Matthew Syed in The Times on Roisin Murphy and Cancel Culture

[Igneococcus]

With a focus on institutions failing to protect free speech:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/8f151dc2-54af-11ee-bc18-cbdd58145dc6?shareToken=0f1af2e996bc2b094ad574c629fbd6b6

Really good, thanks for sharing. I’ve been following this for many years now and it’s nice to encounter a new perspective. I wasn’t familiar with the film taken off cinema schedules due to protesters who claimed it insulted their religion.

So, if Syed is right, and the problem is institutional, then I’d like to know why, and how can it be fixed? Is the answer ‘HR and EDI Departments’? What analytical tools (maybe from organisational theory) do we have for this?

I don't know how to fix the institutions, I think it will come down to people with responsibility in the institutions growing a spine.
I find this paragraph really important:
"And this reveals the real significance of the Murphy story. It is not that cancellation has met its match; rather, it’s that most modern controversies represent a kind of illusion. Yes, Murphy trended.Yes, her comments were a big deal on Twitter. But most people are not on Twitter and even fewer post on it. What almost destroyed Murphy’s career wasn’t an online spasm but the craven overreaction of her record label, venues, the BBC. And what saved her? That’s right: thousands of people (far more than those calling for her boycott) sending her album up the charts.
In other words, there was always a latent majority who supported Murphy; people who defended her right to express an opinion; who felt uneasy that a private communication had become a smoking gun; and who also agreed with her views on puberty blockers. The problem is that most people subject to cancellation don’t have a mechanism, album or otherwise, though which majority support can be expressed. This is why they have nowhere to turn when institutions fail them."

“It only takes a thousand or so people — less than 0.002 per cent of the population — to send a hashtag flying on Twitter but how often do we see not only record labels but big corporations and even editors genuflecting to these trends? “

He’s saying the same thing that people have long been saying on here. Except that often it’s a handful, and sometimes only a couple, of complaints to a retailer’s twitter account which prompts retractions, apologies, and promises to do better.

There’s an important difference between the film and the album. Once withdrawn, the choice to go and watch the film had been removed from the public. The opportunity to queue up in droves to see it, whether out of interest or to make a point, was no longer available. With the album, it was still available to purchase so the public had the opportunity and mechanism to support her, and via the charts, to make that support visible.

He could have gone a step further with his argument and circled back to how egregious the national public broadcaster’s position is, on that basis. I suppose it’s implied / inferred in the reference to institutions at the end.

Edited to add: sorry hadn’t RTFT and see you’d covered that already.

We need grown ups back in charge. As in, people who will react in a timely, yet measured way to issues and are willing to put their biases aside, as best they can, to make a thoughtful judgement.

We must get activists, of any kind, out of our institutions. Unfortunately, they are the ones who are motivated to move into positions where they can wield influence.

So, if Syed is right, and the problem is institutional, then I’d like to know why, and how can it be fixed? Is the answer ‘HR and EDI Departments’? What analytical tools (maybe from organisational theory) do we have for this?

I think Syed is right, and that the problem is institutional. I think part of the answer may be simplifying policy, and having mission statements and aims which actually refer to real things that are actually part of people's jobs rather than undefined abstractions. I work in an organisation like this, which is becoming all pronouns and rainbow signatures, but in which increasingly you can't challenge things. The reason you can't challenge things is because the tools don't exist to do this. There is no staff association for interest groups other than the LGBTQIA+ one.

In "The Republic", Plato says that all organisations and associations within the state should be forbidden to make conflict impossible (if I recall correctly - it's been a very long time since I read it). The modern corporate mind seems to be very Platonic in this sense. It runs away from conflict rather than embracing conflict and working to resolve it. I think that's where the cowardice comes from.

I'm glad he doesn't name the band with the violent, misogynist lyrics. Don't want to Streisand those fools.

I do wish the people, especially people with standing, would show some backbone or just not bother. If they're just going to capitulate, I'd rather they said nothing at all. Although I do sympathise, it must be frightening especiallyif you've just stumbled into the controversy. The tras are insane. But for organisations like the BBC to be so craven is inexcusable. Especially when the likes of BirdsEye can just ignore them.

This is very good. It is exactly what I've been saying, but he's put it more eloquently.

Look at, say, Rachel Rooney and what happened to her. She's a children's writer who wrote a lovely little book called My Body Is Me. She was cancelled not because huge numbers of people refused to buy her book but because publishers refused to work with her after a vicious campaign by a small number of trans activists. I'm sure that if publishers hadn't behaved like that, she would still be writing and her books would be selling well. The same with Gillian Philip and Gareth Roberts, among others. You can tell from what happened to Roisin Murphy and Graham Linehan that the majority of ordinary people don't agree with the extremists. In both those case, Roisin and Graham were able, in effect, to bypass the music and publishing establishment to reach punters willing to buy their product.

I've never understood why any authority or organisation is scared of the trans ideologues - what power do they think these babies have?

There was a publisher, sorry I can't remember which one, who said they couldn't publish some book or other because 'the junior staff would stand for it'. FFS! Show them the door.

And venues which cancel shows because their staff are unhappy - get new staff! How hard is it to book/issue tickets, be an usher, serve drinks? Hell, I know loads of middle aged women who'll do all that on a voluntary basis.

In conclusion, I agree with you all: grow a fucking spine.

Bear with me, I'm going to have to go over a bit of background before I can get to my point.

"Institutional" stirred a memory, which I found in https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/19/coutts-nigel-farage-racism-sexism-banking-braverman/

The first couple of paragraphs:

Coutts bank is signed up to a corporate diversity scheme that pledges to tackle “racism, transphobia, classism, sexism, and xenophobia”.

The institution [Coutts] has come under fire after being accused of closing Nigel Farage's bank account over his views on Brexit, migration and the UK’s net zero policy.

It is a member of the B Corp Certification programme, which rates businesses worldwide based on their record in areas like equity, inclusion and the environment.

To me, this B Corp Certification programme sounds a lot like Stonewall's Workplace Equality Index, but on steroids.

Trying to find out more about this certification, the. term Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) ratings kept cropping up. Trying to find out about that, I came across

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/future-regulatory-regime-for-environmental-social-and-governance-esg-ratings-providers

which kicks off with "Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) ratings are assessments of ESG matters, which increasingly drive investment decisions in financial markets."

So - "drive investment decisions in financial markets." To me, that reads as 'if you don't score highly on DEI and ESG, your company will not be invested in'. Now, that could be big shareholders like hedge funds deciding not to buy your shares thus driving down the share price and reducing the value of the company, or maybe even banks you go to borrow funds from turning you down. And the bigger the company / institution, I'd presume the more likely they are to come under scrutiny for their DEI / ESG scores.

Or to put it another way, companies and institutions have a financial incentive to score highly on DEI / ESG. We're not necessarily just up against spineless managers and overweening HR departments, but solid hard cash and that company / institution surviving financially.

Thank you, @WhereYouLeftIt . An interesting read. Reading the consultation document, I found this:

Despite their increasing prominence, market participants have raised concerns about ESG ratings. Some challenges raised are in relation to ESG ratings providers’ methodologies and objectives, which can be opaque and lead to confusion about what a rating implies. There are other concerns about how an ESG ratings provider interacts with the rated entity. For example, there may be potential for conflicts of interest where an ESG ratings provider also provides advice to the rated entity on how to improve that rating; or scenarios where the dialogue between a rating provider and rated entity could be improved. These issues can affect market confidence.

which is totally Stonewall.

This is not an area I know enough about to comment. But as a receiver of HR and management services, I have noted that the standard reaction to disagreement and conflict is to deny it till it goes away.

I had a brief discussion last year with the Director of the department I labour in, in which I started to make the point that different people worked here for different reasons - meaning some were career ladder oriented, others interested in technical areas for their own sake, others still just needing to pay their mortgages, others seeing an opportunity to build strong social circles, and so on. I was making the point that this means some diverging interests were inevitable, and a potential source of strength. Technical people often don't want to climb ladders as this takes them away from the work they want to do. Their focus is on the work itself. "Ladder" people are more attuned to corporate goals, and in implementing the procedures of the organisation. Both types can learn a lot from each other.

She snapped back "We expect everyone who works here to subscribe to our values", and has avoided speaking to me since. Personally, I'm not worried. I'll be retiring in a couple of years, and I'm a "technical" rather than ladder person, and they need me. But I do find the "we are a community, and everyone is safe, and we value your expertise (but please keep it to yourself if you are going to go off message with it)" attitude slightly frustrating.

She then complains that nobody speaks in meetings.

Isn't this the whole trajectory of identity politics and equity politics.

It's all about who can claim to be in a named group, or convince society to accept that their named group is a real one that needs to be treated as an identity group. Of course that could be anything, theoretically, that some people have in common.

It's these groups that now have institutional mechanisms to affect or communicate to organizations, rather than individuals who are members of the organization generally. What's more - if achieving an equity target in any group is the goal, fairness or rights of individuals can be sacrificed. Individuals have no real standing.

EDI isn't the answer, it's part of the problem, and as long as special working groups in organizations have special status over other individual's inputs, it won't change.

Ah the wonderful Matthew Syed! He hasn't let me down - all of his books and his work on growth mindset for children are bloody marvellous. He's not wrong. Why are we all staying silent for this tiny minority that are offended by reality?