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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2013
The announcement in October, 1946, that in future a single Minister of Defense will sit in the British cabinet, and that the ministers of the three armed services will no longer be of cabinet rank, marks the culmination of a long and important trend in Britain's governmental organization. It is also of interest as the present British answer to advocates of a merger of the Navy, Army, and Air Force. To see the full meaning of this step, it is necessary to refer to two closely related problems of long standing: the question of the size of the cabinet and that of what is broadly known as imperial defense.
From the beginning of the nineteenth century, the British cabinet, originally ten or eleven in number, increased to about fourteen or fifteen in the 1870's and 1880's. By the end of the century, however, increase of governmental services and multiplication of departments raised the normal size of cabinets to nineteen or twenty, and after the first World War to twenty or even twenty-two. Since the cabinet as such functions as a committee, it has been frequently pointed out that the present size is too large for prompt and decisive deliberation; and the experience of two great wars has shown without question that large-scale planning and the coördination of the innumerable interlocking aspects of a national war effort require a much smaller and more cohesive group. The existence around the premier of an inner circle of three or four ministers, among whom many of the most important decisions are made, is as old as cabinet government, but cannot be satisfactory for modern needs.
1 Convenient lists of cabinets from 1783 to 1914 may be found in Carr, F. C., Handbook of the Administrations of Great Britain (London, 1869)Google Scholar, and in Ensor, R. C. K., England, 1870–1914 (Oxford, 1936), pp. 606–614.Google Scholar
2 Ismay, H. L., “The Machinery of the Committee of Imperial Defence,” Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, Vol. 84 (May, 1939), pp. 248–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 The most systematic discussion of this question is in Hankey, Lord, Diplomacy by Conference (New York, 1946), Chaps. 2 and 3, especially pp. 52–56, 62–73.Google Scholar The inconvenience of the old system has often been commented on, for example, in the War Memoirs of David Lloyd George, Vol. III, 1916–17 (Boston, 1934), pp. 36–37, and in Richard Burton Haldane: An Autobiography (Garden City, New York, 1929), p. 231.
4 Report of the Machinery of Government Committee, Cd. 9230, 1918.
5 Hancock, W. K., Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs, I (Oxford University Press, 1937), pp. 86–91Google Scholar; Dawson, R. MacG., The Development of Dominion Status, 1900–1936 (Oxford University Press, 1937), pp. 40–54.Google Scholar
6 Cmd. 2029, 1924, pp. 16–18.
7 Jennings, W. Ivor, Cabinet Government (Cambridge, 1936), p. 239.Google Scholar
8 The official statement is in Cmd. 5107, pp. 13–15; cf. the defense debates in Commons Debates, Vol. 309, and Lords Debates, Vol. 100; Elliott, W. Y. and Hall, H. D. (eds.), The British Commonwealth at War (New York, 1943), pp. 174–175Google Scholar: New Statesman and Nation, Vol. 11 (Apr. 4, 1936), p. 524.
9 Commons Debates, Vol. 309, Mar. 9, 1936, col. 1849; cf. ibid., Mar. 10, col. 2065.
10 Lord Salisbury pointed out that this was a position with much less responsibility and initiative than had been envisaged by his committee in 1924. Lords Debates, Vol. 100, Mar. 19, 1936, cols. 142–43.
11 Spectator, Vol. 158 (Mar. 19, 1937), p. 508. In July, 1939, soon after the decision for conscription, a Ministry of Supply was set up. It was not given full powers of economic planning, nor was it intimately linked with the Minister for Coördination. Elliott and Hall, op. cit., pp. 180–181.
12 The secretariat reorganization arising from Lord Hankey's retirement in 1938 is described in Jennings, W. I., “British Organization for Rearmament,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 53 (Dec., 1938), pp. 481–490.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13 By February, 1941, eight new ministries had been created since the beginning of the war. Commons Debates, Vol. 369, Feb. 20, 1941, col. 287.
14 The period of experimentation in the British organization for war is covered in Finer, Herman, “The British Cabinet, the House of Commons, and the War,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 56 (Sept., 1941), pp. 321–360CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and in Elliott and Hall, op. cit.
15 Feiling, Keith, The Life of Neville Chamberlain (London, 1946), p. 421.Google Scholar
16 E.g., Commons Debates, Vol. 351, Oct. 4, 1939, col. 1944; ibid., Vol. 358, Mar. 19, 1940, cols. 1880, 1903, 1911.
17 New Statesman and Nation, Vol. 18 (Sept. 16, 1939), p. 392; Commons Debates, Vol. 356, Jan. 16, 1940, cols. 18, 48, 53.
18 Commons Debates, Vol. 356, Feb. 1, 1940, cols. 1309–1432, especially at cols. 1309–33, 1355–65, 1427–28. The Marquis of Salisbury shared the desire for a Minister of War Economy. Lords Debates, Vol. 116, May 8, 1940, col. 304. See the acute comments of Jennings, W. I. in Political Quarterly, vol. 11 (1940), pp. 190–191.Google Scholar
19 A minor but interesting twist was that Churchill became in effect Minister of Defense a month before Chamberlain's fall. On April 4, 1940, the office of Minister of Coördination “lapsed” and Churchill, “as senior Service Minister,” took over its functions. Discussion of this change was muffled by the great crisis of early May. Commons Debates, Vol. 359, Apr. 11, 1940, col. 699; ibid., Vol. 360, May 7, cols 1084–85, 1092; May 8, col. 1302.
20 There has been some misunderstanding about the war cabinets of 1916–1919 and 1940, and the magic number “five” need not be taken as seriously as has often been done. In fact, both the Lloyd George and Churchill cabinets not only tended to grow in formal numbers, but were very frequently attended by certain ministers with a “right” of access, and by others called when the agenda concerned their departments.
21 An illuminating White Paper, The Organization for Joint Planning, Cmd. 6351, 1942Google Scholar, was issued in response to criticisms on this subject. It should be read in connection with Commons Debates, Vol. 378, Feb. 24, 1942, cols, 40–42 and Vol. 380, May 19, 1942, col. 63.
22 Chatfield, Lord, Defense After the War (London, 1944, reprinted from the Sunday Times)Google Scholar; Lords Debates, Vol. 131, Mar. 28, 1944, cols. 273–285; ibid., Vol. 135. March 7, 1945, cols. 356–369.
23 Hankey, in Lords Debates, Vol. 131, Mar. 28, 1944, cols. 285–292.Google Scholar
24 As above and Mar. 29, 1944, Dec. 6, 1944, Nov. 14, 1945.
25 Attlee, C. R., The Labour Party in Perspective (London, 1937), pp. 173–174.Google ScholarCole, G. D. H., A Plan for Democratic Britain (London, 1939), p. 238Google Scholar, is less official and vaguer. There was no response in Parliament to Attlee's emphatic criticism on the same lines of thought at the beginning of the war. Commons Debates, Vol. 351, Sept. 26, 1939, col. 1247.
26 Lords Debates, Vol. 140, Mar. 27, 1946, col. 433.
27 Commons Debates, Vol. 420, Mar. 4, 1946, cols. 47–48.
28 E.g., SirMaurice, Frederick in the Spectator, Vol. 156 (Jan 10, 1936), p. 43Google Scholar; Round Table, Vol. 26 (June, 1936), p. 469, quoting Lord Trenchard.
29 Cmd. 2029, 1924, p. 16.
30 Commons Debates, Vol. 378, Feb. 24, 1942, Vol. 380, May 19–20, 1942, Vol. 381, July 2, 1942; SirGrigg, Edward in The Times, Apr. 11, 1942Google Scholar; New York Times, Oct. 1, 1943, p. 10.
31 Lords Debates, Vol. 140, Mar. 27, 1946, cols. 375–381, 418, 420, 428.
32 Central Organization for Defence, Cmd. 6923, 1946. 12 pp.
33 Par. 15–18.
34 Par. 25.
35 The White Paper itself says this. Par. 15.
36 Lords Debates, Vol. 143, Oct. 16, 1946, col. 313; Commons Debates, Vol. 428, Oct. 30–31, 1946, especially cols. 638, 708–709, 795–798, 865, 873.
37 Lords Debates, Vol. 143, Oct. 16, 1946, col. 306.
38 Attlee, in Commons Debates, Vol. 428, Oct. 30, 1946, col. 622Google Scholar; Addison, in Lords Debates, Vol. 143, Oct. 16, 1946, col. 332.Google Scholar
39 Commons Debates, Vol. 420, Mar. 5, 1946; Vol. 428, Oct. 31, 1946, cols. 861–862.
40 The Times, Oct. 5, 1946, p. 5.
41 Commons Debates, Vol. 428, Oct. 30, 1946, col. 622.
42 Ibid.
43 Address by Morrison, Herbert, “Economic Planning in Britain,” Oct. 17, 1946, British Information Services release ID 685, p. 4.Google Scholar
44 Lords Debates, Vol. 143, Oct. 16, 1940, col. 300.
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