Oct 21 2007
Trafalgar day - a reminder of how to lead a public service
Today we mourn the deaths of 1663 brave seamen and soldiers who died fighting to preserve the freedom of our country against Napoleon’s imperialism 202 years ago.
Their deeds were heroic. 27 English ships of the line (including 3 small 64 gun vessels with no ship carrying more than 100 guns) engaged with 33 French and Spanish battle ships, including the three largest ships in the world in the coalition fleet (a 130 gun ship and two 115 gun ships). After a few hours action 19 enemy ships had been captured or destroyed by the English fleet. No English ship surrendered.
1805 had started far less auspiciously. The English navy was stretched by the need to control the Eastern and Western Med, to protect the West Indies, to blockade Toulon, Cadiz, Ferrol, Rochefort and Brest, and to patrol the Western approaches to the Channel. Napoleon in the summer massed his army at Boulogne with barges and ships ready to cross to England. Too may English ships were unseaworthy and not on duty.
The arrival of Barham as First Sea Lord in the Spring began the changes necessary. He took control of the detail to get as many ships as possible out to sea to allow the navy to carry out its worldwide role. He decided that Admiral Sir Robert Calder needed to be recalled from duty following his failure to destroy the French fleet in the battle of Finisterre. He made the important decision to give Nelson command of the English fleet to attack the French, and sent him to join Collingwood’s forces off Cadiz.
Nelson’s leadership rested on his own mastery of seamanship and sailing ship tactics, and on his ability to enthuse and reassure all the men under his command. He gave considerable latitude to the captains of the vessels that sailed with him, remembering how much freedom he had needed as a more junior officer when he had taken chances that represented deviations from the book or from the Admiral’s orders.
As a result practically every man that day wanted to engage the enemy in battle and believed that they would win. They did not worry that they were the inferior force attacking the superior force. The captains did not urge caution or object to Nelson’s unorthodox plan for the battle. Captain Harvey of the Temeraire ( a ship immortalised in a Turner painting at the end of her life) tried to overtake Nelson so he could get to the enemy first, only to be told by his Admiral to stay behind the Victory. Harvey, also a member of Parliament, and the Temeraire, subsequently were singled out in Collingwood’s victory despatch for taking on two French warships at the same time and forcing the surrender of both, saving the Victory flagship from some raking fire in the first heat of the battle.
Barham’s Admiralty won at Trafalgar for two main reasons. They combined administrative efficiency, getting more ships to sea well prepared for their task, with brilliant man management. Barham trusted Nelson to choose his captains and give them instructions. Nelson trusted his Captains in battle to get on with their jobs without close direction from the flagship. Lines of communication were short, people were empowered to make decisions and all were motivated by the Leader’s belief that they could win.
What a pity our public services today do not have those leadership skills, and that same concentration of purpose for peaceful ends that the English navy showed pre eminently on that day of light winds and great deeds 202 years ago.
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
[...] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerpt … engaged with 33 French and Spanish battle ships, including the three largest ships in the world in the coalition fleet (a 130 gun ship and two 115 gun ships)….27 English ships of the line (including 3 small 64 gun vessels with no ship carrying more than 100 guns)… [...]
“What a pity our public services today do not have those leadership skills, and that same concentration of purpose for peaceful ends…”
I don’t think the problem stems from skills and purpose not being there. I believe you’ve already stated the real problem indirectly - a lack of the trust and empowerment which Barham gave to Nelson and Nelson to his Captains.
In my opinion, where there are those leaders who actually have knowledge, wisdom, experience or ability, at any level in all government organisations including public services, they’re not permitted to use any of them. This is because every action, every decision, every budget, every statement is driven from the top down by a government obsessed with total state control. They provide steadily proliferating and ever-more restrictive regulations, and endless numbers of targets, which must be met and proved to have been met. Everything is micromanaged from the centre, with no room for deviation or reaction/adaptation to circumstances.
This all contributes to preventing independent thought, promoting a culture of absolute conformity (or at least one where the figures are fiddled to make it appear so), and ensuring exact adherence to central government provisos. Which means that everything is run according to the government’s incompetence and ignorance, with no relevance whatsoever to anything that happens in the real world.
Of course, one could cynically argue that those who have knowledge, wisdom, experience and ability tend not to get promoted to leadership positions, because they’re more likely to take decisions that actually make sense, rather than those which slavishly agree with the government’s prescriptive and proscriptive desires.
Reply: I agree that the absence of responsibility and the lack of motivation go together
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As a boy I remember being enthralled while reading the story of how Nelson at the age of fifteen was stranded with others on an icy ridge. Those aboard ship disembarked only to come under attack from a vicious man-eating polar bear. The older men fled in terror but fifteen year old Horatio Nelson didn’t run, instead he broke off some wood from the ship and fought the polar bear off. If only we had such spirit among our people today!
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“Of course, one could cynically argue that those who have knowledge, wisdom, experience and ability tend not to get promoted to leadership positions, because they’re more likely to take decisions that actually make sense, rather than those which slavishly agree with the government’s prescriptive and proscriptive desires.” (Kentishwoman)
This is certainly true in some workplaces, in both the public and private sectors, but not in others. Continuing with the military analogy I guess that you could equate employees that show hostility to the official line as ‘rash generals’.
Top-down targets afflict both the public and private sectors to some extent. However in the public sector a surprising number of targets are set lower down the food chain in ’service plans’.
Because of the way public finance works public sector organisations spend a lot of money promoting their agenda and providing ‘pots’ of funding to other public sector organisations that help to promote their agenda (for example central government departments and quangos award funding to local authorities). This is how a lot of the targets get into the service plans.
Because so many central government departments and quangos are removed from the action they have to get local authority officers to do their work on the ground. The local authorities lap up the cash like anyone would and serve the agenda of the whitehall/the quangos.
A good example is the unauthorised unlocking of mobile phones. You see market stalls and shops openly offering to do this, even though it is a criminal offence under the Communciations Act to do so. OFCOM do not employ ‘footsoldiers’ and have better things to do regarding competion issues anyway. Local Authorities are not authorised to enforce the Communications Act hence no one is ever punished for carrying out this black market activity openly and in public.
The way a lot of public services operate would be akin to Nelson’s ship not leaving port. Because the decision makers are removed from the nitty gritty reality, and no one on the ground wants to come across as being the proverbial ‘rash general’ that can’t be trusted to follow orders, masses of money is spent on a long and bureaucratic process of getting the orders and the funding from the Admiral to the gunners so to speak.
The electorate are left standed on civvy street blissfully unaware of what is happening out at sea. If the French Navy appears on the horizon, no one dares deviate from the service plan because missed targets equal less funding next year. The French Navy would have been allowed to dock at Plymouth and march ashore if the Royal Navy functioned the same way as ‘public services’ do. They would have been too busy meeting their annual targets for nautical miles to have stood around in the English channel wasting cannonballs.
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Small point, but it ought to matter to an out-and-out Unionist.
Nelson was in the BRITISH navy.
It’s the casual and consistent failure to recognise that there is, or ever was, a difference between that and English that is more of a “dagger to the heart” of the Union than any home rule movement within the UK.
reply: It was the UK navy, as Ireland had joined the Union. However, Nelson posted his famous signal “England expects…”, revealing how he saw it as the time, which is why I used the language I did. I always refer to the modern navy as the British navy, although to be correct we should call it the UK navy.
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