The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 270 No 7250 p718
24 May 2003

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Letters to the Editor

Special general meeting

Why members should attend

From Mr R. Blyth, FRPharmS, and Mr D. Simpson, FRPharmS

Why should pharmacists attend the special general meeting of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society on 1 June? Because the Society's Council is well on the way to surrendering to the Government the Society's autonomy. So, if pharmacists want to preserve the Society as their own essential representative body, they should make an effort to be present at the SGM.

Disliked as an SGM may be by the Council, the fact is that, short of a referendum, it is the final and democratic forum by which pharmacists can exert pressure to mend its ways upon a Council characterised, so far as the membership is concerned, by dictatorial dogmatism.

For 162 years, the Society has served the public interest by advancing pharmacy as a knowledge-based profession. Pharmacists' reward, the furtherance of which has been aided and abetted by the present Council, is to have our freedom as a liberal profession to govern ourselves removed and for us to be ruled according to the whims of government and the effortless superiority of the denizens of Whitehall. As the Spectator said (February 8): "The dead hand of the managerial state must be removed from professions such as medicine and teaching." And, let us add, "pharmacy".

Britain has long been regarded as a free country. Not any more. The free country has become the "nanny state". Politicians and Whitehall know best.

The Council does not take kindly to criticism, blaming the critics' aversion to change. But the critics are not opposed to change, only to wrong-headed change.

In fact, they desperately desire change of the Council's current policy of supinely abject surrender to government edict. They want the Society to retain its sovereignty as the representative association of pharmacists, with, if necessary, a regulatory arm independent of the Council, as is the present Statutory Committee.

Let the Council say to the Government: "We shall meet your demands, but let us do it our way with the least damage to the proud traditions of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society."

The first stage in this process must be a resounding vote in favour of the motions that will be debated at the SGM.

Finally, we do not want a wild dash towards a new Royal Charter and the seeking of charitable status that may inhibit future activities and could well be inimical to the interests of the Society in its historic role as the professional representative body of all pharmacists.

Robert Blyth
Douglas Simpson
Former Editors
The Pharmaceutical Journal

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