No.158 - The Courage to Apologise
Dear James,
Apology is hard to do. Remember the feeling as a kid when your parents told you to apologise for some minor misdemeanour? Kicking the cat or pinching Jenny’s bottom when she was doing her ‘little goody two shoes’ bit? The hurt was palpable. It took time to recover. Some never do.
The problem of apology is that it damages the amour propre that most of us carry with us as we grow into adulthood. We don’t like to admit error. We hate being found out. Only firm and kind parenthood can help us over this hurdle and into balm of emotional release that often follows a genuine apology. Of course, I am talking about apology as an individual characteristic. When you are part of an organisation or a group then it is different ball game. As part of an organisation you have to balance your individual beliefs with the established beliefs of the organisation. A political party is one such organisation. It builds its identity on a set of beliefs, political, behavioural and emotional. Sometimes these beliefs clash with one’s personal beliefs. Sometimes, that results in the need to blow the whistle. Or even apologise?
In December last year Robert Jenrick, Minister for Housing, Communities and Local Government, had a meeting with Richard Desmond, ex-owner of the Daily Express. Against professional advice Jenrick ok’d Desmond’s house building scheme in East London a day before it would have incurred a social charge of £40m to help the people of that area with schools and other social schemes - or to use Mr Desmond’s phraseology, 'to give Marxists loads of doe for nothing’! It would seem that Jenrick, the ex-Grammar School boy made good, had been charmed by the power of money and the Tory party ethos of looking after its own. Pay your way into a party dinner. Sit with impressionable top dogs, charm and smarm with cheque book flapping and hey presto, you get a decision in your favour. Special access to decision makers by the wealthy is a speciality of your government James, but worth it, I guess, for the £12,000 donated to your party shortly after the deal?
But Jenrick was found out and has since rescinded his decision. He defended himself by saying that what he had done was “unlawful by reason of apparent bias”. Oh so that was alright then? So it just appeared to be grubby! His further defence was that the social surcharge made the project unviable. Oh boy, that opens up a can of worms. Viability is the Tory party code word for ‘unprofitable’ while ignoring the social advantage of the £40m for the poor.
There was, of course, another option for Mr Jenrick. He could have held up his hands and apologized. But Mr Jenrick has got neither the integrity nor courage to defy Boris’s flimsy house of lies and half truths, itself established upon the mantra, of 'never apologize, never admit error'. With so much common wisdom objections to the Boris’s Brexiteer shambles, refusal to apologize is seen as a badge of honour, a slap in the face of ‘political correctness’, a sign of dismissive strength and haughty disdain.
In some cultures, apology is still a major act of contrition carried out in full public view. When in the early 1990s the President of Japanese Airlines went on stage to apologize for his airline’s shortcomings in the build up to the crash of one of its 747s killing over 500 people, he had genuine tears in his eyes. One of the last true apologies by a British PM was in 2012 when David Cameron offered a “profound” apology to the families of the 96 Hillsborough victims for the catastrophic mistakes that led to their deaths. How things have changed!
Truth will one day out James. Societies based on lies eventually crumble. Trump’s vision of a renewed America will crash. Just like the Soviet Union, just like Fascist Germany. Just like Brexit. None of them will stand up long against the hard facts of the world or to individuals willing to put their own balanced view of humanity before the interests of an organisation which they know in their heart of hearts is wrong.
You James, as a father, probably tell your kids that apology is a sign of strength and honour. It is a pity that you cannot apply this to yourself and your party. But ‘a fish rots from the head down’ James and I’m afraid Mr Jenrick this week has dramatically accelerated the rate of infection.
Kind regards,
BH – Your Concerned Constituent