This series of posts examines the current situation of crisis that exists within the British Psychological Society (BPS). The series is a collaboration with the team at BPSWatch. I am reposting here content originally published at BPSWatch. Readers may also be interested in the posts here, here and here.
How much does the future of the BPS actually matter to you?
We began this blog and the associated Twitter feed because we were all extremely concerned about what we see as the misgoverance of an organisation that we gave our time and energy to over many years because we believed in what it stood for. What we have seen in recent years is an increasing distancing of those that run the BPS from its membership – as our posts and out tweets demonstrate. The recent expulsion of the President Elect exemplifies the parlous state of the BPS.
We have had some feedback from people who are of a similar opinion to us, some of which has appeared here, and it’s helpful to know that our concerns are shared by others. We have also had many informal comments of support either applauding our efforts or telling us of similar experiences with this failing organisation. Disturbingly, we have been told of those who, after working hard on behalf of the Society, have left feeling betrayed and traumatised by their experiences. More evidence that change is needed urgently.
But, and it is a big but, we are retired from practice and at are a distance from active involvement in the BPS. Frankly, whether it survives or not will have little practical impact on our lives professionally although its demise would cause us great sadness. But its continued existence as a thriving, member-led organisation which represents the best of UK psychological thinking and practice matters, perhaps never more so than now. Over the half-century that we have been psychologists we have seen such enormous strides made in how psychological practice has grown in maturity and relevance. Psychologist of all sorts and conditions are listened to with respect and can speak with authority. When we started out it was psychiatry that was seen as the ‘go-to’ source of expertise in matters psychological – no more. Psychologists can be proud of the strides that it have made over the years. And that process is almost entirely due to those psychologists, members of the BPS by-and-large, who were willing to spend time and energy to build the discipline, the profession and the BPS. That psychology has got to where it is today is due almost entirely to the hard work – often against the odds – of those who cared deeply and passionately about their discipline. They were not professional, go-anywhere managers – they were psychologists who believed in what psychology could do.
So this is a plea to all those of you who want to be represented by an organisation of which you can be proud. An organisation that reflects and promotes psychology to the benefit of all and of which membership can be seen as badge of honour. The BPS can be this – it is clearly not this right now. Its future cannot depend on the likes of us old codgers alone. It must involve those of you who are still out there, working as psychologists, on whose future the health of a thriving BPS is dependent. It is your responsibility more than ours.
This is a critical time for the BPS. The current ‘leadership’ is engaged in highly unprofessional actions for which they are not being held accountable. The BPS has no senior member-elected officers. The fact that the Charity Commission is heavily involved is a serious warning sign. There is a commitment of £6 million (yes, £6 million of your money) to an ill-specified and inadequately scrutinised change project. There is a £2 million loan (securitised against two BPS-owned properties) with no CFO or CEO in post to manage or oversee these vast financial commitments.
This needs you (yes, you) to act now. Be prepared to be rebuffed and ignored or accused of harassment if you express you concerns to the current BPS officials. Write to the Charity Commission with your comments. Read and contribute to the blog. Email the blog – BPSWatch@btinternet.com. Read and forward the Tweets – @psychsocwatchuk. Share your experience with others.
It’s your Society – and your responsibility to rescue it.
Peter Harvey2 CommentsEXPULSION OF PRESIDENT-ELECT
A challenge to the BPS narrative.
From the BPSWatch Editorial Collective…..
Since the inception of this blog we have had intermittent contact with the now expelled President Elect around matters of concern regarding what we believed were clearly signs of organisational misgovernance, irregularities and toxic culture at the BPS. These had been separately signposted to us individually when we had dealings with senior staff about a range of policy issues. We had become increasingly alarmed by the way we were ignored, brushed off, rebuked, and, as one of the recent threads on @psychsocwatchuk https://twitter.com/psychsocwatchuk/status/1401165572436602884?s=20 demonstrated, we had our correspondence closed down with implications, explicit or veiled, that we were harassing or bullying staff. During our exchanges with Dr. MacLennan over months, he indicated his growing belief that he would never be allowed to become President and that there were moves afoot to prevent that. Latterly he told us he was sure he would be suspended or expelled for persisting with challenging the current governance process and practice. This was, of course, his stated reason for standing to be elected. Members gave him their backing.
His appeal against expulsion remains unheard and there is another legal matter that remains sub judice so he cannot yet speak out in his own defence, despite all that has been said in print and on a Youtube video that he is a “bully”, deserving only expulsion.
We can say, without hesitation, that in the contacts the three of us have separately had with Dr. MacLennan, we have detected no signs in his manner or his expressed attitudes that he is disrespectful, aggressive or demeaning. And despite all the slights and insults he has received, he remains passionate in his commitment to making the BPS a better organisation. All three of us have had long careers as clinical psychologists, two of us with very significant forensic experience. We do not just take things at face value when there are conflicting views and narratives about individual behaviour.
Taken in that context, and with Dr. MacLennan unable to defend himself publicly at this stage, we are publishing verbatim a communication that we received from a friend and long-term colleague and collaborator of Dr. MacLennan. We have permission of the author who is happy to be named, and of Dr. MacLennan.
Good Morning,
I have recently been following your articles about Dr MacLennan on BPS Watch and feel your concerns.
I am not a member of the BPS and feel it would be inappropriate for me to pass comment on recent events, but I am a close friend of Nigel and have been horrified at his very public vilification because this is not the Nigel I recognise. While I have my own views, I recognise that there are two sides to every story and I only have one side, but I feel that I must tell you about my relationship with him and, in a sense, to defend him.
But first, a little bit about myself. I served for 30 years as a police officer with Surrey Police. Towards the end of my career I was seconded to the National Leadership Academy for Policing at Bramshill as a Programme Director to deliver programmes on the High Potential Development Scheme and the Senior Leadership Development Programme. While I have delivered all types of Leadership programmes and consultancy services across England, Wales and Northern Ireland (and to every public service) my core programmes were Managing Finance and Resources, Media Strategy (I developed the National Police Media Strategy in conjunction with the highly respected journalist Brian Morris), and Strategic Community Relations. I retired in 2005 and was retained as a consultant until 2015.
In 2012 I became the Honorary Secretary of the British Academy of Management Special Interest Group on Corporate Governance with a special interest in ethics and, in 2013, I became an Honorary Visiting Professor at London Metropolitan University Business School. This is when I met Nigel. With him, I have delivered talks to four Advances in Leadership Conferences, been a judge and Chairman of judges at national leadership awards, and have even delivered a talk at the last BPS conference. I have also worked with Nigel on a 9 month Leadership Development Programme for BAME officers in the Metropolitan Police Service. In my opinion, his skills and talents are without doubt.
As a former police officer, I tend to view people with suspicion until I can understand their motivations and I have never doubted Nigel’s motivations. As you are probably aware, he has had a glittering career working for blue chip companies and organisations such as the Chartered Management Institute and I have found his honesty and integrity beyond reproach. What I particularly liked about him was his assertiveness – he was not afraid to tell you how it is – and this is an in-demand skill for effective leaders. I have learnt many things from Nigel and have been quite happy when he has pointed out that I am wrong and, I hasten to add, vice versa. In my experience he has never strayed into aggressiveness – forceful yes, aggressive no. However, like me, he does struggle with obfuscation, and this can become a barrier to communication with certain people.
In short, I have always found Nigel to be competent, conscientious, a supreme coach and, above all, honest.
Kindest regards.
Graham Buchanan, BSc(Hons), NdipM, PGCE, CMgr FCMI, FRSALeave a comment“THE PSYCHOLOGIST”, BOARD OF TRUSTEES, EXPULSION OF PRESIDENT-ELECT, GOVERNANCE
The legitimation crisis and a membership denied answers
David Pilgrim posts….
Today, the concept of a ‘legitimation crisis’ can be applied clearly to the BPS. Although explored at length in a book with that title by Habermas (1974), many other social and political scientists have returned to the theme. This is about leadership regimes, which may notionally still retain power, but their strained credibility reflects an imminent or current breakdown in their actual authority. The cabal currently at the centre of the BPS is still in power but its credibility is in rapid decline. It lacks what Eric Fromm, in his book The Sane Society, called ‘rational authority’ and, instead, exercises power on its own terms in order to ward off the stream of criticism warranted. For Fromm this would be an expression of ‘irrational authority’.
On this blog we have been reporting the character and history of this crisis in recent months and each entry, such as this one, is a new take on an unprecedented state of affairs for the Society. The occasional flurry of criticism of rogue celebrity researchers, such as Cyril Burt (Joynson, 1988) or Hans Eysenck (Marks, 2018), barely dented the reputation of the BPS. Similarly, the spat between the Maudsley methodological behaviourists and their scorned psychodynamic colleagues from north of the Thames, in a struggle to control the Medical Section and its journal, led to a temporary closure of its business in 1958 (Pilgrim and Treacher, 1991). These small eruptions of doubt, that all was well in the BPS, pale into insignificance today. We have never seen anything like this, either in living memory or in the literature on the history of British psychology. Those past examples, looked at in the current context, are like comparing a bar room brawl with a military coup.
In meetings of the Board of Trustees today all of the Presidential triumvirate have gone, so it contains nobody elected from the general membership. Unelected Senior Management Team members now outnumber Trustees from the sub-systems. This trend is now amplified by the Board preventing members electing a replacement for the radically reforming President Elect, after expulsion from the Society, a cue for the next main point.
The public disparagement of Nigel MacLennan
The video released, vilifying the President Elect in advance of his appeal being submitted and heard, is a complete outrage. It offends our normal understanding of natural justice and leaves the Board of Trustees, who planned its production and dissemination on YouTube, open to the charge of unethical and possibly illegal activity. Are the Trustees so determined to crush this man’s reputation that they will simply ‘do anything that it takes’?
It is officially the position of the BPS (according to its own website for all to read) not to investigate individual members. However, does that claim fail to apply only when it is politically expedient for the interests of the incumbent leadership? Are the members seriously expected to believe that this has been anything but a ‘stitch up’ from start to finish? Was the investigation panel hand-picked by the Board of Trustees or not? How many on that panel were truly independent and without their own vested interest in the current regime of power? Were membership funds used liberally by the Board to hire legal advice in order to justify the scapegoating of a reformer, turned whistle blower? The questions go on and on. Some of them ultimately may be resolved in court but what is clear already is that Nigel MacLennan has not been treated in a fair manner, if we use everyday criteria of common sense and decency.
If the stitch up hypothesis is in doubt, look at how Carol McGuinness, in a follow-up document to that unedifying and ill-advised video, made it quite clear that even if Nigel MacLennan were to be re-instated on appeal, as a member of the Society, he would still not be permitted back to his role as the President Elect. This nothing-left-to-chance approach, reflecting the persecutory intent of the Board, sticks out like a sore thumb in this planned and vindictive attack on a man whose career has now suffered immediate detriment.
I can find no justification for this pre-emptive strike from McGuinness, on behalf the Board, within the Statutes and Rules. Does she offer no rule-based rationale in the script she is reading because one simply does not exist? This brings us back to Fromm’s notion of ‘irrational authority’. Those in power often do and say things, simply because they can. But do we have to believe this travesty of justice? And given that under Statute 20 of the Society, the Board should have been chaired on an interim basis by MacLennan not McGuinness, is there an Alice in Wonderland feel to this whole scenario?
We know that such a surreal quality can indeed emerge from group think, especially when it leads to scapegoating in order to create an illusion of homeostasis and harmony (Baron, 2005; Leyens et al. 2000). The warring factions of the SMT and the Trustees could take temporary comfort in a common enemy to be eliminated, but the facts of the crisis are still there, with or without the removal of MacLennan. Facts do not disappear because they are ignored conveniently by displacement activity or an ostrich stance.
Keeping the membership in the dark
If a making-the-rules-up-as-you-go-along approach to governance now characterises the workings of the cabal, then another supportive tactic has been information control. Nowhere has this been more obvious than in the silence in the pages of The Psychologist. An exception has been the printing of the statement about the expulsion of MacLennan from McGuinness (giving the BPS a free noticeboard posting without editorial comment or analysis), as well as the link to her video. No right of reply was offered to MacLennan. If this were a normal magazine it would reflect the normal rules of journalism and both sides of a story would have been offered, or at least taken into account.
However, this is not a normal magazine. For example, the political turbulence in the Society, should have warranted some commentary but none has been evident. Its inside cover reminds us every month that it is ‘…the magazine of the British Psychological Society…’. If this means that it obeys the contingent expectations of those running the BPS, then this is actually a fair and valid description. However, maybe members of the Society have broader expectations (such as it being a forum for free debate about the current legitimation crisis). Such expectations are indeed raised, conveniently, by the subsequent cover description ‘…It provides a forum for communication, discussion and controversy among all members of the Society…’. Has there been any actual sign of the latter, in practice, in the past turbulent year? Why are ordinary members still playing catch up about the financial scandal in the Society, the fat file of complaints being held by the Charity Commission and the expensive legal shenanigans to expel Nigel MacLennan?
During the crisis, the monthly column of the Chief Executive Officer suddenly disappeared without editorial comment, and we slowly became aware that he was ‘not in his office’ and his function was then taken on by his Deputy, Diane Ashby. And before the President, Hazel McLoughlin, also disappeared from the pages because she had resigned, citing family reasons, the content of her column revealed nothing to the membership of the chaos and tensions, which led to the resignation of the Vice President David Murphy. He explained on Twitter that this was because of his concerns about both governance and finance.
However, the role of this ‘magazine’ has not gone unquestioned. For example, here is a reply to Pat Harvey from the editor (12.12.20) responding to her criticism of The Psychologist failing to provide information of legitimate concern to the BPS membership:
We are not a ‘house journal’, we are a magazine. Our responsibility is not to speak for the Society or to align with any documents it might publish; it is to provide a forum for communication, discussion and controversy among members and beyond.
This restatement of the confusing and contradictory blurb, cited earlier from the inside cover of The Psychologist, does not cease to be confusing and contradictory simply because it is robotically restated. Does the membership deserve a better journalistic service, during the current legitimation crisis of the BPS, than this sort of vacuous rhetorical gambit? The supine post-it-board role offered by The Psychologist on behalf of the current BPS leadership, reminds us of one of many of Orwell’s dire warnings about democracy: ‘Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.’
The exchange between Pat Harvey and the editor of The Psychologist, Jon Sutton, did not end with the above restated confusion. She also wrote to the Chair of the Editorial Advisory Committee, Richard Stephens, starting with a complaint about the narrow and prejudicial role of The Psychologist, when being biddable and posting the offensive video. She made other criticisms of the magazine as well. This was the response she received from Stephens:
Thanks for your letter and for raising these concerns. I plan to table these for discussion at the next meeting of the Psychologist and Digest Editorial Advisory Committee on 24th June. I felt that your first raised point warranted some urgency of response so I discussed it today with our editor, Jon Sutton. Jon’s view was that while the video featuring Professor Carol McGuinness as Interim Chair of the Board of Trustee has been widely disseminated among BPS members, it is unlisted on YouTube. Given that The Psychologist has a much wider audience, Jon reflected that it’s inclusion in the piece “‘The Society is at a crossroads’” was not appropriate. On that basis the video has been removed. I will feedback in due course following our meeting on the 24th.
This is a small sign of good sense and fairness from Richard Stephens, although at the time of writing the video is still available on YouTube. Will this be the start of a period of genuine honest reflection from the Advisory Committee? Would the video have been removed had it not been for these critical questions from Pat Harvey? In my view, it seems as though those below the cabal level in the Society are very slowly waking up to the serious challenges that the legitimation crisis is posing for freedom of expression and balanced and open journalism in the future pages of The Psychologist. Elsewhere on the blog I have addressed the matter of censorship in the Society.
The ethical and legal culpability of the Trustees
The Charity Commission continues to work with the Society to bring it into ‘regulatory compliance’. This raises questions about the role of the Trustees in the recent past. How many of them (other than Nigel MacLennan), out of public interest, took their concerns about poor governance and financial irregularities to the Charity Commission or the press?
Many resignations have been evident in recent months, including the President and Vice President. Are they now prepared to offer a full and frank account to the membership of what happened in the Board, which went so badly wrong? This could be a starting point for the ‘root and branch’ reform now required, to reverse the demise of the organisation.
Will they admit that the conflicts of interest inherent to the current definition of a Board (which date back to a lack of specificity in the Royal Charter arrangements in 1988) have been routinely out of sync with current expectations of properly independent trustees in charities today? The current Board of Trustees is a sham because its members all have conflicts of interest and there are no outsiders from the Society to offer impartial oversight. Given the legitimation crisis, should the current Trustees at least own up to this basic fact, resign and insist on a properly constituted Board in line with Charity Commission expectations?
And if it turns out that the negligence, or worse, of some Trustees has cost the BPS dearly, will they be held liable for these costs, as Charity Commission regulations allow? Will BPS members now seek to hold Trustees liable for the seeming losses incurred to the Society, by their apparent lack of oversight? Will that liability also extend to those who resigned but were in place during that period of apparent lack of oversight (in legal terms this is called ‘legacy liability’)?
This particular legitimation crisis, like all others, never stops posing questions for democracy. We all (not just a few pushy malcontents) need to keep asking them. The passivity in our current zeitgeist about trying to influence events around us does not have to lead to fatalism. We can still challenge the cabal and the current shambles in the BPS, as this blog and Nigel MacLennan have already demonstrated. The more of us taking up this challenge, the less likely that victimisation will be seen and the more likely that the Society will be saved from its own self-inflicted wounds.
Baron, R. (2005). So right it’s wrong: Groupthink and the ubiquitous nature of polarized group decision making. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. 37: 35.
Habermas, J. (1974) Legitimation Crisis Boston: Beacon Press.
Joynson, R. B. (1989). The Burt Affair. New York: Routledge
Leyens, J. Ph., Paladino, M. P., Rodriguez, R. T., Vaes, J., Demoulin, S., Rodriguez, A. P., & Gaunt, R. (2000) The emotional side of prejudice: The attribution of secondary emotions to ingroups and outgroups. Personality and Social Psychology Review. 4, 2, 186–97.
Marks,D.F (2019) The Hans Eysenck affair: time to correct the scientific record Journal of Health Psychology 24, 4, 409–42.
Pilgrim, D. and Treacher, A. (1991) Clinical Psychology Observed London: Routledge.3 CommentsEXPULSION OF PRESIDENT-ELECT
Questioning the Expulsion – Part 3
Was the evidence sound?
As psychologists, from our very earliest years as bright-eyed, bushy-tailed undergraduates, we are used to dealing with evidence. We learn how to evaluate it, how to contextualise data, how to look in detail at the hypotheses, the method, the analyses. We are used to defining behavioural referents for concepts. Professional researchers carry on and refine this whilst practitioners hone their evidence-gathering skills through the interview rather than controlled trial and have to remain alert to their own biases as well as to the inevitable and understandable one-person perspective of their client. Perhaps we could characterise all these approaches as one of benign scepticism, always open to correction the face of new data. We are assured the BPS commissioned external investigations (presumably at the expense of member subscriptions – will the total cost of all this appear in the audited accounts?) into the allegations and their findings were a central part of the case against Dr MacLennan. All well and good and superficially follows due process. But it raises an important set of questions. As outlined in Part 2, we suggest that Dr MacLennan’s arrival may have heralded an unwelcome intrusion for some in the organisation. Perhaps they had already formed an opinion of him and his reformist zeal and put the shutters up in advance. They were, perhaps, primed to view him as the ‘enemy’. Perhaps Dr MacLennan’s enthusiasm and energy was seen as ‘over the top’. Perhaps he felt he had to be assertive in the face of what he saw, rightly or wrongly, as intransigence and unhelpfulness – and, of course, assertion is not the same as bullying. We ourselves have been subject to veiled accusations of harassment and bullying, simply because we refused to stop asking questions when legitimate requests for information or clarification were denied (an experience not unique to us). So we would ask how many respondents in the data-gathering exercise actually used the word ‘bullying’? What overt, identifiable behaviours of ‘bullying’ did Dr MacLennan show? And, most importantly, what was the criterion used by any of those involved into what constituted ‘bullying’, especially as there are well-documented definitions available? These interactions presumably took place during the COVID epidemic and in many cases could not have involved an intimidating physical presence. How did the Panel account for the potentially distorting effects of conversations being mediated by technology?
Was the sanction proportionate?
The BPS is clear on the three sanctions available to the Responsible Person (and note here that in the long and highly detailed justification issued by the BPS it contradicts itself saying that the Panel recommended the sanction in one place and that the Responsible Person made the decision, acting on the evidence provided by the Panel in another passage – which was it BPS?). He chose the most serious of the three – immediate expulsion. We have no information as to how he reached that decision other than that it is stated that he was presented with the Panel’s findings – minus, of course, any input from Dr MacLennan. That last point raises the question as to whether, in the light of the possible consequences, he might have thought it advisable, at the very least, to check with Dr MacLennan that he had nothing to contribute. The relevant paragraph of the BPS statement is this
The member conduct process involved a careful review of sanctions applied in other similar cases and in relation to the conduct that might reasonably be expected of a member of this standing and experience.
We are in uncharted territory here as we, as mere members, don’t have access to any data about the outcome of any disciplinary process (which may or may not exist) since part of it was outsourced to the HCPC. In the days when the BPS did take this responsibility seriously, the outcome of investigations was published in The Psychologist. Looking at the statement above, we have no idea as to how many similar cases there have been and we have no idea of how many members have been expelled – and, of crucial importance, for what offences were they deprived of society membership. We have already noted the ‘proportionality’ of sanctions in the light of previous cases and we really do need to know what offences committed by (now ex-) members resulted in expulsion. We are left with the highly general and completely subjective judgement (made by one person) as to what he might reasonably expect of a member of standing. And as we have already noted, he is the Chair of a Standing Committee of the Board of Trustees.
We would also ask how he judged the possible consequences of his decisions on all those involved – particularly on the person who is most affected – Dr MacLennan. We understand that he runs his own business and is more dependent than many psychologists on being able to attract clients – they do pay his income quite directly. He has not only been deprived of his BPS membership – this action, compounded and magnified by the subsequent barrage of publicity will cause enormous reputational damage and may well cost him his livelihood. Did the RP take this into account at all?
In a final act of this grossly public humiliation, we are told by ‘the BPS’
If Professor MacLennan has his membership reinstated on appeal, he would not automatically reassume his role as trustee and President Elect, although he would be eligible for re-election to the Board in line with its usual procedures. The BPS constitution provides mechanisms for filling vacancies on the board and these must be followed. These procedures do not include an option for the board to choose to reinstate Professor MacLennan (as President or President Elect) if his appeal is successful.
This is saying that the BPS can overturn the democratic process ‘just because it can’ – and we are sure that many members would value a sight of the rules that allow this. Should Dr MacLennan be cleared of all charges, then how can the BPS justify not reinstating him to his democratically elected post? He has been expelled from membership the Society, the consequence of which is the loss of his position. Reinstatement of his membership should, therefore, mean being able to take up the post to which he is entitled. This looks very much like a small group within the BPS doing its absolute utmost to ensure that Dr MacLennan never becomes President.
Was the video absolutely necessary?
Many of you, like us, will have been shocked by the lengths to which the BPS has gone to justify itself and to ensure the widest possible coverage of this unfortunate affair – before the appeal has even been heard. Five closely typed pages, one video (now on YouTube), all going into the grisly and hurtful accusations of a case that has yet to reach its lawful conclusion. This stands in complete contradistinction to the following; the fact that the CEO is out of his office about which the members have been told nothing (not even the fact of it); the police investigation about which the members have been told nothing (not even the fact of it); that the Charity Commission is engaged with the Society about which it needed a bunch of “malcontents” and the resignation of the Vice-President for the BPS to even acknowledge. These are critical issues for the membership as a whole and could have easily been communicated to us in a way that did not prejudice any legal investigations. So what’s the difference, BPS? Why go in to the sort of supposed detail that is career-wrecking when a simple holding statement would have sufficed? Looks a lot like the actions of a bully to us.
Where from here?
We hope that our highlighting of the issues that we think to be of importance has, at the least, piqued your interest. Perhaps we could encourage you to look further into the workings of your Society – the minutes of the Board of Trustees is a good place to start as much for what it doesn’t say as to what it does. If you are a member of the Senate (a body, as far as we can tell, without Terms of Reference) or know one of the Trustees, perhaps you could ask some questions – and be prepared to fobbed off or accused of harassment. If you have social media links to other colleagues who care about our Society’s future then get involved by spreading the word.
We will do our best to keep you up to speed as far as we are able.
Peter Harvey, Pat Harvey and David Pilgrim
BPSWatch Editorial Collective.1 CommentEXPULSION OF PRESIDENT-ELECT
Questioning the Expulsion – Part 2
Were both sides heard fairly?
The statements from the BPS make the observation that Dr MacLennan declined to present evidence to support his case despite repeated requests. We are at a loss understand this as it is presented. We could speculate that Dr MacLennan might chose to distance himself from a process that he might believe to be illegitimate and be biased against him and that, by co-operating, he would add spurious validity to it. However, it is a surprise that, in view of the seriousness of the issue for him on a personal and professional level, it is implied that he made no efforts to defend himself robustly. We would ask, therefore, whether he was given due time to collect together all the evidence he might need? Was he able to access all available material that would be necessary, such as privileged communications to which he as an office-holder, would be entitled? What efforts were made by either the Panel or the Responsible Person to find our why he would choose to take this course of action? Was the RP able to satisfy himself that Dr MacLennan did not wish to defend himself in the dock?
Was it a level playing field from the outset?
We can have some idea of how the BPS views complaints from this extract from the Minutes of the Board of Trustees meeting in December 2020
“This year has seen a trend for the potential misuse of the complaints process, where it has been used to express a difference of opinion or dissatisfaction with a consultation outcome.The volume of complaints is a strategic risk for the Society and was considered at the Risk Committee.”
Clearly, complaints about the running of the Society are unwelcoming intrusions rather than a learning experience, a risk to be managed. Whilst is it easy to fob off the ordinary member with tactics such as simply not responding, not answering questions or crudely cutting off debate, when an elected officer, who will be an integral part of the organisation arrives, different tactics will be required.
It was very clear from his election statement that Dr MacLennan was a man on a mission – a mission to overhaul the BPS. His successful election (44% of votes cast) must have given him some confidence that he was doing the right thing. His experience, and that of others who he canvassed and supported him, was enough for him to believe that reform was an absolute necessity. We have no doubt that this energy translated into an enthusiasm and diligence to find out, in greater detail, about the mechanics of how the BPS worked (or, more importantly, how it didn’t work). We have no doubt that for some in the organisation this was a significant threat. We have already noted that the BPS had serious problems well before his election and that many people who were meant to have formal oversight of the organisation had – at the very least – taken their individual and collective eyes off the ball (including the Trustees). To support this assertion we can do no more than to quote part of the resignation tweet of Professor David Murphy, lately Vice-President (and therefore a Trustee during his period as President-Elect and President) which identified
“…governance oversight, escalating expenditure and lack of openness and transparency…”
as one trigger for his leaving. And that of Past President, Professor Peter Kinderman
“…When I was President, I was routinely excluded from key decisions, was threatened with legal action over ‘fraud’ (I was completely exonerated, of course) and forced to resign (as Vice-President) for advocating for what is now effectively BPS policy…”
So we know, from two very senior past office holders, that there were significant problems well before Dr MacLennan was propelled into the scene. And remember that Professor Kinderman was in post for the two years 2015-2017 (until his forced resignation) and Professor Murphy for the years 2018 – 2021. We also know, from the minutes of the Board of Trustees meeting in December 2020, that some Trustees themselves were anxious enough about the Society to support
“…a wider discussion in relation to a governance review and stressed the urgency of moving forward with this action…”
Bear in mind also that the Leicestershire police are investigating an allegation of a major financial fraud within the Society. So we have a picture of an organisation that is clearly dysfunctional and under scrutiny and had been so for some considerable period of time. Is it any wonder that some within the organisation, both staff and volunteers, may have felt more than a twinge of anxiety at the arrival of an avowed new broom? We would suggest that in the light of all this, the BPS bureaucracy was on the defensive. This not only might have influenced the trigger for the investigation, it may have influenced its course.
The third and final post will appear tomorrow, Saturday 22 May 2021.
Peter Harvey, Pat Harvey and David Pilgrim
BPSWatch Editorial Collective.Leave a commentEXPULSION OF PRESIDENT-ELECT
Questioning the Expulsion – Part 1
This is the first of three posts looking closely at the recent expulsion of the Present-Elect. We will be asking a series of questions about both the process and outcome, identifying what we see as major deficiencies which highlight, in stark detail, the issues which we have been raising about the sorry state of our organisation. Much of this is speculation and informed guesswork, some generalising from our own experiences because, despite the mass of defensive information coming from the BPS there are many serious omissions and obfuscations.
So, to begin at the beginning.
Can we trust the overall process?
Before we get into the fine detail, let’s step back and cast an eye over the disciplinary process itself. We would remind you that in the Complaints FAQs on the BPS website there is the following statement
The Society does not have a function to investigate complaints against its members…
This, of course, is in complete contradiction to the various statements in the Member Conduct Rules which do outline such a function. If it were sentient, the complaints process would be in a serious existential crisis.
We must also remember that we have been told, by the Acting CEO, that the Society is undertaking a root-and-branch review of the whole of the complaints procedure. To put it at its mildest, this suggests that all is not well with the process, whether it actually exists or not.
In addition, we must also ask who actually made the decision to pursue this complaint against the President-Elect. Again, to remind you, the CEO is still ‘out of the office’; there is no CFO; the President has resigned; the Vice-President has also resigned citing failures of governance amongst his reasons for going; we have an “Interim Chair” of the Board of Trustees (presumably this same Board that is accused of the aforementioned governance failures); an acting CEO who is, presumably, involved in the issues raised by the President-Elect. So the question remains, who decided? Was it the full Board of Trustees or some select subgroup of the willing? Was the complete (if depleted, of course, due to resignations) Board given full and unredacted information about the reasons for this course of action and its possible consequences? Who chose the Panel members and the Responsible Person? Did the Board as a whole and unanimously sign all this off?
In view of the serious and unusual nature of this whole business – disciplining the only remaining elected senior officer of the Society must surely rate as out-of-the-ordinary – and the fact that this would be subject to more than the usual degree of scrutiny from the membership and the outside world, one might hope (perhaps, vainly, expect) that the BPS would go to some lengths to show that justice would not only be done, but would be seen to be done. It should be a shining example of how to do things right. This takes on a particular relevance in the light of the current application to the Professional Standards Authority where matters of monitoring and managing professional standards (the clue is in the name) are paramount.
We argue and will, we hope, show that the whole process, from start to finish, is fatally flawed and itself brings the BPS into disrepute.
How “independent” is independent?
The various self-exculpatory outpourings of the BPS make great play of the ‘independence’ of the investigation. What does that mean to you? To us it suggests – at the very least – that whoever is carrying out the investigation is as far removed from both the current and past history of the BPS as possible. This is not just a matter of not being a Trustee or a member of the SMT. Many of the problems and issues identified by us and by others pre-date the election of Dr MacLennan by many years. Indeed, as we will see later, at least one past President identified serious problems as did the now-resigned Vice-President who had been in post (President-Elect, President) for two years prior to his abandonment of the sinking ship. So any properly constituted investigatory panel should comprise people untainted by previous appointments as Trustees or as senior post-holders with the BPS. This seems to be particularly important in the light of the fact that this may be, to our knowledge, a unique event in BPS history. Ideally, the panel should be made up of people from outside of the organisation completely. After all, the allegations against Dr MacLennan were of ‘bullying’ – this is a generic, non-organisation-specific behaviour. You don’t need to know about the arcane intricacies of the BPS to recognise bullying when you see it. Again, given the importance of being seen to do this correctly, it would be sensible to have someone who has considerable HR experience. Was this the case? No, it was formed of some (number unstated) of ‘…our most senior experienced colleagues…’. The fact is, however worthy and experienced, they are not independent of the BPS. This failure is also shown by asking the Chair of the Ethics Committee to act as the Responsible Person – who is accountable to and appointed by the Board. As an officer holder of a Standing Committee of the Board of Trustees, he is neither independent of the Board nor of the BPS. We assume (again, lack of detail makes this suppositional on our part) that he was completely distant from the everyday work of the Panel for otherwise he would be unable evaluate the evidence presented with fresh and neutral eyes.
It is stated by the BPS that
The process was also conducted throughout with the benefit of independent legal advice to give additional assurance that it was being carried out with propriety and fairness.
This could mean all manner of things. Given that the whole complaints process is muddled and inconsistent and would need an awful lot of (expensive) lawyers’ and consultants’ time to sort through and make sense of, we can only hope that the BPS see this is a good use of your subscriptions. But the point we are making is that even if the letter of law was followed to the last dotted i and crossed t this is not the same as ensuring that the overall process was seen to be just. In our view, it could not be.
We will continue to raise questions in Part 2, to be posted tomorrow (21 May 2021).
Peter Harvey, Pat Harvey and David Pilgrim
BPSWatch Editorial Collective.1 CommentBOARD OF TRUSTEES, EXPULSION OF PRESIDENT-ELECT, GOVERNANCE
The End of Membership Democracy in the BPS?
The campaign in the self-serving bunker at the centre of the BPS continues unabated. Its main character, which we have documented in our posts in the past few months, includes a number of strands. Some reflect the tactics of evasion and secrecy. They include complaints being ignored, as well as concerns (that are not complaints) being turned into complaints and sent into a rabbit hole. The complicit non-reporting of the crisis in ‘the magazine of the British Psychological Society’ has been a trusted management mechanism to keep members in the dark. Dictates have been sent out by ‘Trustees’ to Senate members to demand their silence in a comical pantomime of control freakery.
Other tactics have involved clear projection: a bullying and high-handed culture of management has accused its critics of being the bullies. The power asymmetry here between the parties is ignored but that acknowledgment would require a capacity for honest reflectiveness. Journalists just doing their job in a democracy have been threatened with legal action. By any standards of common sense and fair judgement, this precarious regime of power has had a probity bypass.
The most egregious example of this has been the ‘investigation’ and subsequent expulsion of the President Elect. His sin was to be open from the beginning about reforming the governance arrangements in an organisation which, for years, had flouted the normal expectations of charity law and good practice guidelines offered by the Charity Commission.
What price membership democracy?
The literal price of being in the BPS is known to its membership. For now, some of those fees are maintaining the high salary of a CEO who is still ‘out of the office’, so remains unable to fulfil his duties. Those in the bunker have told us nothing, so members are left to speculate.
In the few days that have elapsed since the expulsion of the President Elect was announced (in a scripted account – crafted by whom?), matters have deteriorated further. The unprecedented video from the ‘Interim Chair’ of the Board of Trustees was a callous public disparagement of the President Elect. Speaking from an office and role that, under Statute 20 of the Society, she still has no right to hold, her personalised career-threatening attack upon him remains on Youtube for the world to see.
This scandal now has worsened. A rapid election is to be held to replace the summarily deposed President-Elect before his appeal has even been heard. From well before he took office there were overt intentions to obstruct him wherever possible. We believe that there is evidence to support this that will be made public. Like the ‘investigation’ of the allegations against him this is a travesty. History will judge those responsible for deposing him, so this faux process of justice will peter out to its discreditable conclusion.
In case members are getting too excited about choosing someone new and untainted by what has gone before, they need to be prepared for a disappointment. This is the score. Only candidates from the current Board of Trustees or Senate members will be permitted to stand. This is the very group under whose ‘oversight’ the Charity Commission has become involved on an ongoing basis. There is an active police investigation into an alleged major fraud (watch this space next month). The self-same group from which the Vice-President resigned, citing issues about “…governance oversight, escalating expenditure and lack of openness and transparency…”, which he communicated to the Charity Commission. Former President, Professor Peter Kinderman, informs us that several years ago “…When I was President, I was routinely excluded from key decisions, was threatened with legal action over ‘fraud’ (I was completely exonerated, of course) and forced to resign (as Vice-President) for advocating for what is now effectively BPS policy…” .
What sort of real choice are members now given?
The candidate will be drawn from a pool of complicit individuals. They assume that everything in the garden is rosy and the much-vaunted £6 million Change Programme will supercharge the BPS, when the membership to date have been shown no substantive evidence to support this wishful thinking.
Meanwhile, for now, any vestige of membership democracy has been placed on indefinite hold. We can only hope that needed legal proceedings, active media interest and decisive action from the Charity Commission will, between them, resolve this sinister and shameful demise of the public face of psychology in the UK once and for all.
BPSWatch – Editorial CollectiveLeave a comment‘FALSE MEMORY SYNDROME’, MEMORY AND THE LAW GROUP
On memories of abuse….
The BBC website, the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail are all reporting on the trial of an alleged sexual abuser, the widow of a former High Court judge. All quote the following statement by the prosecuting QC
“He tried to bury away the memories and not to think about them”.
As is her right, we have no doubt every effort will be put into her defence, perhaps even involving the British False Memory Society.
How will any witnesses for the prosecution or the barristers involved be able to rely on a balanced, empirically based set of guidelines to argue against any claims that the accuser’s memories may be ‘recovered or false’? The short answer is that they won’t because ‘The BPS’, in its wisdom, has given up on any pretence to take this matter with the seriousness that it deserves by abandoning the revision of its Memory and The Law guidelines (see here).
We can only hope that the court is able to hear from a balanced and fully informed range of expert witnesses. It is shameful than none of the psychologists who may be in that position will be able to call on the backing and support of their professional society.
The BPSWatch Editorial CollectiveLeave a commentGOVERNANCE
The BPS is unfit for purpose
This was originally sent as a comment to our post ‘The Crisis deepens…’ We felt that it was important enough to stand on its own as a separate post.
TheBPSWatch Editorial Collective.
I am Professor David Marks, membership number 3829, a Chartered Member with FBPsS, currently a member of the Division of Health Psychology, previously a member of other groups and networks. I joined the BPS as a student in 1963. After completing a BSc and PhD I worked in universities in the UK and overseas carrying out teaching administration and research. I have practiced as a psychologist and worked as a consultant to multiple organisations within the NHS, industry and voluntary sectors. I served as Head of Department at two large Psychology Departments, firstly at Middlesex University, where I worked from 1986 to 2000, and then at City, University of London from 2000 to 2010. I founded two scholarly journals and, for 26 years, have served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Health Psychology
Based on my research publications, I was appointed to a BPS Fellowship in 1984. In the early 1990s, I was elected chair of the BPS Health Psychology Section, which was taken into Special Group status and subsequently to a Division. I was actively involved in the BPS accreditation of the first MSc awards in health psychology and the first Stage 2/doctoral training provision in the UK. I sat on various BPS boards and represented the BPS on international bodies. Over many years multiple elected and unelected BPS officers were well known to me and I counted many as personal friends.
It with sadness and regret that I believe that I must state my concerns about the Society, its organization, working practices and public outputs.
I am writing this comment in support of the recent blog postings on ‘BPSWatch’. I do not know and have never met any of the three authors. However I have read their postings and find myself in total agreement with the points they have been making. Rather than resign from the Society, which has crossed my mind on numerous occasions, I had always hoped that change could come from within. Now, seeing the total chaos that reigns, and the complete lack of transparency, accountability and honesty with members, I am strongly doubtful.
I can summarise my current thoughts on the BPS in four sentences:
1) The BPS is grossly failing the public good, its members, and the discipline of Psychology.
2) The current problems of the BPS cannot and will not be solved by tinkering with the system, as has been tried unsuccessfully on a frequent basis over several decades.
3) Only root-and-branch restructuring would be able to make the necessary changes to achieve the objects of its charter.
4) Sadly, I do not believe the BPS has the wherewithal to achieve the necessary structural reorganization that is called for.
The BPS website (https://www.bps.org.uk/about-us/who-we-are) states:
“The British Psychological Society is a registered charity responsible for the development, promotion and application of psychology for the public good.
Through our Royal Charter we are charged with overseeing psychology and psychologists in the UK, and we are governed by a number of democratically-elected boards and committees.”
My nearly 60-year long association with the BPS indicates to me that the BPS is woefully unfit for purpose. The BPS fails to meet its obligations as a registered charity. This fact is evidenced by the Society’s:
Ineffective governance
Lack of accountability
Lack of transparency
Institutional racism
Improper complaints procedures
Willful neglect of fraud and/or malpractice
In due course, unless I resign first, I will address each point on this and/or my own blog site at: https://davidfmarks.net/
David F Marks
5 May 20211 CommentBOARD OF TRUSTEES, FINANCIAL ISSUES, GOVERNANCE
Twenty Tough Questions for ‘the BPS’
Questions are coming thick and fast from colleagues new to the story of the crisis in the BPS. Of course, they are new to it because, amongst other things, the Board of Trustees (BoT) and Senior Management Team (SMT) have been secretive about the facts. In the past year nothing has appeared in The Psychologist (relevant note: ‘the magazine of the British Psychological Society’) to give the slightest hint of any organisational problems. The CEO’s monthly homilies petered out with no editorial explanation. The President, who has recently resigned, made absolutely no mention of the troubled state of the organisation in her final ‘reports’.
This blog and an increasing number of reputable journalists are now bringing into public gaze the extent of organisational dysfunction in the Society. We have been trying our best to do what the BPS has palpably failed to do in relation to transparency. However, we are not private detectives or forensic accountants and nor do we have the investigatory powers of the Charity Commission. The latter is hovering nearby, but to date it has not fully disclosed its intentions in relation to its ongoing ‘engagement’ with the BoT. Given the very large file of complaints against the Society, we are left wondering what will be the tipping point for them to announce a Statutory Inquiry.
The 20 questions that require answers
Here we raise some questions crossing our minds and those put to us by perplexed colleagues. Ipso facto, we cannot answer them definitively but we can pose them in good faith on behalf of the membership.
- Why is the CEO still in post and being paid (from membership fees) but ‘not in his office’?
2. The Finance Director left the Society abruptly just before Christmas last – what were the circumstances surrounding that departure?
3. Was the expelled President Elect genuinely allowed to conduct his duties and was he given access to information appropriate for that task?
4. Was there a deliberate strategy on the part of the BoT and SMT to marginalise and disempower him, given his election pledges to rectify governance problems in the Society?
5. Was there a large fraud conducted in the Society that is still being investigated by the police?
6. What recruitment checks were conducted on the person who was alleged to have committed the fraud?
7. Who appointed this person?
8. Was the arson attack on the Leicester office during this period of turmoil (unreported to the membership) linked in any way to the alleged fraud investigation?
9. Did the BPS report the arson to the Charity Commission, as it is supposed to do under their guidance?
10. Why did the SMT refuse to give the BoT access to critical information, about the £6 million ‘change programme’?
11. What oversight was the BoT providing of the SMT and how was the effectiveness or otherwise of that oversight assessed?
12. Did the BoT consider that its culture of information restriction, which we have experienced directly ourselves, reasonable for a membership organisation professing a value of openness and transparency?
13. Why did the BoT make public the alleged grounds for the expulsion of the President Elect in advance of his appeal?
14. How can the President Elect have a fair appeal, when it appears to have been already prejudiced?
15. In light of answers to the above questions, has the President Elect been subjected to a ‘kangaroo court’ or ‘show trial’?
16. Was there a planned and wilful campaign to remove the President Elect by the BoT and SMT, as both a radical reformer and a whistle blower, as soon as he was elected?
17. Have journalists making legitimate enquiries, about all of the above matters, been threatened with legal action by the BPS?
18. Had the Vice-President, who resigned citing concerns about finance and governance, already ensured that those concerns were reported fully to the Charity Commission?
19. The ACAS definition of bullying is this: “Offensive, intimidating, malicious or insulting behaviour, involving an abuse or misuse of power through means intended to undermine, humiliate, denigrate or injure the recipient.” Accordingly, does the action of broadcasting a video denouncing the President Elect constitute bullying by the BPS?
20. Finally, does the BoT now knowingly have a policy to ward off legitimate questions from members about governance matters, by alleging that the questioning, in of itself, constitutes bullying and harassment of BPS staff?
The final question is rhetorical; as victims of this tactic we can vouch that the answer is in the affirmative. Some of the questions on the list relate to criminal matters and others to aspects of due diligence and common decency. Ordinary members not only pose them now on reasonable grounds, but they deserve reasonable answers. The BoT have warded off the inconvenient truth surrounding the questions, using a mixture of silence, glib evasions, bureaucratic obfuscation and legal threats.
Is this how we expect a properly functioning learned organisation to operate, with its rhetorical adherence to the principle of openness and transparency? We ask readers to please send us any other questions that come to mind, which we might have missed from the above list. If we cannot answer them we can at least share them.
We will be posting some more detailed analyses of these questions over the course of the next couple of weeks.
The BPSWatch Editorial Collective
How much does the future of the BPS actually matter to you?
We began this blog and the associated Twitter feed because we were all extremely concerned about what we see as the misgoverance of an organisation that we gave our time and energy to over many years because we believed in what it stood for. What we have seen in recent years is an increasing distancing of those that run the BPS from its membership – as our posts and out tweets demonstrate. The recent expulsion of the President Elect exemplifies the parlous state of the BPS.
We have had some feedback from people who are of a similar opinion to us, some of which has appeared here, and it’s helpful to know that our concerns are shared by others. We have also had many informal comments of support either applauding our efforts or telling us of similar experiences with this failing organisation. Disturbingly, we have been told of those who, after working hard on behalf of the Society, have left feeling betrayed and traumatised by their experiences. More evidence that change is needed urgently.
But, and it is a big but, we are retired from practice and at are a distance from active involvement in the BPS. Frankly, whether it survives or not will have little practical impact on our lives professionally although its demise would cause us great sadness. But its continued existence as a thriving, member-led organisation which represents the best of UK psychological thinking and practice matters, perhaps never more so than now. Over the half-century that we have been psychologists we have seen such enormous strides made in how psychological practice has grown in maturity and relevance. Psychologist of all sorts and conditions are listened to with respect and can speak with authority. When we started out it was psychiatry that was seen as the ‘go-to’ source of expertise in matters psychological – no more. Psychologists can be proud of the strides that it have made over the years. And that process is almost entirely due to those psychologists, members of the BPS by-and-large, who were willing to spend time and energy to build the discipline, the profession and the BPS. That psychology has got to where it is today is due almost entirely to the hard work – often against the odds – of those who cared deeply and passionately about their discipline. They were not professional, go-anywhere managers – they were psychologists who believed in what psychology could do.
So this is a plea to all those of you who want to be represented by an organisation of which you can be proud. An organisation that reflects and promotes psychology to the benefit of all and of which membership can be seen as badge of honour. The BPS can be this – it is clearly not this right now. Its future cannot depend on the likes of us old codgers alone. It must involve those of you who are still out there, working as psychologists, on whose future the health of a thriving BPS is dependent. It is your responsibility more than ours.
This is a critical time for the BPS. The current ‘leadership’ is engaged in highly unprofessional actions for which they are not being held accountable. The BPS has no senior member-elected officers. The fact that the Charity Commission is heavily involved is a serious warning sign. There is a commitment of £6 million (yes, £6 million of your money) to an ill-specified and inadequately scrutinised change project. There is a £2 million loan (securitised against two BPS-owned properties) with no CFO or CEO in post to manage or oversee these vast financial commitments.
This needs you (yes, you) to act now. Be prepared to be rebuffed and ignored or accused of harassment if you express you concerns to the current BPS officials. Write to the Charity Commission with your comments. Read and contribute to the blog. Email the blog – BPSWatch@btinternet.com. Read and forward the Tweets – @psychsocwatchuk. Share your experience with others.
It’s your Society – and your responsibility to rescue it.
Peter Harvey2 CommentsEXPULSION OF PRESIDENT-ELECT
A challenge to the BPS narrative.
From the BPSWatch Editorial Collective…..
Since the inception of this blog we have had intermittent contact with the now expelled President Elect around matters of concern regarding what we believed were clearly signs of organisational misgovernance, irregularities and toxic culture at the BPS. These had been separately signposted to us individually when we had dealings with senior staff about a range of policy issues. We had become increasingly alarmed by the way we were ignored, brushed off, rebuked, and, as one of the recent threads on @psychsocwatchuk https://twitter.com/psychsocwatchuk/status/1401165572436602884?s=20 demonstrated, we had our correspondence closed down with implications, explicit or veiled, that we were harassing or bullying staff. During our exchanges with Dr. MacLennan over months, he indicated his growing belief that he would never be allowed to become President and that there were moves afoot to prevent that. Latterly he told us he was sure he would be suspended or expelled for persisting with challenging the current governance process and practice. This was, of course, his stated reason for standing to be elected. Members gave him their backing.
His appeal against expulsion remains unheard and there is another legal matter that remains sub judice so he cannot yet speak out in his own defence, despite all that has been said in print and on a Youtube video that he is a “bully”, deserving only expulsion.
We can say, without hesitation, that in the contacts the three of us have separately had with Dr. MacLennan, we have detected no signs in his manner or his expressed attitudes that he is disrespectful, aggressive or demeaning. And despite all the slights and insults he has received, he remains passionate in his commitment to making the BPS a better organisation. All three of us have had long careers as clinical psychologists, two of us with very significant forensic experience. We do not just take things at face value when there are conflicting views and narratives about individual behaviour.
Taken in that context, and with Dr. MacLennan unable to defend himself publicly at this stage, we are publishing verbatim a communication that we received from a friend and long-term colleague and collaborator of Dr. MacLennan. We have permission of the author who is happy to be named, and of Dr. MacLennan.
Good Morning,
I have recently been following your articles about Dr MacLennan on BPS Watch and feel your concerns.
I am not a member of the BPS and feel it would be inappropriate for me to pass comment on recent events, but I am a close friend of Nigel and have been horrified at his very public vilification because this is not the Nigel I recognise. While I have my own views, I recognise that there are two sides to every story and I only have one side, but I feel that I must tell you about my relationship with him and, in a sense, to defend him.
But first, a little bit about myself. I served for 30 years as a police officer with Surrey Police. Towards the end of my career I was seconded to the National Leadership Academy for Policing at Bramshill as a Programme Director to deliver programmes on the High Potential Development Scheme and the Senior Leadership Development Programme. While I have delivered all types of Leadership programmes and consultancy services across England, Wales and Northern Ireland (and to every public service) my core programmes were Managing Finance and Resources, Media Strategy (I developed the National Police Media Strategy in conjunction with the highly respected journalist Brian Morris), and Strategic Community Relations. I retired in 2005 and was retained as a consultant until 2015.
In 2012 I became the Honorary Secretary of the British Academy of Management Special Interest Group on Corporate Governance with a special interest in ethics and, in 2013, I became an Honorary Visiting Professor at London Metropolitan University Business School. This is when I met Nigel. With him, I have delivered talks to four Advances in Leadership Conferences, been a judge and Chairman of judges at national leadership awards, and have even delivered a talk at the last BPS conference. I have also worked with Nigel on a 9 month Leadership Development Programme for BAME officers in the Metropolitan Police Service. In my opinion, his skills and talents are without doubt.
As a former police officer, I tend to view people with suspicion until I can understand their motivations and I have never doubted Nigel’s motivations. As you are probably aware, he has had a glittering career working for blue chip companies and organisations such as the Chartered Management Institute and I have found his honesty and integrity beyond reproach. What I particularly liked about him was his assertiveness – he was not afraid to tell you how it is – and this is an in-demand skill for effective leaders. I have learnt many things from Nigel and have been quite happy when he has pointed out that I am wrong and, I hasten to add, vice versa. In my experience he has never strayed into aggressiveness – forceful yes, aggressive no. However, like me, he does struggle with obfuscation, and this can become a barrier to communication with certain people.
In short, I have always found Nigel to be competent, conscientious, a supreme coach and, above all, honest.
Kindest regards.
Graham Buchanan, BSc(Hons), NdipM, PGCE, CMgr FCMI, FRSALeave a comment“THE PSYCHOLOGIST”, BOARD OF TRUSTEES, EXPULSION OF PRESIDENT-ELECT, GOVERNANCE
The legitimation crisis and a membership denied answers
David Pilgrim posts….
Today, the concept of a ‘legitimation crisis’ can be applied clearly to the BPS. Although explored at length in a book with that title by Habermas (1974), many other social and political scientists have returned to the theme. This is about leadership regimes, which may notionally still retain power, but their strained credibility reflects an imminent or current breakdown in their actual authority. The cabal currently at the centre of the BPS is still in power but its credibility is in rapid decline. It lacks what Eric Fromm, in his book The Sane Society, called ‘rational authority’ and, instead, exercises power on its own terms in order to ward off the stream of criticism warranted. For Fromm this would be an expression of ‘irrational authority’.
On this blog we have been reporting the character and history of this crisis in recent months and each entry, such as this one, is a new take on an unprecedented state of affairs for the Society. The occasional flurry of criticism of rogue celebrity researchers, such as Cyril Burt (Joynson, 1988) or Hans Eysenck (Marks, 2018), barely dented the reputation of the BPS. Similarly, the spat between the Maudsley methodological behaviourists and their scorned psychodynamic colleagues from north of the Thames, in a struggle to control the Medical Section and its journal, led to a temporary closure of its business in 1958 (Pilgrim and Treacher, 1991). These small eruptions of doubt, that all was well in the BPS, pale into insignificance today. We have never seen anything like this, either in living memory or in the literature on the history of British psychology. Those past examples, looked at in the current context, are like comparing a bar room brawl with a military coup.
In meetings of the Board of Trustees today all of the Presidential triumvirate have gone, so it contains nobody elected from the general membership. Unelected Senior Management Team members now outnumber Trustees from the sub-systems. This trend is now amplified by the Board preventing members electing a replacement for the radically reforming President Elect, after expulsion from the Society, a cue for the next main point.
The public disparagement of Nigel MacLennan
The video released, vilifying the President Elect in advance of his appeal being submitted and heard, is a complete outrage. It offends our normal understanding of natural justice and leaves the Board of Trustees, who planned its production and dissemination on YouTube, open to the charge of unethical and possibly illegal activity. Are the Trustees so determined to crush this man’s reputation that they will simply ‘do anything that it takes’?
It is officially the position of the BPS (according to its own website for all to read) not to investigate individual members. However, does that claim fail to apply only when it is politically expedient for the interests of the incumbent leadership? Are the members seriously expected to believe that this has been anything but a ‘stitch up’ from start to finish? Was the investigation panel hand-picked by the Board of Trustees or not? How many on that panel were truly independent and without their own vested interest in the current regime of power? Were membership funds used liberally by the Board to hire legal advice in order to justify the scapegoating of a reformer, turned whistle blower? The questions go on and on. Some of them ultimately may be resolved in court but what is clear already is that Nigel MacLennan has not been treated in a fair manner, if we use everyday criteria of common sense and decency.
If the stitch up hypothesis is in doubt, look at how Carol McGuinness, in a follow-up document to that unedifying and ill-advised video, made it quite clear that even if Nigel MacLennan were to be re-instated on appeal, as a member of the Society, he would still not be permitted back to his role as the President Elect. This nothing-left-to-chance approach, reflecting the persecutory intent of the Board, sticks out like a sore thumb in this planned and vindictive attack on a man whose career has now suffered immediate detriment.
I can find no justification for this pre-emptive strike from McGuinness, on behalf the Board, within the Statutes and Rules. Does she offer no rule-based rationale in the script she is reading because one simply does not exist? This brings us back to Fromm’s notion of ‘irrational authority’. Those in power often do and say things, simply because they can. But do we have to believe this travesty of justice? And given that under Statute 20 of the Society, the Board should have been chaired on an interim basis by MacLennan not McGuinness, is there an Alice in Wonderland feel to this whole scenario?
We know that such a surreal quality can indeed emerge from group think, especially when it leads to scapegoating in order to create an illusion of homeostasis and harmony (Baron, 2005; Leyens et al. 2000). The warring factions of the SMT and the Trustees could take temporary comfort in a common enemy to be eliminated, but the facts of the crisis are still there, with or without the removal of MacLennan. Facts do not disappear because they are ignored conveniently by displacement activity or an ostrich stance.
Keeping the membership in the dark
If a making-the-rules-up-as-you-go-along approach to governance now characterises the workings of the cabal, then another supportive tactic has been information control. Nowhere has this been more obvious than in the silence in the pages of The Psychologist. An exception has been the printing of the statement about the expulsion of MacLennan from McGuinness (giving the BPS a free noticeboard posting without editorial comment or analysis), as well as the link to her video. No right of reply was offered to MacLennan. If this were a normal magazine it would reflect the normal rules of journalism and both sides of a story would have been offered, or at least taken into account.
However, this is not a normal magazine. For example, the political turbulence in the Society, should have warranted some commentary but none has been evident. Its inside cover reminds us every month that it is ‘…the magazine of the British Psychological Society…’. If this means that it obeys the contingent expectations of those running the BPS, then this is actually a fair and valid description. However, maybe members of the Society have broader expectations (such as it being a forum for free debate about the current legitimation crisis). Such expectations are indeed raised, conveniently, by the subsequent cover description ‘…It provides a forum for communication, discussion and controversy among all members of the Society…’. Has there been any actual sign of the latter, in practice, in the past turbulent year? Why are ordinary members still playing catch up about the financial scandal in the Society, the fat file of complaints being held by the Charity Commission and the expensive legal shenanigans to expel Nigel MacLennan?
During the crisis, the monthly column of the Chief Executive Officer suddenly disappeared without editorial comment, and we slowly became aware that he was ‘not in his office’ and his function was then taken on by his Deputy, Diane Ashby. And before the President, Hazel McLoughlin, also disappeared from the pages because she had resigned, citing family reasons, the content of her column revealed nothing to the membership of the chaos and tensions, which led to the resignation of the Vice President David Murphy. He explained on Twitter that this was because of his concerns about both governance and finance.
However, the role of this ‘magazine’ has not gone unquestioned. For example, here is a reply to Pat Harvey from the editor (12.12.20) responding to her criticism of The Psychologist failing to provide information of legitimate concern to the BPS membership:
We are not a ‘house journal’, we are a magazine. Our responsibility is not to speak for the Society or to align with any documents it might publish; it is to provide a forum for communication, discussion and controversy among members and beyond.
This restatement of the confusing and contradictory blurb, cited earlier from the inside cover of The Psychologist, does not cease to be confusing and contradictory simply because it is robotically restated. Does the membership deserve a better journalistic service, during the current legitimation crisis of the BPS, than this sort of vacuous rhetorical gambit? The supine post-it-board role offered by The Psychologist on behalf of the current BPS leadership, reminds us of one of many of Orwell’s dire warnings about democracy: ‘Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.’
The exchange between Pat Harvey and the editor of The Psychologist, Jon Sutton, did not end with the above restated confusion. She also wrote to the Chair of the Editorial Advisory Committee, Richard Stephens, starting with a complaint about the narrow and prejudicial role of The Psychologist, when being biddable and posting the offensive video. She made other criticisms of the magazine as well. This was the response she received from Stephens:
Thanks for your letter and for raising these concerns. I plan to table these for discussion at the next meeting of the Psychologist and Digest Editorial Advisory Committee on 24th June. I felt that your first raised point warranted some urgency of response so I discussed it today with our editor, Jon Sutton. Jon’s view was that while the video featuring Professor Carol McGuinness as Interim Chair of the Board of Trustee has been widely disseminated among BPS members, it is unlisted on YouTube. Given that The Psychologist has a much wider audience, Jon reflected that it’s inclusion in the piece “‘The Society is at a crossroads’” was not appropriate. On that basis the video has been removed. I will feedback in due course following our meeting on the 24th.
This is a small sign of good sense and fairness from Richard Stephens, although at the time of writing the video is still available on YouTube. Will this be the start of a period of genuine honest reflection from the Advisory Committee? Would the video have been removed had it not been for these critical questions from Pat Harvey? In my view, it seems as though those below the cabal level in the Society are very slowly waking up to the serious challenges that the legitimation crisis is posing for freedom of expression and balanced and open journalism in the future pages of The Psychologist. Elsewhere on the blog I have addressed the matter of censorship in the Society.
The ethical and legal culpability of the Trustees
The Charity Commission continues to work with the Society to bring it into ‘regulatory compliance’. This raises questions about the role of the Trustees in the recent past. How many of them (other than Nigel MacLennan), out of public interest, took their concerns about poor governance and financial irregularities to the Charity Commission or the press?
Many resignations have been evident in recent months, including the President and Vice President. Are they now prepared to offer a full and frank account to the membership of what happened in the Board, which went so badly wrong? This could be a starting point for the ‘root and branch’ reform now required, to reverse the demise of the organisation.
Will they admit that the conflicts of interest inherent to the current definition of a Board (which date back to a lack of specificity in the Royal Charter arrangements in 1988) have been routinely out of sync with current expectations of properly independent trustees in charities today? The current Board of Trustees is a sham because its members all have conflicts of interest and there are no outsiders from the Society to offer impartial oversight. Given the legitimation crisis, should the current Trustees at least own up to this basic fact, resign and insist on a properly constituted Board in line with Charity Commission expectations?
And if it turns out that the negligence, or worse, of some Trustees has cost the BPS dearly, will they be held liable for these costs, as Charity Commission regulations allow? Will BPS members now seek to hold Trustees liable for the seeming losses incurred to the Society, by their apparent lack of oversight? Will that liability also extend to those who resigned but were in place during that period of apparent lack of oversight (in legal terms this is called ‘legacy liability’)?
This particular legitimation crisis, like all others, never stops posing questions for democracy. We all (not just a few pushy malcontents) need to keep asking them. The passivity in our current zeitgeist about trying to influence events around us does not have to lead to fatalism. We can still challenge the cabal and the current shambles in the BPS, as this blog and Nigel MacLennan have already demonstrated. The more of us taking up this challenge, the less likely that victimisation will be seen and the more likely that the Society will be saved from its own self-inflicted wounds.
Baron, R. (2005). So right it’s wrong: Groupthink and the ubiquitous nature of polarized group decision making. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. 37: 35.
Habermas, J. (1974) Legitimation Crisis Boston: Beacon Press.
Joynson, R. B. (1989). The Burt Affair. New York: Routledge
Leyens, J. Ph., Paladino, M. P., Rodriguez, R. T., Vaes, J., Demoulin, S., Rodriguez, A. P., & Gaunt, R. (2000) The emotional side of prejudice: The attribution of secondary emotions to ingroups and outgroups. Personality and Social Psychology Review. 4, 2, 186–97.
Marks,D.F (2019) The Hans Eysenck affair: time to correct the scientific record Journal of Health Psychology 24, 4, 409–42.
Pilgrim, D. and Treacher, A. (1991) Clinical Psychology Observed London: Routledge.3 CommentsEXPULSION OF PRESIDENT-ELECT
Questioning the Expulsion – Part 3
Was the evidence sound?
As psychologists, from our very earliest years as bright-eyed, bushy-tailed undergraduates, we are used to dealing with evidence. We learn how to evaluate it, how to contextualise data, how to look in detail at the hypotheses, the method, the analyses. We are used to defining behavioural referents for concepts. Professional researchers carry on and refine this whilst practitioners hone their evidence-gathering skills through the interview rather than controlled trial and have to remain alert to their own biases as well as to the inevitable and understandable one-person perspective of their client. Perhaps we could characterise all these approaches as one of benign scepticism, always open to correction the face of new data. We are assured the BPS commissioned external investigations (presumably at the expense of member subscriptions – will the total cost of all this appear in the audited accounts?) into the allegations and their findings were a central part of the case against Dr MacLennan. All well and good and superficially follows due process. But it raises an important set of questions. As outlined in Part 2, we suggest that Dr MacLennan’s arrival may have heralded an unwelcome intrusion for some in the organisation. Perhaps they had already formed an opinion of him and his reformist zeal and put the shutters up in advance. They were, perhaps, primed to view him as the ‘enemy’. Perhaps Dr MacLennan’s enthusiasm and energy was seen as ‘over the top’. Perhaps he felt he had to be assertive in the face of what he saw, rightly or wrongly, as intransigence and unhelpfulness – and, of course, assertion is not the same as bullying. We ourselves have been subject to veiled accusations of harassment and bullying, simply because we refused to stop asking questions when legitimate requests for information or clarification were denied (an experience not unique to us). So we would ask how many respondents in the data-gathering exercise actually used the word ‘bullying’? What overt, identifiable behaviours of ‘bullying’ did Dr MacLennan show? And, most importantly, what was the criterion used by any of those involved into what constituted ‘bullying’, especially as there are well-documented definitions available? These interactions presumably took place during the COVID epidemic and in many cases could not have involved an intimidating physical presence. How did the Panel account for the potentially distorting effects of conversations being mediated by technology?
Was the sanction proportionate?
The BPS is clear on the three sanctions available to the Responsible Person (and note here that in the long and highly detailed justification issued by the BPS it contradicts itself saying that the Panel recommended the sanction in one place and that the Responsible Person made the decision, acting on the evidence provided by the Panel in another passage – which was it BPS?). He chose the most serious of the three – immediate expulsion. We have no information as to how he reached that decision other than that it is stated that he was presented with the Panel’s findings – minus, of course, any input from Dr MacLennan. That last point raises the question as to whether, in the light of the possible consequences, he might have thought it advisable, at the very least, to check with Dr MacLennan that he had nothing to contribute. The relevant paragraph of the BPS statement is this
The member conduct process involved a careful review of sanctions applied in other similar cases and in relation to the conduct that might reasonably be expected of a member of this standing and experience.
We are in uncharted territory here as we, as mere members, don’t have access to any data about the outcome of any disciplinary process (which may or may not exist) since part of it was outsourced to the HCPC. In the days when the BPS did take this responsibility seriously, the outcome of investigations was published in The Psychologist. Looking at the statement above, we have no idea as to how many similar cases there have been and we have no idea of how many members have been expelled – and, of crucial importance, for what offences were they deprived of society membership. We have already noted the ‘proportionality’ of sanctions in the light of previous cases and we really do need to know what offences committed by (now ex-) members resulted in expulsion. We are left with the highly general and completely subjective judgement (made by one person) as to what he might reasonably expect of a member of standing. And as we have already noted, he is the Chair of a Standing Committee of the Board of Trustees.
We would also ask how he judged the possible consequences of his decisions on all those involved – particularly on the person who is most affected – Dr MacLennan. We understand that he runs his own business and is more dependent than many psychologists on being able to attract clients – they do pay his income quite directly. He has not only been deprived of his BPS membership – this action, compounded and magnified by the subsequent barrage of publicity will cause enormous reputational damage and may well cost him his livelihood. Did the RP take this into account at all?
In a final act of this grossly public humiliation, we are told by ‘the BPS’
If Professor MacLennan has his membership reinstated on appeal, he would not automatically reassume his role as trustee and President Elect, although he would be eligible for re-election to the Board in line with its usual procedures. The BPS constitution provides mechanisms for filling vacancies on the board and these must be followed. These procedures do not include an option for the board to choose to reinstate Professor MacLennan (as President or President Elect) if his appeal is successful.
This is saying that the BPS can overturn the democratic process ‘just because it can’ – and we are sure that many members would value a sight of the rules that allow this. Should Dr MacLennan be cleared of all charges, then how can the BPS justify not reinstating him to his democratically elected post? He has been expelled from membership the Society, the consequence of which is the loss of his position. Reinstatement of his membership should, therefore, mean being able to take up the post to which he is entitled. This looks very much like a small group within the BPS doing its absolute utmost to ensure that Dr MacLennan never becomes President.
Was the video absolutely necessary?
Many of you, like us, will have been shocked by the lengths to which the BPS has gone to justify itself and to ensure the widest possible coverage of this unfortunate affair – before the appeal has even been heard. Five closely typed pages, one video (now on YouTube), all going into the grisly and hurtful accusations of a case that has yet to reach its lawful conclusion. This stands in complete contradistinction to the following; the fact that the CEO is out of his office about which the members have been told nothing (not even the fact of it); the police investigation about which the members have been told nothing (not even the fact of it); that the Charity Commission is engaged with the Society about which it needed a bunch of “malcontents” and the resignation of the Vice-President for the BPS to even acknowledge. These are critical issues for the membership as a whole and could have easily been communicated to us in a way that did not prejudice any legal investigations. So what’s the difference, BPS? Why go in to the sort of supposed detail that is career-wrecking when a simple holding statement would have sufficed? Looks a lot like the actions of a bully to us.
Where from here?
We hope that our highlighting of the issues that we think to be of importance has, at the least, piqued your interest. Perhaps we could encourage you to look further into the workings of your Society – the minutes of the Board of Trustees is a good place to start as much for what it doesn’t say as to what it does. If you are a member of the Senate (a body, as far as we can tell, without Terms of Reference) or know one of the Trustees, perhaps you could ask some questions – and be prepared to fobbed off or accused of harassment. If you have social media links to other colleagues who care about our Society’s future then get involved by spreading the word.
We will do our best to keep you up to speed as far as we are able.
Peter Harvey, Pat Harvey and David Pilgrim
BPSWatch Editorial Collective.1 CommentEXPULSION OF PRESIDENT-ELECT
Questioning the Expulsion – Part 2
Were both sides heard fairly?
The statements from the BPS make the observation that Dr MacLennan declined to present evidence to support his case despite repeated requests. We are at a loss understand this as it is presented. We could speculate that Dr MacLennan might chose to distance himself from a process that he might believe to be illegitimate and be biased against him and that, by co-operating, he would add spurious validity to it. However, it is a surprise that, in view of the seriousness of the issue for him on a personal and professional level, it is implied that he made no efforts to defend himself robustly. We would ask, therefore, whether he was given due time to collect together all the evidence he might need? Was he able to access all available material that would be necessary, such as privileged communications to which he as an office-holder, would be entitled? What efforts were made by either the Panel or the Responsible Person to find our why he would choose to take this course of action? Was the RP able to satisfy himself that Dr MacLennan did not wish to defend himself in the dock?
Was it a level playing field from the outset?
We can have some idea of how the BPS views complaints from this extract from the Minutes of the Board of Trustees meeting in December 2020
“This year has seen a trend for the potential misuse of the complaints process, where it has been used to express a difference of opinion or dissatisfaction with a consultation outcome.The volume of complaints is a strategic risk for the Society and was considered at the Risk Committee.”
Clearly, complaints about the running of the Society are unwelcoming intrusions rather than a learning experience, a risk to be managed. Whilst is it easy to fob off the ordinary member with tactics such as simply not responding, not answering questions or crudely cutting off debate, when an elected officer, who will be an integral part of the organisation arrives, different tactics will be required.
It was very clear from his election statement that Dr MacLennan was a man on a mission – a mission to overhaul the BPS. His successful election (44% of votes cast) must have given him some confidence that he was doing the right thing. His experience, and that of others who he canvassed and supported him, was enough for him to believe that reform was an absolute necessity. We have no doubt that this energy translated into an enthusiasm and diligence to find out, in greater detail, about the mechanics of how the BPS worked (or, more importantly, how it didn’t work). We have no doubt that for some in the organisation this was a significant threat. We have already noted that the BPS had serious problems well before his election and that many people who were meant to have formal oversight of the organisation had – at the very least – taken their individual and collective eyes off the ball (including the Trustees). To support this assertion we can do no more than to quote part of the resignation tweet of Professor David Murphy, lately Vice-President (and therefore a Trustee during his period as President-Elect and President) which identified
“…governance oversight, escalating expenditure and lack of openness and transparency…”
as one trigger for his leaving. And that of Past President, Professor Peter Kinderman
“…When I was President, I was routinely excluded from key decisions, was threatened with legal action over ‘fraud’ (I was completely exonerated, of course) and forced to resign (as Vice-President) for advocating for what is now effectively BPS policy…”
So we know, from two very senior past office holders, that there were significant problems well before Dr MacLennan was propelled into the scene. And remember that Professor Kinderman was in post for the two years 2015-2017 (until his forced resignation) and Professor Murphy for the years 2018 – 2021. We also know, from the minutes of the Board of Trustees meeting in December 2020, that some Trustees themselves were anxious enough about the Society to support
“…a wider discussion in relation to a governance review and stressed the urgency of moving forward with this action…”
Bear in mind also that the Leicestershire police are investigating an allegation of a major financial fraud within the Society. So we have a picture of an organisation that is clearly dysfunctional and under scrutiny and had been so for some considerable period of time. Is it any wonder that some within the organisation, both staff and volunteers, may have felt more than a twinge of anxiety at the arrival of an avowed new broom? We would suggest that in the light of all this, the BPS bureaucracy was on the defensive. This not only might have influenced the trigger for the investigation, it may have influenced its course.
The third and final post will appear tomorrow, Saturday 22 May 2021.
Peter Harvey, Pat Harvey and David Pilgrim
BPSWatch Editorial Collective.Leave a commentEXPULSION OF PRESIDENT-ELECT
Questioning the Expulsion – Part 1
This is the first of three posts looking closely at the recent expulsion of the Present-Elect. We will be asking a series of questions about both the process and outcome, identifying what we see as major deficiencies which highlight, in stark detail, the issues which we have been raising about the sorry state of our organisation. Much of this is speculation and informed guesswork, some generalising from our own experiences because, despite the mass of defensive information coming from the BPS there are many serious omissions and obfuscations.
So, to begin at the beginning.
Can we trust the overall process?
Before we get into the fine detail, let’s step back and cast an eye over the disciplinary process itself. We would remind you that in the Complaints FAQs on the BPS website there is the following statement
The Society does not have a function to investigate complaints against its members…
This, of course, is in complete contradiction to the various statements in the Member Conduct Rules which do outline such a function. If it were sentient, the complaints process would be in a serious existential crisis.
We must also remember that we have been told, by the Acting CEO, that the Society is undertaking a root-and-branch review of the whole of the complaints procedure. To put it at its mildest, this suggests that all is not well with the process, whether it actually exists or not.
In addition, we must also ask who actually made the decision to pursue this complaint against the President-Elect. Again, to remind you, the CEO is still ‘out of the office’; there is no CFO; the President has resigned; the Vice-President has also resigned citing failures of governance amongst his reasons for going; we have an “Interim Chair” of the Board of Trustees (presumably this same Board that is accused of the aforementioned governance failures); an acting CEO who is, presumably, involved in the issues raised by the President-Elect. So the question remains, who decided? Was it the full Board of Trustees or some select subgroup of the willing? Was the complete (if depleted, of course, due to resignations) Board given full and unredacted information about the reasons for this course of action and its possible consequences? Who chose the Panel members and the Responsible Person? Did the Board as a whole and unanimously sign all this off?
In view of the serious and unusual nature of this whole business – disciplining the only remaining elected senior officer of the Society must surely rate as out-of-the-ordinary – and the fact that this would be subject to more than the usual degree of scrutiny from the membership and the outside world, one might hope (perhaps, vainly, expect) that the BPS would go to some lengths to show that justice would not only be done, but would be seen to be done. It should be a shining example of how to do things right. This takes on a particular relevance in the light of the current application to the Professional Standards Authority where matters of monitoring and managing professional standards (the clue is in the name) are paramount.
We argue and will, we hope, show that the whole process, from start to finish, is fatally flawed and itself brings the BPS into disrepute.
How “independent” is independent?
The various self-exculpatory outpourings of the BPS make great play of the ‘independence’ of the investigation. What does that mean to you? To us it suggests – at the very least – that whoever is carrying out the investigation is as far removed from both the current and past history of the BPS as possible. This is not just a matter of not being a Trustee or a member of the SMT. Many of the problems and issues identified by us and by others pre-date the election of Dr MacLennan by many years. Indeed, as we will see later, at least one past President identified serious problems as did the now-resigned Vice-President who had been in post (President-Elect, President) for two years prior to his abandonment of the sinking ship. So any properly constituted investigatory panel should comprise people untainted by previous appointments as Trustees or as senior post-holders with the BPS. This seems to be particularly important in the light of the fact that this may be, to our knowledge, a unique event in BPS history. Ideally, the panel should be made up of people from outside of the organisation completely. After all, the allegations against Dr MacLennan were of ‘bullying’ – this is a generic, non-organisation-specific behaviour. You don’t need to know about the arcane intricacies of the BPS to recognise bullying when you see it. Again, given the importance of being seen to do this correctly, it would be sensible to have someone who has considerable HR experience. Was this the case? No, it was formed of some (number unstated) of ‘…our most senior experienced colleagues…’. The fact is, however worthy and experienced, they are not independent of the BPS. This failure is also shown by asking the Chair of the Ethics Committee to act as the Responsible Person – who is accountable to and appointed by the Board. As an officer holder of a Standing Committee of the Board of Trustees, he is neither independent of the Board nor of the BPS. We assume (again, lack of detail makes this suppositional on our part) that he was completely distant from the everyday work of the Panel for otherwise he would be unable evaluate the evidence presented with fresh and neutral eyes.
It is stated by the BPS that
The process was also conducted throughout with the benefit of independent legal advice to give additional assurance that it was being carried out with propriety and fairness.
This could mean all manner of things. Given that the whole complaints process is muddled and inconsistent and would need an awful lot of (expensive) lawyers’ and consultants’ time to sort through and make sense of, we can only hope that the BPS see this is a good use of your subscriptions. But the point we are making is that even if the letter of law was followed to the last dotted i and crossed t this is not the same as ensuring that the overall process was seen to be just. In our view, it could not be.
We will continue to raise questions in Part 2, to be posted tomorrow (21 May 2021).
Peter Harvey, Pat Harvey and David Pilgrim
BPSWatch Editorial Collective.1 CommentBOARD OF TRUSTEES, EXPULSION OF PRESIDENT-ELECT, GOVERNANCE
The End of Membership Democracy in the BPS?
The campaign in the self-serving bunker at the centre of the BPS continues unabated. Its main character, which we have documented in our posts in the past few months, includes a number of strands. Some reflect the tactics of evasion and secrecy. They include complaints being ignored, as well as concerns (that are not complaints) being turned into complaints and sent into a rabbit hole. The complicit non-reporting of the crisis in ‘the magazine of the British Psychological Society’ has been a trusted management mechanism to keep members in the dark. Dictates have been sent out by ‘Trustees’ to Senate members to demand their silence in a comical pantomime of control freakery.
Other tactics have involved clear projection: a bullying and high-handed culture of management has accused its critics of being the bullies. The power asymmetry here between the parties is ignored but that acknowledgment would require a capacity for honest reflectiveness. Journalists just doing their job in a democracy have been threatened with legal action. By any standards of common sense and fair judgement, this precarious regime of power has had a probity bypass.
The most egregious example of this has been the ‘investigation’ and subsequent expulsion of the President Elect. His sin was to be open from the beginning about reforming the governance arrangements in an organisation which, for years, had flouted the normal expectations of charity law and good practice guidelines offered by the Charity Commission.
What price membership democracy?
The literal price of being in the BPS is known to its membership. For now, some of those fees are maintaining the high salary of a CEO who is still ‘out of the office’, so remains unable to fulfil his duties. Those in the bunker have told us nothing, so members are left to speculate.
In the few days that have elapsed since the expulsion of the President Elect was announced (in a scripted account – crafted by whom?), matters have deteriorated further. The unprecedented video from the ‘Interim Chair’ of the Board of Trustees was a callous public disparagement of the President Elect. Speaking from an office and role that, under Statute 20 of the Society, she still has no right to hold, her personalised career-threatening attack upon him remains on Youtube for the world to see.
This scandal now has worsened. A rapid election is to be held to replace the summarily deposed President-Elect before his appeal has even been heard. From well before he took office there were overt intentions to obstruct him wherever possible. We believe that there is evidence to support this that will be made public. Like the ‘investigation’ of the allegations against him this is a travesty. History will judge those responsible for deposing him, so this faux process of justice will peter out to its discreditable conclusion.
In case members are getting too excited about choosing someone new and untainted by what has gone before, they need to be prepared for a disappointment. This is the score. Only candidates from the current Board of Trustees or Senate members will be permitted to stand. This is the very group under whose ‘oversight’ the Charity Commission has become involved on an ongoing basis. There is an active police investigation into an alleged major fraud (watch this space next month). The self-same group from which the Vice-President resigned, citing issues about “…governance oversight, escalating expenditure and lack of openness and transparency…”, which he communicated to the Charity Commission. Former President, Professor Peter Kinderman, informs us that several years ago “…When I was President, I was routinely excluded from key decisions, was threatened with legal action over ‘fraud’ (I was completely exonerated, of course) and forced to resign (as Vice-President) for advocating for what is now effectively BPS policy…” .
What sort of real choice are members now given?
The candidate will be drawn from a pool of complicit individuals. They assume that everything in the garden is rosy and the much-vaunted £6 million Change Programme will supercharge the BPS, when the membership to date have been shown no substantive evidence to support this wishful thinking.
Meanwhile, for now, any vestige of membership democracy has been placed on indefinite hold. We can only hope that needed legal proceedings, active media interest and decisive action from the Charity Commission will, between them, resolve this sinister and shameful demise of the public face of psychology in the UK once and for all.
BPSWatch – Editorial CollectiveLeave a comment‘FALSE MEMORY SYNDROME’, MEMORY AND THE LAW GROUP
On memories of abuse….
The BBC website, the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail are all reporting on the trial of an alleged sexual abuser, the widow of a former High Court judge. All quote the following statement by the prosecuting QC
“He tried to bury away the memories and not to think about them”.
As is her right, we have no doubt every effort will be put into her defence, perhaps even involving the British False Memory Society.
How will any witnesses for the prosecution or the barristers involved be able to rely on a balanced, empirically based set of guidelines to argue against any claims that the accuser’s memories may be ‘recovered or false’? The short answer is that they won’t because ‘The BPS’, in its wisdom, has given up on any pretence to take this matter with the seriousness that it deserves by abandoning the revision of its Memory and The Law guidelines (see here).
We can only hope that the court is able to hear from a balanced and fully informed range of expert witnesses. It is shameful than none of the psychologists who may be in that position will be able to call on the backing and support of their professional society.
The BPSWatch Editorial CollectiveLeave a commentGOVERNANCE
The BPS is unfit for purpose
This was originally sent as a comment to our post ‘The Crisis deepens…’ We felt that it was important enough to stand on its own as a separate post.
TheBPSWatch Editorial Collective.
I am Professor David Marks, membership number 3829, a Chartered Member with FBPsS, currently a member of the Division of Health Psychology, previously a member of other groups and networks. I joined the BPS as a student in 1963. After completing a BSc and PhD I worked in universities in the UK and overseas carrying out teaching administration and research. I have practiced as a psychologist and worked as a consultant to multiple organisations within the NHS, industry and voluntary sectors. I served as Head of Department at two large Psychology Departments, firstly at Middlesex University, where I worked from 1986 to 2000, and then at City, University of London from 2000 to 2010. I founded two scholarly journals and, for 26 years, have served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Health Psychology
Based on my research publications, I was appointed to a BPS Fellowship in 1984. In the early 1990s, I was elected chair of the BPS Health Psychology Section, which was taken into Special Group status and subsequently to a Division. I was actively involved in the BPS accreditation of the first MSc awards in health psychology and the first Stage 2/doctoral training provision in the UK. I sat on various BPS boards and represented the BPS on international bodies. Over many years multiple elected and unelected BPS officers were well known to me and I counted many as personal friends.
It with sadness and regret that I believe that I must state my concerns about the Society, its organization, working practices and public outputs.
I am writing this comment in support of the recent blog postings on ‘BPSWatch’. I do not know and have never met any of the three authors. However I have read their postings and find myself in total agreement with the points they have been making. Rather than resign from the Society, which has crossed my mind on numerous occasions, I had always hoped that change could come from within. Now, seeing the total chaos that reigns, and the complete lack of transparency, accountability and honesty with members, I am strongly doubtful.
I can summarise my current thoughts on the BPS in four sentences:
1) The BPS is grossly failing the public good, its members, and the discipline of Psychology.
2) The current problems of the BPS cannot and will not be solved by tinkering with the system, as has been tried unsuccessfully on a frequent basis over several decades.
3) Only root-and-branch restructuring would be able to make the necessary changes to achieve the objects of its charter.
4) Sadly, I do not believe the BPS has the wherewithal to achieve the necessary structural reorganization that is called for.
The BPS website (https://www.bps.org.uk/about-us/who-we-are) states:
“The British Psychological Society is a registered charity responsible for the development, promotion and application of psychology for the public good.
Through our Royal Charter we are charged with overseeing psychology and psychologists in the UK, and we are governed by a number of democratically-elected boards and committees.”
My nearly 60-year long association with the BPS indicates to me that the BPS is woefully unfit for purpose. The BPS fails to meet its obligations as a registered charity. This fact is evidenced by the Society’s:
Ineffective governance
Lack of accountability
Lack of transparency
Institutional racism
Improper complaints procedures
Willful neglect of fraud and/or malpractice
In due course, unless I resign first, I will address each point on this and/or my own blog site at: https://davidfmarks.net/
David F Marks
5 May 20211 CommentBOARD OF TRUSTEES, FINANCIAL ISSUES, GOVERNANCE
Twenty Tough Questions for ‘the BPS’
Questions are coming thick and fast from colleagues new to the story of the crisis in the BPS. Of course, they are new to it because, amongst other things, the Board of Trustees (BoT) and Senior Management Team (SMT) have been secretive about the facts. In the past year nothing has appeared in The Psychologist (relevant note: ‘the magazine of the British Psychological Society’) to give the slightest hint of any organisational problems. The CEO’s monthly homilies petered out with no editorial explanation. The President, who has recently resigned, made absolutely no mention of the troubled state of the organisation in her final ‘reports’.
This blog and an increasing number of reputable journalists are now bringing into public gaze the extent of organisational dysfunction in the Society. We have been trying our best to do what the BPS has palpably failed to do in relation to transparency. However, we are not private detectives or forensic accountants and nor do we have the investigatory powers of the Charity Commission. The latter is hovering nearby, but to date it has not fully disclosed its intentions in relation to its ongoing ‘engagement’ with the BoT. Given the very large file of complaints against the Society, we are left wondering what will be the tipping point for them to announce a Statutory Inquiry.
The 20 questions that require answers
Here we raise some questions crossing our minds and those put to us by perplexed colleagues. Ipso facto, we cannot answer them definitively but we can pose them in good faith on behalf of the membership.
- Why is the CEO still in post and being paid (from membership fees) but ‘not in his office’?
2. The Finance Director left the Society abruptly just before Christmas last – what were the circumstances surrounding that departure?
3. Was the expelled President Elect genuinely allowed to conduct his duties and was he given access to information appropriate for that task?
4. Was there a deliberate strategy on the part of the BoT and SMT to marginalise and disempower him, given his election pledges to rectify governance problems in the Society?
5. Was there a large fraud conducted in the Society that is still being investigated by the police?
6. What recruitment checks were conducted on the person who was alleged to have committed the fraud?
7. Who appointed this person?
8. Was the arson attack on the Leicester office during this period of turmoil (unreported to the membership) linked in any way to the alleged fraud investigation?
9. Did the BPS report the arson to the Charity Commission, as it is supposed to do under their guidance?
10. Why did the SMT refuse to give the BoT access to critical information, about the £6 million ‘change programme’?
11. What oversight was the BoT providing of the SMT and how was the effectiveness or otherwise of that oversight assessed?
12. Did the BoT consider that its culture of information restriction, which we have experienced directly ourselves, reasonable for a membership organisation professing a value of openness and transparency?
13. Why did the BoT make public the alleged grounds for the expulsion of the President Elect in advance of his appeal?
14. How can the President Elect have a fair appeal, when it appears to have been already prejudiced?
15. In light of answers to the above questions, has the President Elect been subjected to a ‘kangaroo court’ or ‘show trial’?
16. Was there a planned and wilful campaign to remove the President Elect by the BoT and SMT, as both a radical reformer and a whistle blower, as soon as he was elected?
17. Have journalists making legitimate enquiries, about all of the above matters, been threatened with legal action by the BPS?
18. Had the Vice-President, who resigned citing concerns about finance and governance, already ensured that those concerns were reported fully to the Charity Commission?
19. The ACAS definition of bullying is this: “Offensive, intimidating, malicious or insulting behaviour, involving an abuse or misuse of power through means intended to undermine, humiliate, denigrate or injure the recipient.” Accordingly, does the action of broadcasting a video denouncing the President Elect constitute bullying by the BPS?
20. Finally, does the BoT now knowingly have a policy to ward off legitimate questions from members about governance matters, by alleging that the questioning, in of itself, constitutes bullying and harassment of BPS staff?
The final question is rhetorical; as victims of this tactic we can vouch that the answer is in the affirmative. Some of the questions on the list relate to criminal matters and others to aspects of due diligence and common decency. Ordinary members not only pose them now on reasonable grounds, but they deserve reasonable answers. The BoT have warded off the inconvenient truth surrounding the questions, using a mixture of silence, glib evasions, bureaucratic obfuscation and legal threats.
Is this how we expect a properly functioning learned organisation to operate, with its rhetorical adherence to the principle of openness and transparency? We ask readers to please send us any other questions that come to mind, which we might have missed from the above list. If we cannot answer them we can at least share them.
We will be posting some more detailed analyses of these questions over the course of the next couple of weeks.
The BPSWatch Editorial Collective
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