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July 9, 2006
John Delane
I have often mentioned John Delane as a hero and I ought to explain why; few people will recognise the name and fewer still will be familiar with the episode which has so caught my eye.
In February 1855 after only a few months of the Crimean War, the entire cabinet of the British Government was forced to resign in humiliation late one night after receiving, unexpectedly, the largest numerical defeat in Parliament that has ever, before or since, been inflicted on a British Government. That evening included some brilliant speeches by long forgotten MP's, but the whole drama was air-brushed very quickly from Victorian History. No history book admits the utter chaos of this country at that time. It was a frightening moment.
The cause of all this was the coverage of events by The Times newspaper and particularly its editorial articles. John Delane was the editor who brought about what was actually a revolution. For many weeks the country had no government and the administration of events, including the military conduct of the disastrous war, was dictated by the newspaper. He berated all the senior politicians who had disgraced the country for day after day and encouraged the people to take to the streets and find new leaders.
He had very lucid views about the cause of events- one of which was the unwillingness of those in senior administrative positions to take responsibility. Yet, as he said:
"When we boast of our institutions we speak especially of the responsibility of their government and we cherish an honest belief that every man who enters the public service has the terrors of responsibility before his eyes to stimulate him to extra exertion and to warn him of the smallest deflection from the path of duty."
This was his preamble to another assault upon the civil servants of the various departments he blamed for what had happened. He called for a great number of them to be removed and the practice which, he observed, did not obtain in ordinary business, of employing people for a lifetime, to be stopped. ‘If they cannot take responsibility for what they do, they are not needed by the rest of us’.
Every word he wrote would be useful to our current administration both local and national. We need, once more, his strength of leadership.
Posted by Perkins at July 9, 2006 9:52 AM