The Civil Servants. An Inquiry Into Britain's Ruling Class

Paperback. Slight browning to spine. Couple of small creases to corner cover. Peter Kellner, political editor of the New Statesman, and Lord Crowther-Hunt, a member of the Fulton Committee of Inquiry into the Civil Service, have written a challenging and wide-ranging book which gives the first full modern account of how Whitehall works. Britian's top civil servants, they argue, are the real ruling class. Their power is substantial, and invariably deployed with skill and subtlety. And like ruling classes in the past, the Civil Service has constructed an elaborate system of defences to protect that power from erosion. In a modern asociety the bureaucracy inevitably wields considerable poer. The important issues raised here by the authors concer what sort of people wield this power, how they wield it, and whether they are subject to sufficient democratic control. The authors' conclusions on these issues provide a disturbing insight into the hidden machinery of government controlled by britain's new ruling class. 352 pp. (We carry a wide selection of titles in The Arts, Theology, History, Politics, Social and Physical Sciences. academic and scholarly books and Modern First Editions ,and all types of Academic Literature.).…