Common Purpose Exposed — Exposed

I’m the graduate of a secret society — Common Purpose — that is so secret, I didn’t know it was a secret society.

I discovered the website ‘Common Purpose Exposed’ by accident. A list exists of current UK politicians, against which a number of notes are made: Negro, Jew, Married to Jew, Openly Homosexual, Trotsky, Somali mother, and … graduate of Common Purpose. For information about the latter, the reader is referred to ‘Common Purpose Exposed’.

It’s an outfit run by a Mr Brian Gerrish, who also uses his site to share some interesting thoughts on the state of the nation from a Cornish perspective, and a penetrating analysis of the connection between Neuro Linguistic Programming and teenage suicide.

Common Purpose’s own website describes its activity as follows:

“Common Purpose UK runs leadership development programmes that inspire and equip people to work together across boundaries. This enables them to solve complex problems in organisations and society.”

I happen to have participated in a Common Purpose course. So, according to Mr Gerrish, my behaviour and, indeed, my free will have apparently been remoulded to encourage my participation in overthowing democracy in the UK, and replacing it with the new regime of the European Union superstate. Teenagers and children have been endangered. Evil has flourished. Good men must stop it, and they are encouraged to begin that task by using a search function to find me (hello, by the way).

Before you reach for your pitchfork in defence of the marvel that is the current UK democratic system, allow me if you will to plead in my defence. I’m conscious that, in doing so, you don’t know whether my bond with Common Purpose has been forged so strongly that I am compelled now to lie and conceal my true intentions — c’est la vie, as we European Union superstate conspirators say regularly under the Chatham House rule.

My involvement with Common Purpose began — and ended — with a twelve week program in 2005 in Aberdeen, Scotland. At that time I was an employee of an international oil firm—an institution not well known for its fondness for inculcating in its employees a strong sense of individualism, non-conformance, and disruption of the status-quo.

My companions were drawn from the region’s civic, business, not-for-profit, and charitable institutions: local government, the police, the prison service, state and private schools, an adult education charity, a small business, a big business (me).

Each of us took it in turns once a month to host the others at our place of work and tell everyone else about our world. Remember that thing you used to do at school when you’d bring something to class and stand up in front of everyone and tell them about it? Like that. In the morning, we’d have a tour of the person’s place of work. In the afternoon, some more people would join — usually people more senior in the institutions represented — and we’d have a big discussion about what we’d seen, and what we thought about it from our perspective in society.

Conversations were held under the ‘Chatham House’ rule — the information could be used, but the affiliation of the speaker or other participants could not be revealed. It’s invoked to encourage openness and the sharing of information, for example when trying to figure out how to make society work better. There’s a reason why people don’t attach a lot of value to the contents of an organisation’s ‘Public Information’ service. And there is a reason why the Chatham House rule is necessary when exploring the roots of dysfunction and their solutions.

The idea was to create a mutual understanding of what everyone did to make their bit of society work, and from that understanding, think about how it could be made to work better together.

And it affected me. Years later, I took a year out to use my private sector skills to help transform the viability of a not-for-profit early years daycare centre. We increased the salaries of some of the lowest paid people in society; we increased their training; we increased ‘profit’ (while charging less than market prices); we transformed the life chances of hundreds of babies, many from some of the most underprivileged homes. Amongst the roots of my inspiration to do so was the understanding I developed during Common Purpose of the deep linkage between Early Years Development, low wage employment, fulfilment of human potential, and crime. Spot the word ‘European’ in there.

Here’s the thing. At no point was ‘Common Purpose’ one of the show-and-tell sessions. At no time did anyone from ‘Common Purpose’ talk about a ‘Common Purpose’ view of how society was supposed to work. There was some talk about how societies might work better if the participants in each bit of it knew how the other bits worked. But that was hardly the stuff of Mein Kampf. Imagine if their agenda argued that society might work better if we all deepened our ignorance of every other part of it.

This all took place in the North East of Scotland — Edinburgh was considered to be a very far off and strange place. I don’t recall Europe being discussed once, much less invoked as the Valhalla to which we Brynhildrs should fly.

No — a nice person gathered emails, issued invites, organised lunches and buses, and generally acted as cat herder.

Not as cat hypnotiser.

And here’s another thing. As we survey the wreckage of UK Democracy, what — exactly — is wrong with questioning whether it might be made to work better? And if you were to ask that question, what — exactly — is wrong with encouraging people in different parts of it to work together from the position of a common understanding, from which a Common Purpose might emerge? None that I can see.

There are nearly 19,000 graduates listed in the Common Purpose Exposed graduate database. By definition, they have come from every corner of civil society. So there will be European Union proponents. And Independent UK proponents. And Scottish Independence proponents. And Conservative supporters. And Labour Supporters. And Marxists. And, statistically, some rum ‘uns. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Common Purpose are not, in my experience of it at least, directing the hand of European fate, any more than are The Iluminati. The truth, as Alan Moore pointed out, is far more frightening — nobody is in control. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.