![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The restructuring of Britain’s civil service is understood mainly as a Thatcher- and Blair-era event rooted in neoliberal economic policies. Yet its roots reach back to the late 1960s and early 1970s. During that time, senior civil servants turned to American management strategy to advance the government’s efforts to scale back the size of the service. This article explores these efforts via the activities of the Treasury’s Management Services Division and its Head, John N. Archer. In 1969, Archer made a month-long visit to the United States to study American management techniques. Over the next few years, he and his colleagues attempted to implement one of these techniques in particular—Office Work Measurement—throughout the service. Derived from scientific management, OWM would, they believed, help cut the number of positions in the service. In tracing these efforts, the discussion sheds light on an under-analysed episode in Britain’s civil service reform history. In turn, it argues that the OWM quest of the early 1970s played a heretofore under-emphasised role in the government’s embrace of ‘managerialism’ and the implementation of civil service reforms.
Acknowledgments
I thank the Department of History and the American Studies Program at Oklahoma State University for their support during the research for this article. I also thank Simon Fowler for his assistance with supplementary research at the National Archives, Kew, and the anonymous reviewers for their feedback on the manuscript.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1. Castellani, The Rise of Managerial Bureaucracy, 14; The Civil Service, “Report of the Committee”, 11–12.
2. The adaptation of American management strategies by British governments is documented in Pollitt, Managerialism and the Public Services; Carew, Labour under the Marshall Plan; and Knafo, ”Neoliberalism and the Origins of Public Management”.
3. Archer’s title was ‘Assistant Secretary’ of the MSD but as he was its de facto head, I refer to him as such throughout.
4. Archer explained the trip’s objectives in two letters to Creamer. 29 April 1968. BA26/26, 1, The National Archives, Kew (TNA); and Archer to Creamer, “Proposed Visit to USA and Canada”, 7 August 1968, 2–3. BA26/26, TNA. W. A. Roberts, “Notes on the Reports on the RIPA Visit to the USA taken at RIPA Seminar on 26.4.68”, BA26/26, TNA.
5. ”Report on a Visit to USA and Canada to Study Developments in Management Services”, March and April 1969. BA26/26, TNA.
6. Archer made his case about the need for a new managerial strategy in the service in several articles in O&M Bulletin, including, Archer, “Some New Approaches to Efficiency in Government Departments”; Archer, “Planning Government Management Services for the Seventies”; Archer, “A New Look for CSD Management Services”; and Archer, “Business Methods in Government”. Archer began to advocate the enlistment of American consultancies in the O&M Bulletin a year before his U.S. trip. See Archer, ‘Management Consultants in Government”.
7. Castellani, The Rise of Managerial Bureaucracy; Knafo, “Neoliberalism and the Origins of Public Management”.
8. Christoph, “The Remaking of British Administrative Culture”, 167–68.
9. On the Blair government’s commitments to managerialism, see Dillman, “Enduring Values in the British Civil Service”.
10. Knafo, “Neoliberalism and the Origins of Public Management”.
11. Ibid., 787.
12. Weiss, Management Consultancy and the British State, 18.
13. Tomlinson, “The British ‘Productivity Problem’ in the 1960s”, 209.
14. Agar, The Government Machine, Chapter 8.
15. The Civil Service, “Report of the Committee”, 11–12; Lowe, The Official History of the British Civil Service, Volume 1, 119.
16. Castellani, The Rise of Managerial Bureaucracy, 36.
17. Dutta, Knafo, and Lovering, “Neoliberal Failures and the Managerial Takeover of Governance”, 782.
18. Knafo, “Neoliberalism and the Origins of Public Management”, 780.
19. R. E. Dearing to J. N. Archer, 12 August 1971. BA26/23, TNA.
20. On the adoption of American managerialism and systems management respectively in the British civil service, see Pollitt, Managerialism and the Public Services and Knafo, “Neoliberalism and the Origins of Public Management”.
21. The shadowy demeanour often embodied by civil servants is reflected in their tendency to abbreviate their first names, thus anonymising them. John N. Archer adhered to this custom, adopting the nom de plume, J. N. Archer in his correspondence. In this article, I have used his full first name to bring him ‘out of the shadows’.
22. For an examination of the influential role of civil servants in shaping Britain’s colonial rule, see Duffield, “The Grey Men of Empire”.
23. Kipping and Saint-Martin, “Between Regulation, Promotion and Consumption”, 452.
24. Begley and Sheard, “From ’Honeymoon Period’ to ’Stable Marriage’”, 233; Bloomenkranz, Charles Bedaux—Deciphering an Enigma.
25. Pollitt, Managerialism and the Public Services.
26. Booth, The Management of Technical Change, 39.
27. Tomlinson, ‘The British “Productivity Problem” in the 1960s’, 190–91.
28. Carew, Labour under the Marshall Plan, 134.
29. O’Hara, From Dreams to Disillusionment, 9.
30. See for example, Shanks, The Stagnant Society; and Edgerton, “The ‘White Heat’ Revisited”.
31. The perception of the service as elitist and the appetite for its reform are charted by Lowe. See Lowe, The Official History of the British Civil Service, Volume 1, 83–100.
32. See O’Hara, From Dreams to Disillusionment, chapters 4 and 5.
33. Edgerton, “The ’White Heat’ Revisited”.
34. Dutta, Knafo, and Lovering, “Neoliberal Failures and the Managerial Takeover of Governance”, 489; Knafo, “Neoliberalism and the Origins of Public Management”, 782.
35. Knafo, “Neoliberalism and the Origins of Public Management”, 787.
36. On the deepening role of ‘planning’ in national recovery efforts and economic progress in the 1960s, see O’Hara, From Dreams to Disillusionment, Chapter 2.
37. Edgerton, “The ’White Heat’ Revisited”. For reasons discussed by Edgerton, this effort was ultimately unsuccessful.
38. See O’Hara, From Dreams to Disillusionment; and Saint-Martin, “Governments and Management Consultants”.
39. Pollitt, Manipulating the Machine. See chapters 5 and 6, respectively.
40. Wilson, “Failure or Precursor?”, 277.
41. HM Treasury, 1954, referenced in Wilson, “Failure or Precursor?”, 281 (my italics).
42. Archer, “Business Methods in Government”, 5.
43. The civil service scaled back its use of CWIP in May 1970 amidst union objections, especially to the timing of work tasks with stopwatches. The CWIP ‘package system’ was administered by WD Scott, an Australian consultancy firm. Archer, ‘Office Work Measurement in the Civil Service’, 8 December 1970. BA26/22, TNA. On the termination of the experiments, see M. Fleming, ‘OWM Summary Background’, Appendix ‘A’. 28 May 1975. BA26/57, TNA. On WD Scott’s work in the UK, see Wright, ‘From Shop Floor to Boardroom’.
44. On O&M’s fragmentation and declining influence, see Wilson, “Failure or Precursor?”, 283–87. Quote from p. 278.
45. Weiss, Management Consultancy and the British State, 55.
46. Ibid., 64–65.
47. McKenna, The World’s Newest Profession, Chapter 7; See also Kipping, “American Management Consulting Companies in Western Europe”, 209; and Kipping and Saint-Martin, “Between Regulation, Promotion and Consumption”.
48. Kipping, “American Management Consulting Companies in Western Europe”, 209; Wright and Kipping, ‘The Engineering Origins of the Consulting Industry’, 57, 62.
49. McKenna, The World’s Newest Profession, Chapter 7.
50. Whereas McKenna argues that higher-echelon restructuring was the most significant strand of consultancy work in Britain, Kipping, and Weiss each argue that shopfloor initiatives formed the lion’s share of consultancy services in the post-war period.
51. Archer, “Business Methods in Government”, 12.
52. See Weiss, Management Consultancy and the British State, Chapter 2. On the Wilson and Heath governments” continued focus on efficiency throughout the 1970s, see Castellani, The Rise of Managerial Bureaucracy. As Castellani notes, ‘The aim of the Fulton Report was to make the Civil Service more efficient and more managerially minded’, 17.
53. The trip itinerary, along with Archer’s reports on his meetings, are described in Archer, ‘Report on a Visit to USA and Canada to Study Developments in Management Services’, March and April 1969. BA26/26, TNA.
54. Among the civil service departments to send delegations to the United States to research American approaches to policy in the 1960s were the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Health, and the Plowden Committee (which worked on educational reform). See O’Hara, From Dreams to Disillusionment, 217.
55. Scott-Smith, “Her Rather Ambitious Washington Program”.
56. Sewill, “Policy-Making for Heath”, 60.
57. See note 10 above.
58. I. P. Bancroft to Archer, 5 May 1969, BA26/26, TNA.
59. A. L. Pollard to J. B. Pearce, 26 July 1971. BA26/23, TNA.
60. Guidance letter to permanent secretaries from Lawrence and Gilbraith, “Management—in Confidence: Office Work Measurement in the Civil Service”, August 1971. BA26/27, TNA.
61. M. Fleming, “OWM Summary Background” (”Appendix A”), 28 May 1975. BA26/57.
62. Hodder, “Employment Relations in the UK Civil Service”, 940.
63. Ibid.
64. Davis, Prime Ministers and Whitehall, 1960–1974, 110.
65. Memo from B. T. Gilmore, Lord Privy Seal’s Office. BA26/23, TNA.
66. During its OWM experiments, Greater London Council (GLC) cut 150 of 1000 positions measured, and made payments as follows: £10 to each of the one thousand clerks a month after the experiments began, £15 to those still working in the section six months after the experiments’ conclusion (‘by which time half the staff savings were expected to have been achieved’) and a final payment of £25 to those remaining, by which time ‘all of the savings were expected to have been made’. Later, half of the accumulated savings (after operating costs were deducted) were paid to GLC’s entire clerical staff (approximately £10 for each of its 6,000 workers). Thus, GLC made payments of approximately £100,000 while cutting 150 positions. BA26/22, TNA.
67. L. A. Wood, “Office Work Measurement: Pay Position Outside the Civil Service”, 10 February 1971, 26/22, TNA.
68. Archer, “Advice to Departments on the Application of Work Measurement”, n.d. BA26/23, TNA.
69. On management uses of employee participation in motivational campaigns within larger strategies of control, see Gray, Work Better, Live Better, chapters 5 and 6.
70. Paul De Berker to V. T. Morgan, 8 February 1971. BA26/22, TNA.
71. Ibid.
72. V. T. Morgan to Archer, 20 January 1971. BA/26/22, TNA.
73. ”Meeting of 14 June 1971”. BA26/23, TNA; V. T. Morgan to J N Archer, 15 July 1971. BA26/23, TNA.
74. See note 72 above.
75. See note 19 above.
76. Ibid.
77. J. N. Archer to Lawrence, 13 July 1971. BA26/23, TNA.
78. P. W. Swales to Mr. K. C. Lawrence, 4 May 1971, 2–3, TNA. This position was also taken by the prime minister’s office. In a report for the prime minister, Lord Jellicoe wrote that there were ‘insufficient grounds’ for agreeing to the CPSA’s calls for introductory participation payments for staff engaged in OWM schemes and that payments ‘could have very considerable repercussions on other employers’. Jellicoe to the prime minister, 10 May 1971, 1–2. BA26/23, TNA.
79. In August 1971, Archer chaired a meeting attended by fifteen senior representatives of government departments. While noting that the Ministry of Defence foresaw cuts of around 2,500 positions if OWM went ahead, he warned that employee ‘disenchantment’ and employee-management ‘strain’ had occurred in departments where OWM had been implemented without the CPSA’s approval. J. N. Archer, ‘Note of Meeting on 4 August 1971’, 11 August 1971. BA26/23, TNA.
80. Keith B. Robertson to G. W. Watson, 17 September 1971. BA26/27, TNA.
81. B. M. Thimont to V. T. Morgan, 21 September 1971. BA26/27, TNA.
82. D. C. Jones to Archer, 26 August 1971. BA26/23, TNA; K. J. Willoughby, Department of Trade and Industry to Archer, 13 July 1971 BA26/23, TNA; Donald Bishop, Department of the Environment to Archer, 27 September 1971, BA26/27, TNA.
83. See note 77 above.
84. J. N. Archer, “The Lord Privy Seal’s Speech at the Annual Conference of the CPSA”, 29 March 1972. BA26/27, TNA.
85. Ibid.
86. Meeting minutes, 28 February 1972. BA26/27, TNA.
87. Kendall to Archer, 13 March 1972. BA26/27, TNA.
88. I. H. Lightman to Mr. Wilding, 27 June 1972. BA26/28, TNA.
89. Keith B. Robertson, 14 November 1972, 3–4. BA26/28, TNA.
90. Southam, “Bowler-Hatted Union Barons and Naked Mandarins: Looking Back at the First National Civil Service Strikes”, Civil Service World, June 2, 2023. https://www.civilserviceworld.com/in-depth/article/smuggling-pinstripe-suits-and-the-naked-top-civil-servant-looking-back-on-the-1970s-civil-service-strikes.
91. On the oil crisis and the three-day week, see Beckett, When the Lights Went Out, 125–44.
92. R. W. L. Wilding, 5 April 1973. BA26/57, TNA.
93. N. E. A. Moore, April 1973, 5. BA26/57, TNA.
94. Pollitt, Managerialism and the Public Services, 56.
95. Carter et al., “All They Lack is a Chain”, 94.
96. R. W. Morris, “Wider Issues Review—Work Measurement”, 10 December 1973. BA26/57, TNA.
97. ”Introduction of Office Work Measurements: Alternative Strategies”, n.d. BA 26/27 TNA.
98. On McKinsey & Co’.s involvement in the reorganisation of the NHS, see Weiss, Management Consultancy and the British State, Chapter 3.
99. As Pollitt notes, in 1960 there were 637,000 non-industrial civil servants in the UK. This figure grew to 698,000 in 1970 and 738,000 after Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979. As Pollitt emphasises, while this growth was ‘significant’ it was not as high as that in local authorities or the NHS. Pollitt, Managerialism and the Public Services, 37.
100. George Hutchinson, “How Can We Sink this Overblown Armada of Civilservants [sic] that has Become a Menace to Us All?”, The Times, Saturday, October 4, 1975. MSS.292E/712.4, Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick.
101. Andrew Alexander, “The Scandal of the Whitehall Millionaires”, Daily Mail, Tuesday, November 18, 1975. MSS.292E/712.4, Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick.
102. Davis, Prime Ministers and Whitehall, 49.
103. Carter et al., “All they Lack is a Chain”.
104. Zifcak, New Managerialism, 16.
105. Smith, “From Consensus to Conflict”, 74.
106. Ibid., 73–74.
107. Lowe and Pemberton, The Official History of the British Civil Service, Volume II, 373. Analysts have cited slightly different numbers. Lowe and Pemberton cite reductions from 735,000 to 583,000. Pollitt states that the total cuts were from 732,000 to 590,00. Pollitt, Managerialism and the Public Services, 53. Important to note is that the staff reductions in the industrial civil service resulted partly from privatisation.
108. Clarke and Newman, “The Right to Manage”.
109. On the roots and emergence of managerialism in the British government and for explanations of why it had a stronger influence than neoliberalism on the government’s civil service reform efforts, see Pollitt, Managerialism and the Public Services, chapters 2 and 3.
110. Castellani, The Rise of Managerial Bureaucracy, 38.
111. Efficiency Unit, Making Things Happen, cited in Zifcak, New Managerialism, 15–16.
112. Jenkins and Jackson (Efficiency Unit), Improving Management in Government: http://www.civilservant.org.uk/library/1988_improving_management_in_government_the%20_next_steps.pdf, 21
113. Crines, Heppell, and Dorey, The Political Rhetoric and Oratory of Margaret Thatcher, 21–22.
114. Pollitt, Managerialism and the Public Services, 53.
115. Ibid., 54.
116. Dorey, “The Legacy of Thatcherism”, 35.
117. Pollitt, Managerialism and the Public Services, 49.
118. Pollitt, “The New Public Management”, 110–112.
119. Dillman, “Enduring Values in the British Civil Service”, 888.
120. Hood and Dixon, “Not What It Said on the Tin?”, 426.
121. Cooper, Tweedie, Andrew, and Baker, “The New “Corporate State”, 269–70.
122. See Saint-Martin, Building the New Managerialist State.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
David A. Gray
David A. Gray is a Teaching Associate Professor in the Department of History and the American Studies Program at Oklahoma State University. His research explores the history of work and society, especially how ideas about work have been shaped by specialists affiliated with management. He charts some of this history in his 2020 book, Work Better, Live Better: Motivation, Labor, and Management Ideology (University of Massachusetts Press, 2020).