It is now widely accepted that building the future of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society requires a knowledge of its foundations. One of the purposes of the first gathering of the Society's Modernisation Steering Group "was to bring everyone up to speed with ... the history of the Society". Philip Green (deputy secretary and professional development director) has said "we need an understanding of our starting point to help us map the way ahead" and Christine Gray (project manager of the modernisation programme) recently contributed an article to this journal in which she delved into the Society's past in an attempt to discover how this starting point was reached (PJ, 19 January, p74). Some of her findings were reproduced in the Modernisation Steering Group's discussion paper on the remit and functions of the Society. It is this version of the Society's history that is now being disseminated as an integral part of the modernisation programme. As a professional historian who has spent more than 40 years researching the political and social history of pharmacy in Great Britain, I have to say that, as an interpretation, it appears flawed by the attempt to make it useful and favourable to the dominant orthodoxy of the day. Factually, I would take issue with it in some respects. Ranke said that the historian's task was "to show how it really was". My aim is simply to set the record straight.

This is not the place to trawl over material already published in my history of the Society and in the articles that I have contributed to this journal. Only a few brief comments will be required to show the relevance of this work. It is, however, necessary to examine in some detail three episodes in the Society's history which have a crucial bearing on its current remit and functions. These events are the Jenkin case (1920), the Pharmacy and Poisons Act (1933), and the 1953 Supplemental Charter.

The Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain was founded in 1841 "for the purpose of protecting the permanent interests and increasing the respectability of chemists and druggists". In February 1843 it was incorporated by royal charter. According to the preamble of that charter, the Society was formed to advance chemistry and pharmacy, to promote a uniform system of education, to provide a benevolent fund "and also for the protection of those who carry on the business of chemists and druggists". The grant of the charter demonstrated that the aim of safeguarding the interests of chemists and druggists was approved of and sanctioned by the government.

Jacob Bell (whose comment on the origin of the charter is quoted by Christine Gray) saw the charter as a source of political strength for the future. "In case of any grievance affecting the individual members in any district, or in any part of the country, and rendering an appeal to the legislature desirable, there is an effective and efficient channel through which such appeal can be made; and it may be supposed that the Council of an incorporated Society, representing so large a body as the chemists and druggists of the United Kingdom, would possess the advantage of an amount of influence which might, on a great variety of occasions, be beneficially exerted." In other words, the collective power of the Society is to be used to advance the interests of individual members. The administrative records of the Society provide innumerable examples of it intervening in local disputes on behalf of members.

Under the 1843 charter, the Council was charged with the direction and management of the Society's affairs. Jacob Bell emphasised that the founders, in drawing up the Society's constitution, had "vested in the Council sufficient powers to render their services effective", while making them "entirely responsible to, and to be elected by, the members at large". In 1852, George Smith, the Society's first Secretary, told a parliamentary select committee that it was the fundamental point of the constitution "that the Council should represent all the members". Democratic representation and self-government embody every member's right to have a say in how the Society is run and in what it does. In an article, based on a detailed and careful examination of the archival evidence and published in this journal in 1993 (PJ, 27 February 1993, p269), I demonstrated that the incorporation of the principles of representative democratic self-government in the Society's constitution was decisive in the award of the royal charter in 1843.

Throughout the period from 1843 to 1920 the Council of the Pharmaceutical Society promoted the public interest by fiercely defending the interests of proprietor chemists against the enemies of pharmacy. The first legislation to deal specifically with pharmacy was a private member's Act secured in 1852 by Jacob Bell who had bribed his way into the House of Commons. Although opposed by leading members of the government, the 1852 Act set up a statutory register, maintained by the Society, of pharmaceutical chemists and restricted the use of that title to persons whose names were on it. The Society was given the authority to institute proceedings and to recover penalties for breaches of the Act. The Society's Council, by vigorous lobbying, secured, in 1864, an esteemed mark of professional status (exemption from jury service) for pharmaceutical chemists.

The year 1868 saw the enactment, with government support, of the Pharmaceutical Society's bill linking the practice of pharmacy with the sale of poisons. By this Act, the Society, subject only to the veto of the Privy Council, became the regulatory authority for the sale of poisons in Great Britain. The Society was required to conduct the qualifying examinations, to maintain the registers, to determine the poisons schedules and to initiate prosecutions under the Act. Registered chemists and druggists secured a monopoly of the retail sale of poisons. Section 26 of the Act gave the Privy Council, but not the Society, power to erase from the register the name of any chemist and druggist convicted of an offence against the 1868 Act, "which in their opinion renders him unfit to be on the register". The Pharmaceutical Society already had power, under the 1843 charter, to remove from the Society a member guilty of an act or conduct contrary to or subversive of the interests of the Society or of a violation of its laws and regulations. The Privy Council never exercised its power under Section 26 and, before 1933, only a few members of the Society were ever thrown out.

Under the 1868 Act the Society had powers to regulate the activities of, and to initiate proceedings against, all chemists and druggists, not just its own members. The Poisons and Pharmacy Act of 1908 augmented these powers and brought limited companies under the Society's jurisdiction. The register of superintendents was compiled and monitored by the Society. After 1908, the Pharmacy Acts were applied to corporate bodies in the same way that they applied to individuals.

Under the various pharmacy acts, the Pharmaceutical Society was provided with the statutory powers to protect its members' privileges. It was given the duty of enforcing those provisions that conferred on pharmacists rights in relation to titles and the sale of poisons. At the same time, successive governments added to the powers of the Society as an examining, registering, prosecuting and rule-making authority. They did so in the full knowledge that the Society was an association governed by a Council elected by members who had voluntarily joined the Society largely for the protection of their economic interests. Sir Almeric FitzRoy, the Clerk of the Privy Council said, in 1917, that the British Medical Association and the Pharmaceutical Society "were two of the closest trade unions to be found in the United Kingdom". Yet governments were prepared to graft on to this militant and flourishing pharmaceutical "trade union", the type of powers that, in medicine, were reserved to the Royal Colleges and the General Medical Council.

"The facts are that Government Departments, Parliament, and the public," remarked Sir William Glyn-Jones in 1918, "know full well that the Society is a voluntary organisation of men whose object in subscribing to its funds is not with the sole intention of serving the public interest without the least regard to their own. Pharmacists stand well with the public, the Government, and outside bodies, but they are not given credit for such altruism as that. The Society has not, and will not, be given credit for acting without regard to the special interests of its members."

The Pharmacy and Poisons Act 1933

The 1933 Pharmacy and Poisons Act was a government measure, drafted by the departmental committee appointed in 1926 to consider the law relating to poisons. This committee rejected Sir William Glyn-Jones's idea that a Pharmacy Board should be established to act as the regulatory authority for poisons and pharmacy, and instead conferred its proposed functions partly upon the Home Office and partly upon the Pharmaceutical Society. Sir Hugh Linstead, then the Society's Secretary and Registrar, pointed out that "the continued realisation by the Society of the responsibility which accompanies privilege has enabled Parliament, with public approval, to confer upon it increasingly wider powers and duties". After 1933, the Pharmaceutical Society became, in Linstead's words, "a corporation completely representative of the profession, with the power to impose its own educational standards for admission, to regulate its own internal affairs and to exercise, subject to the oversight of the High Court, its own disciplinary control over those admitted into its ranks". In 1941 the Lord Chief Justice, Viscount Caldicote, observed "that the intention of the Act seems to me to make ... the Council of the Pharmaceutical Society, as representing the profession ... masters in their own house." The Act, he said, was intended to elevate the business of pharmacy "into the status of a profession which is to be part managed and controlled by members of the Society to which all persons carrying on the business or exercising the profession must belong".

Three aspects of the 1933 Act require comment here: the setting up of the Statutory Committee; the increase in the number of Council members; and the abolition of voluntary membership by the provision that every person registered as a pharmacist shall automatically be a member of the Society.

The Statutory Committee The Statutory Committee was established as a committee of the Pharmaceutical Society by the 1933 Act. Sir Hugh Linstead described it as "the disciplinary tribunal of pharmacy". In 1966, it was said to be "the only body with power to enforce proper professional conduct" in pharmacy. It comprises a chairman and five members. The five members are appointed by the Council of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. Although they need not all be pharmacists, one must be a pharmacist resident in Scotland. The Statutory Committee, however, is a committee of the Society, and not of the Society's Council. It is, in fact, completely independent of that Council. The chairman is appointed by the Privy Council and has to be a person "having practical legal experience". He has considerable powers of his own to stop proceedings at an early stage in certain cases and he must himself assent to every removal of a name from the register. Lord Upjohn commented in the Dickson case (1968) that "the evidence showed that this statutory committee is in truth highly independent and that over the years a succession of eminent chairmen had not hesitated, much to the disappointment of the [Society's] Council, to exercise their powers to stop proceedings at an early stage".

Not only is the Statutory Committee independent of the Society's Council, but it also has jurisdiction over persons who are not members of the Society and over corporate bodies. The Committee has the power to direct the Registrar to remove names of persons and premises from the respective Registers. In such cases, the Registrar acts under the direction, not of the Council, but of the Statutory Committee. Since 1933, a pharmacist whose name is removed from the Register ceases to be a member of the Society. Thus the power to expel members was, in 1933, taken away from the Society's Council and placed with a new independent body.

The regulatory and disciplinary functions which were assigned to the Pharmaceutical Society in 1933 were not added to the powers of the Council but awarded to a new body independent of the Council. By this means the Society was enabled to combine regulatory and individual representational functions. The same organisation was empowered to act in both judgement and defence of its members. In a recent article (PDF* 60K) in this journal, Professor Peter Noyce has rightly stated that "the Government has had no particular quarrel with [the Society] over the effectiveness of its control of pharmacists through its Statutory Committee" (PJ, 11 May, p649). He is also correct to point out that the Society must respond appropriately to the Kennedy report. Then, with an extraordinary leap which defies both history and logic, Professor Noyce draws the unjustified conclusion that "for the Society to adapt sufficiently to be able to continue with its regulatory functions, up to half of the members of Council will have to become lay appointments, rather than pharmacists elected by the membership". The fact is that the Statutory Committee could, without the slightest change in the Society's constitution, be turned into a body consisting of a legal chairman, four lay persons and one pharmacist from Scotland. It does not require a great deal of ingenuity to think of ways in which the Kennedy principles could be implemented in pharmacy without any change whatever in the composition of the Society's Council. The Council has always been, and should always remain, a body, elected by the members and empowered by the charter "to direct and manage the affairs of the Society". The whole gamut of regulatory powers could be assigned to a committee of the Society, but independent of the Council, on the lines of the Statutory Committee.

The increase in the number of Council members Under the 1933 Act, the Privy Council was given power to nominate three additional members of the Council of the Pharmaceutical Society, their period of office to be determined by the Privy Council. The role of the Privy Council members was defined by the Departmental Committee on the Poisons and Pharmacy Acts in 1930. "This provision is intended to secure the representation on the Council of other scientific and educational opinion. It will also serve to maintain touch between the Privy Council and the Pharmaceutical Society." There was no suggestion in 1933 that unelected lay members of Council could, by some mysterious process, represent "the public interest". Such members can, of course, represent only themselves and the views of those who have the power to appoint and dismiss them. They do not constitute an increase in democratic accountability, but merely an extension of government patronage. Pharmacy, unlike most health professions, has always, even after the creation of the National Health Service, had to deal with patients who are also customers, free to take their money and shop where they will. The "user perspective" has necessarily been at the heart of pharmaceutical policy making, with or without the presence of lay members of Council.

Abolition of voluntary membership Now let me turn to the abolition of voluntary membership by the provision that every person registered as a pharmacist shall automatically be a member of the Society. The thinking behind this move was revealed by the Report of the Departmental Committee on the Poisons and Pharmacy Acts, published in 1930. "There are proposals of the Committee, which should result in strengthening the representative character of the Society and in substantially augmenting its income. Under the Society's present constitution, members are elected on their application, by the Council from among those who are registered as 'Pharmaceutical Chemists' and 'Chemists and Druggists'. At present, it appears, there are only 12,500 members out of 20,000 eligible for membership. This is ... an element of weakness both to the Society and the profession of pharmacy. ... It is now proposed that registered persons, should, by virtue of registration, become members of the Society. ... Thus, the Society will be, at any moment, completely representative of the whole body of registered pharmacists, all of them paying members."

Before 1933 pharmacists paid an initial fee when they were admitted to the register which then lasted them for life. This corresponded to the position of doctors who until 1970 paid no annual retention fee to the General Medical Council. By the 1933 Act, however, all pharmacists were required to pay the annual membership subscription of £1 11s 6d to the Pharmaceutical Society. This gave them the right to add the initials "MPS" after their names, to use the library, museum and other facilities of the Society, and to receive The Pharmaceutical Journal each week. It is important to stress that the payment, now referred to as a retention fee, was originally the annual subscription to the Society. All those pharmacists who were life members of the Society at the time of the passing of the 1933 Act were exempted from paying the fee.

Previous to the 1933 Act, non-members of the Pharmaceutical Society, after paying the initial registration fees, had enjoyed all the advantages of being registered without paying a penny. It was the fact of being registered, not membership of the Society, that proclaimed that the pharmacist was "in good standing and uniquely competent to provide vital professional services". Registration, not membership, conferred "a privileged right to practise". The pharmacists who remained outside the Pharmaceutical Society were "free riders", people who drew the benefits without contributing to the costs. The 1933 Act forced all pharmacists to contribute to the cost of protecting the privileges obtained by registration, privileges that had been gained by the political activities of the Society. "By the operation of that Act," wrote Sir Hugh Linstead, "every person registered as a pharmacist became, by virtue of his registration, a member of the Pharmaceutical Society, and as a result the Society has become the corporate representative of all those who practise pharmacy in Great Britain, and its influence as a representative body has correspondingly increased."

Compulsory membership, however, has had the unintended effect of enabling the leadership of the Pharmaceutical Society to be less responsive to members' views and interests. Requiring all pharmacists by law to become members prevents them from showing their dissatisfaction with the Society by leaving it and, therefore, removes from the Society's officials the penalty that might be expected to result from incompetence and inadequacy in serving the members' needs. The fact that members can no longer, in Lenin's memorable phrase, "vote with their feet", has had serious repercussions for the Society's internal organisation. The goal of administrative efficiency has been pursued at the expense of members' participation and involvement.

In his influential book, 'Exit, voice and loyalty' (Harvard University Press, 1970), Albert O. Hirschman argues that when exit from an organisation is denied to members, their voice becomes crucial to its well-being. The "voice" in the title refers to the members' chances to participate by voting, complaining, lobbying and questioning decision-makers within the organisation. Recent issues of The Pharmaceutical Journal have carried letters from members expressing concern that the withdrawal of central funding for branch delegates to the British Pharmaceutical Conference and the new code of conduct for Council members constitute restrictions on freedom of speech within the Society. Yet democratic representation is part of the very raison d'ętre of the Society. The transformation of the 19th century chemist and druggist into today's pharmaceutical chemist could not have been achieved without the political mobilisation of members of the Pharmaceutical Society. The profession of pharmacy did not arise like the sun at some predetermined hour; it was present at its own making. It is now digging its own grave.

The Jenkin case of 1920

Desmond Lewis, Secretary and Registrar of the Society from 1967 to 1985, said at a branch representatives' meeting in 1976 that pharmaceutical politicians had talked more rubbish about the Jenkin judgement than about any other matter in pharmacy. Not much has changed. Christine Gray recently wrote (PJ, 19 January, p75): "It has been clear since 1921, following the Jenkin case, that the Society could only promote the profession as a whole and could not act in the interests of individual pharmacists." Echoing this, Philip Green has stated (PJ, 16 March, p379): "The judgement — in what became known as the Jenkin case — made it clear that the Society can promote the profession as a whole but cannot become involved in pharmacists' individual or commercial interests." The paper produced by the Society's Modernisation Steering Group on the remit and functions of the Society repeats this and adds for good measure the following statement: "This case also made it clear that the Society could not undertake trade union functions such as negotiations on remuneration or terms and conditions of employment, unlike bodies such as the British Medical Association or the Royal College of Nursing."

The Jenkin case was a friendly action to determine the extent of the Pharmaceutical Society's powers under its charter. The judge, the Hon Sir A. F. Peterson, ruled first that a member of a society incorporated by royal charter was entitled to ask for an injunction to restrain the commission by the society of acts which were outside of the scope of its charter and which might result in the forfeiture of the charter and the destruction of the society. In other words, Jenkin had every right to challenge what the Pharmaceutical Society was proposing to do. Mr Justice Peterson then dealt separately with each of the proposed functions of the Society to which Jenkin had objected. His decision on each function depended upon whether the function could legally be included under the chartered object of "the protection of those who carry on the business of chemists and druggists". Basically the judge concluded that the only members of the Pharmaceutical Society who were entitled to protection under the charter were proprietor chemists. However, even proprietor chemists could not protect themselves by turning the Pharmaceutical Society into a trade union as defined by section 16 of the Trade Union Act of 1876.

The first thing to notice about the Jenkin judgement is that it says nothing whatever about "promoting the profession as a whole". On the contrary, the case was about protecting (not promoting) a section (not the whole) of the Society's membership. The case was about the "protection of those who carry on the business of chemists and druggists". The decision meant that the Society could act for the protection only of those who owned businesses. It could not act for the protection of its members as a whole nor for those who were employed. The protection of employed pharmacists, it was ruled, did not come within the authorised purposes of the Pharmaceutical Society. Moreover, the Society could not carry on a business of general insurance, because, even "if insurance could properly be described as a measure for the protection of members, the protection mentioned in the charter is only the protection of those who carry on the business of chemists and druggists, while the Society proposes to undertake the insurance of any members".

On the other hand, the Jenkin judgement specifically authorised the Society to become involved in the individual and commercial interests of proprietor chemists. Mr Justice Peterson agreed that no serious objection could be taken to the Society (i) providing legal advice to its members, (ii) auditing accounts, collecting debts, and taking stock for members, (iii) providing and maintaining an employment register and a register of unsatisfactory employees, and (iv) providing and supplying information as to the commercial standing of persons and firms with whom members of the Society wish to transact business.

Although the Jenkin judgement prevented the Pharmaceutical Society carrying on its attempt to set up an Industrial Council, it did not interfere with the Society's role in National Health Insurance work. Negotiations on remuneration and conditions of service and the price-checking of prescriptions dispensed under the Insurance Act were undeniably activities protecting the interests of proprietor chemists. Although there was no legal barrier to the Society continuing with this work, the Council decided to transfer it to the newly created Retail Pharmacists Union. Had it not done so, it is doubtful whether the RPU could have got off the ground, let alone survive. Throughout its life more than half of the RPU's income originated in the levies imposed on local pharmaceutical committees for the running of the NHI checking bureau.

I would hazard a guess that most people today think of trade unions as organisations of workers who have joined together to improve their returns from, and conditions of, employment. But when Mr Justice Peterson ruled that the Pharmaceutical Society could not carry out acts which would have the effect of converting it into a trade union, he had a quite different definition in mind. The definition in section 16 of the Trade Union Act of 1876 was more precise and narrower than might be thought. I quote from the Act: "The term 'trade union' means any combination, whether temporary or permanent, for regulating the relations between workmen and masters, or between workmen and workmen, or between masters and masters, or for imposing restrictive conditions on the conduct of any trade or business."

Using this definition, Mr Justice Peterson decided that there were four matters which went beyond the powers of the Society. The first was to regulate the hours of business of members. The second was to regulate wages and conditions of employment as between masters and their employees who were members of the Society. The third was to regulate the prices at which members sold their goods. Finally, the judge said that the Society had no power to spend its funds on the formation of an Industrial Council.

One might be surprised that persons involved in the "modernisation" of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society today should seriously believe that the Jenkin judgement of 1920 prevents the Society from concerning itself with the economics of pharmacy in the 21st century. It is, of course, true that the Jenkin decision decided that all chartered bodies were limited by the terms of their charter. But the basic weakness in the Pharmaceutical Society's powers, which the Jenkin case exposed, was rectified by the supplemental charter of 1953. Forty years ago, Robert Blyth, then editor of The Pharmaceutical Journal, wrote: "It is years since the Jenkin judgment has been seriously regarded as a bar to action by the Society in the economic sphere." In the same year, 1962, F. W. Adams, the Society's Secretary and Registrar, declared that "there was nothing in the way of the Jenkin judgment or anything else to prevent the Society from actively interesting itself in the economic affairs of its members." He went on to point out that "the Society's position was that it was a body of individual pharmacists, and so long as its activities were directed to benefiting the person who held the qualification, then of course it could and should act if members wanted it to do so".

Judge Thomas Dewar, both barrister and pharmacist, said, with specific reference to the Jenkin decision: "If members wished the Society to take an active interest in their economic welfare, such as by going to the Prison Commission because pharmacists in the prison service were not paid adequately, or to the Royal Navy because pharmacists in the Royal Navy were not paid adequately, there appeared to be no objection. Similarly, if it were desired to go to the Ministry of Health and to say that proprietor pharmacists were not paid adequately, there appeared to be no objection." Fourteen years later, Desmond Lewis, as Secretary and Registrar, reiterated the point when he said: "There was nothing in law to stop the Society from arguing about the remuneration of a pharmacist under the National Health Service if, and provided that, pharmacists wanted it to participate in such work."

The Supplemental Charter of 1953

The Supplemental Charter, granted to the Society on 19 November 1953, effectively supersedes the earlier charters of 1843, 1901 and 1948.

The Jenkin judgement in 1920 had exposed a fundamental weakness in the 1843 charter. "The protection of those who carry on the business of chemists and druggists" was held to mean only the protection of proprietor chemists in retail business and not the protection of the many thousands of employed members of the Society. Even in 1920 there were as many as 1,500 employee members out of a total of 9,000. With the growth of company and manufacturing chemists and of public pharmacy, employee pharmacists were becoming an increasing proportion of the Society's membership. By 1945 employed pharmacists constituted nearly 60 per cent of the membership.

In 1943, W. S. Howells, the President of the Society, suggested that this anomalous and unsatisfactory state of affairs should be remedied by securing a supplemental charter to extend protection to all members of the Society. At the annual general meeting on 6 May 1945, the President announced the Council's intention of making a thorough examination of the Society's constitution to ascertain what changes were needed to reflect the changed character of the membership. The branch representatives' meetings in 1947, 1948, and 1950 considered how the Society's charter could be amended to provide protection for each individual pharmacist. Since a consequence of ownership of pharmacies by corporate bodies had been to separate ownership from qualification and membership of the Society, it was believed that the new charter must provide for the protection of the economic and financial interests of holders of the professional qualification.

A special general meeting was held on 17 May 1951 to consider the revision of the Society's constitution. It was at this meeting that the decision was taken to change the wording in the charter from "the protection of those who carry on the business of chemists and druggists" to "To maintain the honour and safeguard and promote the interests of the members in their exercise of the profession of pharmacy". In the petition to the Privy Council for the supplemental charter the reason for the change was stated thus: "That the members of the Society at the date of the Original Charter were predominantly persons who carried on the business of chemists and druggists, but that as a result of a number of changes culminating with the coming into operation of the Pharmacy and Poisons Act 1933, the members of the Society now consist of all persons who are registered pharmacists. ... That accordingly the purpose in the Original Charter of the protection of those who carry on the business of chemists and druggists is now not sufficiently comprehensive having regard to the changed character of the membership of the Society."

When the Pharmaceutical Society received the Supplemental Charter in 1953 it became the national body charged with representing the interests of every pharmacist in Great Britain. The 1953 Charter was designed specifically to include the protection and promotion of the interests of employed pharmacists within the chartered objects of the Society. When Professor Roger Waigh asks, in a recent article in this journal (PJ, 11 May, p645), "Why on earth do employee pharmacists not get together and form their equivalent of the British Medical Association?", the answer is that the Royal Pharmaceutical Society already exists to act in that way. The similarity between the chartered objects of the Society and the aims of the BMA is not just coincidental. In 1953 the legal constitution of the BMA declared its purposes to be "to promote the medical and allied sciences, and to maintain the honour and interests of the medical profession".

There is nothing which would prevent the Royal Pharmaceutical Society today acting for pharmacists on all matters in which pharmacists are interested qua pharmacists, if the will to do so were there. The Jenkin judgement determined that it cannot act outside its charter. But the framers of the 1953 charter took care to add to the Society's other objects the words: "To maintain the honour and safeguard and promote the interests of the members in their exercise of the profession of pharmacy." If anything the members ask the Society to do can be shown "to maintain the honour and safeguard and promote the interests of the members in their exercise of the profession of pharmacy", that thing is one of the duties the Government has entrusted the Society to perform.

Marshall Davies, the Society's President, in an article published in The Journal in February this year (PJ, 2 February, p153), referred to "the archaic language" of this object in the charter. If he uses the term "archaic language" in the sense that classical Greek and Latin are archaic languages, then one can only express one's full concurrence. Like those ancient languages, the language used by the framers of the 1953 charter is characterised by its elegance, its conciseness and its precision of meaning. What a stark contrast there is between such language and that which so regularly emanates from Lambeth these days!

Conclusion

The Nuffield report on pharmacy in 1986 remarked that "it is most unusual, if not unique, for one organisation to be responsible for both promoting the interests of the profession and for enforcing the provisions of a series of Acts of Parliament, particularly as these bring under the jurisdiction of the Society people and bodies who are not themselves members of the profession". The report noted that, from time to time, "the question is raised of whether there should be a second body to whom the statutory responsibilities should be entrusted, thus leaving the Society free to concentrate on its professional role." The committee did not pronounce on this matter, but urged instead that the Society should be "assertive, imaginative and constructive" in pursuing its charter objects and "circumscribed, meticulous and judicial" in carrying out its statutory functions, a difference broadly connoted by the terms "dynamic" and "static."

The Nuffield report deliberately echoed the findings of the Pharmaceutical Society's Committee of Enquiry of 1937–41. "The objects, powers and duties which the Society possesses are exceptionally wide and varied and it is doubtful whether any other body is in a comparable position." The Committee of Enquiry continued in these words: "The divided origin — Charter and Statute — of the Society's objects corresponds to a broad division in character between them. The Charter objects are concerned with furthering the interests of pharmacy as a branch of knowledge, as a profession, and as a means of livelihood, and involving as they do both the framing and application of policy, may appropriately be described as principal objects. The statutory objects are concerned with the administration of Acts of Parliament affecting pharmacy and involve the application of policy which is decided not by the Society but by Parliament or a Minister or Department of State and may be appropriately described as subordinate objects. Although the fact that in pursuance of its Charter objects the Society is responsible to its members and in pursuance of its Statutory objects it is responsible to the public may in practice ... give rise to difficulties owing to a conflict of loyalties, there is nothing inconsistent in the Society having this double responsibility; indeed, had this not been the case it may be assumed that Parliament would not still be adding to the Society's Statutory objects. So far from the double responsibility constituting a weakness in the Society, it is a source of strength in that it tends to promote a harmonious relationship between public and private pharmaceutical interests."

Both the Nuffield report and the report of the earlier Committee of Enquiry are clear and consistent in their analysis of the Pharmaceutical Society's responsibilities and powers. In that analysis, the Pharmaceutical Society is, without question, an organisation for promoting the interests of its members. It is a representative professional association for the protection and promotion of their social status and economic interests. Its democratically elected Council has the responsibility to order its affairs in the furtherance of those interests.

The last words should be with Sir William Glyn-Jones, the most influential Secretary and Registrar the Society has known. "Even if I lose my office for doing so, I will give public utterance to the view I have always held as to the Pharmaceutical Society. It exists for pharmacists, and not pharmacists for it."

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