The Nelson Touch for local government

Town & Country Planning, March 2006

As darkness fell on the evening of 1 August 1798, Admiral Horatio Nelson led the British fleet into action against the French in Aboukir Bay.  The result was the first of his overwhelming victories, culminating in a catastrophic explosion that destroyed the French flagship, and an end to Napoleon’s ambitions in Egypt.

            What has all this got to do with localism?  You may well ask, but it isn’t entirely because I have run out of anything else to say that I am now discussing the Battle of the Nile, at least six months too late for the Trafalgar celebrations of last year.

            The reason is that I wanted to look a little more closely at that word ‘led’.  Because, in practice, Nelson was not himself in the lead ship in the British line.

            That ship was the Goliath, commanded by Captain Thomas Foley, and it was actually Foley who saw the opportunity that made the critical difference in the battle.  He realised that if the French fleet, anchored near the shore, had room to swing round on their anchors as the tide changed, then there was probably room to squeeze between them and the shore. 

            He took the risk, led half the fleet that way and was hailed as the hero of the victory, of which Nelson was the architect.

            So although Nelson laid down the framework for the battle, with regular dinners for his captains – his ‘band of brothers’ – so that his intentions became second nature to them,  Foley knew he that allowed to do something entirely different if he saw an opportunity.  In fact, that was the plan.

            Two centuries later, this principle seems relatively well understood in the private sector in the UK.  Ten years ago, I remember writing about Trust House Forte, which had decided to give every employee – however junior – a budget of £1,500 a time to solve any problem they encountered if they could.

            But in the public sector, as we all know, the opposite is the case.  Far from empowering frontline teachers, nurses, police or welfare staff, they are increasingly constrained by a bizarre set of central government targets – much of them contradictory, all of them irrelevant to the actual needs of the individuals they are supposed to be helping.

            There is some understanding of Goodhart’s Law in the private sector – that measurements that are used to control staff will always be inaccurate – but a decreasing realisation of the poverty of centralisation in an increasingly nervous government.

            A great deal of the political debate about localism and decentralisation seems to bog itself down in discussions about the precise divisions of responsibility in local government, and how to extend democratic control to local level. 

            Important as these might be, the real crux of the matter is initiative and imagination and whether the people who are so critical to the way we all live our lives these days are allowed to exercise it. 

            All these are corroded by the target culture, just as they are corroded by the size of the controlling institution.  The chances that the government’s new centralised education plans – however they will finally emerge from Parliament – and their giant new police forces will increase either initiative or imagination is probably zilch.

            But there is a cultural issue here which is debated even less.  Thanks to Nelson and his blind eye – though the incident with the telescope actually belonged to the Battle of Copenhagen – the Royal Navy has a healthy culture of disobeying orders where appropriate.  Of using initiative.  And while Britain felt itself a naval power, that principle filtered through society government and society.

            Now the Navy is down to its last handful of destroyers, and it is the army that we read about endlessly in the papers, we seem to have a military culture of hierarchy and control to take its place.  And, as anyone who did National Service knows, this tends to produce the same combinations of square pegs and round holes that central government institutions increasingly specialise in.

            So, remember the fleet review and the fireworks, and other celebrations of a glorious past we all enjoyed or endured last summer.  But actually, Nelson has some important lessons for the present as well – and how to make enterprise of any kind work, whether it is a battle or just the local hospital.

            I look forward to the day when Whitehall starts treating the poor benighted local authority chief executives or the chairs of hospital trusts – once they are brought back under local democratic control – as a band of brothers, as Nelson did his captains.

            Maybe we might then see some public service reform which is worthy of the name.