No Tradesmen and No Women: The Origins of the British Civil Service

By Michael Coolican

Is our civil service fit for purpose? Michael Coolican takes John Reid’s damning statement about the Home Office as his point of departure for a comprehensive overview and evaluation of the machinery behind the government and the people who make public services work on a daily basis.

Beginning with Henry VIII’s chief minister Thomas Cromwell, Michael Coolican takes us on an odyssey through the history of the British civil service, starting with a time when public positions were sold and traded through Royal Warrant. Coolican examines the radical reforms of the Victorian era which entrenched a culture of elitism, misogyny and distrust of high-quality data as a basis for decision making, that, in some areas, persists to this day.

A former high-level civil servant with forty years of experience, Coolican has produced a pithy and, where necessary, ruthless analysis of the civil service and its relationship with government, especially at Cabinet level, bringing to bear detailed and extensive research informed by a true insider.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Biteback Publishing
• Release date: Nov 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9781785904578

Michael Coolican

Michael Coolican was a civil servant for four decades of his career, latterly as Assistant Secretary, Department of Trade and Industry. Occasionally interviewed by the Trade and Industry Select Committee, he notably gave evidence to the Scott Inquiry. His evidence to the inquiry was described as ‘startlingly frank’, whilst Private Eye renamed him ‘Cool Hand Coolican’.