MUNICIPAL REVOLT?
SIR,—I see that Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield and 14 other Midlands towns are sending their civic heads to London, to protest to the Minister of Home Security against what the Lord Mayor of Birmingham has called "the Gauleiters of Whitehall." Let us hope they will succeed in conveying to Mr. Morrison's mind the state of frustration to which the Government's Regional organisation has reduced the great local authorities. We all want Regional administra- tion, but let us have it on traditional English lines. The Government has followed a Prussian model. Instead of placing power and responsibility in the hands of democratically elected representatives, it has appointed a hierarchy of full-time officials, responsible to no one in their administrative areas and owing allegiance only to itself.
A rigid system of centralised control may suit the Germans with their passion for thoroughness and detailed order, but it is wholly alien to the English character, with its genius for local initiative and improvisation. The attempt to introduce this alien regimentation has proved a fiasco from the start. It has merely produced a flood of verbose, contradictory and unintelligible circulars, with an extra " bottleneck " impeding progress at Regional headquarters. The most serious aspect of the situation is that congestion and "red tape" at the centre are beginning to destroy the high standards hitherto maintained by the great local authorities. If this is allowed to con- tinue, the whole fabric of democratic government will be imperilled.
Previous page
