A lady called me the other day at my office. She had received a demand from my firm for payment of a lump sum to clients of mine by way of statutory compensation for loss of feu duty following the Government’s abolishing of the feudal system. She was clearly angered to have received a payment demand out of the blue. She said she was going to speak with her MSP as to how such an injustice, as she perceived it, could possibly have been the intention of the Scottish Parliament. I could sense, however, a note of defeat in her tone as it dawned upon her that she had no hope now of challenging the provision. She should have been clued up enough to lobby her MP, and subsequently her MSP, back around 1998. But of course back then, like most ordinary people, she hardly knew nor cared about the feudal system or the effect its abolition might have upon her. Despite being the butt of her anger, I felt some sympathy. I remembered an experience of my own a few years ago when I failed spectacularly to achieve changes to a Scottish Bill, because I was far too late in finding out about it.
Democracy, it appears, may allow the individual his voice, but only if he is organised enough and committed enough to be in at the beginning of things. The trouble is that very few of us are agitators or activists. Experiences like the one I have mentioned have the effect, for most people, of pessimistic resignation. We are not galvanised into heightened political awareness. Rather we just accept that legislation is something they do and it is best to leave them to it and grin and bear it when it affects ourselves.
This was borne in me still further in my own professional field just recently. On the Law Society of Scotland’s website I came across the following sentence:
“Diversity is about harnessing potential to create a productive environment in which the equally diverse needs of the customer/client can be met in a creative environment.”
How do you feel when you read a sentence like that? For me it is instant exhaustion, because I know that the mindset to which such a sentence is aimed is likely to be closed humourless and utterly beyond my ability to influence. The sentence appears within a Society Paper “Integrated Equality and Diversity Strategy”. It runs to 60 pages, on virtually every one of which you can find sentences of similar vapid opacity. Within the Society we now have a Head of Diversity. I am sure he is a splendid chap and probably earns more than many of the practising solicitors who pay his salary, but do we really need such a person within the staffing of our professional body? Common sense and experience cries out that this is nothing more than window dressing for the politically correct.
But you see: I am wrong. These criticisms are misplaced. The Society’s Paper is simply obligatory compliance with a stream of legislation dating back more than 30 years. If I wanted to stop it I should have started in primary school. It has spawned an industry whose very lifeblood flows through sentences like the one I quoted. There is no point in opposing this. It is a rolling juggernaut of irresistible momentum, and its essentially laudable intentions have the effect of crushing any opposition as mean spirited or even, the ultimate sin, discriminatory. So we lawyers should welcome our Head of Diversity. At least if he speaks the right language and says the right things, the rest of us will be left in peace to get on with our normal work. Heads down for a quiet life.
