Toby on Tuesday

'The Orderly Management of Decline'

With Sir Jeremy Heywood’s conduct over the Referendum as head of the civil service under the spotlight, let me tell you about an earlier head of the civil service, Sir William Armstrong.  Now when Edward Heath as Prime Minister from 1970 to 1974 was bent on taking us into the EEC, William Armstrong was head of the civil service – indeed his influence was so great that he was known as the “Deputy Prime Minister.”   His best known saying was that his task was “the orderly management of decline.”   It took later governments to reverse his and Edward Heath’s mindset, but even if the British people refused to decline, William Armstrong’s health rapidly did.   A recent semi-official account recalls how, “In the spring of 1974 William Armstrong, head of the civil service, suffered a breakdown...and talked apocalyptically of his control of the Blue Army in its war against the Red, then lay full length on the floor of Number Ten’s waiting room, at the feet of an astonished delegation of businessmen.”   An unofficial account describes further how he was naked at the time, chain smoking and shouting that the world was coming to an end, before being hospitalised and then sent to Lord Rothschild’s villa in Barbados to recover.   And what we laughingly call our “Establishment” looks after its own, for soon afterwards he became Lord Armstrong of Sanderstead and Chairman of the Midland Bank which rather says it all.

 

But not long before then there had been a time when our civil servants could think bravely and creatively.   Indeed there was a splendid civil servant in the 1950’s called Sir Frank Figgures who had been one of the instigators of EFTA, the European Free Trade Association, founded by Britain as a free trade alternative to the political construct of the EEC.   Indeed at its foundation in 1960 EFTA had seven members, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK, as opposed to the EEC’s six members, France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.   EFTA’s first two General Secretaries, Sir Frank Figgures from 1960-65 and Sir John Coulson from 1965 to 1972, were both British and both committed to our country’s traditional belief in free and open trade.   They negotiated a host of successful free trade agreements, including agreements with the global community of Commonwealth nations.   Yet in 1973 the “managers of decline”, the Ted Heaths and William Armstrongs, tragically turned their backs on EFTA to join the EEC.   But EFTA, which now consists of just four members, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, continues to prosper.   From its headquarters in Geneva it has negotiated preferential trade relations with 24 states and territories, in addition to the 28 member states of the EU.

 

So to argue that you cannot trade with the EU without being a member is simply nonsense.   And although this is not official UKIP policy, my hope is that on 24th June, the day after our Referendum, our civil service will dust down its EFTA files from 1973 and apply to rejoin an organisation based on open trade, rather than a failed attempt to create an aggressive European superstate.  Indeed, and I will write about this next week, I believe that the whole of Europe should now leave the EU and apply to join EFTA.   Politicians and civil servants like Edward Heath and William Armstrong in 1973, and David Cameron and Jeremy Heywood today, may not like any attempt to reverse their “orderly management of decline”, but the British people and indeed the whole Continent of Europe surely will!

 

Until next Tuesday!

Toby