Sarah Wollaston, Nigel Evans,and "blog bullies"

Nigel Evans MP was accused of rape and sexual assault. There was a trial, and he was acquitted of all charges. End of story, you'd think? He walks free, with his name cleared? Not so fast.When the allegations first emerged he resigned the Tory whip. At the time of writing it has not been restored to him. Why not?

One of the key witnesses for the prosecution was one Sarah Wollaston, MP for Totnes, a person I do not know, unlike Nigel Evans, whom I count as a friend. Sarah decided not only to support the allegations made against Nigel, without evidence (and yes I know evidence is difficult in cases of rape and sexual assault) but to be a witness for the prosecution and to call him a drunk and a debaucher of young men. I think this is a disgrace, to her personally, to the office of MP, and to the polity of England. Fortunately the judge and jury rejected this poison. Now Sarah has been given a big piece in The Times (£), with a nice blonde smiley photo of her above it, in which she complains about "male blogger bullies" who were HOWWID to her about her hate-filled outpourings. Well, diddums, Sairs. In fact the remarks made were rather mild, though of course "blogger bullies" do exist. I should know. Well, I'm not male, and I used to be an MP, but some years ago when the online climate was rather different from now, and I'm having my say. You want some, Sarah, you can have some. 

A prominent Tory backbencher has hit out at “aggressive male bloggers” who, she claims, target female MPs.

Sarah Wollaston said that certain parts of the political blogosphere were “quite aggressive in their approach towards women”, particularly when discussing sexual violence or gender. “If you stick your head above the parapet you can expect some quarters of the aggressive blogging community to go for you,” she said. Yes, Sarah. It's called having your say, and other people having theirs too. Freedom of speech, dontcha know.

Dr Wollaston, the Totnes MP, faced a barrage of criticism last week after Nigel Evans, the deputy speaker, was cleared of a string of sex charges. One of the alleged victims was in a Westminster bar with the former GP Like a drink do you Sarah? If not, what were you doing in the bar? when an “off-the-cuff” remark about an alleged assault triggered a sequence of events that led to the court case. Dr Wollaston was contacted by a second man — a friend of the first — who alleged that he had been raped. Ah I see, you were drinking with the alleged victims and winding them up to make police complaints.

The MP listened to their complaints and took them to John Bercow, the Speaker, who said that he could not help. She then passed on police contact details to the alleged victims, who contacted the officers, prompting the arrest last year of Mr Evans...

In an interview with The Times, Dr Wollaston was keen to stress that she was in no way challenging the verdict in the case, adding that she empathised with Mr Evans and his ordeal. Oh yeah?

She confessed, however, that the fallout from the case had been “very difficult”, particularly in the online sphere. Did you CWY, Sarah? Did you THCWEAM and THCWEAM till you were THICK? Nigel's life and career have been ruined. Nothing will ever be the same again for him, personally or politically. And he is innocent. How do you sleep, Sarah?

She singled out The Daily Telegraph writer Dan Hodges, the libertarian blog Guido Fawkes, and the Tory publisher and writer Iain Dale, saying that she had been reading their “really quite aggressive attacks” about her handling of the allegations...

Wollaston said that it was striking that much of the criticism of her had come from male bloggers. “I haven’t had any women writing critical articles and I do think that’s very interesting,” she said. You have now, Ms Wollaston. “I think there are some very aggressive male bloggers out there and they target women MPs.”...

Well, I hope you're happy now, Sarah Wollaston. I hope your constituents are happy with your spending your time and your MP's salary trashing a colleague's life and career. Wetting your knickers now because not everyone likes your pretty blonde hair and sweetie campaigns against booze and fags? It could get worse. And if you think that's a threat, it is. Oh, not from me, you understand. From the nasty horrid "male bloggers" who have been so BEASTLY to the lovely Sarah. But still, Ms Wollaston, next time you are in Strasbourg, do come and say hello. Perhaps we can have a refreshing glass of mineral water together.

Sue me.

'March 1939, The British Guarantee to Poland', Simon Newman.

Neville Chamberlain

This book is the author's PhD thesis and was published in 1976. It has been out of print for many years. I met the author at a party in December, and, just for fun, bought the book on my phone while we were talking. Naturally it came from a second-hand dealer, so he didn't make anything on the deal.  I didn't get round to looking at it for a while, but when I did I was fascinated. It is a kind of apologia for Neville Chamberlain, and you don't see much of THAT these days. He says Britain could have avoided war with Germany, either by containment or by capitulation. He doesn't use the latter word, but calls it "granting her requirements wholesale". (When did countries stop being called "she", I wonder? Not in 1976, clearly. Faintly distasteful, I find it.) He refers to "Britain's continued interest in maintaining the independence of the central and south-eastern European states, an interest which most historians do not generally concede". No, it appears they do not. And what actually happened to those central and south-east European states, hein? Other historians, including a pair called Gilbert and Gott, who I do not think were artists in suits pratting around with their own turds, and from whom Newman quotes extensively, call it thus: "Chamberlain's policy was to allow Germany a free hand in eastern Europe". That went well, then.

not the historians Gilbert and Gott

Newman says it is not true that most of the Foreign Office were against Chamberlain's appeasement policy. Halifax, as Foreign Secretary, although he was loyal, was no pacifist. He had written to his father in 1918, about Germany, "It goes much against the grain not to burn some of their towns." That's my boy, though I'd like to think I wouldn't have said that in 1918. Halifax was a High Anglican, who saw the Nazis as a threat to Christian civilisation (he wasn't far wrong there), whose biographer wrote that he saw any war which might come as a "crusade". The Government became unpopular on foreign policy in the late 1930s. However, the appearance of this was deceptive, as it usually is. You can see where I'm going with this, can't you? Labour under Tony Blair won the 2005 election easily, despite the cry-baby "Not In My Name" nonsense. My own doorstep verdict at the time was about a quarter for the action in Iraq, about a quarter against, and the rest didn't care. No Guardianista would believe me, because none of them talked to anyone except other Guardianistas at their dinner parties. In December 1938 there was a by-election in Kinross andWest Perthshire, fought by the Duchess of Atholl specifically on the issue of her opposition to Chamberlain's foreign policy. She lost, rather comprehensively.

misguided or malevolent? You decide

The whole book seems to be an attempt to rebut an earlier book called 'The Appeasers' by the said Gilbert and Gott. Did you know that in 1939 the Anglo-German Payments Agreement was still funding German rearmament? Nor me. It's all very readable, to a non-historian like me who is nonetheless interested in history and world events. Chamberlain told the Commons in March 1939, after the annexation of Czechoslovakia, that appeasement had failed and that the "spirit of Munich" had been violated. Quaintness, looked at from the 21st century: when an article appeared in the Nazi paper 'Volkischer Beobachter' denying that Germany had issued an ultimatum to Romania, Halifax as Foreign Secretary "suppressed the distribution of the report inside and outside the Foreign Office". Imagine trying that one now.

The book is chiefly about the process which led to the British guarantee to Poland, which was spun very successfully to the public at the time as a noble thing. Foreign Office papers of the time say "the value of Poland lay not in the capacity of her army to launch an an offensive against Germany, which was virtually non-existent, but in her capacity to absorb German divisions." Cynical, but true. And wise. Did Chamberlain understand this stuff?

Britain feared a German-Polish deal: they had reason to, as Poland had gone into alliance with Germany in the Sudeten crisis in "demanding the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia".

Gdansk, picture tripadvisor

Danzig (present-day Gdansk, in Poland, a fine city) was at the time a free city under the Treaty of Versailles, under the protection of the League of Nations. The League had a commissioner resident in Danzig, who could do nothing to halt or oppose Nazification and enactment of anti-Jewish laws there. There was even a British representative in Danzig, by the name of Gerald Shepherd, who wrote "Halifax now wanted Polish adherence to an anti-German coalition at all costs." And then he wrote "By encouraging the Poles to reject German terms for a settlement of Danzig, the British increased the likelihood that Hitler would resort to force in order to break the deadlock." So it was decided to plant a parliamentary question and put unequivocal support for Poland in the answer. Tactics don't change.

Newman's line is that you can't say appeasement never worked, because it was never really tried. And that the British guarantee to Poland was not deterrence, but a deliberate challenge. Interesting.

Perhaps people who are cleverer at history than I am might like to give their views in the comments. They'd be really welcome. Jew-hating will not, however, get in, and there's plenty of it around, especially on the Guardianista left, as any fule kno. The cry-baby bully-boys (TM Julie Burchill) who have been active in recent months will also be welcome to leave their comments. But their tactics are more extra-blog and personal, hein?

David Geary RIP

Reading-based readers of this blog may well remember Dave, who was a friend of mine for many years, and who was a fellow ward councillor for several of those years.  Dave was Mayor of Reading twice - the first time at the instigation of myself and significant other, who sat him down in the pub and told him he was the best person for the job.  And a great Mayor he was.  There were those in the Reading Labour Group at the time who wanted as Mayor the useless Ceinwen Williams, the councillor who very nearly got the Reading Festinal closed down by her incompetence in dealing with the police as lead councillor for Licensing.  Fortunately it soon emerged thatr the hapless Williams (now mercifully forgotten by most) and her handler Josephine Lovelock did not have the support they needed, and Reading got the Mayor it deserved.  Dave was a kind man, a funny man, and a Christian Socialist with an unshakable sense of honour.  There should be more like him in politics.  When there was a plan (before ,my time as a councillor) to build a Tesco on green land, and councillors in the controlling Labour Group were informed that if they voted against it they could be personally surcharged, Dave's was the only hand which went up to vote No.  Dave was one of the Cross Town Route Five (which included me) who voted against the dirty deal brokered by Martin Salter (later MP for Reading West) and Tony Page (later defeated candidate for Reading East) to permit the construction of a dual carriageway on the Thames and Kennet riverside.  This infamous and wrongheaded plan was ultimately turned down in 1993 by the then Secretary of State, John Gummer.  Support for it remains Reading Labour Group policy.

Dave had been ill for some time, and died last week at the age of 72.  I am sorry he is gone.  He was a man who made many friends and who kept those friends.  He was a man of decency and honour, and plentiful wisdom for those who knew how to listen.  He was bullied in the Labour Group by Josephine Lovelock, and I will never forget thatr he was one of the very few who spoke up for me when I suffered similar treatment, with accompanying briefings to the Guardian Diary.  I lnew some of Dave's family too, and I will also never forget the funeral of his mother Frances.  She had been a Spiritualist, and I can tell you that Spiritualists have the happiest funerals.  They know they are going to see each other soon, on the other side.  But the family was stalked at the time of Frances' death by Martin Salter, then an MP but not Frances' MP, who told other family members that Frances had wanted him to speak at her funeral.  Dave knew that was rubbish, and told me so, but other family members did not know, and Dave stayed quiet for the sake of family peace.  I hope Salter is proud of himself for that.

Thank you Dave for being a friend and for giving me the privilege of working with you, and learning from you, as a ward councillor.  I hope you get the civic farewell you should get, and that the members of the Labour Group who treated you and others sso aboinably findd a path to penitence at last.

bullying

photo from WeAreTeens Facebook page

is a very hard thing to endure.  Believe me I know, I have been there.  The picture is posed, but is realistic.  Adults behave exactly like this too.  One of the more difficult things is that each incident is trivial in itself.  No-one sitting next to you, no-one answering when you say hello, the use of the word "we" to make clear that you are excluded from a group, none of these things is major.  What constitutes bullying is that there is a pattern of behaviour, and what defines it is that the negative behaviour towards a person by another person or group is motivated not by anything they have done but by who they are.  Australian trade unions are trying to develop a code for workplace bullying which defines what can be called bullying.  It includes, interestingly for me, "glaring".  Boy do I know what that's like.  But enough about Reading Labour Party.

When someone being bullied tries to complain to a person in authority, that person, who may be well intentioned, usually approaches the alleged bullies about it, to receive a straight denial that such behaviour ever happened, often with aspersions on the mental health of the complainer.  And the person in authority may wonder if they are right about that.  So nothing happens.  There may be picking apart of a series of trivial incidents, with the conclusion that "there's fault on both sides".  No there isn't.  If someone is being bullied it is NOT THEIR FAULT.  Never mind if they are ugly, stupid, clumsy, incompetent, lacking in social skills, or all those things.  No-one deserves to be bullied.  No-one.

I believe tht adults are bullied every bit as often as children and teenagers are.  It's just that bullying tends to happen within closed organisations - like schools - from which there is no escape.  It happens in workplaces, but the person being bullied can leave, and very often does.  Never mind, there will soon be a new victim.  And it happens, especially, in voluntary organisations.  Because you have chosen to join the organisation, you don't want to leave it.  You don't see an alternative.  There isn't usually an alternative political party with the same values, or charity supporting the same cause you believe in, or church which gives space to your strand of belief, round the corner waiting for you.  And so you stay.

If you see someone being bullied, speak out.  Shame the bullies, in public.  It'll be easier for you to do it than it would be for the victim.

Lift up the stone, and watch them run.