Does Martyn Sewell Overegg The "Martin Percy Affair"? 馃ケ
On 'Surviving Church. Martyn Sewell gives his views on the events at Christ Church.
Without going into all the detail, which readers will be
(over)familiar with, in this he states:
"The persecution of Dr Martyn Percy has become one of
those iconic events that may change how institutions are viewed in future. It
may not be inappropriate to make a comparison with the Dreyfus Affair in
Edwardian France and the UK Profumo scandal, where the standards of the old
Establishment intersected with the changing standards of “Swinging Britain” in
the early 1960s. One might even add the bungled bugging escapade known as
“ Watergate “ – initially dismissed by actor John Wayne as a “panty raid”
but which ended with the resignation of a President. Each began on a
small scale, but then grew to have enormous cultural consequence; so, I
suggest, might the Oxford debacle in College and Church alike. This is a major
Establishment scandal."
Really? Comparable to the Dreyfuss Affair, the Profumo
Scandal or Watergate!!!
Readers will note that the weblog owner, Stephen Parsons,
wrote at the end of this article: "Because of the nature of this
material, the SC editor has decided not to accept comments for this blog
post."
Interesting ......
"may not be inappropriate to make a comparison with the Dreyfus Affair"
ReplyDeleteUmm ... No. That's ridiculous. The lack of perspective is stunning. He wasn't sent to Devil's Island.
Maybe Percy will name the luxury home that he will buy with his £1M+ payoff "Devil's Island".
ReplyDeleteOr maybe "Dunmutualflourishin"
DeleteOn 'Surviving Church'. Martyn Percy gives his views on the events at Christ Church'
ReplyDeleteDo you mean Martin Sewell?
Jack did mean Martin Sewell - at times it's difficult to distinguish the two!
DeleteJust don't get yourself sued!
DeleteI sent you something through the contact form, by the way. I don't know if it sent, it might not be able to cope with longer messages.
I stopped commenting on this at Cranmer's, not because I was bored with the whole affair, which I was, but because I felt too much of what was written was selective and biased.
ReplyDeleteSo Devils Island enjoying horrific prison conditions, crap food and sadistic prison guards, OR
freedom of movement, living in a beautiful home with servants, an excellent stock of wine and good food.
You can see the parallels immediately.
Exactly so.
DeleteI was never sure this was a 'scandal'. A bunch of overpaid blokes hate each other and try to get rid of one of their number.
DeleteAnd "The persecution of Dr Martyn Percy has become one of those iconic events that may changing how institutions are viewed in future." Hmm, how about the actions of Martyn Percy et al ensuring that Philip North didn't become bishop and the traditional Christian wing of the CofE was squashed changing how this particular institution is viewed in the future.
Martin Sewell makes an interesting point with his triple comparison, though l’m not sure that the Profumo business really belongs in the same category as Watergate and the Dreyfus case. Profumo never claimed he had been doing the right thing all along. The French officer corps, in contrast, thought that scapegoating Dreyfus was no more than a technical breach of a grey-area paragraph in the rule book and they were acting correctly by endeavouring to ensure that the Army retained its prestige, its privileges, and its high standing in French public opinion. In Caiaphas’s words, they were sacrificing one man for the good of the nation. The Watergate burglars, similarly, could deceive themselves into sincerely believing that they were upholding a key national institution, the U.S. presidency, against the subversive efforts of conspirators who were out to undermine its authority in the hope of seeing it pulled down from its pedestal and replaced by an all-powerful Congress.
ReplyDeleteThe question now is, in which category are the fellows of Christ Church to be pigeonholed? Did they see their actions as morally justified by the need to achieve a greater good, to ward off a perceived threat seen to be hovering over the “House” or even over the university as a whole? Or were they, like John Profumo, just having a bit of fun at somebody else’s expense?
Everything I have read about it, mainly (of course) at Cranmer’s but occasionally in the FT and elsewhere, suggests that the indefatigable litigants were miniature sub-Profumos who didn’t even take the trouble to pretend that there might be some moral or ethical argument in their favour that an outsider could be expected to understand and agree with. If Martin Sewell’s calculations are correct and their fun and games at Martyn Percy’s expense end up costing them ₤100,000 per head, they’ll be able to heave a sigh of relief and congratulate themselves that they’ve been let off lightly.
@ Ray Sunshine
ReplyDeleteBut ... is this "Percy Affair" likely to have "enormous cultural consequence"; is it "a major Establishment scandal." on a par with those it's being compared to?
I hope it will have at least some consequences at an institutional level, in the sense that either Oxford University or the Diocese of Oxford, or even both together, will compel Christ Church to amend its constitution in such a way as to make it impossible that this grisly Gothic pantomime should ever have a repeat performance.
DeleteAgreed.
Delete↑Uptick
DeleteWe're gonna miss those upticks! (I don't mean getting them... it was always better to give than receive).
ReplyDelete↑Uptick
DeleteMartin S's clubby obsession with the fate of Martyn P (a very prosperous enemy of biblical faith who was treated badly by the abominable dons) in turn bored and annoyed me when I thought of the true servants of Christ toiling for the Gospel and facing terrible persecution in the world. I really felt Cranmer allowed far too much of this sideshow in his late and lamented blog.
ReplyDeleteBut I will venture this prediction: I think it will emerge that Percy lied about Alannah Jeune,
I wouldn't be surprised.
DeleteYes, it all got a bit much with the "victimology". In particular, Cranmer's article on Alannah Jeune went too far. It's been archived and can be found here:
Deletehttps://web.archive.org/web/20221117115429/https://archbishopcranmer.com/
I have to confess I disliked Sewell's contributions from the start. To me he typifies the worst kind of lawerly pedant, entirely willing to use accuracy to bend truth, and I'm sorry that he's ended up as the champion for reforms around abuse allegation processes (the need for which I do not doubt for a moment).
DeleteParadoxically, I felt that the initial coverage of the Percy/Fellows affair underscore the importance of the Cranmer Blog, while the later coverage of the Jeune/Percy allegations (and especially the final "fisking" article, which was riddled with overblown and faulty logic) was its nadir.
While I imagine the run-in with Croft has more to do with its eventual demise, sound judgement was already slipping into what read increasingly like cliquey partisanship.
Every single time an attack would fail, another would materialize. Without fail. Did Percy lie? Who knows? The last accuser's credibility was undermined by all which went before her. If she wants to blame someone, she should blame the Dons and their ecclesial allies.
DeleteThe trouble with "L'Affaire Jeune" is that the original allegation - hair stroking and a cheesy chat up line - was pretty minor and not really minded by Alannah ( and nothing compared to what Joe Biden does in public) until she shared it with others. Further, in today's insane climate, stupid comments and faux pas are treated as hanging offences - look at the way Lady Husey was thrown under the bus by William the Bald. So I can understand Percy lying to save his hide. The problem was he had to accuse Alannah of lying. The whole thing became something like a communist show trial.
Delete@Brianr, I largfly feel the same. And being a person of a parsimonious nature, the thought of all those lawyers fees being paid out sickens me - Martin Percy can come and touch my hair any time he likes, for a small donation, and we can sign a pre-groping agreement.
DeleteParsimonious or Percy-money-us? The trouble with men working with women is not just the old bullying issue of bosses and subordinates but the frisson of male-female relations, how power is exercised through personality and where "harassment' begins. Throw in race or national origins and kaboom! It's a minefield out there - or a gold mine for some.
Delete@BrianR
DeleteIs allegedly chatting up and touching other women when one is married really 'minor'? I thought that a minister had 'to be above reproach, faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable' etc. Either the Bible sets out normative principles or it doesn't, one cannot pick and choose when they apply depending on how one feels about individual cases.
I don't excuse it but sometimes attempts at "gallant" humour or badinage can misfire. In previous centuries a man might kiss a woman's hand - as I have done semi-humourously with erstwhile colleagues. How would that be seen today? What Percy was accused of was a long way short of indecent assault or any crime, but the workplace atmosphere is much more charged nowadays.
DeleteIt's not a matter of it being a crime, it's a matter of Christian integrity (or sin, as it was once called). A married vicar who, consensually, sleeps with another woman isn't committing a crime, but is committing a sin. Chatting up another woman when you're married is a sin (Mt. 5:27-28), and makes you unfit for office (1 Tim 3),
DeleteKissing a hand is a recognised historical act. It might be anachronistic now, and probably unwise given the climate, but it's not the same as, allegedly, getting someone alone in the vestry, stroking their hair and making a pass at them: which is either flirting or so horrifically misjudged that the person doing it probably shouldn't be allowed out without supervision. I make no comment on Percy's case here, which for all we know may be a malicious allegation or gospel truth, but merely the principles underlying it.
If the allegation had been that a priest stroked a man's hair and cooed sweet nothings to him in the vestry, I imagine that there would be calls from conservatives to lynch said priest from the spire as a deviant and an exemplar of all that's wrong in the modern church. But, as it's a woman, it's brushed off (not dismissed for lack of evidence, but treated as a nonissue per se). I'm surprised that Anglicans seem to have set such a low bar for sexual continence among their clergy.
@ 闆叉按
DeleteThe 'problem', as Jack sees it, is that Christ Church's safeguarding team opted to respond to this allegation as a safeguarding matter, judging Alannah Jeune to be a "vulnerable person". This then fed into the "they're out to get Percy" narrative and the substance of the allegation became a secondary issue.
@Jack (and @Carl) - exactly; the entire sequence of events could no longer be seen in isolation but as part of an ongoing saga. I think Carl's quite right when he notes that the approach taken by CC made all subsequent issues harder to deal with.
DeleteBut the only way to unpick that is to resist the narrativization of events and get back to disaggregating claims. Percy was a failed leader - the question of where blame should be attributed for that happening (Percy himself, the Dons, or some hybrid - it's liberals all the way down in this story) almost no longer matters. CC had no mechanism for removing a Dean in which they had lost confidence. A better man than Percy (like, say, Philip North) might have dealt with that failure in a far more graceful way, but still would most likely have had to deal with what was quite possibly going to be an "unfair" outcome (again, like Philip North).
But Percy is not a better man, and he insisted, perfectly correctly and perfectly obtusely, on staying in a role where he couldn't be removed legitimately and couldn't be effective.
But that can't justify CC then putting him through the ringer or engaging in a poisonous whispering campaign (again, ibid North... and hold this thought for another interesting parallel later).
But that can't preclude that Percy did behave inappropriately towards Jeune (and other liberals, all the way down), and that evidently couldn't stop those allegations turning into the cornerstone of attempts to define the whole saga as poor/loathsome sainted/machievellian Percy persecuted/brought to an overdue comeuppance (delete as appropriate).
Nor apparently could it stop a subsequent attempt to taint Percy's accuser with yet another online harrassment campaign (my, how these keep cropping up!) possibly including some level of involvement from Percy himself (pace Radio Times' The Feud, episode 5).
So from what I can see, some enormously painful and unjust and stupidly destructive outcomes on multiple parties and the wider Oxford college and CofE have emerged from an institution's lack of a modern leadership structure, and a lawerly insistence throughout on getting one's pound of flesh (Cranmer always was attracted to Shakespearean tragedy).
@HJ
DeleteYes, I never understood the rationale that this allegation stands or falls by the rest of the ivory tower hissy fit that was going on at Oxford at the time. If any sanity prevailed, this would all lead to a separation of church and academia; too many clerics seem rather too desirous of the power and status that comes with floating around in academic gowns and robes of state rather than getting their hands dirty feeding the sheep.
@ Grutchyngfysch
Delete馃憤
"Oh what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive"
A very ‘Shakespearean’ phrase from Sir Walter Scott.
@Grutchyngfysch
Delete"it's liberals all the way down" - Ha, I'm going to use that!
Btw, now we have all made a fresh start on Jack's wonderful blog, any chance of you explaining what name of yours means?
@Gadjo Dilo - grutchyng is essentially "grumbling" or "complaining" - e.g. Wycliffe Bible Numbers 11:1. Fysch is just Middle English "fish". So it's just a play on my avatar as well as the fish as a symbol for Christians, and an acknowledgement that I moan too much :)
Delete@Grutchyngfysch
DeleteOk, interesting. I still can't quite see what your avatar is, but I'll accept that it's a fish of some sort!