I have been reading Mary Fulbrook’s challenging new book Bystander Society. It is subtitled ‘Conformity and Complicity in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust’, which makes clear what the book is about. This is a forensic historical study of how in the mid to late 1930s the German population as a whole was moved into a position of compliance with the emerging practices of the Nazi regime. Fulbrook understands bystanding as a posture that is socially constructed and capable of undergoing change. At a time when Western populations (in particular) seem to be more and more indifferent to egregious acts of violence and the curbing of peaceful protest, this book is a timely publication. As I recall saying at the very start of the COVID-19 pandemic, if you only act when it is blindingly obvious that you need to do something – then that is the definition of having left it too late.

“And for anyone who, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, wants to give more meaning and content to the oft-repeated refrain ‘never again’, this may suggest many potential points for earlier or more effective intervention. It is, then, vital that we extend our understanding of the historically contingent conditions for the production of a bystander society”.

Fulbrook, Mary, 1951- author. (2023). Bystander society : conformity and complicity in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. New York, NY :Oxford University Press, p. 399

The most dangerous circumstances steal upon us in such a way that by the time society might be roused to action, the means of action have been disassembled and silenced. Last week’s pantomime in the House of Commons, when something was both done and not done, epitomises a wilful complicity with chaos even while – elsewhere – a society is being dismantled by sustained violence. Distraction is the art of manipulation and deceit. While some bystanders may be innocent, and deprived of any realistic prospect of intervening, other bystanders occupy a role best described as ‘neutral’. These bystanders could do something, or work with others to intervene, but they choose to remain inactive.

‘Bystanding’ has been identified as a problem in society for a long time. The phrase ‘watchful bailiffs’ comes from the poem ‘A Description of the Morning’ by Jonathan Swift, written in 1709. Many older adults of that time lived with the memory of the English Civil War and a nation torn apart by violence and radical change. Describing the urban twilight of London as it awakes to an unheroic dawn, the poem observes the effects of growing trade, wealth and criminality. Swift describes a society busy sustaining mechanisms where servants are the victims of the powerful; apprentices carry the marks of malnutrition; and the destitute young are sent up chimneys. At the end of the poem, Swift writes:

The watchful bailiffs take their silent stands;
And schoolboys lag with satchels in their hands.

Swift, J. (1879). The Poetical Works of Jonathan Swift (Vol. 1). Houghton, Mifflin,.

A great deal of harm and inequality is woven into this observation of the early morning. The bailiffs – court attendants – were people of authority to whom the behaviour and conduct of the affluent would be known. Transcripts from trials are often the clearest historic records of people’s behaviour and relationships. It is here, in the courts, that at least some of the underbelly of capitalism could be seen. Yet the bailiffs are silent. Swift’s poem demonstrates the need for change, to end the cycles of exploitation he sees, but the people best placed to enable this are doing (and saying) nothing. They have their place, and watchful complicity comes with rewards.

In every organisation there are people behind those who appear in public. Often these servants of power are the ones who can alter the course of events. They are the people who enact the decision of the leaders and turn the cogs to make things work. Without their active help no regime can enact its policies, whatever these might be, and the ‘bailiffs’ can never be innocent bystanders. For good or ill they share the responsibility for each and every policy that is implemented by those in positions of executive power.