The British Civil Servant

William Robson, William A. Robson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000527841
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Gouvernement américain

First Published in 1937, The British Civil Servant presents a comprehensive overview of the main problems and conditions related to the British public service during early twentieth century. It discusses important themes like what is public service; the administrative class in the home civil service; middle and lower grades of the local government service; the experts in the civil service; women in public service; the Indian civil service and the colonial civil service. With chapters written by experts like Professor Ernest Barker, Harold Nicolson, William A. Robson, this book is a must read for scholars and researchers of British political history, public administration, and political science.

CHAPTER 1 THE PUBLIC SERVICE

By WILLIAM A. ROBSON
B.SC.ECON., LL.M., PH.D.
Reader in Administrative Law in the University of London

DOI 10.4324/9781003254669-1

1

THE public service as it exists to-day is almost entirely the work of the last eighty years; and most of its essential features have taken shape during the past halfcentury. The Trevelyan-Nothcote Report of 1853, the Superannuation Act 1859, the Orders in Council of 1870 and 1920—these are the decisive landmarks so far as the Civil Service is concerned. But the public service includes much more than the Civil Service, although it is an expression which has no precise content. An attempt will be made in this essay to survey the public service from the widest point of view, including for that purpose the Civil Service, the municipal service, the personnel of the socialized services, and the various boards and commissions which he on the periphery of our system of public administration.

The civil servant and the municipal officer of to-day are new kinds of men, just as the engineer is a new type of man. Their nearest counterpart in the days prior to the nineteenth century was the public officer, such as the coroner, the constable, the surveyor of highways, the overseer of the poor, the justice of the peace, and the sheriff. But these "subordinate magistrates," as Blackstone called diem, were appointed and known individually by name; they held office either for a fixed term or during good behaviour; and their duties were mostly imposed upon them directly by the law and enforced by the Courts. They were utterly different from the armies of anonymous officials who now carry on administration under the orders of a responsible minister or an elected local authority. The modern official is, indeed, one of the outstanding creations of Victorian capitalist democracy; and without the civil and municipal services political democracy as we know it would be impossible.

The key to understanding the public service lies in a study of the conditions of employment the official is offered and the code of conduct he is required to observe, which together constitute a vocational way of life as distinct and definite as that laid down for soldiers or clergymen or doctors.

The principal conditions of service¹ include recruitment by open competition, by nomination plus a qualifying examination, by competitive interview or by a combination of these methods; age limits for entry and retirement; classification into recognized classes or grades; fixed salary scales of modest dimensions with regular increments; security of tenure subject to good behaviour; pension rights, accompanied by sickness benefits to provide against disaster; promotion from within the service, partly at least by seniority; definite and increasing vacations on a generous scale. These conditions are to be found most fully applied in the Civil Service; a great effort is being made by n.a.l.g.o. and other associations to obtain them throughout the municipal service, and their establishment is doubtless only a matter of time. As one leaves the regular departments of central and local government and arrives at the more nebulous organs on the outer ring of public administration, these conditions tend to be found in less and less degree.

¹ An excellent summary is contained in N. E. Mustoe: The Law and Organization of the British Civil Service.

The code of conduct is less explicit but more far-reaching in its influence. There are the Corrupt Practices Acts and the Official Secrets Acts to prevent graft and the betrayal of trust by means of heavy criminal penalties. There are legislative provisions to prohibit politicians from holding paid offices under the Crown and elected councillors from being employed by the local authority. There are regulations which forbid civil servants from offering themselves as candidates or prospective candidates for Parliament until they have resigned or retired.¹ There are departmental orders which restrict participation in municipal elections. There is a Treasury instruction which lays it down that a civil servant is not to indulge in political or party controversy, enjoins him to maintain a reserve in political matters and not to put himself forward prominently on one side or the other. There are stringent regulations forbidding officials to take part in the management of commercial or industrial undertakings between the hours of 10 a.m. and 6 p.m.; and this minimum rule has been supplemented by departmental additions making further inroads on subsidiary activities during leisure hours. The Report of the Board of Enquiry¹ instituted after the disagreeable Ironmonger case has once and for all set the seal of official disapproval firmly on "transactions of a wholly speculative character." The mere suspicion of a conflict between interest and duty makes such transactions on the part of a state official "not only undesirable or inexpedient, but wrong." The recent dismissal of Sir Christopher Bullock from the permanent secretaryship of the Air Ministry for "interlacing public negotiations entrusted to him with the advancement of his personal or private interests" shows not only how strictly this rule is upheld, but also how essential it is to the maintenance of integrity in the service.³ The Trade Disputes and Trade Union Act, 1927, placed a further limitation on the freedom of officials by prohibiting established civil servants from belonging to trade unions or professional associations, except those whose membership is confined to persons employed by the Crown, and which are not affiliated to unions containing other persons. The objects of Civil Service trade unions may not include political purposes, and they may not be directly or indirectly associated with any political party or organization. This law compelled such bodies as the Union of Post Office Workers to sever their connection with the Trades Union Congress.

¹ Mustoe: op. cit. passim.

¹ Cmd. 3307: 1928, para. 56. The principles formulated by this Board were ordered by the Treasury to be incorporated in the rules of every Department.

² Report of the Board of Enquiry, August 1936. Cmd. 5254, 1936.

There are, in addition, certain other obligations of a less definite kind which relate to sexual relations. There are, so far as I know, no universal rules on this subject; but civil servants and municipal officers of both sexes are certainly expected to observe the conventional proprieties and to avoid conduct which might find its way into the newspapers and there be described as "scandalous." Until recently sexual relations between men and women officers of the Post Office were punishable with immediate dismissal of both parties; and one gathers that civil servants who are cited as co-respondents in divorce petitions are unlikely to make further headway in their official careers if the matter receives "undesirable publicity." The problem of avoiding newspaper publicity is a fairly easy one to solve so far as Court proceedings are concerned; but official restriction extends further so as to prevent women civil servants (who usually have to resign on marriage) from cohabiting openly with men if they desire to do so. The matter, therefore, takes on a different complexion.

2

These conditions of employment and this code of conduct have been the formative influences in moulding our public service. It is generally recognized that the development of an honest and efficient service is one of the great achievements of this country. The English public service is held in high esteem, both at home and abroad, and is rightly regarded as an outstanding success. We do not have the political pressure which the French Civil Service exerts on the government; nor the corruption which frequently exists in American state and city administration. We are fortunate in possessing in the Administrative Class a corps or highly trained permanent officers of unusual ability, the lack of which is the chief weakness of the Federal Service in U.S.A. The Brains Trust is essentially an attempt to fill the aching void in Washington; but the ablest students of the American situation know that a hurriedly assembled collection of professors and professional men is no substitute for a career service of high quality.

Yet when full tribute has been paid to the excellence and devotion to duty of our public officials, closer reflection suggests that the time for gratulation has passed and the moment arrived for taking stock of the situation.

3

We might begin by considering the assumptions on which our system is based. The most obvious one is that the service should be divided into categories which reflect, if they do not reproduce, the social structure and economic inequalities of our society. The Diplomatic and Foreign Office staff, for which nomination is required, contains scarcely anyone who is not related to, or patronized by, either the aristocracy or the narrow circle of high society. The Administrative Class, which occupies all the controlling positions in the Home Civil Service, consists to an overwhelming extent of the fortunate few who can manage to get to Oxford and Cambridge; and the entrance examination has always been expressly designed for that purpose. The chief officers of local authorities are normally required to be doctors, lawyers, engineers, and so forth, and the appointments are in consequence reserved for the sons of those who can afford the time and money to acquire expensive professional qualifications. There are other compartments lower down in the scale carefully reserved for those who can attend secondary or public schools until they are seventeen or eighteen years of age, as compared with the mass of the population who leave school at fourteen to sixteen years.

This system has worked well in the past because it produced men at the top of the administrative machine whose educational and social background was similar to that of the Ministers and Councillors whom they served. The Foreign Secretary and the Permanent Under-Secretary of State could spend a week-end together on terms of essential equality; the Lord Mayor and the Town Clerk could both belong to the same club. All this has made for that tacit understanding based on common feelings which is far more valuable than verbal explanations as an aid to co-operation.

The emerging trends in our society suggest, however, that this system has served its purpose and will prove definitely obstructive unless it is severely modified. To begin with, it is intolerable that the universities of London and of the provincial towns should find their students (who are drawn largely from lower social strata) virtually debarred, or at least seriously handicapped, from entry into the highest grades of the service, especially when one considers the relative importance of the work these universities are doing in the social sciences. Second, there is a manifest anomaly between the widened political opportunity which enables men and women of working-class origin and experience to secure the highest positions of political power at the centre and in the localities, and the arrangements which require the leading officials to be drawn from narrow strata in the upper levels of society. Recruitment from the universities for the highest public positions is indispensable on grounds of efficiency; but it is consistent with political democracy only if access to the universities is really open to every child of sufficient ability, instead of, as at present, to an infinitesimal fraction of the educationally submerged masses. If we do not recognize the need for adjustment in this matter we are likely to witness a notable dwindling in the degree of confidence, understanding, and cooperation between political chief and professional officer, simply because the distinction of class and education will become insuperable. There were numerous instances where members of the Labour governments of 1924 and 1929 felt intimidated and overshadowed by the superior training and manners of their chief officials. It is a short step from intimidation to resentment.

This brings us to a much more difficult problem. We assume that the public service in all its branches is perfectly neutral from a political point of view, the utterly loyal and obedient instrument of whatever party may be in power. Here again we shall have to re-examine our assumptions in the coming years, not because there is any reason whatever to doubt the honest and genuine desire of the official to serve his political master to the fullest possible extent, but because there is some question as to his ability to do so in certain circumstances owing to causes of which he is not aware.

In the past, the greater part of our public administration consisted of regulatory services: that is, services in which departments were required to control the conduct of individuals and corporate bodies in accordance with carefully enacted legal provisions. A typical example of this is the Factory Acts. To-day, however, the most important part of our public administration consists of service functions, i.e. those in which a service is provided, such as housing, transport, education, and so forth. In these service functions the official is less concerned to administer law than to promote energetic and far-reaching projects based on plans which he must himself create. The question is whether this kind of constructive work can be performed successfully by merely obedient officials who are indifferent to the social purposes involved. The late Sir Robert Morant was a great administrator because he believed passionately in education and public health. Is it possible to get enough steam up in a department or a local authority if the chief officials are not moved by something stronger than a mere desire to obey the minister or the dominant party? Is a discreet diplomat de carrière sent as Ambassador to Washington or Moscow really able to achieve the fullest possible degree of understanding of, and co-operation with, the U.S.A. or the U.S.S.R. if he does not share a profound belief that such a policy is essential to the good of mankind? Observation of recent tendencies and events at the Foreign Office, Ministry of Health, the Treasury, the Post Office, and the Ministry of Transport offers both negative and positive evidence to support these doubts.

What, then, are we to do? It is not, of course, suggested that the chief officials should be replaced with every change of political control. That would be a deliberate move in the direction of the totalitarian state—a step which all civilized persons desire to avoid. In Germany and Italy the officials are impregnated through and through with Nazi or Fascist doctrine; and we should certainly avoid at all costs making our own public servants into politicians.

There is, however, an alternative. Although it is highly desirable to keep the official out of party politics we should nevertheless aim at securing a more constructive type of individual in the various services, so that when a go-ahead policy is ordered, it will not meet with the unconscious obstruction caused by the sort of official who, with the best will in the world, can see only the difficulties and dangers of the situation rather than its possibilities and opportunities. In certain critical fields of public administration, such as those dealing with foreign affairs, territorial planning, housing, unemployment, public utilities, public works, the depressed areas, education and child welfare, the absence of such an outlook is, and has been, an immense handicap; its presence would be an incalculable advantage. The established tradition of official loyalty can be relied upon to respond promptly to an order to slow down the work of a department or even to close it down completely; but mere obedience is not sufficient by itself to set in motion a policy requiring imagination and what is called in the United States aggressive action.

4

How can we get men and women of more constructive ability and imagination into the public service? The answer is a comparatively simple one. It would be quite as easy to utilise the existing methods of competitive examination or competitive interview to discover the qualities of mind and character and temperament that we require as it is to select candidates possessing the requisite standards of education and mental ability. I am sure that I could devise a series of examination tests which would distinguish the cautious, negative, obstructive type of individual from the positive, constructive, problem-solving, planning type for whom there is so great a need at present.

It may be contended that the sort of man whom I am describing is unlikely to go into the public service; that he is almost certain to aim at the larger field of opportunity offered by private enterprise. I believe this to be an entirely mistaken view. Public enterprise to-day offers unrivalled chances of doing really important work on the largest scale, and on this ground alone it can offer superior attractions to private business. The public service motive is, moreover, becoming increasingly powerful as a...