Behind every successful minister there is an energetic civil servant. Not that you would think so from reading most journalism, and most books, about politics. The focus is generally on politicians, and recently also on special advisers, but civil servants are seldom mentioned.
That has generally suited both politicians and civil servants. The traditional, implicit bargain has been that politicians are not only constitutionally accountable but also take the glory and the insults – the latter invariably following the former. And civil servants stay in the background in order to preserve their neutrality from partisan politics and their ability to serve ministers of differing parties. In return, civil servants get permanence, honours at the end of their careers, and generous pensions, all three now much reduced compared with a generation ago.
This picture was always misleading, but the bargain is also being strained as civil service leaders have come more into the public limelight via select committee appearances and, as successive cabinet secretaries have found, in being attacked, often unfairly, in the press.
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The real, complicated story is one of balance and of partnership between ministers and civil servants. That is hardly surprising given that ministers spend much of their time with their private offices and other key civil servants. Recognising the importance of these relationships is one of the many merits of Volume II of Charles Moore’s magisterial biography of Margaret Thatcher. He has not only seen the influence of civil servants via the official records but he also interviewed many key officials – who willingly talked to him when they would never dream of publishing their own memoirs.
The result is a more rounded picture of the way Thatcher took decisions. It also contradicts the false impression that she was anti-civil service. She was certainly critical of civil servants collectively, but she valued individual civil servants with whom she worked, such as those in her private office.
The Moore biography refers not only to minutes of meetings but also to civil service notes of advice about how to handle an issue. After all, private secretaries such as Robin Butler and Andrew Turnbull were constantly advising her on a wide range of matters, balancing the often discordant political and other voices urging her to take one course rather than another. Throughout the miners’ strike there were fascinating, and astute, notes from Turnbull assessing what was happening.
There is nothing sinister about this. They were doing their duty in serving Thatcher, advancing, and at times defending her interests. It is all perfectly proper and did not prevent either Butler or Turnbull from successfully serving Labour prime ministers as well.
The importance of official advisers is shown when they changed. For instance, a meeting in November 1985 on exchange rate policy saw a bruising stalemate between Thatcher and Nigel Lawson and other ministers about joining the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. She was left isolated. The failure of the meeting – which led to Lawson pursuing his own policy of shadowing the D-Mark – was partly the result of lack of preparation in lining up supporters for the Thatcher line. As Moore writes: “By ill chance, her main advisers and officials – Nigel Wicks and David Norgrove in her private office, and Brian Griffiths in her Policy Unit – were all new to their jobs. None yet had the relevant experience to fight the Whitehall battle in the right way. Despite her astonishing personal dominance, hardly anyone was working the system to get her what she wanted.”
Similar stories could be repeated both before and after the Thatcher years about the crucial influence of both private secretaries and cabinet secretaries in support of prime ministers. But is there a danger of officials becoming too powerful? Precisely because their role is behind-the-scenes, charges can easily be made, often mistakenly, about overmighty advisers, without civil servants being able to respond – as Sir Jeremy Heywood has found a number of times over the past four years.
Influence and power depend in practice upon what a prime minister wants, and permits. The classic case, covered by Moore, is about the roles of Charles Powell and Bernard Ingham, respectively her main foreign policy and press advisers.
They were directly involved in the murky Westland affair of late 1985 and 1986, when Thatcher feared that she might have to resign. Moore quotes Stephen Sherbourne, her political secretary, as saying: “She was professionally extremely well served by Powell and Ingham and she relied on Charles even more than Bernard. But I do think it was a problem. They were too personal to her and too powerful.”
These relationships are being explored as part of the AHRC-funded History of Whitehall project which my colleague Dr Catherine Haddon is doing in association with King’s College, London. There are narrow lines between working for a prime minister or minister and being seen as too powerful. The adage is that officials, like special advisers, should never become the story. The paradox is, of course, that they are inescapably part of the it.