17-04-2018, 13:03
Back in 1961 I think Stanley Milgram devised a psychological experiment that showed how far human beings would take their obedience to authority figures. Fifty seven years on Windrushgate is proving how unwilling people are to rebel against authority.
Milgram's experiment demonstrated how volunteers assigned the role of teacher were prepared to continue administering apparent electric shocks to apparent learners upon the instructions given to them by researchers. They continued correcting wrong answers with increasingly high voltages despite the screams coming from the other side of the partition which separated them.
In The Home Office apparently ordinary men and women thought it right to send out letters threatening deportation to people who had been brought to this country even before Milgram conducted his experiment. Some of these people have been denied NHS treatment, lost jobs and had their driving licences removed. They've become non-people. Ordinary men and women in The Home Office have colluded in this policy. They've seen the letters. They knew what was happening. They did nothing! EVEN when protests were voiced they colluded.
Those same people would no doubt be appalled by the clerk in the death camps listing the possessions removed from those about to be gassed .......... but their own lives would have been in no danger had they spoken up and yet they chose to obey.
It is frightening. My mum used to nurse in a hospital for what at the time were known as Mentally Subnormal people. At one point it became psychiatrically fashionable to administer shock treatment, electro-convulsive therapy, was that its name? The patients facing it, though often childlike, knew what was about to happen and were terrified ....... really, really terrified of this procedure and begged not to be taken. My mum, who had left school at fourteen yet embarked on this quite demanding nurse training, had the courage to say, "This is cruel. I will have no part of it!" She did not have the power to stop it, but she protested and refused to collude. She saw that these patients had no prospect of recovery or real improvement, said so, and she kept her job too! I read about The Home Office and I am so bloody proud of her.
Windrushgate is a lesson for all us. If we see something wrong we should speak up. If something seems wrong and unjust let's question it. I can't remember the last time anything made me quite so furious. I just wanted to say it out loud.
Milgram's experiment demonstrated how volunteers assigned the role of teacher were prepared to continue administering apparent electric shocks to apparent learners upon the instructions given to them by researchers. They continued correcting wrong answers with increasingly high voltages despite the screams coming from the other side of the partition which separated them.
In The Home Office apparently ordinary men and women thought it right to send out letters threatening deportation to people who had been brought to this country even before Milgram conducted his experiment. Some of these people have been denied NHS treatment, lost jobs and had their driving licences removed. They've become non-people. Ordinary men and women in The Home Office have colluded in this policy. They've seen the letters. They knew what was happening. They did nothing! EVEN when protests were voiced they colluded.
Those same people would no doubt be appalled by the clerk in the death camps listing the possessions removed from those about to be gassed .......... but their own lives would have been in no danger had they spoken up and yet they chose to obey.
It is frightening. My mum used to nurse in a hospital for what at the time were known as Mentally Subnormal people. At one point it became psychiatrically fashionable to administer shock treatment, electro-convulsive therapy, was that its name? The patients facing it, though often childlike, knew what was about to happen and were terrified ....... really, really terrified of this procedure and begged not to be taken. My mum, who had left school at fourteen yet embarked on this quite demanding nurse training, had the courage to say, "This is cruel. I will have no part of it!" She did not have the power to stop it, but she protested and refused to collude. She saw that these patients had no prospect of recovery or real improvement, said so, and she kept her job too! I read about The Home Office and I am so bloody proud of her.
Windrushgate is a lesson for all us. If we see something wrong we should speak up. If something seems wrong and unjust let's question it. I can't remember the last time anything made me quite so furious. I just wanted to say it out loud.
