WHITEHALL DEPARTMENTS

See Also: CIVIL SERVANTS; WHITEHALL; MENU

The Department of Education

Website: www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-education

A.H. Halsey

In 1965 Anthony Crosland appointed the University of Oxford sociologist (Albert) A.H. Chelly Halsey (1923-2014) as an adviser. The academic came from a solidly working background. He had attended a grammar school. This had furnished him with a quality of education that had enabled him to enter the academic world. His research had combined with his Socialism to convince him that Britain would only become a more egalitarian society if everyone had the same education. As a private individual the puritanical academic found Crosland to be highly distasteful. He was to remember the minister as a profligate drinker and philanderer alcohol, cigars, women, even opera were avidly consumed. The politician compounded their differences by having concerns about the right for people to have the freedom to choose how they educated their children and the political liability of degrading the grammar school system.

In 1967 Patrick Gordon Walker succeeded Crosland at Education. Halsey found that he no longer had the same degree of influence as he had had.

In 1967 Shirley William succeeded Gordon Walker at Education. Within the Labour government she and Tony Benn were particular champions of comprehensive education. Yet, Halsey found that he was no longer taken notice of. In the early 1970s Margaret Thatcher had him advise her upon nursery education. She did not implement any of his proposals.

The Department of Health

In 1995 government figures were published that revealed that of all the ministries, the Department of Health had the highest rate of civil servants taking sick days (fifteen days a year as opposed to the national average of eight).

Location: Richmond House, 79 Whitehall, SW1A 2NS. Sir William Whitfield's building (1988) incorporates Richmond Terrace (1822) on its northern side. (purple, pink)

Website: www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-of-health-and-social-care

The Foreign & Commonwealth Office

In 1868 Sir George Gilbert Scott won the competition to design what is now the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (1873) building with a Gothic-style plan. The architect was an admirer of the work of Augustus Pugin and the Whitehall site was close to the Houses of Parliament. However, the then Prime Minister Lord Palmerston overruled the decision and insisted that if the man wished to retain the contract he would have to design a Classical building (the style was held to be a cheaper style to build in than the more ornate Gothic one).¹ Scott did as he had been bid and created the plan for the present building.

At the same time that the architect was working on the Foreign Office building, he was also designing the St Pancras Station Hotel (1876) in King's Cross. He is reputed to have relieved his frustration over the Whitehall project by stressing the Gothic element in the hotel's design.

One of the ways by which senior Foreign Office officials failed to ingratiate themselves with their ministers was by using Classical tags.

Charles Mosley (1948-2013) worked in the Foreign Office Research Department in the 1970s. He was asked what F.O.R.D. did. He replied They plot for Abroad and Against England .

Location: King Charles Street, SW1A 2AH (blue, brown)

Website: www.gov.uk/government/organisations/foreign-commonwealth-office

¹. The architect Sir William Tite M.P. was prominent in the campaign that prevented Scott from giving the new Foreign Office Building a Gothic fa ade. Tite called for it to be given an Italianate one instead. However, Sir William was not opposed to either Scott or the Gothic style. In 1863 he publicly applauded the architect s use of it for the Albert Memorial.

The Ministry of Defence

The Ministry of Defence Building was designed by Vincent Harris in 1913. Appropriately enough, in view of its intended use, its completion was delayed by not just one World War but by two. The building was finished in 1959.

It has been claimed that the structure is mounted upon a vast rubber platform that was intended to absorb some of the shock if it is ever bombed.

It is reputed that, when the London Eye was erected across the Thames on the South Bank, a memo was circulated to the staff who worked in the building that requested that those of them who were using rooms on its riverside side should be careful about leaving documents where they might be photographed by passengers on the Eye, who might have cameras with telescopic lenses.

Location: The Ministry of Defence, Whitehall, SW1A 2EU (purple, brown)

Website: www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-defence

U.F.O.s

The Ministry of Defence's DI55 intelligence section investigated U.F.O. sightings. The unit examined 7000 reported incidents over a 30-year period.

In 2008 it was reported that the Ministry was going to release its U.F.O. files. The French government had made its public several months before.

Location: Room 801, The Corinthia Hotel, Northumberland Avenue, WC2N 5BL (orange, turquoise)

The Reporter Who Knew Too Much

The prominent American journalist and television panel show guest Dorothy Kilgallen (1913-1965) claimed to have a contact in the British military who had confirmed the existence of U.F.O.s to her. She investigated the Kennedy Assassination, compiling a body of notes. Those whom she interviewed included Jack Ruby (n Jacob Rubenstein) (1911-1967), who had shot dead Lee Harvey Oswald who had been accused of shooting the president. She died in suspicious circumstances. The notes she had taken during the Ruby interview could not be found subsequently.

The Ministry of Technology

Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks sketch was a skit aimed at the Ministry of Technology.

Location: The Ministry of Technology, 21-41 Millbank, SW1P 4QP (orange, red)

Website: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCLp7zodUil

The Treasury

There is a tale that the Treasury Building (1912) was designed to be a set of government offices in Bombay but that, due to a mix-up, the Indian government ended up with the building that should have been the British Treasury. The ministry's interior character is reputed to be most un-British in its style.

As a government department, the Treasury is not always renowned for the financial acuity with which it handles its own affairs. During the 1990s the Cabinet Office had to take over the Treasury s centre for information systems, the C.C.T.A., after it had emerged that the Treasury had been unable to balance the section's figures for several years.

Simon Jenkins, in his books Accountable To None: The Tory Nationalisation of Britain (1995) and Thatcher & Sons: A Revolution In Three Acts (2006), argued that there were two parallel Thatcher revolutions. The public one, of which she boasted, involved confining the unions, privatising portions of the state, and encouraging the free market. The other, which stood in direct contrast to developments in every other state in western Europe, involved the transfer of power from the regions to the centre. This was in contradiction of the Conservatives professed aim of rolling back the state. The paradox stemmed from her own personality. She believed in freedom as a theory but felt a compulsion to control. The centralising trend continued when John Major became Prime Minister, despite his having a very different character from his predecessor. He was not a strong enough figure to counter the centralising tendency that had developed within Whitehall, which had gathered particular momentum within the Treasury from Nigel Lawson's time onwards.

Location: 1 Horse Guards Road, SW1A 2HQ (blue, red)

Website: www.gov.uk/government/organisations/hm-treasury

David Backhouse 2024