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History does not repeat itself, but it sometimes needs to be repeated. What I shall attempt in this paper is to explain what publishers think about the question of copying and copyright, how they have come to hold the views they do hold, and what action they are trying to take or to instigate. An historical approach seems to be the obvious and natural way of doing this—to go back a few years and retrace the path that has brought us to the present. It accords, too, with such qualifications as I possess for talking to you today. I am in no sense an expert on copyright; but I have been deeply involved until a few weeks ago (and even that time is sufficient, in this area, for one to become seriously out of date) in the discussions and negotiations about copying and copyright that publishers have been involved in ever since the time when Whitford was taking evidence and producing his Report.

Britain's educational publishers, for too long the laggards in educational development, are at last responding to the changes wrought by successive education acts and curriculum reform. Previously the sleepy refuges of tired (or failed) teachers, in the past decade the publishing houses have undergone a quiet revolution. Out has gone Mr Chips, to be replaced by a brand of publishing executive owing more to management accounting than to those money‐spinning Latin primers and grammar‐school texts.

In the UK and elsewhere, accounting vocabularies and practices have come to permeate everyday life through their involvement in the management of hospitals, schools, universities, charities, trade unions, etc. This has been accompanied by an increase in the power of accountancy and the institutions of accountancy which increasingly function as quasi‐legislators. Such developments call for a (re)consideration of the role of accounting academics/intellectuals. Argues that, in a world where major business and professional interests are organized to advance sectional interests, to promote stereotyped images and to limit public debates, accounting academics/intellectuals have a responsibility to give visibility to such issues and thereby mobilize potentialities for gaining a fuller understanding of, and encouraging more democratic participation in, the design and operation of major social institutions. Suggests that, despite the constraints on academics, there are considerable opportunities to create, develop or become active in public policy debates through networks that comprise politicians, journalists, disaffected practitioners and concerned citizens – all of whom are potential allies in furthering a process in which accounting and its institutions are problematized and accounting professionals are rendered more accountable.

In the Court of Appeal last summer, when Van Den Berghs and Jurgens Limited (belonging to the Unilever giant organization) sought a reversal of the decision of the trial judge that their television advertisements of Stork margarine did not contravene Reg. 9, Margarine Regulations, 1967—an action which their Lordships described as fierce but friendly—there were some piercing criticisms by the Court on the phrasing of the Regulations, which was described as “ridiculous”, “illogical” and as “absurdities”. They also remarked upon the fact that from 1971 to 1975, after the Regulations became operative, and seven years from the date they were made, no complaint from enforcement authorities and officers or the organizations normally consulted during the making of such regulations were made, until the Butter Information Council, protecting the interests of the dairy trade and dairy producers, suggested the long‐standing advertisements of Reg. 9. An example of how the interests of descriptions and uses of the word “butter” infringements of Reg. 9. An example af how the interests of enforcement, consumer protection, &c, are not identical with trade interests, who see in legislation, accepted by the first, as injuring sections of the trade. (There is no evidence that the Butter Information Council was one of the organizations consulted by the MAFF before making the Regulations.) The Independant Broadcasting Authority on receiving the Council's complaint and obtaining legal advice, banned plaintiffs' advertisements and suggested they seek a declaration that the said advertisements did not infringe the Regulations. This they did and were refused such a declaration by the trial judge in the Chancery Division, whereupon they went to the Court of Appeal, and it was here, in the course of a very thorough and searching examination of the question and, in particular, the Margarine Regulations, that His Appellate Lordship made use of the critical phrases we have quoted.