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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2013
It must be confessed that, outside the inner circles of the administration, people in Great Britain show little interest in their civil service. It is taken for granted by the majority and used as an Aunt Sally by a considerable minority to whom the merest suspicion of that much overworked epithet, “bureaucrat,” acts as a red rag to a bull. Much wider interest in the British civil service has, in fact, been shown in the United States, whence the most illuminating writings on the subject have almost invariably emanated. For this reason, the present writer believes that there must be many members of the American Political Science Association who will be interested in a brief survey of civil service development, with particular reference to the changes at present in hand. It might be as well to point out that this essay is written with all the prejudices of a writer in Britain, e.g., with regard to the importance of open competitive recruitment and a quite different approach to veteran preference; but this in itself may add something to the article's interest.
1 See particularly “Fourth Report of the Commissioners,” Cmd. 7338 (1914), and “Report of the Machinery of Government Committee,” Cmd. 9230 (1918).
2 “Report of Royal Commission on the Civil Service, 1929–31.” Cmd. 3909 (1931).
3 “Recruitment to Established Posts in the Civil Service During the Reconstruction Period.” Cmd. 6567 (1944).
4 “Sixteenth Report from the Select Committee on National Expenditure, Session 1941–1942” (1942).
5 “Report of the Committee on the Training of Civil Servants.” Cmd. 6525 (1944).
6 “The Administrative Class of the Civil Service.” Cmd. 6680 (1945).
7 “The Scientific Civil Service.” Cmd. 6679 (1945).
8 “Proposals for the Reform of the Foreign Service.” Cmd. 6420 (1943).
9 As the draft of this article is being completed, news comes that the National Whitley Council has agreed upon an improved superannuation scheme for civil servants which embodies inter alia (a) a contributory pension scheme covering widows and other dependants and (b) retention of pension rights by a civil servant retiring voluntarily after reaching the age of fifty. The latter consideration, which includes the right on the side of the departments to call upon a civil servant above that age to retire, is of particular interest. It is a radical departure from current practice under which a civil servant retiring, except for health reasons, before reaching his sixtieth birthday relinquishes all pension rights. It will make the present structure much more flexible and if wisely administered will, by encouraging the early retirement of senior civil servants to whom the official environment is no longer agreeable, help to reduce stagnancy in the top positions. The proposals will require statutory sanction, matters of superannuation being the only provisions affecting the civil servant's conditions of service with which Parliament normally concerns itself.
10 Proposals toward the supersession of the present three-class structure are contained in my The Civil Service; Its Problems and Future (2nd ed., London, Staples Press Ltd., 1948)Google Scholar.
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