The Twisted History of Red Tape
A few thoughts on why the art of spoiling paper will never end
In 1872, Thomas Baker, a senior Barrister-at-Law of London’s Inner Temple, produced a slim volume of invective with the cumbersome title The Insidious Red Tape Form of Government in England.
Along with a seven-page rant about a completely unconnected subject, it amounted to 39 pages of rational and well-argued loathing of what Baker saw as the self-serving wing of the civil service.
‘What then is this mighty power?’ Baker asks rhetorically. ‘The system has, in one sense, been very aptly described as the art of spoiling paper; for the tons of thick foolscap wasted by its votaries in the effort to kill time are incalculable.’
Previously known only for penning a series of lengthy and sober legal texts, Baker was responsible for blockbusters like ‘The Laws Relating to Burials in England and Wales’ — complete, according to the subtitle, with ‘notes, forms’ and, alarmingly, ‘practical instructions’. So, his pithy tirade was a little out of character. It was also, nevertheless, a fine example of what can happen to anyone when faced with insurmountable obstacles like government departments and intractable bureaucracy.
Besides the archaic turn of phrase, the anachronistic references to Victorian grandees long forgotten and Baker’s detailed examples of waste and extravagance in what seems now like Palaeolithic currency, the book could easily have been written last week.
Particularly if last week was, for instance, the last week of an election campaign.
Such shrill libertarian opinions would not be out of place coming from the mouth of many 21st-century politician seeking easy votes in exchange for popular promises. Baker’s fascination with the administrative stalemate, nepotism and corruption of his time still ring true today. Indeed, we hear so much about red tape, how it is essential to cut it in government and local councils, it may come as a surprise that one government body has already banned it .
Actually, that’s not quite true. The Stationery Office — set up by the Treasury in 1786 to bulk-buy office supplies for the Crown — did indeed abolish red tape in 1914, but they were more concerned with tackling supply problems than setting up an Edwardian Better Regulation Task Force.
Taking a lead from legal clerks, who had been binding documents together with red ribbon since the 17th century, civil servants had long since tied official papers with red cloth. At the outbreak of the First World War the Stationery Office let it be known that there would be no more red tape, as the red dye was manufactured in enemy territory.
The name lives on, however, along with all the irritation and anger that bureaucracy causes. If the term ‘red tape’ has a long legacy, the concept of bureaucracy is apparently timeless.
The word ‘bureaucracy’ was first used in the mid-17th century by the French laissez-faire economist Jean Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay. De Gournay became the French Administrator of Commerce in 1751 and coined the term in response to the multitude of official regulations first put in place a hundred years earlier by Louis XIV’s Comptroller of Finance, Jean-Baptiste Colbert — regulations that, de Gournay believed, placed an intolerable strain on commerce.
The theme was picked up by author Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm — an expat German living in Paris who took it upon himself to write a series of trenchant letters to sovereigns of various German states in the late 18th century.
In his letter of 15 July 1765 von Grimm writes, ‘The real spirit of the laws in France is the bureaucracy of which the late Monsieur de Gournay used to complain so greatly; here the offices, clerks, secretaries, inspectors and intendants are not appointed to benefit the public interest, indeed the public interest appears to have been established so that offices might exist.’
It seems that bureaucracy is enduring and that our relationship with it has not changed for a very long time. Indeed, the concept of a bureaucracy pre-dates all of these writers by thousands of years, having first emerged in the world’s first nation — ancient Egypt, where enormous projects like the Pyramids of the Third and Fourth Dynasties required sophisticated tax collection and administrative effort. But what we think of as modern bureaucracy was invented by the Chinese — specifically the short-lived Qin Dynasty that ruled between 221 and 206 BC and effectively united China.
As a method of control, it was a success — Qin Shi Huangdi, the first Emperor of the Dynasty, was sufficiently in command of his realm to order construction of a life-size, 8,000-strong, terracotta army to accompany him in his mausoleum into the afterlife. Shi Huangdi’s tomb complex, complete with a scale replica of the universe that incorporated gems and pearls set in ceilings representing the cosmos and free-flowing mercury for the sea, may have taken 700,000 workers 38 years to complete. The lavish dedication and ornament are testament to his power in this world, power that came not only from military might, but administrative organisation. In his lifetime, Shi Huangdi was responsible for the construction of 6,000 miles of road and a thousand miles of canal.
The Qin bureaucracy was developed by subsequent dynasties, particularly the Later Han from AD 25 to 220, into a system capable of running the largest country of its time with a population equivalent to 21st-century Britain.
The greatest surprise is that, having invented bureaucracy, it still took the Chinese another thousand years to invent gunpowder. Perhaps the discovery was in the hands of an executive sub-committee.
Just as the Chinese were experimenting with blowing one another up, another great bureaucratic civilisation, the Byzantine Empire were perfecting the dark arts of administration. By the 8th century, what was originally the Eastern arm of the Roman Empire was administered by thousands of officials in its capital, Constantinople.
Officials differentiated themselves from the lower classes by wearing more elaborate dress — including conspicuously enormous hats. There is even a mosaic in the Chora Church in Istanbul from around 1320 that depicts a traditional devout subject — Joseph of Nazareth and the Virgin Mary — in a traditional Byzantine administrative context — putting their names down on the census. The official in charge of proceedings, Quirinius the Roman Governor of Syria, wears a hat that looks like a modernist sculpture.
On Clerics and Clerks
Administration and the church go hand in hand elsewhere — not least because of the link between clerics and clerks. In medieval times, bookkeeping was performed by members of the clergy as they were among the few groups literate enough for the work, hence the term ‘clerical work’.
Aside from the ancient Chinese, Byzantine and Egyptian dynasties, churches pre-date most governments as power structures. The most powerful of these, the Roman Curia — the official name of the Vatican State — has existed since 1588 and acts as the governmental and administrative arm of the Holy See; it is the Pope’s civil service and cabinet rolled into one.
The Vatican has many distinctions that mark it out as rather a modern and efficient state. As befits its internationalist status and global influence, its telecommunications, postal and banking systems are second to none; when in Rome, in fact, you should do as the Romans and post all your international correspondence via the Vatican Post — it will probably reach its destination several days before packages posted in Italy’s postboxes. And nearly everyone will get on well with the Vatican’s phone system, where there are no automated, labyrinthine menus to negotiate or canned music to pacify you.
Your call really is important to the Vatican and your call will always be answered by a nun within 30 seconds.
In 1979 the perception was that the Vatican was running into financial difficulties and that some of those difficulties were down to the ancient Roman Curia, whose complex procedures were described, by those who were unfortunate to run into them, as ‘Byzantine’. The new Pope, John Paul II, called a meeting of the Sacred College of Cardinals to discuss church business — the first time the Sacred College had met in four centuries. The last time the College of Cardinals had been summoned was just before the Curia was set up.
John Paul was trying to redistribute administrative duties back to the Cardinals. After all, at around 109 acres in size and with fewer than 600 citizens, there isn’t a lot of administration to be done with regards to the Vatican State itself.
At the same time as the new Pope was rearranging the bureaucracy of the Vatican, two things were happening in the UK that had important long-term consequences for all of us. First, Margaret Thatcher came to power and completely changed the bureaucratic landscape with her instinctive loathing of the civil service, local councils and public administration of all kinds.
The first part of her answer was to expand the role of quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations — better known as quangos. Quangos are made up of political appointees, rather than elected officials or career civil servants and are, therefore a kind of unaccountable, unelected bureaucracy — one open to criticisms of cronyism and opportunities for abuse.
Secondly, the introduction of the BS 5750 kite mark, the British standard for quality management helped launch a new form of commercial bureaucracy. Given her hatred of red tape, it’s ironic that Thatcher was such a keen advocate of the BS 5750 — seeing it as the British equivalent of the Japanese Miracle — and the UK’s Department for Trade and Industry ruthlessly pimped it to the world, despite concerns from business leaders and managers about the extra bureaucracy involved and what many saw as its low value.
In essence, the BS 5750 was merely an exercise in validating your processes simply by writing them down.
Although a simple process, it became a self-perpetuating system, where companies who had qualified for it insisted on dealing only with other kite-marked firms. It gave life to thousands of consultant businesses — so-called certification bodies feeding off a system more like a pyramid scheme than a philosophy of management.
In one case, Oxford City Council insisted that Morris dancers had to be registered for the international version of BS5750, the ISO 9000, in order to take part in a local festival promoted by the council. Because it was an official body, the council could not hire any person or firm, including a group of Morris dancers, unless they were ISO 9000 certified.
Thatcher’s government, who sold the International Standards Organisation (ISO) the BS 5750, is directly responsible for the growth of by-the-book, jargon-laden business consultancy that adds little value and makes business less efficient. Unwittingly, as she severed each head from bureaucracy in the public sector, the hydra grew stronger in her beloved, once efficient private sector.
In that way, at least, all those election eve promises, rants and raves about red tape and Better Regulation Task Forces are utterly pointless. All good intentions come to nought. Bureaucracy will never die. Red tape is here to stay.
