Public Services Dinner to the President
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1946.tb03061.x |
| Published date | 01 March 1946 |
| Date | 01 March 1946 |
Public Services Dinner
to
the President
PEAKING
at
the dinner given in his honour by the Institute
of
Public
Administration
on
4th December, 1945, Sir
John
Anderson said
:
-
I
am
very grateful to the
(Jtairman
for
all
the
kind
things he has said about
me, but we
ark
not gathered here to appraise or acclaim the qualities of your
President; we are here to give the Institute a frah send4 in its career after
a
period
of
suspended animation
in
which it has been almost
on
a care and main-
tenance basis.
It
is noteworthy that the membership has kept up and that funds have
accumulated. The journal has continued to circulate and conferences were
resumed
two
years
ago.
It
is fitting that we should recognise the services of
Miss
Kemball,
who has played
so
great
a
part in keeping the structure of the
Institute
intact.
The Institute owed its inception largely
to
the inspiration
of
that great
man,
Lord Haldane; he was
its
first President,
and
I
look back with pleasure to
his
presiding over meetings, and
I
recaU the interest which he took in its work
Sir
Gwilym Gibbon indicated a certain feeling of disappointment that the
progress of the Institute was not more rapid, but
I
would myself say that
its
progress, though not
such
as to satisfy the
enthusiasm
of
its founders,
was
steady
if not spectacular. The Institute marked a new departure:
it
had nothing
in
common
with
trade unionism, nor was
it
a professional body; it had aspired to
some of the qualities and functions
of
a learned
society,
but it did not conform
to any
known
model.
The
primary
object
of
the Institute was to provide opportunities to those
concerned
in
the practical
bushes
of
administration
far
an
exchange
of
views
and a pooling of experiences.
Its
activities before the war had several facets,
the
main
feature of which
was
regular meetings at which papers were read and
discussion took place
on
subjects more or less directly related to administration.
Then
the
Journal
was established, and its management was obviously in
very
good
hands.
At
a somewhat later stage the Institute promoted summer
conferences
at
University centres.
I
myself
regard these as one of its
most
attractive and
useful
features, and
I
have pleasant recollections of days, almost
weeks, spent in
the
company of friends whom
I
am
delighted
to
see
again after
an interval of many years. By
no
means the least attractive features of these
conferences were the social and unofficial activities and the presence of inter-
national visitors. At a later stage winter conferences were held in one or other
of the large towns. Then there were the regional organisations of the Institute,
both
in
this
country
and in the
Daminions
which kept public administration in
the
self-governing empire in direct touch with that in this country.
All
of
these
things
have
suffered
an eclipx, but this is only
a
passing
phase.
Sir
Gwilym
Gibbon’s disappointment
on
the progress of research is due
to
his
natural modesty as its Director.
I
hope that the various
prewar
activities of
the Institqe will
s001l
be
resumed. There are proposals for expanding these
activities in various
ways;
there
is
a scheme for building
up
a library
on
public
administration, and a- more ambitious project for establishing joint
premises
in
co-operation with other organisations of a cognate character. Despite
the
admittedly
slow progress before
the
war that progress did justify the belief that
the Institute could serve
an
increasingly useful purpose in future.
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