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Society Subverted: How the RSA Is Being Dismantled by Its Own Leaders · UK Column Radio

0:07
Speaker 1: Hello there, Welcome to the UK column. I'm Ben Rubin
0:11
Speaker 1: and I am delighted to be joined today by Paul Atherton,
0:17
Speaker 1: who is a filmmaker, playwrights, author, artist, journalist and social
0:22
Speaker 1: campaigner and most importantly for the context of today's discussion,
0:26
Speaker 1: a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce,
0:32
Speaker 1: more commonly known as the RSSA.
0:35
Speaker 2: Welcome Paul, Thank you very much.
0:37
Speaker 3: Ben, good to be here.
0:38
Speaker 2: Good stuff.
0:40
Speaker 1: So a lot of people I think will be familiar
0:43
Speaker 1: with the RSSA is a very well known name, certainly,
0:49
Speaker 1: but it'd be great if you could just give us
0:51
Speaker 1: a little bit of background to the organization when it
0:54
Speaker 1: was founded, when its purposes, and some keemle stones in
1:00
Speaker 1: its history.
1:02
Speaker 3: Sure well, most people, as you say, were probably recognized
1:06
Speaker 3: it as the RSA. The actual original title was the
1:10
Speaker 3: Society for the Encouragement of Manufacturing, Commerce and Arts. It
1:14
Speaker 3: was set up by a gentleman called William Shipley, who
1:17
Speaker 3: was one of the early members of the London's first Society,
1:22
Speaker 3: which is the Royal Society, saw the Industrial Revolution coming,
1:26
Speaker 3: saw the way banking and mercantile credit was working in
1:29
Speaker 3: the city of London, and realized quite quickly that this
1:33
Speaker 3: was going to decimate the arts and crafts. So rather
1:36
Speaker 3: than arts as in fine art, it was the arts
1:38
Speaker 3: and crafts. It was the thatchers, the silver smiths and
1:43
Speaker 3: the steelmakers. And he thought, well, how do I protect this?
1:47
Speaker 3: How am I going to be able to make sure
1:50
Speaker 3: that that group has a voice, And rather than trying
1:53
Speaker 3: to battle this oncoming industrial revolution and this oncoming nature
1:57
Speaker 3: of banking, he went, no, I'll just make it as
2:01
Speaker 3: important as those are the two and so he's founded
2:04
Speaker 3: the Society with the principles basically of protecting those sort
2:08
Speaker 3: of crafts and arts in those environments, which by our
2:13
Speaker 3: terms today we call them working class roles, but obviously
2:16
Speaker 3: you know they are very artists and roles and very
2:19
Speaker 3: specialist roles, but they were about to be replaced by
2:22
Speaker 3: sort of the mass manufacturing and mass industrialization of what
2:25
Speaker 3: was coming in Britain. So our original idea basically was
2:29
Speaker 3: founded to say, hey, here's a group of people, we
2:32
Speaker 3: should protect it. It's not all about money, it's not
2:35
Speaker 3: all about growth and industry. It's about people. And there
2:38
Speaker 3: are a lot of people in Britain that are going
2:40
Speaker 3: to be decimated by this. We should embrace them and
2:43
Speaker 3: encourage them. So that was the original ethos of the
2:46
Speaker 3: organization back all the way in seventeen fifty four, and
2:51
Speaker 3: we have at its essence always been a charity, and
2:54
Speaker 3: we were a charity before the notion of charity existed.
2:58
Speaker 3: So we had a King's charter that basically said, yes,
3:01
Speaker 3: you can behave like this. You don't have to be
3:04
Speaker 3: in a business model. You can do these things for
3:07
Speaker 3: the population. And as the years progressed in the centuries passed,
3:11
Speaker 3: we morphed to adapt to the ages. The thing most
3:15
Speaker 3: people will know about the Royal Society of Art if
3:17
Speaker 3: they have any interest in it. It was the organization
3:21
Speaker 3: that came up with the notion of blue plaques. So
3:24
Speaker 3: when the Industrial Revolution was knocking down lots and lots
3:27
Speaker 3: of architecturally important buildings to build massive factories, the RSA
3:31
Speaker 3: went bad, idea, we need this architecture, This architecture is important.
3:36
Speaker 3: And the way they thought to protect this well, say hey,
3:39
Speaker 3: look someone famous lived here, don't knock this house down,
3:41
Speaker 3: and that became incredibly powerful tool. Wasn't always successful, but
3:46
Speaker 3: it did shift people's opinions about what they were knocking down.
3:50
Speaker 3: So a lot of the buildings that remained with blue
3:52
Speaker 3: plaques on them was a direct consequence of the Royal
3:56
Speaker 3: Society of Arts and it was again part of that
3:59
Speaker 3: ethos protect things and looking after things and nurturing a
4:03
Speaker 3: more important asset to human nature than just give us
4:07
Speaker 3: the money. And so we then come into sort of
4:11
Speaker 3: the eighteen hundreds and again the RSA steps up when
4:15
Speaker 3: Britain needed to place itself on the map and came
4:18
Speaker 3: up with Prince Albert, who was our then president, and
4:23
Speaker 3: Henry Cole, who was at the time. All this prior
4:28
Speaker 3: to nineteen twelve we were known as members. After nineteen
4:30
Speaker 3: twelve we became fellows. He was a member and he said, look,
4:34
Speaker 3: we need to create the greatest, biggest structure that's ever
4:37
Speaker 3: lived on the planet to demonstrate just how wonderful we
4:40
Speaker 3: are at trade. But more importantly, he was trying to
4:44
Speaker 3: raise funds to build what was then going to be
4:46
Speaker 3: the South kens Into Museum now the South Kensington Museum,
4:49
Speaker 3: as most people today would know, it is a Victorian
4:52
Speaker 3: Albert Museum. But he goes, right, how do we fund this?
4:55
Speaker 3: So they set up the great Exhibition, this amazing glass
4:59
Speaker 3: structure that sat in Hyde Park, and then latterly moved
5:01
Speaker 3: to South London which is now known as Course Crystal
5:04
Speaker 3: Palace and house all these amazing works from across the world.
5:10
Speaker 3: And they crowdfunded that. They went out to the public
5:12
Speaker 3: and said, look, we want to build the biggest structure
5:14
Speaker 3: in the world. Will you help us do it by
5:16
Speaker 3: giving us a donation. That people did, and then they
5:19
Speaker 3: charged people to go into that structure, and the figures
5:24
Speaker 3: for that were amazing. They were about a hundred million
5:26
Speaker 3: visitors over a period of time and they came and
5:31
Speaker 3: they saw this thing and they paid to get in,
5:33
Speaker 3: and that money was meant to raise enough to open
5:37
Speaker 3: the Kensan and South kens In and Museum. It didn't
5:40
Speaker 3: just do that, It raised enough money to build the
5:42
Speaker 3: Science Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Royal Albert Hall
5:45
Speaker 3: and latteralie the Albert Memorial. That area then became known
5:49
Speaker 3: as O the Top List. But again the essence of
5:52
Speaker 3: that the Victorian Albert Museum was originally a teaching museum.
5:58
Speaker 3: It was designed for the work class to come in
6:01
Speaker 3: and learn. It had the world's first ever cafe, and
6:05
Speaker 3: that cafe was a working class cafe. If people would
6:08
Speaker 3: finish their jobs, come in they'd be able to get
6:11
Speaker 3: a really hearty meal for very little money, and they
6:13
Speaker 3: would have like classes there free of charge. And again,
6:16
Speaker 3: so this is the essence of the RSA and has
6:19
Speaker 3: been pretty much up until the point really about twenty
6:23
Speaker 3: five years ago and the turn of the millennium, and
6:27
Speaker 3: then we started to turn into something vastly different and
6:30
Speaker 3: we had the appointment of the CEO, and with Tony
6:34
Speaker 3: Blair's idea of the third sector, which kind of came
6:37
Speaker 3: in with his election in ninety seven, we started to
6:40
Speaker 3: become a business. And as that's evolved now we are well,
6:45
Speaker 3: we don't know what we are. In truth, we're not
6:47
Speaker 3: really a charity. We're far more interested in generating money
6:51
Speaker 3: and then not giving it to anything charitable. So as
6:55
Speaker 3: a condensed as I can do it, that's pretty much
6:58
Speaker 3: its highlights and.
6:58
Speaker 2: Its history amazing.
7:01
Speaker 1: So this is part of the bedrock of the nation ultimately, right,
7:04
Speaker 1: I mean talking about incredible heritage and culture. I had
7:07
Speaker 1: no idea about the Blue Plaque. So that's fascinating and
7:10
Speaker 1: sounds like it was directly responsible for what did you
7:14
Speaker 1: call it?
7:15
Speaker 2: Out the top list?
7:16
Speaker 1: I mean that's basically half of Knightsbridge isn't it, you know,
7:18
Speaker 1: built on the back of this thing.
7:21
Speaker 3: I did love the fact that when Henry Cole was
7:26
Speaker 3: looking at the area, it was called Brompton, and he
7:29
Speaker 3: didn't like the name of Brompton because it sounded sort
7:32
Speaker 3: of downmarket and cheap, and he wanted to feel salubrious.
7:35
Speaker 3: And of course it is south of Kenson and Kensalan
7:37
Speaker 3: and gardens just at the top of the road, and
7:40
Speaker 3: so he named the museum the South kensal And Museum.
7:43
Speaker 3: And even when the area of South Kensalon didn't exist
7:47
Speaker 3: and the tube station latterly came and named itself after
7:51
Speaker 3: the museum, and he got his accomplishment by changing the name.
7:54
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean the very ethos of the RSA.
7:58
Speaker 3: When most of our young fellows come in, I asked
8:00
Speaker 3: them if you heard about the RSA, and actually quite
8:03
Speaker 3: a lot young people have not. But then I asked them,
8:05
Speaker 3: have you ever taken an OCR exam? I think, oh, yeah,
8:09
Speaker 3: I have taken OCR exams. Well, that sounds for Oxford,
8:12
Speaker 3: Cambridge and the Royal Society of Arts because it was
8:15
Speaker 3: the RSAY that came up with the standardized the idea
8:18
Speaker 3: for the standardized examination. So it is literally the essence,
8:22
Speaker 3: as you say, the bedrock of a British society, and
8:26
Speaker 3: pretty much everything that we do and sort of the
8:29
Speaker 3: nature we do in some way has come from the
8:32
Speaker 3: Royal Society of Arts. You look at things like the
8:35
Speaker 3: Royal Academy, for instance. Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough were
8:41
Speaker 3: both sort of presents in different times and they clashed
8:44
Speaker 3: over what the word arts meant, and Gainsborough was very
8:48
Speaker 3: much still arts and crafts. Reynolds was kind of going, no, no,
8:51
Speaker 3: we should be evolving now, this should be answer. The
8:53
Speaker 3: first ever summer exhibition that was ever held in Britain
8:57
Speaker 3: was held in the Great Room at the RSA on
8:59
Speaker 3: John Adams Street. But when Reynolds couldn't get his way,
9:03
Speaker 3: he bought Burlington House on Piccadilly and set up the
9:06
Speaker 3: Royal Academy. So there are all of these kind of
9:09
Speaker 3: spin offs in the Royal Institution of people realizing that
9:14
Speaker 3: we need to educate the masses, we need to engage
9:18
Speaker 3: people in culture and gender, a sense of community and
9:22
Speaker 3: build on that platform and that has been the driving
9:25
Speaker 3: force of our organization for two hundred and seventy plus years.
9:30
Speaker 1: Fascinating I hadn't realized it was linked into the Royal
9:33
Speaker 1: Academy as well, and that distinction betweens crafts and arts
9:40
Speaker 1: and you know, practical things that people do on a
9:43
Speaker 1: daily basis almost but are still creative, versus the kind
9:47
Speaker 1: of high arts of sculpture and portraiture and the more
9:51
Speaker 1: conceptual modern arts that have come along in the past
9:53
Speaker 1: century or so. I think that's absolutely fascinating to say
9:56
Speaker 1: how those two things have actually kind of come from
9:58
Speaker 1: the same place.
9:59
Speaker 2: Really brilliant and amazing.
10:01
Speaker 1: Now you've mentioned that it's a fellowship, we can you
10:05
Speaker 1: describe a bit more about what that actually means and
10:08
Speaker 1: also maybe some of the names that we might recognize
10:12
Speaker 1: you've been fellows of the RSA over the years.
10:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, as I mentioned, the notion of a fellow
10:19
Speaker 3: didn't really come until the early part of the twentieth century,
10:22
Speaker 3: in nineteen twelve, but it was a way of distinguishing
10:28
Speaker 3: people that were involved with the Royal Society of Arts
10:30
Speaker 3: as not just being members. You were embraced into an
10:34
Speaker 3: organization were if you can imagine it like a Christian fellowship,
10:40
Speaker 3: a group of individuals all working for the betterment of
10:43
Speaker 3: each other. In the betterment of society, and it was
10:46
Speaker 3: to begin with, it was considered an honor. The post
10:50
Speaker 3: normals that we use thersa Fellow of our Society of Arts,
10:54
Speaker 3: which you can use after your name when you become
10:57
Speaker 3: a fellow, was also a very an easy way to
11:01
Speaker 3: recognize other people with sort of similar thinking or a
11:04
Speaker 3: similar ethos, because one of the great things about the
11:07
Speaker 3: Royal Society of Arts is it really has encaptured people
11:11
Speaker 3: from all walks of life. It's included people like Mary Curie,
11:15
Speaker 3: it has included people like Karl Marx Adams. You know,
11:18
Speaker 3: you've got the birth of communism and the birth of
11:20
Speaker 3: capitalism with Adam Smith. The both of these fellows. Tim
11:23
Speaker 3: Berners Lee is a fellow, the creator of the Internet.
11:26
Speaker 3: Johnny Ives is a fellow who obviously designed the iPod
11:29
Speaker 3: and like the other Apple product. You know that these
11:32
Speaker 3: people who have genuinely shifted how the world works in
11:37
Speaker 3: one guys or another have have sort of come in embraced,
11:41
Speaker 3: but they've not always agreed. The one thing that you
11:44
Speaker 3: all agree on is that we want to make the
11:46
Speaker 3: world a better place. Marx obviously came about from one perspective.
11:51
Speaker 3: Adam Smith came in from another. And as we've seen,
11:55
Speaker 3: you know, people like Stephen Hawkins who've come through, they're
11:58
Speaker 3: all people that have an amazing idea, an amazing sense
12:04
Speaker 3: of improving people's lives. And that's everybody's lives, not their
12:09
Speaker 3: lives per se, but generating something that benefits British society
12:13
Speaker 3: as a whole. And I think again, it comes back
12:17
Speaker 3: to that notion that you're uniting in a group of
12:20
Speaker 3: people with a singular goal, which is to make Britain
12:24
Speaker 3: a better place. But how we get that. We may
12:27
Speaker 3: not agree on, but we debate and we do so
12:32
Speaker 3: in a reasoned manner. You know that that was the
12:35
Speaker 3: whole point of the institution, is that it brought these
12:38
Speaker 3: great thinkers, because the best ideas do not come from
12:41
Speaker 3: a single person. The best ideas come from being challenged
12:44
Speaker 3: and being forced to present an argument in such a
12:48
Speaker 3: valid and immovable way that everybody then goes, oh, actually,
12:53
Speaker 3: this is the way to go. So if you again,
12:55
Speaker 3: you know, if you look at the history of how
12:57
Speaker 3: Henry Cole and Prince Albert eventually got Crystal Palace built,
13:02
Speaker 3: it was because they both believed in what they were doing.
13:05
Speaker 3: It was an incredibly arduous task It wasn't an easy thing.
13:08
Speaker 3: You know. We talk about it now as if they
13:10
Speaker 3: just went, oh, Halo, let's do this, and off they go,
13:12
Speaker 3: And of course it wasn't. There were lots of politics involved.
13:15
Speaker 3: There was There was lots of machinations about judging who
13:18
Speaker 3: was actually going to construct this thing. There was lots
13:21
Speaker 3: of fear that they would raise the funds. What happens
13:23
Speaker 3: if it all collapsed. This is one of the biggest
13:25
Speaker 3: things that Britain is ever going to do, you know,
13:27
Speaker 3: and on it goes. But because they were successful doing
13:30
Speaker 3: it at that time, when we came to do the
13:32
Speaker 3: Festival of Britain a century later, you know that there
13:36
Speaker 3: was a lot of that gambit and a lot of
13:37
Speaker 3: that tactic that was already embedded. So the society was
13:41
Speaker 3: able to go to government and state and go, look,
13:43
Speaker 3: let's create this amazing thing on the South Bank, to
13:46
Speaker 3: again celebrate the genius of Brits, the amazing craftsmanship, the
13:49
Speaker 3: amazing workmanship, the way we're standing way above the rest
13:53
Speaker 3: of the world in terms of technology and everything like that.
13:55
Speaker 3: So that fellowship is this idea of joining in all
14:01
Speaker 3: Previously you had to be invaded, then you could apply,
14:05
Speaker 3: but you have to choose, you prove your worth. Now
14:09
Speaker 3: we are far more like a membership where you just
14:11
Speaker 3: pay your money, you can get in and you can
14:13
Speaker 3: use it post nomenal. So the idea of fellowship and
14:16
Speaker 3: that unated of people is diminishing and diminishing rapidly, Saturday.
14:21
Speaker 2: Which is.
14:23
Speaker 1: Absolutely crucial and to the point of what we want
14:26
Speaker 1: to talk about today, right, because the reason that you
14:29
Speaker 1: and I first met is that I had it come
14:32
Speaker 1: to my attention. I can't remember exactually where from that.
14:37
Speaker 1: There were some some rumblings coming out of the r S,
14:41
Speaker 1: A some disquiet, some industrial action even I think had
14:46
Speaker 1: taken place over the past year or so. And this
14:50
Speaker 1: has all happened under the UH. I want to say
14:54
Speaker 1: curren Ceo, but I think he might have just left
14:56
Speaker 1: Andy haw Day and formerly the Bank of England, which
15:00
Speaker 1: we will know doubt get into as we go along.
15:03
Speaker 1: But it sounds like this transformation from a fellowship focused
15:08
Speaker 1: on a higher purpose, the improvement of the nation and
15:13
Speaker 1: the protection of our heritage, is this kind of degradation
15:16
Speaker 1: of that core purpose has been happening for a little while.
15:18
Speaker 2: And I think you mentioned Matthew.
15:21
Speaker 1: Taylor a little while Ago who was the chief executive
15:24
Speaker 1: before Andy Haldin, who, if I remember correctly, was actually
15:27
Speaker 1: quite a senior advisor to Tony Blair at one time.
15:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's quite great. So Matthew Taylor was the first
15:35
Speaker 3: ever chief executive officer. It was a new role. I
15:40
Speaker 3: have yet to be able to get to the bottom
15:42
Speaker 3: of how we went from voting for the person that
15:45
Speaker 3: led our institution, as we or fellows have voting rates
15:48
Speaker 3: in the charity, to this external appointment by somebody that
15:53
Speaker 3: just goes, oh, he's going to run the organization now,
15:55
Speaker 3: which seems like counterintuitive to everything we stand for really,
16:00
Speaker 3: but that predated me becoming a fellow. I became a
16:02
Speaker 3: fellow in two thousand and what we know twenty twenty five,
16:07
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen seventeen. But I'd been involved with the RSA
16:14
Speaker 3: well pretty much since I was in school. I mean
16:16
Speaker 3: I used to the Royalstute. Christmas lectures was something I
16:19
Speaker 3: was very excited about and became part of my Christmas tradition,
16:23
Speaker 3: and the Royal Institution had a strong connection to the
16:25
Speaker 3: Royal Society of Arts. When I was sixteen, I took
16:28
Speaker 3: an RSA typing exam, so I became affiliated through their
16:32
Speaker 3: examination board that existed at the time, and then by
16:36
Speaker 3: the time I moved to London when I was in
16:37
Speaker 3: my mid twenties, I used to go regularly to the
16:41
Speaker 3: public talks and I'd always aspired to become a fellow there.
16:45
Speaker 3: It was one of those sort of aspirational things you
16:49
Speaker 3: had as well, not very few did, but certainly as
16:52
Speaker 3: a Valley's child growing up under a Thatchers Britain, it
16:55
Speaker 3: was kind of like, oh, that's where you want to be.
16:57
Speaker 3: You want to be with this, this amazing ethos and
16:59
Speaker 3: this amazing culture, in this amazing group. So that was
17:02
Speaker 3: always an aspiration. So when I was invited by a
17:05
Speaker 3: friend of mine who nominated me, I was just over
17:08
Speaker 3: the moon. And I remember that in the great room
17:11
Speaker 3: there is a mural the twenty five years to paint,
17:15
Speaker 3: and I just literally sat stood actually and sort of
17:19
Speaker 3: admired that for a good part of chunk, because I
17:21
Speaker 3: felt like I'd actually become part of this institution. So
17:26
Speaker 3: all the way through its history, you know, it was
17:29
Speaker 3: this idea of a group and looking after itself and
17:31
Speaker 3: looking after its members, and then the appointment of a
17:35
Speaker 3: CEO see encounterintuitive to that as I say, I don't
17:38
Speaker 3: know the mechanics of it or how it was achieved.
17:40
Speaker 3: But Matthew was there. As you say, he was one
17:43
Speaker 3: of Tony Blair's right hand people, senior advisors, and he,
17:49
Speaker 3: from what I could tell, basically turned the RSA into
17:53
Speaker 3: a classic think tank. We're basically we're sort of banging
17:57
Speaker 3: out reports and we're not really doing any thing, you know,
18:00
Speaker 3: we're holding conferences and things. I mean, the lecture series
18:04
Speaker 3: has always existed with the RSA. It's lack continued as
18:07
Speaker 3: it's always done. But this idea of moving away from
18:09
Speaker 3: getting a group of people to find a solution to
18:11
Speaker 3: a problem was now, oh, we're going to employ some
18:14
Speaker 3: people at work at the top of the organization and
18:17
Speaker 3: the fellows can just pay their funds to fund that
18:20
Speaker 3: research that will then either give or sell off to
18:23
Speaker 3: somewhere else. And there was a distinct shift, and fellows
18:27
Speaker 3: that I spoke to had been the considerable time felt
18:29
Speaker 3: that that was not really the way to be going.
18:33
Speaker 3: Many people just kind of went, it's not really having
18:35
Speaker 3: that much of an impact on us. We're you know,
18:37
Speaker 3: we're still uniting and doing what we're doing in the house,
18:41
Speaker 3: which is on John Adam Street, just off Strand here
18:44
Speaker 3: in London, but there was a distinct shift. But when
18:49
Speaker 3: Andy Haldan came in, that really shook everybody because nobody
18:54
Speaker 3: understood why a former Chief Economist of the Bank of England,
18:58
Speaker 3: who had never been CEO in his career, had not
19:03
Speaker 3: really any third sector experience, has certainly not had any
19:07
Speaker 3: diverse experience outside of banking. His entire career since he
19:10
Speaker 3: left university was in one job, you know, progressively but
19:14
Speaker 3: nonetheless with the Bank of England, and that was it.
19:18
Speaker 3: So he was coming into the most multi discipline organization
19:21
Speaker 3: that probably exists in the world, where everybody comes from
19:24
Speaker 3: different backgrounds, different careers, different ideologies, and was now going
19:29
Speaker 3: to lead this organization to where nobody was really sure.
19:33
Speaker 3: In addition to that, he was getting paid to run
19:36
Speaker 3: a charity more money than he was being paid to
19:40
Speaker 3: be the Chief Economist of the Bank of England, which
19:43
Speaker 3: all slightly took us back, and some of those revelations
19:46
Speaker 3: took a little time to come to life. As you
19:49
Speaker 3: rightly point out, when he came in, he immediately started
19:54
Speaker 3: clashing with staff to such a point that for the
19:58
Speaker 3: first time ever in the Royal society's history. The staff
20:02
Speaker 3: required to unionize, and this was huge because you have
20:07
Speaker 3: to remember, prior to these CEO appointments, staff were fellows.
20:12
Speaker 3: So by definition any problems it would be solted communally.
20:17
Speaker 3: You know, there'd be no reason to have an US.
20:19
Speaker 3: And then you know, there wasn't management. It was just
20:22
Speaker 3: all fellas, and suddenly subcontractors were coming in catering. We're
20:25
Speaker 3: outsource people that found out house staff that had worked
20:29
Speaker 3: there for decades and decades and decades were suddenly this
20:33
Speaker 3: you know, sort of poopooed and said, oh, we're moving
20:35
Speaker 3: you to this outsourced company. You can't renegotiate. And so
20:40
Speaker 3: basically the whole of the existing staff, which is the
20:45
Speaker 3: organization was run roughly on about thirty five forty people,
20:49
Speaker 3: the majority of them decided to join the union and
20:52
Speaker 3: retaliate against this. And yes, we had lots and lots
20:56
Speaker 3: of industrial action, much of which was publicized to the
21:00
Speaker 3: detriment of the organization, but that didn't seem to bother
21:03
Speaker 3: the trustees, which I always found slightly strange, and to
21:08
Speaker 3: the point that we have now literally had over one
21:11
Speaker 3: hundred percent turn over a staff, so that nearly anybody
21:15
Speaker 3: that existed when I first joined, and those people were
21:18
Speaker 3: committed to the organization for life. You know, they weren't
21:20
Speaker 3: tempts or anything. You know, they, as I said, they'd
21:22
Speaker 3: worked for a decade, had all gone. And even some
21:25
Speaker 3: of Haldane's own appointments who he sort of brought in
21:30
Speaker 3: and a big fanfare, went as quickly as they arrived,
21:34
Speaker 3: and often under very dark clouds, to the point that
21:38
Speaker 3: one of our members of staff was dismissed, took an
21:42
Speaker 3: unfair dismissed or tribunal and won it. Now, we're supposed
21:46
Speaker 3: to be a charitable institution that's all about uniting people,
21:50
Speaker 3: and yet here we have this structure where this CEO
21:54
Speaker 3: is seemingly so disconnected from the very ethos of what
21:58
Speaker 3: we do, has had no associate with us whatsoever, and
22:01
Speaker 3: its entire history, and it's meant to be running this
22:04
Speaker 3: organization and seemingly just running it into the ground.
22:08
Speaker 2: Incredible.
22:09
Speaker 1: So you've got a stable, robust, mature, extremely valuable institution.
22:18
Speaker 1: It's run in a very specific way, and then you
22:23
Speaker 1: have two new leaders come in who essentially have just
22:26
Speaker 1: completely disrupted this thing and turned it from what it
22:30
Speaker 1: was into something it's not. I think the essentially it
22:35
Speaker 1: sounds a bit like what we've seen happening across the
22:39
Speaker 1: government over the past thirty forty years, right, the introduction
22:42
Speaker 1: of private contractors, the changing of people's employment.
22:45
Speaker 2: Contracts, like all of that kind of thing.
22:46
Speaker 1: There's lots of parallels here with what we've seen happen
22:50
Speaker 1: around central government. I think, you know, under various different governments.
22:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we've seen it across the board. I
22:58
Speaker 3: think that you know, this was the birth of the
23:01
Speaker 3: third sect that you know, this idea that we should
23:04
Speaker 3: treat charities as if they're businesses and bringing in so
23:08
Speaker 3: called CEOs on these ridiculously high salaries to operate them
23:13
Speaker 3: as if their businesses, when in fact they're not, and
23:16
Speaker 3: they never have been, nor whatever it should be. They
23:18
Speaker 3: are charities, you know, the whole point is that they
23:21
Speaker 3: should be supplying something charitable. But often you see these
23:25
Speaker 3: organizations now, as you rightly can't point out, you know,
23:28
Speaker 3: you privatize absolutely everything, and then the only thing that
23:32
Speaker 3: matters to anybody in those institutions is revenue, and seemingly
23:36
Speaker 3: that revenue is only being generated to pay the staff
23:41
Speaker 3: that aren't needed to deliver the things not being delivered.
23:45
Speaker 3: I mean, it just seems about the most insane scenario
23:48
Speaker 3: that you've got, that we have taken the very word charity,
23:51
Speaker 3: which if you look at the sort of English dictionary definition,
23:54
Speaker 3: it's giving to the poor, and go on, yes, well
23:58
Speaker 3: we could do that, but alternative, it's much better to
24:00
Speaker 3: raise donations and funds and you know, make my own
24:04
Speaker 3: nest with it. You know, you know a two hundred
24:07
Speaker 3: thousand a year, Andy Hardane is you know that that's
24:12
Speaker 3: a large proportion. We've gone from thirty nine staff to
24:15
Speaker 3: over one hundred with many of these titles, as David
24:19
Speaker 3: Graver says, and his foot bullshit jobs, you're kind of going,
24:23
Speaker 3: they're just made up. We've got a director of Fellowship
24:25
Speaker 3: and a fellowship director. There are departments with three managers
24:29
Speaker 3: and only one member of staff. And this is just ludicrous.
24:33
Speaker 3: But again, there doesn't seem to be anybody overseeing this.
24:38
Speaker 3: The trustees don't seem to be challenging this ethos. In fact,
24:41
Speaker 3: they seem to be encouraging it. The outcome of all
24:45
Speaker 3: this is that fellows who've been fellows for decades and
24:48
Speaker 3: decades and decades resigned on mass. We've almost lost a
24:52
Speaker 3: quarter of our fellowship. We were mirroring forty thousand and
24:55
Speaker 3: we're now just over thirty thousand, and many of those
24:58
Speaker 3: fellows now are being brought in not really as fellows,
25:01
Speaker 3: they're just people who are, as I said earlier, just
25:03
Speaker 3: paying their membership feason and joining. We've got these two
25:07
Speaker 3: very weird setups where we're bringing in people in America
25:11
Speaker 3: and Australia and the different sort of banners. So whilst
25:16
Speaker 3: the RSA is sort of a UK charitable institution, these
25:19
Speaker 3: these are the things that sort of not for profits
25:21
Speaker 3: or community I'm never quite sure what other countries do,
25:24
Speaker 3: but you know, again it's just a way of bringing
25:26
Speaker 3: in revenue because what other countries do and how they
25:30
Speaker 3: think is vastly different to what Britain does and how
25:33
Speaker 3: it thinks. And that also felt an element of globalization
25:37
Speaker 3: coming into our own institution, where actually the very ethos
25:40
Speaker 3: of how we were founded is like, don't do that.
25:44
Speaker 3: We have crafts and skills and talents in this country
25:48
Speaker 3: that are unparalleled to such a degree that the world
25:51
Speaker 3: comes to us. You know, there is a reason that
25:53
Speaker 3: Marricurity was a fealue. She's friend. There's a reason John,
25:56
Speaker 3: you know that John Logiber came up in Scotland with television.
25:58
Speaker 3: There's a reason that Mozart came over with his father
26:01
Speaker 3: and performed in London. You know, it draws the greatest
26:05
Speaker 3: of talent all around the world, and we should be
26:09
Speaker 3: proud of that. We should embrace that and encourage that.
26:11
Speaker 3: And again, this is why things like the Victorian Albert
26:14
Speaker 3: Museum was built, was to get the working class into
26:17
Speaker 3: these establishments, to encourage them, to help them learn and understand,
26:22
Speaker 3: and so to watch this get corporatized and prophetized for
26:28
Speaker 3: the sake of the usual sort of I hate to
26:31
Speaker 3: use the term one percent, but that is the essence
26:33
Speaker 3: of what it is. Is this sort of small cabal
26:35
Speaker 3: group of individuals who are now having not only taken
26:39
Speaker 3: over nearly the government, the corporations and everything else, have
26:43
Speaker 3: now managed to tap into the charities and turn that
26:46
Speaker 3: into their own revenue.
26:47
Speaker 1: So it's just mind blowing. It sounds like the organization
26:52
Speaker 1: is imploding.
26:53
Speaker 2: Frankly.
26:53
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're losing twenty five percent of your
26:56
Speaker 1: fellowship down from forty thousand tons, I think I just
26:59
Speaker 1: on the epsode and said that it's now thirty one thousand,
27:02
Speaker 1: So you've got thousands of people who ultimately are you're
27:06
Speaker 1: you know, it's not just about the membership that they're paying,
27:09
Speaker 1: it's also about their own personal contributions to the community
27:14
Speaker 1: and the you know, the whole kind of spirit in
27:18
Speaker 1: essence of the of the society.
27:22
Speaker 2: I mean to what you stand.
27:24
Speaker 1: I mean some of the things you just said, they're ludicrous, right,
27:26
Speaker 1: I mean the idea that you've got three managers in
27:28
Speaker 1: the department with one employee, right, I mean, that's just
27:31
Speaker 1: that's just crazy. I mean, but that is what we're
27:34
Speaker 1: looking at here. Is it just mismanagement or do you
27:37
Speaker 1: think that there's something deliberate? I mean, are they actually
27:40
Speaker 1: trying to destroy it in some way?
27:42
Speaker 3: I think you've got a double edged sword. I think.
27:44
Speaker 3: I think, as I mentioned, Andy had no affiliation with
27:47
Speaker 3: the Royal Society of Arts and no understanding of what
27:50
Speaker 3: it was before he joined, and never had the role
27:52
Speaker 3: of CEO before, and so there was a level of
27:57
Speaker 3: just sharing confidence came in with that. But at the
28:01
Speaker 3: same time, you know, we've got a board of trustees
28:04
Speaker 3: that includes you know, the share person Sandra boss A
28:08
Speaker 3: black Rock, and you're kind of going like, why are
28:13
Speaker 3: these appointments kind of accepted because ultimately they're going to
28:17
Speaker 3: come in with that same old classic finance thinking and
28:20
Speaker 3: actually what's required in an institution, an organization like the
28:24
Speaker 3: Royal Society of Arts is a vast array of different
28:26
Speaker 3: approaches and people with vast and differing backgrounds, and we
28:30
Speaker 3: just don't see that reflected. So I think on the
28:33
Speaker 3: one side, you've got somebody who is completely incompetent and
28:37
Speaker 3: annowledgeable about the institution running it, and then the process
28:42
Speaker 3: of doing that, I believe Panicked created his own little
28:45
Speaker 3: cabal and just you know, surrounded himselves with yes people,
28:49
Speaker 3: and in the process of doing that, managed to alienate
28:52
Speaker 3: the majority of active fellows. And on the other side
28:57
Speaker 3: you've got people using it as profile for other things.
29:01
Speaker 3: You know, Lloyd Grossman has just been appointed our chairman
29:05
Speaker 3: in the past year. Timiles was former to that, and again,
29:10
Speaker 3: you know, they're both very institutionalized people. They come from,
29:14
Speaker 3: you know, very set kind of corporate worlds, and it's
29:19
Speaker 3: just not incongruent for something like the RSA. So I
29:23
Speaker 3: think it is one. It's in competence and yeah that
29:27
Speaker 3: I think it is tactical, and I think we've seen
29:29
Speaker 3: it with Tufton Street and all the various organizations like
29:31
Speaker 3: the Adam Smith Institute and all the things that spin
29:33
Speaker 3: off of that, where these organizations are now tapping into
29:39
Speaker 3: cultural institutions that are well known to the public at large,
29:45
Speaker 3: but certainly within their own networks as some kind of
29:49
Speaker 3: esteem badge so that they can do off you know,
29:53
Speaker 3: I'm the chair of this or I'm the trustee on
29:55
Speaker 3: this board and things, and that helps in other career paths.
30:00
Speaker 2: And it certainly does. I mean, this is just astonishing. Really.
30:06
Speaker 1: Uh, this this this kind of globalization I think is fascinating.
30:10
Speaker 1: And I'm just looking at the trustee board here and
30:12
Speaker 1: I can see that, uh, there's there's a significant board.
30:16
Speaker 1: We can talk a bit more about them in a moment.
30:18
Speaker 1: But then also the fact that you've got a separate
30:20
Speaker 1: board for the r s A in the U s
30:22
Speaker 1: and for Oceania and actually none of that has got
30:25
Speaker 1: anything to do with England or the UK or you
30:30
Speaker 1: know what what the institution was originally set up to
30:34
Speaker 1: to represent. Ultimately, you've talked a little bit about commercialization,
30:39
Speaker 1: it sounds like. And actually you also use the term
30:42
Speaker 1: think tank earlier, which I think is quite interesting, given
30:44
Speaker 1: particularly the the the the the political background of Matthew
30:50
Speaker 1: Taylor right in particular because that's certainly his world. So
30:53
Speaker 1: you've now got this thing which which was all of
30:55
Speaker 1: the stuff that we've described, but they're now trying of
30:57
Speaker 1: turning into a think tank slash. It almost sounds a
31:02
Speaker 1: little bit like a kind of Soho House type thing
31:04
Speaker 1: that they're going for. Does that resonate with you.
31:08
Speaker 3: Sadly yes, because one of the appointments of the Head
31:11
Speaker 3: of Fellowship actually came from Soho House, so he was
31:14
Speaker 3: a head of membership of so High, which everybody thought
31:18
Speaker 3: was a really weird thing. Because a couple of points
31:21
Speaker 3: to note the house which stands on John Adams Street,
31:25
Speaker 3: which was designed by the Adam brothers, so it's got
31:28
Speaker 3: a myriad of Adam fireplaces and goodness knows what the
31:31
Speaker 3: cost of that would be, but it obviously belongs to us,
31:35
Speaker 3: so it was all and owned by us. On that
31:37
Speaker 3: land is open to the public, so it is part
31:40
Speaker 3: of its chargeable process. At the library, the cafe, the
31:45
Speaker 3: sort of workspaces, anybody can just go in. You have
31:47
Speaker 3: to sign in, but nothing prevents you from doing that.
31:51
Speaker 3: So we're not a membership house. You know, you're not
31:56
Speaker 3: paying your money into the fellowship to get get access
32:00
Speaker 3: to a building, which is how most membership buildings operate,
32:05
Speaker 3: you know, they you know, the Conduit is probably the
32:07
Speaker 3: closest and the most modern thing to the Royal Society
32:10
Speaker 3: of Arts, which I think has existed enough for about
32:11
Speaker 3: ten years, and their ethos is very similar to Hours,
32:15
Speaker 3: but it's far more a classic membership style where you
32:18
Speaker 3: pay thousands of pounds to get access to you know,
32:20
Speaker 3: private area and private spaces that no one else can
32:22
Speaker 3: get access to it. That is not true of the
32:24
Speaker 3: roy Society of Arts on John Adams Street. Anybody can
32:27
Speaker 3: walk in, anybody can use the library, anybody can use
32:30
Speaker 3: the cafe. So the notion of kind of trying to
32:33
Speaker 3: structure it like a membership in that way is ludicrous
32:36
Speaker 3: because you're like going, well, you don't need to pay
32:38
Speaker 3: to get into the building. So if that's if it's
32:40
Speaker 3: access to the building you're after, just turn out. So
32:45
Speaker 3: the fellowship fees were originally structured to fund some of
32:50
Speaker 3: the organizations, but you know, also to go to poor
32:54
Speaker 3: people there, you know, help help with with with the
32:57
Speaker 3: issues of the day. And so now it seems that
33:02
Speaker 3: the revenue sources I said earlier, is simply two fund
33:05
Speaker 3: the wages of the staff that are now employed, not
33:09
Speaker 3: as it was originally to support the Fellows, but to
33:14
Speaker 3: work off in its own little sort of operational thing
33:17
Speaker 3: with this banner of the RSA above it. And so yeah,
33:22
Speaker 3: I mean it's it's it is a strange thing to
33:27
Speaker 3: kind of go, oh, become a fellow because and if
33:31
Speaker 3: you look at any of the material these days, it's like,
33:34
Speaker 3: why would you become a fellow? It's kind of like
33:36
Speaker 3: I think anybody with any intelligence, and we've seen it
33:40
Speaker 3: happen in the house. It basically became a very very
33:44
Speaker 3: inexpensive we work. You know, people started realizing, oh, I
33:47
Speaker 3: can come in and use this and you know, I'll
33:50
Speaker 3: put my computer rep and I haven't got to pay
33:51
Speaker 3: the fees of a we work office. And it changed
33:55
Speaker 3: the dynamic and it changed the way people behaved in
33:58
Speaker 3: the house, and it changed everything. And again that's part
34:01
Speaker 3: of its commercialization. But there is no real revenue source,
34:05
Speaker 3: nor should they be from the Fellows Fund, which should
34:09
Speaker 3: basically be going to charitable purpose which is helping poor
34:13
Speaker 3: people endure the sufferings of being poor.
34:17
Speaker 1: As they selling corporate memberships like the company can companies
34:21
Speaker 1: come along and like buy them for their staff and
34:23
Speaker 1: that kind of scene.
34:24
Speaker 3: Now, yeah, that's again I think that came under Andy's
34:29
Speaker 3: auspices with you know, after the mass exodus of Fellows,
34:34
Speaker 3: they've tried to get corporate memberships and all kinds of things,
34:37
Speaker 3: and I think we've had a couple sign up. Again,
34:40
Speaker 3: you look at it and go, I don't see what
34:42
Speaker 3: the advantages of a corporate membership because access the house
34:47
Speaker 3: is free. What are you paying for? You know, it's
34:52
Speaker 3: you paid to be a Fellow because you wanted to
34:54
Speaker 3: help other people. If you're just buying that, you'd be
34:58
Speaker 3: better off going to Soho House or Home House, you know,
35:01
Speaker 3: any of the other modern clubs that now exist, or
35:03
Speaker 3: even any any of the older clubs that still exist.
35:06
Speaker 3: So yeah, it was it's a strange, strange, strange idea
35:11
Speaker 3: to try and corporatize us in that way, and clearly
35:14
Speaker 3: it's failing. You know, it's not working for them because
35:17
Speaker 3: they're losing revenue. And the house has always been hired
35:21
Speaker 3: out as a venue, so you know, weddings are a
35:24
Speaker 3: big revenue source for the institution and and sort of
35:28
Speaker 3: at the big events and filming and all that kind
35:30
Speaker 3: of things, because obviously, you know we're quite an old
35:33
Speaker 3: and we're listing I think the great. If we're not
35:37
Speaker 3: Grade one, we're great two star listed, and so you
35:42
Speaker 3: know it's a great venue to do great things, and
35:44
Speaker 3: that that's a revenue source, and that happens on the weekends,
35:47
Speaker 3: so that again the club doesn't open on the weekend.
35:49
Speaker 3: So you know, it isn't a homehouse is it's very
35:51
Speaker 3: much kind of working environment of Monday to Friday. Although
35:56
Speaker 3: we have now got a new bar.
36:01
Speaker 1: Sounds like there's a bit of an identity crisis going
36:03
Speaker 1: on down there and a lot of value extraction. Frankly, right,
36:08
Speaker 1: because you've mentioned the the the actual physical building on
36:12
Speaker 1: John Adams Street, and I can attest to the fact
36:14
Speaker 1: that it is a beautiful, beautiful building in an astonishing location,
36:19
Speaker 1: and it sounds like some people have come along and gone, oh,
36:21
Speaker 1: we'd like a bit of that. We'll take that, and
36:24
Speaker 1: you know, we'll make as much money as we can
36:25
Speaker 1: out of it in a very cynical fashion. You've mentioned
36:30
Speaker 1: to me when we spoke the other day, some frankly,
36:33
Speaker 1: really quite troubling stuff about the archive and be great
36:37
Speaker 1: to hear a bit more about that and what's been
36:39
Speaker 1: going on with the the the assets that the Society
36:43
Speaker 1: has been entrusted to care for. Frankly that it doesn't
36:46
Speaker 1: appear to be doing that anymore.
36:49
Speaker 3: No, I mean, this is probably I would call this
36:52
Speaker 3: the worst type of cultural vandalism I have ever encountered
36:56
Speaker 3: in my entire life. So when I first became I'm
37:00
Speaker 3: aware of the Societies, I was very aware of its archive.
37:04
Speaker 3: It had a brilliant archive display out and the things
37:08
Speaker 3: that are kept in the archive are obviously the classic
37:11
Speaker 3: things you'd have with any organization, minutes and meetings and things.
37:14
Speaker 3: But these minutes include people that invented electricity, the first
37:17
Speaker 3: demonstration the telephone in Britain. You know, these are amazing things.
37:21
Speaker 3: Plus the fact we have an art collection that much
37:24
Speaker 3: of which is on loan to the National Gallery. And Eve,
37:30
Speaker 3: who's the head of archive, had been there twelve thirteen
37:34
Speaker 3: years and suddenly in the last six months, the entire department,
37:38
Speaker 3: everybody now has been either let go or pressured out,
37:46
Speaker 3: or one of my friends who volunteered in the archive
37:49
Speaker 3: was just ceremoniously told never to come back. Again, and
37:55
Speaker 3: there doesn't seem to be anybody now protecting this archive, which,
37:59
Speaker 3: as you rightly point out, this should be considered a
38:01
Speaker 3: national archive. This is the nation's work and some of
38:05
Speaker 3: the most important inventions and creations have come out of
38:08
Speaker 3: the Royal Society of Arts and some patents and it's
38:11
Speaker 3: just an amazing thing. And it's some of it is
38:15
Speaker 3: actually in the building, other part of the archive or elsewhere.
38:19
Speaker 3: But the issue is now is which I'm sure will
38:23
Speaker 3: come on to you know, I've had a conflict with
38:26
Speaker 3: the RSA and in checking the new rules that they've created,
38:31
Speaker 3: they now have the auspices to be able to sell
38:34
Speaker 3: anything they want to generate revenue the Society of Arts.
38:39
Speaker 3: And you're like going, well, that shouldn't be a thing.
38:41
Speaker 3: You shouldn't just be able to flog off whatever you
38:43
Speaker 3: want to whenever you want to if you're losing money.
38:46
Speaker 3: But again, nobody seems to care. I've raised it with
38:49
Speaker 3: the Charity Commission. They don't seem to care. I raised
38:51
Speaker 3: it with the trustees. They don't seem to care. And
38:54
Speaker 3: it seemingly, you know, the only people that do care
38:57
Speaker 3: genuine fellows, and most of them now resigned their fellowships
39:02
Speaker 3: and moved on elsewhere.
39:04
Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
39:05
Speaker 1: I mean, this really concerns me, right, I mean, I
39:08
Speaker 1: think you use the term of cultural vandalism.
39:11
Speaker 2: I would agree completely.
39:13
Speaker 1: People are basically selling off national assets for their own
39:16
Speaker 1: benefit into the total detriment of the nation. And this
39:18
Speaker 1: is happening at the RSA, it's happening everywhere else as well.
39:22
Speaker 2: Absolutely appalling behavior.
39:24
Speaker 1: And the fact that actually rewriting their own governance essentially
39:27
Speaker 1: to make this okay as well. I mean it's just
39:29
Speaker 1: so cynical to hear this kind of thing.
39:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, but as you say, I think it's commonplace. You know,
39:35
Speaker 3: there just doesn't seem to be anybody in Britain right
39:38
Speaker 3: now that there are no grown ups left, is what
39:40
Speaker 3: I would say. There's nobody coming in going well, yeah,
39:43
Speaker 3: that's a really silly idea and you shouldn't do that,
39:46
Speaker 3: should you know, put the nice painting back. They're just
39:49
Speaker 3: not doing it. And and you know, for me, the
39:52
Speaker 3: most disappointing thing was the Charity Commission. I genuinely thought
39:55
Speaker 3: when I raised this with the Charity Commission that the
39:57
Speaker 3: least that they would do was go and invest gate
40:00
Speaker 3: to see what's gone. I mean, none of this seems
40:03
Speaker 3: to be public. You know. I'm only aware of the
40:07
Speaker 3: archived department going because I was working so closely with them,
40:12
Speaker 3: you know, and it was shocking, and especially because Eve
40:17
Speaker 3: was so well respected amongst the archived community. If you
40:20
Speaker 3: go in, you know, to any other institution and talk
40:22
Speaker 3: about it, she was always held very very highly amongst
40:26
Speaker 3: people because she was so good at her job and
40:29
Speaker 3: understanding how precious these items are and how important it
40:32
Speaker 3: is to keep these things logged and protected at a
40:34
Speaker 3: time when a lot of archivists are going, oh, we
40:36
Speaker 3: don't have money, we can't do this, we can't if
40:38
Speaker 3: she didn't do any of that, she was like, no, no,
40:40
Speaker 3: this is my life's work. I'm gonna you know, and
40:42
Speaker 3: it's for the best again once again, it's for the
40:45
Speaker 3: betterment of everyone in Britain. And that's how people should think,
40:49
Speaker 3: and that's how all the fellows used to think. But
40:51
Speaker 3: sadly that's no.
40:52
Speaker 1: Longer the care indeed, so it sounds like you've been
40:57
Speaker 1: making a bit of a new of yourself so far
41:01
Speaker 1: as the trustees and the board would probably have it.
41:04
Speaker 1: Inside the RSA and frankly blowing the whistle on some
41:07
Speaker 1: inexplicable and inexcusable behavior. Frankly, could you talk to me
41:12
Speaker 1: a little bit about that, this process that you've been
41:14
Speaker 1: going through and how you've been targeted.
41:17
Speaker 3: It all started with an idea a long time ago
41:21
Speaker 3: that a woman called Anne Longley and I were chatting
41:25
Speaker 3: some years ago at a London Fellow's meetup in Greenwich,
41:29
Speaker 3: and we both I've got a tech background, she is
41:32
Speaker 3: a tech and we're both going we should have a
41:35
Speaker 3: platform where we can share ideas and quickly connect with
41:38
Speaker 3: each other and say, I'm doing this, let's get a
41:40
Speaker 3: group together who's in type thing? And I'm really bad
41:46
Speaker 3: at kind of not being quick and proactive. So if
41:51
Speaker 3: I picked something up, I run with it and I
41:53
Speaker 3: get the job done. So a lot of people used
41:56
Speaker 3: to ask me support, where do you get your funding
41:58
Speaker 3: from your films? And I'm like, well, every project different,
42:00
Speaker 3: but one thing I guarantee you is I never get grants.
42:03
Speaker 3: And they go why, and I said, because it takes
42:04
Speaker 3: a grant maker three months to make a decision, and
42:07
Speaker 3: in that time I will have come up with the
42:09
Speaker 3: idea and made the film, but it moved on to
42:12
Speaker 3: the next project. So I immediately started hitting the sort
42:15
Speaker 3: of bureaucratic brick walls, and I kind of went, okay, well,
42:19
Speaker 3: that's clearly not however, and picked up the ball and
42:21
Speaker 3: ran with it, and over about a two and a
42:23
Speaker 3: half three year period, eventually persuaded the RSA to build
42:26
Speaker 3: a social media platform basically a sort of a LinkedIn
42:30
Speaker 3: for RSA. Sadly though, it morphed into something neither of
42:37
Speaker 3: us had hoped, and it basically became a third party
42:40
Speaker 3: product in the States. It's a white label product called Circle,
42:45
Speaker 3: and it works exactly the same way as every year
42:47
Speaker 3: the social media platform, and you basically buy it, bang
42:50
Speaker 3: your name on the front of it, and present to
42:54
Speaker 3: your audience that it's yours. So anyways, as part of
42:57
Speaker 3: the innovation team of this, I was asked to be
43:00
Speaker 3: to test it and I got on there and the
43:01
Speaker 3: first thing I suppotted was the terms and conditions with
43:04
Speaker 3: the exact same as Twitter or facebooks, which was completely
43:08
Speaker 3: anti the rssa's data protection rules. So I brought it
43:12
Speaker 3: to their attention when hey, this Circle thing shares your
43:17
Speaker 3: data and it links you to other platforms and they
43:20
Speaker 3: can sell your information, and I it's fine if people
43:24
Speaker 3: want to do that. Because you know, may do people
43:26
Speaker 3: use Facebook and LinkedIn and all the other things, but
43:29
Speaker 3: they need to be aware of this. And I got
43:32
Speaker 3: nan by back going, yeah, Paul, absolutely, thanks for bringing
43:35
Speaker 3: this to our attention. We'll make sure it's up front
43:38
Speaker 3: and center that this is a third party product and
43:41
Speaker 3: that you're actually coming out of the rssay's own sort
43:44
Speaker 3: of date protection rules. And I thought that's perfectly acceptable.
43:47
Speaker 3: Everybody knows what's going on. We move on from there.
43:50
Speaker 3: What actually happened is they buried it in the terms
43:53
Speaker 3: and conditions of the RSA and when you sign up
43:55
Speaker 3: the circle now it just says you know you're an
43:58
Speaker 3: RSA member, click here to join circle, and for the
44:02
Speaker 3: majority of people, they just think it's an RSA product,
44:05
Speaker 3: which it isn't. And so that that was my start
44:08
Speaker 3: in conflict because people then said, oh, you're trying to
44:11
Speaker 3: dissuade people from signing up the circle, and they clearly
44:14
Speaker 3: spent a lot of money on this. When I asked
44:16
Speaker 3: why they didn't use an open source product, I was
44:18
Speaker 3: told that, oh, it's open source. Confused some of our
44:22
Speaker 3: older fallows, and I'm like, well, I'm not buying that
44:25
Speaker 3: because most people who work in open source came from
44:30
Speaker 3: Gen X and boomers, most people who are sort of
44:34
Speaker 3: Gen Z millennials that don't even know what open source is,
44:36
Speaker 3: let alone anything else. But anyway, but nonetheless, you can learn.
44:40
Speaker 3: You know, we're intelligent people. You can learn, and an
44:44
Speaker 3: open source product would mean it embedded with our ethos.
44:48
Speaker 3: And one of the biggest ironies is Amanda Brock, who
44:52
Speaker 3: is the head of open Source UK, is a fellow,
44:55
Speaker 3: and nobody thought to approach her and kind of gone, hey, Amanda,
44:58
Speaker 3: you're a fellow, what should we do this? So again,
45:02
Speaker 3: it was a bunch of people knowing very little about
45:04
Speaker 3: the technology asking another bunch of people who knew even
45:07
Speaker 3: less about technology about which technologies they use, rather than
45:10
Speaker 3: the resources some of the greatest technological talent that we
45:13
Speaker 3: have as part of our fellowship. And I think that
45:15
Speaker 3: was a classic demonstration of why the organization is splitting
45:18
Speaker 3: up the way it is. And yeah, so I was
45:22
Speaker 3: seen as a troublemaker and that was kind of the start.
45:27
Speaker 3: And I was mortified at the bad press we were
45:30
Speaker 3: getting during the Industrial Revolution. And I was also mortified
45:34
Speaker 3: about how fellows who were uniting together to try and
45:37
Speaker 3: support the staff and trying to be what I would
45:41
Speaker 3: consider fellows were being shut down consistently, they were being
45:46
Speaker 3: barred from coming into the building, they couldn't contribute, And
45:51
Speaker 3: so I wrote a substack about it, called for the
45:54
Speaker 3: Love of Fellowship and basically explaining my passion for the organization,
45:57
Speaker 3: how much I love it, how much, why I like
46:00
Speaker 3: what's happening to it at the moment, and trying to
46:03
Speaker 3: put a bit of a rallying core for any fellows
46:05
Speaker 3: that were in my sphere to kind of unite and
46:09
Speaker 3: push back against this sort of destruction really of our
46:13
Speaker 3: beloved institution. That resulted in the RSA management telling me
46:20
Speaker 3: that I had brought the organization into distribute, and that
46:25
Speaker 3: claim has varied from me bullying staff members allegedly, which actually,
46:30
Speaker 3: when you look at the evidence and I've supplied that
46:32
Speaker 3: to you of an email of the person that I'm
46:34
Speaker 3: supposed to be bullied, it was him bullying me and
46:36
Speaker 3: me saying I'm not dealing with you anymore. You've upset me,
46:40
Speaker 3: leave me alone, and then him going, well you've upset
46:42
Speaker 3: me now, and apparently that was me bullying him. Yeah,
46:47
Speaker 3: and according to our bylaws. Oh no, So let's get
46:51
Speaker 3: this straight. So the first thing I hear about it,
46:54
Speaker 3: I get an email from Andy Hawdy in one of
46:56
Speaker 3: the most ridiculous emails I think I've ever received from
46:59
Speaker 3: a living human being, saying you cannot speak to other
47:02
Speaker 3: fellows or staff at the RSA. And I'm like, well,
47:04
Speaker 3: considering most of these people that I know at the
47:06
Speaker 3: RSA and my friends, are you telling me I can't
47:09
Speaker 3: communicate with my friend? And I didn't get a response
47:14
Speaker 3: to that. I then kind of escalated this up to
47:17
Speaker 3: Tim Miles, going, look, this is ridiculous. I mean, this
47:19
Speaker 3: is an embarrassing email. And somebody is supposed to be
47:22
Speaker 3: a chief execu, supposed to be a professional, supposed to
47:25
Speaker 3: be empathetic, supposed to be compassionate, and actually it's just
47:29
Speaker 3: telling me I can't do something because I've done something
47:31
Speaker 3: he doesn't like that should not be acceptable to the
47:35
Speaker 3: chair of our institution. Tim, instead of investigating anything or
47:40
Speaker 3: doing anything, just wrote back to me saying I've spoken
47:43
Speaker 3: to Andy and I agree with everything he says. I
47:46
Speaker 3: was like, well, that's not helpful. So then I reached
47:48
Speaker 3: out to the Charity Commission, going, look, this is a
47:51
Speaker 3: structure we predate you. By the way, so you know,
47:54
Speaker 3: as a charitable organization, we come under the King's Charter
47:58
Speaker 3: and not under the charity law, so that's going to
48:00
Speaker 3: be really complicated. We're also a voting fellowships that we're
48:03
Speaker 3: unique in that in terms of charity. How do you
48:05
Speaker 3: treat this differently? And they go, we don't. We just
48:07
Speaker 3: treat you like a normal charity. So you're like, right,
48:10
Speaker 3: so you don't have enough law or understanding of what
48:12
Speaker 3: we're doing here. So they were a dead end and yeah,
48:17
Speaker 3: and it culminated in the subset. They then go, right,
48:20
Speaker 3: we're going to kick you out for so they dropped
48:22
Speaker 3: me an email saying we had a meeting, we had
48:25
Speaker 3: a vote, you've got to go, but you do have
48:29
Speaker 3: according to our by laws are made up by laws,
48:31
Speaker 3: you do have a right to an appeal. Would you
48:34
Speaker 3: like do an appeal? And I was like, well yeah,
48:36
Speaker 3: it's like that's a no brainer. And so they set
48:40
Speaker 3: up the first meeting for this appeal, which they were
48:44
Speaker 3: going to do online. They said you can't do it online.
48:46
Speaker 3: You're gonna have to do it in person, and they
48:48
Speaker 3: said we're not doing that. We're not doing this. So
48:50
Speaker 3: basically I had two rounds of appeal that I wasn't
48:53
Speaker 3: even present at. But they both sort of went, well,
48:55
Speaker 3: we can't agree to expelling you until I got to
48:59
Speaker 3: my third and final round, and this was when Sandra
49:02
Speaker 3: Boss from Black Rock was on the panel, and the
49:06
Speaker 3: head of CIPD and the former director of the House
49:10
Speaker 3: of Conference, director of the House of Commons, and I'm
49:13
Speaker 3: sitting in this room with these three people and we're
49:15
Speaker 3: going through what I've done wrong. And in the first round,
49:19
Speaker 3: I was like, I actually don't know what I'm trying
49:21
Speaker 3: to be expelled for, because it's been a moving target.
49:23
Speaker 3: First it was closed bringing the organization into distribute, then
49:26
Speaker 3: it's because I'm bullying staff. Now I don't know what
49:29
Speaker 3: it is today. And they all agreed that actually it
49:32
Speaker 3: wasn't clear they were going to go away, they were
49:34
Speaker 3: going to get this thing done. And then we came
49:36
Speaker 3: back the next one, and in the next one it
49:39
Speaker 3: should have been the final hearing. According to the by laws,
49:42
Speaker 3: they should have been no other hearing. This is full
49:44
Speaker 3: and final. Whatever the decision was at this meeting was
49:48
Speaker 3: going to be it. And the decision that came out
49:50
Speaker 3: of this meeting is that we cannot uphold the reason
49:54
Speaker 3: to expel you go. We're not agreeing with your expulsion,
49:59
Speaker 3: but we're not going to let you enter the house.
50:02
Speaker 3: It's like, what And we've also had a decision that
50:07
Speaker 3: we're going to bring some external person in to make
50:10
Speaker 3: the final decision. And I'm like, well, that's not in
50:12
Speaker 3: your by laws. That's not what your by laws say.
50:14
Speaker 3: And they're very very very clear, and they're very very
50:16
Speaker 3: emphatic in this particular contract. The rest of them wish
50:19
Speaker 3: you watching on this one issue. This final hearing had
50:23
Speaker 3: to be the final hearing, clear and emphatic. And they
50:26
Speaker 3: brought in somebody external who apparently did some reading, didn't
50:29
Speaker 3: get in touch with me on any level, didn't talk
50:32
Speaker 3: to me, didn't interview me, and asked me any questions,
50:35
Speaker 3: and said, oh, no, I agree that you should be expelled.
50:39
Speaker 3: So you're being expelled. And in this response is again,
50:44
Speaker 3: you've gone. They've actually gone. Yeah, we broke the by laws.
50:48
Speaker 3: We banned you from the building when we shouldn't have done.
50:50
Speaker 3: We did this wrong, we did that wrong, we did
50:52
Speaker 3: the other wrong. But it's all right because you're gone now.
50:57
Speaker 3: But I haven't. I'm still here. I'm still trying to
51:00
Speaker 3: bigger There is that.
51:02
Speaker 1: Yes, it sounds like they manufactured an outcome that they
51:06
Speaker 1: were looking for to get rid of someone who was
51:08
Speaker 1: causing them an inconvenience. And yes, that's not that unsurprising frankly,
51:16
Speaker 1: given a lot of what you've just described to me,
51:19
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of this takeover of the institution.
51:23
Speaker 1: Now you have kind of mentioned a couple of people there.
51:26
Speaker 1: I'll just focus. You mentioned Soundra Box, So she's actually
51:29
Speaker 1: the head of the chair of Black Roll UK, right,
51:33
Speaker 1: So these are very powerful, influential people. Is there anyone
51:37
Speaker 1: else on the board that people should be aware of
51:39
Speaker 1: that you think is you know, a particular interest.
51:43
Speaker 3: I mean the three people, I can't really you'll probably
51:47
Speaker 3: be able to look at their names quicker. And but
51:49
Speaker 3: one is the head of the CAPD, which is a
51:52
Speaker 3: charge in issue personal development of all the people you
51:55
Speaker 3: think would make sure that somebody in my situation would
51:59
Speaker 3: have been getting the best protections would have been him.
52:02
Speaker 3: And the other was the former director of the House
52:05
Speaker 3: of Commons. So I mean they were not inconsequential individuals
52:10
Speaker 3: by any stretch of imagination.
52:12
Speaker 1: So you got Ian Ales, who is the treasurer of
52:15
Speaker 1: the r s A. So he was the Director General
52:19
Speaker 1: of the House of Commons.
52:22
Speaker 2: Yeah.
52:22
Speaker 1: And then was there another man, you said ahead of
52:25
Speaker 1: the c I P. D. David Deus. Yeah, okay, there's
52:29
Speaker 1: some pretty serious people on here.
52:31
Speaker 3: My friend Richard supported me in the meetings. And you know,
52:36
Speaker 3: one of the key things that we kept saying is,
52:39
Speaker 3: you know, where's the evidence to back this stuff up?
52:43
Speaker 3: You know, you claim that I bullied, you claimed that
52:46
Speaker 3: I've done X, Y and z, some of these things
52:48
Speaker 3: at the level of you know, a criminal activity, you know,
52:52
Speaker 3: if you've been bullying someone to such an extent. But
52:57
Speaker 3: they didn't provide any And you know, one of the
53:01
Speaker 3: most laughable things is that after we've had this, they said,
53:05
Speaker 3: oh the artists, say said, we've given them new evidence,
53:09
Speaker 3: like after the judgment, you've you've gone out. Well, that
53:13
Speaker 3: didn't work out for us. So I have some new
53:15
Speaker 3: evidence I've never seen ever, so I've never been able
53:19
Speaker 3: to comment on it or retaliate against it. So, yeah,
53:25
Speaker 3: as you say, it was clearly a manufactured but again
53:27
Speaker 3: no protections, nothing from the charity Commission, nothing from the trustees.
53:32
Speaker 3: And I should point out that of all the sort
53:36
Speaker 3: of tick boxes and inclusivity, I'm probably I'm probably the
53:40
Speaker 3: Bengo card of them all, because you know, I, whilst
53:44
Speaker 3: a mixed race, I come under the banner of Black,
53:46
Speaker 3: Caribbean and other I have a disability and that I
53:50
Speaker 3: suffer with MECFS. I am reliant on disability did WP payments.
53:55
Speaker 3: I've been homeless for fifteen years. And you know, you
54:00
Speaker 3: like going of all the people that an organization like
54:03
Speaker 3: the RISA should be rallying around and supporting and going,
54:06
Speaker 3: my gosh, you've got all that going on, yet you're
54:07
Speaker 3: still producing films. You're still you know, bringing attention to
54:11
Speaker 3: the public of the failures in various systems all across
54:15
Speaker 3: the UK to try and make other people's lives better,
54:20
Speaker 3: their approaches. You're bothering us, go away.
54:26
Speaker 1: Well, you're asking lots of inconvenient questions about what exactly
54:29
Speaker 1: is it they're up to back there, you know that
54:31
Speaker 1: never goes down. Well, okay, this is fantastic, Thank you
54:34
Speaker 1: so much, Paul. This would be really interesting, just just
54:36
Speaker 1: on a final point, at an institutional level, what would
54:40
Speaker 1: you like to see the RSA do and get back
54:42
Speaker 1: to in terms of it's it's it's its future direction.
54:47
Speaker 3: Go back to what we were, go back to a fellowship,
54:50
Speaker 3: a fellowship that elects its leaders, that is a group
54:55
Speaker 3: of individuals who come together with the solve single problems
54:58
Speaker 3: so you know where it's looking at welfare or money
55:03
Speaker 3: or health that we go right okay. Every time that
55:08
Speaker 3: there's been a major problem in Britain, it has been
55:10
Speaker 3: a group of people in the RSA who've got together
55:13
Speaker 3: and gone, if we do this, this and this, and
55:16
Speaker 3: here's the talent, in here the expertise, and here are
55:18
Speaker 3: the connections, we can fix this problem in a matter
55:21
Speaker 3: of days or weeks or months. And that's what I
55:24
Speaker 3: want to see back. I want to see a fellowship
55:26
Speaker 3: of united talented people with their core ethos about helping
55:31
Speaker 3: and supporting other human beings in the British Isles being
55:34
Speaker 3: led by someone that they have elected to leave.
55:38
Speaker 1: That sounds like exactly the kind of institution that we
55:40
Speaker 1: need to have in this country right now. There's been
55:43
Speaker 1: a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much for be time,
55:46
Speaker 1: Paul Ratherton, FRSA. For all those listening and watching back home,
55:51
Speaker 1: Thanks for watching