Local government

A healthy local democracy is a vital component of civil society, a badge of the ability of citizens to participate in local affairs and make the decisions which affect their lives. However, this is not the state of local government in Britain today.

The Queen still retains some influence in the local affairs of her "subjects". Local magistrates keep "the Queen's peace" and she appoints a few of "the great and the good" to represent her as Lord Lieutenants of each county in Britain. In the City of London (the historic "square mile" which contains Britain's major financial institutions) there are no elections to the City Corporation (the local authority for the area), its members being chosen by a feudal process.

Because our constitution is unwritten, the mere existence of local government is dependent upon the will of our "sovereign" Parliament. Indeed the local government apparatus set up by the Liberals in 1835 was merely to undertake the specific, delegated tasks which Parliament felt it could not supervise itself, replacing the vast feudal bureaucracy that existed at that time. To this day many responsibilities we might normally associate with local government, such as bridging a river or erecting a pier on at the sea shore (or subsequently demolishing either of them) require special acts of Parliament!

After the resignation of Margaret Thatcher in 1990, the Conservatives sought to reorganise local government by establishing a Local Government Commission to oversee the transition from the two-tier system of counties and districts that was created in 1972, to all-purpose single-tier unitary authorities. However, the Commission recommended that only in Scotland, Wales and the larger towns and cities of England, much to the disappointment of the government. Thus the two-tier system remains in the "shire" counties of England.

A Tale of Two Urban Districts

Another idiosyncrasy of local government in Britain concerns the designation of our towns. Some urban districts are known merely as "towns." But others are elevated to "city" status.

How can this be so? It is not according to population, as one might expect. Rather it is determined by the presence or absence of an Anglican cathedral or the grant of a royal charter by the monarch. Thus Durham with its Anglican cathedral, principal university and population of 89,000 is a City, whereas neighbouring Middlesbrough with its Catholic cathedral, university and population of 146,000 is not. In 1994 Armagh in Northern Ireland was granted city status by the Queen merely on account of its "important Christian heritage", despite the fact that it has a population of only 52,000.

Although new city status is granted in the name of queen Windsor, the choice is made by government ministers. There is now a public set of criteria, including regional or national importance, historical or royal features and a "forward looking attitude."

The Labour Party has been accused of political bias in its decisions on which towns should become cities. All of the new cities in Britain created between 2000 and 2002 have had Labour MPs.

City status was given to five towns in 2002. The elevation of two towns in Northern Ireland, one with a Catholic majority and the other with Protestants in the majority, caused allegations that the government was recognising the sectarian divide. Republicans opposed the application of Newry for city status because of the association of the award with monarchy.

As local government exists at the behest of Parliament there is nothing to prevent a Parliament abolishing it. Indeed this was considered as recently as 1992 by the Cabinet of the Conservative government. Contrast this with the situation in the rest of the European Union whereby local governments are constitutionally-enshrined and able to exercise any function not reserved to central government.

Following the election of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government in 1979 the powers of local government in Britain were greatly eroded. The financial autonomy of local authorities was restricted by central government-imposed spending limits. And punitive measures were applied to any local authority that the government considered to be fiscally incompetent. The Conservatives even sought to police the moral behaviour of local authorities with the now infamous "Clause 28" of the 1986 Local Government Act which disallows local authority schools from "promoting" homosexuality. Perhaps the most despotic act of partisanship was the abolition of the Greater London Council. That left London with fragmented government under a plethora of borough councils and unelected quangos.

The rationale for this attack on local democratic institutions was the rise of a new Left of the Labour Party in local government in inner-city areas of England, opposing the national Thatcherite agenda of the Conservative party through its own radical local government agenda. In democratic Britain the central government was free to neuter or abolish those democratic institutions which would not acquiesce to its will.

In opposition the Labour party had long campaigned for the restoration and enhancement of local government's powers and functions. Yet in government the results have been rather mixed. The Labour government has provided for a soon-to-be strategic authority for London with the innovation of an elected mayor but without the major service provision responsibilities of the old GLC. In the name of efficiency it has also published proposals that would, if legislated for, introduce mayor and cabinet government in Britain's larger towns and cities. Many fear that this will lead to more secrecy and less power for most council members. The government has not sought to repeal "Clause 28" however, nor to answer the "English question," i.e. what to do about devolving legislative power to England now that Scotland and Wales have legislative assemblies.

Britain's Deficient Democracy

Local government, central power

A Tale of Two Urban Districts