*
But, even now, I sense enormous tensions in the people we’re about to interview. The most senior, once part of the Shell directorate, when I first managed to talk to him, spent half an hour on the phone explaining why he wouldn’t be much ‘use’ to my research. Then, when this didn’t work, he began to probe my background and approach. He sounded extremely anxious, and only after a long time was I able to persuade him that I was not approaching this from a position of conventional, activist judgementalism – that my interest was much more to do with organisational psychology, looking at the detailed processes which occur when people are attempting to deal with tensions between their own sense of ethics and their organisations’ values. After that, he telephoned to postpone our first meeting – a sudden medical issue. So, two days ago, I phoned him again, from Pembrokeshire where I was writing, explaining that the following day I would be driving back to London – a six-hour journey – solely for the purpose of interviewing him, and therefore I wanted to be sure there weren’t going to be any further problems. No, he would be there, don’t worry. So this morning I arrived early at Birkbeck, and set up the room.
My professor friend and I didn’t have time to go through the correct, bureaucratic procedure for room bookings with the college office. He simply gave me his keys, sent me an email confirming all of this was agreed, and then said: ‘If you don’t want to be disturbed I think it would be good to put up a sign on the door – anything with an acronym will do. People don’t ask because they don’t want to feel stupid. What’s the title of the research? That sounds fine – just turn that into initials!’ So I printed out the following sign, and put it on the door:
PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB
ECBL INTERVIEWS IN PROGRESS
And nobody’s disturbed me so far, so his idea seems to be working. I go downstairs to get a coffee and some cold drinks. Then I go to the main entrance, and wait for the first interviewee to arrive. Months and months of preparation to simply get somebody into a room, to talk for an hour and a half.
The man is on time. I recognise him from photographs in Business Today and the FT. But today he’s not wearing a tie, he’s smart, but off-duty, pale blue linen shirt, tasteful ivory jacket and trousers, loafers. But he looks flushed, and furrow-browed as we shake hands. ‘Look, I’ve come today, but only to tell you in person that I don’t think I can do the interview after all. I’m terribly sorry, I know you’ve put yourself to a lot of trouble, but … you see, I looked at your organisation’s website yesterday last night, and I realised more about the work you do. And I was shocked by the misrepresentations there, the inaccuracies, and I began to ask myself questions about how this research would be used. You see, I have to be very careful, even though I’m now retired.’
I had anticipated precisely this response, and had already thought through how I would deal with it. So I now spend twenty minutes talking to him, explaining that Platform are highly respected in terms of the research we do in our field, that we could never have survived for more than fifteen years working on issues concerning the oil industry if we were not scrupulously careful in terms of what we publish, that we double-check everything, and moreover, we have two lawyers on our board of trustees, who ensure the accuracy of all that goes out into the world. I re-emphasise that, in accordance with the research criteria I sent him, he has complete control over his material, that he can redact all or any parts afterwards, if he feels uncomfortable with anything he’s said. Eventually he’s a little calmer, and agrees that we can go ahead with the interview. But what this shows me is that people are acutely aware both of the political nature of discussing the trajectory of a career in the oil industry, but also, on a far more personal level, people know that such a conversation could bring up extremely painful issues, questions which go to the heart of their sense of identity – what you have spent most of your adult life putting your energy into. And they know, instinctively, that talking about these issues, and their own ethics, could start pulling down walls that they have spent most of their working lives building and keeping in place.
*
On this day I’m also thinking of a former student of mine, and a warning he gave me more than ten years ago now. Alberto was a high flyer at Arthur Andersen,fn1 a globe-trotting consultant – I sometimes wonder what happened to him after Andersen imploded in the wake of the Enron scandal – who’d been based in London for a year; he was about to return to Madrid, and we’d gone out for a last drink. We were sitting in a pub in Lamb’s Conduit Street, reflecting on the last six months. We’d got on very well, he was a very sensitive, intelligent man and I’d enjoyed our classes together enormously. It had been more like talking to a bookish colleague; some weeks I felt he’d taught me more than I’d taught him – about how the Opus Dei strengthened their position under Franco, or a story from Buñuel’s autobiography or where to get the best serrano ham in London.
Anyway, now Alberto was asking me directly about my other work – what exactly did Platform do? And what was this research into corporations that I’d mentioned from time to time? It’s what you could call a ‘taxi moment’. The exhilaration of living completely in the present, knowing that you will probably never see the other person again, so what is to be lost by being totally open? So I laid out my position in detail, describing the work on the oil industry that we’d been developing recently, telling him about Ken Saro-Wiwa and Shell in Ogoni. I didn’t pull any punches. I talked about my particular fascination in aspects of both corporate psychology and the way that people working in corporations can distance themselves from the impacts their corporation has. I sketched the desired future trajectory for the project and the wider intent of the work I was developing. Alberto listened intently, nodding here and there, encouraging me to go further. Behind those round glasses it was hard for me to gauge his response; his face was curiously impassive at the best of times. After ten or fifteen minutes I paused, Alberto was smiling now, he put down his wine. This is my recollection of what he said:
I agree with a lot of what you’ve said, which may surprise you considering my job, but I think you’re wrong about two things. First of all, I’m surprised by the way you generalise. Would you talk about ‘activists’ as if they’re some kind of collective entity? People working in corporations are as different as any other group of people – gay, straight and confused, intelligent and ignorant, selfish and … oh, what is that opposite word you taught me? … altruistic, yes, that’s it. But most people are just trying to get through to the end of the month like everybody else. Secondly, these people you’ve just talked about – the oil executives, the accountants, the planners – I’ve known a lot of them over the last ten years and the shocking thing is they’re more like you, in all sorts of ways, than you could ever imagine. They’re all graduates, quite a lot of them read the Guardian or the Independent, they go to theatre, concerts, are really interested in culture, and you’d be surprised how many of them care about wider issues, they’re members of Friends of the Earth and Amnesty International. It’s a mistake to think of ‘them’ as if they’re another species.