The Permanent Under-Secretary of State: A Brief History of the Office and its Holders

During the early- and mid-Victorian eras the PUS's role was in part fashioned by the personalities and ambitions of holders of the office. But it also grew in response to new demands on the time and energy of Secretaries of State, political developments abroad, advances in communications technology, the emergence of a career civil service, and parliamentary pressure for more efficient and more rational administrative structures. Backhouse, though dogged by ill-health and frequently forced to take long periods of leave, established the principle that, as the senior official, it was the PUS's duty to preserve Foreign Office traditions, whether these related to uniformity of rule and practice or the maintenance of regulations. He also claimed ascendancy in matters affecting the establishment, including the handling of clerks' petitions for extra payment for extraordinary duties. His functions were, however, chiefly administrative. Thus, while he appears to have been the first Under-Secretary to issue letters written on his own initiative, but ostensibly under the direction of the Foreign Secretary, where questions of policy were concerned neither he nor Addington were much more than intermediaries. Backhouse occasionally offered an opinion to Lord Palmerston, who was Foreign Secretary during 1830-34, 1835-41 and 1846-51. He conferred with Palmerston on the American boundary problem in 1835 and again on events in Constantinople in 1836. Nevertheless, Palmerston generally preferred to keep his own counsel, and he was cautious in devolving work to Under-Secretaries. 'Lord Palmerston', noted Sir George Shee, his political Under-Secretary during 1830-34, 'never consults an Under Secretary. He merely sends out questions to be answered or papers to be copied when he is here in the evenings.'

Palmerston was even less inclined to seek advice from Addington. The latter, whose diplomatic career Palmerston had terminated in 1833 on the grounds that he was too stupid and too ill-willed, owed his appointment to the patronage of Lord Aberdeen, the Foreign Secretary in Sir Robert Peel's second administration (1841-46). Nicknamed 'Pumpy', he seems to have been generally disliked within the Office. He, nevertheless, had Palmerston's support in his quarrels with the possibly still more detested Chief Clerk. The two officials had clashed openly in 1846 over Lenox-Conyngham's efforts to enforce Aberdeen's ban on smoking in the Office. After returning to the Office one evening to find it 'in a disgusting condition from the smell of Tobacco', Lenox-Conyngham proposed to summon each of the clerks in order to identify the delinquent for reprimand. But Addington considered this too severe a course, and that while it was 'a very good thing sometimes to take the bull by the horns', it was 'generally wiser to get out of his way'. 'When [he continued] an abuse has become an use by prescription, it is not quite fair, nor is it wise, to up with the club and knock it down. Smoking at [the] F.O. is in this category; and we must deal gently with those who have had their long allowed enjoyment suddenly cut off, and who shew some temper at the prohibition.'

Two years later, when Lenox-Conyngham declined to implement measures Addington had ordered for the defence of the Office against possible Chartist violence, Addington took this as a challenge to his seniority. The Chief Clerk insisted that such specific actions required prior instructions from the Secretary of State. But Palmerston backed Addington, and the net result of the dispute was a reaffirmation of the PUS's absolute authority over senior personnel.

Addington and his colleagues were also presented with more opportunities for influencing policy after Palmerston's resignation in December 1851. The three relatively inexperienced Secretaries of State who followed in rapid succession, Lord Granville, Lord Malmesbury and Lord John Russell, were far more inclined than their illustrious predecessor to look to their officials for advice. Meanwhile, increased business, particularly in the administration of consular work, placed new demands on staff. Addington's resistance to Treasury pressure for changes in personnel policy and recruitment was, however, to ensure that the clerks in the Office were to continue to spend much of their time carrying out such essentially menial duties as the copying, docketing and filing of despatches. In his endeavour to promote comprehensive reform of the Civil Service, Sir Charles Trevelyan, the Secretary to the Treasury, sought to root out dead wood wherever it could be found. But Addington and his successors successfully opposed open competitive entry to the Office and any measures which might distinguish between staff engaged in intellectual and mechanical tasks. They insisted that the work of the Foreign Office was different from that of other Government Departments, that it was of a more confidential nature, and that it was therefore only possible to employ clerks who were absolutely trustworthy. They would have to be gentlemen either known to the Secretary of State, or recommended to him, and as such they must be paid a salary commensurate with their social status. It was an attitude of mind which profoundly irritated those pressing for greater economy in Government. It also denied the Office the chance to recruit copying clerks, and condemned many of the bright, and not-so-bright, young men who joined it during the next half century to years of employment in work which was very often neither satisfying nor intellectually challenging.

Edmund Hammond, who succeeded Addington as PUS in April 1854, was equally opposed to Treasury proposals to bring the Foreign Office into line with the rest of the Civil Service. The son of a career diplomat, a Fellow of University College, Oxford, and the choice of the Foreign Secretary, Lord Clarendon, for PUS, he was, unlike either Backhouse or Addington, drawn from the ranks of the Foreign Office clerks. However, he too had firm ideas on how the Office should be staffed. 'There is', he contended, 'no department that at all resembles it [the Foreign Office] in the character of the work or in the manner in which it must be done.' The absence of routine work in the Office, the irregular hours that clerks frequently had to work, and the need for speed and accuracy in the despatch of business, meant that much depended on the maintenance of a certain esprit de corps to which Hammond felt the 'pariah' class could not contribute. A vigorous administrator, he believed that the primary requirement of a Foreign Office clerk was that he should write 'a good bold hand forming each letter distinctly'; and he resisted the introduction of electric telegraphy into the Office, complaining that 'nothing is sufficiently explained by it. It tempts hasty decision. It is an unsatisfactory record for it gives no reason.' But while Hammond, with the aid of Clarendon and the Prime Minister, ultimately triumphed over Treasury reformers, the business generated by the Crimean War (1854-56), subsequent wars in Europe, and speedier communications, forced changes upon the Office. The political (geographic) divisions of the Office gained in importance; an Assistant Under-Secretary was appointed and more clerks were recruited, so that by 1858 the Office had an establishment of forty-three, approximately the same as it still had in 1902; and the Parliamentary Under-Secretary became so preoccupied with the growing interest of MPs in foreign affairs that Hammond accumulated even greater responsibilities within the Office. By the end of the decade he was supervising four out of five of the Office's political divisions.

Hammond's period as PUS also coincided with the temporary relocation of the Office in Whitehall Gardens whilst the present building in Downing Street was being constructed during 1861-68. Little escaped his attention, though it was the Foreign Secretary, Lord Russell, who was responsible for reprimanding the Office Keeper and Assistant Doorkeeper, who during supper on the night of 6 April 1862 transformed one of the public rooms of the Office 'into a scene of riot and debauchery'. Of more immediate concern to Hammond was the appearance of rooms, corridors and staircases of the new building, whose care was entrusted to Mary Langcake, the Office Housekeeper. A formidable lady, Mrs Langcake had already quarrelled with the Chief Clerk over the extent of her responsibilities, warning him on one occasion 'that she would rather go and keep a lodging house' than take on extra work in the Office. But Hammond was far from satisfied with her conduct. In a minute of 10 March 1871 he protested that he had just heard that the 'generally filthy state of the Office attracted attention from guests at Lord Granville's party on the 4th instant, and that great complaints were made of the damage sustained by ladies' dresses in consequence'. There was, Hammond felt, no excuse for this state of affairs. 'The duty of the housemaids and charwomen in the Office', he insisted, '… is little more than can be done by broom and duster, and soap and water; and it is the housekeeper's duty to see that this work is properly done; and more particularly when there is a party in the Office, the Housekeeper, as such a servant in a private family would do, should be throughout the day looking to the state of the rooms.' And much to the evident irritation of the delinquent Housekeeper, he insisted that she henceforth go everyday before noon through all the passages and rooms, and satisfy herself that the maids had done their work properly.

The nineteen years during which Hammond was PUS witnessed both a clear acceptance of his authority in the Office, and the beginnings of the PUS's modern advisory function. Indeed, to the consternation of some social observers, he was on retirement at the age of seventy-two, one of the first Victorian bureaucrats to be rewarded with a peerage. But Hammond had also tended to concentrate all-important work in the Foreign Office in his own hands, and this left other officials with little opportunity to demonstrate and develop their talents. 'I think', complained one disgruntled colleague, 'that when Mr Hammond retires we shall find that with many very competent men in the Office there will not be one ready to take his place.' This may help in part to explain the appointment, in October 1873, of the thirty-eight year old Lord Tenterden as his successor. A nephew of the second Baron Tenterden, he had, as Charles Stuart Aubrey Abbott, joined the Foreign Office as a clerk in 1854. His career might have been unremarkable had it not been for the untimely death of one Assistant Under-Secretary in 1869, and the rapid translation of another to the Embassy in Berlin. In consequence, Tenterden became Assistant in the Far East and American division, and was able to win recognition for himself as secretary to Lord de Grey's mission to Washington during the Alabama arbitration proceedings. Two years later he was appointed Assistant Under-Secretary over the heads of all the other Senior Clerks.

Tenterden appears to have adopted much the same approach to the running of the Office as did Hammond.

He was, however, soon to discover a problem that was to beset many of his successors, notably that there was 'routine work' in the Office and that it obstructed strategic thinking. 'It has', he noted on 17 January 1876, 'occurred to me that it would much facilitate business and save some time and trouble to the Heads of Departments if I were to set aside a time during the day which I could devote to interviews and the discussion with the Heads of Depts. of important matters without being interrupted by routine work.' He therefore decided to set apart two hours in the afternoon, leaving the remaining time 'for signing and going through mere detail work'. In other respects a rather conservative figure, he nonetheless managed to displease the Conservative Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli. The latter's disastrous scepticism about Ottoman atrocities in Bulgaria in 1876 was attributed to the failure of the Foreign Office to send him the relevant despatches and telegrams. And Tenterden's subsequent criticism of the personal diplomacy of the Foreign Secretary, Lord Salisbury, was denounced by Disraeli as 'Tenterdenism—a dusty affair not suited to the time and things we have to grapple with.'

The Near Eastern crisis underscored the Office's need for immediate and reliable legal advice. Until the mid-1870s it had relied for legal advice upon the Queen's Advocate and the Law Officers of the Crown.

But in 1876 a Parliamentary Committee recommended the appointment of a Legal Assistant Under-Secretary, and Sir Julian Pauncefote was selected for the post. A former Attorney-General for Hong Kong and Chief Justice of the Leeward Islands, Pauncefote had only recently been appointed to a similar position within the Colonial Office. Hardly, however, had he taken up his new job in the Foreign Office before he found that, in addition to his legal work, he was expected to assume responsibility for superintending a good deal of the Department's political work. Tenterden declined to support his plea for the upgrading of his post to a full Under-Secretaryship. Nevertheless, when after a long illness Tenterden died in September 1882, Pauncefote was, despite the objections of those who believed a career official should have been appointed, chosen as his successor.

The business of the Office meanwhile continued to expand, and the complex geographical, legal and political issues raised by the Berlin West Africa Conference of 1884-85 placed severe strains on its limited resources. True, the official six-hour working day of 12 noon to 6 p.m. might seem short by modern standards. Indeed, Pauncefote complained vigorously to the Chief Clerk on 8 January 1886 when, after having arrived 'early' at 11.45 a.m., he found himself unable to summon an Office Keeper. But Clerks were not usually released from their attendance until all the day's work was complete, which often meant their working until 7 or 8 p.m., those in charge of divisions were required to do a good deal of work at home and, unlike other Whitehall Departments, there was no half-day holiday on Saturdays. Granville, in any event, heaped fulsome praise upon the Office when he resigned as Foreign Secretary in June 1885. 'I doubt', he wrote to Pauncefote, 'whether the Department was ever so well-manned as at present, & it is to that fact that I ascribe that with no increase of numbers, they have been so able to deal so efficiently with an increase of work. It is certainly the best type of the best civil service in the World.'

Prior to Tenterden's death the old political divisions of the Office were reorganised into larger departments. The French and German divisions thus became the Franco-German, or Western, Department, and the Ottoman Empire and its neighbours became the responsibility of the Eastern Department. Pauncefote's decision to continue providing the Office with legal advice required a greater devolution of work to the two Assistant Under-Secretaries. One of these, Sir Philip Currie, eventually replaced him when in 1889, Salisbury, who wanted to honour the Americans without demoting an Ambassador, appointed Pauncefote British Minister in Washington. Four years later, when the British Legation in Washington was raised to an Embassy, Pauncefote became Britain's first Ambassador to the United States. He is also remembered by diplomatic historians as the head of the British delegation to the first Hague Peace Conference of 1899, at which he played a leading role in securing agreement to the establishment of a permanent court of international arbitration, and as the co-signatory of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty of 1901 which sought to regulate rights of passage through the Panama Canal. A lawyer who stumbled into the rough and tumble of diplomacy, Pauncefote, made no great changes in the administration of the Office, but he was a conciliatory force during a troubled and stressful period in Anglo-American relations.

Currie was an official much more in the mould of Tenterden. He had entered the Foreign Office in 1854 and served as Prėcis Writer to Lord Clarendon during 1857-58. But he was also endowed with a private fortune and was socially well-connected. His cousin was the Earl of Kimberley (Lord Wodehouse), to whose special mission to St Petersburg in 1856 he was attached, and he was on close terms with Salisbury whom, on Tenterden's recommendation, he accompanied to the Constantinople Conference in 1876, and whose Private Secretary he subsequently became. Mary, his wife, was the novelist Violet Fane. His contribution to the running of the Office was nonetheless hardly impressive, and Currie was better remembered for the tricks performed by his pet dog 'Pam' than for any administrative initiative. He adopted a distinctly negative attitude towards the Royal Commission on the Civil Service which began its enquiry into the Foreign Office in 1890, and chose to ignore its recommendation that second division (copying) clerks should be employed for handling non-political correspondence. He likewise allowed the implementation of the Royal Commission's other main recommendation for the amalgamation of the Foreign Office with the Diplomatic Service to become bogged down in technicalities. Yet, the last years of Currie's career would seem to suggest that those raised in the Victorian Foreign Office were not the best suited for service abroad. Currie's rigid mannerisms did not endear him to foreign courts. Neither in Constantinople, where he was appointed Ambassador in December 1893, nor in Rome, to which he was translated in 1898, did he succeed in advancing British influence or interests.