Call an apology made on behalf of some collective entity - an organization, country etc - an institutional apology. Then I think we can safely conclude that every time one of these institutional apologies is offered by someone not personally responsible for the act(s) for which the apology is thought to be due, there will be people moaning that the apology is a waste of breath or worse. There is confirmation of that generalization again this week. Gordon Brown apologized on Britain's behalf for the thousands of children shipped to Australia and other destinations, causing much hardship; and up pops Gerald Warner in the Daily Telegraph with an accusation of hypocrisy.
Warner at least spares the readers of that paper the philosophical non-starter frequently uttered in this connection: to the effect, namely, that a person can't meaningfully apologize if they aren't individually to blame. (Yes, they can.) However, Warner's argument is little better. It is that Brown could be apologizing instead for things for which he does bear some personal responsibility - like his mismanagement of the economy. Whether the prime minister should be apologizing for something else, I shall set to one side; because that has no bearing on the merits or demerits of his apology for the child migrants policy. It is easy to see why. If, as CEO of a firm which has mistreated one of its previous employees, you apologize to her though you had no part in whatever it was she suffered, while failing to apologize for a more recent and bad policy that you were central in instigating, then the fact that you owe a second apology doesn't in itself negate the value or importance of the first one. For evidence that Brown's apology this week was to the point, see here.
Warner also throws in the irrelevant complaint that Tony Blair apologized for the Irish potato famine but not for the war in Iraq. Has no one ever told him (Warner) that apologies offered by people in circumstances where they don't feel they owe one aren't worth anything?
