A CRISIS FOR LONDON. A NOTHER election for the London County
Council is approaching. Already the rival parties are in the field. The election will take place on March 2nd. Although there are still _five weeks before the election, we desire to make an appeal to all Londoners who value good citizenship in the old accepted sense to do everything they can during the campaign to resist the forces of bad citizen- ship, and, above all, to remember March 2nd and make a point of voting on that day. Good causes are often lost through lethargy. The cause for which we appeal now is a very important one indeed, and it is, unfortunately, true that in municipal politics lethargy is only too familiar. Economy in municipal expenditure all over the country is a large part of the problem of national expenditure as a whole. It is ridiculous for people to wring their hands at the high rates and to abuse the bodies which impose these rates if they do not take the trouble to see that municipal bodies are composed of sincere and highly responsible persons. Very often the men and women who lament the exactions of the rates most loudly, and who never fail to denounce the iniquity of which they are the victims, are the very people who take least trouble about supporting the right candidates and about voting. In the long run every city has the local government it deserves. The voters have their fate in their own hands. A London County Council election always has .a certain reaction upon politics in a wider field. To some extent it will indicate, if it does not affect, the character of the General Election. Nothing could be more heartbreaking for candidates for Parliament who are determined to use all their power to reduce national expenditure than to know that even before they issue their election addresses the cause of economy has already been lost in one important encounter, owing to the supineness of London municipal electors.
As at the last election in 1919, there are now three parties before the London electors—the Municipal Reform Party, the Progressives, and the Labour Party. The election of 1919 was the first occasion on which the Labour Party was strong enough to engage in an election as a distinct party. Before then Labour candidates had been merged in the Progressives. The result of the appearance of the new Party in 1919 was that the Municipal Reformers and the Progressives made an arrangement by which they did not oppose one another where a Labour candidate was in the field. Triangular elections were avoided. One might have supposed that the appearance of the new party of an extreme type—the candidates being frankly Socialists when they were not Communists—would have called the London voters strictly to attention. The effect, if not the aim, of the Labour policy is to pour out money under the disastrous illusion that it is simply a case of the rich paying for the poor ; although really the chief sufferers from high rates, as from all high taxation, are the poorer classes. Strangely enough, the result of the Labour challenge in 1919 was not to create apprehension but to soothe it. It was calculated that the combined Municipal Reform and Progressive votes would easily defeat the Labour attempt. Only about 17 per cent. of the electorate voted—the smallest percentage on record. True that, according to calculation, the lethargy was not visited by any serious consequences. The arrange- ment between the Municipal Reformers and the Progres- sives did save the situation. Sixty-eight Municipal Reformers were returned, forty Progressives, and only fifteen Labour candidates. But it cannot be expected that indifference will come of so lightly every time.
There has already been an ample warning of what may happen through slackness in the way in which Labour candidates swept into some of the Borough Councils when their campaign was not taken seriously. Consider the Poplar Council as an example. The methods of the powerful Labour majority in that Council have been a perfect instance of what we have called bad citizenship. The expenditure has been appalling ; the rates have soared up ; and the Poplar Council, instead of regarding itself as a custodian of the law, has itself defied the law and tried to reduce the Government of London to chaos. We have often admitted that the poorer Boroughs of London have a distinct grievance in that they are rated more heavily than richer Boroughs in connexion with unemployment and so forth, although they are the Boroughs least able to bear the burden. But the right method of redressing the grievance is to work constitutionally for sharing the burden more equitably under a central scheme. Individual Boroughs would, of course, have to sacrifice a part of their present liberty to rim up bills. They would not be allowed to run up bills which others have to pay when those others have no say- in the policy which causes the expenditure. That is the most rudimentary application of the principle " no taxation without representation " which every good democrat accepts. But Mr. Lansbury and his friends at Poplar acted as though coherence and stability could be produced out of anarchy. Their idea of a demonstration was to set the fashion in law-breaking. That is the kind of policy, or, rather, negation of policy, ruinous in finance, and demoralizing to the whole character of government, which Londoners must make it their busi- ness in the approaching London County Council election to prevent. The manifesto of the Labour Party shows plainly enough what is intended. It is proposed that there should be public ownership of the means of pro- duction. It is proposed that an authority should be created to deal with all such public services as the Tube railways, the trams, lighting, and water supply. Co- operative Societies under the control of the London County Council would trade in coal and food. The County Council would also take to banking. In other words, the lesson of the past few years that bureaucratic interference is tiresome, inefficient and fabulously expensive is to be disregarded. The L.C.C. steamboats on the Thames—an economic tragedy—are to be remembered, if remembered at all, only as though they had been a gigantic success. We should have everything fashioned on the model of failure—bands, cinemas, cafes, dancing halls, parks, all contributing to make London theoretically the brightest of cities and practically an impossible place for any poor man to live in. If the Socialists and Communists get their way we are to have more interference, more meddlesomeness, more deprivations of personal liberty, and much higher rates than ever. It is a clear duty, therefore, in our opinion, for every good citizen who values (1) orderly government, and (2) reasonably low rates, to support the Municipal Reformers or the Progressives against the Labour candidate. The issue as between the Municipal Reformers and the Progressives is, as we have seen, of much less importance than the issue between these two parties and the Labour Party. We sincerely hope, nevertheless, that all possible support will be given to the Municipal Reform Party to enable it to put forward as many candidates as it can. The Radicalism of the Progressives is tinged with Socialistic concessions to Labour. The Progressives have an un- fortunate infatuation for the principle of taxing land values which was discredited at some cost to the nation by Mr. Lloyd George's Budget of 1909. They are also so much in love with tramway systems which do not pay that they would throw good money after bad. And they would refuse all saving on education, though there is room for considerable saving without cutting the teachers' salaries— a cut which, for our part, we should resist. The Municipal Reform majority have governed London on the whole with very good sense for some fifteen years. In their manifesto they pledge themselves to reduce expenditure, and as a guarantee of good faith they are fully entitled to recall the fact that whereas the cost of living and the price of materials have doubled since 1914, the London County Council rate has been increased by only 621 per cent. Moreover, the debt of the Council charged on the rates has been reduced from about £40,000,000 in 1908 to about £34,000,000 in 1921. During the reign of the Progressives from 1900 to 1907 the debt was increased by 19,000,000.
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