The Glass Closet

John Browne

• Publisher: Harper Business
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780062316981
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Biographies
• Index: Business

Part memoir and part social criticism, The Glass Closet addresses the issue of homophobia that still pervades corporations around the world and underscores the immense challenges faced by LGBT employees.

In The Glass Closet, Lord John Browne, former CEO of BP, seeks to unsettle business leaders by exposing the culture of homophobia that remains rampant in corporations around the world, and which prevents employees from showing their authentic selves.

Drawing on his own experiences, and those of prominent members of the LGBT community around the world, as well as insights from well-known business leaders and celebrities, Lord Browne illustrates why, despite the risks involved, self-disclosure is best for employees—and for the businesses that support them. Above all, The Glass Closet offers inspiration and support for those who too often worry that coming out will hinder their chances of professional success.

CHAPTER ONE

HIDE-AND-SEEK

IT WAS TIME to leave the building.

At 5 pm on 1 May 2007, just a few hours after resigning as chief executive of BP, I stepped into the elevator on the fifth floor of the London headquarters and began my descent. When the doors opened I had two options. I could make my way to an underground parking garage without being noticed and escape by car through a side exit on Charles II Street. Alternatively, I could simply walk through the lobby and out of the main entrance overlooking leafy St James’s Square, where about thirty press photographers had spent the day waiting like vultures for their prey.

My overwhelming desire to conceal my sexual orientation over four decades in the oil industry had culminated in this terrible juncture. My long-kept secret was about to be exposed and I was not going to hide any longer. I decided that I would leave through the front door.

The photographers and editors back at their offices had plenty to feed on. At around ten o’clock that morning, reporting restrictions on a High Court injunction granted by Mr Justice Eady in January that year had been lifted. That decision would allow Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday and Evening Standard, to disclose details of a three-year relationship I had with a young Canadian named Jeff Chevalier.

Rumours concerning our relationship had swirled about for months,¹ but the very public confirmation of that gossip would take most in the business world by surprise.

In 2003, Jeff was a twenty-three-year-old male escort. I met him on a now-defunct website. As a businessman in the public eye, I was too frightened to go out to a club or to find a date because of the risk of being discovered. Instead, I chose a secretive and far riskier approach. In any event, after nine months, he moved in with me. Too ashamed to tell most of my closest friends how we had met, we concocted a story that we had bumped into each other while running in Battersea Park, which was opposite my apartment on the other side of the River Thames. I never volunteered this to people, but naturally friends are curious. When pressed, I had my cover story.

The relationship eventually fell apart. I continued to support Jeff financially, not because I wanted to buy his silence but because, out of a sense of decency, I did not want to cut him off too summarily. I was not, however, willing to finance his life indefinitely. After about another nine months, I stopped sending him money. He started to send me text messages and emails. I ignored them. An email he sent on Christmas Eve of 2006 seemed like a threat. ‘The least I am asking for is some assistance,’ it said. ‘I do not want to embarrass you, but I am being cornered by your lack of response to my myriad attempts at communication.’² I ignored this as well.

Christmas and New Year came and went. On Friday 5 January 2007, I was on holiday in Barbados when The Mail on Sunday telephoned the BP press office. They said they intended to publish an exposé about my private life, focusing on how I met Jeff and detailing the time we spent together. Jeff had sold them the story for a substantial sum of money. They wanted me to comment by the end of the day. Regardless of whether I did, they were going to publish their story on Sunday.

Thoughts of sand and sunshine gave way to anger and fear. The young man I had once trusted had chosen to sell our stories for money. Many of these stories would turn out to be exaggerated or wrong. The walls I had built around my private life started to crumble. I feared a chain reaction would start that would damage my life, my business relationships, my reputation and ultimately BP, the corporation that I had been trusted to lead. After emergency discussions with friends and colleagues, I decided to hire a top London law firm and seek an injunction to block publication of the story.

I was fifty-nine years old, and I had not discussed my sexual orientation with most of those closest to me. Yet I suddenly found myself explaining my situation to an unknown lawyer on my mobile phone. We had never met, but in a state of anxiety and stress I was being asked to share with him the most intimate details of my second, secret life. Perhaps that is why I decided not to tell the whole truth. When he asked how I had first come into contact with Jeff, I said we had met running in Battersea Park.

On Saturday 6 January, the High Court issued the injunction blocking the publication of the story. I felt a great relief, but knew it was fleeting. I knew that the newspaper would appeal the decision and doggedly work to have the injunction lifted. I also knew that my witness statement contained a single but important fabrication.

The next day I flew on to Trinidad for business. During my meetings with Prime Minister Patrick Manning, I was preoccupied with the injunction and the imminent publication of a damning report on safety at BP’s refineries. I made up my mind that I could not continue as chief executive. The brewing storm around my personal life had the potential to destroy my reputation and I refused to let it have an impact on BP. On 8 January, I flew back to London on an overnight flight. After landing, I went to see the chairman of the board, Peter Sutherland. I explained to him as much as I could without divulging the substance or details of the injunction, as instructed by my lawyers. I said that I wanted to resign immediately. Although Peter accepted my proposal, the board decided that I would stay on until the end of July. With the injunction still working its way through the court system, and with all parties legally bound to silence, how could my resignation be explained to the public? The company named Tony Hayward as my successor. He would take over in the summer and I would have to wait.

On 16 January 2007, BP released the findings of the Baker Report, an investigation by a panel headed by former US Secretary of State James Baker into the March 2005 explosion at its Texas City refinery. My personal worries paled into insignificance. Fifteen people had died and more than 170 had been injured in that tragedy, one of the worst workplace accidents in the US in two decades. It was a very tense day on which I again accepted responsibility. The press conference stirred memories of my visit to the refinery in the immediate aftermath of the explosion, and of the anguish felt by the victims’ families and our employees.

I was well practised at keeping my personal life separate from my professional life, but the brutal honesty of the report transcended the divide. The reality dawned on me that my fabrication of how I met Jeff was a lie. I was unable to concentrate on anything else. By 20 January 2007, I had corrected my witness statement and apologised to the High Court for misleading it. I was relieved to have done so, even though I knew in my heart that it would make no difference to the outcome.

To the outside world, business carried on as usual. My calendar for the following six months read like any other period of my life as chief executive of BP. Every day was filled with meetings and trips for business: five to New York, three to other US cities, two to Russia (including one to say farewell to Vladimir Putin) and one to China. There were also three BP board meetings and one annual general meeting during that time. I remained cool on the surface, but those were the most stressful days I have ever lived through.

At times, the weight of remaining silent made me act out of character. I cancelled my attendance at the World Economic Forum in Davos without giving a reason. In late January, I took a week off and simply disappeared, something I had never done before. In a state of heightened paranoia, I wanted to get away from anyone who might ask why I was leaving BP, and I escaped to stay with friends near Barcelona. I came back to hear that the High Court had ruled that the injunction should be lifted, but allowed it to stay in place temporarily pending an appeal. The Court of Appeal heard my appeal in camera on 5 and 6 March. While waiting for their judgement, I went to do some business in New York. I remember being so frozen with anxiety that I failed to appear in front of a CNBC camera crew waiting to film me for a business award. Jeff Immelt, the CEO of GE, the owner of CNBC, later called to say they had withdrawn the award.

Days later I lost my appeal, but again the court temporarily kept the injunction in place whilst I sought permission to appeal to the House of Lords in a final effort to protect my privacy. However, I knew this was unlikely to succeed and that the injunction would ultimately be lifted. Preparation for that event did not take up much time. It was as if all of it, including my resignation, was part of a schedule planned well in advance.

Those were the most nightmarish few months of my life. I was not a victim. We must own up to our choices and I had made some bad ones. I had lived in the closet and got myself into a mess with an escort. That was bad enough. But worse, I maintained the relationship and was not prepared to tell anyone about it. That led me to make a false witness statement, which I corrected after two weeks. It was not perjury, but it was close. The lie made things worse. Throughout the ordeal, my lawyers advised me that I must not discuss the case with anyone, but time enabled editors at The Mail on Sunday to elaborate their story. And time tortured me until the morning of 1 May 2007, when the injunction was finally lifted.

By noon, I had announced my resignation from BP, the company I had led for twelve years and the place where I had begun my career while still an undergraduate. My statement to the press had a tone of mourning.

‘For the past forty-one years of my career at BP, I have kept my private life separate from my business life,’ it said. ‘I have always regarded my sexuality as a personal matter, to be kept private. It is a matter of personal disappointment that a newspaper group has now decided that allegations about my personal life should be made public.’

The announcement triggered tsunamis of headlines and stories that would dominate the front pages of UK and major international newspapers for days. By releasing the injunction, the High Court gave the press the freedom to publish a tangled skein of allegations, some of which were erroneous and misleading. I had not divulged details of sensitive discussions with Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown to my ex-boyfriend as claimed. Nor had I misused company assets and funds to support him, a fact BP confirmed after reviewing the evidence.

In the court ruling, Mr Justice Eady said that, whilst he could refer the matter to the Attorney General, nothing would be achieved by this, as it was sufficient penalty for my behaviour to be mentioned in a public judgement. On top of that, I faced the grim reality that recent events would overshadow the many achievements BP had made since 1995. During my tenure as chief executive, the corporation’s market value quintupled. We had grown the business from one of the weaker of the so-called Seven Sisters³ into a major world player, employing tens of thousands of people from Houston to Moscow to Kuala Lumpur. At one point, BP accounted for £1 in every £6 received in dividends by pension funds in the UK. All of those accomplishments suddenly seemed like footnotes. Editors would spin today’s news as a story of power, sex and lies. And in a moment I would have to give them their photograph.

The elevator doors opened. I could see the photographers outside with their lenses pointed and ready to fire. Upstairs my team had been sad and tearful as I prepared to depart. I was deeply grateful to them, but I did not show any emotion and I offered no parting words. I was very focused on getting through the next few moments.

I had one recurring thought, which came from memories of my mother, an Auschwitz survivor, who lived with me for the last fourteen years of her life. Almost all of her family were murdered during the war, and she had lived through a period of intense pain and suffering. But in a way that we might find difficult to comprehend in today’s world of emotional expression and candidness, she never dwelled on her past. She never let that dark period diminish her sense of humanity, the knowledge that she too had human rights and that she could face everything standing up straight.

An illuminated green line runs through the lobby of BP and leads to the exit. I followed it into the scrum. One shutter click became a thousand. I paused on the pavement and smiled. What else can you do? Cameramen pushed and shoved, and some attempted to get a rise out of me, which surely would have made for better photographs. Someone shouted the epithet ‘gay scum’. As BP security guards cleared a path for me to get into the car, a pushy photographer was shoved to the ground. One of the security guards looked down at him and said, with some irony, ‘I’m so sorry.’

Roddy Kennedy, the head of press at BP at the time, accompanied me during the short drive back to my home in Chelsea. Peter, my driver, who had previously worked with the police, had to lose a convoy of motorbikes chasing us with cameras. Amid the commotion, we sat there in silence. It felt as though all the air had been sucked out of the vehicle.

Driving away from the corporation that I helped to build felt like dying. For decades, I dissembled and fenced off a large portion of my life to prevent all of this from happening. I had ducked and weaved and been evasive for as long as I could. But on that day, almost inevitably, my two worlds collided. In the fallout, I lost the job that had structured my entire life.

After all those years of worry and dread, I could not help but think that my fears were finally justified. At that moment, I was convinced that I had been right all along.

GROWING UP

MY REFUSAL EARLIER in my career to acknowledge my sexual orientation publicly stemmed from a lack of confidence. That is not to say that the oil industry had beaten me down. That was far from the reality. Navigating my way from trainee to chief executive had given me faith in my abilities and taught me to project self-assurance, almost to the point of seeming arrogant.

But inside I concealed deep unease and had to deal with inner turmoil almost daily. It is difficult to feel good about yourself when you are embarrassed to show who you actually are. That feeling did not diminish as I rose through the ranks. I grew more scared the more senior I became because I felt I had more to lose.

As with so many gay men and women, my feelings of anxiety began to grow long before I contemplated a career in business: all the conditioning, the questioning and the self-doubt started early.

I attended the King’s School Ely, a boarding school in rural Cambridgeshire. Set up in AD 970, it spread out over several monastic buildings and had strong connections with the Cathedral of Ely, where we often worshipped. A liberal Church of England school, there was little talk of hellfire and damnation, and the topic of homosexuality did not feature in any religious lessons that I can remember. There was a conspiracy of silence on the topic; it was as if it did not exist.

Despite popular myth, it is simply not true that, at an all-male boarding school, there was a storm of gay activity. Homosexuality was still illegal as I came of age in the 1960s. We were vaguely aware of that. I never saw any homophobic bullying, and there was not any whispering abou...