William Armstrong, Baron Armstrong of Sanderstead

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William Armstrong, Baron Armstrong of Sanderstead GCB MVO PC (* 3. March 1915 in Clapton , London ; † 12. July 1980 in Oxford ) was a British government official and banker , the 1968-1975 head of the civil service ( Her Majesty's Civil Service ) and was Chairman of the Board of Directors of Midland Bank from 1975 until his death and became a member of the House of Lords in 1975 as Life Peer under the Life Peerages Act 1958 .

Life

Public service career

Whose father Armstrong Colonel of the Salvation Army , was completed after visiting the Bec Grammar School in South London to study at Exeter College of Oxford University and then joined the civil service. First he worked in the Ministry of Education between 1938 and 1943 and then from 1943 to 1945 private secretary to the Secretary of the War Cabinet , Edward Bridges, and was appointed a member of the Royal Victorian Order (MVO) in 1945 for his services there.

After the war, Armstrong moved to the Treasury ( HM Treasury ) and was there from 1949 to 1953 first private secretary ( Principal Private Secretary ) of the then Chancellor of the Exchequer ( Chancellor of the Exchequer ) Stafford Cripps , Hugh Gaitskell and Rab Butler . From 1953 to 1957 he was Permanent Under-Secretary of the Department of Overseas Finance and then Undersecretary of the Department of Internal Finance, before he was Third Secretary of the Treasury and Treasury Officer of Accounts between 1958 and 1962 . In 1957 he became Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB).

In 1962, Armstrong succeeded Frank Godbould Lee as Joint Permanent Secretary to the Treasury and, together with Laurence Helsby, appointed in 1963 as the successor to Norman Brook, took over from the then Cabinet Secretary Norman Brook and then Burke Trend the second most influential post in the UK civil service. In 1963 he was made Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) and has since had the addition of "Sir". He and Helsby held the joint office as permanent secretaries of the Treasury until 1968 and were then replaced by David Allen , who carried out the office alone.

Head of Public Service

In 1968 Armstrong succeeded Helsby as Head of Her Majesty's Civil Service and as such was also permanent secretary of the Civil Service Department , which was headed by the respective Prime Minister. Due to his considerable influence in the government of the Conservative Party , which was led by Prime Minister Edward Heath between 1970 and 1974 , he was referred to in the press and in public as "Deputy Prime Minister" ("Deputy Prime Minister"). During this time in 1973 he was also appointed a member of the Privy Council .

During this time, in the wake of the oil crisis and subsequent miners' strikes, some government-ordered energy-saving measures such as the three-day week took place. This provided that from January 1 to March 7, 1974, electricity consumption by commercial electricity consumers was limited to three consecutive days and it was forbidden to work on these for longer periods. Necessary service companies such as hospitals, supermarkets and newspaper publishers were excluded from this. Television companies were asked to stop broadcasting their programs at 10:30 p.m. during the crisis to save electricity. During this tense situation he suffered a nervous breakdown and was on sick leave for some time.

Chairman of the Board of Directors of Midland Bank and Member of the House of Lords

Shortly after he resumed his duties, the Department of Public Services’s Second Permanent Secretary, Ian Bancroft , told him he should ask Armstrong to accept the position of Chairman of the Board of Midland Bank. Sometime before that there was an internal meeting between Bancroft, Cabinet Secretary John Hunt, and the new Prime Minister Harold Wilson as to whether an official so closely involved in government economic activity could move to the board of directors of a bank. Previously, the former Heath government's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Anthony Barber , had taken up the post of CEO of Standard Chartered Bank .

The Prime Minister agreed that Armstrong could take up the position as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Midland Bank. After taking over this role in 1974, he retired from the public service and was replaced as head of the public service by David Allen.

For his longstanding service, Armstrong, who was also named Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath in 1968 , was raised to a life peer by a letters patent dated January 29, 1975 entitled Baron Armstrong of Sanderstead , of the City of Westminster was a member of the House of Lords until his death. Its official induction into the House of Lords was on March 4, 1975 with the assistance of Leslie O'Brien, Baron O'Brien of Lothbury and Burke Trend, Baron Trend.

Publications

  • Some practical problems in demand management , Athlone Press, 1969
  • The role and character of the Civil Service , Oxford University Press, 1970
  • Personnel management in the Civil Service , HMSO, 1971
  • The Individual, the enterprise, and the state: a collection of ideas and insights from a series of seminars held at the Oxford Center for Management Studies , Wiley, 1977
  • Budgetary Reform in the UK , Oxford University Press, 1980

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Revealed: The day Britain's top civil servant rolled naked on the floor ranting about the end of the world . In: Daily Mail of September 20, 2008.
  2. ↑ London Gazette . No. 46481, HMSO, London, January 31, 1975, p. 1427 ( PDF , accessed November 6, 2013, English).
  3. ^ Entry in Hansard of March 4, 1975
personal data
SURNAME Armstrong, William, Baron Armstrong of Sanderstead
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British government official and bank manager
DATE OF BIRTH March 3, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Clapton , London
DATE OF DEATH July 12, 1980
Place of death Oxford