Today’s banner:
Girl on the bridge,
The Mound, Sutherland,
by Islay McLeod
The report on the Hillsborough disaster reveals that 164 police statements were altered, 116 of them to remove or amend ‘unfavourable’ comments about the policing of the match and officers’ actions as the tragedy unfolded. This was part of an attempt to construct a narrative of the event that sought to attribute blame to the victims – a strategy that a leader in the Scotsman described as ‘a grotesque abuse of power and authority’.
When David Cameron gave an account of the findings in the House of Commons, even cynical old political hacks gasped with shock at the extent of the betrayal of the principles of truth and justice which the police are expected to uphold. The reverberations are likely to continue for some time, with the re-opening of the inquests on the 96 deaths, the possibility of a charge of corporate manslaughter against South Yorkshire police and individual officers being subject to criminal charges or allegations of professional misconduct.
This was clearly an extreme example of institutional deception, but I want to argue that a key aspect of it – the deliberate falsification of the written record – is merely one end of a linguistic spectrum that can be seen in many other organisations. Words are important. Those who construct the language in which events are recorded possess a significant form of power. There is always a temptation that they will seek to promote accounts that reflect well on themselves and avoid any interpretation that may reflect badly on the organisation that they represent.
Let me give some examples, ranging from the relatively minor to those that are much more serious. Minutes of meetings are generally written in a fairly bland, ‘factual’ style. When approved, they become the official record of what happened, but they are sometimes more significant for what they conceal rather than what they reveal. For instance, they are unlikely to capture the emotions or strength of feeling that may have surfaced at the meeting which they ostensibly summarise. If one of the participants in debate were to produce an alternative minute, it may give quite a different impression of what took place. The narrative privilege of managers generally ensures that nothing too controversial is allowed to creep into the final version.
Similar tendencies can be seen in the annual reports of private companies and public organisations. The story they tell is invariably one in which successes are highlighted and problems played down. Statistics and financial projections can be configured in ways that support the textual claims. The modern trend in such documents is to have attractive graphics, smiling photographs of senior staff and plenty of white space between sections of text – all helping to draw attention away from the substance.
Move up a notch on the misrepresentation scale and you have the reports of internal inquiries intended to placate and reassure. Think of the initial reactions of health boards to complaints about the standards of nursing care: too often bureaucratic containment is the preferred option. The same response has been seen in the armed forces following the unexplained deaths of soldiers in training: there has been a marked reluctance to take seriously parental concerns that bullying may have been a factor.
Less dramatic cases can also be cited to illustrate the pattern of institutional cover-up. In the course of my career I had some involvement in the mergers of universities and colleges. Mergers are always difficult but one was especially problematic. A senior manager was tasked with producing a progress report. His account was regarded as a whitewash and was overwhelmingly rejected in a vote by staff, an outcome that seriously displeased the university principal. A subsequent external report confirmed that there were major issues which had not been addressed effectively.
We might expect better of churches but here too distortion is evident. The disgraceful treatment of Helen Percy, a Church of Scotland minister, is recounted in her book ‘Scandalous Immoral and Improper: the trial of Helen Percy’. Harry Reid, reviewing the book, describes the episode as ‘a protracted saga of institutional bullying, legalistic nastiness and bureaucratic obfuscation which was devoid of compassion and replete with pompous puffed-up sanctimony’.
Official reactions to the many cases of child abuse within the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, Ireland and elsewhere reveal a similar preoccupation with defending the institutional church at the expense of the victims. A major part of this involved re-writing, concealing or destroying important documents. The lawyer who was engaged by the church to defend the first priest prosecuted in the USA, and whose own faith as a Catholic was undermined by the attitudes he encountered from bishops and cardinals, has written a compelling novel based on his experiences: ‘In God’s House’ by Ray Mouton.
Historians will be well aware of the important interpretative implications arising from these examples. Too much emphasis on official documentary ‘evidence’ can be misleading. If the record has been systematically constructed in such a way as to serve the interests of those at the top of an organisation, and omit or misrepresent material that might point in another direction, its value as a source is seriously diminished. At the very least, it needs to be set against other forms of evidence such as the accounts of individuals working at different levels of the organisation. There has been a tendency, in the past, to undervalue personal testimony and disparage it as ‘anecdotal’. In certain circumstances it may provide a more accurate insight than laundered reports given an institutional stamp of approval.
In their quest for justice, the survivors of the Hillsborough disaster and the relatives of those who died have not only righted a wrong that has caused them anguish for 23 years. Their courage and persistence, and the diligence of the inquiry team, have alerted us to a practice that can be seen in many other contexts – the abuse of language to conceal the truth. All official narratives, no matter how ‘respectable’ their provenance, should be subjected to sharp critical interrogation.
Walter Humes held professorships at the universities of Aberdeen, Strathclyde and West of Scotland and is now a visiting professor
of education at the University of Stirling
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