Authority and legitimacy
During the lecture last Saturday this was the hardest subject to discuss and talk about (apart from how I felt when I received my charges of misleading, deliberately misleading and dishonest)
I didn’t have long enough in the lecture to explore this concept and I won’t have long enough here. I honestly feel I could write a book about this if I had the time and the skill, but here goes nothing.
Before I begin the whole concept of legitimacy in authority and the explanation using the metaphor of Northern Ireland and the ‘troubles’ it is important to say that I was raised by my Mother and Father in the West if Scotland who spanned the divide. While not being in any way as intense a religious divide in the West of Scotland as in Northern Ireland it is worth note that the Protestant / Catholic tensions when I was growing up were hugely significant. As an example of this I can tell you that I was advised to leave Glasgow Dental School at the end of my House Officer job by a trusted Senior Colleague who suggested that because of my upbringing as a Catholic I would be unlikely to progress.
My mother and father were married in the 1960s to a considerable amount of consternation from both families because my mother was a Catholic and my father was a Protestant. My father had to agree for his children to be brought up as Catholics in order to be married. In considering discussing this Northern Ireland story though I wanted advice from one of my closest friends in dentistry, David Nelson who owns the exceptional Cranmore - Excellence in Dentistry in Belfast, a practice I have visited on two occasions already and will visit again this year. David is a Protestant from Northern Ireland who married a Catholic. David and Brenda are the next generation. David is the person who shows you around Belfast with pride and explains that the new courthouse has been built in glass because never again will there be the problems of the past. Every day David and Brenda are a living, inspirational example to how life can be in the new Northern Ireland, but the point of the blog is this… it wasn’t always thus. As David shows you the new glass courthouse it’s only 100s of yards from the Europa Hotel which at one time was one of the most bombed buildings in the world. This started in 1969 when the ‘troubles’ between Protestants and Catholics during the marching season escalated and a number of people were killed. It’s reported in Malcolm Gladwell’s exceptional book David and Goliath, where the majority of this story is taken from, that the Northern Ireland Secretary of that time rushed back to the airport, got on a plane and said “bring me a large scotch, get me out of this terrible country” or words to that effect. He was politically responsible for Northern Ireland. The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) who were the police force in Northern Ireland were over run and also incidentally predominately Protestant. The British sent in the army and in particular a Commanding Officer called Ian Freeland who was allegedly given orders to be tough on violence and to be seen to be tough on violence. For the full story you’ll have to read the book but essentially, in the end, 3,000 troops of the Royal Scots were sent in to contain an area of Northern Ireland with 8,000 people, many of them women and children in the Lower Falls Road. During this process they managed to gas the Priest with tear gas (the centre of the Catholic community) and then during all dealing with Protestants and Catholics during the marching season they stood with their backs to the Protestants and their faces to the Catholics. The invoked a curfew in the Lower Falls and would not let people in or out. In order to bring bread and milk thousands of women came from another part of Belfast with prams and were beaten, kicked and shoves against walls by soldiers as they tried to get through the curfew line. They did eventually get through.
This is in no way any comment on who was right and who was wrong during the troubles in Northern Ireland, I am not a Catholic (anymore) I am an Atheist with a Protestant father and a Catholic mother. My two best friends in Northern Ireland are a Protestant and a Catholic. The problems in Northern Ireland may well have been able to be sorted out in a matter of months but as a result of the approach of the British Army they lasted for 30 years. Approximately 5 people died in the troubles in 1969, over the next 5 years this escalated to over 500 per year. It led to hunger strikes and terrorism, culminating in the deaths of many, many people on both sides of the divide. ‘the troubles’ were not troubles, they were a war and Malcolm Gladwell suggests (I think correctly) that this was the result of the loss of legitimacy of the authority of the British Army.
Authority is worthless without legitimacy. Force without legitimacy leads to rebellion.
Tell me any situation in the world anywhere where you can remember where the answer was force instead of discussion.
In the lecture last week I suggested that the GDC was at risk of losing its legitimacy of its authority.
Doubling the ARF whilst renovating the buildings in Wimpole Street – a loss of legitimacy? Appearing arrogant on a publicised Health Select Committee and discussing things like ‘social media chatter’ – a loss of legitimacy?
10 cases in FTP at approximately £10,000 per day resulting in ‘not case to answer’ – a loss of legitimacy?
A Chief Executive who did not understand defensive dentistry – a loss of legitimacy?
A profession in fear of their regulator and not working with them to secure the best for patients may well result in a loss of legitimacy.
It’s time for both sides of this divide to talk to each other the way people did in Northern Ireland and begin to build their own glass courthouse.
(for David and Brenda)
Blog Post Number: 959
If you would like to read the previous posts in this blog series they are below:
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