Special general meetings of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society

A special general meeting of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society is to be held on June 3 to discuss matters relating to the appointment of the editor of The Pharmaceutical Journal. Jonathan Buisson looks at how previous SGMs have affected the profession

“Special general meetings of members shall be held on such dates and at such times and places and for such purposes as the Council may determine. Upon the requisition in writing of not less than 30 members requiring the Council to convene a special general meeting for the purpose specified in the requisition, such meeting shall accordingly be convened within such reasonable time as the Council shall think fit.” (Byelaws of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, Section VI, 5)

Special general meetings of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society have tended to mark watersheds in the profession's own evolution and development. Always controversial, both before and afterwards, they have polarised opinion between different groups or sections of the membership.

SGMs have been the membership's final way to oppose Council decisions since the passing of the Pharmacy and Poisons Act 1933 took away the right from members to approve byelaws and regulations (PJ, April 27, 1991, pS16). The same act made membership of the Society compulsory for pharmacists.

Such meetings have been few and far between, with only a handful in the past 100 years. The two most high profile meetings of recent years were in 1989, on the subject of supervision and the final check of dispensed medicines, and in 1965, on the Society's capacity to restrain the type of goods sold through registered pharmacy premises.

Supervision and the final check

The 1989 meeting had its roots in the 1986 Nuffield inquiry into the future of pharmacy. This had recommended that pharmacists should delegate activities to suitably trained support staff so as to release time for pharmacists to talk directly to patients and customers. The Council wanted to see the law changed so that a pharmacist's supervision duties would be satisfied if he saw the prescription at some stage during the process of dispensing (PJ, May 21, 1988, p666).

At the Society's annual general meeting in May, 1988, a motion was successfully proposed by John Davies, of Wiveliscombe, that “although the pharmacist, at his discretion, need not be directly involved in the dispensing process, he must, in the interest of the patient, check each prescription before it is delivered to the patient, with or without counselling at the pharmacist's discretion”. However, this motion was rejected by the Council at its next meeting after a long debate.

Ashwin Tanna, then a member of Council, organised an unofficial referendum regarding the AGM motion. He received 582 replies in favour of the motion and 81 against. The Council debated the matter of supervision at its August meeting and again reaffirmed its policy. This decision led to a spate of letters in The Journal and a special general meeting on the matter was first mooted in September.

In January, 1989, the Society published a model dispensing procedure (PJ, January 28, 1989, p103), commenting that “most pharmacists will decide to carry out a final check on a dispensed medicine before it is handed out. That would, however, be a matter for a professional decision by the pharmacist when each prescription is assessed.”

Mr Davies immediately requested an SGM to discuss the motion: “This meeting has no confidence in the Council of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society over its response to the AGM motion which was carried in May, 1988, on the matter of the pharmacist making a final check of each made up prescription before it is delivered to the patient.”

The meeting was held on Sunday, April 9, 1989, at the National Theatre on the south bank of the Thames. One strange twist was that because the hall had only been hired for one day the stage was still dressed with the set for Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, with the platform party sitting in the heroine's living room and the speakers' lectern surrounded by autumn leaves.

The debate was described as lively and with feelings running high. Mr Davies, in proposing his motion, said that the Council had refused to put its proposed dispensing procedure to a ballot, in spite of opposition to it at the AGM, and also through Mr Tanna's poll and through the letters columns of The Journal — nowhere had the Council received wholehearted support, he said.

After the meeting, some disquiet was expressed about the debate being cut short with a number of eminent pharmacists, such as Tim Astill and David Sharpe, being denied a chance to speak. The meeting was reported in detail in The Journal of April 15, 1989. Over 700 members attended the meeting and the motion was carried by 371 votes to 306.

Following the SGM, Mr Davies was elected to the Council. He was soon appointed to a working party on supervision led by the Vice-President (Linda Stone). At its October meeting, the Council published a policy statement saying that “every prescription for a medicine must be seen by a pharmacist and a judgment made by him as to what action is necessary” (PJ, October 14, 1989), a form of words described by The Journal as being the common ground between the two sides. The Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee said that it would seek changes to pharmacy contractors' terms of service to reflect the Society's position on supervision.

Practice in pharmacies may have changed over the intervening years to reflect the greater use of trained dispensing technicians, but the Society's position on supervision has remained essentially unchanged to date.

Restraint of trade

As in 1989, the 1965 SGM had its roots in a report on the future of pharmacy, in this case a report drawn up by the Council. The most controversial recommendations of this report were that new pharmacies should be situated in physically separate premises and that they should restrict their trading activities to the sale of pharmaceutical, professional and traditional chemists goods (such as toiletries, cosmetics and photographic materials).

This was strongly opposed by Boots Cash Chemists, as Boots the Chemists was then known.

A motion to implement the Council's proposals was put to the Society's annual general meeting on May 19, 1965, but the meeting was so crowded, with around 750 members present, that it had to be adjourned until the next day at which time it was proposed to hold a special general meeting at a larger venue. The Journal described the AGM as being packed in both senses of the word, with a group of members obviously organised for the purpose of defeating the Council's motion (PJ, May 29, 1965, p541).

Robert Dickson, retail director of Boots, sought an injunction to prevent the holding of the SGM, but this was dismissed after the Society gave an undertaking not to implement the proposals, if passed, until a full court hearing on the matter.

The 1965 special general meeting was probably the largest meeting of the Society's membership ever held, with around 7,000 pharmacists attending. Special buses and trains were laid on by local branches to bring members to the Albert Hall, Kensington, London, on July 25, 1965.

Such was the number of pharmacists attending that the doors to the hall had to be closed to comply with safety rules. Around 300 pharmacists, including a large contingent from Wales, were only allowed to enter and cast their votes later when some members had left.

After almost an hour-and-a-half of debate, a vote was held and the motion was carried by 5,026 votes to 1,346. A second motion on the training of pharmacy assistants was then debated and carried by 3,731 votes to 1,640.

The full hearing in the case of Dickson vs The Pharmaceutical Society was held in June, 1966. The High Court ruled that the motion as passed was an unreasonable restraint of trade and this judgment was subsequently upheld by both the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords. As Sydney Holloway put it in his history of the first 150 years of the Society, “the Council had been made to recognise its limitations at heavy financial cost”.

Apothecaries' assistants

The special general meeting held on July 2, 1919, was a more heated and unruly affair. Again it was followed by a court case which the Society lost. The meeting was called to adopt a new byelaw which would allow apothecaries' assistants who had been continuously employed for seven years to become members of the Society.

A private meeting of members was held at 2.30pm to rehearse the arguments for and against ahead of the SGM, due to start at 3.30pm. However, the hall was crowded with 700–800 members and the meeting became unruly. One participant, writing in The Journal, was disgusted with the behaviour he had witnessed. “I know dockyard workers who are gentlemen compared to some of those present,” he complained.

The SGM failed to start on schedule with some members unable to gain entry and, after a discussion with the Society's solicitor, the President and some members of Council left the meeting. Those members remaining passed a resolution rejecting the byelaw.

The Council then organised a referendum of members, despite legal opinion that this had no validity, which supported the byelaw by 4,294 votes to 1,667. A conference of the local associations (as the branches were then known), held on July 25, 1919, supported the byelaw.

The byelaw was passed at a second special general meeting on August 6 by 682 votes to 434. The atmosphere of this meeting was described as being surcharged with electricity and exceedingly animated. As a result of the new byelaw, 52 new members were admitted to the Society.

The arguments around the byelaw had soured relations within the profession. When the Society announced a proposal to establish a Joint Industrial Council to regulate terms of conditions of pharmacists and employees, Scottish pharmacists proceeded to set up their own Scottish Pharmaceutical Federation, which promptly took legal opinion on whether or not the Society's proposal was compatible with its Charter.

The Society decided to settle the matter through a friendly court action. Arthur Jenkins, a hospital pharmacist and a member of the Society's Council, agreed to be the plaintiff. He resigned from the Council (but was later re-elected) and the case was heard in October, 1920.

The judgment was given against the Society with Mr Justice Peterson ruling that it was not in the Society's power to regulate hours of business, wages and conditions of employment or prices.

The Society did not appeal against the decision, although it was pressed to do so by other chartered bodies. By the end of 1920 the Retail Pharmacists Union (now the National Pharmaceutical Association) had been established.

Other SGMs

A special general meeting was held in 1988 to approve the change of the Society's title to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. This was uncontentious and the motion was passed by 28 votes to three.

An SGM was held in February, 1965, to approve the sale of a property acquired by the Society's Benevolent Fund in accordance with the Society's Charter.

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Jonathan Buisson is on the staff of The Pharmaceutical Journal