Professions Reborn: Revitalised professions in a material world
Written Summer, 2002

Introduction

Trust in a commercialised world

Quasi-judicial

Professions: the past

Where education meets experience

Regulation without confrontation

Combatting the (professional) campaigners

Signs of the renaissance

Professions – elitist and proud of it

Professions: protecting profit

Professions: protecting whistleblowers

Pundits and actors - a special case?

Professionals are not altruists

Introduction
A prediction for the next decade. We will, if we are lucky, see a revival in the idea and ideal of the professions. Professional bodies will step forward as the trusted, intelligent, dynamic social ingredient which will come to represent and embody the way men and women can act socially whilst getting a living. Crucially, they will have a role in mediating between the creation of wealth and wider social goals. This is not a crude trade-off, of course. For instance, one social goal – the creation of trust – would be useful to wealth-creation.

That there is a problem of combining wealth creation and social conscience is hardly in doubt. What has not been quite so clear recently as it is now is this: that robust individuals who go to work with strong principles can be useful to their trades. Enron, Xerox, Andersons and Railtrack are just a few of the big names which have suffered loss of reputation and revenue in cases where professionalism might have helped. These are cases where disaster might have been averted if professionals – in-house and hired-in – had behaved with more boldness.

These narrow cases illustrate a wider problem which may need a similar solution. Farmers, grocers, engineers, waste handlers and chemists are all involved in arguments amongst themselves and with the public in which professions might become very useful. In both sorts of case – the narrow and the wide – professions could become locations of trust. They could be where insight and integrity are combined. They could be where wealth-creators regain respectability. They might also be useful to democracy, if the new wave of politicians developed a new professionalism.

Trust in a commercialised world

1) Privatised services

2) The Archipelago State

3) Professional politicians

4) Privatising government

5) Some hard cases….

6) Gatekeepers and rationers

7) The new need for professions

The problem of locating trust is particularly acute in a world of privatised public services, the Archipelago State, and Professional Politics and anti-capitalism. Western societies have become rich and democratic. There is just a chance that they have almost become too rich and too democratic. That is to say, whilst they have all but abolished poverty and exploitation, they have also seemed to flirt with crass materialism and to have made a god of populism. Put this another way: we have recognised the vigour of markets, but we have unglued government.

1) Privatised services
Many public services have been privatised, so that shareholders are now an important factor in services which are not merely supposed to be universally available, but are also supposed to represent something of the “pro bono publico” in their ethos. Of course, there is no way back. Private enterprise is now reckoned to be capable of performing every task. More of our lives is in the hands of firms, and less in the hands of politicians.

2) The Archipelago State
Yet politicians regulate a huge amount of activity, and do much of it through myriad agencies whose connection with Whitehall and Westminster is opaque. We need to see that “government” has become something quite new. For instance: over half the British home civil service now works in agencies of the state which are decentralised, granted a degree of independence and “branded” as self-contained. These are Quangoes – Quasi-Non-Governmental Organisations. Their moniker lets us see that even formal parts of the “government” are now hovering close to a state which makes them like Non Governmental Organisations. In particular: they are having to grab media attention as best they may as they seek to become locations of trust.

3) Professional politicians
At first sight it’s mildly offensive to imagine a profession of politics. We are already rightly worried – or ought to be – that there are people who make a career of politics, and see little difference between being an elected parliamentarian, a party aparachik, a lobbyist or a journalist. They cycle through these roles, and think of them as rather alike. Such a person is a commodity dealer, and the commodity concerned is public opinion. Politicians have understood that they are performers and salesmen, and they need to be trusted. They have learned that much, but have not yet worked out how to demonstrate that they are worth trusting. They need to elevate themselves above hack status. They need a new professionalism as they chase the votes of fickle constituents who operate toward them more like customers than loyal followers. The profession of politics needs a profession.

We mourn the absence of learning, experience and public service which the new kind of politician displays. But similarly, parliaments will need a new sense of personal dignity and public obligation amongst their elected members – a new professionalism – as a buffer and guarantee against the opinion-managers and mood-surfers who run the party machine. We seem likely to see an emerging portfolio political career amongst people who are at various times party workers, MPs, journalists and lobbyists. Such a class of political operative will need to develop and demonstrate professional standards perhaps more than any other.

4) Privatising government
There are some firms which illustrate the problem and possibilities with real poignancy. These are the out-sourcing firms like Capita which combine the market with administration. They make a market out of administration. They will take over more and more of government’s chores, and especially those chores which make it unpopular. Taxes, fines, wages-slips – all these and more will go the way of water and rail and energy: their operation will be given to companies in the hopes that “delivery” can be improved by the profit motive. This approach will press its way into the provision of police, prisons, health and education. Presumably, in time, it will work its way into the military.

5) Some hard cases….
One of the most remarkable features of 2001 was the way the debate about the health service completely changed. In all my lifetime, it has been assumed that the NHS was at the heart of the social consensus and that it had to be “free at the point of use”. Suddenly, in the past year, Sir Jimmy Young’s show on Radio 2 would be rung up by ordinary punters saying: “Why should we have the last Stalinist health service in Europe?” People suspect there must be a better way.

6) Gatekeepers and rationers
There are particular difficulties with marrying healthcare and the market. Like education, it involves rationing a necessarily scarce resource to which all of us have a potentially unlimited claim, unrelated to our ability to pay. When the state ran everything, and was trusted, the answer was simple, in that the state’s writ was occasionally brutal, but it was largely undisputed. But as we evolve systems which involve insurance, direct payment, and state-run public funds, and as we all become more demanding, who then will be the gatekeepers? When most of us are customers of health and education services, we will need trusted professionals for many things, but especially to decide who amongst the poor deserves, can reward, or must for some other reason be given the means to pay or be doled-out expensive services. These tasks will presumably fall to doctors (and teachers, in their own sphere) who will become extraordinarily important. Theirs will become a job requiring disinterestedness, courage and high skill.

7) The new need for professions
In common with many other people who do important jobs, but especially in societies like ours in which less and less is provided or controlled by the state, doctors, teachers, engineers and others will find that they need special skills and, in the end, special support. They will need professional “formation” (to use an old word) and professional backup. In short, professions and professionalism will serve them and us well.

Quasi-judicial
Their role will be quasi-judicial. They will be condemning people to doing without care, just as judges condemn people to doing without freedom. They will interpret the law, and be the law. This is a key feature of much professional activity. Policemen, pilots, firemen share this element: you are under their command in certain situations.

Professions - the past
What has happened to this idea which has so diminished it? This was an area where Mrs Thatcher’s lower-middle-class, corner shopkeeper’s chippiness let her down. She was determined that “trade” no longer be a term of disdain, but tripped herself up by disliking the professions as the antithesis of what she liked. She had a point. She is said to have disliked the professions because she saw them as trade unionists in white collars. And indeed, medicine (including nursing) and law, perhaps even accountancy, had developed into self-serving closed-shops which were judge and jury in matters that ought to have been in the public domain. The teachers, meanwhile, had a trade union which was not only a closed-shop but an institutionalised engine of leftiness to boot.

Besides, professionals were all seen as technicians performing certain services, but not to be trusted to make judgments. We neutered the professionals, first in our imaginations and then in practice. We preferred regulating and suing them to listening to them. They had ceased to be thought of as skilled people working for the public good rather than their own profit. They had ceased to be thought of as the best source of advice on policy and practicalities.

We can put this right quite quickly, because professionalism never did die, but was only put at a discount. The future of professions is written in their history. Medieval Europe was in large part made modern by educated men (doctors, merchants, lawyers) who believed that a self-regulated good behaviour was essential to private profit and public well-being. If we look back at the medieval guilds and professions only as vested interests, that is only because we have forgotten the ancient fraternities of a London or Venice – they were half-social, half religious, both charitable and prestigious - with which they were intertwined. They were of a piece with the effort – not remotely a matter of state activity – by which schools and hospitals were founded and funded. In working class and middle class form, they underpinned the mutual movement which might have developed into mass provision of education and health.

Where education meets experience
The part of the tradition which most needs reviving is the sense that professions are where learning meets experience. It is this combination which help us learn to trust, first, their understanding of their patch, and, second, their practical judgements. And where commerce meets conscience.

Many public services (rail and health, for instance) are amongst the most challenging to privatise. Fairness and technical ability must be demonstrated every day and in every way. But there are plenty of other activities which are very demanding but have never been in public hands (a restaurant can kill you just as quickly as a hospital). In truth, the problem of trust, and the opportunities for Professions Reborn, are as numerous in the operations which have always been private as those which were once comfortably inside government departments.

Everywhere we look, we see the need to be sure that the people employed by firms can nuance their commercial role and ambition with an understanding and interest in the wider public interest.

Regulation without confrontation
But there is something more, too. We currently make the mistake of believing that we can regulate modern society in a mainly confrontational way. Professionalism is much better than high profile, punitive regulation at producing the good management which will minimise cock-ups. The blame culture makes the public more fearful of their world, whilst it makes service providers legalistically cautious. Yet, many campaigners insist, the vested interest of private providers is at odds with the public good, whilst regulators are too feeble rather than too strong.

Combatting the (professional) campaigners
The NGOs insist that it is they who alone can police the politicians, the firms, the regulators; the NGOs insist that only they have no vested interest, and are therefore the true regulators of inequality, pollution, injustice. But the NGOs actually have less learning and experience than politicians or regulators, and less legitimacy and accountability than them too. And of course, most of them have their own agendas, which will tend to be more romantic or more radical than the view of the majority of people in whose name they claim to speak. We may enjoy them as providing a useful pepperiness, or a usefully lofty idealism, to the management of affairs, but they are not a big part of the real solution. And the media, of course, mostly enjoys problems. It can only marginally be interested in solutions. The NGOs command the debate and demand controls. As campaigners are heard more and more, and demand more and more regulation, the private sector can respond by fielding professionals and their argument. By promoting the integrity and intelligence of the people who sell us food, accountancy, travel and much more, firms will be able to.

Campaigners are paradoxical. They are trusted, but are not much challenged on the basis of the truthfulness or fairness of what they say. They are not expected to be educated or experienced - they are merely required to be "authentic" - passionate, idealistic and fearless. Actually, they will come under indreasing fire to be nmore trustworthy. They too may need a new professionalism.

Signs of the renaissance
The professions, then, have plenty of work to do. Luckily, they are already waiting in the wings, renaissance-ready. Last year, I happened to come across two interesting outposts of the phenomenon.

In Belgium, I spoke at a conference of food scientists who belong to a professional body which debates improvements in food safety and quality from a technical point of view. This body has many of the elements of a profession reborn: one joins and contributes as an individual; all activity is voluntary and unpaid; technical experts employed by firms are members on equal terms with academics; firms contribute money not clout; the membership is international; everyone counts real evidence and real experience as the currency of debate.

In Sardinia, I was at a biannual conference of waste disposal experts (from firms, consultancies and government bodies) who meet to present and debate a series of evidence- and experience-led papers whose closely-printed volumes take up about a yard of shelf-space each time. Again, membership is personal; debate is fierce; expertise very highly-regarded. What impresses about these two bodies is that their ethos mixes self-interest with public service.

This is the mark of a profession: men and women seek to enhance their reputation with people who can be useful to them, and they do so by deploying and displaying skill in a pro bono way. Notice: these are not philanthropic bodies. They don’t do good by giving alms. They don’t dislike profit, but see profitability as a matter of practical necessity – of viability – not a goal in itself. They do good by seeing and expressing the public dimension in their trade. Members do not advance themselves by being kind or generous in a general way, but by being excellent in a public-spirited way.

Professions – elitist and proud of it
Some unfashionable words will have to be reframed if the professional spirit is to thrive. Elitism is amongst them. Professions will be valuable to the rest of us when we cheerfully endorse the proposition that excellence is necessary and admirable. We cannot enshrine excellence without accepting that it is a property which has to be worked at, and takes time, and brain and energy and commitment too. It cannot be common, and can be dangerous if it is not socialised.

Excellence can do no work, it is wasted, if it is not trusted and admired. Indeed, a profession, really, is a body which turns skill into something which is publicly valuable; it makes excellence something which is more likely to be useful. Once we have reinstated professions in our public life, and have placed professionalism at the heart of what talented people do, we will see that we have gone a long way to provide the counterweight to the enterprise culture.

A vigorous profession of railway engineers would have informed the public about the risks of under-investment and under-management of the nationalised and privatised rail system. If farmers and grocers had had a higher sense of their professionalism, we might have avoided a food chain prone to accident and farms denuded of wildlife.

Professions: protecting profit
But more than that, as we set enterprise to work on provision of public services we will have the answer to the conundrum: how to reconcile profit with the public good? This is the ancient problem which professions addressed. In many spheres, we will come to see the firm as the means of profitably putting a profession at work for the public good. Put this another way: professionals will be the main asset which shareholders and customers will expect to see in a viable firm. In terms of corporate governance, the visible professionalism of a cadre of employees will be the way the outside world senses that the pursuit of private profit does not over-rule public good, or undermine long-term profitability. A firm will be charged by the quality of its engineers, accountants and administrators.

Professions: protecting whistleblowers
Employees seeing corruptions large and small within their firms, and between their firms and politicians, will know that they have backup from their professional body when argue against bad practice. In the public sphere, civil servants always were especially aware of their professional status. It was of a special sort, because they had, and may need to reassert, a sense of a quasi-judicial dignity and values, usually against political interference. Of course, the better professions work in protecting whistleblowers, the less will there be a need for whistleblowers.

Pundits and actors - a special case?
Oddly, pundits never have seriously conceived of themselves as professionals and perhaps this was because, like politicians, they were not subject to a specific educational regime and also because they do not constitute a stable population of people exclusively seeking a particular career. (Unfortunately, that is less true than once it was.) They are self-promoters, who profess no expertise. Consider actors, a rather similar case. There is something absurd or otiose in the idea of actors being a profession. After all, these are people who do not have to be trusted. They are moving or funny, or whatever, as they say other peoples’ words. We do not mind what they say, however fanciful or absurd it may be, because the damage they do is done by others. Any wickedness on the stage or screen resides with the people who write the words, usually. Besides, we can see what they are up to.

They teach us what professions do. They are the means by which we come to trust the words uttered by people whose opinion matters, and they are means by which we come to trust people whose activities we cannot see, or be expected to understand.

Professionals are not altruists
A last word against taking a romantic view of the new and reborn professions. We would have little faith in the idea that professionals will do great good if we believed that it will be the personal goodness of the professionals which will make it so. Professionalism will make a comeback because people are vain as well as good or bad. Just as capitalism is brilliant at harnessing greed for the public good, so professionalism is brilliant at harnessing pride. If we properly reinstate the professions, we will be putting a further, an enriching, enticement in front of our most talented people. It will be the trick by which energetic people in all the right places will daily check and ensure that profit is doing its usual good work, and not exerting the baleful influence it is occasionally prone to. ends