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The above argument is almost sufficient to show that old banking was a tradition as MacIntyre uses the term, though not a tradition of enquiry in its own right – almost but not quite. A key criterion for deciding that old banking was a tradition is not only that it is spoken of as such, and that it was structured as such, but also that it was handed on. The word tradition is rooted in the Latin word tradere, meaning to hand over; a tradition is something handed on (Oxford Dictionary of English, 2010). It is distinct in this respect from a culture (Schein, 1990) which may be handed on or not.³¹ That old banking was a tradition handed on from one generation to the next is clear from

McKinlay (2002), who traces banking in Scotland as a cultural phenomenon at least as far back as the establishment of the Scottish banking cartel in 1863 (the old

‘Agreement of Understandings’ (C1: 13)), which was itself a response to a previous banking crisis in 1857. The culture of Scottish banking at the end of the 19^th century is vividly portrayed in a collection of cartoons in the archives of the Bank of Scotland.

Robert Shirlaw, a clerk who joined the bank in 1899, produced hundreds of cartoons and hid them in ‘Ledger 99’. They ‘overwhelmingly depict the daily grind of the bank clerk and the management style of his superiors’ (McKinlay 2002, p.613). The portrait

31 The hippie culture of the 1960s, for instance, is identifiable as a culture but not a tradition, because by definition it did not persist into the 1970s. Even if it influenced later cultures, it was not handed on as a distinct culture. Blues and jazz, on the other hand, are arguably traditions in music, since they are handed on from one generation of musicians to another through teaching,

is distinctly unflattering to management, but still recognisably the same culture as the one evident in my conversations in 2013, with a core emphasis on morality, attention to detail, routine and stability. As McKinlay (2002, p.609) puts it: ‘Maintaining the

continuity and absolute clarity of banking procedures was morally cleansing.’

Two key questions arise in this context. If tradition is a handing on of something and old banking was a tradition, then who is handing on what? And is new banking really a tradition?

There is an assumption in MacIntyre’s work that one tradition is composed broadly of one set of people, while any rival tradition would be composed of a different set. He sometimes refers to these groups as ‘adherents of different traditions’ (MacIntyre, 1990, p.151). The boundaries between traditions are porous, and this is important for MacIntyre’s thinking, that some people should be able to migrate from one tradition to another and that some should live in a borderland between two traditions (McIntyre, 1989). But such talk of moving across or living in borderlands rests on the assumption nevertheless of separate and broadly stable groups, and the idea of two distinct traditions only makes sense as long as the people migrating or the people living in the borderlands are in a sufficiently small minority. If there are too many migrants and border-dwellers, the distinction between Tradition A and Tradition B becomes too blurred.

Such a blurring of boundaries in terms of membership might be expected at a time when one tradition is defeated by another, and this is possibly what is being witnessed in Scottish banking. Of the group of ten participants in this research, only one

appeared to speak unequivocally with the voice of old banking, and only one similarly with the voice of new banking. Most speak with an emphasis of one voice and an admixture of the other. In a qualitative study of a limited group such as this, no conclusions can be drawn about any wider membership, but we can say that in this small group at least, the boundaries are blurred but not obliterated. It is clear for the majority of the speakers where their loyalties lie – to Tradition A or to Tradition B – even if their reasoning sometimes borrows from the one or the other. P7, for instance, whose story of constancy (S5.12) leaves no room for doubt about his ultimate loyalties, is nevertheless capable of stepping into a sequence of reasoning which is very ‘new banking’, including praise for entrepreneurial chief executives (C7: 134).

The doubtful status of new banking

Another key boundary is provided by time. Traditions have beginnings and endings.

They ‘begin in and from some condition of pure historical contingency, from the beliefs,

institutions and practices of some particular community…’ (MacIntyre, 1988, p.354);

and a tradition may end or radically change through being defeated, or ‘in the splitting apart of a tradition or integration of what have hitherto been disparate or even hostile traditions’ (MacIntyre, 1998d, p.107). There are signs that old banking may be ending as a tradition; certainly it has suffered a kind of hiatus in practice, as is evident from the overall chronological narrative. But it is too early to form a clear view of the fate of the tradition itself. At the same time as there are signs of decline and defeat in these conversations, there are also signs of resistance and tenacity. What is clear with old banking is that it has been a tradition and that its demise, if that is what is happening, is self-aware; the members of that tradition know that they are members and they are strongly aware that their own tradition has been losing a contest, perhaps fatally. With new banking it is not so clear. These research conversations may be witness to the birth of a new tradition, or equally, new banking as it is portrayed here might turn out to be short-lived.

Although new banking has been explored above as if it were a tradition in order to draw a boundary to old banking, it is not at all clear that new banking is a genuine tradition in the sense in which old banking appears to be. This is for two reasons. The first and weaker reason is the question of time. New banking is too young to be counted a tradition at this time, and in any case, within its brief history it has been radically disrupted on its own terms by the crisis of 2007/8. The second and stronger reason is that the culture of new banking is spoken of in these conversations primarily as a foreign invasion. External and global forces have been at work in the establishment of new banking, including the rise of the generic business manager, the western joint stock model, the red brace boys, the consultants, the City analysts and so on. If new banking is in any sense a tradition it is only part of a much larger one, which MacIntyre (2007, p.262) might describe as ‘advanced capitalism’.

As an alien culture, new banking appears close to the enterprise culture of the 1980s described by Keat (1991), who highlights in it processes of structural reform to move institutions closer to commercial enterprise models, together with attendant

enterprising qualities of individuals (including boldness, self-reliance and the

willingness to take risks). This culture, developed actively in Britain by the Thatcher government, was advanced further under New Labour in the 1990s, with a large emphasis on the finance sector, rapid re-engineering of organisations and a prevailing interest in rising share prices, not simply profit (Rutherford, 2008).

The implication, which necessarily lies outside the scope of the current research, is that

phenomenon. From this point forward, there is therefore no further discussion in this thesis of new banking as a coherent tradition in its own right.

Coherence in the tradition of old banking

Old banking by contrast was very clearly a tradition, and it was also reasonably clear who the inhabitants of that tradition were because membership was largely formalised by membership of the Chartered Institute.³². If it is clear who was doing the handing on of the tradition, then what was the content of that tradition: what was being handed on?

In the context of MacIntyrean traditions of enquiry, the answer in general terms is that what is handed over from one set of members to the next is a set of beliefs and assumptions, and a language in which to express them. MacIntyrean traditions of enquiry, we might say, are epistemological and linguistic in content. The same is not necessarily true, however, of traditions in a broader sense. Fly fishing, to take Nicholas’ (2012) example, is a tradition carrying with it particular beliefs and

assumptions about nature and the value of fishing in a certain way and a particular language that goes with it (Snyder 2007). But most of all, what is handed on in this case from one generation of fly fishers to the next is the practice of fly fishing.

This serves as a partial model for old banking. Old banking was a practice-bearing tradition (MacIntyre, 2007) (see the further discussion below at S6.7). However, this tradition did not only hand on a practice, it also handed on a number of other things including a social order and, of course, banks.

The diagram at Figure 4 above draws attention to a number of elements of Tradition A, though not the practice of banking, and we will need to return to this point. These include goods and structures which form a coherent set. The goods of old banking themselves are coherent in the sense that they reinforce and depend on one another.

The virtues of old banking, including the cardinal virtues as understood in that tradition and those particular virtues of patience and truthfulness which are characteristic of it, form a set which fits with the central importance of the customer relationship, both in terms of custodianship of deposits and the provision of advice. In what ways do these elements of characteristic relationships and characteristic virtues cohere?

For Aristotle, friendship ‘is a virtue or involves virtue, and is an absolute necessity of life’ (NE, VIII.1), and he goes on in Book VIII of the Nicomachean Ethics to describe his

32 This is of course a broad approximation for neatness. It would be more accurate to say that the authority of the tradition was supplied by the core membership defined by the Institute.

However, many others also played their part in the tradition, including large numbers of life-long bank workers who never made it to the exalted status of fully qualified banker.

understanding of the connection between friendship and virtue in detail. He regards business relationships as a form of friendship and regards the best kind of friendship as that between good people ‘who are alike in their virtue’ (NE, VIII.3). For traditional Scottish bankers, the customer relationship was valued in itself, and the characteristic virtues of old banking were there in part because they served that relationship. The operation of justice and courage, for instance, in old banking served to recognise and protect the interests of people who had entrusted their savings to the banker (S5.9).

Other goods were part of the same coherent set: the provision of security of deposits or of advice to customers requires expertise (techne), and respect was awarded to the banker on the basis of the fulfilment of this relationship of trust (S4.2). These goods together with the goods of cooperation and stability were only possible in the context of the structures which support them, and those structures similarly worked together to provide a framework in which those goods made sense.

Coherence in this context was more than simply a theoretical consistency, it was practical, a self-supporting system which lent consistency to lives lived as a unity and in a context. An outstanding example of this is seen in P7’s narrative of constancy shown above at 5.12. It is striking, for instance, that in constructing his own reasoning at a critical point in his own career, he appeals to two types of relationship (types of friendship in Aristotle’s terminology), his relationship with his family, particularly his mother and his relationship with his customers. In both cases he appeals to a notional conversation which depends on the idea that virtue is supported by the relationship.

Other speakers have similar ways of thinking, linking their practical reasoning through cohesive structures of family, school, Kirk or youth clubs, and customers are portrayed as situated within these communities. P6, the most senior executive in the group, makes judgements about customer care and the ethics of banking explicitly with reference to his mother (C6: 113-114); he views the customer relationship in the same frame as this family relationship, which gives him an ability to see customers as vulnerable others, rather than as resources in the marketplace.

We might then describe this kind of coherence as an enabling one, where the goods of the tradition form a consistent set alongside its structures, such that each reinforces the other. Cooperation is a vital component of this picture: the social structures and the individuals situated in them act in cooperation to enable the goods which they mutually value.

In this exploration of old banking as a tradition it has been suggested that it can be regarded as a tradition which handed on a practice, rather than one which handed on a

some detail, questions such as what that practice was, whether it was recognisably a practice in the sense used by MacIntyre, what the implications of regarding it as such a practice are, and how a practice in this context fits with the idea of a tradition.