Thread by @AndrewPRLevi

Margaret Thatcher gave the impartial, professional Civil Service a big shove down the slippery slope of politicisation & cronyism, decades ago. Previously, Harold Wilson had given it a modest kick. But it was her 1985 assault which set the stage for the current crisis.

A 🧵/1.

https://twitter.com/redhistorian/status/1387696493268770818

Via Robert Armstrong, the then head of the Civil Service, she insisted the Crown was indistinguishable from the government of the day. So, service to the former was to be understood as service to the latter & vice versa. /2.

The actual “Armstrong Memorandum” (subsequently updated) was & is a deal more sophisticated than that. And, at one level, it’s a non-point. Ministers are set above civil servants. No one denies it. But, of course, it wasn’t meaningless. Far from it. The intent was clear. /3.

Mrs Thatcher & her ministers saw the Civil Service as an instrument of their will, as a political party in power. Or as an obstacle to that will, which had to be bent to it. Or circumvented. /4.

Their overriding objective was implementation of their political party’s requirements & the perpetuation of its power.

It’s easy to understand why Mrs Thatcher felt such an approach necessary. /5.

Fundamental aspects of long-standing British constitutional & policy consensus were crumbling. Or, at least, she believed they were & should be. She felt she was in the vanguard of a necessary revolution. And a revolution it was. /6.

Its shockwaves, temporarily dampened from 1997 to 2010 (although New Labour had its own, sometimes problematic, approach to the Civil Service) have, ever since, shaken the foundations of the modern state Gladstone, Northcote & Trevelyan built. /7.

No one, except politicians seeking to evade accountability, doubts that ministers, not civil servants, are directly responsible to the Crown & to Parliament, as the 1854 Northcote-Trevelyan Report clearly set out. /8.

The same report also stated: “... the Government of the country could not be carried on without the aid of an efficient body of permanent officers, occupying a position duly subordinate to that of the ministers [...] yet possessing sufficient independence, character, .../9.

... ability, & experience to be able to advise, assist, & to some extent influence, those who are from time to time set over them”. Subordinate, certainly. But also: permanent, efficient, expert, able, unimpeachable, influential. Why? /10.

Because, according to Northcote & Trevelyan, they’re indispensable: without them the country couldn’t be governed. That, in essence, is the higher purpose. /11.

The country doesn’t need this or that political party. Or this or that majority of MPs. Or this or that set of ministers. But it does need this “body of permanent officers” & that fact doesn’t depend on the views & whims of “those who are from time to time set over them”. /12.

What does it mean to be “duly subordinate”? Back to Thatcher & Armstrong: to them (or, at least, to her) it meant “subordinate”: doing what she said - as long as it was legal. /13.

To Northcote & Trevelyan - &, despite the Armstrong Memorandum, to most civil servants I’ve come across, over many years, with ignoble exceptions - it meant & means ensuring permanent governance of the country, .../14.

... ethically, efficiently & within the law, influencing & implementing ministerial requirements accordingly. /15.

It isn’t that Mrs Thatcher ignored all advice. Far from it. But she didn’t wish to be constrained by what she viewed as failed conventions, processes & institutions. /16.

By the standards of the Vote Leave orthodoxy which now dominates Whitehall, Mrs Thatcher’s attempted démontage of Northcote-Trevelyan seems quaint. It isn’t. It’s a lit fuse which may be about to blow barrels of gunpowder stacked under the British constitution. /17. End

An important aspect, from @Retrograder25, replying to @redhistorian 👇

https://twitter.com/Retrograder25/status/1387707607725625344