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The British Cabinet and the Ministry of Defense
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2013
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The announcement in October, 1946, that in future a single Minister of Defense will sit in the British cabinet, and that the ministers of the three armed services will no longer be of cabinet rank, marks the culmination of a long and important trend in Britain's governmental organization. It is also of interest as the present British answer to advocates of a merger of the Navy, Army, and Air Force. To see the full meaning of this step, it is necessary to refer to two closely related problems of long standing: the question of the size of the cabinet and that of what is broadly known as imperial defense.
From the beginning of the nineteenth century, the British cabinet, originally ten or eleven in number, increased to about fourteen or fifteen in the 1870's and 1880's. By the end of the century, however, increase of governmental services and multiplication of departments raised the normal size of cabinets to nineteen or twenty, and after the first World War to twenty or even twenty-two. Since the cabinet as such functions as a committee, it has been frequently pointed out that the present size is too large for prompt and decisive deliberation; and the experience of two great wars has shown without question that large-scale planning and the coördination of the innumerable interlocking aspects of a national war effort require a much smaller and more cohesive group. The existence around the premier of an inner circle of three or four ministers, among whom many of the most important decisions are made, is as old as cabinet government, but cannot be satisfactory for modern needs.
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- Copyright © American Political Science Association 1949
References
1 Convenient lists of cabinets from 1783 to 1914 may be found in Carr, F. C., Handbook of the Administrations of Great Britain (London, 1869)Google Scholar, and in Ensor, R. C. K., England, 1870–1914 (Oxford, 1936), pp. 606–614.Google Scholar
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10 Lord Salisbury pointed out that this was a position with much less responsibility and initiative than had been envisaged by his committee in 1924. Lords Debates, Vol. 100, Mar. 19, 1936, cols. 142–43.
11 Spectator, Vol. 158 (Mar. 19, 1937), p. 508. In July, 1939, soon after the decision for conscription, a Ministry of Supply was set up. It was not given full powers of economic planning, nor was it intimately linked with the Minister for Coördination. Elliott and Hall, op. cit., pp. 180–181.
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20 There has been some misunderstanding about the war cabinets of 1916–1919 and 1940, and the magic number “five” need not be taken as seriously as has often been done. In fact, both the Lloyd George and Churchill cabinets not only tended to grow in formal numbers, but were very frequently attended by certain ministers with a “right” of access, and by others called when the agenda concerned their departments.
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26 Lords Debates, Vol. 140, Mar. 27, 1946, col. 433.
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34 Par. 25.
35 The White Paper itself says this. Par. 15.
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