ABSTRACT
As with most issues concerning Britain’s constitutional and political arrangements, the Labour Party gave little serious thought to the role and (potential) power of the civil service whilst in opposition throughout the 1950s. This partly reflected Labour’s general disinclination to think critically or theoretically about the structure and operation of governing institutions in Britain, but also derived from a significant sense of satisfaction following the success of the 1945-1951 Attlee Governments in establishing a mixed economy and welfare state. This success tended to allay the suspicions of many of those on the left who had previously been suspicious about the politics of the civil service, and who thus feared that a Labour government would encounter obstruction and opposition – overt or covert – from an ‘establishment’ civil service. Indeed, at the end of the Attlee premiership many Labour Ministers were expressing their respect for a civil service which had apparently cooperated so conscientiously and professionally with what was widely viewed as a radical, reforming government. Herbert Morrison doubtless echoed the sentiments of many of his Cabinet colleagues when he spoke admiringly of ‘the meritorious loyalty which the Civil Service quite properly owes and practises towards its Ministers’, and which ensured that ‘the British Civil Service is loyal to the Government of the day’ (1964: 52, 345).
