• 3) Read the text “Vivian Brown: a British Civil Servant” and prove that the main character is a typical British civil servant.

5.23 Vivian brown: a british civil servant

• 1) Read the text and answer the questions:

a) Vivian Brown has a very good job, doesn’t he?

b) How does he get to work?

c) What does he wear at work?

d) What does he like about his job?

e) Does he have international experience?

f) What is his marital status?

g) What is an “au pair” girl?

In the old days, civil servants wore black “bowler” hats and dark suits, and they carried long umbrellas. But not now.

Take Vivian Brown for example. He has a very good job in the Department of Trade and Industry. He has to make important decisions about the future of British businesses. He works with the top men in his Department, and he often has discussions with government ministers. But Vivian Brown (aged thirty-nine) rides a bicycle to work, wearing a pair of jeans. True, he changes into a suit when he arrives at the office. But at about six-thirty, when his day’s work is over, he changes back into his jeans and cycles home again.

Vivian Brown could have chosen any kind of job. He did well at school, and very well indeed at Oxford University, where he studied Arabic. But the civil service offered lots of interesting chances. Like many other clever young men and women, Vivian chose to make it his career. When he left Oxford, he took the difficult civil service exams, and passed.

For Vivian, the best thing about his job is the variety. He likes changing from one kind of work to another. In the past fifteen years he has worked on Britain’s space programme, and on Concorde, the supersonic aeroplane. He has travelled around Britain, meeting heads of universities, and well-known scientists. He has even travelled abroad. The Department of Trade and Industry lent him to the Foreign Office for three and a half years. During that time he and his family lived in Saudi Arabia.

Vivian is not the only successful person in his family. His wife has a very good job, too. She is a doctor in a large hospital, with a special interest in very young babies. She works long hours, and is often away from home at night. So who looks after their two young children? Like many other middle-class parents, the Browns have an “au pair” girl. “Au pair” girls are usually students from European countries who want to live in an English family and learn English. They work for about four or five hours a day, helping in the house or looking after children. In their free time they go to English classes, or go out with friends. At the same time young Matthew and Oliver Brown can practise their French, Dutch or German. It will be very useful when they grow up, and - who knows? - join the civil service.

• 2) Name the words and expressions that belong to the topic “work.”

• 3) Describe Vivian Brown’s career path.

5.24 WOMEN IN THE CIVIL SERVICE IN THE UK

• 1) Agree or disagree with the statements:

a) Civil service is not a woman’s career.

b) Men dislike working with women in the upper echelons of government.

c) Women become self-confident working in men’s society.

• 2) Read the text and point out the sentences corresponding to its title.

Jaqueline Hope-Wallace, who recently turned 100, built a successful career in the civil service at a time when women were a rarity in its upper echelons. She recalls the highlights of forty years in Whitehall.

“I was born in 1909, and went to the local school in Wimbledon Common. My father was in the civil service in the Charity Commission. So when I came down from Oxford with a degree in history in 1931, I wasn’t keen on the civil service; it seemed boring. But of course in the early ’30s things were very low. I had friends with very good degrees from Oxford who couldn’t get jobs. One girl who got a first at my college was selling hats at “Harrods” for a year or two before she could get a proper job. So my father said I had better go into the civil service, and I did. I was there for 40 years.

I joined the Ministry of Labour, and they sent me out into the provinces. I had to stay in B&Bs in county towns for nearly two years, then I managed to get back to London. Soon after that they set up the National Assistance Board, and I got in there right at the beginning. There was high unemployment at that time, and the unemployed and pensioners received a non-means-tested unemployment benefit. The Board had offices all over the country, and gave benefits to people for whom the basic benefits weren’t sufficient. The ’30s was a very bad period; we all felt certain that there was going to be a war.

When the war came the Board got lots of extra jobs. For a short time I was evacuated up to Lancashire while London was being bombed, but it was awful being exiled up there and I got back to London as quickly as I could. I lived in Wimbledon, so I had to get up to London every morning - and that was sometimes difficult, London being in such a state of chaos, but one got used to it.

After the war, everybody was hopeful that everything was going to be wonderful and different - but it wasn’t, of course. I got a fellowship to America for six months, where I examined how they dealt with the unemployed and old people, then I stayed at the Board until 1965. I became an Under-Secretary, and looked after the policy side of things. In ’65 I moved to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government to deal with countryside matters - and very soon after that, the Board was folded up.

The newspapers wrote that I was the first woman to reach the rank of Under-Secretary - but I don’t think it’s true. When I became an Under-Secretary there were a couple of women who were already Permanent Secretaries, and when I moved to the Ministry, the Permanent Secretary was Dame Evelyn Sharp. It upsets me when they write that.

I retired in 1969, though I stayed on various boards: I was on the board of the Corby Development Corporation until 1980. Corby had been a village and it absorbed the people from the North. Like many of these places, the people who lived there originally didn’t like being a new town - but we managed these problems.

Life has changed immensely over the years, especially for women. When I used to go to civil service meetings with other departments, I always found myself the only woman at the table. It didn’t bother me at all, though. I quite liked it: being the only woman gave one a little bit of self-esteem.