Siding with Ken
Gavin Stamp
T iving, as I do, in King's Cross, I con- sider myself a Londoner and an inhabi- tant of the ancient parish of St Pancras; I
do not identify with or have any affection towards the bureaucratic entity known as the London Borough of Camden, to which I pay my excessive rates. That, in essence, is my argument in favour of the retention of the Greater London Council or some such metropolitan authority.
I have little sympathy for Mr Kenneth Livingstone and his henchman at County Hall; I had very little more for Sir Horace Cutler and his previous Conservative ad- ministration. Nevertheless, despite all the self-promoting extravagance and irrespon- siblity of the present GLC, I consider that the institution they are bringing into disrepute needs radical reform, not aboli- tion. London without the GLC may revert to the unsatisfactory state of affairs before 1888 when the biggest city in the world had no overall administrative authority and when the various bodies responsible for local government and public works were notorious for inefficiency and corruption. 1 had always thought that Conservatives valued continuity and believed that institu- tions are greater than the individuals who use or abuse them. In wishing to do away with the GLC, Mrs Thatcher is allowing Political prejudice to override the best interests of Londoners — who might themselves like to comment on Mr Liv- ingstone's behaviour at the polls.
Oddly enough, Conservative govern- ments have been responsible for the crea- tion of all the various authorities which have been established in London over the last century. Lord Salisbury was Prime Minister when the London County Council was first created in 1888. Before that date, the local vestries had been responsible for what local government was carried on, while the Metropolitan Board of Works, formed in 1855, undertook public works and street improvements. The finest achievements of the MBW, like the Victoria Embankment, are impressive indeed but its new streets, like Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road, contrast painfully With the picturesque elegance of the Metropolitan Improvements' earlier car- ried out by John Nash for the Crown. Suspicion of corruption within the MBW together with the limitation of its powers were reasons for the creation of the LCC in the face of bitter 'opposition. And when that same opposition feared that the new LCC was becoming too left-wing under the influence of John Burns and the Fabian Socialists, Lord Salisbury's government set up the London boroughs in 1899 as a counterweight to its growing power. These new boroughs — Woolwich, Deptford, Finsbury and the rest — built the exuberant Edwardian Baroque town halls that are among the few pleasant expressions of civic bureaucracy in London's streets.
On the whole, over its first half-century I think the policies of the LCC were enlightened and sensible. Although I must damn Herbert Morrison for deliberately destroying old Waterloo Bridge in 1934 just to spite a Conservative House of Commons which had voted for its preservation, the LCC had a good record architecturally. The Architects' Department, inherited from the MBW, soon was staffed with bright young men, who, under the influence of Philip Webb and the Arts and Crafts movement, were responsible for the delightful fire sta- tions of the turn of the century while, in the early days, the LCC's public housing was among the best in Europe. Things only went really wrong in the 1950s when, following Khrushchev's speech at the 20th Party Congress condemning traditionalism in architecture, the very left-wing architects in the LCC went all out for system buildings and high-rise housing, with the disastrous consequences we all now know. Today the GLC, like most authorities, is hardly building anything.
The GLC, which succeeded the LCC in 1965, was, of course, a product of the Con- servative government's 'reorganisation' of local government which gave us such absur- dities as Avon and Humberside. But whereas the new counties ignore ancient boundaries and loyalties and the new metropolitan boroughs like Merseyside united towns which did not wish to have anything to do with each other, there was a certain sense in expanding the LCC into the GLC as London was still a distinct entity which had grown since 1888. The mistake was making the GLC so big and, at the same time, greatly enlarging the boroughs. Fulham and Finsbury were manageable; Brent and Bromley are not, while Orp- ington has practically nothing in common with Hackney.
If the GLC as it now is constituted has to go, then, as County Hall rightly argues, there are some functions of a metropolitan scope which cannot just be devolved to the boroughs: roads and sewers, for instance, and London Transport — whose present sensible fares policy is a positive achieve- ment by Mr Livingstone's administration. Of course the GLC in the last few years had been utterly irresponsible in doling out huge sums of ratepayers' money to lunatic and anti-social causes, but these politically self- advancing antics ought not to overshadow the continuous good work carried out by responsible and old-established depart- ments of the GLC and LCC.
I am particularly worried, as readers might suppose, about the future of the GLC's Historic Buildings Department, a highly expert body which, by combining the restoration skills of historians and archi- tects, is the admiration of many other capital cities. It is also one of the oldest departments of the GLC, having descended from the Committee for the Survey for the Memorials of Greater London established in 1894 principally by C. R. Ashbee. That the Geffrye Almshouses in the Kingsland Road are now a popular museum and not a memory is one of the many achievements of the department, one of the latest and most conspicuous being the magnificent restora- tion of the Covent Garden Market something that probably would have been beyond the resources of the London Borough of Westminster.
What is impressive about the record of the Historic Buildings Department is that it has, until now, remained apolitical and has enjoyed the support of all parties within County Hall. It has also not been afraid to challenge other authorities in trying to preserve buildings and, because of its pro- fessionalism and expertise, is a strong force at a public inquiry. That almost any old buildings are left in the City of London is very much owing to the Historic Buildings Department, which fought the City Cor- poration to preserve the City Club, the old National Provincial Bank (now restored at the bottom of the Seifert tower) and even the Bank of England. The LCC opposed the government's megalomaniac plans for rebuilding Whitehall and the GLC suc- cessfully opposed the Department of the Environment's plans for demolishing much of the Natural History Museum. What money the Historic Buildings Panel has had at its disposal has also been well spent. It has been the GLC rather than the Borough of Tower Hamlets which has encouraged the restoration of Spitalfields and grants have been given to churches like St Paul's Deptford, that masterpiece of the English Baroque.
Over recent years the Historic Buildings Department has acquired more respon- sibilities. It now undertakes the listing of buildings in London on behalf of the DoE and photographs London subjects for the National Monuments Record. It also operates well on a small scale. Because the division contains under one roof architects, draughtsmen and historians — including some of the best young talents in the field in the country — it can offer practical advice and help on the correct restoration of a house facade or shop-front: a service no in- dividual borough can supply. The new canopy on Liberty's, the removal of Pan Am's tawdry plastic fascia formerly disfiguring the Piccadilly facade of the old Society of Watercolourists building, are both recent examples of the good, quiet in- fluence of the Historic Buildings Depart- ment of the GLC evident all over London.
This authority and expertise will, I fear, be dissipated if the GLC is abolished. The ill-thought-out white paper, Streamlining the Cities, which cheerfully proposes mak- ing County Hall into an hotel, envisages the functions of the Historic Buildings Depart- ment being taken over either by the Depart- ment of the Environment or by the in- dividual London boroughs. Whether its staff will be kept together, or even retained
at all, is not clear but is rather unlikely. As it is, the historic buildings division of the DoE is already overworked while some London boroughs may be unwilling as well as unable to carry out these functions. When, in the mid-1970s, the revised statutory list for Hackney was published, the borough immediately applied to demolish all the listed buildings in its ownership; they were foiled by the GLC.
If the Government goes ahead with its present plans to abolish the GLC, not only will many Londoners find more of their in- terests served by boroughs like Islington and Camden, which are even more ir- responsible and entrenched politically, but London may well become a safer place for property developers and vandals. But perhaps that is part of the thinking behind the White Paper?
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