sibility’, but whom they may never have met and whose actions they could not,
in practice, conceivably have controlled.
The political need foraccountabilitymeans that there must be some
clearly identifiable individual who can be held responsible for an abuse or
failure of power, or a mistake or casualness in policy-making. Hence, at least
according to orthodox British constitutional law, a civil servant’s mistake is
answered for before parliament by the member of parliament who, as a minister
of the crown, is their nominal superior, and that minister may have to resign to
atone for that mistake, however little an ordinary judgement of guilt could be
directed at them. In practice it is very unlikely that a minister will nowadays
resign when some mistake is made by a subordinate official, which would not
have happened had the rules, for which the minister clearlyisresponsible, been
followed. Thus, though the opposition demanded the resignation of Kenneth
Baker as Home Secretary when incompetence in a British prison led to the
escape of suspected terrorists in 1991, it was clear that he felt no obligation to
do so. Subsequent Home Secretaries have been equally trenchant in their
refusal to be held personally responsible for their department’s errors. In
contrast, the Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, resigned in 1982 when the
Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands took the British government by
surprise, because he felt that the advice tendered to the cabinet was more
clearly something for which he had actual, as opposed to merely formal,
responsibility. Though the consequences for individuals can sometimes appear
unduly harsh, the doctrine would be worth retaining not only to ensure
accountability but also to prevent those who are elected from hiding behind
the anonymity of the public bureaucracy. However, it must be treated now as a
defunct part of the constitution because the reality of political careers clearly
makes it impossible for anyone to emulate Carrington.
A related, though nowadays seldom important, doctrine is that of ‘respon-
sible government’. This, which used to be paired with the idea of ‘representa-
tive government’, referred to stages in the development of self-government in
colonies. As a first stage on the road to independence local citizens would be
invited or selected to form a government under the general supervision of the
colonial power, that government to be given gradual responsibility for increas-
ing areas of public affairs. This would usually, however, come some time before
they were allowed representative government, that is, before the population
would be allowed themselves to choose and sanction which of their number
would be given these responsibilities.
Revisionism
Revisionism is usually a term inMarxistorsocialistdebate, indicating a
falling-away from a previous and ‘purer’ form of a theory. Thus left-wing
Revisionism