What is a Civil Servant?
It is a tradition of the House of Commons that civil servants are not attacked in the House. This is partly because they are unable to reply, but chiefly because they are politically uncom- mitted. It would be .a strange and indefensible extension of this doctrine if the Labour Party's new advisers, Balogh and Kaldor, suddenly be- came politically invisible and immune by being Paid as members of the Civil .Service. No one Imagines, for example, that if a Tory Minister had brought a member, say, of Colman Prentis and Varley into the Civil Service, that the Labour benches would refrain from violent comment. If the Foreign Secretary chooses to appoint, as he has done, the Director of Publicity of the Labour Party as his personal assistant, and if what Mr. John Harris does in his new post calls for com- ment, comment there will certainly be.
Dr. Balogh and Dr. Kaldor have for a long time been advising the Labour Party on economic matters. We are seeing now the fruits of their advice. The House of Commons (and the press) cannot be expected to devote the whole of their criticism to the marionettes. They are entitled to say what they will about the men who hold the strings.
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