The remaking of London

Tony Craig

few weeks ago a Labour front-bencher on the Greater London Council, Mr Tony Judge, tried to bolster his party's sagging spirits. Horace Cutler, he suggested, was destined to remain for ever in opposition. lie's been in opposition for eleven years for four years to Reg Goodwin, and before that for seven years to Desmond Plummer.'

There was more than a glimmer of truth in Mr Judge's criticism. Mr Cutler, deputy GLC opposition leader to Sir Percy Rugg since 1964, was the obvious heir apparent, but when the Tory leadership fell vacant in 1.966 it was Sir Desmond who took over, PiP,Ping Mr Cutler by one vote, and going on f .° lead the GLC during its six years of Conservative control from 1967 to 1973. Mr Cutler remained the Crown Prince. 'There ns no tension,' he says, 'but it was like 'Ting married to the wrong woman.' Now, aN'if;.!r an apprenticeship rivalling Edward he is King. 'This is the accolade,' he nobbled happily after last Friday's victory breakfast. With the Tories capturing control of tCounty Hall with sixty four of the ninety u, seats Mr Cutler becomes London's 'Prime minister' after a massive victory rtarred only by the Tories' failure to TPture the Inner London Education uthotity (the prize within the prize), the 'act that despite the landslide they captured cbthnlY 495 per cent of the popular vote, and the statistic that the swing from Labour to e Tories on the total London vote, at Ini 05 per cent since the last GLC election four years ago, was rather less than the national swing. The swing in London cornfaared to the last general election was, in

V t, less than 9.4 per cent. St It was still a convincing victory, and the ore of London's government is set to 'hose beyond recognition. Mr Cutler, nose twenty five years in local government ?aye included twenty three years with tl:ont-bench portfolios in planning, housing, Il,nance and transport, is forthright, some

times

_lines indiscreet, always enthusiastic: a

'fore refined model of Labour's extravag a,,,ntlY colourful Illtyd Harrington who reacted to the Tory victory by describing the new GLC leader as an 'old geriatric'. But he

ills• devoted to his new job, and has arranged jslife around his political ambitions. In the „'Ixties, recognising that his involvement in

nte building industry could create conflicts ,•‘‘7th his local government work, he converted his business, and is today mainly n

' ncerned with investment.

The Tory Privately manifesto lacked detail. But ately plans had been well laid. With the ernPhasis on creating a more efficient structure the mass of sprawling committees, sub-committees and boards which have proliferated in recent years at County Hall, are to be swept away. In their place the Tories will divide those responsibilities they want to remain under the strategic control of the GLC between four umbrella policy groups. The housing group will be led by George Tremlett, who is on the radical right of the party, nearly thirty years younger than his leader, and writes biographies of pop stars. He is charged with overseeing the Conservative plan to reduce drastically the GLC's involvement in the details of housing management by transferring many of the council's 215,000 homes to the thirty two London boroughs, and by selling to their existing tenants nearly a quarter of the total housing stock over the next four years.

In the run-up to the election Mr Tremlett accused Tony

Judge, Labour chairman of the housing management committee of having held GLC rents at an artificially low level (the average is only £6.04 a week) specifically to hinder plans to sell off the properties at mortgage repayment levels acceptable to the occupiers. Now, without yet giving any details, Mr Cutler says he has worked out a scheme which would allow tenants to buy their homes with a 100 per cent mortgage with repayments no higher than their existing rent levels. Even allowing for generous discounts on the selling prices (he has intimated that a tenant who has lived in his council home for twenty years could expect a discount of some 20 per cent) this seems a particularly rash undertaking, especially for a council committed to cutting back public spending.

At the same time youngsters will be encouraged to renovate and rehabilitate th'e GLC's older and less attractive properties by being allowed to live in the places rentfree for up to three years, and being then given the opportunity to buy at a low price (and taking no account of their own improvements) or rent cheaply. This 'homesteading' concept is the Tory answer to the tens of thousands of squatters, with whom the Cutler GLC plans to take a hard line. Squatting is a 'scandal', the manifesto proclaimed, 'an anarchistic response to the bureaucratic rigidity of socialist housing policy . 1n many cases squatting is the only way in which decent young people can find a home at all, but in too many other cases it is merely a means by which cynical freeloaders live rent-free,' The Tories plan to remove unauthorised squatters and pressure the Labour government to make unlicensed squatting a criminal offence.

The Tories' housing strategy is aimed at rejuvenating the run-down inner city areas

Acquisition of land in the outer London boroughs has been halted, and the emphasis is on developing the council's own land in the eight square miles of derelict docklands. Here a lot of the responsibility will rest with Shelagh Roberts, the only woman in the Cutler cabinet. At fifty five she has been a member of the GLC since 1970, and the Tory planning spokesman since 1974. Miss Roberts is to be leader of the Planning and Communications policy -group, which will, inter alia, be responsible for the road and rail infrastructure vital to the successful rehabilitation of the docklands. The Tories are committed to pressing ahead with the development of London's new tube line through the area, without which there would be little incentive for industry to move in. The new Fleet line is to be extended from Charing Cross to Fenchurch Street, and the mooted River line will take the tube from Fenchurch Street through the Docklands and the East End. 'All that was needed to complete the Fleet line to Fenchurch Street was the political will,' Mr Cutler said during the election campaign, confident that the huge sums of money which will be required could somehow be raised even if, as seems likely, the government refuses to cooperate.

Meanwhile, as the Tory enthusiasm knows no bounds, disillusionment has set in in the Labour camp, which has been reduced to a feeble rump, shorn of many of its ablest people. Sir Reg Goodwin, Labour's leader, is already sixty eight and is unlikely to want to hang on for another four years. But the Labour group, with twenty eight members, will not find it easy to find someone even remotely capable of leading the party into the next GLC elections in four years' time. Controversial but able young politicians like Richard Balfe, who handled housing development, and the left-winger Tony Banks, who was chairman of the general purposes committee, lost their seats as did Jim Daly who, as Transport chairman, had to bear the responsibility for the choked streets of central London and the inefficiencies of London Transport. Come the next GLC elections in 1981 Mr Cutler will be faced with a Labour group as ineffective in opposition as it has ppaved itself to be in its last months of government.