Leader – Right to know

On 14 May 2022, Hackney Council’s then chief executive Mark Carroll phoned Mayor Philip Glanville to discuss a highly sensitive matter. Carroll informed the borough leader that Tom Dewey, who was a newly-elected councillor and also a person with whom Glanville was sharing a house, had been arrested the month before.

We know that Carroll had been contacted regarding Dewey’s arrest, a day before making the call to Glanville, by Hackney’s director of children’s social care.

All that Glanville has said about the call from Carroll is that he was “told of the arrest, but not the full extent of the charges”. It seems that only two people know the exact content of that phone conversation. The council says it has no record of what was said.

Many justifiable questions to those involved about who knew what, and when, and how, have been met with silence, partial responses, or obfuscation. A lack of openness and transparency bedevils many accounts of the events of April and May last year.

What has become apparent is the profound tension between reputation management and parrhesia – to speak about everything and to do so freely.

It is therefore unsurprising that there are calls for an independent inquiry.