Accused of treating a colleague like a 'slave', Paul tells his story

At least once a day, Dr Paul Morrison stands at one of his upstairs windows with a pair of binoculars and counts the seabirds flying past.

'I don't think I'll ever stop doing that as long as I live here,' he says.

The birds hail from Coquet island, a stunning six-hectare outcrop (a mile offshore from his Northumberland home) which is home to 40,000 breeding seabirds, including puffins and rare roseate terns.

It's a special place for 75-year-old father of three Paul, a man who has dedicated his professional and personal life to caring for birds and who, for nearly 40 years, worked for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) to help safeguard this precious avian population.

His passion for Coquet is such that he bought his home in the seaside village of Amble specifically because it looks out onto the island, and he got special dispensation to marry his wife Isabel there in its tiny chapel in 1991.

Sadly, a binocular view is the closest Paul will now get to the island he loves.

As the Mail reported earlier this week, this dedicated conservationist was sacked by the RSPB in March last year amid claims that he mistreated a Syrian immigrant colleague. 

Accused of 'behaviours which look to be controlling, coercive and manipulative', he was also said to have refused to grant Dr Ibrahim Alfarwi leave he was entitled to and instructed him to kill a sickly bird while not wearing PPE.

At one meeting Paul says a manager summarised his conduct by saying what would people think if they thought the RSPB was treating someone 'like a modern day slave’. 

Despite Paul's vehement protestations to the contrary – and, he says, the mountains of written evidence he could produce backing them up – another manager was installed in his place, only to be faced with a walkout from other volunteers disgusted at Paul's treatment.

It is only now, after a protracted and highly emotive legal battle, that Paul is able to tell his side after reaching a settlement with his former employer for an undisclosed sum.

Often when people are paid off they agree to gagging clauses, but Paul says: 'I was determined that would not happen.

'To some people, it's about money. To me, it's about justice, clearing my name and to bring the people who are responsible for this to account for what they have destroyed.'

He means the middle management of the RSPB, an organisation whose founding principles when established in 1889 – charmingly, its origins are rooted in the union of two women's groups opposed to the exploitation of birds for fashion purposes – was the preservation of birdlife but which, in common with so many large charities, seems to have become increasingly politicised.

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Last year, for example, amid a row over then‑Tory government plans to scrap water pollution restrictions for housing sites in England, the RSPB posted a tweet featuring a picture of former PM Rishi Sunak and two ministers, dubbing them 'liars'.

Behind the posturing, however, are hundreds of devoted workers and volunteers like the genial Paul, whose bewilderment at the accusations made against him remains profound, matched only by his anger at his treatment by RSPB managers, whom one volunteer recently insisted were determined to get rid of an older white man who didn't fit their progressive new agenda.

'I'm incredibly angry, but more than anything I am saddened,' he says. 'Saddened at the way the charity has been hijacked by people with their own agenda, saddened for all the volunteers who worked so hard, but also saddened on a personal level, because what they have done has destroyed my day-to-day contentment.

'My career aspirations weren't climbing the ladder. I just wanted to do the best for the wildlife on an island I love.'

Nor has the impact been just emotional: two years ago, after his first disciplinary meeting, Paul – a regular half-marathon runner – suffered a mini-stroke which doctors put down to stress.

'I'm OK now, but I'm on medication for the rest of my life to keep me right again – and I am right again, but the damage done was just very hurtful,' he says.

Not in the least because Paul's passion for birds is life-long, sparked by the discovery as a youngster of a distressed sea bird covered in oil near his family home in Tynemouth.

'I tried to rescue it and clean it,' he recalls. 'It died sadly, but I think it started there. I just loved trying to do the best I could for these poor oiled sea birds. I even had them in the bath at my parents' house.'

He went on to study zoology, followed by an MSc and then a PHD in public health engineering, latterly simultaneously working as a country park warden for Northumberland County Council, progressing through the ranks to head warden.

By the mid-1980s, he had also started volunteering for the RSPB on Coquet Island. 'I was bitten by the island bug and it never stopped,' he says.

As time went on it progressed into additional part-time paid work, then in 2005 he was offered the full-time post of warden and, latterly, site manager. He also continued to volunteer at weekends. 'Looking after the birds is 24-7, not nine-to-five, and we never had enough people,' Paul says.

By and large, he was left to his own devices. 'I was trusted,' he says.

That meant, most days, making the one-mile journey to the island in a small rib, returning to the mainland at the end of the day.

'That journey can be a matter of a couple of minutes in calm seas. But this being the North Sea, it can change in a heartbeat, so I and others have been marooned on several occasions,' he says. 'This is something the managers just can't seem to get their heads around.'

Reliant largely on volunteers, in 2015 Dr Alfarwi joined as another paid employee when he was taken on as a research student. He was based on the island, living in its lighthouse which has electricity provided by solar power.

The two got on well enough for Paul to consider him a friend and invite him to join his family for Christmas on more than one occasion and in 2021 he organised a small celebratory ceremony, in keeping with Covid restrictions, when the Syrian student learned he was about to receive his PHD.

'We hired in gowns, and a couple of us had an outdoor celebration on the island, presenting him with a scroll and a cake,' recalls Paul.

In what he acknowledges is a case of supreme irony, it was he who stepped in to fight for people like Dr Alfarwi when, four years ago, the RSPB made an internal announcement that they would no longer act as a sponsoring organisation for visa applications.

'I asked them how they could possibly not support foreign visas when I had a member of staff from another country whose visa expired the following year,' he says. 'I was very outspoken.'

But Paul felt that his colleague’s demeanour started to change after getting his PHD. 'Ibrahim was doing an extra job, working at Newcastle Library every weekend,' he recalls. 'I used to bend over backwards to try and get him off the island in time – sometimes I would head over at 4am – but it wasn't always possible because of the weather or work commitments.

'Even so, he started insisting he had every 'right' to be off the island, which I just didn't get because he'd chosen to live there. Unbeknown to me, complaints had been made about me to my boss.'

Those complaints came to a head in September 2022 when Paul was called to a meeting by the area manager which he had been led to believe would be a discussion about creating a staffing rota on the island, but turned out to be an 'unannounced investigative' meeting he calls 'little short of an ambush'.

Instead of rota chats, Dr Morrison says he was first accused of working illegal hours himself, before being told that he was making Dr Alfarwi work excessive hours, too.

'They weren't minded to listen to a single thing I told them. In fact, they started shouting to the point that the clerk for the Harbour Authority, whose building I was in at the time, later told me she had been so shocked she had nearly come in to check on me,' he says.

A shaking Dr Morrison left the meeting in tears, so distressed that a few days later he had that mini stroke. 'I was told my blood pressure was incredibly high, which had never happened to me before,' he says. 'I hoped that was the end of it.'

In fact, it was just the start of a series of other increasingly Kafkaesque claims against him. One regional manager suggested that the small celebration he organised for Dr Alfarwi's PHD was both a breach of Covid rules and also RSPB rules barring drinking at work.

'I pointed out that the ceremony was actually on a Sunday at five o'clock, when I wasn't working or volunteering in any official capacity,' he says.

Other accusations suggested that he had been drinking alcohol while operating heavy machinery, and used coercive behaviour on volunteers. 'All nonsense,' he says.

On October 31, 2022, Paul was suspended in a meeting over Zoom. At a later disciplinary hearing he was told he was guilty of gross insubordination, based on a specific 'charge' of failing to get cover for Dr Alfarwi for a weekend at the end of August.

'They arrived at this conclusion despite the fact I had a chain of emails showing that I had organised a volunteer the moment he had made his request, but she had pulled out at the last minute,' he says.

Astonishingly, the next day Paul opened his front door to two armed police officers who said they had been notified he was an unsuitable person to have a firearms licence for reasons they said they were 'not at liberty' to disclose. Paul subsequently discovered that a manager had contacted the police by email to say he had concerns about Paul's 'mental health'.

 When he told them the firearm they were referring to was kept on Coquet Island to manage the gull population, he says they 'looked absolutely baffled, but I knew there was something wrong'.

He was right: two months later Paul was told he was being subjected to a second disciplinary procedure for not following correct bird flu practices – despite, he insists, the accusations dating to a period prior to the disease being declared present on the island, on June 29, 2022.

'I'm a public health engineer, and there was a generic risk assessment in place at the start of June, during which my boss came to the island and hosted a party picnic on the beach with no PPE. My boss made it quite clear he was perfectly content with the safety measures in place at that time,' he says. The CEO visited the next day.

'Then suddenly, all these months later, I was accused of not adjusting the risk assessment.

'I pointed out first, bird flu hadn't been confirmed; and second, I should know what I'm talking about as I'm a public health engineer. I must have repeated myself a dozen times.'

In another surreal twist, during these disciplinary processes video footage emerged showing Dr Alfarwi chasing and stepping on the tail of a skua with suspected bird flu the previous August. He can then be seen bashing its skull against a rock after trying and failing to wring its neck.

'I wasn't on the island at the time and had no idea this had happened until I was chatting to a volunteer over a cup of coffee,' says Paul. 'I was appalled and put in a complaint.'

Dr Alfarwi then insisted to managers that Paul had instructed him to kill the bird and failed to provide him with any PPE while doing so. He was later cleared of any wrongdoing by the RSPB.

For his part, Paul denies all of this saying angrily: 'I'm meticulous in the things I do in looking after the island that's precious to me and staff that are precious to me, too. Long before bird flu came down the Northumberland coast, I had a stockpile of PPE in the lighthouse. And not only that, I kept receipts for every bit of it.'

Meanwhile, the investigation into his handling of bird flu resulted in a second written warning and Paul was dismissed as a result.

'I just could not take in,' he says, his head shaking at the memory.

'It was just the most horrible way to end when I'd given my life to an organisation that protected birds – or should I say is meant to protect birds, because it seems to be moving away from its original founding principles.'

Indeed, since Paul's story went public this week, the organisation's chief operating officer James Robinson has published a blog post referring to what he calls 'unfounded reports' in national media outlets. In it he emphasises the RSPB's vision to be 'an inclusive, diverse and equitable organisation', a 'key part' of which is 'challenging racism wherever it occurs'.

The post has left Paul dumbfounded. 'Anybody reading that will see it as a clear attempt to divert the realities of this case by suggesting there was a racist agenda,' he says. 'It's horrifying.

'Thankfully, I have people around me who know me as a person and know the truth.'

This includes Isabel, who has witnessed first-hand the impact that events of recent years have had on her husband.

'It's been absolutely terrible to watch,' she says. 'He's felt isolated, bullied and humiliated. When he was shouted at in that first meeting I don't think I have ever seen him so upset.' 

When contacted by the Daily Mail, the RSPB said: 'There are two sides to every story and at the RSPB we have thorough, fair and legal processes and procedures that we follow when dealing with staff issues.

'The RSPB takes pride in being an organisation which is committed to ensuring that all employees and volunteers are treated fairly and reasonably and is confident that has been the case in this instance. We will not be making further comment on issues relating to previous members of staff.'

What, meanwhile, of Dr Alfarwi? He has since been replaced in his role on Coquet island, and while Dr Robinson refers to him as a 'current member of staff' it is unclear in what capacity he is now employed by the RSPB.

Equable to the last, Paul refuses to say anything against his former colleague, preferring instead to focus on his own future working for several other conservation organisations.

'I'm still keeping busy,' he smiles. 'When it comes to conservation there is always something to be done.'

Perhaps even the RSPB could not disagree with him on this.