Article

Change

Community

Justice

Sustainability

2 May 2025

5 min read

Everything is a movement – and that’s as it should be

They’re powerful when they are marked by love, dignity and justice.

Julia Kendal

Juila is a writer and social justice advocate.

A digital billboard on top of a London building reads: Make Earth Day Everyday.

An Earth Day billboard, London, 2025.

Le Good Society.

I keep accidentally joining movements. In one instance, I had a go at submitting an essay for a competition; when it was (happily) selected to be part of the published book, the blurb told me that I was part of a movement of people embracing messy motherhood stories. At the same time, I am not parenting – and this apparently pulls me into a ‘sisterhood’ of women without children. These could seem contradictory, but I recognise that they are calls to togetherness. And yet, as I go about my life – trying to pay my bills, navigate community, play my part as a citizen of this world that is partly marked by climate crisis and conflict – I have to confess that my gut reaction at being called part of them is to feel tired. I don’t know if I have the energy for another movement in me.

Movements seem to be having a moment. Open the news or social media, and there will be stories of communities of people speaking up together. And yet movements are not new. History reminds us that they have long been one of the best ways to counteract unchecked or disproportionate power. The anti-slavery campaigners of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the US civil rights movement, the influence of anti-apartheid and land rights activists… when we participate in a movement for justice, this is the heritage we are locating ourselves in.

What makes a movement? It’s a group of ordinary individuals, and it’s so much more than that. It’s marked by people trying to live the change they seek, but it doesn’t end there. There is something about a movement that is emergent, more than the sum of its parts. Groups of people taking collective action to see change happen. Crucially, the movements that bend the arc of justice are those that are centred on the voices and priorities of those most affected by their cause. In this, they reflect God’s heart; an invitation to us all to participate, with a particular emphasis for those on the margins.

The other week saw Earth Day, an annual event which celebrates the environmental movement. While for some, it can be co-opted to suggest green credentials that don’t bear out the rest of the year, but for many it is an entry point, a chance to meaningfully participate. What began in the US on 22 April 1970 is now marked by around one billion people – one in eight of us – around the world. It’s a particular moment to highlight action for this world that we share. This world with boundaries that are being tested and breached. Just a week earlier, communities in India and Pakistan were experiencing heat that tested the limits of human survival. Our bodies were not made for this kind of weather.

The theme of this year’s Earth Day was ‘Our power, our planet’, with a particular emphasis on scaling up renewable energy. But I have found myself thinking about other kinds of power: the influence of people when they come together. Do we greet moments like this with cynicism, self-interested opportunism, or genuine expectation for change? In the face of horrifying headlines and lived injustice, what motivates people to keep going again for change? There are many likely reasons, often personal. To understand a few of the common ones, we need to go back to the beginning.

“Much of my life goes irrelevantly on, in spite of larger events.”

Nora Ephron

In the opening passages of the Bible, the world was called ‘good',and the rest of the story is one of restoration; what has been broken being made whole and new. This articulates for us what we often intuit: the world was made to be better than this. Where cynicism offers a casual invitation to give up on change, when we look at our daily lives, we see the myriad ways that we demonstrate a quiet hope for tomorrow. Sowing seeds in spring is an act of faith that the summer will bloom.

This conviction might manifest differently for each of us. For some of us, it means carrying a persistent hope in spite of the hurt we see and feel. For others, it might feel grittier. Like the irritation of a grain of sand in your shoe; you can’t walk on until you do something about it. Either way, it is a longing for something that is brighter and fairer and kinder than what we have right now. Something more resonant with the deep cries of our souls.

Underlying these instincts is our God-given purpose. He made humans to draw even more goodness out of that which was baked into this world from the beginning. We were shaped to partner with God to see order brought out of chaos, freedom from captivity, a seed of renewal out of the grave. Allowing this to take root in our hearts can save us from a sense of nihilism, that nothing matters.

Like many women of my generation, I am a fan of Nora Ephron’s writing. She famously wrote about taking part in movements and yet “Much of my life goes irrelevantly on, in spite of larger events.” There is welcome honesty in acknowledging how privilege can insulate against the impacts of injustice. But there is also a provocation in these words. When we respond to God’s invitation to participate in his restoration work, we find our relevancy in the work we were always made for. In other words, our choices can be meaningful.

I may have stumbled into some movements, but I can see that these are invitations to move closer to each other. Acting for justice can require sacrifice of lifestyle, time, comfort. But outworking this together can also bring growth, empathy, joy. When we are weary, there is life to be found with others. God is inherently relational: three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – co-existing as one. In this relationship is unity, service of each other, appreciation of each other’s gifts. With God’s likeness in each of us, we too made for this kind of community. Our movements are powerful when they are marked by such love, dignity and justice. Glimpsing this induces us to look beyond ourselves, to step towards people and circumstances. Being part of a movement is to choose to be in closer proximity with each other and the world we dwell in together.

I remind myself that in such community, there is room to acknowledge weariness. At the same time, there is also an encouragement to move beyond disenchantment about days like Earth Day, about gloomy headlines, about discouragement or setbacks. It can be tempting to let our lives go irrelevantly on, but being part of a movement reminds us that we don’t have to settle for that.

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Article

Comment

Justice

Leading

Politics

7 July 2025

5 min read

The consequences of truth-telling are so severe our leaders can’t admit their mistakes

When accountability means annihilation, denial is the only way to survive

Leah Brown

Leah is a campaigner for restorative practices and founder of The WayFinders Group.

Baroness Casey.

BBC.

Why do our leaders struggle so profoundly with admitting error?

Media and inquiries regularly report on such failures in the NHS, the Home Office, the Department of Work and Pensions, HMRC, the Metropolitan Police, the Ministry of Defence, and so many more public institutions. Often accompanied by harrowing personal stories of the harm done.

In a recent white paper (From harm to healing: rebuilding trust in Britain’s publicly funded institutions), I defined “harm” as a holistic concept occurring where physical injury or mental distress is committed and sustained and explained that harm is generally something that is caused, possibly resulting in injury or loss of life.

When we look at harm from an institutional perspective, structural power dynamics inevitably oppress certain groups, limit individual freedoms, and negatively affect the safety and security of individuals. But when we look at it through the lens of the individuals who run those institutions, we see people who often believe that they are acting in good faith, believe that their decisions won’t have a significant impact, who don’t have time to think about the decisions they are making, or worse still, prefer to protect what is in their best interest.

Even well-intentioned leaders can become complicit in cycles of harm - not just through malice, but through their lack of self-awareness and unwillingness to put themselves in the shoes of the person on the receiving end of their decisions.

Martin Luther King Jr supposedly said, “the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” In contemporary politics, leaders are neither selected nor (largely) do they remain, because of their humility. Humility is synonymous with weakness and showing weakness must be avoided at all cost. Responsibility is perceived as something that lies outside of us, rather than something we can take ownership of from within.

So, why do leaders struggle so profoundly with admitting error?

The issue is cultural and three-fold.

First, we don’t quantify or systematically address human error, allowing small mistakes to escalate.

We then enable those responsible to evade accountability through institutional protection and legal barriers.

Finally, we actively discourage truth-telling by punishing whistle-blowers rather than rewarding transparency. Taken together, these create the very conditions that transform errors into institutional harm.

Nowhere is this plainer than in Baroness Casey’s recent report on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse that caused the Government to announce a grooming gangs inquiry. In this case, the initial harm was compounded by denial and obfuscation, resulting not just in an institutional failure to protect children, but system-wide failures that have enabled the so-called “bad actors” to remain in situ.

Recently, this trend was bucked at Countess of Chester Hospital where the police arrested three hospital managers involved in the Lucy Letby investigation. Previously, senior leadership had been protected, thus allowing them to evade accountability. Humble leadership would look like acting when concerns are raised before they become scandals. However, in this case, leadership did act; they chose to bury the truth rather than believe the whistle-blowers.

Until we separate admission of error from institutional destruction, we will continue to incentivise the very cover-ups that erode public trust.

The answer to our conundrum is obvious. In Britain, accountability is conflated with annihilation. Clinging onto power is the only option because admitting error has become synonymous with career suicide, legal liability, and is tantamount to being hanged in the gallows of social media. We have managed to create systems of governing where the consequences of truth-telling are so severe that denial is the only survival mechanism left. We have successfully weaponised accountability rather than understanding it as the foundation of trust.

If Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council had admitted even half of the failures Alexis Jay OBE identified in her 2013 report and that Baroness Casey identifies in her 2025 audit, leaders would face not only compensation claims but media storms, regulatory sanctions, and individual prosecutions. It’s so unthinkable to put someone through that that we shrink back with empathy as to why someone might not speak up. But this is not justice. Justice is what the families of Hillsborough have been seeking in the Public Authority (Accountability) Bill: legal duties of candour, criminal offences for those who deliberately mislead investigations or cover-up service failures, legal representation, and appropriate disclosure of documentation.

Regardless of your political persuasion, it has to be right that when police misconduct occurs, officers should fear not only disciplinary action and criminal charges. When politicians admit mistakes, they should face calls for their resignation. Public vilification is par for the course. Being ejected from office is the bare minimum required to take accountability for their actions.

The white paper shows that the cover-up always causes more damage than the original error. Institutional denial - whether relating to the Post Office sub-postmasters, the infected blood scandal victims, grooming gang victims, Grenfell Towers victims, Windrush claimants, or Hillsborough families - compounds the original harm exponentially.

In a society beset with blame, shame, and by fame, it is extraordinary that this struggle to admit error is so pervasive. Survivors can and will forgive human fallibility. What they will not forgive is the arrogance of institutions that refuse to acknowledge when they have caused harm.

The white paper refers to a four-fold restorative framework that starts with acknowledgment, not punishment. The courage to say “we were wrong” is merely the first step. Next is apology and accountability followed by amends. It recognises that healing - not just legal resolution - must be at the heart of justice, treating both those harmed and those who caused it as whole human beings deserving of dignity.

Until we separate admission of error from institutional destruction, we will continue to incentivise the very cover-ups that erode public trust. I was recently struck by Baroness Onora O’Neill who insisted that we must demand trustworthiness in our leaders. We cannot have trustworthiness without truth-telling, and we cannot have that without valuing the act of repairing harm over reputation management. True authority comes from service, through vulnerability rather than invulnerability; strength comes through the acknowledgement of weakness not the projection of power.

We must recognise that those entrusted with power have a moral obligation to those they serve. That obligation transcends institutional self-interest. Thus, we must stop asking why leaders struggle to admit error and instead ask why we have made truth-telling so dangerous that lies seem safer.