Abstract
The dominance of a centralist and statist approach in the British Labour Party’s political thinking and practice in the twentieth century gave a vital role to the civil service and the Whitehall bureaucratic machine in the transformation of society and the achievement of socialism. However, Labour has generally not paid much serious or sustained attention to the civil service and the Whitehall machine. Certain lines of criticism of civil service organisation, management, power and accountability recur through the party’s history, together with proposals for reform. In practice, however, Labour governments made only patchy progress towards the implementation of Whitehall reforms from the 1920s through to the 1970s.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Churchill Archive Centre: CHAR 20/20/28-31.
- 2.
Note by the Deputy Prime Minister, MG (42) 6, 31 December 1942, National Archives: CAB 87/74.
- 3.
National Archives: BA 1/6.
- 4.
Labour Party Archives: RD774/May 1964.
References
Attlee, C.R. 1937. The Labour Party in Perspective. London: Gollancz.
———. 1954. Civil Servants, Ministers, Parliament and the Public. Political Quarterly 25: 308–315.
Balogh, T. 1959. The Apotheosis of the Dilettante. In The Establishment, ed. H. Thomas. London: Anthony Blond.
Barker, R.S. 1986. Civil Service Attitudes and the Economic Planning of the Attlee Government. Journal of Contemporary History 21: 473–486.
Benn, T. 1981. Arguments for Democracy. London: Cape.
Blick, A. 2006. Harold Wilson, Labour and the Machinery of Government. Contemporary British History 20 (3): 343–362.
Castle, B. 1973. Mandarin Power. The Sunday Times, June 10.
Cole, M., ed. 1956. Beatrice Webb’s Diaries 1924–1932. London: Longman.
Crossman, R. 1972. Inside View. London: Jonathan Cape.
———. 1975. The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister. Vol. 1. London: Hamish Hamilton and Jonathan Cape.
Diamond, P. 2011. Beyond the Westminster Model: The Labour Party and the Machinery of the British Parliamentary State. Renewal 19 (1): 64–74.
Dorey, P. 2008. The Labour Party and Constitutional Reform. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Fabian Society. 1991. Labour and Whitehall: A Fabian Enquiry into the Machinery of Government. London: Fabian Society.
Gwyn, W. 1971. The Labour Party and the Threat of Bureaucracy. Political Studies 19 (4): 383–402.
Haines, J. 1977. The Politics of Power. London: Cape.
Hennessy, P. 1986. Cabinet. Oxford: Blackwell.
———. 1989. Whitehall. London: Secker and Warburg.
Hennessy, P., and S. Coates. 1992. Bluehall SW1? The Civil Service, the Opposition and the Government During a Fourth Conservative Term. Glasgow: Strathclyde Papers on Government and Politics, No. 11.
Hennessy, P., R. Hughes, and J. Seaton. 1997. Ready, Steady Go! New Labour and Whitehall. London: Fabian Society.
Hetzner, C. 1985. Social Democracy and Bureaucracy: The Labour Party and Higher Civil Service Recruitment. Administration and Society 17 (1): 97–128.
Jay, D. 1937. The Socialist Case. London: Faber & Faber.
Jones, B., and M. Keating. 1985. Labour and the British State. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Laski, H.J. 1938. Parliamentary Government in England. London: Allen & Unwin.
———. 1942. Introduction. In Passed to You, Please, ed. J.P.W. Mallalieu. London: Gollancz.
Lipsey, D. 1982. Making Government Work. London: Fabian Society.
Morgan, K.O. 1985. Labour in Power 1945–1951. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Morris, J. 2007. The Life and Times of Thomas Balogh: A Macaw Among Mandarins. Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press.
Morrison, H. 1964. Government and Parliament: A Survey from the Inside. 3rd ed. London: Oxford University Press.
Richards, D. 2008. New Labour and the Civil Service. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Stone, N. 1996. The Development of Labour Party Thinking on the Civil Service 1945–1995. Unpublished M.Phil thesis, University of Kent.
Theakston, K. 1992. The Labour Party and Whitehall. London: Routledge.
———. 1998. New Labour, New Whitehall? Public Policy and Administration 13 (1): 13–34.
———. 2006. Whitehall Reform. In The Labour Governments 1964–1970, ed. P. Dorey. London: Routledge.
Theakston, K., and P. Connelly. 2018. William Armstrong and British Policy Making. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Webb, S. and B. (1920) A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain (Cambridge: London School of Economics and Cambridge University Press, reprinted 1975).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Theakston, K. (2020). The British Labour Party and the Civil Service in the Twentieth Century. In: Fulla, M., Lazar, M. (eds) European Socialists and the State in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41540-2_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41540-2_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-41539-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-41540-2
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)