent strategy for the organisation. Any decisions about use of assets should be aligned to the charitable objects, and the Charity Commission guidance on property disposals. The Chair observed that a number of issues had been raised which were linked to the broad question of sustainability of the organisation; and it was good practice to review all assets and whether they are being utilised in the most effective way for the benefit of members and the organisation’s said charitable objectives.”.

The Future, Any Future?

In our forthcoming book British Psychology in Crisis: A Case Study in Organisational Dysfunction Editor: David Pilgrim (2023) https://firingthemind.com/product/9781800131842/ I express a pessimistic view about the survival of the BPS, believing it fails to meet the needs of its existing and potential future membership and membership is confirmed as significantly falling in number. As existing members register discontent by voting with their feet and removing their subscriptions, the organisation is showing no signs of becoming more transparent and receptive to the expressed concerns of its remaining subscribers. It has pursued a number of high profile and contentious policy positions outwith the balance and authority expected of a learned and professional body. It has attracted bad publicity accordingly. Its shop-front magazine The Psychologist has failed to properly inform readers about BPS matters, remains highly conflict averse and clearly captured on one side of current contentious debates, suppressing discussion of alternative views. It is, in a word, “boring”. 

At the end of the day, however. It will be The Money that “does for the BPS”.

It will not be able to afford itself.

"The Psychologist", Board of Trustees, Charity Commission, Expulsion of President-Elect, Governance

MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS ABOUT THE BPS LEGITIMATION CRISIS

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David Pilgrim posts….

On this blog we have often noted an irony or paradox. The legitimation crisis now facing the BPS is taking place in a psychological society. At first glance we might expect psychologists, more than other professional groups, to have some insight into their conduct. However, just as doctors all get sick and die, the old adage of ‘physician heal thyself’ was always an accusation and never a realistic expectation. 

Our book length analysis of the crisis (Pilgrim, 2023) points out that it is constituted by a few dimensions. Prior to 2000 the same names were recurring at the top of the BPS (oligarchical trend). After 2000 new general managers arrived with no necessary understanding of psychology or of academic norms. Recently a culture of self-protective deceit has emerged to protect this amalgamated cabal. This has culminated in the past ten years in an arrogant leadership culture, seemingly indifferent to its own amoral norms. A broken complaints process and wilful blindness have been used to avoid organisational transparency. Multi-signed letters of complaint from senior practitioners to the CEO and Presidents have been contemptuously ignored. 

In some ways the pay-offs of power (and in the case of managers, their salaries as well) might explain in simple terms why the BPS is in the mess it is. This formulation requires little more than a Skinnerian account or its extension into social exchange theory (Homans, 1958). However, there is a layer of functioning which this would miss out. Whilst we might say of the cabal now running the Society ‘Well they would do and say that wouldn’t they?’ many other questions remain. 

How have they got away with it for so long? Why have heads not rolled? Why is the CEO still in post when he should have gone the very day the fraud was revealed about expenses paid to his PA which he signed off? Who in HR has been held to account for hiring a fraudster with past form? Why did The Psychologist fail completely to report the crisis in the Society to the membership and general public? Why were they not informed of the damning findings of Korn Ferry and the National Council of Voluntary Organisations (Korn Ferry, 2021; Farrow and Potkins, 2020)? In terms of governance, who actually appoints members of the Board of Trustees, or recently, and for the very first time, three new trustees, and an independent lay chair, from outside the BPS? What criteria are used and why is the process not transparent? Why them and why now? In terms of BPS policy making who made the decisions to defend and perpetuate heavily criticised BPS policies that put children at risk and betray the victims of child sexual abuse (Conway and Pilgrim, 2022)?

Why does the BPS claim not to investigate complaints against individual members but it made a convenient exception, when expelling a brave and honourable reforming President-Elect, Nigel MacLennan, on trumped up charges? How come that the chair, at that time, of the Board of Trustees (BoT) rationalised this kangaroo court purge of a critic very publicly on YouTube, and before he had even had his appeal? Who appointed those hearing the appeal, using what criteria of independence? There have been no repercussions for either her or her supportive cowardly colleagues on the Board (McGuinness, 2021), whilst their victim has suffered severe effects as so many whistle-blowers continue to do.

All of these questions go on and on, unanswered or unanswerable, for one simple reason: for the past fifty years at least, there has been no transparency of decision-making at the top of the BPS. The BoT has been appointed from within and those appointments have been made on a grace and favour basis by the oligarchs already running the Society. Some of those self-serving oligarchs, such as Ray Miller, have operated in plain sight and admitted that they were indeed ‘BPS junkies’ (his own phrase) (Miller and Cornford, 2006). 

In an episodic ritual of fawning self-congratulation they claim that they have been servants of others, rather than serving their own career interests. For example, we find this from one oligarch about another. Ann Colley, was unique as both a CEO for a while and also BPS President. This appeared in The Psychologist (always on hand for a PR exercise for the oligarchs) about Colley in 2017, when she was retiring from the role of CEO. It was offered by another oligarch, ex-President Carole Allan, herself by then the Honorary General Secretary of the Society:

Ann served twice as Honorary General Secretary. The first time was for three years from 1989, when membership of the Society stood at 13,000. The second time was from 2003 to 2008. In between she was elected to serve as President, which office she held in 1993/94. https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/always-cheerful-and-positive

In light of the clear evidence of dysfunction and corruption in the BPS the word ‘served’ is replete with many possible meanings. Have these ‘BPS junkies’ served the public interest or that of membership democracy? In what way were they ever accountable, to either the public or the membership? Why over decades of being in power at the top have they all failed totally to bring the governance of the Society in line with expectations of a well-run charity? Did this problem even cross their minds, until the Charity Commission challenged them about legal compliance and good governance? These important questions also seem to have rarely crossed the minds of those they claim to have ‘served’. Thus, while the self-interest of the ‘BPS junkies’ is easy to discern, what is psychologically intriguing is the largely silent and complicit role of the membership.

A timid and docile membership

We have explored the above problem of lack of accountability at different times on this blog and have garnered much praise privately for our efforts. We have repeatedly been sent new ‘bullets to fire’ from angry and disaffected members. This layer of support reveals another psychological aspect of the drama or black comedy of the BPS and its organisational dysfunction. But again more questions are prompted. Why are more members not angry about the disrepute into which their Society has fallen? And why are those who are so angry and vociferous privately not publicly firing their own bullets?

If we take the self-serving role of the cabal for granted (or for our purposes bracket it for now) and turn to the active collusion and passive complicity of the membership, there is certainly a moral dimension to all of this. Cowardice, but more importantly indifference, are part of the picture, as is the barely veiled tendency of some to simply give up in despair and leave the Society, often quietly no longer renewing their membership subscriptions. 

In some cases, those departures have been explicitly organised on a collective basis. Examples of this molar fragmentation occurred in 1963 with the formation of the Association of Educational Psychologists (which is also a trade union), with the formation of the Association for Business Psychologists in 2000 and in 2017 with the formation of the Association of Clinical Psychologists. The explanation was the same: the BPS was out of touch with its members and its processes were arcane and served the interests of a few at the expense of the many. 

As for those remaining, their non-critical passivity, which is for now giving the cabal a political free pass, might in part be explained by factors other than selfish motives. For example, if The Psychologist does not report key events or permit discussion of difficult policy matters, which include policy capture by some members at the expense of others, then ignorance is abroad in those paying their fees. The cabal and the editor of ‘the magazine of the British Psychological Society’ have very knowingly kept the membership in the dark. 

An example of this was when The Psychologist dutifully posted the Pollyanna piece from the CEO and the President installed selectively to replace MacLennan. This did not mention the fraud, the arson, the shameful YouTube piece fronted by McGuinness or the damning reports from Korn Ferry and NCVO (Carpenter and Bajwa, 2022). ‘Forget the past’, they were saying but why did members not question this glib bullshit? Or if they did, why did they not do so publicly? However, many have told us that they fail to get their views/letters published in The Psychologist.  The BPS publication was castigated by David Murphy, when he resigned as Vice-President, complaining that his reasons for going were not reported in full. In response to this block, he took to Twitter to explain and publish there his resignation letter in full (https://twitter.com/ClinPsychDavid/status/1491509477794799620?s=20). Murphy has subsequently resorted to Twitter to make other damning criticisms:

            The expenses scandal at the BPS is shocking and sad on so many levels. Now the trial has            concluded, the press have published the details, but still no apology from BPS to members.    This is the case I mentioned in my letter of resignation as Vice President.             (https://twitter.com/ClinPsychDavid/status/1491508896095219712?s=20)

and

            The BPS AGM is Weds 27th July. The annual report appeared on the website at the end of            last week with no mention on the homepage, no email to members, nothing on Twitter.   Even if you managed to find it, the deadline to submit a question for the AGM was the     previous week! (2/3)             (https://twitter.com/ClinPsychDavid/status/1551193990741037056?s=20)

Murphy ends this Twitter exchange with the comment “I am seriously thinking this might be my last year of membership.”.

Apart from ignorance in the membership, to some extent perpetuated by the lack of transparency and occasional outright censorship, there is also the role sometimes, of fear. Individuals have contacted us to report how their persistent attempts to engage with the society have been shut down along with implications that they were “bullying staff”. Some of those running courses reliant on BPS validation have offered us support privately, but they have demurred from speaking out about their points of sympathy for our critique. Many were appalled by the way in which MacLennan was expelled but their views were not publicly available. This was also the case in relation to our specific critiques of policy capture in relation to the gender document and the policy on law and memory. Both have put the public at risk and any honest scrutiny of these documents confirms that point (Harvey, 2023). 

Many members know that, when taken in the round, this is a scandalous scenario but they either leave or they stay, but typically their voices are not heard. We do not know how many people are resigning from the BPS and sending a note of their dissatisfaction, and as things stand, the BPS will never tell us. Our wider zeitgeist reflects this. From the election of Donald Trump or Boris Johnson, to the arrest of anti-monarchy supporters and self-censorship in the academy, we are living in a time in which healthy protest and deliberative democracy are being actively suppressed time after time. It is as if most ordinary people are living through a period of learned helplessness and those in power are the grateful beneficiaries. Self-interested elites, including those claiming to protect democratic integrity, are also now part of the problem, cuing the next section

The Charity Commission

BPS Watch and many other members (including several elected Presidents) have, in the past few years, sent screeds of material to the Commission, with evidence that the BPS is being poorly governed and that it lacks transparency. Those in the Commission know that the Society has had no proper public oversight since 1965. They know that censorship is common in the Society; they were told this before the Korn Ferry report also relayed evidence of it. They know that the fraud was not the first symptom of poor financial control. They know that Presidents trying to effect needed governance reforms have been punished. 

For a while the Commission was ‘engaged’ with the managers of the Society but that has now petered out. What did it achieve? The answer is that a few new independent trustees have now been appointed, still leaving the rest of on the Board as faux trustees. The term ‘faux’ is appropriate here because they are called trustees but they are appointed in a non-transparent way and they have conflicts of interests by being Society insiders not independent of its operations and goals . As I noted above, how were even the newcomers appointed (who are now from the outside), using which criteria? And, for that matter, how have all and any of the faux trustees been appointed onto the Board since 1965? Who knows the answer to these questions? It is certainly not the average member of the Society or the general public. 

There is widespread evidence that regulators including the Charity Commission, but also those which relate to the media and the public utilities are themselves, like the organisations such as the BPS that they are meant to regulate, “captured”. It is a depressing scenario. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

Conclusion

The future of the BPS remains precarious. Its legitimation crisis is unresolved. Some needed reforms to governance have been installed following Charity Commission pressure, resisted by the cabal for a good while, but they do not go far enough. The old guard remain largely in charge on both the SMT and BoT. We will now be interested to see whether the small new broom of a few independent trustees are powerful enough to resist becoming apologists for a body that is neither a learning or learned organisation. The next few months will tell us. 

References

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

Conway, A. and Pilgrim, D. (2022): The Policy Alignment of the British False Memory Society and the British Psychological Society Journal of Trauma & Dissociation 23, 2,165-176.

Farrow, A. and Potkins, J. (2020) British Psychological Society: Strategy Consultancy Set Up Phase Report November 2020 London: NCVO 

Harvey, P. (2023) Policy Capture (1) at the BPS: the Gender Guidelines.  In Pilgrim, D. (ed) British Psychology in Crisis: A Case Study in Organisational Dysfunction Oxford: Phoenix Books.

Homans, G. C. (1958). Social behavior as exchange. American Journal of Sociology, 63, 597–606.

Korn Ferry (2021) British Psychological Society: Member Network Review Leicester: British Psychological Society

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