Published: 07/03/2002, Volume II2, No. 5795 Page 20
As President Kennedy ruefully remarked after the botched invasion of Cuba and the Bay of Pigs disaster: 'Success has 100 fathers - failure is an orphan'.
In trusts now boasting a glittering constellation of stars, no doubt everyone is busy staking claims for the credit, while in the 12 without any stars all are equally busy blaming everyone but themselves.
But it will be far worse in the four unfortunates which, despite naming and shaming, have still failed to thrive.
Now, they are going to be taken over - 'franchised' in Milburn-speak - by NHS managers with 'proven track records of delivery'.
'Turning zeros into heroes'was the vivid phrase the BBC news chose to describe the process.
Whoever these paladins are, they will do well: they can't fail. If they succeed they will take all the credit, and if they do not do quite as well as expected then, like an incoming government, they can blame continuing failure on their predecessors' years of incompetence.
But the programme is too high-profile for the franchisees to be allowed to fail. If franchising were to be a poisoned chalice, where would health secretary Alan Milburn find his next group of willing franchisees from among the promised not-for-profit bodies such as universities and charities?
Resources will be made available to make success a certainty; Milburn's heroes will simply not be allowed to become zeros.
This hit-squad approach to failure is not novel. It has been applied in education for years.
Chronically failing schools have been identified, and brigades of super-teachers drafted in to whip up standards.
And it has worked. But why did schools fail in the first place, and how was improvement achieved?
Failure was largely the result of years of underfunding, an overwhelming workload and the inevitable collapse of staff morale which followed.
Success was achieved by suddenly opening the fiscal floodgates, almost swamping the previously failing schools with all the resources - from extra staff to computer rooms and language labs - which they had lacked.
The 'failure' of the four 'no-star' trusts' facing franchises is unquestionable, but how many times had their managers asked for more resources and had them denied? How many times had they asked for help and been sent away with threats rather than succour? Is it the trusts'managers who have been the real failures or those from whom the trusts should have received support?
In summer 1944 in the battle for Normandy, the Canadian division in the British army was subject to heavy criticism from the Americans for its lack of success in reaching its military objectives quickly enough.
Popular history has it that the Canadians' dilatoriness allowed thousands of Germans to escape, so leading to the failure of one of the Normandy campaign's principal objectives.
But popular history seldom tells the whole truth.
The Canadians simply could not go any faster. Unlike the Americans, the 100,000 Canadians faced the cream of the Nazi war machine - SS Panzer divisions - as their casualty rate testifies.
So who was really responsible for their failure - the soldiers in the field or those higher up who did not equip them with sufficiently or to take account the enemy's strength?
Simply blaming the managers of the failing trusts is too easy.
But politics is often about seeking short-term, easy-toimplement and highly visible solutions.
Shouldn't the NHS be looking deeper, asking how that situation came to be?
Doesn't the very fact that so many trusts were doing so badly indicate a failure further up the chain of command?
In 1961, President Kennedy no doubt blamed the CIA and the 'free' Cubans who made up his forces for their failure to get ashore at the Bay of Pigs.
Those who tried to land on the beaches blamed the Cuban air force. But common sense suggests the real blame lay with military planners who mistakenly believed Cuba had no air force.
Failure at the front line does not necessarily mean those who have been fighting for their lives should carry the blame. In war, and in the NHS, field marshals and generals are more likely to be responsible for disasters.
Who is responsible for failing trusts? The Department of Health.
Logically, the answer is to send a team of highly skilled experts with a proven record of success into the DoH to take it over for - say - three years, and turn it around.
Steve Ainsworth is a former primary care manager.
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