Private Investigator Daniel Morgan was murdered in South London in 1987. His killer has never been found.
The murder however set in chain a series of investigations which have revealed links between police, the Murdoch controlled newspaper company News International and organised criminal groups. Is is widely thought that Morgan was on the verge of revealing links between corrupt police officers and organised criminals. This is certainly the belief of the Morgan family.
The Metropolitan Police carried out an initial sub-optimal investigation with basic elements of police work left undone. This happened on more than one occasion as successive investigations were botched. Of course police would not have been inclined to investigate properly if they thought the murder would reveal ongoing corruption or even their own involvement in Morgan’s death to hide what he knew.
This has resulted in several re-investigations and an independent panel (the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel) headed by Baroness O’Loan which produced its long-awaited report last week. (written in June 2021).
Another element of this case worthy of note is that the police and other organisations were accused by the panel of institutional corruption.
This was defined by the panel as:
“Concealing or denying failings, for the sake of the organisation’s public image, is dishonesty on the part of the organisation for reputational benefit and constitutes a form of institutional corruption.”
The report into the murder makes depressing reading. It details how The Metropolitan Police systemically failed the Morgan family and then lied and attempted to cover up their failures in order to preserve their professional reputation.
Again this is a pattern familiar to anyone who has dealt at any level with the organisations I mention in this blog.
On that basis all of the organisations mentioned in this blog to date are also institutionally corrupt since they also conceal or deny failures to maintain a professional reputation. That this takes place even in the face of overwhelming evidence of incompetence, deceit and failure.
Arguably since 1987 this kind of behaviour has grown more prevalent from state-run organisations. Again the report states there was a failure in the Morgan case:
“to acknowledge professional incompetence, individuals’ venal behaviour, and managerial and organisational failures”.
The British state has a pattern of dealing with the failure of its agents and organisations. The Morgan family’s statement following the results of the panel say that:
“At almost every step, we found ourselves lied to, fobbed off, bullied, degraded and let down, time and time again.”
Again since 1987 the means by which state funded organisations deny error, evade blame and continue to practice incompetence and institutional corruption have been refined and improved with each passing decade.
The panel found that:
“culture of obfuscation and a lack of candour is unhealthy in any public service”
Danial Morgan’s brother has stated:
“police don’t like to own up to anything” and that his “experience of the police over many, many years is that they put their own reputation over anything else”.
To relate that to the wider picture again I say that this is equally true any of the organisations mentioned in this blog.
The Met has attempted to downplay the panel’s findings by claiming the conclusions it reached applied to the police 35 years ago. This is a standard diversion tactic organisations use.
Panel member Professor Rodney Morgan shot back that “institutional corruption is not used in a historic sense – it is used in a current sense”.
You may be interested to learn that Britain is the most corrupt country in the world, according to journalist Roberto Saviano, who spent more than a decade exposing the criminal dealings of the Italian Mafia.
You can read more on the Daniel Morgan murder and the fallout from the recent report here: /https://bylinetimes.com/2021/06/15/the-daniel-morgan-report-from-institutional-racism-to-institutional-corruption-no-hierarchy-of-sickness-in-met-police-failures-says-morgan-fami/
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