Mick Hartley

Janice Turner in the Times, after the Children in Need debacle – and Justin Welby, and the Post Office scandal – on the wilful blindness that allows all kinds of nonsense to thrive in so many large organisations:

In an authoritarian, violently repressive regime such as Nazi Germany, or Russia and Iran today, would you be brave enough to speak out? This was the question Jemimah Steinfeld, granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, posed to Wednesday’s Index on Censorship awards. Few of us, thankfully, will ever need to put our physical courage to this test — but what about our moral courage?

Why are institutions full of people prepared to overlook malpractice, abuse or injustice conducted within their professional field of vision, while just a cussed few speak out? […]

The unspoken belief “I am a good person, ergo everything I do must be good” afflicts all organisations that proclaim their own virtue, from religions to progressive campaigns and charities. It is why management at the Tavistock Gids clinic ostracised and thwarted Sonia Appleby, its safeguarding leader, for raising staff’s concerns about prescription of puberty blockers: the righteousness of child transition was beyond all question. Ideology is always the enemy of truth.

Blessed are the whistleblowers, not the self-righteous who think they have God’s ear. The Private Eye editor, Ian Hislop, who has been the conduit for many, notes they are often difficult people: prickly, obsessive, annoying. Because speaking out means being unafraid to stand alone.

It's no great mystery. The people who thrive in large organisations tend to be the people who don't question anything, agree to all the boss's wonderful suggestions with enthusiasm, and make sure they toe the line on all the right issues. 

Ian Hislop? Well, yes, Private Eye has played its part no doubt, though goodness knows it's got enough things wrong – the MMR vaccine and autism comes to mind. But like all such "prickly" institutions if they go on for long enough, it's lost its prickle as Hislop becomes as establishment a figure as you could wish for. He's avoided the whole trans issue, as Graham Linehan reminded us, and Have I Got News For You, as I argued years ago, is off the charts with its smugness – Hislop leading the way.