So, is it OK to dislike Nick Walkley?

Barnet Council CEO Nick Walkley is changing jobs. He has handed in his notice - a privilege he still enjoys while he denies it to so many Barnet Council employees under him who his decisions have made and will make redundant. He expects to be confirmed soon in his new post of CEO for our neighbouring borough of Haringey.

How pleasant to be able to choose the time of your own departure, to control your own career in this way. How pleasant to be at the top of the local government food chain instead of anywhere further down. (Even fellow senior managers at Barnet are losing their jobs in a restructure.)

There has been much speculation about why Walkley is walking. How prescient, some say, to go now before the shit hits the One Barnet fan (much the most popular theory).

I have recorded some scathing views about Nick Walkley lately. I recorded some even more scathing views that failed to make it into the pages of local newspapers, who know the law on defamation better than I do: I’ll say them here instead in more measured tones.

I said I didn’t understand why Haringey would want to appoint as their CEO a man who is despised by many of the staff under him and by most of those Barnet residents who actually know who he is.

I think this statement skirts the safe side of defamation - but, more to the point, is the statement just and why?

I believe it is just and here is why. I have felt a little guilty for the forthrightness of my views - a man’s a man for a’ that - but then I remember this:

This is the poster that Nick Walkley ordered to be plastered around the staff areas at Barnet Council offices on the eve of a legal strike in September 2011 by workers whose jobs are going to be outsourced to the private sector.

Workers who could lose their jobs in that outsourcing, or who, if they keep their jobs, will certainly have to work harder and probably for less money – for how else are ‘savings’ to be achieved? Workers who would be no better than dumb animals if they did not try to defend themselves in the face of this.

On this occasion, I am happy to say, Nick Walkley’s poster campaign, his attempt at intimidation, had the opposite effect to that intended and made those planning to strike even more determined to go ahead.

Any other outcome would have been unjust. Can’t Nick himself see that?

How would he, Nick, feel, I wonder, if he went into work and was confronted with walls of posters aimed at him that said something like: “you are not breaking any laws but I would like to remind you that your job is not safe, I can sack you if I can find a pretext, do your job obediently and know that I am watching you – Your Boss”.

I’m quite sure he wouldn’t like it. So why does he think it is alright to do it to others?

I have examined the evidence, and I have come to the conclusion that not only is it OK but it is in fact completely sensible to dislike Nick Walkley.

I have set out the reasons why below, in the shape of an ‘Open Letter to Nick Walkley’, since that is evidently a medium that he feels to be effective – if it’s good enough for the workers, it’s good enough for him, their boss.

An open letter to Nick Walkley  

These are the levels on which I believe it is reasonable to dislike you.  

First, on a completely impersonal level, for occupying a class position that allows you to bully those under you while you naturally assume your right to control your own destiny, to name your own price. For the hypocrisy involved in that.  

For the conversation we had in the lunch queue at NLBP where you said you had no moral responsibility for the way Lovells employees, who had earlier been transferred from Barnet Homes, were treated when the company went bust. For the look of puzzlement on your face when it was suggested otherwise. For leaning on the law (be afraid lest one day it lean on you).  

For exercising your right to govern – though in whose name it is not at all clear. Who are you meant to serve? Who do you in fact serve? The people or yourself?  

For getting lucky in life; for riding your luck, and, worst of all, not reflecting on how lucky you are. In short, for your ignorance.  

I am a socialist so I would call your ignorance the ignorance typical of the ruling class. There are many Nick Walkleys in this world; they don’t choose to do what they do, but their class position, the way things are structured, makes it impossible for them to act otherwise than they do.  

Second, for something you did choose, for the job you do. For being among the small professional elite of local government chief executive officers taking fat salaries – in your own case, for no discernible benefit shown to the residents of this borough.  

In cahoots with each other and with the outsourcing companies that want to take over running our public services, not out of the love of mankind but for venal reasons, boosting their profits and in the process making a few richer while most will only see worse services out of the deal and endure harder working lives.  

For pushing through a privatisation plan, One Barnet, that no resident has agreed to. For not even seeing that that is a problem, that politics and perceptions matter.  

For not understanding why, whether you deserve it or not, people think you are running away from Barnet, deserting a sinking ship, behaving like a rat. You moan about the rough ride the bloggers have given you, without having the wit to know why people criticise you or taking the trouble to look at what they see as faults in the system. Don’t we pay you enough to do that?  

Here you are the civil servant, Walkley. You serve a master, any master. You bend with the wind; how readily you bend.  

People wonder how you will fare transferring, as it were, from a flagship Tory borough to a borough with no Conservative councillors. I don’t think this switch will trouble you one iota; and you are so much the worse for that.  

Third, and finally, yes, on the personal level, it is reasonable to dislike you. To dislike you just for being who you are, for being Nick Walkley.  

In order to remember why, I just look at that poster, your decision, your doing, and signed, by you, Nicholas Walkley. 

Regards, 

Vicki Morris
Barnet resident