Draftsman
J.A.G.Griffith
In on the Act Sir Harold Kent (Macmillan E8.95) The story begins in the late 1920s when the author was called to the Bar, disliked it, and in 1932 joined the Parliamentary Counsel's Office. There he remained as a draftsman of Bills until 1953 when he became Treasury Solicitor and the story ends.
Recruitment to the Parliamentary Counsel's Office came about because, at a Bar dinner, Sir Harold was introduced. by Geoffrey Lawrence, who had just been appointed a King's Bench Judge, to Sir Granville Ram. 'The port was excellent angl Ram was a lover of port.' Also Ram had been a close friend of Lawrence's brother and giving a helping hand to a protégé 'was the kind of thing at which he excelled.' Finally, Sir Harold was able to chat about a Private Bill on electricity supply, in which Ram was interested. Some months later, after a brief interview and no selection board, but with a good reference from Somervell, whose pupil he had been, our author found himself with a job. , The life of a draftsman might be thought not exciting enough to support a book of memories. Sir Harold proves that view to be incorrect. He has written a book that is, first of all, a good read. It is urbane, witty and has many good stories like the draft Defence Regulation which would have provided that no person should, without a written permit granted by the competent authority, make any sound transmissible by wireless telegraph. Or Stuart Bevan's reply when asked by the Judge in a case what he had to say to some unexpected body-blow: 'It makes me case the stronger me lud, it makes me case the stronger.' Or 'It is well known that every P.P.S. falls into a deep trance at crucial moments.'
Politically, Sir Harold is a steady Conservative who may have voted Labour occasionally. He wishes Gaitskell and not Wilson had been Prime Minister which is solid doctrine but he alarmed me more than a little by suggesting that Alf Robens might well have been the statesman that the country needed. I had not heard this before. Was it once a popular view amongst men of bottom?
So all the qualities are here which make the civil service efficient and incorruptible. This is government not by the inner circle but by the top table. Everywhere we are falling over the feet of Fellows of All Souls. And one other quality, also deep in the psyche of elevated public servants in Britain: a suffocating sense of complacency, of self-satisfaction. Sir Harold does believe, I am sure, that there is very little wrong with the higher reaches of the civil • service. Almost everyone he mentions is adulated. He speaks of Ismay and Bridges and adds: 'At every level the civil and military sides worked together in harmony, and thus there was created a machine of unrivalled efficiency, which was much admired by the Americans and provided a model for post-war international bodies, including the United Nations itself . .. When I contemplate that trinity of Bridges, Ismay and Brook I am not surprised that we won the war.' I know' he says 'all my geese are swans, but the difficulty is that they are!'
One small example about which I happen to know something will suffice. Sir Harold writes of Datne Evelyn Sharp and her evidence to the Franks Committee on Tribunals and Enquiries: 'She was the star performer and batted impeccably,' What she also did in her evidence to the Committee was to fight hard and long and stubbornly to seek to prevent the publication of inspectors' reports on public inquiries. She struggled for secret bureaucracy, she pleaded that any other course would 'embarrass' Ministers, she showed an insensitive disregard for the feelings of ordinary citizens. She lost, was overruled, and the law was changed. She was wrong.
If a foreigner asks what the civil service in Britain is like, give him this book. He will be charmed and amused, and impressed by the intelligence and the integrity. He will also understand that one reason why the country has declined is that its ruling group is bound together by the steel hoops of mutual admiration.
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