Tall poppy

Reader question:

Please explain this sentence, particularly “tall poppy”: It’s a “tall poppy” culture: you stick your head above the crowd and you get it whacked off.

My comments:

In China, we say the bird that sticks its head out gets shot.

Or similarly, we say the nail that raises its head above the even surface of the table always gets hammered down.

Metaphorically, that means that those that appear to be different and better, especially better than the rest of us attract unwanted attention in forms of jealousy and criticism, if not anything worse.

The question is, what have poppies got to do with it?

That is because in ancient Rome, one of the kings really did chop down the taller poppies in his garden to send out the exact same message: get rid of the more prominent members of society and stability is ensured. This, from Wikipedia:

The specific reference to poppies occurs in Livy’s account of the tyrannical Roman King, Tarquin the Proud. He is said to have received a messenger from his son Sextus Tarquinius asking what he should do next in Gabii, since he had become all-powerful there. Rather than answering the messenger verbally, Tarquin went into his garden, took a stick, and symbolically swept it across his garden, thus cutting off the heads of the tallest poppies that were growing there. The messenger, tired of waiting for an answer, returned to Gabii and told Sextus what he had seen. Sextus realised that his father wished him to put to death all of the most eminent people of Gabii, which he then did.

In the West, resentment towards tall poppies is also known as the tall poppy syndrome, signifying that it is a disease, something unhealthy and wrong.

Disease or no disease, human jealousy is prevalent everywhere and, I’m sorry to say, here to stay. To cure the disease, we perhaps need all people to become tall poppies, each outstanding and excellent in their own way. Only then can we stand a chance of having a society of open- and fair-minded people who aren’t be jealous of the achievements of others.

Becoming a tall poppy yourself, at the very least, will help you get a feel of what other tall poppies feel.

But, the question is, will that be too tall a task? Will that be too much to ask?

Never mind, then, let’s read a few media examples of tall poppies:

1. Australia needs to let its tall poppies grow, rather than slashing them, to promote innovation and capitalise on the “world century”, says Harvard management adviser Rosabeth Moss Kanter.

Echoing a speech former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher made 40 years ago, Professor Kanter said people should be encouraged to “stick their necks out” and share ideas, rather than being cut down.

“People who simply stand for big ideas shouldn’t be criticised for that,” Professor Kanter, a world leader in business administration at Harvard Business School, told Fairfax Media at the Sunsuper Game Changers conference in Melbourne.

“If people feel they will get in trouble for trying to stand out among their peers then you lose a lot of ideas. It does curb innovation”.

Professor Kanter, who prefers to use the term “world century” rather than “Asian century” to describe the next era of growth, said the so-called tall poppy syndrome was more prevalent in developed countries, which had established systems and practices.

She said emerging markets were different because they were more eager to embrace entrepreneurs who ignored others shooting down their ideas.

“Rupert Murdoch is a good example, and then he moved to other parts of the world. There is a sense in which entrepreneurship always involves being a little brash.”

But Professor Kanter said letting tall poppies grow didn't excuse people from all forms of criticism.

“Anybody who’s in the public eye and does something questionable deserves the criticism they get – questionable in terms of being unethical or illegal.”

- Australia needs to encourage its tall poppies, says Rosabeth Moss Kanter, SMH.com.au, June 2, 2017.

2. Erwin James insists on paying for the tea. “Do you take milk, sweetie?” he asks before heading to the counter of the cafe, a North London joint full of people tapping at laptops.

He returns to chat about his work as an author and journalist, but breaks off to assure me that I am in no danger. “You’re safe as the bank of England, sitting there,” he says. “Imagine. The idea of me hurting someone …”

James is more than 1.8 metres tall, but it seems unlikely that this 58-year-old gent in a smart navy jacket might take a violent turn as we sip English Breakfast. I tell him I feel quite safe.

Thirty-one years ago, though, a British judge considered James dangerous enough to lock him up for life. He served 20 years of his sentence for murdering two people.

In jail, James became known as the prisoner who could write a decent letter, despite his brief and sporadic schooling as a boy. He sent articles from prison to national newspapers, which were sometimes published.

When an editor at The Guardian came looking for an inmate to write a column about prison life, James was an obvious choice. A life inside – full of insight and vivid characters – became a popular fixture in the paper.

At the bottom of the first column, published in 2000, The Guardian noted that James was serving a life sentence for two murders. For some readers, it became a consuming question: who did Erwin James kill?

They speculated in online forums. Was it, wondered one sleuth in 2008, a crime of passion? Surely there must be some excuse for this writer with his gentle wit.

Twelve years after he left prison, James has released a memoir, Redeemable. “I never thought I'd be someone who’d commit such terrible crimes,” he says.

“I’ve ended up with a life that’s quite meaningful and satisfying. And yet there’s two people not here because of me – two people who will never have satisfaction. Their families will always be grieving. Because of me.”

James avoids recounting the murders in his book, although the details emerged in 2009, thanks to internet users picking and picking at the facts.

At the crucial point in his memoir, there is a newspaper clipping reproduced on the page. The details are sketchy but seedy: 28-year-old James Monahan (as James was then known) and William Ross, 25, were convicted for killing Greville Hallam, a 48-year-old theatrical agent, and Angus Cochrane, a 29-year-old solicitor.

Hallam was robbed and strangled in his London home in 1982. In a separate incident, Cochrane died in hospital after being mugged in the West End.

James fled and joined the French Foreign Legion, but deserted to hand himself in. He still remembers the words the judge used to describe him at the trial. Brutal. Vicious. Callous.

Few people know exactly what happened when James’ victims died. He has written down the story only twice: once in a confession to Joan Branton, the prison psychologist who helped transform his life, and once when applying for approval to visit Sydney in 2013. (It was granted. He gave a talk at the Opera House titled, A Killer Can Be a Good Neighbour.)

He believes that to give gory details would be an affront to the men he killed. “Just me being around is painful for my victims’ families, I’m sure it is,” he says.

By the time Hallam and Cochrane’s names were linked to The Guardian’s columnist, James was free. A woman who had known Hallam emailed to say she had admired James' writing for years “and now I’ve discovered you killed my friend”.

James “cried like hell” and, after a while, wrote back saying sorry, asking if there was anything he could do. Her response was brief: “I regretted that email as soon as I pressed send.”

Another of Hallam’s friends wrote to say that the agent would have been proud of what his killer had achieved.

“Imagine how that made me feel,” says James and for a moment it looks like he might cry.

He went to the British Library to dig out that old newspaper clipping for the book and while he was there, he pulled out another fragment from the archive: the local news story about the car crash that killed his mother when he was seven.

Back then, James was called Erwin James Monahan. From his mother’s death until the day he took his two first names as a writer’s pseudonym, life would be tough.

His father was a violent drunk. There was never enough to eat. A few weeks after James’ 11th birthday, he was placed on probation for breaking into a television factory. After he robbed a bowling alley he was placed in state care.

The children’s home where he lived for four years would be his only fixed address until he went to prison for murder. In between, he squatted, slept rough and stayed with girlfriends.

He had two daughters with different mothers, but both women threw him out for his drunken violence. James offers no excuses.

“Lots of people have difficulties in their lives and they get through it,” he says.

In prison, he had time to stop and think. He put his name down for evening classes and remembered his childhood love of reading and writing. He did homework in his cell, listened to current affairs on the radio, passed the UK’s school-leaving exams, then graduated from the Open University, majoring in history.

Early in his sentence, he met Branton in the “psycho’s office” near the gated entrance to Wakefield Prison in Yorkshire.

“All she wanted me to do was succeed in being a better person,” he says. “She wasn’t thinking about the future. She was thinking, with the life that you’ve got left, you ought to use it to do the best you can.”

The Guardian column came about by chance. A probation officer who knew James liked to write lived next door to the Irish novelist and screenwriter, Ronan Bennett. After James and Bennett struck up a correspondence, Bennett mentioned the prisoner’s talents to Ian Katz, an editor at the newspaper.

All this reads like a story of redemption, a shining example of the good work prison can do, but James isn’t having it. Along with the books and the chats with Branton, he remembers the riots, the suicides of his fellow prisoners and the constant effort to look like nobody’s victim.

He kept the column a secret; jail was no place for a tall poppy.

“Even today, every four days on average in [British] jails, someone is killing themselves,” he says.

“I benefited from good-hearted, open-minded people who worked in our jails, but it really was chance in the end that I made it.

“I’m not saying I deserved a second chance, but we have a system that lets even people like me out. If we are letting these people out, we’ve got to make sure that whatever failings they had when they went to jail are addressed.

“If they need an education, let them have it. If they need work skills, give them work skills. Because they are going to come out and they are going to be somebody’s neighbour. And let me tell you, if they are going to be my neighbour, I want them rehabilitated.”

- Erwin James: from double murderer to newspaper columnist, by Louise Schwartzkoff, SMH.com.au, March 26, 2016.

3. The role of the prime minister’s spouse has no real formal status in the Canadian system, but they traditionally get support in performing official activities, a point that was made by supporters of Grégoire Trudeau.

The Toronto Star newspaper ran an editorial on Sunday titled: Sophie Grégoire Trudeau should have all the help she needs to fulfil her role.

“The instant, often spiteful reaction from both social media and other politicians who should know better smacks of ignorance about the requirements of the role the prime minister’s wife has taken on,” it said.

CBC News suggested Grégoire Trudeau was targeted because she was a “tall poppy”, something Canadians abhor.

Grégoire Trudeau herself has not commented on the furore.

But some on Twitter suggested the hounding of Grégoire Trudeau was not just about politics, but sexism, while an open letter to her on Facebook noted “society seems to have a problem when women ask for help”.

- ‘I need help’: Sophie Grégoire Trudeau’s plea sparks anger in Canada, TheGuardian.com, May 16, 2016.

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.