Like many, even most of us, I watched the ITV docu-drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office. Its been incredible witnessing the impact that drama has made on public opinion, policy and ultimately )one hopes) the lives of those affected. It’s a testimony to the power of good storytelling to change things.
One thing that has not been commented on much though is the leadership of Alan Bates in the whole process. I was so stuck by the incredible way in which this unassuming man doggedly led a campaign that has achieved the impact it has. We still expect our leaders to have status, charisma, power. We still expect them to be magicians – capable of ‘hitting the ground running’, ‘turning things around’, ‘getting results’. There is an irony in this, because all these phrases, and the leadership culture they come from, are part of a corporate managerial culture which has been exposed by this whole scandal. A culture that concentrates power into the hands of a select few people and protects it from the ordinary person by any means.
Alan Bates’ leadership was counter-cultural in that respect. Perhaps prophetic of the kind of leadership we want to see, the kind of leadership we need, in the dehumanised world of hyper-modernity.
So what are the characteristics of the leadership embodies by Alan Bates in this story:
- Guided by a deep purpose.
There is a moment in the drama when there is decision to be made about a civil action against the Post Office. It becomes clear that the best-case scenario for each individual sub-postmaster is a pay out (if they win) of something in the region of £22k. For most this is nothing compared to what has been lost, materially and personally. There is a murmur of revolt at the thought of another long fight when the rewards may not outweigh the cost. But then Alan Bates speaks and reminds them they not fighting for money, or for compensation – ultimately they are fighting for the truth. Deeper than any material outcome in this case, is the principle of truth and justice, principles of eternal and lasting value.
Too often we lose sight, if we ever had it, of the deeper purpose of what our leadership is about. The fundamental purpose, deeper than say an annual goal, or a particular target, or a strategic aim, deeper than our personal ambition, or our ambition for our organisation or group, gets lost in the detail. What is what we are doing really about? Why are we putting our energies into this? What is the fundamental and eternal purpose which, even if we failed at this juncture, would still motivate us to keep going?
2. Patience
Patience is not a virtue we value in our culture. Some years ago I saw an advert for a new delivery service which simply said ‘Waiting. Boring.’ Our culture values speed as a moral good. To be busy is to be someone. Our culture encourages us to display our identity and worth to others through a performance of busy-ness.
Alan Bates never seemed to be in a hurry. If he had been he would have given up years ago. His wife refers to him as ‘bloody-minded’ which no doubt is true. But I think deeper than determination, or bloody-mindedness, is a resolute patience, an unwillingness to succumb to the timeframes of our culture and to set his watch perhaps by the historical timescales of social and systemic change. As Martin Luther King said “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Patience in this respect is not just a virtue but a practice that schools us in the timescales of eternity.
3. Non-anxious presence
At the end of the ITV series, many of those who have been wrongly accused of theft and false accounting have their convictions quashed at the Supreme Court. They celebrate their victory outside as the TV cameras capture the moment. Watching from their home in Wales Alan Bates and his wife. ‘You should have been there’ his wife says. ‘No…its not about me’, Mr Bates replies.
This attitude seems to me entirely in line with his leadership all the way through which exhibits a calmness, an unwillingness to resort to anger, a non-anxious presence which provides a still, yet powerful, presence throughout the campaign. The unspoken message of Alan Bates’ disposition throughout the story is one of calm, determination toward the possibility of justice. Mr Bates doesn’t need to make impassioned speeches to motivate people toward that end – he simple models it authentically in his tireless work on behalf the movement and his personal demeanour throughout.
4. Curating space for the leadership of others.
Whilst the ITV drama was entitled ‘Alan Bates vs The Post Office’, as though one man took on the might of a monster corporation, it becomes very clear just how good Alan Bates was in bringing other people into the campaign and curating the campaign as a movement rather than a one-person crusade. A key moment exemplifies this leadership. Knowing the identities of only 7 of those affected by the scandal, Mr Bates decides to call an open meeting and invite anyone else affected to come. At random he chooses an obscure village in the midlands to hold a meeting, hires the hall and waits to see who will come. When they do come there is not great rousing speech from Bates, no clever strategy launch – they just sit in a circle and tell their stories. And so a movement grows based on the solidarity of a shared experience of injustice.
Leadership is so often cast as being about personality. About being the kind of extraordinary person who can do heroic things on behalf of others, drawing people together by the sheer force of their charisma, or the genius of their strategy. What Alan Bates reminds us is that sometimes the most extraordinary things happen when someone sticks a pin in a map, or a stake in the ground, and says ‘lets do this together’. Leadership is about creating (and curating) the space for the participation of others, then standing on the edge and letting it happen.
His Light Material 