I would rarely differ from George Monbiot but I will here because I think he is probably wrong, and I am probably right.
In his piece in The Guardian yesterday George essentially writes what people were saying a week ago – that the RSPB caved in to political pressure and one of their trustees, with a right-wing think-tank background, was probably to blame, when they apologised for a very striking and outspoken tweet.
I wrote about this last week and I don’t feel disposed to change my mind after a week passing. There are two reasons why I think George is wrong – first, the RSPB hadn’t made up its mind to send out that tweet, it was someone in RSPB who didn’t have the power to make such decisions who put out the tweet and second, it would be a very odd charity where a single trustee had much power and influence over things – it is the trustee body as a whole, with its Chair, that has that power.
When Beccy Speight, the RSPB CEO, was quizzed on Today last week she clearly wasn’t keen to admit that the tweet had popped out without being sanctioned by higher management but she did. She wouldn’t have been keen to admit it for two reasons, First, it means telling the world that you haven’t got a vice-like grip on the actions of c2000 staff and CEOs would like the world to think that corporate discipline is high in their organisation (and, actually it is in RSPB). Second, if you say ‘I didn’t know’, it can look like washing your hands of the blame and no good CEO will want to do that, or be seen to do it. But the fact is, that tweet (which I think was brilliant) was not an RSPB-sanctioned tweet because it hadn’t been signed off high enough up the line. And it should have been because it wasn’t about a raffle in Barnsley, it was clearly an incendiary tweet (a brilliant one!) that would please lots of people and piss off lots of people, and the person with access to the Twitter account to put out tweets about raffles in Barnsley is not authorised to stir up a hornets’ nest. It’s all boring stuff about levels of responsibility but it is about who makes the call, and who carries the can. When an organisation is blindsided by its own staff it is likely to backtrack a bit. I think (as I wrote last week) that the RSPB could have stood by that tweet. The thing is, if the very senior management had signed it off they would have stood by it and faced the consequences, but since they hadn’t said ‘yes’ in the first place then it’s not surprising they took a step back.
Second, it wasn’t that one trustee who made a difference. That’s not how things work. The fact that the single trustee who went on social media to voice his opinions did so was, as I wrote last week, not very supportive and not very classy (as a trustee), but it doesn’t mean that it made that much difference on its own. If George Monbiot is an RSPB member then he had the ability to choose trustees over the years – all members do. And if he is a member and would like to stand for RSPB Council then I’ll certainly vote for him. Trustees are the governing body of a charity – it’s their job to make decisions. These days there is a lot of emphasis on having a diverse set of trustees, so gone are the days when everybody on RSPB Council had the same view and so differences are bound to be sharper. Trustees should be wedded to the charitable objects of the organisation, rather than ticking a box for diversity, but it they are so wedded then the aim is to get a diverse set of backgrounds, genders, ages, classes, ethnicities and political persuasion. I don’t think George wants to go back on that.
There isn’t anything new in George’s piece that we didn’t know last week, and he seems to ignore the fact that the sign off for the incendiary tweet went awry.
George and I agree that it was a great tweet and that maybe RSPB shouldn’t have apologised. The tweet has been viewed nearly 11m times. You’ll see that Wild Justice liked it so much that we adopted it as our twitter profile image.
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An interesting analysis, Mark, and one with which I essentially agree. If the tweet was not sanctioned at the appropriate level then it is right that the CEO takes it on the chin and promises to tighten up procedures.
You and I have both held trustee and charity chair roles – we know that the principle of collective decision making and accountability is firmly embedded in all well-functioning boards. The particular trustee publicly criticising the organisation is a breech of that principle. I trust the board will be asking him to consider his position or, at least, not inviting him to stand for re-election.
I also noted that the RSPB didn’t delete the tweet (I haven’t checked to see if it is still available). The criticism of it may have made more people go and look at the original, so maybe on the principle that there is no such thing as bad publicity it actually gained the RSPB more respect
Lyn – still there and not far off 11m views…
It was a great tweet and the reason the government and their lickspittles don’t and didn’t like it was because it was true and hit home. We need more of them from different sources, time to call this awful government to book.
An alternative explanation may be that use of the word “LIARS” left RSPB open to legal action inasmuch that an aspiration that is stated but later retracted is not a lie unless it was known at the time that it would be retracted notwithstanding the oldie about politicians moving their lips.
The impact in Time/ Energy/ Money just wouldn’t have been worth it. IMHO
Filbert – a legal action by whom?
Thems who were called liars – I guess. I saw this point flagged up in a post on Twatter iirc. Whether they would bother? Who knows?
Following the Greenpeace decoration of Sunak’s Yorkshire pile and revocation of their pass to the Bowels of Nobel House perhaps RSPB wanted to avoid a similar outcome. Who knows?
Monbiot spent a lot of time deflecting – dark money whoaaaargh – and relentlessly plugging his latest neologism. Perhaps that was his purpose – who knows?
I not long ago finished ‘Regenesis’ by George and it’s one of the most truly remarkable books I’ve ever read. I also saw him speak at the Hay Festival and it was THE most brilliant public speaking performance I’ve ever seen – no notes, autocue or ear pieces yet not one single hesitation, repetition or stumble in over half an hour of speaking to an audience.
Yet he can every now and again can be rather silly. He did a video rant not so long ago where he actually said anybody concerned with population growth was a racist – that means me then which came as a great surprise, as it will to many third world field workers who’ve expressed fears about it for decades. Thanks George!
There’s a danger with someone like George of putting them on a pedestal (which TBF they rarely, if ever ask people to do) and take everything they say as gospel which is not healthy. While I’ve not always agreed with Chris Packham, I’ve never found him go off at a tangent the way George can sometimes. Great bloke Georg, but I think you’ve always got to be ready for him dropping a clanger although on this occasion it wasn’t quite that bad.
Monbiot wrote: “the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, apologised for calling the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and his secretaries of state, Michael Gove and Thérèse Coffey, to account for abandoning their environmental commitments”. That’s rubbish. RSPB apologised for the tone of the tweet. They are furious about the policy change and are not backing down at all – something many commenters on the Guardian website didn’t seem to appreciate.
Monbiot over-egging the pudding to fit a wider agenda and doing a disservice to conservation.
I am a member of the RSPB and have checked the description of the trustees which was presumeably what was sent out to members at the time of voting new trustees. It does not mention Mr Caldicott’s role in Policy Exchange that accepts funding from the fossil fuel industry, and so this lack of transparency – I don’t know if he didn’t tell the RSPB or if they didn’t think it relevant to include this information – undermines members’ choice to vote on his appropriateness for the RSPB Council. I would certainly not have voted for him if I had known. I accept that diversity of backgrounds is important, but experience has shown us, as with the Reform group in the National Trust, that members of these secretive right-leaning thinktanks, can act with the intent to undermine the aims of environmental organisations rather than support them. For this reason, I think George Monbiot was right to raise this issue, and I have not seen a response from the RSPB to address it.
Don’t you thing there’s an alternative explanation? That this was a carefully concocted campaign, allowing the RSPB to say something politically incendiary and then apologise for its ‘mistake’? However much the RSPB may have changed since our day, I find it hard to imagine anyone tweeting this on its behalf without ‘air cover’ from on high.
Like so often with these things the violent objections by right wing media backfired because the storm on a teacup has led literally millions to view the tweet. If Lynton Crosby were involved one would suspect the whole thing was intentional