‘Common Purpose’ outed

The antics of a sinister left-of-centre freemasonry need consideration by those of us concerned about the elite and the quangocracy. But scripture can encourage us in our prayer.

In November 2012, Richard Pendlebury, an investigative journalist on the Daily Mail, put together a series of articles on the activities and people behind a shadowy elitist training school called ‘Common Purpose’:

See: Dark Arts and links with the Masters of Spin

And: The influence of ‘people who know best’

Also: A careful response from the Guardian

And: A good summing up in the Telegraph

Common Purpose runs expensive leadership courses mainly for public sector employees, largely because only the public sector can afford its fees of £5,000 for a week’s attendance.

One cannot always trust what the Daily Mail says, and in attacking those campaigning for restrictions on the press, it can be accused of fighting its own corner as the Leveson Report looms rather than exposing chicanery in high places.

Nevertheless, Mr Pendlebury is an award-winning journalist and his articles are replete with well-researched links between personnel and based on documents and statements in the public sphere.  Chief among the people identified is Sir David Bell, a top fixer in the Leveson Enquiry and a trustee of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which falsely linked Lord McAlpine to the Wrexham paedophile scandal.  Sir David is indeed a trustee of the Common Purpose Charitable Trust, whose purpose statement claims: ‘Our educational courses give people the inspiration, skills and connections to become better leaders.’

Common Purpose International is linked by personnel to the Common Purpose Charitable Trust and aims to establish Common Purpose operating organisations in countries outside the UK.  It says ‘All Common Purpose operating organisations aim to give leaders the inspiration, the knowledge and the connections they need to produce real change.’

Even the Guardian’s Michael White was grudgingly appreciative of the ‘Mail’ article and Richard Pendlebury, writing: ‘Bell is a good Mail target because he’s highly visible in the octopus as a former Social Democrat party member and ex-chairman of Pearsons with links to other quango-crats named by the paper.’

The idea of constant or nebulous ‘change’ with no qualification or explanation or what it entails is a Marxist concept within which the Common Purpose website feels right at home. Common Purpose graduates acquire skills in ‘group dynamics’ equipping them to manipulate meetings. EDI features heavily. There again, an elitism present in Common Purpose is exemplified in its constant assertion that it provides ‘connections’. Certainly its Chief Executive, Julia Middleton, has become extremely well-connected to the liberal establishment through Common Purpose.  She is director and company secretary of the Media Standards Trust, financial backers of the ‘Hacked Off” campaign and no end of feminist groups.  In 1994, she helped set up the left-of-centre think-tank Demos. Look for a comment by ‘The Trician’ about her here. She is married to the equally well-connected financier Rupert Middleton.

While campaigning for transparency elsewhere, the Common Purpose website has a password-protected inner core and refuses to publish a list of its ‘graduates’.  But they include some 35,000 mainly public-sector employees, journalists, police officers – the Met spent tens of thousands of pounds on Common Purpose courses under Sir Ian Blair – and aspiring politicians.  Nor is Common Purpose any more forthcoming – or eager to comply with company law – over disclosing the home addresses of its directors. Most of them claim to live at the Common Purpose office in Banner Street, EC1.

Common Purpose tried to blacken the name of people doing Freedom of Information searches on it, and it would not be beyond the bounds of possibility to suspect that if a group of Common Purpose graduates have the down on someone in a locality, that they could do him serious financial damage.

The most subversive aspect of the Common Purpose mindset is the one hiding in plain sight, the concept of leading ‘beyond authority’. It is even the subject of a book by Mrs Middleton.  According to the Common Purpose website:

‘Many successful leaders learn to lead in roles or circumstances where they have clear authority, budget and accountability. When they move beyond this – leading peers, partners and stakeholders – the skills that brought them success may not be enough. To operate effectively they need a different approach to leadership – the ability to Lead Beyond Authority.’

What that means is that CP people are trained to interfere in matters which are not their responsibility in order to effect the changes in policy (EDI, etc) they want to see. Even the Guardian’s Michael White is alarmed: ‘In her book Beyond Authority, Middleton – as quoted by the Mail – writes cheerfully of using “charm and flattery” to place a “conventional useful idiot” into a job which would be a “perfect smokescreen” for a chum’s agenda. Such tactics need watching.’

The Guardian described Common Purpose as ‘well-meaning’.  But what Common Purpose plot and plan is likely to benefit themselves and their pet causes first and the rest of us and righteousness a long way second. Pray that the Lord will bring their devices to naught:

Psalm 2:2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, 3 Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. 4 He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.

Matt 10:26 Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.

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