Common Purpose - purveyor of received wisdom but no conspiracy

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Are you a joiner? No, I don’t mean someone who’s good with wood but someone who joins thing, who “takes part”, who becomes a ‘member’. This is important because some people who aren’t joiners worry that people who are joiners are getting together to fix stuff in their collective interest. I guess all this starts with Adam Smith:

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

The criticism of masons, trade guilds, unions and other combinations has always been that the purpose of meeting is to arrange matters so as to exclude those outside the ‘club’ or to promote the interests of members at the expense of others. And now, it seems that the centrist, social democrats have their secret society, their go at doing the fixing things in their members’ interest – it’s called “Common Purpose”. And – as sure as eggs is eggs – the tin hatted, conspiracy theorists are on the case:

“Common Purpose is identifying leaders in all levels of our government to assume power when our nation is replaced by the European Union, in what they call “the post democratic society.” They are learning to rule without regard to democracy, and will bring the EU police state home to every one of us.”

Now this is admission time. I have spoken to “Common Purpose” meetings on several occasions (although I haven’t done and would not do their “course”) – all “Chatham House Rules” but otherwise very cuddly and convivial. For me, it was a chance to ‘tell it like it is’ rather than feel constrained by the possibility of publicity. But what stood out was the sheer lack of challenge, of questioning of independent thought. As if those assembled were unable to see what was said and to ask whether it was right. What I saw was the triumph of received wisdom rather than some attempt to form the vanguard of some new authoritarian super-state.

Now for the tin-hatted ones, I have a further guilty secret to reveal – my wife is a Common Purpose ‘graduate’. She quite enjoyed the course, got some business from it and came away with a very jaundiced view of public sector values.

For most folk Common Purpose is just a networking organisation, something to put on the CV and a break from work. True, it promotes a pro-state, EU supporting view at its national level but locally it’s just a networking group that has disappeared up the pompous backside of the state so as to get funding.

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