Unifying the British Civil Service: Some Trends and Problems

Abstract

When Sir Charles Trevelyan and Sir Stafford Northcote referred in their famous report of 1853 to the British Civil Service, they were undoubtedly indulging in wishful thinking. Applied to the administrative branch, the term suggested a degree of uniformity in conditions of service and a centralization of controls which was completely lacking. Horace Mann, first secretary to the Civil Service Commission, described the Service to the London Statistical Society in 1868 as “a chaotic mass of unorganized elements … an aggregation of separate departments governed, in many points, by no principle.” Nevertheless, three generations later, in 1931, the Royal (Tomlin) Commission on the Civil Service could point with justifiable satisfaction to the gradual process by which “a measure of common regulation and common staffing” had been achieved.While this unification has been the work of reformers who succeeded Trevelyan and Northcote after the middle of the last century, it is clear that the foundations of a centralized bureaucracy were laid much earlier. Under the banner of “economical reform,” Burke, Pitt, Lord Liverpool, and others introduced measures which not only reduced administrative expenditures but also cleared away the feudal barnacles, which had clung so long to the ship of state. Economical or administrative reform was the conservative counterpart of parliamentary reform, the two alternating in popularity during the century following 1780. The removal of pensioners and sinecurists (1780-1850), the abolition of the sale of public offices (1809), and the extinction of the casual system of paying civil servants out of fees and perquisites were typical constructive changes fostered by the economical reformers. These preliminary measures were necessary before the modern bureaucracy could be erected on stable foundations.