Triggered Fingers

We are frightened children, constantly accusing each other of imagined sins.

I can’t remember much of my school days. I have a friend, who can recall the names of all the kids in our class and recount in perfect detail the traumatic events that happened in the urinals in 1978. But for me. Most of it is a blur.

But even so, there are little vignettes which stand out. Even from my earliest childhood.

At my Catholic primary school we were taught by nuns. Some were beatific and benign. Some terrifying. And the most blood freezing of all was Sister Columbanus. Hence my school’s best known and most oft repeated rhyme,

‘What’s black and white and dangerous? Sister Columbanus!’

Not exactly Keith Douglas, but not a bad effort from a few five year old kids, some tadpoles, and a tray of cress.

Whenever Sister Columbanus had to leave us alone in the classroom she would say ‘I’ll be back in a minute. Fingers on lips. No talking.’ And in the sure and certain knowledge that her instruction would be obeyed, she’d sweep out of the classroom, like a spine chilling, monochromatic phantom.

And we would sit there, opposite each other on the Big Table. With our fingers on our lips. Silent as death.

Then after a minute or two, without fail, one of the children would point an accusatory finger at another and slowly nod their head. Indicating that the pointed at classmate, had spoken.

J’accuse.

And the target child, with genuine fear in their eyes, would vigorously shake his or her head in denial. And seek to cleanse themselves of the contagion of blame by passing it onto someone else.

So they would point at themselves and sagely shake their head, before pointing instead at another unfortunate child and nodding.

It was not me who spoke, it was you. You broke the rules.

And of course that child, in their turn would attempt to shuffle off the stigma of accusation and blame the next luckless classmate. And so it would go on.

A classroom full of frightened children, each blaming the next for an imagined crime. Each attempting to establish their innocence by throwing around a baseless accusation of their own.

And all the time of course, the entire class was soundless, not a tiny squeak was uttered, even though in its own way, the cacophony of silent allegation was absolutely deafening.

It was a pathetic scenario. And I mean that in the true sense of pathetic. In that even to this day, the memory of it arouses in me, feelings of pity, vulnerability, and yes, even a little sadness.

Sadness because even though these events happened over fifty years ago, in a little Catholic primary school in an unremarkable corner of Essex, we see the same scenario playing out in our society each and every day.

Because for the most part, that scene from the early 1970s describes what public discourse has become in 2023.

We think we are sophisticated, grown ups discussing important issues, offering opinions, making a contribution to ‘The Debate’. But in reality we’re little more than a bunch of frightened kids, gathered around a giant table, endlessly accusing each other of some unforgivable offence.

Mainly racism of course. But also sexism. Transphobia. Ableism. Climate change ‘denial’. Sizeism(?) Hate speech. An ever growing list of Deadly Sins.

There doesn’t seem to be a mainstream story which doesn’t have at its heart, the shrill allegation that someone has transgressed, and committed one of these heinous and unforgivable crimes against liberalism.

And just like in my classroom, most of these accusations are simply baseless. Often purely performative, they are little more than an opportunity to demonstrate fealty to the current orthodoxy. Coupled with the chance to express the accuser’s own tolerance, understanding and kindness, by chucking someone else, under a bus.

And somewhat ironically. The bullies have recently added yet another sin to their arsenal of outrage. Bullying.

Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab has resigned after a report found that he had bullied his staff.

Bullied his staff? He worked in the Justice Department, not KidZania.

I’m not here to defend Raab. He’s never struck me as particularly warm or sympathetic. And he has the look of a policeman they haven’t caught yet.

But, and I know I’m going out on a limb here, I’d suggest that despite what it says in the 2010 Equality Act, grown ups cannot actually bully each other. Not really. Sure they can behave inappropriately in the workplace, but that’s different. Because ‘bullying’ is the preserve of children, it is playground behaviour.

What exactly did Raab do? Line up the top civil servants in the Justice Department each morning, dish out some dead-legs and demand their lunch money?

No. The report, which took five months to complete, found he ‘acted in a manner which was intimidating’, and if that wasn’t bad enough, he also made ‘un constructive critical comments’ about his subordinates’ work.

Thank god they finally caught him. The man is a monster.

In addition, staff at the Justice Department were said to have “suffered significant negative impacts on their psychological wellbeing” after simply coming into contact with him.

Well of course they did. They are highly professional, neutral and dispassionate civil servants, fair minded, decent and rational. While Raab is a scum sucking fascist shit bag Brexit loving Tory scumbag Tory. No wonder they didn’t get along.

Having to take daily instruction from someone you despise with every fibre of your being is sure to have a significant ‘negative impact’ on the ‘wellbeing’ of anyone.

Weirdly, on the same day Raab resigned, I found myself at a function sitting behind a woman who claimed to be a member of his staff. She didn’t seem crippled with stress and anxiety to me. Far from it, she was cock-a-hoop.

An absolutely delightful lady. If you like that type of thing.

That we seem to have unquestionably accepted that actual bullying can take place in the upper levels of government says a lot about how infantilised our culture has become.

And whilst I concede that Raab looks like someone has managed to put a suit on an angry thumb, it does seem that his awful, unacceptable behaviour, essentially amounted to little more than him expecting grown up professionals, to do the jobs they were being paid (handsomely by the rest of us) to do.

But expecting even this much seems unreasonable these days.

As an aside I notice that Accord, the union which represents the occasional workers at Lloyds Bank is up in arms this week. All because the bank’s boss has had the temerity to suggest his staff, most of whom I assume he is paying with, you know, wages, might actually turn up for work at the office.

For two days a week.

Apparently this unreasonable demand was upsetting their work life balance and causing them ‘unnecessary disruption’.

How dare you expect me to come and do the work you’re paying me to do? It’s modern slavery.

Wherever you look, people are being accused of sins against liberalism.

Question the need to destroy your neighbourhood economy by closing all the roads so no one can drive to the local shops, and Sadiq Khan will accuse you of being ‘far right’.

Wonder aloud if we really should be marching bravely onward into a cripplingly expensive Net Zero future while the rest of the world digs coal mines and laughs at us. Then Great news! You are now officially a climate change denying planet killing Nazi.

Suggest timidly that perhaps the first duty of government is to enact policies which are in step with the majority of voters’ wishes, and find yourself dismissed as a Trump adjacent Q Anon loving populist thug.

Hesitate for the briefest moment before stating your personal pronouns at a Pokemon Tournament (yes really) and find yourself disqualified.

Our society seems to have lost all appetite to solve real problems. There is no longer any desire to improve peoples lives by actually getting things done, creating stuff or building things people need. Just boundless energy for searching out and punishing imagined transgressions.

It’s destructive, painful and stultifying. Just as there was no one actually talking in my classroom, then surely, the amount of genuine ‘hate’ in our society on no account justifies the endless, joyless purges, the hair trigger vigilance, the ceaseless expenditure of blood and treasure, to hunt it down.

The finger of accusation is everywhere. And of course just like in my classroom. No amount of sanctimonious pointing at others can inoculate you yourself against the witch hunt.

Because the most enthusiastic finger pointers often turn out to be just as guilty as their luckless targets.

I’m going to miss Diane Abbott. The Hyacinth Bucket of the Labour Party.

With her unfailingly imperious tone and genius for baseless condescension, Diane could seemingly find racism literally everywhere. Except it seems, in the one place you might expect. 1940s Germany.

Because while Diane could no doubt detect a microagression in a hurricane, she was quite happy to write a letter to the Observer newspaper pointing out that real actual proper racism had never really been experienced by you know, Jewish people. And now you come to mention it Diane, I’m struggling to think of a single incidence of Jewish people being persecuted. Not a single one. Hang on give me a moment…..maybe…? Nope. Still nothing.

Diane Abbott has, to her credit, apologised, and I’m sure she didn’t mean to come across as remotely anti Semitic. And neither did hilarious Guardian cartoonist Martin Rowson who was unlucky enough to accidentally fill one of his very funny cartoons with long established anti Jewish tropes which I’m sure he’d never heard of. Whoops!

Of course the Guardian is itself perhaps the most accomplished finger pointer, and outrage-monger on the entire media landscape, so it was quite the misstep.

I’d link to the cartoon. But I can’t for a couple of reasons. One because the Guardian have apologised and removed it from their website. But not because it was anti Semetic, or anything. No. Yeah. But no. It was just because ‘it fell below their standards’ and also they’d sort of gone off it anyway and that. Yeah. That was it.

And secondly, because I don’t want to link to something which many people, including Jewish Chronicle editor Stephen Pollard, find so blatantly anti-Semitic.

Martin Rowson has also issued a full apology.

An often overlooked, but hugely significant benefit of Free Speech is that it not only gives you the right to say what you like. It also, and just as importantly, allows you to hear what other people are actually saying. Which means you can make your own judgement. And body swerve accordingly.

There was a time when adults were expected to behave differently from children. To accept a level of personal responsibility. To acknowledge that actions have consequences. That it is often necessary to defer pleasure, to work hard and save up for the things you want. To make difficult decisions involving trade offs. To have agency, to expect to solve problems yourself, and not to always expect someone else to step in and solve them for you.

But no longer. We’re now too scared to act like grown ups. To point out the absurdity of shutting down our entire health service to protect us from a virus which mainly targets the very sick and elderly. To stand up and question whether we should really be sabotaging our way of life, just to appease the disputed claims of climate extremists. (Not that climate change is a problem, it is, but that the world is on the brink of an apocalypse.) Or whether it makes sense to junk perfectly functioning technology and replace it with untested, unaffordable and unworkable alternatives.

To ask why our government is lying to us again. Again.

Because just like those little kids, we’re living out our lives with our fingers on our lips, terrified that any moment someone will turn their finger in our direction and accuse us of something awful, and unforgivable.

And of course we should be terrified. Because instead of merely suffering the wrath of Sister Columbanus these adult transgressions can have real consequences, and lead to us losing our jobs, our reputations, our livelihoods and in some cases, our friends.

It was silly and sad to see five year old children acting like that. It’s clearly no way for adults to behave.

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Just a note to say that in retrospect it’s clear to me that Sister Columbanus, and all the nuns who taught me to read, write, and look after hamsters, might have seemed scary at the time, but were genuinely amazing women, who had nothing but our wellbeing and best interests at heart. I owe them a huge debt. Thank you Sisters.

Thanks again for reading. All the best.