Viscount Waverley
| Author | NORMAN BROOK |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1958.tb01325.x |
| Date | 01 March 1958 |
| Published date | 01 March 1958 |
Viscount
Waverley
By
SIR
NORMAN
BROOK
HE
Royal Institute of Public Administration has lost in Lord Waverley
T
its most powefi patron and supporter. He took a leading part in its
work from its foundation and maintained his support for it until the end.
By
all
who are interested in the theory and practice of government,
John
Anderson will be remembered as the foremost administrator of
this
century.
His unrivalled administrative ability was based partly on the depth and
variety of his experience and partly
on
the certainty of his judgment and
the strength of his character. After seven years at the Colonial Office he
joined that remarkable group
of
brilliant young men who were responsible
for launching, under the leadership of Robert Morant, the first National
Health Insurance Scheme in this country. He learned much from the
experience which he gained in helping
to
frame, in association with the
best brains in the Civil Service,
this
vast new administrative project. He
quickly rose to the top
;
and, during the First War and immediately after
it, he held a succession of senior posts in a number of different Departments,
culmi~ting in his appointment as Under-Secretary in Ireland during the
troubles. Thus, when
in
1922
he beame Head of the Home Office at the
early age of
40,
he was already a Privy Councillor for Ireland and a G.C.B.
and had acquired a knowledge of the working of the Government machine
which was more extensive than that of any
of
his contemporaries. He
remained at the Home Office for ten years-a longer period than he spent
in any other appointment-and
it
was during that time that his pre-eminence
as an administrator became established.
His
strength of purpose in enforcing
respect for law and’order had already been demonstrated in Ireland
;
but
at the Home Office he combined this with enlightened support for social
legislation-a combination which he later turned to good use when he went
to India
as
Governor of Bengal.
Even when he became a Minister, after his return from India, he continued
to be concerned with problems of administration. When he was brought
into the Government to organise Civil Defence after Munich he was quick
to realise that this was
no
longer a matter for a sub-Department of the Home
Office, but was one in which many of the civil agencies of Government must
play their part. And with his intimate knowledge of Whitehall and
his
sure
touch on the wheel of administration he rapidly fashioned an organisation
in which dispersal
of
functions was combined with effective central control.
A
similar task was. assigned to him when
Mr.
Churchill’s Government
was formed in
1940.
By
then the organisation for Civil Defence
had
been
shaped
and
needed
only
popular leadership. The Prime Minister
saw
that
it
was time to use Anderson’s special genius on an even larger problem of
organisation. As a member of the War Cabinet with the office of Lord
President he was given the task
of
supervising the home front and mobilising
the country’s economic resources for total war. Here again, though he was
dealing with policy at the highest level,
it
was his knowledge of the Govern-
ment machine and
his
deft handling of it that enabled
him
to marshal
all
the
civil agencies of Government in support of the main strategic concept
of
the
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