Sir Norman Fenwick Warren Fisher (22 September 1879 – 25 September 1948) was a British
civil servant
The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...
.
Fisher was born in
Croydon, London, the only son of Henry Warren Fisher. He was educated at the
Dragon School (Oxford),
Winchester College and
Hertford College, Oxford. He
matriculated in 1898, taking a first
Classical Moderations
Honour Moderations (or ''Mods'') are a set of examinations at the University of Oxford at the end of the first part of some degree courses (e.g., Greats or '' Literae Humaniores'').
Honour Moderations candidates have a class awarded (hence the ' ...
in 1900 and a graduating with a second in
Greats in 1902.
After failing to get into the
Indian Civil Service and the medical examination for the
Royal Navy, he came a lowly 15th in the
Inland Revenue entrance exams in 1903. Sixteen years later he was
Permanent Secretary to the Treasury and the first-ever
Head of the Home Civil Service. Fisher has been described as one of the most influential British civil servants of his generation.
[Hennessy, 1992, p.225]
Fisher gave the
Civil Service
The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...
a cohesion it previously lacked and did more to reform it than any man in the preceding fifty years. He increased the importance of the Treasury. He advanced the interests of women in the civil service and at one point described himself as a feminist.
However, he was also a controversial figure: his colleague
Maurice Hankey, with whom he sometimes co-operated and sometimes competed on issues of imperial defence policy, once described him as 'rather mad', and he was criticised for his attempts to control the appointments of senior civil servants across Whitehall.
Christopher Bullock
Sir Christopher Llewellyn Bullock, KCB, CBE (10 November 1891 – 16 May 1972), a prominent member of the Bullock family, was Permanent Under-Secretary at the British Air Ministry from 1931 to 1936. Appointed at the age of 38, he remains one o ...
was one example. His generally unsuccessful attempts to gain a say in Foreign Office appointments were much resented, and gave rise to unfounded accusations that he had been an
appeaser
Appeasement in an international context is a diplomatic policy of making political, material, or territorial concessions to an aggressive power in order to avoid conflict. The term is most often applied to the foreign policy of the UK governmen ...
(despite a robust defence of his reputation by the anti-appeaser
Robert Vansittart).
He married Mary Ann Lucie (Maysie) Thomas on 24 April 1906 and had two sons, but the marriage ended in separation in 1921. He died in London a few days after his 69th birthday.
Sir Noel Curtis-Bennett eulogised him in a letter to ''
The Times'':
His elder son Norman Fisher (d. 1982) made his career in the Royal Navy, surviving two submarine disasters before the war and attaining the rank of captain; his second son Robin died in 1988.
Offices held
References
Bibliography
*
Fisher, Sir (Norman Fenwick) Warren' at ''
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (requires login)
* Hennessy, Peter, ''Never Again'' (London: Penguin Books 1992)
* O'Halpin, Eunan, ''Head of the Civil Service: A Study of Sir Warren Fisher'', (London: Routledge 1989)
'Sir Warren Fisher, Head of the Civil Service 1919 – 1939' PhD thesis by
Eunan O'Halpin
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fisher, Warren
1879 births
1948 deaths
Permanent Secretaries of HM Treasury
Civil servants in the Board of Inland Revenue
People educated at The Dragon School
People educated at Winchester College
Alumni of Hertford College, Oxford
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath
Knights Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order
20th-century British civil servants