This came up in a workshop I was running for people helping refugees today. What do you do if you know someone's being treated badly, as though there's a policy at work; or some kind of thing playing out that targets them? It depends on the context, as usual, but I'd always be looking to corroborate what they are saying.

You can only do that if you stay in touch with the realities of legislation and policy making; which will be disputed, almost certainly by the people doing whatever it is unless they are acting out some kind of explicit public role or law enforcement.

You need to decide where you stand because that will affect how you read the situation. Remaining 'neutral' can be like asking someone to stay where they are because what looks like a giant boot descending from the sky above them may not be that. In fact, if they think differently it may actually be a feather.

Logic has a relationship with common sense; reasoning is sometimes very unreasonable because it leaves out what many still dispute as not a thing to discuss, say racism, which you think you'd know if you saw it. But how can you know something you can't know because it will never come to you?

Describing what you see and saying what you know can be helpful. But only if you see it or know it. Don't create an imaginary enemy, even if you believe one is there. Find another way.

Now, think about what that does to the drama triangle (Karpman's, 1968): P: Persecutor, V, Victim and R, Rescuer. Normally we're told to 'get off the triangle' by remaining neutral. The feeling driving the 'rescue' belongs to the rescuer, not to what is happening to the person in front of him, and it leaves the victim where he was; you create the enemy that 'rescue' needs. The letter comes from the Home Office. The man at the desk hands it over. It's the man at the desk you go after. Getting off the triangle is to say it as you think it is ... which, as we know, is rarely the easy thing to do.