Geoffrey Kingdon Fry and the British road to public sector reform
| Published date | 01 October 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/09520767231189791 |
| Author | Edward C Page |
| Date | 01 October 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Obituary |
Obituary
Public Policy and Administration
2023, Vol. 38(4) 512–518
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/09520767231189791
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Geoffrey Kingdon Fry and the
British road to public sector
reform
Edward C Page
Department of Government, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK
Abstract
To mark the 2023 death of GK Fry this note focuses attention on the approach to public
sector reform in Britain discussed in his many works. Starting with his criticism of the
1968 Fulton Committee Report, his work developed a view of reform that foreshadowed
debates that later went under the label of ‘new public management’by at least 20 years.
This note explains how he argued that a ‘positive state’or Fabian approach dominated
thinking about public administration for so long and largely accounted for the failure of
most of the reforms of the postwar period until the 1980s. Fry’s background and interests
to some degree help explain how he reached this perspective and how he set it out, so this
note begins and ends with some outline of his life, career and outlook.
Keywords
Public sector reform, civil service, administrative theory, central administration, new
public management, public administration
My friend Geoff Fry died on May 21
st
2023 aged 85 years. Fry was a prolific, engaged and
engaging author known best for a standard history of the British civil service since the
mid-19
th
century, for some of the finest research on the UK postwar civil service as well as
for his interpretations of British politics since the 1930s. This tribute to him concentrates
on setting out the clear, consistent and important insight his work on the machinery of
government in Britain offers into the progress of public sector reform in the postwar years.
Though different in origin, Fry’s work foreshadowed debates that later went under the
label ‘new public management’by at least 20 years. His background and interests to some
Corresponding author:
Edward C Page, Department of Government, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton
Street, London WC2A2AE, UK.
Email: e.c.page@lse.ac.uk
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