Professional demands

I do not want to be called "professional."

Some of my friends and most of my colleagues think this is odd.  After all, the word "professional" is a term of praise - isn't it?  

But if you go back a little bit, you can find other uses of the term.  There are many theological attacks on those who are called "mere professors of religion."  They are seen as people whose entire concern is with formalities and outward show rather than real belief and action.  Within my lifetime the term "professional woman" signified a prostitute.  And the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary offers a sense in which "professional" is uncomplimentary, giving examples of people who treat themselves as commodities.  One of the examples is the old term "professional beauty."   


It may seem rather strange to go back to earlier meanings of the word.  We all know that language develops and words change their meaning.  But in an important sense, those older meanings of the words cling around the term "professional".  


I'm not so worried about the idea that people are paid.  I like my job - well, most of it - but I do it for money and I don't need to be coy about the fact.  If I weren't paid I couldn't do it.  But jobs - particularly those jobs that are labelled "professional" - can take more than the energy and dedication with which most employees perform their primary work.  They can, by degrees, sap the integrity of those who work.

Behaving in a "professional manner" often means acquiring a veneer of false confidence which creates a distance between the "professional" and any member of the public.  This isn't something that I would always criticize.  When I go to see my doctor, for instance, I accept that she will adopt a confident and reassuring manner, even if she's just had a bad weekend and is personally feeling a little unsure of herself.  I don't mind the distance either.  She really can't ask all her patients to be her personal friends.  But I hope her determination to appear confident never gets the better of her honesty.  If one day she can't work out what is wrong with me, she'd do best tell me so and send me for tests elsewhere. 

While professionalism distances professionals from the public, it also draws professionals together in their workplace and can begin to separate them from the world in which others live.  Here it can be closely related to the kind of corporate loyalty which leads employees to forget to question what they are doing and why.  An inside account from an unnamed bank suggests how easily a number of professionals forgot about the ethics of banking practice and their responsibility to the wider society.  Instead they showed their loyalty to the well-being - primarily the financial well-being - of their employer and, as a group of professionals, broke the law.  Manipulating the Libor rate had an effect on the wider economy and on numerous individuals but some of the professional employees of the banks involved put the banks' interests first.  They placed the good of a corporation and the good opinion of their colleagues above the good of individuals.  They may also have broken the law, though that isn't yet clear. 
 
Almost all employers have a rule somewhere that employees must not damage the reputation of the company or institution for which they work.  It's a vague rule which employees have come to accept - not that they have much choice.   But what does that rule really mean?  


I take for granted the idea that I shouldn't tell lies about my employer and that I should behave in a reasonable way and work hard at my job.  I worry that the reputation rule may give my employer the right to police my private life or my public life away from work.  Suppose I, acting in a private capacity, go on a demonstration against the government or the arms trade, and am recognized by someone who knows me through my job.  Would this be regarded as bringing my employer into disrepute?  If my employer were dependent on government funds and good will, or if my employer wanted to make money by hosting a reception for arms traders, I might find myself in a difficult position.  I hope the clause doesn't extend so far.  If it does, it gives government and global corporations a very easy way of stifling dissent.  And it means that an employer can control my free time as well as my working hours.

But what if I wanted to tell the truth about my employer?  There are circumstances in which honesty would be seen as "unprofessional."  So would whistle-blowing, although society as a whole owes a great deal to whistle-blowers who have seen where their wider loyalty lies. 


The best employers I have worked for have encouraged open discussion and haven't been afraid of criticism.  They create an atmosphere in which the workers do their best but know that they aren't perfect.  Anyone who needs help or advice can ask for it.  If a worker sees that something isn't working, that worker is free to say so.  The aim is not to hide behind the mask of professionalism but to do the work as well as possible.

These days, however, the market is more firmly and forcefully present.  Everything seems to be for sale: sport, arts, education, health.  Every public good is forced into competition and instructed to sell itself and explain its value in solely economic terms.  Organisations concerned with sport, arts, education and health are told that their primary aim is to acquire customers, and that the approval of those customers is the means to acquire and retain sponsorship.  Every school and GP's surgery is busy competing with others and every sports team and art gallery spends days and weeks writing funding bids, surveying customer opinion and producing the kind of jargon that will enable them to keep going. 

No-one tells employees to lie but the rhetoric everywhere is about "marketing," "branding," "presentation" and "networking."  Apparently these are key elements of professionalism.  In these panicked times they make employees look inward, focus their attention on the survival of their own jobs, and discourage them from looking at any question larger than the immediate good of their own company or institution.  When the competition is so fierce, there's a danger that the competition will focus only on the first impressions of the "customer," whether a patient, a parent, a pupil, an enthusiast for museums or the local football team.  There's no time to consider the longer term or the good of the "customer" in five or ten years. 

But humans have a tendency to ask questions and make ethical judgements.  I can't stop questioning what my work is for and what its value is, and should be, in society.  These are difficult questions and may produce answers that go against my personal interests and the interests of my employer.  It's a dangerous path.  If I think too much, I may find myself saying something my employer doesn't like.  I could even be accused of damaging my employer's reputation.  Yet I believe in freedom of speech and I believe in speaking the truth.  It's a matter of integrity - and, next to integrity, professionalism looks pretty hollow.


 I hope my employer agrees.

Bringing home the Ashes

They made me play cricket at school. Looking back, I approve. Cricket was widely seen as a boys' game and it was good to have the opportunity. I didn't even mind too much at the time.

Like every sport, cricket had its dangers. There was the hard ball hurtling in my direction and the scorn of the games mistress - and fellow players - every time I ducked or missed a catch. But I soon developed a strategy that made the game a source of pleasure. I made sure I had a book in my pocket and volunteered to field on the boundary line. Very few teenage players - boys or girls - can hit a cricket ball to the boundary and there was a convenient hedge nearby. I and my book would adjourn to the other side of the hedge where I would read in the sunshine. Books I enjoyed at the time included Dorothy L. Sayers' Murder Must Advertise. I quite like fictional cricket matches.

This probably doesn't make me the ideal audience for Michael Pinchbeck's new play, The Ashes, which I saw at its final preview performance - it runs till late September. I wasn't really in the mood for theatre when I headed to Nottingham Playhouse. It didn't help that the lovely Cast bar, where, as a Backstage Pass member I have a discount, told me there was a 45-minute wait for food - even cold nibbles. It was only 50 minutes to curtain up. I settled down with a beer and surveyed the crowds. They were mainly male, which had a definite and unusual advantage - no queue for the ladies' loo.

It looks as though The Ashes will be a popular play. Harold Larwood, the cricketer at its centre was a Nottinghamshire lad who played for the county. The crowds in the bar included more cricketers and cricket fans than I usually observe at the theatre - but perhaps I was just more aware of conversations about cricket. It could be a tricky audience, I reflected, picking out flaws in details or cricketing stance. Looking at the length of the two parts of the play, I was further concerned. The first half was a mere 45 minutes and the second 75 - against the usual logic which makes the second act shorter than the first. I was full of doubts as I settled down to watch.

I already knew something of the subject of the play. The Bodyline tour, as the 1932-3 Ashes tour of Australia is known, is still discussed, often in relation to class as well as sporting ethics. In the 1930s the distinction between "gentlemen" (upper-class amateurs) and "players" (working-class professionals) remained an important one, although the national team drew from both groups. Discussions of the bodyline strategy, in which batsmen risked serious injury from fast bowling, often focus on the contrast between the public-school and Oxford-educated team captain, Douglas Jardine, and the two Nottinghamshire ex-miners, Harold Larwood and Bill Voce. This, as a friend pointed out, set up the risk that the play would be worthy and obvious. I settled in my seat without great hopes.

Within the first five minutes I realised that the play was going to work. It doesn't aim at naturalism - just as well, since the Playhouse stage isn't big enough for a cricket pitch - so all the actors, including the leads, took other roles as required, changing both attitudes and accents. However the actors convinced within each role they took. The cricketers in the audience plainly approved too. They were quickly receptive to references I found obscure and their appreciative laughter made the theatre a comfortable place. It was plain that the play was not going to be dully worthy.

Pinchbeck's play places the emphasis precisely where it needs to be: on character and events. There are ethical dilemmas but they are explored through the complex characters at the centre of the drama: Harold Larwood, played by Karl Haynes and Douglas Jardine played by Jamie de Courcey. The performances in these roles were stunning, even within an excellent ensemble cast. When I think of Larwood and Jardine in future, I suspect they'll always be embodied by Hayes' slight and determined figure and de Courcey's humourless intensity. Class mattered, of course, but these characters weren't cardboard cut-outs but people for whom class was one part of their complex individual experiences. The only slight problem came from the inevitable passivity of Lois Larwood (Sarah Churm) whose role was largely limited to staying in Mansfield, following the match at the cinema and expressing an admiration for Gracie Fields. But her final speech conveyed a depth of feeling that went far beyond the words she was given to say.

As a viewer, I was caught up in the English team's determination to win at all costs. This tour came, after all, in the wake of the Great War and members of the team must have spent part of their youth anticipating battle for king and country. But I winced when I saw film footage from the tour, showing the impact of bodyline (or "leg theory") bowling on the batsmen. And the longer part of the play didn't seem long at all as I was riveted by the tensions within the story.

I emerged from the play with a much greater respect for cricketers. As I stood in the bus queue afterwards, some of the cricketers from the audience were still discussing the ethics of bodyline as well as explaining theories of bowling or small aspects of the story omitted from the play. And that, I think, is how it should be.


Please note that the play has an undeservedly short run - you need to see it before 17th September. And apologies for my long absence from blogging. I was simply tired and needed a break. I'm back now.

Mrs Minns

The photos say it all. The 19th century maids may be wearing caps and aprons - even carrying a kettle to show their "service" - but they are dressed in their best for the picture. They gaze out, confidently or nervously, holding the required pose before resuming their complex, interesting lives. They are hard-working women whose leisure activities and concerns for friendship and family cannot be shown in this photo.

If a 19th century photo can show women domestic workers as human beings, why do writers in the 21st century still get it so wrong?

I've been listening, casually, to the P.D. James serial on Radio 4. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that I don't turn it off. It follows The Archers and Front Row and I leave the radio on so that I can catch the 8.00 p.m. news headlines.

The serial is one of the later novels featuring James's posh, poetic detective Adam Dalgliesh. I used to read P.D. James. She created an early woman private investigator and I liked the idea of combining crime and poetry. Buit gradually P.D. James' take on class began to grate on me. In the end I couldn't bear to read her any more. The radio serial has reminded me just what is wrong with her writing.

The victim in this serial is a politician - posh and sensitive like James's detective. But the investigation, as usual, means interviewing the servants. The other evening an entire episode featured an interview with the victim's cleaner.

I had to listen. The first thing I learnt was that the cleaner lived in a council flat - just like my mum, who also worked as a cleaner. When I was growing up I knew lots of cleaners who lived on the estate. (For the benefit of P.D. James, that's a council estate, not the kind of estate owned by the landed gentry.) I enjoyed their conversation about their employers - it was gossipy and satrical. The wealthy employers were good material for a laugh, before talk moved onto more serious topics: politcs, family, books, television, etc.

Of course, the cleaner created by P.D. James was there for a purpose - to provide a clue to the mystery. But upper and middle-class characters in James' mysteries have complex lives and face ethical dilemmas. The cleaner didn't. She was called Mrs Minns - such a stock name for a domestic worker that it's also used by Enid Blyton in the first of her Famous Five books. And listening to the interview with Mrs Minns, as created by P.D. James, I longed for the ethical complexity of Enid Blyton.

Mrs Minns was not a character with a credible independent existence. She was an attribute of her employer - her role was to admire him. It was impossible to believe there had ever been a Mr Minns because people who get married are human beings with human emotions and Mrs Minns was a cardboard cut-out. (I've seen cardboard cut-outs who are more convincingly human.)

Mrs Minns' role involved the discovery of a book. It was, of course, a trashy romance with a lurid cover. My mum's favourite authors include Dickens, Shakespeare, Moliere, Plato, Borges and late 20th century magic realists - but that would be too much complexity for P.D. James to handle. Cardboard cut-out cleaners don't enjoy literature or art or think about politics - they leave that to real cleaners.

By the end of the episode I was angry. How could the BBC perpetuate this travesty of characterisation - this lack of literary imagination?

Before blogged about it, I had to be sure that it mattered. So I thought it through.

It matters that we see other human beings as complex individuals. Seeing people as cardboard cut-outs is dangerously close to seeing them as sub-human. If people are treated as sub-human, no-one will care what happens to them. We're already close to that when thinking of people on council estates. The government is threatening to move families out of their council homes, as a punishment for being unemployed or being too successful. This policy assumes that people in council estates aren't attached to their homes, communities or schools - are mere units who don't matter and can be moved around the country for political convenience. (But I, my brother and my parents were not sub-human. We loved our council-flat home.) P.D. James' fictions feed into current anti-working class prejudice and policies.

P.D. James is also in a position of power. She has been a magistrate. She has been a governor of the BBC. As Baroness James of Holland Park (an unelected member of the House of Lords) she is a lawmaker - she speaks and votes on matters that affect the people she fails to see as complex, interesting individuals.

Mrs Minns is not just a failure of literary skills. She's a failure of human understanding. She shows that P.D. James' grasp of ethics is dangerously narrow.

Iceland and the axis of evil

"The half wit does not know that gold
Makes apes of many men:
One is rich, one is poor,
There is no blame in that."

Those words, translated by W.H. Auden and Paul B. Taylor, come from 'Hávamál', also known as 'The Words of the High.' The earliest manuscript version comes from around the year 800 but the poem probably pre-dates Christianity in Iceland as the words are ascribed to the god Odin.

I've wanted to visit Iceland for many years - even before I saw pictures its mountains, plains and geysirs. The starting point was Auden and MacNeice's travel book, Letters from Iceland, which combines comedy with an underlying seriousness - Iceland is a place of sanity in a world rapidly going mad.

The Iceland Auden and MacNeice visited was a relatively poor country. Since I've wanted to go there, it has seemed too expensive. Every so often I leaf through a travel brochure or visit tourist websites and then the prices deter me. I don't want a weekend break - I want to see Iceland properly and learn enough of the language to get by, but that's far too expensive.

Britain's relationship with Iceland has been awkward. I remember the antagonisms of the Cod Wars, especially the third Cod War in which Iceland claimed that its unilateral extension to its coastal waters was an attempt to stop overfishing. Iceland may have had a point as the seas have certainly been overfished since then, but Icelanders were portrayed in the press as unpleasant, violent people trying to grab territory from poor British fishermen.

Later the image changed - the Icelanders were cool, sophisticated people wandering through trendy Reykjavik and swimming in the Blue Lagoon. I was never quite convinced by that. I had, at least, glanced at a copy of a novel by Halldór Laxness and the Icelandic people he described didn't seem quite like that.

I hadn't noticed the rise of Icelandic banks. I don't worry too much about where my money is held, so long as the bank operates efficiently. I know I ought to take more trouble about ethical accounts but I've been defeated by the effort entailed in switching to the Co-op, though I do have an ISA with Triodos. The safety of money seems a matter of luck and quite beyond my control - if it vanishes, I'll have to do without it.

The crash in Iceland took me by surprise and the ripples shook me. I hadn't realised Icelandic companies owned so much - or, it turned out, owned less than nothing. The assets seem to be cancelled out by liabilities and the government has stopped trading on the stock exchange and presided over the closure of the banks.

Poor Iceland - it seems that the country is in debt to the rest of the world. That debt amounts to £116,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. And Gordon Brown is threatening to sue for British assets.

I don't know how one country sues another. I don't know how Iceland is supposed to pay the rest of the world for the money lost by its banks. I can see that there's an argument about where the money should be, just as there was with Lehman Brothers. Lehman was accused of sending money out of Britain to privilege debtors in the United States - but Lehman is old news now.

I'm slightly shocked to find that the British government is using anti-terrorism legislation against Iceland. At 10.00 this morning, Gordon Brown enacted a Statutory Instrument under the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. It was called the Landsbanksi Freezing Order 2001 and it came into force 10 minutes later - one hour and fifty minutes before it was laid before Parliament. The Home Office website is clear on the purposes of the Act. It was introduced to "cut off terrorist funding" and improve security. It was even meant to aid European co-operation. And it was introduced in response to the shock of 9/11, without the detailed debate and analysis that would be usual.


It may be necessary to act quickly on funds. But we were told that this law, like so many others, was introduced to keep us safe from terrorists - to prevent another 9/11. Has Iceland suddenly joined the Axis of Evil?


I find I'm impressed by the behaviour of ordinary Icelanders, as reported on the BBC. And there's something moving about the behaviour of the Icelandic rock star, Bubbi Morthens, who convened and performed at a free concert opposite the parliament building, asking people to stand together. Bubbi Morthens has lost money too. He spoke of a "new reality" and the possibility of a "new dawn". The language is too vague for me to be sure about what he means - there could be implications I've missed. But this does seem a time for people to stand together and face reality - and to think about how society must change. I just hope that what emerges is a more just and kinder society.


Meanwhile, here's Bubbi Morthens performing in Copenhagen (mostly in English) in 2007.

Production lines and freedom

I was lucky in the other papers in my session at the conference. My paper wasn't a very good fit but the two other papers were ones I would have chosen to hear. I managed to go first - I was anxious about the media files but they played perfectly - and then settled down to listen.

The other papers were on class and Marxism - but not class from a Marxist perspective. One looked at the ways in which Marx was read and understood in the 1880s and 1890s - and how Marxist ideas were interpreted and modified in novels and other writings of the time. I didn't take many notes but I hope the speaker will let me see a copy of her paper. I'd like to consider how interpretations of Marx influenced the slightly later writers Robert Tressell and Ethel Carnie Holdsworth.

The other paper took as its starting point the film of Alan Sillitoe's novella, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. The speaker considered the ways in which Sillitoe's young male heroes asserted their freedom through various acts of resistance, as well as considering the way Arthur Seaton, in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, remains free in his mind while working on the Raleigh production line. This led into a consideration of the way Jean-Paul Sartre interpreted freedom and the suggestion that Sartre saw workers as full human beings, with freedom to think, act and resist. The paper was further enriched by the way the speaker drew on his own experiences from the freedom of a working-class childhood to his sense of not really belonging when he studied for his first degree.

Quite rightly, the discussion centred around questions of class and I wished I'd done a paper on working-class writing to fit more with the panel's themes. I also wished I'd persisted with reading Sartre's La Nausée (Nausea).

The ideas from those papers haunted me for the rest of the day. At the final panel, a discussion of Shakespeare moved into a more general discussion of Literature, Humanism and universities. I found myself getting annoyed as speakers suggested that academics in literature departments had a particular grasp of ethics because of their subject, and found myself speaking out. I tried to draw the distinction between the responsibility to act ethically, which academics share with all human beings, and the special skill which literature academics have, which is the analysis of literary texts and the construction of arguments. Academics may be ethical but this is part of their responsibility as humans and not related to their skills, qualifications or job.

I found myself talking about Franz Jagerstatter who was executed for refusing to fight for the Third Reich - he was more ethical than any academic I've met but this was because he knew how to act rightly in a crisis. He didn't seek or expect fame and he didn't spend his life reading, analysing and publishing books. I can't remember if I went on to point out that a university's cleaners, porters and cooks may be far more ethical than its academics - I hope I did.

At the reception afterwards I was challenged for some of the comments I had made during the conference, though some people also supported my comments on ethics. A few people were concerned that I didn't reckon the study of English Literature was ethical in itself. Even more were concerned with a quick comment I'd made earlier. When one speaker - an enthusiastic scholar and teacher - suggested that she did her job for love not money, I remarked that I did it in order to be paid. For some reason people find that idea very shocking. Of course I enjoy teaching and reading, thinking and writing. But I'm still an employee. I work for money. I wouldn't do my job if I wasn't paid.

But perhaps I write this blog for love. It costs me nothing except time. And it's free to whoever wants to read it and comment.