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Reflective writing

You have now considered reflection as a way of thinking and learning. Now you will move on to think about reflective writing. Many of the expectations of reflective writing will be very similar to the kinds of writing you may already be used to, such as the requirement to acknowledge your sources by using references and using clear language that is easily understood by your reader. There are also, however, important differences which you will also need to think about, should you go on to study for the social work degree.

This is a photograph of someone writing in a notebook.

The questions may not require an ‘essay’ answer and may therefore need a different approach and structure from the conventional one of introduction, main paragraphs and conclusion.

While most professional writing (e.g. reports, records) are written in the third person, reflective writing requires that you write about your own experience and consequently the use of the first person (‘I’) is actually encouraged.

While you are still expected to use your reading or ‘theory’, this will need to be linked to your discussion of your own experiences and also what you have learned from these experiences.

If you already have experience of writing in higher education, reflective writing may feel odd at first. One social work student who was already a graduate commented that while her experience was that academic writing ‘is looking at writing in the third person’, reflective writing is about something different:

Well, you write that to your Auntie Jane, you don’t write it for a course, I’ve never written it for a course ... In this course you are going to be asked to write about yourself big style. You have got to be king. You have got to be in the centre.

Although reflective writing is not exactly like writing a letter to ‘Auntie Jane’ or a personal blog, this student was picking up correctly that reflective writing has something in common with writing a diary or journal (or blog) and that most academic writing does not encourage you to write about yourself and your own experiences.

Activity 13 Reflective writing

Spend 15 minutes writing as freely as you can about your thoughts on your learning so far. This writing is only for you to see, so don’t worry too much about how you organise your ideas or even about your language (words used, sentence construction, spelling, grammar, punctuation etc.). Just write from your own thoughts.

After writing for about 15 minutes, put your writing away somewhere safe.

Later, perhaps the next day, come back and re-read your writing. Note down your answers to the following questions:

• Did you enjoy writing in this way, or did it feel difficult?
• Did you feel able to forget about traditional expectations of ‘good’ writing and just let your thoughts flow?

Some people find this type of writing hugely enjoyable, as a way to put their feelings and thoughts on paper and even to develop creative ideas. For others this is an awkward, challenging and artificial task, particularly for people who would not commonly talk about themselves reflectively, never mind commit their thoughts about themselves to paper in this way. Some people also feel very inhibited by the thought of someone reading and judging their writing, which can get in the way of expressing themselves. Free writing can be a good way to overcome feeling anxious about expressing yourself. Free writing also has a lot in common with reflective writing, as the focus is on you, the writer, your thoughts and experiences as told in the first person. If you found this activity difficult in any way you might like to keep practising this free writing exercise. Remember, you can pick any topic, based on work or personal experiences and you can jot these down on paper, phone or computer or perhaps by using voice recording software.

• Reflection can enhance social work practice.
• Reflection involves drawing together your experiences, study and feelings to help you evaluate practice and think about intervention and outcomes.
• Supervision plays an important role in supporting reflection.

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Article Contents

Introduction, barriers to hearing children’s voices, the impacts of neoliberalism and managerialism on practice with children and families, the ecv research project, methodology, l.m.’s critical incident (pre-test data), l.m.’s critical incident (post-test data), analysis and further reflection, discussion and conclusion, acknowledgements.

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How Can Critical Reflection Improve Social Work Practice with Children and Families?

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Christine Morley, Lee Marshall, Chez Leggatt-Cook, How Can Critical Reflection Improve Social Work Practice with Children and Families?, The British Journal of Social Work , Volume 53, Issue 6, September 2023, Pages 3181–3199, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcad088

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The impacts of neoliberal managerialism mean that practitioners working in child protection programmes are often challenged to balance social work values, with formal compliance activities to reduce risk. Within this context, what are the possibilities for practitioners to creatively navigate complex practice environments to achieve better outcomes for children and families? And how might transformative research empower practitioners to improve practice by reconnecting their work with the emancipatory values of the profession? This article seeks to address these questions by showcasing key findings of a state-wide study focused on empowering children’s voices, through the presentation and analysis of a case study. The research used a pre-test/post-test design with critical reflection as a methodology to transform the practice of front line workers and managers who work with children and families in an Australian-based non-government organisation. The case study illustrates the conceptual and practical processes involved in achieving change in a way that can be replicated by others and transferred to other contexts. The findings of the research suggest that critical reflection can be effective to enable practitioners to improve practice with children and families. The article concludes by highlighting implications for organisations in supporting critically reflective practitioners.

The impacts of neoliberal managerialism on social work practice and organisations have now been well documented (e.g. see Hendrix et al. , 2021 ). Practitioners working in statutory child protection programmes often report feeling powerless in risk-averse and busy contexts and struggle to balance social work values with formal compliance activities designed to reduce risk (e.g. see Cree et al. , 2016 ). A key challenge for practitioners is to find ways to navigate these complex practice environments to achieve better outcomes for families and children.

This article discusses key findings of the final stage of a three-part Australian study: ‘Empowering Children’s Voices’ (ECVs), spanning from 2018 to 2022. This research used critical reflection as an educational methodology to transform practice with children and families in a Queensland-based, Non-Government Organisation (UnitingCare). The second author (L.M.), a participant in the research, presents her analysis of a case study from her practice to demonstrate the conceptual and practical processes involved in using critical reflection to achieve change. The first author (C.M.) was the Chief Investigator on the project and facilitator of the critical reflection workshops. The third author (C.L.-C.) is a research and evaluation advisor within UnitingCare and worked in partnership with C.M. to design and implement the research.

Despite an obligation and intention for practitioners to incorporate children’s insights into professional practice (e.g. see McCafferty, 2017 ; Stafford et al. , 2021a ; Toros, 2021 ), there are barriers to achieving genuine child-inclusive practice (e.g. see Harkin et al. , 2020 ; Morley et al. , 2021 ; Stafford et al. , 2021a , b ; Toros, 2021 ). These include: practitioners holding adult-centric perspectives ( McCafferty, 2017 ); a lack of expertise and confidence on the part of practitioners to work effectively with children ( McCafferty, 2017 ; Toros, 2021 ); protectionist discourses that position children as incapable and/or vulnerable ( van Bijleveld et al. , 2015 ; McCafferty, 2017 ; Harkin et al. , 2020 ; Toros, 2021 ) and a proclivity for child protection over child rights ( Rogowski, 2015 ; Holt, 2016 ; Toros, 2021 ).

Research suggests that children have ‘limited opportunities to participate in the decision-making process’ ( van Bijleveld et al. , 2015 , p. 133; see also Munro, 2011 ; Bastian, 2020 ; Stafford et al. , 2021b ) and ‘are infrequently being seen and heard’ ( Stafford et al. , 2021b , p. 12; see also Holt, 2016 ; Harkin et al. , 2020 ; Morley et al. , 2021 ; Stafford et al. , 2021a ; Toros, 2021 ). On the rare occasions when children are consulted, they report having ‘insufficient or inconsistent opportunity to express their views on matters affecting them while in care’ ( van Bijleveld et al. , 2015 , p. 133). Moreover, when asked, children can recall times when they were ‘excluded from decision-making and planning and were able to articulate how it felt when adults didn’t listen or act on what they had to say’ ( Morley and Leggatt-Cook, 2022 , p. 139); resulting in ‘a sense of being ignored or overlooked’ ( van Bijleveld et al. , 2015 , p. 133).

Neoliberalism and managerialism have become increasingly embedded in human service organisations over the last four decades (e.g. see Spolander et al. , 2014 ). Designed to increased management power and control through cost-cutting, standardisation of work risk management and the imposition of extensive accountability mechanisms for staff, managerialism diminishes professional autonomy and undermines relationship-based practice ( Weinberg and Taylor, 2014 ; Braithwaite, 2021 ). Directly affecting practice, managerialism has resulted in families affected by structural disadvantage (including experiencing problems that manifest as substance abuse, domestic violence, poverty, homelessness, mental health, etc.) being targeted ‘for pre-emptive action’ ( Braithwaite, 2021 , p. 56), leading to the caseloads of child safety workers ballooning.

Invariably, higher workloads and the move from professional practice (conceptualised as ethical practice to support a public good) to technical and proceduralised ways of working that emphasise ‘risk minimisation and performance management’ ( Hitchcock et al. , 2021 , p. 2362) have resulted in reducing social work ‘to a narrower, truncated role of rationing ever scarcer resources, assessing/managing risk and changing the behaviour and life styles of children and families often in punitive ways’ ( Rogowski, 2015 , p. 94; see also Bastian, 2020 ; Rogowski, 2021 ).

Robinson and Macfarlane (2021 , p. 444) argue that neoliberal managerialism renders practitioners ‘paralysed… concerned for our jobs, concerned for our professional integrity… and at a loss as to how to proceed.’ Greenslade et al. (2015 , p. 427) similarly describe the ‘current focus on risk management and compliance’ as undermining practitioners’ ‘ability to do their job’, whilst ‘excessive caseloads, insufficient resources, increased documentation requirements… seriously impaired their ability to practise’ effectively ( Greenslade et al. , 2015 , p. 427). Fenton (2014) likewise found that the less individually responsive, more risk-averse and less social justice value-friendly the organisation, the more neoliberal practice became and the more ethical distress (and powerlessness) practitioners experienced as a result.

Despite the current context, however, Rogowski (2015 , p. 107) argues a ‘more humane practice’ is needed. Elsewhere, he advocates ‘for a different child protection narrative; one that acknowledges the impact of poverty and inequality on children and families, and which interrogates the causes and consequences of deprivation’, noting the clear intersections between poverty/disadvantage and the ‘rates by which children being taken into care’ ( Rogowski, 2018 , p. 79). Rogowski (2015 , p. 107) also argues for ‘a genuine emphasis on family support as opposed to “intervention” which censures parents’.

UnitingCare is a non-government organisation operating in Queensland, Australia. UnitingCare’s ECV project arose from an identified need for children’s experiences to inform programmes that aimed to support their safety and well-being. Several factors prompted initiation of the project. First, in line with the shift towards earlier intervention with vulnerable families in other Western industrial countries (e.g. see Parton, 2006 ; Featherstone et al. , 2014 ), the (then) Queensland Government Department of Child Safety, Youth and Women had recently established a new early intervention programme. Intensive Family Support Services (IFSS) were designed to respond to families where children were deemed at risk of involvement in the statutory child protection system. IFSS supplemented the existing Family Intervention Service (FIS), which provided more intensive intervention and monitoring due to safety concerns, including assisting in reunifying children in out-of-home care with their families.

By 2017, cases were emerging across Queensland of children being harmed whilst their family was engaged with an intervention programme. In some cases, it seemed that a failure to involve children may have contributed to the harm that occurred. Further, the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2017) was encouraging renewed scrutiny of systems designed to protect children’s rights. The National Principles for Child Safe Organisations confirmed that children’s voices could be a powerful protector against harm (see Principle 2, Australian Human Rights Commission, 2018 , p. 6).

The ECV project commenced in 2018 with the aim of hearing from children and practitioners in UnitingCare’s eight FIS and five IFSS programmes about what needed to change:

In Stage 1, WorldCafé workshops with practitioners revealed that child-inclusive practice was occurring in pockets, but overall, intentional engagement with children was not consistent in family intervention practice ( Stafford et al. , 2021a ).

In Stage 2, participatory interviews conducted with children aged 6–17 years (whose families were current or recent clients of UnitingCare’s IFSS or FIS programmes) confirmed that they were largely excluded from decision-making and support planning ( Stafford et al. , 2021b ).

Stage 3 of the project was designed to support the development of new practice strategies for engaging children.

Given the findings of Stages 1 and 2, it was apparent that expanding child-inclusive practice would require thinking beyond existing practice approaches to envision other ways of working with children and families. Interpreting the findings of Stages 1 and 2 within a critical analysis of the impacts of neoliberal managerialism led the research team to understand that meaningful and sustainable change ‘would not be achieved by rolling out a new tool or training package or creating a child-friendly feedback process. Instead, the research demonstrated an overarching paradigm shift was required’ ( Morley and Leggatt-Cook, 2022 , p. 139). This recognition informed the development of Stage 3, which aimed ‘to build on and translate the research findings from Stages 1 and 2 into practice by devising new strategies to empower children’s voices’ ( Morley et al. , 2021 , p. 6).

Given the difficulties that practitioners’ identified, critical reflection was strategically employed to overcome barriers that practitioners face in seeking to meaningfully involve children in their practice. As a qualitative methodology, critical reflection strengthens the connections between theory and practice by recruiting research participants as co-researchers to determine new practice outcomes (e.g. see Morley, 2012 ; Allen, 2013 ; Hickson, 2016 ; Fox, 2021 ). Critical reflection is a transformative methodology that sits within critical and constructivist paradigms and shares similarities with participatory and co-operative inquiry approaches ( Morley, 2008 ; Fox, 2021 ). In this research, the aim was to address the gap between practitioners’ intentions to include children and their actual participation, and to contribute to an evidence base that supports practitioners to genuinely empower children’s voices and participation in practice.

Stage 3 of the ECV research project involved a pre-test/post-test design to measure the impact of the research intervention: that is, critical reflection workshops (3 days total involving 2 × 1.5 days of facilitated learning and reflection). Participants were required to submit a description of a critical incident from their practice to the research team, prior to participating in the workshops. These narratives about practice provided baseline data to understand a practitioner’s level of child-inclusive practice at the time, which was later compared with their post workshop reflections.

Beyond gathering narratives about the barriers to implementing child-inclusive practice, the critical reflection workshops aim to assist practitioners to reimagine their practice in ways that align with the espoused social justice value base of social work. The first half of the workshops involved participants learning about Fook’s (2016) model of critical reflection and presenting their own critical incidents, which were then subject to deconstruction. This involves identification of implicit (often hegemonic) assumptions, values and their unintended implications for practice. Having deconstructed unhelpful assumptions by reinterpreting practice situations within a critical theory framework, the second half of the workshops aimed to reconstruct practice; generating new possibilities for child-inclusive practice (e.g. see Fook, 2016 ).

Following completion of the workshops, participants were invited to share their overarching reflections in a focus group. These discussions, in which participants shared their learning gained from the workshops, and articulated shifts in their thinking and practice that had occurred as part of participating in the research, were recorded and transcribed. These data were also subject to critical analysis (e.g. see Morley, 2012 ; Fook, 2016 ). Formal ethics approval to undertake the research was gained through both QUT Human Research Ethics Committee and UnitingCare. All participants in the study gave written consent.

The first four deconstruction workshops occurred in 2020, with a maximum of twelve participants in each group. Whilst follow-up reconstruction workshops were planned to occur four to six weeks later, as recommended by Fook and Gardner (2007) , COVID-19 resulted in the reconstruction workshops being postponed for more than 12 months. By this time, only eight out of thirty-eight participants were able to continue their participation, following the lengthy break, which is a clear methodological limitation. However, the time in between workshops also provided an opportunity to more fully capture the changes. L.M. was one of the research participants who participated fully (prior to becoming a co-author when UnitingCare seconded her to specifically work on the ECV research). What follows is a presentation and analysis of her pre-test critical incident description, post-test critical reflection and the relevant contributions she made to the focus group discussion. C.M.’s analysis has also been included to transparently demonstrate the methodological process that enabled L.M.’s practice to become more child and family-focused.

Background/contextual information

This practice example is a family with three small children—eighteen months, six and seven years of age .

The family were a blended family with the two eldest daughters having a different father. The family had a significant child protection history including the mother having been a child in care with the experience of twenty-six separate placements in her childhood. The father had experienced a difficult upbringing, reporting being sexually abused as a child and tensions at home due to his parents being intoxicated and frequently fighting.

The current situation was characterised by domestic violence between the parents, substance abuse by both parents, with the father reporting using Ice—however this was not current (self-reported). There were also concerns about poor parenting and the mother being emotionally and physically abusive towards her children—poor attachment was observed and whilst the mother presented as being focused on parenting there had been limited opportunity to observe parenting interactions with the children.

The family had been a current case within the programme for over twelve months and whilst there had been some observable progress in addressing the goals (the house was cleaner and tidier, the older children were attending school regularly and the family were engaging with the service), the intervention felt controlled. The family seemed to be making progress because they felt they needed to change rather than really wanting to.

Critical incident

Recently one of the girls was severely injured by tipping a hot cup of noodles on her lap. This required two weeks in hospital where she received skin grafts. The incident occurred at the paternal grandparent’s home, despite a direction from Child Safety that the girls not be in the care of this grandmother (due to past injuries as a result of lack of supervision). In conversations with the mother about the incident, she did not appear concerned, was happy that the father (ex-partner) ‘was dealing with it’ and despite offers of support, refused to visit her daughter in hospital and preferred to have Facetime with her. In working with the mother, we discussed wound care for her daughter when she returned home and how this would work with transport home from the hospital. The mother had no engagement with the hospital and became aggressive when asked why she had not visited. There had been ongoing discussions about wound care, however the mother was adamant that this had not occurred and there had been no discussion about follow-up appointments. Concerns had been raised with Child Safety given the mother’s lack of attachment and her ability to meet the child’s high-level care needs upon discharge from hospital.

Initial reflection

I chose this scenario because I felt somewhat stuck in working with this family and worried that they may disengage from the programme as a result of my engagement around the most recent injury. There had been a lot of work done with both parents; however, there had been minimal opportunity to involve the children in direct observations and guidance. This was due to the parents’ refusal to have visits when the girls were at home after school. I felt that the children were not the focus of my intervention and I wanted to explore how I could engage them better—given the parent’s refusal to allow visits after school.

This case is important to me as I feel like the change that I have seen in the family has not impacted on the children—whilst they continued to benefit from a cleaner home and more support in attending school, there has been minimal change in the mother’s parenting and her connection/attachment to the children. I believe that both parents have learnt so much from FIS intervention and are now able to articulate their responses during discussions; however, they have limited ability/desire to translate these into practice.

I continue to be worried about the parent’s engagement and the impact of my engagement and work with the family. I hope to learn better techniques/strategies to engage parents to allow their children’s voices to come through. How can I capture their voices, engage and build rapport with children when we have parents that are not willing for this to happen?

C.M.’s initial reflections

Whilst there was nothing wrong or problematic about this practice, it became a critical incident for L.M. because she was feeling ‘stuck’ in working with this family and had developed a sense of frustration in relation to perceived blockages—especially those exhibited by mum. This led to a sense of disconnection from the children and a heightened sense of risk.

As with other practitioners who experience obstacles in their practice, critical reflection can be used to uncover alternative discourses that highlight new possibilities for action (e.g. see Alberti, 2000 ; Fox, 2021 ; Morley and O’Bree, 2021 ). It is from within these subjugated (often invisible) constructions/interpretations that new practice possibilities may emerge ( Morley, 2012 ). Such practice possibilities are available to all practitioners who are able to recognise their role in creating the knowledge that they use through the interpretations that they privilege (or dismiss). This process of deconstruction involves the ‘hunting’ of (hegemonic) discourses within one’s assumptions in order to recognise how these influence our thinking and action, so that alternative practice options can be created ( Morley, 2020 ). To facilitate this process, in response to L.M.’s critical incident data, I (C.M.) posed some questions to assist her to critically reflect on: her construction of the family; her use of language to describe family members and her interpretation of their behaviours (particularly the mother), amongst other things, in order to: (1) highlight how some of her assumptions might undermine her espoused intentions for practice and (2) elucidate some other possible interpretations of the situation. This connects with much of the literature that refers specifically to developing and utilising reflective perspectives in practice. A critical postmodern theoretical analysis was used to generate questions in relation to the case study, as it is the theoretical framework that underpins the model of critical reflection being used ( Fook, 2016 ). Critical postmodernism shines a light on the operations of power, as well as showing up the social processes and structures that create inequality, structural disadvantage and injustice ( Fook, 2016 ). Within neoliberal contexts, critical postmodern theory, when activated through critical reflection, is particularly useful for highlighting how practitioners might be complicit in hegemonic thinking that disadvantages families and/or blames them for the difficult circumstances they find themselves in. In this way, critical postmodern theory enacted through critical reflection has been asserted as ‘bolstering critical practices that are more aligned with protecting human rights, equity, democracy, social justice and other emancipatory goals of social work’ ( Morley and Macfarlane, 2014 , p. 338). The questions included:

Why have you chosen to emphasise the family’s ‘significant child protection history’ (rather than some of the recent positive changes that you have observed)?

How might shifting your narrative about the parents to incorporate their strengths (and the positive changes they have made) potentially change the way you see them, the situation (and your practice within it)?

What assumptions did you make about the mother’s behaviour? What other interpretations might be relevant?

What does your use of language to describe the mother’s behaviour indicate about how you perceive her? (i.e. ‘refused’ to visit; ‘mother became aggressive’, etc.). What purpose does the meaning you are imposing serve? Are there other terms that are less adversarial? What are some other interpretations of the ‘facts’ of this case? For example, is it possible that mum just doesn’t like hospitals? (or something else?), rather than ‘lacks attachment’?

If you continue to view the mother exclusively through a risk lens, how might this undermine your capacity to build a relationship with her (and ultimately reduce your opportunities to connect with the children)?

If you were able to build a supportive relationship with mum, how might this potentially reduce the risk—and/or your perception of it?

How might this enable you to reconstruct your practice towards being more child-inclusive?

Following the deconstruction workshop, I provided tailored, written feedback to each participant. Approximately twelve months later, I met with those continuing with the research in one-on-one meetings via zoom to revisit and reconstruct their initial accounts. Extracts from L.M.’s post-test reflection data are presented below.

Whilst the impact of COVID-19 has had a significant impact on the intended outcomes of our study, I feel that allowing the fullness of time to stand back and reflect has been extremely beneficial. At the point of introducing my family scenario, there was a sense of ‘stuckness’ in my practice:

I was making progress with the family—however, I did not move with their changes.

As a former government Child Safety Officer, I found myself still sitting in an investigative role rather than in the therapeutic space of the programme.

When I initially wrote the case scenario, the family were going through some really big changes that only became evident after the scenario was completed.

The father was participating in a men’s behaviour change programme and was struggling with the confronting nature of this perpetrator intervention.

Child Safety had also been in the process of removing the children due to the worries around the parent’s ability to make safe decisions and

There was ongoing domestic violence—however, it was unclear what the severity or frequency of this was.

Upon reflection on the feedback, I became aware that I was not focusing on the family’s strengths and had become stuck in a deficit-focused space where I was worried about safety—rather than looking for partnership.

As a result, I shifted my practice to a more strengths focused approach and started to support the mother by rewarding her for achievements—partnering with her.

Opportunities for one-on-one work became available and I spent some time with her whilst the children were doing after school sports—facilitating contact and spending time with the mother and her children.

Mum began to open up a lot and we started to talk about safe/challenging conversations she could have with dad to challenge his assumptions. This was very successful and mum started having more open conversations with dad—who by now was ready for these conversations after his work with the men’s behaviour change programme.

As mum became more confident, we continued our work on relaxation and self-care branching out to crafts, breathing techniques and delighting in spending time doing fun activities with her children and her partner.

As a result, the relationship really strengthened between the parents—mum became emotionally stronger and was able to manage her emotions better, becoming able to have calm conversations with Dad—who was now also in a space where he could listen to mum and respond calmly. This achieved safety for the first time in their relationship.

As we moved further along in the intervention, mum was able to establish stronger safety for herself and the children and their behaviour began to improve—mum began to connect and strengthen her relationship with her children and as a result became more in tune with their needs.

The family were now able to spend more time together doing fun things.

As I continued to strengthen my relationship with the mother, I was able to challenge her more and really focused on building her self-esteem and confidence as a parent and this was observed in the children.

As we moved towards closure dad became drug free and was able to get a job as a roofer (his trade). This resulted in more funds coming into the home and more time for mum to spend on her own, visiting friends, attending appointments or doing things around the house.

The youngest child started day-care and this improved his speech and development.

Mum became more proactive in her engagement with health professionals for her daughters.

Mum also began to take greater care of her appearance—doing her hair, wearing make-up and nice clothes and dad was no longer worried that she was ‘having an affair’—but rather just looking after herself.

The children had new clothes and the house became a home with mum decorating it was pictures and arts and crafts from the children. The family were able to afford some new furniture and had taken great pride in tidying up and decorating their home and

At closure the family expressed a sense of gratitude for pushing them further than they thought they were capable of—but also for listening to their troubles and challenging and supporting them without judgement.

Some weeks after closure dad flagged me down in the car park of the local supermarket—calling out my name from his car. He was genuinely excited to see me and chatted about how well the family were doing. The kids were in the backseat of the car—saying hello and chatting about school and the fun things they had been doing at home. Dad indicated that he was off the drugs now and still working and they were doing really well. Mum approached the car and said hello and advised that she was really happy and things had been going really well.

When I looked at this family scenario recently, I was able to reflect on my shift in engagement with the family and how this had changed the outcome for the family. I reflected on the thoughts that I had when I first read the feedback and some of the strategies I had used to turn the case around from when I had been stuck. I found this experience far more valuable than I had anticipated.

Through L.M. being prepared to consider alternative constructions of the parents, she developed a more engaged and trusting relationship with them, which enabled her to have far greater engagement with the children. Letting go of the risk-dominant lens and using a strengths-based approach permitted her to manage the risk, form a partnership with the family, whilst simultaneously developing opportunities to connect with the children. The children undoubtedly benefitted from L.M.’s work with the parents, as they became a key focus.

the difference that we made with that case was how we moved away from being focused on risk and started to change that intervention strategy to more partnering with mum .

Why would they give their trust to us if they see us as a statutory system like Child Safety? … We have to be mindful [when] walking into their homes … if you [the family] picked up that they [the practitioners] were judgmental about how you lived your life, about how you keep your home, about whether you’re drinking too much alcohol, or whether you’ve got a mental health diagnosis, it’s that kind of picture that they’re building about you as a bad parent . . I do understand why parents are protective of workers seeing their children. If you don’t feel comfortable with that person, why would you let your children engage with that person? I think that’s actually a strength of a good parent if they’re protective. It depends on the reason behind it, but we want our parents to ask questions about who engages with their children .

In adopting a more holistic and empathic perspective, and examining the complexities of the helping relationship, L.M. changed how she viewed the mother and started to trust her. As she observes: ‘I was focusing on what mum was saying, because she really did know what was going on, and once we strengthened that [our relationship] we were able to get to the bottom of what was happening.’

Shifting my perspective from constantly looking out for… the kids [being] unsafe …to actually, I wonder what mum really is thinking and feeling, and what does she really want here? Shifting that whole idea around… What would be her dream or her goal at the end of this intervention? By constantly listening and then coming back to her, and acknowledging what she said, and moving away from that [concern about], Child Safety jumping up and down on the side—going ‘Oh my God, oh my God, the risk is too high,’ and not getting sucked into that .

This research sought to explore how critical self-reflection on practice might assist practitioners to navigate complex organisational environments, dominated by neoliberal managerialism, to achieve better outcomes for children and families. Critical reflection has been an identified useful strategy for practitioners in this regard in other fields of practice (e.g. see Mueller and Morley, 2020 ; Morley and OBree, 2021; Morley and Stenhouse, 2021 ). It further sought to investigate how transformative research, using critical reflection as an educational methodology, might empower practitioners to improve child-inclusive practice by reconnecting their work with the social justice values of the profession, which have been marginalised by neoliberal managerialism (e.g. see McKendrick and Webb, 2014 ; Weinberg and Taylor, 2014 ).

Prior to collecting our reconstructed post-test data, our findings suggested that critical reflection could theoretically create ‘possibilities for practitioners to conceptualise practice differently and implement changes to practice . . that have potentially major implications for improving child-inclusive practice’ ( Morley et al. , 2021 , p. 14). Now that data collection is finalised, this article has presented one participant’s journey of critical reflection and practice transformation in its entirety. Whilst critically reflective research makes no claims about being generalisable ( Morley, 2012 ), the results of this process demonstrate that through engaging in critical reflection, the practitioner facilitated new opportunities for engagement with the family that resulted in her achieving critical outcomes with and for them.

I’ve learned, for example, from [a practitioner’s] example that she brought to our workshop, I’ve learned that if I ever go on a home visit again, I’m going to have eyes on the child, you know. I’ll never forget that . I will never not have my eyes on a kid. I’ll never not be in their bedroom on never not have a … conversation with them. Because I learned, you know, the importance of that and through other people’s experience and through my own experiences .

The unexpected time delay during the workshops due to Covid-19 and the associated lockdowns has been noted as a significant methodological limitation of this research. This was impactful, particularly for attrition associated with the study. That being said, at the conclusion of the research, more than fifty workers in the organisation, including front line practitioners and managers, as well as members of UnitingCare’s leadership team and others in strategic leadership roles had experientially participated in the critical reflection workshops. As one focus group member commented: ‘Having just had the critical reflections… has had ripple effects across the whole organisation and people have seen the importance… the work that came out of that, from all the practitioners … [was] phenomenal.’

At the time of submitting her pre-test data, L.M. indicated that she was feeling frustrated, concerned and ‘stuck’ due to not being able to form supportive relationships with the parents, and consequently even see the children, let alone engage with them. She was about to terminate her work with the family, as the risk was perceived as too great. This was common amongst research participants, who indicated that they were either considering case closure or had already closed the case at the time of submitting their pre-test data, due to their frustrations and/or concerns about risk within the family (for further case examples, see Morley et al. , 2021 ). This pattern is also acknowledged in the literature, as Bastian (2020 , p. 138) explains: ‘The closure of cases due to competing priorities is a legitimate and organizationally endorsed workload management tool in times of limited resources and high workload demands’. However, the findings of this research suggest that critical reflection can assist practitioners to continue working with the families despite perceived risks, and in doing so, may diminish actual risk for children and foster many positive outcomes that strengthen families (see also Morley et al. , 2021 ). Whilst the unplanned time delay between the deconstruction and reconstruction workshops provides the possibility that change identified in L.M.’s practice may have occurred in any case, she does not hold this view, and conversely sees the delay was an opportunity to demonstrate the full impact of the research intervention, which would not have been evident had the workshops progressed and data been collected in the planned timeframe.

This finding aligns with a Scottish-based project that employed critical reflection as a research strategy ‘to contribute to culture change in the children and families’ departments’ ( Cree et al. , 2016 , p. 548). The project similarly involved critical reflection training for practitioners and managers due to the ‘long-standing evidence show[ing] that these [workshops] provide an opportunity for practitioners to discuss their work in an open, non-blaming atmosphere’ ( Cree et al. , 2016 , p. 549) and the understanding that critical reflection can facilitate ‘improvements in professional practice’ ( Cree et al. , 2016 , p. 521). In documenting their experiences, the researchers similarly heard about the difficulties practitioners endure in responding to ‘the day-to-day impact of managerialism and public service cutbacks … and of a social work profession that felt undermined, undervalued and under attack, from government, the media, service users and the general public’ ( Cree et al. , 2016 , p. 553). They, too, acknowledged that the critical reflection workshops had revealed ‘that children and families’ social work practice … is still procedural, risk-averse and focused more on assessment of problems than on prevention or support’, which as one participant in their study pointed out ‘runs counter to relationship-based social work’ ( Cree et al. , 2016 , p. 552). In other papers, these same researchers concluded that critical reflection may offer some opportunities ‘to destabilise dominant practice orthodoxies and cultures and, in so doing, encourage culture change in organisations’ ( Smith et al. , 2017 , p. 973), as it has done it this study.

Ultimately, L.M.’s critical reflection demonstrates that despite the challenges of contemporary contexts, practitioners can (and do) continue to find opportunities to work in partnership with children and families. Analysis of this reflective case study provides an innovative, hopeful, practice-based research example that contributes evidence for informing ‘a transformative agenda in child protection’ ( Bastian, 2020 , pp. 141–142). L.M.’s practice affirms the importance of critical self-reflection in enhancing her relationship with the family (see also van Bijleveld, 2015 ) and also connecting her with concrete possibilities to challenge neoliberal managerialism by placing, in Rogowski’s words, more emphasis ‘on the caring side of social work, one which is more compatible with social justice and social change’ ( Rogowski, 2018 , p. 80; see also Rogowski, 2016 , 2021 ). This includes moving beyond ‘being competent technicians’ ( Rogowski, 2018 , p. 82) to a more critical understanding of what constitutes professional practice. Further, it is important to acknowledge that responsibility for driving change also sits with organisations, which directly influence practice by providing a collegial organisational culture, quality supervision, peer support and manageable workloads ( Hitchcock et al. , 2021 ; Waugh et al. , 2021 ). Given the findings of this inquiry, perhaps the challenge now is for organisations to expand the opportunities for child-inclusive practice by directly supporting and enabling practitioners to critically reflect on their practice.

Scholarly acknowledgements and thanks to Matthew Harcus and Kate Stewart of Queensland University of Technology who contributed to the library research that informed this article.

This research was funded by UnitingCare and funding for this submission was received as part of an industry grant via consultancy agreement. No grant/award number was issued.

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The Case of Social Work Supervision: A Self-Reflection Essay

The profession of social work is challenging and extremely meaningful, as its subjects are humans and their minds, the most complex and complicated of all existing phenomena. The ability to be a successful social worker requires particular personal and professional qualities. They are necessary not only for fulfilling the professional duties but also for the adequate reaction to the critic, which often appears from the side of the social work supervisor.

In this essay, I will analyze my own social worker’s experience of the interaction with the supervisor, where I had to encounter the situation of seemingly wrong assessment of my work. In my view, my professional skills were undervalued, and the proper credit has not been given. In this case, I observed that some personal characteristics helped me to overcome the difficulties, while the other qualities appeared to be less helpful or even harmful. I am going to discuss the result of my observations further.

First of all, I realized that the qualities, helpful in the professional issues I am dealing with, appeared to be so in the described situation. The most important of them are critical thinking skills, tolerance, and the ability to set boundaries. Critical thinking implies the approach where intelligence prevails over emotions, helping to observe the problem more logically and impartially. In my situation, indulging the negative emotions might prevent my understanding of which part of the critique was adequate, and which seemed to be inappropriate.

Further, tolerance helped me to understand the possibility of diverse opinion; so, the excessive criticism of the supervisor might have been a result of his misunderstanding of alternative professional decisions. Ultimately, the supervision in social work is extra-challenging as it makes to think about things that do not have easy answers (Heslop and Meredith). Finally, the ability to set boundaries prevented me from attributing the negative judgment to my personal characteristics, in addition to the professional, and, thus, eliminated overly emotional reactions.

However, such a quality as sensitivity made the situation more dramatic. The ability to respond to the situation and take it close to heart, being highly beneficial in the professional issues, becomes harmful in the described matter of personal concern. In any case, I must conclude that the mentioned case of the supervision provided for me a possibility not only to evaluate my professional skills but to reconsider the ways of interaction with the people and withstand the challenges of life.

Heslop, Philip, and Cathryn Meredith. Social Work: From Assessment to Intervention. SAGE, 2018.

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Reciprocal Reflections: Nostalgia for the Present in Vladimir Nabokov’s “A Guide to Berlin” and Walter Benjamin’s “Moscow” Essay

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The Moscow Trials

(march 1962).

This article was first published in Survey , No. 41, April 1962, pp. 87–95. Prepared for the MIA by Paul Flewers.

AT the twenty-second congress of the CPSU, N.S. Khrushchev once again raised the question of the “great purge”, this time in open session and with more detailed references to individual instances of Stalin’s persecution of his opponents. Khrushchev did not directly mention the three great Moscow trials, but the whole tenor of his reply to the discussion on the party programme made it clear that these trials were frame-ups. His remarks on the Kirov assassination alone were sufficient to demonstrate this, since the Kirov affair was the king-pin of the entire structure of these trials.

The assassination, 25 years ago, of Sergei Mironovich Kirov – Secretary of the Leningrad party organisation and member of the Politbureau – was the signal for the merciless repression of all Stalin’s known, suspected or potential opponents in the party. The range and thoroughness of this action was matched by the domestic and international propaganda campaign that accompanied it: for the Stalinist objective was not merely the physical destruction of all those who might conceivably constitute a rallying point for opposition within the party; not merely the creation in the USSR of an atmosphere of terror in which self-preservation should become the overriding consideration for each individual; it was also the complete moral annihilation of the leading figures of the Russian Revolution. Only Lenin would remain untouched, a great messianic figure; and by his side would rise the figure of Stalin, his sole true disciple. Consciousness of the past history of the Russian Revolution was to be erased from the mind of man and a new history was to take its place, the Stalin legend.

The campaign launched for this purpose – which may truly be termed a brain-washing campaign – was on a colossal scale. Its highlights were the three great Moscow trials in August 1936, January 1937 and March 1938, when almost the entire Bolshevik “old guard” was found guilty of organising the murder of Kirov, of wrecking, sabotage, treason, plotting the restoration of capitalism, etc. And it was precisely the defendants at these trials who, with their self-accusations, their abject penitence, their acceptance and praise of Stalin’s policies, showed themselves as eager as the Stalinists to support this campaign. Never before in history had there been a conspiracy of such dimensions, conspirators of such former eminence, and at the same time conspirators so uniformly anxious to attest the unrighteousness of their cause and the utter criminality of their actions.

At once sordid and deeply tragic, combining the grim reality of apparently normal juridical procedure with the lack of any evidence against the accused other than their own nightmarishly unreal confessions, these trials shocked the liberal conscience of the entire world. Yet it was, strangely enough, in Great Britain, a country proud of its tradition of liberal thought and action, that the most influential voices were raised in their defence.

Thus A.J. Cummings, then a political columnist of considerable standing, although admitting to some difficulty in accepting the guilt of all the accused, wrote of the first trial that “the evidence and the confessions are so circumstantial that to reject both as hocus-pocus would be to reduce the trial almost to complete unintelligibility”. (News Chronicle , 25 August 1936) The Moscow correspondent of the Observer also wrote (23 August 1936) that: “It is futile to think that the trial was staged and the charges trumped up. The government’s case against the defendants is genuine.” Sir Bernard Pares ( Spectator , 18 September 1936) likewise expressed the view that:

As to the trial generally, I was in Moscow while it was in progress and followed the daily reports in the press. Since then I have made a careful study of the verbatim report. Having done that I must give it as my considered judgement that if the report had been issued in a country (that is, other than the USSR) without any of the antecedents I have referred to, the trial would be regarded as one which could not fail to carry conviction ... The examination of the 16 accused by the State Prosecutor is a close work of dispassionate reasoning, in which, in spite of some denials and more evasions, the guilt of the accused is completely brought home.

These statements were made use of by the Anglo-Russian Parliamentary Committee in presenting to the public its summarised version of the official report (itself not verbatim) of the first Moscow trial. Its account of the second trial (compiled by W.P. and Zelda K. Coates) was introduced by Neil Maclean, MP, with a preface by the Moscow correspondent of the Daily Herald , R.T. Miller, and contained two speeches by Stalin, “in that simple and clear style of which Mr Stalin is such a master”, as Maclean put it. Maclean in his introductory foreword asserted that:

... practically every foreign correspondent present at the trial with the exception, of course, of the Japanese and German – have expressed themselves as very much impressed by the weight of evidence presented by the prosecution and the sincerity of the confessions of the accused.

In the course of his preface Miller wrote that “the prisoners appeared healthy, well-fed, well-dressed and unintimidated”; that “Mr Dudley Collard, the English barrister ... considered it perfectly sound from the legal point of view”; and that the accused “confessed because the state’s collection of evidence forced them to. No other explanation fits the facts.” [1]

Leaving aside Mr Collard, whose well-known political sympathies might explain his easy acceptance of surface appearances, it is clear that none of these commentators had the slightest understanding of the political struggle raging in the Soviet Union; a struggle of which these trials and those that had preceded them from 1928 onwards (which these gentlemen had apparently totally forgotten) were a reflection. Nor could any of them have really made a serious study of the official report. The circumstances of the time made many politically conscious people desire above all to think the best of the Soviet Government, and the views quoted above, deriving in part from this very desire, in part from sheer ignorance, were very welcome to the Stalinists. If they did not wholly convince, they at least helped to lull suspicion.

*  *  *

The most outstanding and the most influential supporter of the Stalinist campaign in the country was D.N. Pritt, an MP, a KC, and formerly president of the enquiry set up to investigate the proceedings of the Reichstag fire trial. Pritt entered the campaign with an article in the News Chronicle (27 August 1936), later reprinted in pamphlet form, The Moscow Trial was Fair (with additional material by Pat Sloan). He then expanded his analysis and argument in a booklet of 39 pages entitled The Zinoviev Trial (Gollancz, 1936). In this he first of all suggests that the bulk of the criticism of the trial emanated from the extreme right-wing opponents of the Soviet government. Still, he admits that much of it was made in good faith and came from “newspapers and individuals of very high reputation for fairness”. However, he goes on to imply that these critics had not, as he had, really studied the whole of the available evidence, but had relied upon incomplete reports. Moreover, they had not his advantage of being an eyewitness of the trial and a lawyer into the bargain. Having established in the reader’s mind that all criticism coming from sources hostile to the Soviet regime is ipso facto baseless, and having made plain his own geographical and professional superiority to the “fair-minded” critics, he argues that:

It should be realised at the outset, of course, that the critics who refuse to believe that Zinoviev and Kamenev could possibly have conspired to murder Kirov, Stalin, Voroshilov and others, even when they say themselves that they did, are in a grave logical difficulty. For if they thus dismiss the whole case for the prosecution as a “frame-up”, it follows inescapably that Stalin and a substantial number of other high officials, including presumably the judges and the prosecutor, were themselves guilty of a foul conspiracy to procure the judicial murder of Zinoviev, Kamenev and a fair number of other persons. (pp. 3–4)

The most general and important criticism of the trial, Pritt says, is that it was impossible to believe that “men should confess openly and fully to crimes of the gravity of those in question here”. (p. 5) In fact, of course, the critics” difficulty was not to believe that “men” should confess to “grave crimes”, but that these particular men should confess in that particular manner to crimes so contrary to everything known of their very public political pasts, so contrary to their known political philosophy, and so manifestly incapable of achieving their alleged objectives. For among those 16 accused there were, as Khrushchev has now obliquely reminded us, “prominent representatives of the old guard who, together with Lenin, founded “the world’s first proletarian state”. ( Report on the Programme of the CPSU , Soviet Booklet No. 81, 1961, p. 108) These were now transformed, in the words of the indictment, into “unprincipled political adventurers and assassins striving at only one thing, namely, to make their way to power even through terrorism”. ( Report of Court Proceedings: The Case of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre , People’s Commissariat of Justice of the USSR, Moscow 1936, p. 18)

Pritt himself, however, does not appear to be wholly at ease about the lack of evidence adduced other than the confessions, for he suggests that the Soviet government would have preferred all or most of the accused to have pleaded not guilty, for then the “full strength of the case” would have been apparent. As it was, “all the available proof did not require to be brought forward”. (p. 9) He assumes the existence of this proof; he writes that we cannot possibly know “what further facts there were in the record that were not adduced at all”. Not, that is, whether further facts were available, but what facts.

Although there is constant mention of facts, Pritt never gets down to a consideration of verifiable factual evidence adduced in alleged corroboration of the confessions. The closest he gets to giving an example of this is when he refers to an alleged conversation between two of the accused in which “a highly incriminating phrase was used”. Each of the accused denied using it, but each said that the other had. Pritt found this highly significant. He does not explain why the accused should have shied at admitting the use of “incriminating phrases” when they had already confessed to capital crimes.

Pritt claims to have reached his conclusion on the basis of a careful study of the official report of the trial. Surely, then, he must have been aware that, when it was not simply a question of “incriminating phrases”, conversations about conversations, but of concrete facts, some very glaring discrepancies were exposed, such as, for example, the flatly contradictory evidence of two of the accused, Olberg and Holtzmann, and the alleged meeting at a non-existent hotel.

It hardly seems possible that a man of Pritt’s professional training could have failed to see that the whole structure of the confessions simply did not hang together. He did not even notice anything strange in the tale of those two desperadoes Fritz David and Bermin-Yurin, who, after spending two and a half years preparing a plan to kill Stalin at the Congress of the Communist International, decided, when it came to the point, that they could not shoot “because there were too many people”!

For Pritt “anything in the nature of forced confessions is intrinsically impossible”; it was “obvious to anyone who watched the proceedings in court that the confessions as made orally in court could not possibly have been concocted or rehearsed”; and not even the keenest critic had been able to find a false note (pp. 12–14). The picture he gives of himself is that of an utterly credulous bumpkin. Any reasonably objective student of Soviet politics must have been aware at the time that this trial and those that followed were frame-ups. It did not require Khrushchev to admit that “thousands of absolutely innocent people perished ... Many party leaders, statesmen and military leaders lost their lives”; that “they were ‘persuaded’, persuaded in certain ways, that they were German, British or some other spies. And some of them ‘confessed’.”

For the Moscow trials were all of a piece with those that had preceded them: the Shakhty trial in 1928; the Industrial Party trial in 1930; the Menshevik trial in 1931; and the Metro-Vickers trial in 1933. [2] No student of these trials would fail to see that they served a definite political purpose and that justice had been perverted to this end. The very occurrence, previous to the Moscow trials, of exactly similar confession trials – with all their “technical” failures (attempted retraction of confessions; an accused going insane; long dead men named as conspirators, etc) – should have been enough to raise doubts in the mind of the most prejudiced. But the supporters of Stalin clearly did not want to see the truth. [3]

Here, as elsewhere, it was the paramount task of the Communist Party to “sell” the trials. For this purpose, in addition to public meetings throughout the country and articles in the Daily Worker and other periodicals, a stream of pamphlets was published. The Moscow correspondent of the Daily Worker , W.D. Shepherd, wrote two pamphlets in 1936: The Truth About the Murder of Kirov (31 pages) and The Moscow Trial (15 pages). In 1937, two leading English communists, Harry Pollitt and R. Palme Dutt, wrote The Truth about Trotskyism: The Moscow Trial (36 pages), and in 1938 R. Page Arnot and Tim Buck dealt with the third trial in Fascist Agents Exposed (22 pages). Supplementing all this there were the so-called verbatim Reports of the Court Proceedings (published in English by the People’s Commissariat of Justice of the USSR), and the abridged version of the official report of the August 1936 trial, published by the Anglo-Russian Parliamentary Committee. This does not, of course, exhaust the list of published matter issued directly or indirectly by the Communist Party in defence at the trials. Party contributors to the Left Book Club publications naturally also supported the campaign. In this respect JR Campbell’s Soviet Policy and its Critics (Gollancz, 1938, 374 pages) and Soviet Democracy (Gollancz, 1937, 288 pages) by Pat Sloan, are notable.

The bulk of this material eschews any attempt at reasoning and concentrates on invective in the verbal knuckleduster style typical of the Stalinist school. Campbell’s book is a much more ambitious effort in that he admits knowledge of the Dewey Commission [4] , quotes from its proceedings, and also uses quotations from Trotsky’s writings, albeit within strict limits. Thus he quotes Trotsky’s words:

Why, then, did the accused, after 25, 30 or more years of revolutionary work, agree to take upon themselves such monstrous and degrading accusations? How did the GPU achieve this? Why did not a single one of the accused cry out openly before the court against the frame-up? Etc, etc. In the nature of the case I am not obliged to answer these questions.

Here Campbell stops and comments: “But if there is no answer then a most important element in the case of the Soviet government is upheld.” (p. 252) He does not follow the quotation further, which runs:

We could not here question Yagoda (he is now being questioned himself by Yezhov), or Yezhov, or Vyshinsky, or Stalin, or, above all, their victims, the majority of whom, indeed, have already been shot. That is why the Commission cannot fully uncover the inquisitorial technique of the Moscow trials. But the mainsprings are already apparent. ( The Case of Leon Trotsky , pp. 482–83)

A very striking illustration of the Stalinist technique – low cunning, contempt for the truth, contempt for the reader’s intelligence – is to be seen on page 213 of Campbell’s book in his quotation from Trotsky’s The Soviet Union and the Fourth International . He begins in the middle of a paragraph:

The first social shock, external or internal, may throw the atomised Soviet society into civil war. The workers, having lost control over the state and economy, may resort to mass strikes as weapons of self-defence. The discipline of the dictatorship would be broken down [5] under the onslaught of the workers and because of the pressure of economic difficulties the trusts would be forced to disrupt the planned beginnings and enter into competition with one another. The dissolution of the regime would naturally be thrown over into the army. The socialist state would collapse, giving place to the capitalist regime, or, more correctly, to capitalist chaos.

And on this, Campbell writes: “This was more than a prophecy. It was the objective of the conspirators.” The very next paragraph in Trotsky’s essay begins: “The Stalinist press, of course, will reprint our warning analysis as a counter-revolutionary prophecy, or even as the expressed ‘desire’ of the Trotskyites.”

Campbell’s book is a long diatribe against “Trotskyism” and of its 374 pages there is hardly one on which the name Trotsky does not appear. Since this was written after the third Moscow trial, he has caught up with the Soviet scenario, successively developed with each trial. The crimes of the accused are now “only a culminating point in the struggle which Trotsky and his followers have been waging against the Bolshevik party since 1903”.

One of the curiosities of this period is the book written by Maurice Edelman from the notes of a Peter Kleist, entitled GPU Justice (1938). [6] According to Edelman, Kleist was “by no means a communist”. Efforts to convey an impression of objectivity are evident. The book dispenses with the usual Stalinist bludgeoning invective and affects a dispassionate, disengaged attitude, but its phraseology and tone are unmistakably pro-Stalinist. The Soviet Union is a classless society; the GPU is simply a police force like any other (only superior, of course); it is a misconception to consider it a secret police; if you are innocent no one can make you guilty; talk of GPU torture is Polish fascist slander; he, Kleist, is treated considerately, without brutality, and, therefore, so is every other suspect. There are many little touches designed to bring out the humanity of Kleist’s captors. The Lubyanka and Butyrki prisons are depicted as rest-homes, where lengthy discussions (reproduced apparently verbatim) permit Stalinists to defend Stalin and Trotskyites to expose themselves as avowed wreckers and saboteurs in collaboration with the White Guards. The book could obviously only have been written by someone with a very clear idea of the party line, and at the same time someone anxious to appear non-partisan. The cloak of non-partisanship is worn pretty thin, however, by the author’s efforts to defend and extol, not merely “GPU justice”, but almost every aspect of Soviet life, including the forced labour camps. Finally, in an appendix, Kleist on the Moscow Trials , all pretence of impartiality is dropped. There one reads: “Why do they confess? was the typical journalistic question, and no one, except the communist papers, supplied the obvious answer: ‘Because they were guilty.’” (p. 211) In this section the stock Stalinist arguments are put forward by Kleist himself and not, as in the main narrative, through the mouths of others.

To these arguments he adds one of his very own. It gives the appearance of having been inserted to show that in spite of his total agreement with the party line, he is nevertheless by no means a communist. For he says that, the GPU having established the guilt of the accused, they were “at this point quite conceivably offered remission of the death sentence”. This, he argues, “would account for the fluency of the confession and for the calm with which the majority of the prisoners heard the sentence of death” (p. 217). Apparently, Kleist regards this kind of double-crossing as a mark of the humanity of GPU justice.

His final sentence is worth noting:

In the years which have passed since this my release , the bursting into flames of the Spanish-Fascist rebellion, the risings and intervention of the Nazis in Austria and the promise of intervention in Czechoslovakia, have convinced me that whatever bewilderment is felt outside the Soviet Union at the unearthing of these Fascist conspirators, Fascist conspiracy in conjunction with Trotskyist conspiracy does exist and that its extirpation, so far from endangering the USSR, marks another peril avoided. (p. 218)

Leaving aside the peculiar logic of this passage, attention is drawn to the words emphasised. The book was published in 1938. Kleist was released in April 1937. Thus, no “years” could have passed since his release. The reader may work out for himself the chronology of the events to which he refers, all of which he says took place after his release.

The verdict of the British press was in general unfavourable to the Moscow trials. Among the dailies the Manchester Guardian stood out as their sharpest critic. In addition to its own editorial comment, it published cables from Trotsky rebutting the evidence and attacking Stalin’s policy, earning what is probably the rarest praise ever bestowed by a revolutionary on a “bourgeois” newspaper. “I know full well”, Trotsky telegraphed from Mexico (25 January 1937), “that the Manchester Guardian will be one of the first to serve the truth and humanity.” Typical of the Manchester Guardian ’s attitude was its statement of 28 August 1936: “He [Stalin] surrounds himself with men of his own making [7] and devotes all the power of the state to removing those who, however remotely, might become rival centres of authority.”

Nothing as bluntly condemnatory as this came, however, from The Times . Indeed, in 1936 and 1937, its attitude might justly be construed as favourable to Stalin. The trials, it thought, reflected the triumph of Stalin’s “nationalist” policy over that of the revolutionary die-hards. The conservative forces, with the overwhelming support of the nation, had now demonstrably gained the day. On this single point it was curiously at one with Trotsky himself, who wrote in an article in the Sunday Express (6 March 1938) that: “From beginning to end his [Stalin’s] programme was that of the formation of a bourgeois republic.” It was only with the 1938 trial that The Times expressed doubts as to the general trend of affairs in the Soviet Union. On balance one cannot say that The Times saw very clearly in this matter. [8]

The labour press was naturally in agreement with the views expressed by the Socialist International and the International Federation of Trade Unions (Louis de Brouckère and F. Adler on behalf of the LSI, and Sir W. Citrine and Walter Schevenels on behalf of the IFTU sent telegrams of protest on the occasion of each of the trials). Writing on the second trial in Reynolds News (7 February 1937), H.N. Brailsford said that it left him “bewildered, doubtful, miserable”; pointed however to the confessions – “If they had been coerced, surely some of them ... would have blurted out the truth”; referred then to the conflict of the evidence with known facts, and concluded: “In one Judas among 12 apostles it is easy to believe. But when there are 11 Judases and only one loyal apostle, the Church is unlikely to thrive.” In the Scottish Forward , Emrys Hughes” witty, ironic articles bluntly exposed the trials as “frame-ups”.

On the other hand, however, it was the communists alone who maintained a campaign consonant with their objectives. There can be little doubt that they did finally succeed in diverting the attention of left-wing opinion and those others whom they courted from the essential issues raised by the trials, and in persuading a very large body of public opinion that Stalin’s policy was right.

In this task they received powerful support from the New Statesman and Nation , which reached an audience not in general susceptible to direct communist approach. This journal gave an exhibition of dithering evasiveness and moral obtuseness rarely displayed by a reputedly responsible publication. The 1936 trial, “if one may trust the available reports, was wholly unconvincing” (28 August 1936). At the same time:

We do not deny ... that the confessions may have contained a substance of truth. We complain because, in the absence of independent witnesses, there is no way of knowing ... When we hear that so close and trusted a friend of Stalin as Radek, is suspected ... we are compelled to wonder that there may not be more serious discontent in the Soviet Union than was generally believed.” (5 September 1936)

An article on the second trial, Will Stalin Explain? (30 January 1937), stated that “the various parts of the plot do not seem to hang together”; but the confessions could not be doubted because that would mean doubting Soviet justice; on the other hand, “to accept them as they stand is to draw a picture of a regime divided against itself”. If there was an escape from this dilemma, would Stalin please tell them what it was?

In the absence of any answer from Stalin to this complaint, the journal had to be, and apparently was, satisfied with matters as they stood. For after the verdict it asserted that: “Few would now maintain that all or any of them were completely innocent.” (6 February 1937) Reference is made to a letter from Mr Dudley Collard (the letter noted earlier in this article) and the comment made: “If he is right, we may hope that the present round-up and the forthcoming trial will mean the final liquidation of ‘Trotskyism’ in the USSR, or at least of the infamous projects to which that word is now applied.”

The third trial again demonstrated the New Statesman and Nation ’s remoteness from reality and indifference to the moral issues raised: “The Soviet trial is undoubtedly very popular in the USSR. The exposure of Yagoda ... pleases everyone and seems to explain a great deal of treachery and inefficiency in the past.” But: “the confessions remain baffling whether we regard them as true or false, and the prisoners as innocent or guilty. There has undoubtedly been much plotting in the USSR.” (12 March 1938)

True or false; innocent or guilty: one could take one’s choice – what was important was that the confessions were baffling. Even more baffling were the mental processes by which an otherwise humane and intelligent man could write in a manner at once so callous and so superficial.

This type of confusion and refusal to face facts dominated the thinking of many left-wing intellectuals and the left wing of the labour movement during the 1930s. The experience of the great Russian purge destroyed no illusions, taught them nothing. And even today it is doubtful if there is a full appreciation of the profound effect those events had on Russian society and the men who lead it.

1. A member of the Fabian Society, Mr Collard performed the same service for the second Moscow trial as Pritt had done for the first (see D. Collard, Soviet Justice and the Trial of Radek , 1937). In 1936 he sent from Moscow a long telegram of protest against the appeal for mercy addressed to the court by Adler and Citrine. Yet in the New Statesman of 6 February 1937 he stated that “English reports of previous trials induced in me certain misgivings as to the genuineness of the charges”.

2. There were 53 accused at the 1928 trial – far too many for its proper staging. Right at the beginning it was announced that one, Nekrasov, had gone mad. Two other accused tried to withdraw their confessions during the course of the trial, giving a sickening glimpse of the preliminary investigation’s “rehearsal” horrors. At the next trial, in 1930, one Osadchy was brought into court under guard to give evidence as a member of the “conspiracy”. Osadchy had been one of the state prosecutors in the 1928 trial. With each trial the staging “improved”, but in the very nature of such trials perfection was impossible. Even at their “best” they could only deceive those suffering from what Ignazio Silone called the disease of juridical cretinism. It is worth noting that at the third Moscow trial the State Prosecutor, Vyshinsky, himself called attention to the connection between all these trials. ( Report of the Court Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet Bloc of Rights and Trotskyists , Moscow 1938, pp. 636–37)

3. It is worth recording that Moscow University recently conferred on D.N. Pritt the honorary degree of Doctor of Law. During the ceremony Academician Ivan Petrovsky, Rector of the University, praised Pritt as an “outstanding lawyer and selfless defender of the common people”.

4. See The Case of Leon Trotsky and Not Guilty (Secker and Warburg, 1937 and 1938).

5. The original reads: “The discipline of the dictatorship would be broken. Under the ...”, etc.

6. Recommended in Philip Grierson’s Books on Soviet Russia, 1917–1942 (1943) as “sober and matter-of-fact narrative; an admirable corrective to more sensational writings” (p. 125).

7. Among them, of course, N. Khrushchev, who, speaking from the roof of Lenin’s tomb to a parade of 200,000 workers after the 1937 trial, said: “By lifting their hands against Comrade Stalin they lifted them against everything that is best in humanity, because Stalin is the hope, Stalin is the expectation, Stalin is the lighthouse of all progressive humanity. Stalin, our banner! Stalin, our will! Stalin, our victory!” ( Daily Telegraph , 1 February 1937)

8. “Stalin’s policy of nationalism has been amply vindicated. Russia has made much industrial progress, social conditions are improving.” ( The Times , 20 August 1936) “Today the Russian dictatorship stages what is evidently meant to be the most impressive and terrifying of its many exhibitions of despotic power ... The customary overture has already been played by the Soviet press ... howling for the blood of those whom it denounces, in the grimly proleptic phrase, as “this Trotskyist carrion”.” ( The Times , 2 March 1938).

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Last updated: 17 February 2023