A decade ago, I chaired a conference of business people at which the keynote speaker was a senior official of Greenpeace. He began by saying how displeased he was that the British Labour government had recently appointed an energy minister whom he considered unacceptably pro-nuclear.
There is only so much you can do when you are in the chair but I felt like asking the Greenpeace man who on earth he thought he was. The Labour party had just won a general election with an overwhelming majority. Who had elected him?
He then announced that he would list 10 steps companies needed to take if they did not want to come to Greenpeace’s attention. At this point I expected to have to quell a revolt, or at least quieten things down while those who objected to this effrontery walked out. Instead, all I saw was the tops of the delegates’ heads as they obediently wrote down the recommended code of conduct.