'God has given us the papacy', said Leo X, 'let us enjoy it.' The presidency of the Law Society is a great office and I am commonly asked if I enjoy it.

The position now carries a salary.

There is a fine official residence off Chancery Lane.Anyone who likes foreign travel can indulge his tastes to the full.

During the past six months, for example, I declined trips to Chicago, Brisbane, Milan, Vienna, Barcelona, Berlin and Warsaw (whilst visiting Doncaster, Newcastle, Birmingham and Nottingham).The President also gets to entertain and be entertained by any number of interesting people he would not normally meet.I could, therefore, have passed the last six months very agreeably.

Instead, I am now routinely described as 'beleaguered'.

One Past President rises in Council to demand that a hostile letter he has sent to me be circulated.Another seems to have given over his twilight years to composing denunciations of me and all my works.

Last ye ar's defeated presidential candidates, whom I thought were dead and buried with stakes through their hearts, have risen to affright my waking hours.In the midst of all this turmoil, I admit there are times when I am tempted to shrug my shoulders, call a truce and settle down to be a President in the traditional mould.The fact is that the present troubles should surprise no one.

Last summer's election campaign was notable for its acrimony.

Time and again Robert Sayer and I denounced the old regime and its conduct of the profession's affairs in vigorous terms.

Our opponents gave as good as they got.

Now they have emerged to fight another day.

In fairness to them, they cannot be accused of dissimulation.We had, for instance, Henry Hodge's Christmas message to the New Law Journal: 'During 1995 I slipped on Martin Mears' banana skin.

During 1996 I hope he slips on one of his own.' Well, that is clear enough.So where are the banana skins? The most obvious and dangerous of these would be perceived failure.

If there is one thing upon which the various ghosts of Christmas past are in agreement it is that the policies which won us the election are unachievable and/or undesirable.They knew all along that nothing worthwhile could be done about conveyancing fees or the cost of indemnity insurance or unemployed legal practice course graduates or the excessive expansion of the profession.

In due course it would emerge how right they had been and our plans would be exposed for the bogus nostrums they were.In setting out to do battle on behalf of the profession, therefore, Mr Sayer and I have been in the position of Richard III at the battle of Bosworth.

With half his forces in covert alliance with the other side, it was no wonder he lost.But perhaps it is all my paranoia.

It may be that I am imagining the opposition of the ghosts and that in reality no one would be more delighted than they if our programme were to be triumphantly successful.

Believe that if you wish.With opposition goes large scale disinformation.

Take, for example, the Council meetings which one of the ghosts kindly described as 'a shambles'.

The press turned up in strength at the February Council meeting and were able to judge for themselves how efficiently, or otherwise, the proceedings were conducted.

They saw no shambles.Following the December Council meeting likewise (when the conveyancing/indemnity insurance proposals were discussed) I received letters from practitioners complimenting me on maintaining control in the face of manifest hostility of some Council members.What about our foul slur on the Law Society's staff? Here, I bore myself with repeating the same thing.

But let me say it yet again.

The vast majority of the staff are loyal and capable.

We have no quarrel with them.We have differences with only a very few people.

From the moment of our election they have made their hostility towards us plain, appearing to take pleasure in every real or perceived set-back we experience.

I am, incidentally, not the only President to receive something less than wholehearted support from elements of the bureaucracy.

I am the first, however, who refuses to tolerate an intolerable situation.Ah well, let me not pretend that the faults are all on one side.Mr Sayer and I have been pursuing an agenda which we believe is the profession's.

In this we have been unwillingly involved in a kind of trench warfare and if we finally fail this is far more likely to be the consequence of internal rather than external opposition.Nevertheless, when one Council member complai ned that our general approach savoured too much of blitzkrieg he had a point.The message is well taken and we shall try to do better.

But we still mean business and we shall not be deflected.

Let no-one think otherwise.