Crowds and Power

Crowds and Power by Elias Canetti is a book I have owned for longer than I can remember. I have never read it but, for some reason, it has always fascinated me. Maybe I will read it one day but, in any case, that is not what this piece is about. 

Neither is it about the Gamestop affair - the story of how a shoal of marauding, individual investors set out to beat and humiliate a bunch of major hedge funds. 

No, this post is about The Good Law Project and its attempt to call the government to account over its award of highly lucrative Covid-19-related contracts to private companies.  

There are all sort of concerns about the way in which these contracts were let. Procurement processes were either cursory or entirely absent; many of the companies concerned had links to Tory donors or friends of government ministers; many had little or no relevant expertise in the products or services they were contracted to provide. 

The Good Law Project, along with a cross-party group of opposition MPs, is asking the High Court to make a declaration that the government failed to comply with its legal obligations in declining to publish details of these contracts. That’s all. Right now, we are simply asking for openness and transparency. 

It is easy to think of the law as some sort of machine that kicks into action in response to unlawful acts. Nothing could be further from the truth however. The law only works when someone is prepared to bring a case before the courts - and this is an option that is becoming increasingly difficult due to the prohibitive costs involved. 

In the present case, the government has assembled a huge legal team, to defend what it has already admitted to be persistent and unlawful conduct. It is as if it is trying to scare off any form of scrutiny. And of course, when seeking how to fund this intimidatory behaviour they have only to look to the beneficiaries of their largesse. 

So maybe this is where those ‘crowds’ come in. The Good law Project is a not-for-profit organisation that is using the law in the service of truth and the common good. It is paid for entirely by individual contributions and through crowd-funding. 

I would ask everyone to consider making a contribution.

As history repeatedly reminds us: if we work together we can make a difference.