Justin Welby
I do not normally think of the Archbishop of Canterbury as a source of incisive social commentary. Holders of that office are generally preoccupied with smoothing the ruffled cassocks of Anglican clergy who, somewhat bizarrely, think that questions about women bishops and gay marriage represent the central challenges facing the Christian community.
It was an agreeable surprise, therefore, to hear the new archbishop, Justin Welby, addressing a matter of major importance in his remarks about the ethically dubious ‘culture of entitlement’ which he detected among bankers and city traders.
The archbishop, a member of the cross-party Banking Standards Commission and a former oil executive, is well-placed to comment on the practices of the financial sector. On the BBC Radio 4 programme, The Week at Westminster, he stated: ‘I think in banking, in particular, and in the City of London, a culture of entitlement has affected a number of areas…in which it seemed to disconnect from what people saw as reasonable in the rest of the world’.
He acknowledged that banking has become a highly complex and technical operation and that the city contains some ‘very gifted people’, but it needs to demonstrate greater moral sensitivity to matters affecting ‘the common good’ if it is to regain the trust of the public. A sector which seems to reward itself disproportionately compared to other people, particularly at a time of recession, should not be surprised if it continues to attract a high degree of opprobrium.
When I heard these comments it struck me that the archbishop’s analysis could be extended to a wide range of other spheres, in which various forms of ‘entitlement’ are assumed by people in positions of power. Some of these are well-known, such as politicians’ sense of entitlement to be ‘creative’ in their expenses claims, which have done much to damage the reputation of parliament. Again, the leaving packages of some BBC executives and senior officials in the health service and local government have been defended as contractual entitlements, despite serious questions about their record in office.
Many ‘celebrities’ and pop-stars routinely assume that they are entitled to red-carpet treatment wherever they go, sometimes making demands of a kind that cast doubt not only on their sense of what is appropriate, but also on their mental stability. Again, it is not unknown for top-ranking footballers to imagine that their undoubted skills and their high earnings give them the right to behave badly on and off the field, sometimes in the knowledge that their bad behaviour is as likely to be defended as censured by their managers.
It might be argued that sport and entertainment are special cases and that the salaries and perks their stars expect, and often receive, are not typical of wider society. But the attitude of entitlement which they exhibit can be also be detected in the public sector, even if the actual sums involved are more modest. For example, it was recently reported that some 88 university employees in Scotland earn more than the first minister, who is paid £140,000 a year. One principal receives more than £300,000.
At a time when frontline staffing levels in universities are being cut and lecturers’ salaries kept in check, this seems excessive. Both the National Union of Students in Scotland and the University and College Union condemned the high payments. A spokesman for the latter said: ‘The lack of self-awareness from university leaders when it comes to their own rewards continues to be an embarrassment for the sector’. A leader in the Herald called for ‘a sustained period of restraint at the top’ and argued that it is precisely the wrong time to create ‘a super-league of academic high fliers’.
One of the characteristics of those who develop an inflated sense of entitlement is that they do not feel the need to explain or justify their expectations or demands. They assume it is their right and decline to engage with critics. Thus, in the case of top university salaries, press reports did not elicit comment from the principals themselves. Instead, a PR statement issued by Universities Scotland, the organisation which represents their collective interests, pointed out that not all university income comes from public sources, implying that salary levels similar to those of senior executives in the private sector are not unreasonable.
This confirms the corporate drift which has been evident in the academic world for some time, which has led to a damaging divide between management and teaching staff. It will be interesting to see if there is any negative fall-out, perhaps in the form of a disinclination among some graduates to respond to the regular requests they receive asking them to make donations to the universities they attended.
One effect of Archbishop Welby’s intervention might be to cause some rethinking of current attitudes to benefit claimants who are often characterised as wanting ‘something for nothing’, as feeling ‘entitled’ to state support without making much of a contribution to society. No doubt there are people who try to exploit the system, and it is right that they should be challenged, but compared with the big beasts in the entitlement stakes, they don’t get beyond the starting line. When it comes to serious greed, they are merely ‘also rans’. It is no wonder, however, that some of them, by way of attempted justification, point to the abuses evident among those at the top. The bad example of leaders provides an excuse for minor players.
Archbishop Welby’s criticism of the ethical and professional standards of the City of London will be welcomed by many. The desire to ‘move on’ and ‘draw a line’ under recent misdemeanours – a depressingly familiar tactic in establishment attempts to shift the focus from their own failures – should be resisted. Equally important, however, is extending Welby’s analysis to other areas of our deeply divided and increasingly unequal society.
Walter Humes held professorships at the universities of Aberdeen, Strathclyde and West of Scotland and is now a visiting professor of education at the University of Stirling
