Their Own Agenda?

A couple of nights ago I caught part of BBC News Hardtalk series. I often catch a little of it but rarely until the end as it is so late. That night they were interviewing Ruth Hunt the CEO of Stonewall the LGBT pressure group founded by Peter Tatchell the campaigner. I met Ruth about ten years ago at an event at the University. At the time she was a young, confident, firebrand lesbian determined to prove her point about anyone else's. She completely failed to answer my question about mental health to highlight her own agenda of lesbian role models. Clearly the mark of a politician and I guess why she is now CEO.

Around the same time I met Poppy Jarmon. At least her agenda was mental health but she has done rather well for herself. She has cornered the market in mental health training and organisations now seem convinced that the way to battle this scourge of mental health difficulties is to sign up to her Mental Health First Aid brand. I number of people I know trained to be trainers and have had lucrative careers from it. I wonder how much Poppy has made along with her Honours gong?

Jonny Benjamin is the current darling of the mental health world. He is genuine in the sense that he has a serious mental illness, has been on psychiatric wards, and has last time I saw him finally accepted he needs to keep taking his medication. He has had a book about himself written, ghost written I suspect. What isn't widely known is that he charges £1000 per talk. Now I've no idea what he does with that money but it's certainly a damn sight more money than many people who are ill and live on benefits will ever see. He too has a gong.

I suppose I'm from an earlier generation. I've know a few great and sometimes famous campaigners many of whom I consider my friends. The Anne Beales's, Ruth Chandlers, Emma Hardings, Laura Mays of this world have contributed a great deal. Yes Anne has an MBE but few of us ever made any money. Some fame locally, in my case anyway, and nationally for the others. But they I firmly believe mainly do it for the right reasons.

The truth is all us activists have our own agenda as well as high ideals. The service user world is littered with people who speak on what matters to them. And their opinion because they have lived experience must be right above all others. Did I want to be famous with my books? Of course I did. Did I think I was right all the time? Yes. Was I? No.

I will never be more than a middle aged man who wrote two books read by a few hundred people. Am I known and influential? Only in my world. Am I respected? Yes. Jaded and burnt out? At times.

Maybe I have failed but as I come to the end of my six years as a governor of Hertfordshire Partnership University Partnership Trust I have done some good and tried at least to marry together my agenda, their's and the needs of the countless people suffering who I will never know.

So another plank of my identity passes into history. What next? I really don't know. With Mozart as my guide I'm musing on that tonight. See you at the weekend.

I Heard a Voice.