JONATHAN YOUNG WRITES: The clerk to Newport Parish Council has resigned and has, in the process, put a new set of wheels on a bandwagon which has been rolling around the Island for some time.

Daniel Faulkner had issues with the conduct of two councillors. In one case the parish council chair, Geoff Brodie, brokered an informal rapprochement; in the other case that was not possible.

Daniel quit, observing that he valued his dignity higher than the convenience of employment. The vacancy was advertised on page 61 of the CP.

And on page 61 it may well have stayed but for Daniel’s decision to copy his perfectly dignified thoughts to all of his fellow clerks across the Island. Within 24 hours the keyboard warriors had declared a Major Incident. The “reply all” button was taking a hammering, and worst of all, people who should have known better — if only out of respect for the laws of defamation — were adding bells and whistles to what Daniel had actually said, without the apparent benefit of any facts.

One outrageous extrapolation, in particular, stands out. Mrs Valerie Taylor is the clerk to Whippingham Parish Council and a national director of the Society of Local Council Clerks (SLCC), in whose Island branch she is active.

“This is a major problem on our Island and if it continues it will be the end of local democracy as no one will wish to be a clerk and mob rule will have prevailed,” thundered Val.

She also wants MP Bob Seely to raise the issue in Parliament, adding: “Any acts of bullying you have experienced let us know so a good dossier can be put together.”

Bullying in the workplace is a very serious matter. Council clerks, like all other employees, are entitled to be protected from it. But bullying is not a word which should be thrown around lightly. The basis on which Daniel Faulkner is alleging bullying (CP, 21-09-18) is unclear; rudeness, for example, needs to pass a certain threshold to qualify, and those of us not witnesses to it are in no position to judge.

In any event he has commended the Newport post to whoever succeeds him and will stay in position to ensure a smooth handover — the epitome of professional behaviour.

The Island SLCC was meeting to discuss the slide into mob rule as the CP went to press Many of its more level-headed members were staying away, dismayed at the lurch into a parallel universe where, elsewhere on the Island, the paid staff see themselves, rather than the elected members, as the custodians of local democracy; where almost any criticism — internal as well as external — of what a council does is taken as an attack on its clerk, so that, conveniently, it can be discussed in private as a “staffing matter”, the drawbridge pulled up and dissenting voices silenced by the deployment of letters which typically begin: “As an employer, (insert name of town or parish council) has a legal duty of care, obligations, and responsibilities towards and for our staff.”

Likewise new blood on some of our other councils find themselves treated as the enemy simply for questioning past decisions and challenging traditional ways of doing things, particularly around the use of social media.

This is the antithesis of local democracy, and may well not be what Daniel Faulkner was driving at when he gave vent to his irritation at events in Newport.

Nonetheless the rift between a few paid officers and elected councillors is a serious problem and a growing one, and our MP, if and when he gets Val Taylor’s dossier, should pause and ask himself where the threat to local democracy is actually coming from.