LEADING ARTICLE : No longer bowled over by the old fogeys

The worms are turning. From the Law Society to the Test and County Cricket Board, insiders are running scared. Out there, at the grass roots, outsiders are banging on the doors. A vacancy on the selection committee for England's cricket team has called forth nine candidates, among them Ian Botham; there is no precedent for the election that now has to take place. This weekend, solicitors are consulting barristers about the legality of moves to oust the entire council of the Law Society. It turns out legal revolution is a lot easier to engineer than anyone thought. Will Carling's immortal phrase rings in the air. The old farts are again under assault. Deference is on the run.

Well, at least there are welcome signs of renewal in organisations which could do with a spring clean. We should not get carried away. Revolts against the Establishment are not new. Each generation of youth struts its stuff and age quails. We have heard about the end of deference before. One of the attractive features of Thatcherism was its impatience with old guards and status quos. Then Lady T turned out to be highly selective in where she swung her handbag.

The country's biggest symbol of deference to the wisdom of the ages (and the acres), the House of Lords, remains entirely unreformed. The Barings crisis showed that even in the City of London, supposedly subject to all sorts of competitive cleansing forces, the powers that were remained the powers that be. Deference ends only when those outside the gate start doing something to evict the possessing classes.

It is people's growing consciousness of themselves as consumers that has promoted the decline of deference. The Citizen's Charter helped, focusing attention on rights and the performance of institutions in meeting them. In politics, anti-deference mostly takes the form of across-the-board rejection of politicians. Measures of public esteem place Members of Parliament low, low down. But you can only throw the old farts out if there is a replacement team. A less deferential political culture would surely by now have given birth to more creditable alternatives than the Greens, the Social Democrats and Sir James Goldsmith.

In the voluntary and professional sectors and sport, deference has certainly taken a knock. In charities, from the National Trust to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, trustees and executives now have to worry about members' reaction and revolt. Often, though, members are only stirred by single issues such as fox hunting, for example. Their enthusiasm fires like a comet, then quickly wanes. Insurgents wanting permanent change must sooner or later take over running of the committee.

Of course, the grass roots are not necessarily progressive. The current president of the Law Society, Martin Mears, was elected last summer as the voice of "country" solicitors against the machine candidates. Mr Mears has been nothing if not controversial but, it seems, has failed to satisfy the country cousins that he is doing enough quickly enough to gouge yet more money out of the public on conveyancing fees. A special general meeting is in prospect that could, after postal ballots of members, lead to the unseating of Mr Mears and the entire Law Society council.

That outcome would not only offer a welcome demonstration of democracy at work. It would make the Law Society more honest and allow us all to see where conflicts of interest (between public and professionals, say) actually lie. Not all governing committees are stuffy. Age can bring wisdom; experience can inform decisions for the better. But what does matter is the relationship between the inners and the outers, consultation and, preferably, regular elections.

Traditionally, sport has been autocratic or, at best, oligarchic. British football used to be a by-word for deference, all those supporters crowded on wet terraces. Fans are now better treated - and pay more for it - but the operation of most clubs is far from populist. For all the rise of fan culture in recent years, football is still run by cliques whose connections with the unwashed masses of everyday supporters is limited; supporters are rarely invited to vote or participate in decision-making.

Sports government seems beset by what we might call the Fifa factor - the prevalence of self-regarding gerontocracy in the upper reaches of the administration. Old boys go on forever. Will Carling's challenge provoked the fans in rugby, but only briefly. To effect change, fans have to be prepared to vote, vote and vote again.

Underdogs in voluntary organisations and professional groups usually have three options. They are exit, voice and loyalty. Most people are loyal; they defer. They may grumble - members may say things behind their hands - but loyalty to the regime ensures nothing changes. Exit is drastic. Fans stop going to games; members stop paying subscriptions. The organisation folds. Voice is the democratic option. Fans start speaking up. They appoint spokespeople who tweak the greybeards. Sports pages, like ours this week, resound with debate about prices and conditions. Members start calling special meetings, circulating round-robins and making a useful nuisance. Good so far, but they then have to be prepared to take the committee jobs, and run risk of becoming old farts in their turn.

You can argue the England selection question in different ways. Ian Botham may possess a large character and an admirable track record on the field, but it is anyone's guess whether as a selector he will make, as they say in Yorkshire, a ha'porth of difference. Cricketing talent cannot be conjured out of nowhere, however imaginative the selectors of the TCCB might be.

Yet the contest for the committee has the merit of exposing cricket governance as a network of gents and amateurs. They may be the game's strength, embodiments of its values and better self. But there is no substitute for an election in exposing the argument. Not that the TCCB electorate is a great sample of English cricket - it consists of the mini-establishments in the counties and the MCC. Nonetheless, here the politics of cricket is going to be put on public display. Power is made more visible, contestable. You do not have to be John Stuart Mill - a first-class batsman with a beard to match WG Grace's - to believe that more contested elections must be a useful education in a society that holds representative government dear.