Plenty of our work at Action Hampshire is uncontroversial – such as giving information and guidance, or supporting people to start up and develop new projects. But some of what we do involves making a case, lobbying, trying to persuade people to change their mind. And in the rest of our lives, we often want to bring others round to our way of thinking. This can be about fairly trivial stuff like what to do next weekend but there are also, of course, more serious decisions such as moving home, your children’s education, or caring for loved ones.
I’m a keen follower of politics, which obviously involves a lot of trying to influence people and changing their way of thinking! When I hear and read what politicians have to say, it saddens me how they often set out to mislead, with the way they use information to back up their arguments or how they frame opposing views. I wish more politicians would presume good faith on the part of their opponents. So, instead of throwing out accusations like ‘heartless’, ‘naïve’, ‘reckless’ or whatever, wouldn’t it be great if they focused on how their approach will more effectively address the challenges and problems of the day? After all, how do we react when people criticise our motivations and way of thinking? I think many of us find that kind of direct attack hard to take on board.
As an aside, I’ve got a bizarrely strong memory of a couple of events from when I used to play football (not at any meaningful level, I hasten to add!). I think it was in the same game, although the memory does play tricks on us – anyway, here’s how I recall it. At one point a team-mate said, ‘Pass the ball faster’, and I was encouraged to do exactly that. But the same person also said something like, ‘Too slow, Kevin!’ after I’d kept the ball for too long and been tackled. That comment really got me down, making me think I was no good at this stupid game and should just go home. An immature response, I grant you, but I’m not convinced I’d handle it so differently now, some 15 years later! I still respond so much more positively to encouragement than criticism.
Back to politics, and I know what you’re thinking. ‘But people often do argue in bad faith! That needs to be challenged head-on, not pandered to by this ‘presuming good faith’ nonsense.’
Well, I agree that there’s plenty of bad-faith argument going around – perhaps especially in national politics, but in other spheres of life too. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that good-faith argument and transparency usually trumps the bad-faith approach and reveals the latter for what it’s really like.
I’m reminded of when Nick Griffin, then leader of the British National Party, appeared on the panel of the BBC’s Question Time show in 2009. There was concern beforehand that the BBC was making ‘one of the biggest mistakes in its proud history’ and giving the BNP the ‘best-ever platform for its poisonous politics’ (to quote, respectively, a Government minister of the time and a major national newspaper). But the widespread reaction to the show was that, far from giving the BNP’s views the so-called ‘oxygen of publicity’, it actually revealed how flimsy and unreasonable those views were. Instead of oxygen, the BNP found its appearance on prime-time TV to be something of a disinfectant – the post-show media coverage was almost universally negative and the BNP didn’t build on its position in 2009 of having 2 MEPs and council seats in a few London boroughs.
Click this link for a more detailed recount of the 2009 BBC Question Time show.
As well as being keen on politics as a ‘spectator sport’ (and goodness, wasn’t 2022… interesting?), I sometimes wonder about getting more involved in politics directly myself. Partly, now isn’t the right time as I’m already committed to a few other things and don’t really have the capacity for anything new. But also, despite my belief that good faith tends to triumph over bad faith, the worry does nag at me that it’s just not possible to do anything meaningful in the political sphere without being willing to put forward misleading arguments and misrepresent those who see things differently to yourself! I hope my worry is groundless…
