VIEWPOINT
Voting in the dark
GEORGE GALE
The poll in last month's Greater London Council elections, averaging over 30 per cent, struck me then, and still does, as remarkably high for an election which few seemed to know or care was happening, and in which virtually none knew the names of his candi- dates. Those elections provide more than one affront to democratic notions about the value of representative institutions. There is not much value in a representative institution if those who are represented by it do not know who are its representatives, what is the institution, where are the bounds of the con- stituencies, and what are the existing party political natures of the constituency from which they are presented and of the institution which contains their representa- tion.
Not only do people not know who their ct.c candidates, or representatives, were or are; they do not know who are the men who possess the powers at County Hall, and they do not know what those powers arc; moreover, they do not know how those powers compare with the powers exercised by equally unknown councillors, also repre- senting them, in the equally unknown Lon- don boroughs set up under the grotesque reorganisation of Greater London that has now just experienced its second triennial election. And on top of all this great and monumental pile of ignorance, people do not know how these unknown powers, shared to an unknown extent between unknown borough councils and councillors and un- known Gtx councillors of the unknown Greater London Council at County Hall, are limited, or expanded, by the powers of the local government officials at their borough town halls, by the powers of the County Hall officials, and last, but by no means least, by the powers of the officials of White- hall and the political government at West- minster.
Now I do not for one moment suppose that outside London quite so absurd a situa- tion exists. Most people know what county, or what major town, they live in, for a start; and this is quite a considerable start. Many will also know the names of their urban or rural district councils, and of their parishes, too. But the name of one's county councillor will not normally spring immediately to mind, and few outside the immediately interested circle of local politicians will know who are the men who head planning com- mittees and education committees inedistant county halls. In the great towns there is, I would have thought (although it may be that there is a sociologist's report proving other- wise, in which case I will be glad to be sur- e ed at a sociologist's report), a greater
of knowledge, less total ignorance, about who is one's councillor, and what is his politics, and who is Lord Mayor: but even here the knowledge is comparative, and remains the possession of a minority, ignor- ance being the majority's condition.
If it is 'regarded as desirable that there should be greater interest in local govern- ment affairs, and if it is also regarded as desirable that a better standard of local government administration and decision- making should be brought about, then the case for very radical reform is powerfully conclusive. And the first demand of any such reform is that it should produce a more, rather than a less, intelligible system than we now possess. The second is that more able and more reputable men should as a con- sequence seek election as local government councillors. The third is that any new form of local government should both administra- tively and politically be powerful enough to provide effective checks upon the powers of Westminster.
And here, of course is the rub. Is it likely that any party in power in Westminster will drive through a reform which will weaken its powers over the country? And is it likely that the senior civil servants, themselves more able by and large than local government officials, and certainly more conscious of their superior ability to conduct the affairs of their country, would permit a political party to effect such a reform supposing a party in power became convinced of its duty to dele- gate? It,is not at all likely.
The Government set up a commission to advise on local government change, and in the Maud report changes were proposed which, apart from anything else, would have the effect, if carried out in the way politicians would do so, of reducing much of the rest of the country into that condi- tion of bewildered ignorance about the nature of their local governance that now exists within the area covered by the Greater London Council. The only sort of local government 'reform' I can envisage either political party in power at West- minster actually carrying out, would be a form of local government gerrymandering which, in the opinion of the government of the day, would increase the power and suc- cess of that government's party in the various elections to be held for whatever local councils or unitary authorities the central government decreed should here- after exist.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain (if we can forget about Ireland for the time being) is a unitary state which makes cer- tain slight and chiefly honorific gestures to- wards the Scots and the Welsh but none whatever towards the English. In virtually no field of local government can the central government not find a political excuse and a legal ground and a financial power for intervening and overruling, should mem- bers of that central government, or of that central civil service administration, think it desirable or fit or otherwise advantageous so to do. If local government is to be taken seriously, it must be a serious activity; and the only way to make this so is to hand over genuine and large powers to local authorities, and more especially powers the exercise of which involves men in political decisions and therefore involves electors in political debate and division. That is, if you want good local government, it is not enough to hand over to local councils res- ponsibility for sewage, or delegated plan- ning agencies, or matters of street lighting, or heavily supervised administration of educa- tion, or autonomy in the selection of police- men's uniforms. You have to delegate considerable powers and to do so irrevoc- ably.
Shall we turn our unitary state into a federation? Defence and foreign policy are kept at Whitehall and Westminster, and the judiciary and the police should certainly, as much as the army, be national; there would be only one criminal law; and the central government, in order to maintain the peace at home and to defend the country as best it could from foreign enemies, would need to raise by its budget sufficient reven- ues.
It could well be argued, too, that since the national survival required a sufficiency of general education, the central authori- ties could require the local authorities in their educational policies to educate child- ren to certain stated minimum standards.
It might seem, too, to be generally desirable that, at any rate during a transitional period, the richer parts of the country should sub- sidise the poorer by way of subvention, or through the normal incidence of progressive direct and central taxation. And, by way of setting standards, it might also appear wise that certain clearly national institutions like Oxford, Cambridge and London Airport be not wished upon the local authorities with- in whose territories they chanced to fall.
But otherwise, all might well be left to local authorities — universities, the attrac- tion into each area of tourists or business- men, licensing laws, the manner in which the national educational requirements are met, planning, censorship, laws on personal habits such as drinking and marrying and divorcing. People would have the right to choose under which local authority, and in particular under which local authority's style of rule, they wished to live. The most important single institution of any local authority would probably be its university, and so the size of each authority would be not less than that necessary to support a university of not less than five thousand undergraduates. Sounds fine, doesn't it? It's easy to think, to daydream, along such lines; easy to con- clude that in such a diverse community, local newspapers would take local politics seriously because local people and local politicians would also do so. But will any- thing of the sort come about? Of course not. Instead, people will tinker and tamper here and there, enough further to obscure the nature of the machine we are in and the way it is working and the direction it is going; but not enough to change the driver's seat at Number 10.
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