Parting Shots.

On The Way Out: Gaurav Sharma has clearly had enough of Parliament and is more than ready to return to his life as a medical professional. What he has been willing to do on the way out, however, is draw aside the curtain, if only for a moment, and let the electors of New Zealand see how their representatives are treated. For this, those same electors owe him a vote of thanks. 

GAURAV SHARMA has clearly had enough of parliamentary life. Equally clearly, he is not suited to it. Nevertheless, he has made an extremely useful contribution to the bullying debate.

His op-ed piece for the NZ Herald confirms what all political journalists should know: that Parliament is Ground Zero for institutionalised bullying. It would, however, be naïve to expect members of the Press Gallery to augment Sharma’s observations with their own. The Press Gallery is no less enmeshed in the system of punishments and rewards that pervades every corner of the parliamentary complex than the MPs themselves.

What emerges from the Gallery and the Labour Party itself over the next few days promises to be a master-class in the art of dismissing, diminishing and disparaging an individual who has had the temerity to breach the iron law of omerta which governs the practice of party politics.

Like Fight Club, the first rule of party politics is not to talk about party politics.

It is to be hoped that Sharma is a resilient person, because the amount of emotional violence heading his way will likely be personally devastating.

That hope may be a vain one, however, since Sharma appears to have entered Parliament without the necessary acculturation to the vicious political environment of the New Zealand Labour Party.

Purely from the perspective of an outsider, Sharma’s selection appears to have been a pro-forma affair. Very few Labour strategists would have anticipated success in the Hamilton seats – which, prior to 2020, had been in National’s column for four elections in a row. Sharma would likely have seen himself as nothing more than a booster of Labour’s Party Vote. A not unreasonable view, given his Number 63 position on Labour’s Party List. Just as it did for most Hamiltonians, Sharma’s victory in Hamilton West would have come as a mighty shock.

Nothing like as big a shock, however, as the political culture of the Labour Caucus. Those Labour politicians who spent years fighting their way into Parliament would have had an enormous advantage over a political naïf like Sharma. They would know what to expect. Whose way to keep out of. Whose prospects to block. And, whose hunting party to join when the Leader’s minions identified a member of caucus to be taken down a peg or two. All of them would have mastered the courtier’s art of sucking-up and punching-down. Putting it bluntly, a disturbingly high proportion of Sharma’s colleagues would be – as he has now charged – bullies.

Those who weren’t bullies would’ve been doormats. Selected as candidates for their placidity and biddability, they are the sort of people who can be relied upon to back their party right or wrong, and to support whoever occupies the top leadership roles with an equally undiscerning fervour. The traditional term for these types is “hack”. Sharma likely found these Labour lambs even more disturbing than Labour’s wolves.

Judging from his op-ed piece, Sharma may even have been labouring under the misapprehension that he was in Parliament to represent the electors of Hamilton West. He may even have thought that they were the people to whom he was ultimately answerable. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! That is merely his constitutional role.

His actual role is to shut up and do as the Whips command. Make a speech on a subject he knows nothing about. Sit on a Select Committee and vote exactly as the Labour Chair indicates – no matter how wrong or stupid. Most importantly, say nothing, write nothing, and do nothing that attracts unwanted attention.

The poor man would soon have discovered that this “sit still and shut up” rule applied with equal force in caucus. If he was ever incautious enough to stand up in front of his colleagues and express views contrary to those of the Front Bench, then he would very soon have appreciated why those tasked with the responsibility for keeping the Back Bench under control are called “Whips”.

Think about it for a moment. Labour has a caucus of 65 MPs. Most of them, like Sharma himself, highly qualified professionals. How, then, is it possible that all but two of these intelligent and (presumably) principled men and women (the exceptions being Louisa Wall and, now, Sharma) have never even once spoken out of turn or (God forbid!) expressed a viewpoint on any major – or even minor – issue that was not in 100 percent conformity with the official party line? What does it take to inspire and maintain that sort of collective discipline? The answer, tragically, is fear. Fear of being written-off as a troublemaker; and fear of the emotional violence inevitably inflicted upon those who, at least initially, refuse to be bullied, by those who long ago abandoned all resistance.

The good little bunnies of the Labour caucus will, of course, object that party politics cannot function without party discipline. They will remind their critics that politics has always been “the art of the possible”, and that nothing will ever get done if a government is mired in endless internal debates.

These objections will be backed-up energetically by the Press Gallery as basic common-sense. How could they not, when the members of the Press Gallery are just as much victims of the “Stockholm Syndrome” as the MPs they cover. Gallery journalists are expected by their editors to hunt as a pack – not on their own. They are also prone to being bullied by the darker variety of ministerial minion, who will threaten them with a denial of access to the key newsmakers if they step too far out of line.

How many of the current crop of Labour MPs and Gallery journalists are aware of the fact that the First Labour Government’s caucus was a hotbed of dissent and disputation, and not above over-ruling the demands of Cabinet Ministers? Strangely, given the dictates of “common sense”, that First Labour Government still managed to keep its promises to the electors – and transform a nation. Which is not to say that the 1930s party was lacking in bullies, merely that, back then, there was no shortage of Labour MPs willing to stand up to them.

Sharma, sadly, is not doing that. He has clearly had enough of Parliament and is more than ready to return to his life as a medical professional. What he has been willing to do, however, is draw aside the curtain, if only for a moment, and let the electors of New Zealand see how their representatives are treated. Those same electors owe him a vote of thanks: not only for the glimpse of the bullying culture that pervades their Parliament, but also for the demonstration that is bound to follow of how that same, sick, system responds to its critics.

Undoubtedly, there will be Labour supporters reading these words with mounting disbelief – and fury. It is fitting, then, to close with a vivid illustration of Labour’s long-standing culture of bullying.

At the Labour Conference of 2002, a tiny handful of mostly younger delegates attempted to protest the Labour-led Government’s decision to sent troops to Afghanistan. As Helen Clark began speaking, one young man rose to his feet and attempted to make his opposition known. As he did so, a number of party heavyweights (fortuitously seated next to him) also rose to their feet. The dissenter was grabbed – none too gently – and physically dragged from the auditorium. Two young women, positioned closer to the stage, who attempted to unfurl an anti-war banner, received very similar treatment.

When Willie Jackson boasts that Labour has a different definition of democracy – he’s not kidding.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 12 August 2022.

The Flashman Factor.

The Empire Within Which Bullying Never Ceased: The bitter truth about Great Britain’s “public” schools (and their many imitators in the Empire’s far-flung dominions) is that they were consciously designed to produce a very particular kind of imperial administrator. These men needed to be courageous, but not compassionate; clever, but not too clever; up for anything their superiors deemed necessary, and indifferent to others’ pain and suffering. 

TOM BROWN’S SCHOOL DAYS defined a whole generation of “Muscular Christian” English gentlemen. The author of this immensely popular Victorian novel, Thomas Hughes, set out to redefine the values deemed essential to ruling the greatest empire the world had ever known. He had no time whatsoever for effeteness, and even less for arid intellectuality. What Great Britain and its sprawling empire needed were strong and practical souls – leavened by a sound education. What it had absolutely no need for, Hughes insisted, were bullies.

Tom Brown’s School Days provided the model for all the many “school novels” that succeeded it – the most recent of which, J.K. Rowlings’ Harry Potter series – owe a great deal to the original. The all-wise figure of Professor Dumbledore, for example, bears an uncanny resemblance to Dr Thomas Arnold, the real-life headmaster of Rugby School from 1828-1841 who “plays himself” in Hughes’ partly autobiographical novel.

In many respects, Tom Brown’s School Days represented a girding of British ruling-class loins for the great tasks that lay ahead, as British imperialism got its second wind in the Nineteenth Century’s second half. Certainly, the novel’s hero possesses an impressive tally of the virtues required for the daunting mission of imposing “civilisation”. He’s physically fit, amiable, courageous, and up for any challenge. As the novel unfolds, however, it becomes clear that these muscular qualities are not of themselves sufficient. Minds need training as well as bodies, and courage must always be tempered by compassion.

Lest their be any confusion, however, Hughes introduces the unforgettable figure of Flashman, Rugby’s biggest and most brutal bully. It is Flashman who supplies the novel’s most memorable scene, in which a defiant Tom is held in front of a roaring fire by Flashman’s accomplices. Although Tom is ultimately rescued from Flashman’s torture, it is the bully’s viciousness that remains with the reader.

As George MacDonald Fraser, author of the best-selling Flashman novels, realised, it would be the anti-hero’s amorality, not Tom’s Christian piety, that titillated readers in the much darker Twentieth Century.

Hughes’ civilising mission, though indisputably admirable, was always doomed to fail. A thousand Dr Arnold’s could not overcome the brutal fact that imperialism is a brutal business. Seizing and holding other peoples’ lands is an undertaking for which the Flashmans’ of this world are much more suited temperamentally than the Tom Browns.

The bitter truth is that Great Britain’s “public” schools (and their many imitators in the Empire’s far-flung dominions) were consciously designed to produce a very particular kind of imperial administrator. These men needed to be courageous, but not compassionate; clever, but not too clever; up for anything their superiors deemed necessary, and indifferent to others’ pain and suffering. Most importantly, these imperialists needed to enjoy wielding power and subjecting weaker peoples to their will.

In other words, producing bullies was what Eton, Harrow, Rugby, and all the other public schools, were all about.

Why else would public schoolboys be expected to read Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul in the original Latin? (Hint: It wasn’t because he demonstrated Muscular Christianity!) The other great lesson these privately educated gentlemen were required to learn, apart from the practicalities of genocide, is that what a ruling class tells the world it is doing, and what it actually does, are two very different things. Hypocrisy is, always, the indispensable aspect of effective governance. Take note of what I say, not what I do (or have done in the past) is the necessary expectation of those who wield power over others.

These, the instincts and habits of domination are much too important to learn on the job. That is why the pliable young saplings that enter our elite schools must be bent, twisted and violently pruned until they are ready to be released upon the world. It’s why the people responsible for running these schools turn a blind eye to the brutalities by their star pupils, and protect them when they go too far. After all, isn’t life just one long game of rough-and-tumble? And isn’t it better to win at that game than to lose?

The Powers-That-Be may say they want a world filled with the likes of Dr Arnold and Tom Brown. What they really want, however, is a world filled with the likes of Flashman.

Bullying isn’t a bug in the private education system – it’s a feature.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 12 August 2022.

Not A Gentle Species

Strange Fruit: A Florida lynch-mob of the 1920s admire their handiwork. Human-beings exhibit a deep fascination with the public infliction of pain and violence.

I HEARD Cindy Kiro being interviewed on the radio the other day. The Children’s Commissioner was talking about bullying in schools. Towards the end of the interview, she said something which struck me as very funny: "Schools should prepare us for life", Ms Kiro declared.

I burst out laughing.

If schools really were about preparing us for life, they’d not only teach us how to endure bullies, they’d teach us how to become one.

What is a bully, after all, but a person who has embraced the basic principles of social organisation more ruthlessly than his or her peers?

Bullies intuitively grasp the brutal, but essential, truth that all human communities are held together by the threat, or, where the threat fails, by the actuality of violence. Experience has also taught them that when the weak are being bullied by the strong, most people will do absolutely nothing to protect them.

Indeed, history shows that human-beings exhibit a deep fascination for the public infliction of pain and violence.

Just examine the photographic record of the scores of lynchings which took place in the southern United States during the first three decades of the 20th Century, and you will be stunned by the participants’ expressions. Though they have just witnessed the torture, emasculation and incineration of a fellow human-being, you will find no traces of horror, fear or disgust upon their faces. On the contrary, they’re smiling broadly for the camera, and their eyes glitter with excitement. Even the faces of the children (some might say especially the faces of the children) wear expressions of fierce triumph and frank pleasure.

We are not a gentle species.

Millennia have taught us that when the powerful start exercising their power the smartest thing for those not involved to do is stand well clear. Those brave (or foolish) individuals who, in ages past, displayed their empathy too openly, or recklessly intervened on behalf of the victim, were clearly placing themselves at an evolutionary disadvantage. Incurring the wrath of the dominant individual, or group, is probably not the most effective method for ensuring one’s genes get passed on to the next generation.

Endorsing the bullies’ choice of victim may not rate highly in terms of ethics, but it’s an excellent survival strategy.

And it is this, the brutal logic of evolutionary advantage, which lies behind the behaviour of so many school principals when confronted with evidence of bullying. Punishing the strong, on behalf of the weak, makes absolutely no evolutionary sense.

Almost unconsciously, the people in charge of our schools – its dominant individuals – will align themselves (emotionally, if not formally) with the bully rather than the victim. In their heart-of-hearts they know that, in the world beyond the school gates, it’s the bullies who go places. They will be the managers, the bosses, the sergeant-majors and – yes – even the headmasters in the workplaces our children will enter upon leaving school. Punish the bully and, by implication, you condemn the intricate system of multiple hierarchies upon which our entire, unforgiving society depends.

So, you see why I laughed – not unkindly, but ironically – at Cindy Kiro and her stalwart ally, Rosslyn Noonan, the Chief Human Rights Commissioner. If they have their way (and in the face of the less-than-sympathetic Education Minister, Anne Tolley, I’m pretty sure they won’t) our schools will be transformed into islands of empathy, decency and justice in a vast sea of social brutality and indifference.

I can’t see it, myself. The fact that the bully’s right to an education is so clearly spelt out by the Education Ministry, while nothing at all is said about the rights of the victim should tell our idealistic Commissioners something about the State’s real priorities. It would certainly explain why, nine-times-out-of-ten, it’s the victims who are forced to leave the school in which they were attacked, and the bullies who remain.

Dear Ms Kiro! Brave Ms Noonan! They’d have us all behave in the "real" world, as they’d like to think our children behave at school. And, of course, the Commissioners are right: we should defend the weak from persecution and injustice; we should empathise with the laughed-at, the picked-on, the excluded and the "other". That should be the nature of the world into which our children sally forth.

Why shouldn’t they have something to teach us?

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Evening Star of Friday, 20 March 2009.