Accommodating Diplomacy: The Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Debate over Whitehall Redevelopment

Abstract

The Main Building of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is an impressive architectural achievement. Yet during the 1960s radical plans for Whitehall redevelopment envisaged its demolition and replacement with a more functional structure capable of accommodating all the Office's London-based staff. Senior officials pressed for the project's early implementation or, at least, for some measure of renovation. Their efforts were, nonetheless, frustrated by proposals for the dispersal of civil servants from central London, inter-departmental rivalries, Treasury spending limits, and the opposition of amenity groups more interested in the preservation of Britain's Victorian heritage than in such Victorian aspirations as the effective and efficient administration of policy.