SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
J. W. M. THOMPSON
One day some academic researcher, tired of less obvious subjects, may give us a paper on the
timing of embarrassing official documents. If
so, the report on the Ronan Point disaster will come into his field. Mr Anthony Greenwood, in presenting this absolutely appalling docu- ment to Parliament, felt sensitive enough on the question of timing to volunteer that he had published it as quickly as the printers could provide it (the report, I note, contains only seventy-one pages yet evidently took three and a half weeks to produce), thus implying that only pure and utter coincidence led to its appearance on the day when press, Tv and public were overwhelmingly occupied with the American election. The only polite comment is that it was, in that case, a very convenient coincidence for very many people.
Ronan Point collapsed, we all know, be- cause the Ministry of Housing and its agencies failed to enforce adequate safety standards. The failure seems to be rooted partly in ignorance, partly in complacency : yet how could responsible men accept as safe a type of building which, as the inquiry has shown, is vulnerable even to a very high wind, let alone a perfectly predictable minor gas explo- sion? Mes will, of course, have to find out much more about all this. As an example of what they are likely to meet in the process there is Mr Greenwood's emollient remark in the House that the Ronan Point building systems 'had been well tried on the continent and there was no reason to believe that they were not satisfactory.' No reason? The report (page 59) says that a year before anyone went to live at Ronan Point the Comitd Europden du &ton published an alarming warning about the risk of such buildings behaving like 'a house of cards'; and recommended precautions. Owing to a 'very regrettable' delay, no English translation of this warning was available until a couple of months after Ronan Point had collapsed like—well, like a house of cards. The report might have used a much stronger word than 'regrettable.'
Local confusion
Unhappily, for one reason or another this country has fallen into a state of confusion about local government. Ministers pay lip- service to the notion of sturdy local democracy, just as they pay lip-service to 'participation,' whatever that might mean. But their actual acts tend to transfer an ever greater number of decisions to Whitehall. For example, consider the recent series of minis- terial interventions ordering local councils to reduce council-house rents. Without looking at the justice or otherwise of the reductions ordered, here is a major invasion of a tradi- tionally local field of reponsibility—and all done, of course, not as an open diminution of councils' authority. but under the cloak of the Prices and Incomes Act 1968. Central government never says it wishes to reduce local power: it merely does so in a roundabout way. On another level. I have been interested by the general attitude to the Welsh referen- dum on Sunday drinking. This has been, it would appear, a pleasantly Welsh bit of whimsy, a suitable subject for patronising humour from the metropolis. Yet it seems to me to have been
Out of bounds
The newly published Representation of the People Bill makes a stupefyingly retrograde proposal about local councils. Under this Bill, 'business residence' will cease to qualify either to vote in, or stand in, local elections. There is a case for 'one man, one local vote' (instead of just one per locality, as at present), although this could be met by allowing a voter a choice between his domestic and business 'residences.' What is really monstrous is the intention of excluding people who work in an area from standing for election to the council unless they also live there. Have the authors of this scheme learned nothing from the example of the United States, where the decay of urban centres and the flight to suburbia has left the cities bereft of lively local leaders? In this country, local parties have hitherto succeeded in persuading useful people to continue to serve their cities (unpaid) even after they have gone to live out- side the city boundary, and such people ought to be encouraged, not excluded. Presumably the trouble is that most of them happen to be Conservatives or Liberals. But if this is seen as a class-privilege situation, the sensible solu- tion would be to extend the workplace principle, not to contract it. Why not let anyone stand as a candidate where he works, whether he pays rates there or not? The Maud report last year urged this very reform: and that report was con- cerned with persuading good people to enter local government, not with scoring party points.
Pet subject
After reading Hansard's report of the great dog- licensing debate in the House of Lords, I'm almost persuaded that any attempts to reform this House are to be deplored as wanton tam- pering with a priceless asset. No future second chamber, alas, will ever match the extra- ordinary blend of eccentricity, practicality and breeziness which characterises their lordships at work on some great issue like dog licensing Lord Ailwyn, for example, solemnly arguing for the appointment of a corps of dog wardens, to be financed out of a L2 dog licence; Lord Amulree, fuming about the state of the streets ('During the summer months I saw several piles of dried-up excrement which were becoming dusty from lying on the pavement'); Lord Ferrers, briskly declaring, 'I for one should not like to see a whole lot of people being paid to, as it were, sit on their bottoms chasing up more and more people to see whether they have dog licences,' and pondering, 'I wonder why the Government have stopped at dogs? There would appear to be a•pretty lush harvest if they were to start on cats, canaries or gold- fish'; or Lord Arran truculently demanding, 'Would you like it if your friends have you killed, too, when you get old and smelly?' Are we really to lose all this? an admirably efficient and sane proceeding. As a result, three more counties will now be able to open their pubs on Sundays, and some others will continue to close them, because that is what the local people want. Whitehall would• never have conic up with so untidy a solution; its only virtue, after all, is that it exactly re- flects public opinion. - :4!
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