POLITICAL COMMENTARY
Why not a spoils system?
PETER PATERSON
Only the most flinty-hearted and vengeful of partisan politicians would fail to be moved by the plight of Mr Anthony Green- wood. One can concede that he was hardly a success as Minister of Housing—and ac, knowledge that this was not his own fault so much as that of a government which gave housing a low financial priority. He was re- jected by the party he was born into when the general secretaryship became vacant and was allotted to Mr Harry Nicholas. And now, having given up his seat in Parliament on the promise of the chairmanship of the Com- monwealth Development Corporation—a job worth something like £2,000 a year more than that of Minister of Housing—he finds it snatched away from under his eyes by a new administration.
The response of the mean-minded and churlish—for they do unfortunately exist in rather large numbers—is 'serve him right,' and the neanderthal cry of 'Jobs for the Boys' goes up once more. Slightly more intelli- gently. anxious leader writers wonder whether the American spoils system of poli- tics is taking a grip, and whether anyone in the public service can ever feel safe again. And to be fair, this attitude is not just based on the Greenwood case: assorted public re- lations officers to the Wilson government have found themselves made redundant, Mr Aubrey Jones faces a fate worse than death with Laporte Industries, and there are nasty rumours that neither Mr Frank Cousins at the Community Relations Commission, nor Lord Wigg at the Horserace Betting Levy Board—is nothing sacred?—is entirely safe from the Heath purge.
The first point to make is that there is no discernible Heath purge as such. Convention demands that a new government does not immediately sack every person appointed to a public board by its predecessors, and in- deed the system would probably collapse if they did. The Greenwood case, which has caused the most fuss, was just one more example of the arrogance and mismanage- ment of Mr Harold Wilson—arrogance be- cause he announced Mr Greenwood's appoifitment just about five minutes before a general election he was utterly convinced he was going to win, and mismanagement be- cause he imagined that Edward Heath would merely sit back and accept as blatant a piece of placemanship as anything since the reign of Walpole. Poor Mr Greenwood is just the fall guy. Mr Heath can probably be faulted in his treatment of Mr Wilson's private secretary Mr Alexander Isserlis, who might have been expected to continue awhile with the new Prime Minister but who instead found him- self removed. There are two sides to this argument, one interpretation of history being that a Prime Minister—or any minister —is entitled to rearrange his private office as he sees fit, and the other that private sec- retaries do not achieve that key rank unless they are peculiarly suited by nature to serve Labour or Tory masters alike with complete loyalty, and can therefore be expected to stay on with a new master. Mr Isserlis's statement absolving Mr Heath of any blame and contending that he had half expected this treatment anyway may be put down as a measure of career protection, The altogether worrying thing about the whole argument that has developed—not so much an argument in Mrs Judith Hart's case as a brawl—is the degree of good old British hypocrisy involved. Everyone knows that the Prime Minister and his cabinet have any number of paid and unpaid jobs at their dis- posal, and that this power of patronage is sometimes used to reward political friends. butter up the opposition or even just to do someone a good turn on a personal level. To pretend otherwise is to deny the role of human frailty in public life.
It has been estimated as a result of assiduous questioning of Labour ministers earlier this year that the government has at its disposal something like 50,000 appoint- ments to boards, agencies, commissions, authorities, councils, societies, corporations and committees. Salaries range from the £25,000 paid to Lord Melchett of the British Steel Corporation down to £750 a year paid to the three part time members of the Sugar Board.
Many posts are of course unpaid, or listed as such, though in a fair number of cases an undisclosed sum is paid from public funds to make up the salaries of people seconded from industry on a full or part time basis: just how much is never disclosed. And sometimes it really is done for love. I seem to recall an acquaintance who was a member of the Hop Board—which presum- ably had something to do with the supply of raw materials to the brewing industry— whose remuneration consisted of an enor- mous meal once a year. Or so he said.
Payment for public service seems slightly capricious, to say the least. Why, for ex- ample, should Mr R. F. Pugh receive £1,500 a year as a part time member of the British Transport Docks Board, while Mr G. H. Lowthian, CBE, gets only £1,000—and Mr D. A. Stringer is unpaid? And with Lt Col Richard Seifert getting himself a footnote in Cmnd 4245—the White Paper listing mem- bers of public boards of a commercial char- acter—for not drawing his £1,000 a year from the British Waterways Board, doesn't this make other part timers like Mr Illtyd Harrington and the Hon A. L. Hood feel slightly embarrassed?
Cmnd 4245 is not, of course, comprehen- sive. It lists only nationalised industries and similar institutions of a commercial charac- ter to which ministers have the power of appointment. A boring list, generally, with- out that John Gordon-ish capacity for en- raging the taxpayer that one expects from such compendiums.
But the British pork barrel is consider- ably more interesting once one moves away from the area of at least notional profit- making. The Home Secretary has a pretty good list of jobs which are occasionally on offer—indeed, the futures of both Mr
Cousins and Lord Wigg seem to be in his hands if you make the somewhat naive assumption that lie would consider their posts without having' a word with Mr Heath. Apart from the Community Relations Commission and the Horserace Betting Levy Board, Mr Maudling is entitled to appoint members to the Gaming Board, the Race Relations Board and the Horserace Totalis- ator Board, forty-three jobs in all and most of thCm fairly lucrative (twelve guineas a day as a part timer on Community Relations, which beats the House of Lords).
Mr Maudling also has the Parole Board, a body which perfectly illustrates what the Prices and Incomes Board was in existence for, since it pays the psychiatrists among its nineteen part-time members £16 a day, while the two barristers with the rank of Recorder receive £21 4s a day, and High Court judges are expected to give their ser- vices free.
If you get on to the list of the President of the Board of Trade, you can earn your- self fifteen guineas a day as a member of the Performing Right Tribunal, or do even better with the Cinematograph Films Coun- cil or British Overseas Airways Corporation —£1,000 a year for turning up at board meetings. For it is wise to turn up, non- attendance being one of the grounds on which, a minister having given you a job, a minister can take it away. You can also be removed for bankruptcy (when is this victimisation of the indigent going to stop?), physical or mental incapacity, conviction of a statutory offence, or a vague 'inability or unfitness' to discharge your duties.
Without getting down to what will no doubt be as important a piece of patronage for the present Prime Minister as the appoint- ment of bishops of the established church— that is, membership of the Working Group on Safety Appliances for Pleasure Yachts Under 45 Feet—one can make the point that we already have a spoils system in this country, a ready-made alternative to an out- worn honours system. It is ridiculous to complain that we are importing the Ameri- can way of government—we already have a version of it suitably adapted by the native genius of our own politics. Politicians so far have been shy of acknowledging it — the identity of the beneficiaries has to be wrung from reluctant ministers, who generally give written answers to avoid cross-examination in the House. But life peerages kicked the stuffing out of the old arrangements for look- ing after one's political friends and the busy government appointees are no doubt just as happy on their boards and commissions as their predecessors were to receive their knighthoods and peerages. In fact, 18 per cent of the entries in Oland 4245 already boast an old-style title and have clearly now moved on to more trendy things.
All that really remains is for politicians to be a little less covert about their patron- age, making it clear that there are means at their disposal to enhance the status and the pride of those of their supporters who would once have yearned for a place in the honours list. We might regard it as an extension of the new science of tribology invented during Mr Wedgwood Benn's tenure at Mintech and dedicated to finding lubricants which will effectively eliminate or reduce friction (and there's a nice little committee looking into that, too). And, finally, the parties should appoint a select committee (expenses only) to work out some ground rules for the new patronage to avoid the silly squabbling that has developed over poor Mr Greenwood.
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