TY  -  JOUR
TI  -  ‘We lost a type of job for a type of person in this country’: changing expectations of working in the UK scientific civil service
  AU -Emmeline Ledgerwood
PY  -  2023
VL  - 
IS  - Spring 2023
KW - Building Research Establishment
KW - Defence Evaluation and Research Agency
KW - Defence Research Agency
KW - government research establishment
KW - government science
KW - life story
KW - Oral history
KW - organisational change
KW - privatisation
KW - QinetiQ
KW - Royal Aircraft Establishment
KW - scientific civil servant

AB - Organisational change in UK government research establishments (GREs) during the late twentieth century profoundly affected the scientific civil servants who worked in them.[1] Civil service reforms in the 1980s and 1990s led to the reconfiguration of career management frameworks, alterations to physical working environments, the introduction of new management practices and an increasingly commercial outlook in GREs, yet we know very little about the how these changes were experienced by the scientists themselves. A new series of oral history interviews with former scientific civil servants offers the personal perspective of everyday working life in a GRE. Through extensive use of interviewees’ own words this article reveals the norms and values associated with working in the scientific civil service and articulates the processes of organisational change that led to a fundamental shift in how government scientists felt about their work. In so doing it offers a record of a type of scientific working life in the UK that has largely disappeared as a consequence of bureaucratic reform and commercialisation.

N1 - Title quote from Paul Cannon interview, Track 4, [00:37:40].
N1 - See J O’Connell Davidson, Privatization and Employment Relations: The Case of the Water Industry (London: Mansell Publishing, 1993) and T Strangleman, Work Identity at the End of the Line?: Privatisation and Culture Change in the UK Rail Industry (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
N1 - The collection of interviews is deposited in the British Library sound archive:  C1802: Privatisation of UK Government Science: Life Story Interviews (2018‒2019). The interviews were conducted as part of an AHRC-funded PhD research project, and the author’s 2021 unpublished PhD thesis is available online: ‘Privatisation of UK Government Science: The Changing Working Lives of Scientific Civil Servants, 1970‒2005’. https://doi.org/10.25392/leicester.data.19193291.v1
N1 - The National Archives, DEFE 75/1‒55, Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) and Its Immediate Predecessors: Reports and Files 1991–2001 http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C16166 (accessed 2 June 2021).
N1 - See Appendix 4 of Ledgerwood, ‘Privatisation of UK Government Science’, pp 250‒261.
N1 - Sarah Herbert interview, Track 8 [01:07:33‒01:09:02]. Herbert is referring to the Royal Aircraft Establishment (Farnborough), the Admiralty Materials Laboratory (Holton Heath), the Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment (Fort Halstead), the Admiralty Naval Construction Research Establishment (Rosyth) and the Military Engineering Experimental Establishment (Christchurch). 
N1 - Ian Linsdell interview, Track 2 [00:40:57‒00:43:17]
N1 - Mike Westby interview, Track 2 [00:15:33‒00:15:41] and Track 3 [00:12:13‒00:13:16] 
N1 - Susan James interview, Track 3 [00:01:06]
N1 - Paul Cannon interview, Track 3 [00:19:35‒00:21:19] and Track 4 [00:51:35‒00:53:12]
N1 - Mike Westby interview, Track 4 [00:19:34‒00:20:37]
N1 - Larkhill refers to the Royal School of Artillery ranges on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire.
N1 - David Dunford interview, Track 1 [00:07:33‒00:10:30; 00:43:13‒00:43:27]  
N1 - Vic Crisp interview, Track 5 [00:06:23‒00:07:03] and Track 6 [00:33:28‒00:33:44]
N1 - Shirley Jenkins interview, Track 2 [00:22:59‒00:24:31]
N1 - Anthony Bravery interview, Track 2 [00:44:04‒00:44:42]
N1 - Chris Peel interview, Track 2 [00:10:24‒00:10:59]
N1 - Anthony Bravery interview, Track 5 [00:27:05‒00:29:00]
N1 - Robyn Thorogood interview, Track 4 [00:08:57‒ 00:09:21]
N1 - Anthony Bravery interview, Track 4 [00:18:56‒00:19:20]
N1 - Steve Rooks interview, Track 2 [00:54:25‒00:55:00]
N1 - A key exploration of these types of relationships is in M Sanderson, The Universities and British Industry, 1850‒1970 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972).
N1 - Phil Catling interview, Track 1 [00:13:48‒00:14:43]
N1 - Steve Rooks interview, Track 3 [01:03:24‒01:03:58]
N1 - Paul Cannon interview, Track 3 [00:26:58‒00:27:24] and Track 5 [00:02:35‒00:03:03]. Sarah Herbert and Alan Gray both worked in Whitehall.
N1 - See also J B Morrell, ‘Professionalisation’, in R C Olby (ed), Companion to the History of Modern Science (London: Routledge, 1990), pp 980‒989 and Ferlie et al., The New Public Management in Action, pp 165–94
N1 - ‘British science in decline. Evidence prepared by Save British Science for the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology, 3 June 1986’, quoted in Agar, Science Policy under Thatcher, p 3
N1 - David Dunford interview, Track 7 [00:46:55‒00:47:51]; HM Treasury, Supply Estimates: A Guidance Manual (2011)
N1 - Sarah Herbert interview, Track 5 [00:01:47‒00:02:17]
N1 - David Dunford interview, Track 2 [0:24:45‒00:25:07]. Soon after the de Havilland Comet entered service in 1952, three of the aircraft crashed after breaking up in-flight.
N1 - Paul Cannon interview, Track 4 [00:23:42‒00:24:43]
N1 - Mike Westby interview, Track 2 [00:56:29‒00:59:00]
N1 - Anthony Bravery interview, Track 4 [00:07:08‒00:07:44]
N1 - Anthony Bravery interview, Track 2 [00:25:42‒00:30:56]
N1 - Shirley Jenkins interview, Track 1 [00:52:25] and Track 2 [00:35:57‒00:36:32] 
N1 - Chris Peel interview, Track 6 [00:00:43‒00:01:20] and Track 3 [00:48:25‒00:49:32]
N1 - Phil Catling interview, Track 1 [00:36:13‒ 00:37:48]
N1 - P Mirowski and R van Horn, ‘The Contract Research Organization and the Commercialization of Scientific Research’, Social Studies of Science, 35, no. 4 (2005), pp 503–48 (p 531)
N1 - Roger Courtney interview, Track 10 [00:26:57‒00:28:14] and Track 16 [00:12:36‒00:13:28]
N1 - Anthony Bravery interview, Track 8, [00:40:42]
N1 - Sarah Herbert interview, Track 7 [00:23:21‒00:24:23]
N1 - Ian Linsdell interview, Track 2 [00:32:27‒00:33:40]
N1 - Mike Westby interview, Track 1 [01:00:43]
N1 - Anthony Bravery interview, Track 3 [00:36:15‒00:37:01]
N1 - Vic Crisp interview, Track 2 [00:37:28‒00:38:03]
N1 - For an example of New Right arguments, see D Howell, A New Style of Government: A Conservative View of the Tasks of Administrative, Financial and Parliamentary Reform Facing an Incoming Government (London: Conservative Political Centre, 1970). 
N1 - Sarah Herbert interview, Track 6 [00:51:46]
N1 - Mike Westby interview, Track 6 [00:44:02]
N1 - Chris Peel interview, Track 5 [00:06:32‒00:08:48] and Track 6 [00:06:20]
N1 - David Dunford interview, Track 8 [00:41:31] and Track 4 [00:44:19‒00:44:30]
N1 - Ian Linsdell interview, Track 9 [00:08:18]
N1 - Ian Linsdell interview, Track 7 [00:10:04‒00:10:27]
N1 - Susan James interview, Track 2 [00:42:45‒00:43:06] and Track 4 [00:45:42‒00:47:30]
N1 - Shirley Jenkins interview, Track 7 [00:21:41‒00:22:16; 00:43:55‒00:45:26]
N1 - Paul Cannon interview, Track 5 [01:09:33‒01:10:21]
N1 - Paul Cannon interview, Track 4 [00:24:44‒00:26:27]
N1 - Anthony Bravery interview, Track 7 [00:01:21‒00:02:25; 00:19:18‒00:19:44]
N1 - Susan James interview, Track 5 [00:04:41‒00:05:55]
N1 - Sarah Herbert interview, Track 5 [00:50:35‒00:51:31]
N1 - David Dunford interview, Track 7 [00:04:22‒00:04:57]
N1 - David Dunford interview, Track 9 [00:40:03‒00:42:43]
N1 - Steve Rooks interview, Track 2 [01:01:22‒01:02:32; 00:53:09‒00:53:27]; Rooks, Track 3 [00:52:53‒00:54:39] and Track 6 [00:39:22‒00:40:11]
N1 - Paul Cannon interview, Track 6 [00:19:34‒00:20:09]
N1 - Mike Westby interview, Track 5 [00:46:04‒00:46:42]
N1 - Paul Cannon interview, Track 4 [00:31:11‒00:32:53]
N1 - Anthony Bravery interview, Track 7 [00:30:14‒00:31:54]
N1 - Phil Catling interview, Track 4 [00:45:48‒00:46:33]
N1 - Ian Linsdell interview, Track 8 [00:17:16‒00:18:05]
N1 - Mike Westby interview, Track 5 [00:47:22‒00:48:03]
N1 - Chris Peel interview, Track 6 [00:55:16 ‒00:56:00]
N1 - Paul Cannon interview, Track 4 [00:37:40]
PB - The Science Museum Group
 
SN -  2054-5770
LA -  eng
DO -  10.15180/231903
UR -  https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/we-lost-a-type-of-job-for-a-type-of-person-in-this-country-changing-expectations-of-working-in-the-uk-scientific-civil-service/
T2 -  Science Museum Group Journal