A long way to the town hall
A candidate elected to a local council in 1971 will, in many cases, be entering his last term of office. Sweeping changes in the structure of local government in England were confirmed in February by the Secretary for the Environment. It is planned to legislate the new pattern in 1971-72, and bring it in operation by 1974.
The proposals, in outline, were made two years ago by Lord Redcliffe-Maud’s Royal Commission. Their concern above all else was to reduce dramatically the number of elected councils from its present 1,200 to a small number of centralised administrative bodies. The Maud Report projected 58 of these “unitary authorities”. The new version intends to have only 30 and retain for them the familiar name “counties”. As well, there will be certain designated city areas which will follow the pattern of the Greater London Council. Against Maud’s recommendation, it is now proposed to have below the counties a “second tier” of 400 elected and — relatively — local councils.
What has to be noted is that there is little or no disagreement between the major parties over this. The Maud Report was accepted by a Labour government, the modified version comes from a Tory one which intends to make the changes as quickly as Labour intended. In an article in the Sunday Times (21 February), Lord Redcliffe-Maud welcomed the new proposals; while the same day in The Observer Terence Bendixson wondered if they might eventually do more electoral good to Labour than the Conservatives. Over the last few years spokesmen and commentators generally have agreed on the urgent necessity to “streamline” and “modernise” local government in this way.
The present local government system represents a cumulation of nineteenth-century legislation. Holding to a traditional framework in which the units were the county, the parish and the borough — each rooted in mediaeval practice — it piled piecemeal measures on or against one another. Roads; the Poor Law; public health; education; police: a series of reforms and rationalisations made to cope with a stream of problems as capitalism developed. The statute which gave coherence and definition to all this was the Local Government Act of 1888. While laying down a system of interdependence between the units, its crucial function was to make clear the financial relations between central and local government.
As legislation had developed, it had become plain that local authorities could implement national laws only with national monetary aid. Through the nineteenth century, Exchequer grants were given for highways, schools, criminal prosecutions, sanitation and other principal purposes. The 1888 Act made specific proposals which, in fact, did not endure — the assignation of a certain proportion of national taxation for local government expenditure. However, finance remains the point from which local government is controlled by central government. It is true that, in any case, councils have no powers other than those conferred on them by Parliament; but the manner in which the powers are carried out can be — and is — directed by the availability of national finance, or conditions attached to it.
This does not mean that every housing estate or new town centre or monster school is paid-for direct from Exchequer funds. For such capital projects, loans are raised in the market by councils. But Ministry consent has to be obtained for any loan, so that expenditure on vital schemes depends on central-government approval. As P. G. Richards says in The New Local Government System (1968):
“Thus, local authorities have to fit into a national economic plan, and the amount of capital resources they are permitted to consume in any period will depend upon Government policy.”
Obviously this financial relationship must remain dominant, however the pattern of councils is altered. Local government is branches of central government. Nor can there be any break-out from the dependence. Successive Acts give Ministers power to take over councils’ functions themselves if the councils are non-compliant; the power was brought into play in the Civil Defence rebellions at Coventry and St. Pancras.
The strong objections to the Maud reforms were made by councils in rural areas, which were to be made redundant by Maud. Urging a system involving second-tier authorities, the Rural District Councils Association began a campaign with the slogan “Don’t Vote for R. E. Mote”. It can be assumed that the revised proposals now made by the present government are a sop to these predominantly Tory country areas. However, the objections were disunited, despite the campaign. Practically every councillor agreed that changes in local government were necessary — so long as his place was safeguarded.
The fact remains that elected councils are to be reduced to a third of their number. The populations under the county and city councils will be a million each. In the Midlands, for example, Coventry, Birmingham and Wolverhampton will become the area for a single county authority. The second-tier councils will represent large areas, some amalgamating several of the present Rural and Urban administrative districts. There is the likelihood too that elected representation will be further diminished in the constitution of the new bodies. One of the Maud proposals was that the new unitary authorities should comprise only half elected members, the other half to be co-opted from — as suggested fields — industry and the universities.
It has been remarked that there was general agreement on the need for some such reorganisation of local government. But this is too easily accepted. Whose need? and from what sources was the idea of the necessity of large-scale reform most keenly promoted? First and most obviously, one sees the continuing need for centralisation in capitalism, against which what is contemptuously called “the parish pump” militates. Just as in the eighteenth century the turnpike trusts were established to take roads from parish upkeep and facilitate marketing and social movement, the demands of modern transport and regional planning are hindered by the number of local authorities. Forty miles of motorway may run through four or five councils’ territory, and each council has its own considerations to voice. Another instance is detailed by Lord Redcliffe-Maude in his article:
“Further, the Government clearly recognise the obvious facts that many towns cannot hope to clear their slums and obsolescent housing without building outside their own area and that neighbouring rural authorities are unlikely to welcome such new estates.”
The answer to that problem, then, is to liquidate the neighbouring authorities so that consultation will not obstruct a central project, and the populations can lump it. Possibly this answers the problem of siting airports too.
Beyond that general need, there was a pressure from all government departments to reduce local government to a relatively small number of large-scale units. In giving evidence to the Maud Royal Commission, every department expressed a desire for between 30 and 40 local authorities: Peter Walker, the Secretary for the Environment, appears to have obliged them handsomely. His report promises a drastic reduction in the number of controls exercised by Ministries over local authorities, under the new system. Attractive as that may sound to people irritated by bureaucracy, its implication is not true. The government departments are keen on fewer local authorities because control over them would be simpler and stronger than over the present profusion.
The final factor is computerisation. The amount of data-work done by computers in local government has grown and continues to grow. It has become the practice for, say, smaller authorities within a county to send work to the county council headquarters for processing by the computer there. This by itself has gone some of the way to making the elimination of the smaller councils inevitable. The differing figures for the number of major authorities now to be established are largely assessments of the scale on which regional computers would function best. Much has been made of the improvements in welfare administration that the new system would bring, and this is what is meant. In that connection it is worth noting that a new structure for the Health Service is promised, to go hand in hand with the reorganisation of local government, in 1974.
What does all this mean, politically and socially? Parliament remains the seat of power in capitalism, and it is there that the working class must go to change society: local government is its adjunct. Councils themselves do not usually compel admiration; in common experience, all too often, they comprise bumptious officials supported by inflated shopkeepers in robes of office, or simply local party machines. It can be said, rightly, that changes in the system of administration are only attempts by those concerned with capitalism to solve the problems of running it. What is needed to end the housing problem and the traffic problem and to answer all the questions about how we are to live is a new social system, not a new council.
All the same, there is a lesson here in what capitalism thinks of democracy. The intended reorganisation of local government — as proposed by Labour and Conservatives, both — means a wholesale reduction in representation and opportunities for making one’s views heard. P. G. Richards in his book, quoting the terms of reference of the Royal Commission, speaks of “the perennial conflict between efficiency and democracy”. It is hardly a contest: efficiency, or the capitalist idea of it, wins easily.
When democracy is used as a national rallying-call, we are told it means the man in the street’s right to raise grievances at the Town Hall or campaign for bizarre objectives in the council election. This change will dispose of much of that kind of nonsense for the administrators. The man or woman with a grievance or a problem is likely to find the Town Hall a long way away, and the local councillor a remote figure whose identity is barely known. For any person or group wishing to stand against the big-party representatives, the difficulties will be increased immensely.
Capitalism makes use of democracy, contemptuously. Don’t be misled by the talk of efficiency. The fact that we live in a society where democracy can be extended or diminished by legislation means it is, despite the speeches, an unfree society. It is also, curiously enough, an inefficient society in which the problems are never solved.
R. BARLTROP