March.06 : The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, this royal throne of kings, this sceptre’d isle, this earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, this other Eden, demi-paradise, this fortress built by nature for herself against infection and the hand of war, this happy breed of men, this little world etc. etc. has turned into a ghetto primary school playground. The list of all but the last description belongs to Shakespeare, the last attribution to me, following the revelations this week of the British press.
Workers and ex-workers in 10 Downing Street, servitors of present Prime Minister, have told Andrew Rawnsley who has just published a book, which alleges to have got under the covers of the seat of government, that Gordon Brown is a bully. The press, in previewing the book, featured several incidents in which the Prime Minister lost his temper with his staff. There are incidents in which mobile phones were flung at the underlings, in which members of staff were “nudged” on a staircase, where some undeserving soul was pushed off her chair in a group discussion by an infuriated Mr Brown.
The incidents, or alleged incidents because the Prime Minister’s office denies they ever happened, have been classified by the hostile press as incidents of “bullying”. To be fair, there have also been comments sceptical of the “bullying” charge. Throwing a phone at someone with whom you are annoyed may not constitute bullying. It may simply be an act of extreme frustration at their stupidity, their blundering through some important assignment or, indeed their petty betrayals.
I have never thrown a mobile phone or anything else, partly because I value property above petulance. I have never understood why distressed or embattled wives or lovers destroy a man’s suits by cutting them to shreds, or why they smash precious crockery in fits — something I have seen in films. On balance I think the flung phone is on a par with the smashed bits of crockery and doesn’t quite fit any definition of bullying which my ample experience as a child, friend or father has forced upon me.
Now: nudging on the staircase? Yes, I can see how that can be interpreted as bullying. In the school to which I went in Pune all those years ago, bullying sometimes took the form of shoving hockey sticks into the wheels of the victim’s bicycle while it was on the move and having him fall of it in startled shock and with considerable injury. It was usually not the bully’s hockey stick as the severity of this “nudge” could damage the hockey too. It was, the hockey, in all probability, taken off some weedy junior with a minimum of persuasion and a tangible physical threat.
In school and later, the definition of bullying was clear. It was the exercise of strength, of threat, of power to coerce or terrify the subservient or the weak. It was causing pain to people unable to defend themselves, for the sake of some twisted, mean psychological thrill: Ducking the feeble fatty of the class repeatedly through the swimming session to derive amusement from his begging to be spared. Yes that used to happen. And then there was the sexual bullying — weaker boys physically forced to strip and even to perform shaming acts on their tormentors.
At the time, in our school, in that era, it felt as though there was no recourse available to the bullied. Making a complaint was “sneaking”, punishable by perpetual bullying in new ways by hitherto inactive tormentors. Telling your parents was a terminal offence. It was a cruel, grin-and-bear-it culture.
Perhaps it was in other schools around India too and, from the testimony of literature (“Put out his eyes, apologise, apologise, put out his eyes”) of British and Irish schools too.
But those were Tom Brown’s Schooldays, not Mr Brown’s paroxysms of power. Does our Gordon really bully his staff? Is it a matter of definition, because there is a lot of both about.
I mean bullying and definition. And the more definition there is, the more bullying can be statistically registered. Anti-bullying has, from perfectly understandable and laudable origins, become an industry. Literally. It has funding, official and charitable, workers, investigators, advisers, clinical services, trauma-management therapies, other formalised assistance and a hundred websites on which all of these are available.
That big kids thumping small kids in school playgrounds should be stamped upon and stopped is not something anyone but the deranged, or those with twisted minds who believe that the smaller kids will benefit by being repeatedly challenged to fight back, would disagree with. That employees should not, because of their status as such be humiliated by employers is also an accepted tenet of civilisation.
The technology of the Net and of mobile phones has given rise to its own forms of cyber-bullying and these too can be easily recognised as old evil instincts discovering fresh outlets. There’s what the current generation call “happy-slapping” which is the recording on the video facility of mobile phones, the act of beating someone weaker.
The Internet has made it possible for gangs, even hundreds and thousands of unseen and unknown strangers to unite in the bullying of an individual through spreading slander or photographs, lies or even hurtful truths about the vulnerable.
Now every schoolchild knows that the Second Law of Rammsammy says that definitions expand. In the case of medical provision, diseases are invented to suit available cures. The anti-bullying industry — more power to one of its elbows! — has, in strict accordance with Rammsammy’s Law, extended the definition of “bullying” to include any disciplinary procedures taken at school, in employment and even in punitive institutions. The definition includes being made redundant, domestic violence, stalking, suspension and even giving unwitting pain to strangers via your blog or website.
Investigations of and advice to the victims of all these are available through the anti-bullying agencies, on and off-line.
And so, very neatly, we see Rammsammy’s Third Law beginning to operate: Definition spread leads to dilution. Being made redundant is a serious matter and its remedies lie in the economic and political sphere. Coming to terms with one’s dismissal from work is a different category of misery from being nudged on a staircase by the Prime Minister.
Similarly, domestic violence and stalking may be considered forms of bullying, but they should be treated as criminal activity and taken more seriously than injury from a flung mobile phone. I have been the target of one of these and it didn’t hurt much.
Farrukh Dhondy
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