Even today, well over 40 years since I lived with my parents, I have no idea how my father voted.
We had all kinds of intense political discussions, but he never tried to make me think in a certain way – only to make sure I did think. Sometimes I used to drive him mad with my naïve views. But still, even though I had an idea where he put his x when it was election time, I never actually knew.
That’s because he was a civil servant. A senior one, as it happens, and he took his job very seriously. His role, he knew, wasn’t to hawk his own views around, it was to advise ministers dispassionately, using the evidence available and apply his intellect – and boy did he have an intellect! – to that evidence.
Which brings us to members of the Public and Commercial Services Union, or PCS as it’s known, working now at the Department for Business and Trade. According to reports, some civil servants there have issued an ultimatum to the government: stop arms exports to Israel or we will stop working.
