LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
MUNICIPAL REVOLT
SIR,—A letter in your issue of April 3rd warmly supports the protests against regional organisation which are being made by the civic heads of many large cities in the Midlands. As I urged about two years ago, in a lecture before the Royal Society of Arts, that the present regional system should be continued, with necessary modifications, for at least some years after the war, in order to help us through the difficulties of reconstruction. I think the subject deserves more temperate considera- tion than we can get by such terms as "The gauleiters of Whitehall."
That present conditions should be trying to all concerned must be chiefly due to the desperate uncertainties with which we are faced, and may be more due to faulty handling of the present machinery than to defects in the machinery itself. Your correspondent seems to think that the regions should be run by "democratically elected representatives." It is hard to see how such men could have been got at a moment's notice on the brink of war ; and even harder to suppose that they would have managed any better than the very picked men selected by the Ministry to act as its agents in co-ordinating the efforts of local authori- ties. It is also very misleading to write as if the present Regional Commissioners were petty dictators owing allegiance to no one but them- selves, for any one of them can be dismissed at a day's notice, is we have lately seen, and powerful local authorities can easily get local M.P.s to exercise all necessary pressure on the Ministry to get any serious defects set right. Indeed, so far from regarding the present system as a trespass on our liberties (beyond what the necessities of war require), I would claim that it really expands them, in so far as it promotes the harmonious and effective co-operation of all concerned.
Since the word " harmonious " may jar on ruffled feelings, I may perhaps explain that this letter is only my last effort in a fight against every kind of "red tape" which has lasted for over forty years, and that I have even succeeded in mitigating its worst evils in some varied fields of human activity. The first thing is to get an organisation which allows for adequate personal contact between all concerned ; since so many misunderstandings arising from correspondence can only be cleared up by meeting the other man face to face. In this respect the pre-war organisation of this country was extremely bad, and a principal cause of the congested monster secretariats of Whitehall and of the exasperation they aroused in everyone who had to deal with them. For in England and Wales alone Whitehall had to deal directly with 146 separate and independent county units (63 administrative counties and 83 county boroughs), besides a host of other local authorities. The last war soon showed that this unwieldy muddle caused endless friction and was incapable of prompt collective action ; though the prevailing ignorance as to the root of the trouble was such that we had hardly arrived at a suitable regional system by 1918, and even that was scrapped after the war, instead of being used to help us through the cruet difficulties which followed.
By the time this war became imminent we had learnt enough to apply the only practical remedy at once, by grouping all local authorities into legions and appointing Regional Commissioners to act as intermediary agents between Whitehall and the focal authorities of each region. This grouping of the 146 county units of England and Wales into ii regions has given us an average of only about 12 units in each region, and thus enormously increased the possibilities of personal contact. By this means vigorous collective action in extreme emergencies has been made possible, while it has become much easier to arrange personal conferences for
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