A class act

The civil service is to introduce a new question for job applicants, asking them whether they think that they come from a lower socio-economic background.

Of course the popular image of a civil servant is a bowler-hatted, rolled-up umbrella-wielding Sir Humphrey strolling along Whitehall with a copy of The Times under his arm, but in reality the term spans a huge spectrum, from the relatively small ranks of senior civil servants with their high pay and pensions to a far larger number of junior ones earning not much more than the minimum wage.

I worked in the administrative grades of the civil service for just over ten years, from the beginning of 1997 to the end of 2007, in what was first the Department of Social Security and then Department for Work and Pensions, and was also a trade union activist, briefly in the admin grade CPSA and then, following a merger with another union, the current, multigrade, union, PCS.

I'm not sure what I would have answered to the question, probably "No", but that's one of the problems with this idea: most people, whether they are rich or poor, think of themselves as average, because that is their and their friends' and family's experience, and because they wrongly estimate (poor people slightly underestimating and rich people wildly overestimating) what an average income actually is. There is also the problem of non-manual workers, some of them low-paid, seeing themselves as middle-class because they wrongly associate being working class with manual labour.

I'm also not sure what the civil service intends to do with the data. Two long-term studies, Whitehall I and II, have linked pay inequality and lack of job control in the civil service with a reduced life expectancy amongst lower-grade workers, and at the other end of the scale the Fast Stream graduate entry scheme continues to channel a disproportionate number of white, privately-educated men from elite universities into the top jobs rather than promoting people within departments.

From Humble Petition to Militant Action

Like fellow beer bloggers and CAMRA members Red Nev and Tandleman, I'm a former civil service trade union activist, in my case between 1997, when I joined the Department of Social Security as a casual Admin Assistant, and 2007, when I was made redundant after the local office I worked in closed.

A dozen or so mergers of sectional and grade-based associations in the last century led at the end of it to a single union, PCS, which represents civil servants across Government departments and agencies. I'm reading a history of one of its predecessor unions, the Civil and Public Services Association (CPSA), which I was a member of for just over a year before the final merger which created PCS. From Humble Petition to Militant Action was published in 1978 after the union commissioned the industrial correspondent of The Times Eric Wigham to write a book to mark the 75th anniversary of its formation.

The introduction to the book is a hoot.

"The abrasive character of Association life is probably in part a reaction to the humdrum routine of many of its members' jobs...many of the more energetic young members seek to develop in union work a freedom of expression they cannot find in their daily tasks....Youth is impatient. Association work offers an escape from the restraints and inhibitions of Civil Service life. Conferences and meetings give members an opportunity to let their hair down. Certainly on these occasions they bear little resemblance to the image of tea-drinking, rubber-stamping, buck-passing plodders which seems to be imprinted on the public mind."

Many of the things described in the book, disputed and cancelled elections, General Secretaries refusing to stand down at the end of their terms of office, court cases (the union's HQ in south-west London was famously dubbed "Clapham Injunction"), and arguments about affiliation to the Labour Party, will be familiar to younger union activists, as will the internecine conflicts between Catholic Action and the Communist Party in the 50's and the National Moderate Group, Broad Left, Militant and Redder Tape in the 70's: not for nothing was CPSA known as the Beirut of the labour movement.

I knew that women civil servants had to leave their jobs upon marriage up to 1946, but not that in the 20's the payment they received when they did made them attractive to the few young men who had survived World War I, nor that in the 60's the CPSA magazine Red Tape ran beauty competitions, printing photographs of young women members in its pages ("A motion submitted to the conference expressed disapproval, but got little support"). I also hadn't realised that the head of the Committee on Standards in Public Life between 2004 and 2007, Alistair Graham, is a former CPSA General Secretary.

Brewer's pounds

Anti-alcohol groups have seized on the fact that the new head of the civil service John Manzoni has been allowed to retain a non-executive directorship with global brewer SABMiller.

Although Manzoni will forego his £100,000 a year salary and place the shares he holds in the company into a blind trust, critics claim that these interests should rule him out being appointed as Civil Service Chief Executive,

I don't hold any brief for Manzoni (his activities in the oil industry haven't between without controversy and he seems set to introduce a more business-orientated, target-based culture into the civil service), or for global brewers like SABMiller come to that, and as a former civil servant I understand the argument about conflicts of interest and impartiality.

Having said that, I suspect that what those opposed to his appointment really object to is not his corporate background per se but specifically his links to an industry (brewing) which they regard as beyond the pale.

The Job Lot

I watched The Job Lot, ITV's new comedy set in a jobcentre, last night.

I worked in social security offices rather than jobcentres in my ten years in the civil service but I've signed on in them more times than I care to remember. I wasn't expecting too much from The Job Lot but I actually found it pretty funny and quite accurate too, more so in fact than many dramas set in the civil service.  I'd defy anyone who's worked in or signed on at a jobcentre to say they didn't recognise at least one of the characters.

The talented civil servant

I've just received the magazine of my trade union, PCS.  Along with other public sector unions, PCS will be striking at the end of the month over Government plans to attack our pensions and most of the issue is understandably given over to that issue.

There's a bit at the back though about Sarah Millican, one of my favourite comedians, who it turns out is also a former civil servant. 

It got me thinking about other famous former civil servants.  As well as Millican, there are comedians Phil Jupitus and Paul Merton and Mancunian musicians Morrissey and Ian Curtis.  I'm sure there are lots of others I can't think of just now.

So what is it about former civil servants? Are we overrepresented in entertainment and if so why? Does the civil service attract talented people or is it the experience of working in the civil service that provides comedic and artistic material? 

I know when I worked in the civil service we used to laugh at the lyrics of this song knowing that Morrissey had been a civil servant himself.