So in late 1994 he took the only ethical course of action available to him, and resigned from Shell. This was at the height of growing global concern about what was going on in the Niger Delta, and Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni campaign were causing massive problems for the Abacha government in Nigeria and all the oil companies operating there, particularly Shell and Chevron.
His public resignation caused national consternation in his home country. He had shattered the code of behaviour that corporations insist upon. In return for substantial financial and material benefits employees are bound by certain ‘obligations’ – chief among these being that any differences are dealt with internally. You never go public. And so a culture of silence is created, a culture of looking away, and, after a time, it hardly has to be enforced at all because the employees themselves internalise this behaviour. Self-censorship becomes vastly more effective than externally imposed rules. Even to talk with colleagues about doubts becomes unthinkable. It is in this context that the reaction to his public resignation needs to be seen. He was one of the very few Shell employees who had ever spoken out about the reality of what the oil company was doing in Nigeria, though doubtless hundreds had thought about it. How could you not? When the evidence was all around you, every day?
I’ve always wanted to know what precisely went on in this man’s mind, in his heart, in the days and weeks before he typed that resignation letter. And then, at the moment of sending it. A wave of liberation? Or exhaustion? Fear? And if we could discover more about why this action was possible for him, what could then be opened up in others, in similar situations today? Beyond the bandages of PR and ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’, beyond the gloss of annual reports. Suddenly detectable, even from the carpeted office in the City of London, the stench of the fumes in the village, the oil blackening the waters, the mobile police starting to shoot, bullets cutting into flesh.
*
This evening, just after seven o’clock, I spoke to Bopp van Dessel. After fifteen years of having him in my mind, I’d finally managed to get his phone number via a journalist contact. With a certain amount of trepidation I press the numbers into my phone and hear the long bleeps calling across the North Sea. A man’s voice answers. I explain that I’ve been wanting to talk to him for many years, that I’d been struck by the moral position he’d taken over Shell in Nigeria. He sounds a little cautious at first, but yes, he knows of Platform’s work, he’d heard about the memorial in London we’d created to Ken Saro-Wiwa and the other members of the Ogoni Nine. I ask if he’d be prepared to take part in some new research about the relationship between an individual’s ethics and the values of the corporations they work for. I explain about my research partners at the business school and Birkbeck. He says he’s very interested, but emphasises that he was at Shell a long time ago now, he’s not sure he can remember all the details. But yes, he’d like to do the interview, and his new work with his environmental foundation brings him over to London every now and then. So we arrange that I will send him more details of the project, and that he’ll let me know when he’s next going to be over and we’ll do the interview then. I put the phone down, rather stunned that it had been so simple. Perhaps a wider metaphor for the things in our lives that we make so complicated in our heads, but which are actually relatively simple …
I turn away from my desk and reach down to stroke my grey cat, Tarka, who’s just come in from the garden and is in a skittish mood. He’s lying on top of an atlas I’ve been looking at, extending his claws, stretching out and daring me to tickle his belly, which will then trigger a playful attack of biting. But then I see he’s actually got something in his mouth, a little, dark grey thing, a mouse probably. ‘Tarka! That’s very bad, give it to me.’ But getting closer, to my horror I see it’s not a mouse but a small and motionless bird. A young dunnock. He’s never caught one before, he’s a pretty hopeless hunter, not helped by the fact he makes an involuntary kind of cackling noise whenever he sees a bird. A feline protest against the unfairness of these winged beings coming and going as they please. I clap my hands, and rather to my surprise, Tarka slinks away, leaving the terrified bird on my floor. Absurdly, I begin to apologise to the bird: ‘Oh, I’m so sorry! You poor thing!’ Despite having grown up in the countryside I have a terror of wounded animals, possibly due to a traumatic memory of trying to kill a young rabbit riddled with myxomatosis that was flopping around blindly near the house, when I was nine or ten. My elder brother, with a no-nonsense approach to these sorts of things, said that the only humane thing to do was to kill it, and then invited me to do it, as a kind of test. I followed the poor rabbit around our orchard for a while and then steeled myself, picked up a large log, and struck it over the head. It fell, twitched, and then, somehow, raised itself again and flopped off, leaning slightly to one side. I hit it again. The same thing. It just wouldn’t die. I then had to bring the full force of the log down repeatedly, in a mad flutter of blows, and after several minutes it did stop moving. But I knew after that experience that I could never kill an animal again.
I approach the bird nervously, but at least it’s still alive. Tiny, dark eyes blinking at the unfamiliarity of its surroundings. But then I’m stabbed by concern – one of its wings is out at an angle. Shit, what do I do now? Maybe it looks worse than it is? I go to get my gardening gloves, knowing I wouldn’t be able to pick up the bird in my hands. As I get closer, the bird, with its animal impulse for survival, makes a wild attempt to fly off, but can’t really get off the floor – its wing is clearly broken. It ends up under my desk. I can’t explain how shaken up I am by this. At the total fragility and vulnerability of this terrified bird. And the fact I can do almost nothing to help it. I go into the front room and find Tarka, looking sheepish (if a cat can look sheepish); I can’t really be angry with him. Instinct and all that. But I make sure he can’t do any more harm today, and shut the door.
Then I hurry back to the other room where the bird is still under my desk, now motionless. Making soothing noises, I kneel down and pick the bird up in my gloves. It’s ridiculously light, not even an ounce, I should think. Yet extraordinary – an entire life working in its unimaginable complexity only a few minutes ago, now flickering, right on the boundary between living and dying, because of my cat. I carry it outside and place it on the grass, still blinking. Completely silent. Rationally I know I should kill it. I can hear my brother’s voice still, after all these years. But I know I can’t do that. Could there be a miracle? Could the wing be only slightly damaged? If I had more time today I’d ring my brother to ask for advice, but I have to go into town for an important meeting. I decide to leave it here, go to get a saucer of water, and then prop up the saucer so that the water is almost touching its little beak. And then, thinking about food, I dig in the earth nearby and find a worm, which I place, enticingly I hope, just next to the saucer. But no movement from the bird now. Apart from those black eyes. Still alive. Still in the world we both inhabit.
I rush into the city centre to my meeting, now feeling a new pang of remorse, not only for the injured bird, for also the unfortunate worm. I’m shocked at how casually I ranked the value of the bird’s life above that of the worm. Surely a real Buddhist would be able to treat both the bird and the worm as equally worthy of life, equally part of the universe?