Book Reviews
| Date | 01 September 1969 |
| Published date | 01 September 1969 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1969.tb01160.x |
Book
Reviews
Treasur3,
Control
of
the
Civil Seruice
1854-1874
By Maurice Wright. Clarendon Press,
Pp. xxxv
+
406.
80s.
The publication of tpe Northcote-
Trevelyan report
is
normally taken as
the date from which the modern
history
of
the civil service begins;
yet one of
its
most important recom-
mendations, ‘open competition’ was
not proceeded with until
1870,
and
another, the creation of
a
single
unified service out of the existing
departmental services was not even
accepted as a goal by most of the
Treasury officials who were primarily
responsible for reform over the two
decades which are the subject of
Mr.Wright’s learned and often very
illuminating study.
To
summarize findings which take
in the whole history of the service
in
the period, and the specific role of
the Treasury in relation to recruitment
and the control of establishments and
working conditions would bc to repeat
less well what Mr.Wright has done
himself, and
is
unnecessary since no
one interested in British administrative
history can avoid reading the book
anyhow. But certain points stand out
for their relevance to what
is
or
may
be going
on
now as a result of the
Fulton Report and the setting up of
the Civil Service Department.
First,
as
has been said, there is the
time factor; even the relatively small
service
of
the mid-nineteenth century
could not be transformed in a hurry;
we must not expect the Fulton-
inspired changes to make themselves
felt all at once. More detailed work on
Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1969.
the organization of individual depart-
ments is essential, and
it
is
one of
N1r.Wright’s most valuabIe discoveries
to have shown how important were the
departmental inquiries which preceded
and followed the main Northcote-
Trevelyan report.
Second, the moulding of
the
new
system was largely the product of
quite
a
small group of higher civil
servants in the Treasury, whose long
continuity in office made effective
techniques
of
gentle pressure which
differed from the often exaggerated
picture
of
stringent Treasury control
that we get
in
the book.
It
is
therefore
a question of some importance as to
how
this
element of continuity in
management can be assured over
the next two decades of civil service
history.
Third, the role of ministers and of
civil servants as subordinates to
ministers
is
properly brought out.
Questions of establishment could
not
be settled by the Treasury (even when
the great spending departments, the
War Office and Admiralty, had been
persuaded to acknowledge its consti-
tutional authority)
if
powerful
ministers were ready to challenge
it
on
behalf of their departments.
When an issue came to be argued
it
was the political weight of the ministers
involved
-
the desire of the Chancellor
of the Exchequer not to be disobliging
to his colleagues -that counted for
more even than code or precedent.
3
79
BOOK
REVIEWS
Fourth,
in consequence both of this
fact and of the growth in government
business, the idea that important
reductions could be made in govern-
ment establishments, even at the
height of Gladstone’s zeal for retrench-
ment, proved to be an illusion. Perhaps
Treasury control flattened the curve
of
growth;
it
clearly could do no more.
Departments remained the judges
of
the country’s needs and their own.
Fifth, some conflicts are insoluble:
notably that between the full recogni-
tion
of
merit
as
a
basis for promotion
and the service’s own liking for
seniority,
on
the assumption that new
merit is but old patronage writ small.
On the other hand
it
was
as
well
perhaps that the
Civil Service Gazette
did not get its way as against re-
cruitment by merit, i.e., by competitive
examination, what the journal called
the ‘recognition
of
the right of every
free-born Briton periodically to
compel the country, at
its
own expense,
to fathom the depths
of
his ignorance’.
The final point to be made is that
Mr.Wright has fully demonstrated
the fact that administrative history
cannot be written only from reports
and enactments, and that nothing short
of access to the files enables even the
basic structure
to
be understood
-
and
even then in the pre-telephone era,
much iii.lst have been done to smooth
the way
lor
certain transactions which
remained- for ever unrecorded.
Administration and politics are only
conceptually separable. Persons count;
and one could wish for similar studies
for periods much closer to our own.
A book with the same title
but
the
dates
1919
to
1939,
if
done by an
author of Mr.Wright’s pertinacity
and skill, would perhaps be even more
revealing.
MAX
BELOFF
-4
11
Souls
College.
Oxjord
Minist9
and
Management:
The
Study
of
Ecclesiastical
Administration
By Peter F.Rudge. Tavistock Publications,
1968.
Pp.
178. 18s
(paper).
Dr.Peter Rudge held
a
diploma in
public administration before he entered
the Church in Australia. After ten
years
of
parish work, he came to
England, where study at St. Augustine’s
College, Canterbury and Leeds
University crystallize
1
his thoughts
on ecclesiastical administration in this
noteworthy book. Students of organiza-
tion with no interest in the Church
may learn nearly as much from
it
as
churchmen who have hitherto been
blind to the theological implications
of administration.
Dr.Rudge begins with a lucid and
well documented summary
of
five
organizational types, which he calls
the traditional, the charismatic, the
classicaI, the human relations and the
380
systemic. Each, as he shows, implies
a
set of assumptions about the nature,
purpose and historical significance
of
the organization and the nature of
its
human constituents and of the
world in whicl; it lives and acts. Then,
assuming hi: theological hat, he
reminds his fellow churchmen that
for them these assumptions
-
about
the Church, the world and human
nature
-
are matters of central
Christian doctrine. He examines the
reIevant doctrines and their implica-
tions for church organization and
compares
-
or contrasts -these with
organization as
it
is.
This
is
then made
more concrete by a series of case
histories, which are later used to
illustrate problem areas in ecclesiastical
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