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Sir Horace Wilson, 1900–1935: the Making of a Mandarin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Rodney Lowe  and
Richard Roberts
Rodney Lowe
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
Richard Roberts
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
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Extract

In 1975, Max Beloff wrote an article entitled ‘The Whitehall factor: the role of the higher civil service, 1919–39’, which historians have been singularly slow to exploit. Influenced, no doubt, by the publication in the same year of the Crossman Diaries, Beloff argued that no modern political history could be complete which ignores the influence of the civil service on policy-making. ‘The anonymity of the civil service’, he argued, ‘may or may not be a valuable convention of the constitution: it is one which the historian of modern Britain accepts at his peril.’ The peril was greatest, he suggested, for the inter-war period because it was then that higher civil servants in Britain ‘probably reached the height of [their] corporate influence’. In contrast to their predecessors, they controlled a far more centralized machine whose influence had been greatly extended by increasingly interventionist policies. In contrast to their successors, they were a highly compact group – being a mere 500 in number.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , September 1987 , pp. 641 - 662
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

1 In Peele, G and Cook, C., eds., The politics of reappraisal, 1918–39 (London, 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Later quotations are from pp. 227, 210. Given the avalanche of memoirs and even television programmes which the pregnant relationship between politicians and civil servants has produced since 1975, historians' reticence is the more remarkable.

2 The definition here used is that of Dale, H. E., The higher civil service of Great Britain (Oxford, 1941), ch. 1Google Scholar; those officials who were ‘in a position to exercise a real and direct influence upon the government in important matters’. For an overview of the inter-war civil service, see Lowe, R., ‘Bureaucracy triumphant or denied? The expansion of the British civil service, 1919–39’, Public Administration, LXII (1984), 291–310CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

3 ‘Cato’, Guilty men (London, 1940), p. 87Google Scholar; Brown, W. J., So far (London, 1943), p. 220Google Scholar. In 1940, for example, Boothby wrote to Lloyd George; ‘the higher ranks of the civil service are filled with elderly and fatigued mediocrities, strongly imbued with the Horace Wilson tradition, and still dependent on that gentleman for their position and promotion. A very different situation to that which prevailed under your administration in the last war, when men like Anderson, Salter, Layton, Beveridge and Keynes were rapidly brought to the top.’ See Lloyd George papers, G 3/13/22 (House of Lords Record Office).

4 National Library of Wales, Tom Jones papers, P 3/68, record of a conversation between Jones and Wilson, 16 July 1942. Wilson explained Attlee's hostility on the grounds of his role in the general strike, his opposition to the repeal of the Trade Disputes Act and his friendship with Lord Weir. Attlee had also been heavily involved in the fall-out over the Mosley memorandum in 1930.

5 Brown, , So far, p. 221Google Scholar.

6 Dale, , Higher civil service, pp. 116, 163Google Scholar.

7 Hence the certain air of unreality which characterises the whole debate in recent editions of the Economic History Review (vols. 36–8, 1983–1985)Google Scholar on the evolution of full employment policy. Beloff, for instance, asked for closer analysis of SirHopkins', Richard influence and such an analysis is provided by Peden, G. C., ‘Sir Richard Hopkins and the “Keynesian revolution” in employment policy’, in Economic History Review, XXXVI (1983), 281–96Google Scholar. This considers the broad political influences on Hopkins' advice but not the impact of individual political events or ministers. Can the evolution of a ‘Treasury view’ be so wholly divorced from the personality of a chancellor such as Chamberlain whom Peden has stressed elsewhere ‘could pursue his own definite ideas in economic policy regardless of his officials' ideas’ (‘The Treasury as the central department of government, 1919–39’, Public Administration, LXI (1983), 380)Google Scholar. If the development of official advice can be so divorced from individual political events, then this bureaucratic unresponsiveness demands explicit acknowledgement.

8 Haines, J., The politics of power (London, 1977), p. 26Google Scholar.

9 The inevitability of the increase in civil servants' powers which, nevertheless, lawyers characteristically refused to acknowledge is well analyzed in Williams, D. G. T., ‘The Donoughmore report in retrospect’, Public Administration, LX, (1982), 273–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 To condemn the consequences of increased state intervention in the inter-war period, for example, is to beg the whole question of why such intervention was thought to be necessary at the time and the actual degree of effective freedom which politicians and civil servants enjoyed.

11 Lowe, R., Adjusting to democracy: the impact of the Ministry of Labour on British politics, 1919–39 (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar and Roberts, R., ‘The Board of Trade, 1924–39’ (unpublished D.Phil., Oxford University, 1987)Google Scholar. The traditional weaknesses that have characterized the biographies of individual officials unfortunately mar the most sustained analysis of Wilson's predecessor as permanent secretary of the Treasury: O'Halpin, E., ‘Sir Warren Fisher, head of the civil service 1919–39’ (unpublished Ph.D., Cambridge University, 1982)Google Scholar. Fisher's advice is sought only in a narrow range of documents, there is no differentiation between the advice he gave to ministers and the administrative action he himself took, and there is little assessment of the actual impact of those actions. Public professions of his objectives are taken at face value and the only serious criticisms of Fisher mentioned are those of other commentators, which are then quickly discussed. It is perhaps because of this approach to the evidence that differences of interpretation have arisen between DrsO'Halpin, and Lowe, , see Historical Journal, XXIV (1981), 926–7 and XXVII (1985), 761Google Scholar.

12 National Library of Wales, Tom Jones papers P 3/68. The other breaks were the general strike, the Ottawa conference and Munich. Jones's comment in June 1930 on the failure of the experiment was: ‘the P.M. would not have Sir Horace Wilson in charge of the secretariat at any price despite his super-human efforts in the last 6–7 months. The Labour intellectuals think that he has blocked the programme of “Labour and the nation”’ (Middlemas, K., ed., Whitehall diary (3 vols., 1969), II, 264)Google Scholar. Symbolically, the chief industrial adviser's staff were housed in the Treasury.

13 The consummation of this suggestion at Cliveden is noted in Tom Jones's papers, P 3/60. Middlemas, K. and Barnes, J., Baldwin (London, 1969), p. 929Google Scholar state that Wilson only reluctantly accepted the position once Baldwin insisted that he could not go on without him. This claim is unsubstantiated and its authority is somewhat undermined by the simultaneous assertion that Wilson was permanent under-secretary of the Board of Trade and was appointed chief industrial adviser in 1935.

14 Brown, , So far, p. 220Google Scholar.

15 Middlemas, and Barnes, , Baldwin, p. 382Google Scholar; private information from Wilson's private secretary, the late Sir Harold Emmerson.

16 ‘Cato’, Guilty men, p. 87.

17 Brown, , So far, p. 220Google Scholar. Mosley's, rejoinder is in My life (London, 1968), p. 237Google Scholar.

18 Mowat, C. L., Britain between the wars 1918–1940 (London, 1955), p. 593Google Scholar. Wilson, himself claimed that ‘my whole life has been one of progress through constructive compromise’ (Streat diary, 29 04 1942)Google Scholar.

19 Public Records Office, T 162/74/E 7112/01 and private information from P. H. St J. Wilson. For an account by a former colleague of Wilson as permanent secretary, see Norman, F. A., Whitehall to West Indies (London, 1952), pp. 84–5Google Scholar.

20 Lowe, R., Adjusting to democracy, pp. 43–4Google Scholar.

21 Middleton, R., ‘The Treasury in the 1930s: political and administrative constraints to acceptance of the “new” economies’, Oxford Economic Papers, XXXIV (1982), 48–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Borcheding, T. E., Budgets and bureaucrats (N. Colombia, 1977), p. 61Google Scholar.

23 The major statement of industrial relations policy under Wilson is in P.R.O., Lab 2/921/7.

24 The struggle over the finance officer is recorded in Lab 2/1907/CEB 649/1922. Wilson was equally indecisive when asked, during the Second World War, for his advice on how long-term economic planning and short-term financial policy should be administratively related. He deprecated an independent Economic Section to the cabinet and suggested that it should be attached to, but not ‘absorbed into’, the Treasury (Cab 87/74/MGO 32, para. 10).

25 Lab 2/1983/S and E 229/1930.

26 Lab 2/1930/CEB 154/1921; Lab 2/1822/CEB 537/2/1921.

27 Lab 2/696/15.

28 Lab 2/933/21.

29 P.R.O. 30/69/1/359 (12); Lab 2/841/TB 165/5/1921.

30 Cambridge University Library; Baldwin papers, vol. 7, fos. 257–60. The joint proposals are in Pin 1/1 and Cab 24/110/CP 1747.

31 Baldwin papers, vol. 28, fo. 4. The departmental report is in Lab 2/1215/ED 48401/1926.

32 Cab 27/438/UP (30) 15th. The term ‘private enterprise’ solution to unemployment was coined by Miller, F. M., ‘The unemployment policy of the National government, 1931–1936, Historical Journal, XIX (1976), 454Google Scholar. In 1932 MacDonald called Wilson the ‘vital spark’ on a cabinet employment committee (Prem 1/126).

33 Sir Sydney Chapman (chief economic adviser) and Percy Ashley (head of the industries and manufactures department) for instance, left in 1932 to join the import duties advisory committee and Sir Charles Hipwood (the second secretary) retired in 1933 to campaign against increasing state intervention as director of the national union of manufacturers. After 1930, Wilson was also assisted by a formal panel of industrial advisers.

34 Miller, , ‘Unemployment policy’, 462Google Scholar and Campbell, R. H., ‘The Scottish Office and the special areas in the 1930s’, Historical Journal, XXII, (1979), 167–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Prem 1/126, 7 Nov. 1932.

36 P.R.O. 30/69/413, 22 Nov. 1930; Streat diaries, 20 Jan. 1931. In the most forceful, later statement of his views (Cab 27/577/CP 197 (35) 2, 27 Sept. 1935), Wilson doubted whether proposals for creating new jobs in the depressed areas were ‘much more than make-believe’. Advocating industrial transference and training sis the major remedy, he went so far as to suggest the denial of unemployment relief to those who refused either. This hardening of his views perhaps reflected his decreasing contact with the human problem of the depressed areas and his increasing familiarity with the views of industrialists and bankers.

37 P.R.O., BT 56/37/CIA 1770. See also Cab 24/211/CP 134 (30). Wilson initially sought to direct assistance to new expanding industries but, after the appointment of the National government, it was politically necessary to concentrate solely on the declining staples (BT 56/37/ CIA 1770/2).

38 Cab 27/468/PE (31) 20. The administrative and political encouragement of development corporations can be seen in BT 56/38/CIA 1800 parts 1 and 2, and the reconciliation of Liverpool and Manchester in BT 64/8/IM 3883/35. Local rivalry did in fact delay the creation of a north east development corporation until 1935.

39 The main evidence of Wilson's, covert negotiations is in BT 56/35/CIA 1768/50 part 1, 11 1931 and the Streat diariesGoogle Scholar.

40 Chamberlain in 1934 rashly promised that any experiment by the commissions which was successful would be made permanent. This was a hostage to fortune which junior ministers exploited in 1938 to wring unwilling concessions from him. See Cab 27/578/DA (34) 20, 29 June 1938.

41 The Times, 26 May 1972. In 1938 employment stood at 378,000 (compared to 554,000 in 1928) and the number of surplus spindles was 3.8 m. (compared to a peak of 4.6 m. in 1933).

42 Cab 27/438/UP (30) 15.

43 The main evidence for these views is in BT 56/37/CIA 1770. Despite being a member of the Tuesday dining club, where he regularly met Keynes and planners such as Macmillan and Gaitskell, Wilson's views were very similar to those later popularized by Hayek. In The road to serfdom (London, 1944), pp. 10 and 101Google Scholar, Hayek vigorously defended ‘The freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom have never existed’ and concluded that ‘the democratic statesman who sets out to plan economic life will soon be confronted with the alternative of either assuming dictatorial powers or abandoning his plans’.

44 The most recent application of these neo-Marxist views to interwar Britain is by Hall, S and Schwarz, B. in the introductory essay to Langan, M. and Schwarz, B., Crises in the British state, 1880–1930 (London, 1985), pp. 7–33Google Scholar

46 Middlemas, K., Politics in industrial society (London, 1979), p. 327Google Scholar. A rather broader examination of these theoretical approaches is in Lowe, , Adjusting to democracy, pp. 241–9Google Scholar