From ‘Cabinet Responsibility’, The Spectator, 1 May 1915:
The maintenance of Cabinet responsibility, that is, the responsibility of the Cabinet as a whole for the acts of individual Ministers, is of the utmost importance for the welfare of the nation. It is only through such Cabinet responsibility that the country can hope to obtain a strong, coherent, and therefore successful administration of its affairs. If once we admit that Cabinet Ministers can shrug their shoulders at the actions of a colleague and say that his mistakes or his negligence are his affair and that they have no share in the blame—if, in fact, the Government are treated as if the great Office were in water-tight compartments, we shall never be able to hold the Ministry accountable for their actions, and force them to observe that vigilance and high sense of duty in regard to the work of Government without which the affairs of the nation are sure to fall into disorder.
Unfortunately there has been a marked tendency of late among the critics of the Ministry to give support to this dangerous view of individual rather than of collective responsibility by levelling their criticism by name at the heads of special Ministers, and by attempting to hold these Ministers personally responsible for the action taken by their Departments. When we deprecate this singling out of individual Ministers for personal attack, it must not be supposed that we object to criticism. On the contrary, we hold it in itself, and if justly applied and without prejudice, to be essential to good government. Criticism is the necessary antiseptic of administration, and we are convinced that without it we shall never get good management of public affairs whether in war or peace. It is only when Ministers and the Departments over which they preside know that they will be exposed to criticism if they go wrong, that we can feel sure that they will take the maximum of trouble to avoid false steps. Man is a lazy animal, even when the greatest interests are involved, and will idle and shirk if he dares…
The Government cannot have it both ways. We must enforce the responsibility of the Cabinet as a whole. If not, and if various Ministers are allowed to act on their own without that co-ordination which comes from the maintenance of collective responsibility, we shall be in imminent danger. On the merits of the case which we have taken for illustration we pronounce no final opinion, because the facts are not known to us, but only to the Government. Our object in writing as we have written is to point out to the public that they will never obtain proper control of their affairs if they once abandon the safeguard of collective Cabinet responsibility and allow individual responsibility to be substituted for it. We must never permit Governments to answer criticism by saying: “Please, Sir, it was not us. It was that impulsive fellow Blank. We always thought that he would make a mess of it, and he has. No one can control him.” Our answer must be: “But it was your business to control him. If you endorse his action by keeping him where he is, on your heads will be his blunders.” If once Governments are made to feel that, we shall get Ministerial supervision. Without it we shall get none. The House of Commons, owing to the extremity of the party system, has become utterly incapable of controlling the persons to whom it delegates national affairs. Unless the Cabinet control their members, it becomes a case of mere “Go as you please.”
Here is our final word. Those—and they are many— who, though they have no personal feeling against Mr. Churchill, have come to regard him as a public danger, and desire that he shall not remain in his present position, should remember that they will never see him moved from the Admiralty unless they insist upon the collective responsibility of the Cabinet in the fullest sense. They must make Mr. Churchill’s colleagues realize that they are one and all individually responsible for his acts, and that when he commits himself he commits them. Only by making them feel thus can a remedy be provided.
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