Common Purpose. A secret society?

[Jan Klimkowski]

Chatham House rules
And while there is no evidence that Common Purpose has anything to hide, it is not the most open organisation.

Its meetings are held under Chatham House rules, which means everything that is said in them is unattributable.

One footnote.

Chatham House rules are as follows:

The Chatham House Rule of Confidentiality was established by the Council of the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA) in June 1927. In order to bring the Rule into line with current practice at the RIIA, where many meetings are now held "on the record", in a resolution of the Council adopted in October 1992 the application of the Rule was clarified and its wording strengthened as follows:

Meetings of the Institute may be held "on the record" or under the Chatham House Rule. In the latter case, in accordance with the Chatham House tradition, it may be agreed with the speaker(s) that it would be conducive to free discussion that a given meeting, or part thereof, should be strictly private and thus held under the Chatham House Rule.

"When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed".

The influence of the rule has been so considerable that it has become common parlance in other institutes where confidentiality is required for the Chairman to use an expression such as "We are holding this meeting under Chatham House Rules".

http://www.gcsp.ch/e/about/CHRule.htm

In my journalistic judgement, Chatham House rules are as much a disgrace as Westminster lobby rules.

The fact that this code originated with the Royal Institute for International Affairs, and is now used by numerous government and big business-aligned thinktanks is no surprize, as the primary purpose of Chatham House rules is to muzzle journalists....