Bullying

So many examples of bad behaviour as a result of this story - http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/feb/21/gordon-brown-rage-despair - including lying and breaches of confidence. I'll deal with those some other time, but in this post I'll concentrate on bullying.

The allegations about Gordon Brown's behaviour towards his staff led to several carefully phrased responses from government figures. These largely consisted of the old strategy of denying claims that hadn't been made. But the straightforward statement by Mandelson that Brown "doesn't bully people" seems to have been contradicted by the head of the National Bullying Helpline. (This potential breach of confidence by a charity which is supposed to guarantee anonymity has led to a principled resignation by Cary Cooper - great name!)

So, despite the murkiness in the political manipulations of the story, it seems that Labour has lied and Brown is a bully. But - is it so simple? Perhaps not, because bullying isn't easily defined. It's easy enough when it's in Tom Brown's Schooldays, where the school bully Flashman is, of course, an unmitigated bounder. Or when the culprit is the similarly named Flash Thompson, Peter Parker's bête noire in Spider-man.

In fact, the dominant cultural image of bullies and bullying is securely attached to schools. The particular patterns of peer relationships with subtle hierarchies which require continual and visible reinforcement are very much a part of the institutional structure - both formal and informal - of schools, and they seem to almost encourage bullying. Whether this concept can be extended into the much more complex relationships which exist in the workplace is, I think, debatable. That's not to say that 'bullying' can't happen outside of school; but it requires a different formulation if it's not to continually conjure up images of drawing pins on chairs and punch-ups after school. 'Bullying' at work involves issues of exploitation, and harrassment, and economic or structural dominance, which don't apply in the same way to the school environment. It needs to be taken seriously, but this involves addressing institutional management structures, not personalities.

To read an illustrated edition of Tom Brown's Schooldays, which includes this scene of "roasting a fag", click here.

More on Flashman's later adventures, as depicted by George Macdonald Fraser, here.

Flash Thompson's relationship with Spider-man and Peter Parker is delineated here.

For a survey and examination of the cultural significance of bullying in US culture, check out 'A Short History of Bullying, Toadying and Snitching' by Kenneth Minogue.


For more 19th century fag roasting, with a Prime Minister on the end of it, check the video below.