When the piranha is a scapegoat
4 min read
·
25/05/2024
USA
by Leslie R. Herman
A rare moment in UK politics in 2001 resurfaces in a new book out this month. Chocolate-Coated Piranha is written by a man who was a scapegoat for failings in the government and judicial systems.
These failings resulted in the resignation of the then Minister of Education, Estelle Morris. In her resignation letter to the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, Morris wrote:- “I am less good at strategic management of a huge department, and I am not good at dealing with the modern media. All this has meant that with some of the recent situations I have been involved in, I have not felt I have been as effective as I should be or as effective as you need me to be.”
Read the entire resignation letter here:- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/2355079.stm
Writing in The Guardian, Education Correspondent Sally Weale described this as a ‘rare moment of mea culpa in British politics’. (‘Mea culpa is a phrase originating from Latin that means my fault or my mistake and is an acknowledgment of having done wrong. The expression is used also as an admission of having made a mistake that should have been avoided.’) Morris was humble enough to admit her mistakes, but her status in society and government meant she would not bear the burden, so another person would have to.
Enter Mike Smallman. His business, the National Distance Learning College, collaborated with the government to grant adult students learning grants. Smallman deduces that he was a clear target to blame for the scheme’s failures because his business was the largest user of the government granting scheme among the 8,500 educational providers.
This thread is rolled up in a tangled yarn that unravels in Chocolate-Coated Piranha. Smallman is not seeking retribution: ‘My need is to move forward. I don’t need to be found innocent, but I want the deeper story to come out of the cloud. It’s been hidden behind the cloud of 9/11. It was ‘not in the public interest’ for Estelle Morris and her team to shoulder the blame. And it was easy for this story to go away with 9/11 taking all the attention.’ (‘The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on September 11, 2001. That morning, 19 terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners scheduled to travel from the East Coast to California.‘) Date: September 11, 2001, at 8:14 AM EDT Location: World Trade Center, The Pentagon, ShanksvilleNumber of deaths: 2,996 Perpetrators: Al-Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden
‘Not in the public interest’ is a term Smallman refers to repeatedly, impressing upon his listener that there has been flagrant misuse of power to determine what is and is not in the public interest. The phrase was used as part of a cover-up. It was not in the public interest for Morris to bear any further burden. The whispered announcement of her resignation and the underlying issues surrounding it were shrouded by the cloud of smoke that 9.11 created. (‘Experience has shown that there will be times when a public official will need to balance conflicting or incompatible conduct standards or objectives — where the public official has to make a decision that will serve one objective, but not another, or one more than another.’)
This book’s time has come. Chocolate-Coated Piranha is a means to an end, and as Smallman insists: ‘I may be the lead protagonist because this has affected me in a big way, but it is not about me. It is about uncovering corruption; about what goes on behind closed doors. If a lie has been told, it has impacted many — I say, 80,000 students, 8,000 businesses — every single one has lost out because of these governmental and institutional flaws. Who else has been affected by this same issue? I still wonder. I want to put a call out to find out.’ He believes his story is ‘just a fragment of a greater injustice.’
Smallman continues, ‘It is so frustrating talking about it and not being believed because of the story that is out there about me. The negative story is out there, but it is not the truth.
‘When the world has access to lies about you, it’s like living with PTSD.
‘I’m trying to rebuild my life, and if I go out on a date, for example, this person is trying to form an opinion of who I am. Then they Google me. Nothing I can say will make them disbelieve what they read.
‘It’s isolating. It’s awful. It’s like cancer. I can’t have it removed.
‘The hope is that the book will be like a kind of chemotherapy — to dilute the negative cancerous information out there about me. I need to get this story told and reach as many people as possible so that the chemo will have some impact on the cancer.
‘I’m trying to get the positive side of the story out there by writing the book — the book will be the driver — to make the necessary connections in the media and, in turn, the necessary corrections in the justice system.’
Chocolate-Coated Piranha is available now on Amazon Books www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1738506800
Resources/Citations:
BBC NEWS | UK | Politics | Estelle Morris’ resignation letter in full. (n.d.). http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/2355079.stm
Wikipedia contributors. (2023, November 19). Mea culpa. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mea_culpa
Wheeler, C. (n.d.). THE PUBLIC INTEREST: WE KNOW IT’S IMPORTANT, BUT DO WE KNOW WHAT IT MEANS. In AIAL FORUM: Vol. №48 (pp. 12–14). https://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AIAdminLawF/2006/2.pdf
Wikipedia contributors. (2024b, May 24). September 11 attacks. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks
Weale, S. (2019, March 20). ‘It is an end-of-tether moment’ — Estelle Morris on the schools crisis, cuts and child poverty. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/mar/18/it-is-an-end-of-tether-moment-estelle-morris-on-the-schools-crisis-cuts-and-child-poverty
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