Workplace bully being promoted, WWYD?

[Basafish]

I started a new job a few years ago. It was weird from the outset and to cut a long story short the colleague supposed to train and supervise me was a controlling bully. It took me about a year to wake up and realise the problem wasn't me, during which time I became ill from stress. I talked about some issues to our line manager in my first appraisal, but she did nothing, and then got promoted to a different team. Tried again in next appraisal with the new manager, she also did nothing, until I reported a new specific incident to her. This was informally resolved ie no records, which only lasted until that manager also got promoted. I made another report via HR when manager 3 started and was assigned new duties. Now she's being promoted to be manager's deputy, so will likely have power over me again, which is making me incredibly anxious. I now feel I wasn't believed. Manager 3 has called it a difference in working styles, but she never asked for the full story or to see my evidence. There were no consequences for the bully. Is there anything I can do? Talk to manager again? Just suck it up? I've been looking for another job for 4 years.

What has the person actually been doing to be a bully?

This.

Sorry, I edited it before posting for length, so first incident, after one month in job, she was away one Friday and redirected any urgent emails to me. Didn't say what I should do, but then again it didn't seem likely there would be something urgent. (She persistently acted like things were more urgent than they were). I got one email from a potential supplier, clearly not urgent, and not something you would expect to be answered immediately, so I sent a nice holding response. The following week, in our one to one meeting I mentioned it and she went crazy that I hadn't told her first thing Monday. By itself it's no big deal, but this became a repeated pattern, of her giving vague instructions, then I would try to apply common sense and get it wrong. If I asked questions about tasks she would accuse me of not listening. She also told me I had to send a meeting request every time I had a question. She never let an opportunity slip for pointing out a mistake, even if completely inconsequential. She used to create pointless work, like cutting and pasting adresses from one spreadsheet to another for no reason.
The single incident I reported to manager 2 was that she was trawling through our email files, we had a shared inbox by then looking for emails that I might have misfiled - she created hundreds of folders and sub-folders. I could go on but you get the gist.

So you never raised it formally (as a grievance or complaint) but think the org should have done something?

What does the company bullying and harassment policy say?

They say they will not tolerate any form of bullying or harassment, but as is normal I think, they encourage you to speak to your line manager first, which is what I did. Line manager 2 sent me an email acknowledging I raised an issue. She arranged a meeting between the 3 of us where we went through our jobs and confirmed who did what. There was no written evidence of that meeting though. And as soon as she left I was back to square one, as we had no line manager for 3 months. Line manager 3 also sent me an email acknowledging I made a complaint and then separated us, by giving me a different job. It didn't seem necessary to go down the full greivance route at the time, but I didn't anticipate that anyone would actually promote this psycho.

I’m not sure this screams bullying to me. Definitely some incompatibility in communication styles. Manager could do better at making themselves understood but then I wonder if you could articulate better too? For example if you should have replied immediately to the suppliers request and told your manager when the enquiry came in but you didn’t think you should, did you ask for some clarity for the future as there is a big gap there between your judgement and their expectations. If this happens a lot I think you may need to take some responsibility and not blame your manager who you perceive as “psycho”.