In Defence of the English Professions

When I came to England in 1952 as a postgraduate student, I knew little about the London School of Economics, and less about the subject which I had chosen for further study sociology. Having just completed my German doctorate in philosophy, with Latin and Greek as subsidiary subjects, I was venturing onto new ground. Thus it was no small embarrassment when my supervisor, the late Professor T H Marshall (whom I came to like and admire greatly), asked me in my first week at LSE what subject I proposed for my thesis. I felt I had to give a definite answer to this man of few but carefully chosen words, and I said, 'intellectuals'. He liked the idea and proceeded to tell me of his Bloomsbury friends, all men and women of letters, but seeing my blank face he decided to recommend something more definite for me to read: the book by Roy Lewis and Angus Maude, 'Professional People', which had then just appeared and which I studied eagerly. Thus, one of my first intellectual encounters with this country had to do with the subject of tonight's lecture. Let me confess right away that in the end I did not write my thesis on intellectuals. Indeed, I departed a long way from the original plan. My PhD thesis is entitled 'Unskilled Labour in British Industry'. But I hasten to add that this change of mind had little to do with Lewis and Maude, let alone T H Marshall. In fact, the book by Lewis and Maude is a rather impressive statement of a problem which continued to exercise many: 'To be a professional man or woman today is to live with uncertainty', they say in their very first sentence. They go on to talk about the fear of those who have inherited a 'tradition of selfexamining integrity and self-forgetful service', that their future may be at risk, a great risk, in their view, for which they use big words: 'Indeed, it may be that the overriding problem of the professions is no less than that of western economies and modern societies themselves' (Lewis & Maude 1952, pp 1-2). My own claim in this lecture is somewhat less sweeping. But it is my contention that the condition of the British professions is an index of the state of liberty in this country, and that what they do, and what happens to them, has a great deal to do with whether Britain remains a model of a free society for the rest. My distinguished predecessor as Director of the London School of Economics, Sir Alexander Carr-Saunders Director at the time at which I came as a postgraduate has spent much energy on defining the professions: 'For a profession may be defined as an occupation based upon specialized intellectual training, the purpose of which is to supply skilled advice and service to others in return for a definite fee or salary' (Carr-Saunders & Caradog Jones 1937). The definition has almost clinical precision, and undoubtedly is correct. However, it is one which does not help us in trying to distinguish the English professions from those of other countries, notably countries in Europe. Here the list of qualities drawn up by W E Wickenden, a former president of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, and quoted by Roy Lewis and Angus Maude, takes us rather further. Wickenden characterizes professions, first, by a 'body of knowledge or of art', and this is true everywhere. He then mentions their concern with an 'educational process'; already differences are profound, for not everywhere are the professions as directly involved in the education of new members as, say, the Bar or the Law Society in Britain. Professions uphold a 'standard of professional qualifications' as well as a 'standard of