GOVERNMENT OF A METROPOLIS
History of the London County Council, 1889-1939. By Sir Gwilym Gibbon, C.B., C.B.E., and Reginald W. Bell. (Macmillan. 2 I S.) THESE books survey much the same scenery, though from different hilltops. The first, though " in no sense an official history," has " been written at the instance of the London County Council to commemorate its jubilee." The authors " have not hesitated to make comments, though, naturally, with less freedom than if the book had been a wholly private venture." In any case, it is a record of have-beens rather than a speculation about might-have-beens or ought-to-have- beens. Dr. Robson, on the other hand, as his title suggests, is out to criticise. For the most part, however, it is not acts that he censures, but omissions ; and he puts the blame for them less on individuals, or even Parties, than on what he regards as a fundamentally defective and inadequate munici- pal constitution.
The problem of local government in a mammoth super- city, a Millionenstadt, is a very difficult one, wherever you find it ; and when the city is also the capital of a great country (as, save in the United States, it usually is), the complications are still greater. Dr. Robson is right in hold- ing that the problem of London has too seldom been viewed as a whole and tackled systematically. Certainly it was not so viewed in 1889 ; the L.C.C. was little more than a by- product of the Salisbury-Ritchie County Councils Act, which, in turn, was inspired far more by the necessity of carrying out electoral pledges, and the hope of doing so with the least possible interference to existing institutions than by any administrative planning.
But when you look abroad, what solutions do you discover in similar cases? Berlin tried several, before and after the War ; but, though much thought was given to them, none gave great satisfaction, and now the Nazis have substituted a purely bureaucratic system. Paris has always had bureau- cracy ; the Prefect of the Seine and the Prefect of Police be- tween them control everything. If you want to find any precedent for a super-city being governed as a whole by a single local authority directly elected, you will have to go to America. Dr. Robson does so, and doses his book with an interesting account of the new constitution for Greater New York, which came into force on January zst, 1938. But before one can usefully apply any New York lesson to London, one has to remember two things—first, that it is not, like London, a national (or even a State) capital; and, secondly, that the mayoral government of New York differs completely from the committee government of an English municipality, alike in its merits and its defects.
Dr. Robson's solution is "a directly elected Greater London Council for the whole region." He conceives the region on the widest scale. Even the Greater London within the boundary of the Metropolitan Police District is "much too small for regional needs." The area which he recommends is 31 times as large, or " a little over 20 times the size of the County of London." At the same time, he wisely deprecates an over-large council ; so that he has to propose enormous constituencies. He tries to reassure us by saying that New York's are much larger ; but it might be answered that, where the crucial voting is for the mayor, the size of constituencies for councillors is of vastly less consequence than where the crucial voting is for them, and them only.
His conclusion really rests on two premises : (1) " It is a principle of good government that administrative areas should become larger as the means of communication improve, in order that the areas of political organisation should compre- hend the areas of diurnal movement made by the people " ; (2) a quasi-universal presumption that a local council directly elected, even by a very large area, gives better results than one formed on federal or " Water Board " lines. Both of these theorems are rather postulated than proved ; nor is any adequate attention paid to the administrative argument, that the more you insist on (I), the less you can afford to insist on (2)—i.e., the wider the area, the more plausible the case for federalism. Similarly in dismissing, rather perfunctorily, the alternative of ad hoc bodies, Dr. Robson is too content with showing how difficult it is to co-ordinate them, and how mischievous is their non-co-ordination. He does not sufficiently face the fact, that Parliament's deliberate reversion to ad hoc bodies in recent years, despite all these drawbacks, testifies to a growing belief in their superior intrinsic efficiency. Nor does he ever seem to have stood back and asked himself, without prejudice, whether a " general" local authority, virtually unreported in the Press, answerable only to an electorate of which nearly 7c, per cent. do not vote, and working through the English municipal committee system which is calculated to conceal from the public almost all individual responsibility, is really fit to discharge any but routine tasks. Yet remember that it is almost entirely upon the non-routine side—particularly in regard to all that is covered by the word " planning "—that he finds—and rightly finds—the administration of Greater London so fatally deficient.
Sir Gwilym Gibbon and Mr. Bell are naturally not con- cerned to emphasise that side. Looking at the L.C.C.'s positive record, they have a long and interesting story to tell of its detailed achievements. Perhaps the greatest of these is the high standard of honesty, thoroughness, even-handed- ness, and regularity established throughout its routine administration. Probably no English local authority has less petty corruption among its servants ; very few have as little. Its merits and defects are those which characterise English workmanship in general ; it is solid, eschews shams, stands hard wear ; conversely, it is expensive, unimaginative, inelastic.
The L.C.C. started with some handicaps, of which the greatest was area. Unquestionably the Essex fringe, out to Barking and Walthamstow inclusive, ought to have been added at the outset to make the conception coherent. But it also began with some great advantages, not the least of which, it may be suggested, was that it had not to administer the police. Of old it used to be a Progressive grievance that London did not " control its own police," and one is surprised to find Dr. Robson still echoing the murmur. In retro- spect, it might have seemed obvious that few things have helped the Council more than to be rid of an easily detach- able responsibility, which—quite apart from the added pro- blems of a Metropolitan seat of national government—is always thorny with politics and sticky with risks of corruption.
Tributes have often been paid to the early work of Lord Rosebery and Lord Avebury on the Council. One might have expected Sir Gwilym Gibbon and Mr. Bell to bring out more than they do the unique services rendered by a series of brilliant ex-Civil Servants, from Lord Farrer down to Lord Welby and Sir Francis Mowatt ; to whom has been due the basic excellence of the L.C.C.'s procedure in regard to finance, staff, contracts and some other fundamental things. But the early impetus—not entirely spent down to the War—brought into the Council a membership of distinction on many sides. Its subsequent decline in prestige has been gradual but immense. Today, when the number of L.C.C. members who are known to the world outside it might be counted on the fingers of one hand, one has to rub one's memory to recall a period when such men sat on the benches of the Council in scores, and when the letters L.C.C., then invariably affixed to their names by the Press, carried a halo comparable to— and not so much behind—that which the letters M.P. still carry. Such memories form a useful corrective to any too
theoretical view of County Hall. R. C. K. ENSOR.
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