Disclaimer: This post has been written by a handful of the signatories for Resolutions 6 and 7, motions that will be debated and voted on at the Society of Authors AGM on the 17th November. They have asked that I post it here for them. LoobyLou.
We would like to make it clear that not everyone who signed Resolution 7 are signatories for Resolution 6. They are distinct Resolutions and we hope authors voting at the AGM or by proxy beforehand, will keep that distinction in mind.
The resolutions in question are:
Resolution 6: That in light of her documented behaviour and comments, which are not compatible with the Society’s goals of protecting free expression and their policy of dignity and respect, that Joanne Harris stand down as Chair of the Management Committee.
Resolution 7: That in the light of disturbing recent press coverage about the Society, that the Society urgently reviews how to pursue its stated aim “to protect free speech” and puts in place a robust framework to do so, including a member and Management Committee working group that looks at how best to protect the fundamental right of all authors to express themselves freely within the law, and to uphold the impartiality expected of the Society, including all who govern and work for it. This should include a sub-committee of the Management Committee.
Below are seven of the most frequently asked questions we’ve received since we put forwards the Resolutions. We hope you will read our answers with an open mind.
1. Why have you brought this vote to get Joanne Harris to go?
For the Resolution concerning Joanne Harris, this isn’t something that those of us who proposed it have done lightly but, in the end, we felt we had no choice. Numerous complaints have been submitted to the Society about Harris’s online behaviour, but her conduct continues, at times, to be inconsistent with Society of Author’s stated policy on social media bullying.
2. As chair of the management committee, where do you think Joanne Harris has breached her responsibilities?
Joanne Harris has breached her duties by failing to follow the aspirational code of ethics which she as Committee Chair presumably helped to devise and which she declared, as a member of the Committee, that she was fully signed up to. This includes not making comments which amount to bullying, harassment, or any other detriment. She has made repeated public attacks on authors with whom she disagrees although these are often covertly expressed, using sub-tweeting and plausible deniability, or by retweeting. For example, when children’s author Rachel Rooney was being harassed and bullied by other authors, Ms Harris retweeted another author involved in the situation, one of the bullies, thereby justifying this harassment. She has encouraged pile-ons, significantly by retweeting a troll account that exists only to encourage pile-ons. Only this week when an anonymous account asked her about Resolution 7 (our Resolution in favour of freedom of speech) she first tried to unsuccessfully dox the account and then to claim that her actions had nothing to do with Society business when the conversation was about Society business. Individual authors have submitted complaints about many of these instances to the CEO of the Society of Authors, in private, but the response is usually to dismiss these complaints and send emails in response that are simply cut-and-paste quotes from the Society’s policy documents.
3. The Soc of Authors has a code of conduct that involves protecting speech - do you believe she has failed in this duty and why?
Yes. As much as she is as entitled to express her views as anyone else – freedom of speech has no ‘but’ after it – her role as Chair of the Society of Authors means she has a degree of power, and her words carry weight. She has championed a variety of theories which emanate from post-modern French philosophy and these theories actively discourage the right of dissent. Her repeated public 'no debate' stance on a series of contested concepts to do with social and political issues does not allow for opposing points of view to be expressed or seriously considered. She appears to see anyone who might dissent from her worldview as her enemy. If someone has such a stance, do they truly believe in freedom of expression? This, along with her dismissive mocking of cancel culture and authors’ concerns over it has helped to create a climate of fear and self-censorship amongst many in the publishing community.
Writers are not a homogenous being. We need a chair who can put aside their personal views and reach out to all authors. It’s not healthy for anyone when the Chair of a supposedly non-political organisation sees a large swathe of her membership as their enemy.
4. When she tweets, do you think she is representing the Soc of Authors?
While Joanne Harris claims to tweet in a personal capacity and not as the Chair of the SoA, it is hard to see where the two things separate. She seems to don the mantle of Chair as and when it suits her. While she is free to tweet her personal opinions, everyone who follows her knows she is Chair of the Society of Authors. She freely accepted that position and the power and privileges which go with it. While she holds that position, she cannot pick and choose in a public sphere when to put it down. How are the authors and the wider public to know?
5. Given that the Soc of Authors spoke out after the attack on Salman Rushdie, do you think there are other examples when it hasn't done enough for threatened authors?
Death threats, indeed threats of violence, are a very real way to seek to coerce silence. Harris - in defence of the flippant twitter poll that she created the day after the murderous attack on Sir Salman Rushdie (a poll which was widely condemned), later stated that people did not truly appreciate the growing scale of the problem. We have yet to see any concrete evidence that the Society is attempting to understand the true scale of the problem or indeed if it is ready to stand shoulder to shoulder with authors who experience death threats for their words.
And it’s not just death threats. Currently, authors are living in a climate of fear where bullying, harassment, and the risk of losing livelihoods for saying the wrong thing is becoming part of daily life. Joanne Harris has presided over and contributed to a growing spiral of silence in the publishing industry. In a spiral of silence, when holding a certain view entails a stigma and a likely punishment, then - for fear of being seen as having that view - most people remain silent. Thus, the masses believe they are alone or in a small minority, when, in fact, they are the majority. Some of us have pulled together collectively to propose this motion but as we are discovering daily, there are many more of us – hundreds – hiding in the shadows.
This culture of fear and spiral of silence within publishing is real and it strikes at the heart of creativity and threatens to corrode one of the main pillars of freedom which ultimately protects the marginalised – namely freedom of expression.
Simply claiming that the Society is a democratic society, one which does not wish to single out any single author as being more deserving, is a nonsense. We are all deserving of free speech.
6. If Resolution 7 passes, what would you like to see change?
There are so many ways the Society can step up to the mark in its commitment to free speech/expression and not just through its internal practices, which should include much more robust defence of authors being harassed, bullied and threatened for legally held views and/or writing books that some people might find offensive. It needs to remember that offense is taken, not given, and so long as the views expressed by authors are within the bounds of the law, they should always be defended.
On a practical, day to day level, there are many ways the Society can work to better protect its authors and their freedom of speech and expression. Much of this will require collaborating with publishers and agents and everyone else involved in the publishing world.
Some examples of how the Society can step up include working harder to rid the use of compelled morality clauses in contracts, and not just those for books – we were horrified to learn the Society worked with and approved the incredibly restrictive compelled code of conduct enforced on Scottish Book Trust members. This is exactly the thing our Society should be fighting against, not for. Because who decides what is and isn’t moral? Morality means different things to different people.
It should be fighting, too, to stop publishing houses denouncing their authors for having political views or values certain members of their staff disagree with, or because they’ve offended a social media mob for legally held beliefs. No author should be dropped by an agent or publisher, or have their contracts cancelled for having and expressing views that are legal, no matter how eccentric or seemingly unpalatable those views might be to some. Without free expression, art becomes homogenous. It dies.
It needs be proactive too, in dealing with the increasing use of sensitivity readers. Many authors are comfortable using them. Many are not. No author should be compelled to use them. We also know of authors who write historical books both in the factual sense and fictional sense, having to deal with the insidious push to relay history through the prism of current morality and not through the social mores of the time being dealt with.
Language evolves naturally but currently there are attempts to change culture through it, and we’re reaching a stage where language is becoming proscribed. How are authors supposed to create vivid worlds and characters with the full spectrum of human emotion in them if they are constantly having to second guess themselves and living with the fear that some social media mob will take umbrage and their publisher will drop them? The Society should be actively encouraging publishers and agents to stand by their authors and their books, not use them as shields.
These are just some examples of what we feel the Society should be doing to protect its authors and their freedom of expression. Freedom of expression does not have a but after it. Coerced silence leads to repression and fear which in turn leads to instability. We should always remember that freedom of expression is the great safeguard for marginalised communities; it allows for their voices to be heard rather than forced into silence.
Lots of passionate demands here, but no specifics. I have yet to see any concrete example of what you believe the SoA should do in specific situations.
What, specifically, should it have done for JK Rowling?
What, specifically, should it have done for Gillian Philips?
What, specifically, should it have done for Rachel Rooney?
A press release for each? Lots of social media activity? Behind-the-scenes letters to publishers and others? Open letters of support / condemnation (delete as applicable). Perhaps a media appearance or two? An op-ed in the Bookseller. Oh, and of course scripted statements for their new obedient Chair to copy diligently into their social media feeds?
The SoA is not a big organisation, so how much time should they allocate each year for all this essential work? And who should do it? If as you say there is so much of this going on perhaps they need a new department to manage the work. I'm sure members won't mind subsidising the salaries of the extra staff.
You need to be more specific. From the woolly wording of the resolutions, your comments on social media and now this, you honestly have no idea what you're asking for, do you.
NB.