THE CITIZEN'S DUTY AT MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS.
WE publish to-day a letter signed " A Householder," setting forth, with a frankness which we welcome, criticisms on a recent article of ours in deprecation of the growing tendency to conduct the elections for the London County Council upon the lines of Imperial party politics. In the view of our correspondent, which is very ably ex- pounded, our advice to the Metropolitan electors—that they should disregard party labels and take steps to in- form themselves as to the really relevant qualifications of municipal candidates—is neither practicable nor wise. It is impracticable because the ordinary private person has no means of informing himself as to the qualifications of candidates other than those furnished by their political professions. It is unwise because, as we understand our correspondent, nothing can in truth be more relevant, broadly speaking, to the question of a candidate's fitness for the discharge of the responsibilities of municipal office than his political creed. The smart of the reflection on our judgment involved in the latter contention is some- what mitigated by " A Householder's " acknowledgment that if the Spectator were to undertake the function of advising its readers with regard to such individual candi- dates for the County Council and the School Board as it deemed deserving of support on grounds apart from politics, its recommendations "would always be carefully weighed, and sometimes acted on." That is a compliment which we value, and if we could admit that there existed the virtual impossibility which our correspondent alleges, in the case of ordinary citizens, of finding out what aspirants for municipal office were worthy, we might conceive it to be our duty to offer opinions with regard to individual candidatures. We do not, however, feel able to make any such general admission. No doubt, if people have paid little or no attention to the conduct of municipal affairs between one election and the next, there is, or may be, some serious difficulty for them in deciding which of the candidates before them make out the strongest claim— whether by reason of past services on the Council, or by reference to their general character and work in other ways, and their statement of their views on municipal questions—to be entrusted with a share in the Council's work in future. Even so, the expenditure of a reasonable amount of trouble in inquiry among neighbours who have kept their eyes and ears open in regard to the course of municipal affairs, and in making reference to the files of newspapers at public libraries or elsewhere in respect of questions of local importance, should go far to enlighten the ignorance resulting from previous neglect. But, of course, the exercise of the municipal franchise can only be entirely satisfactory where it is the result of reflection based on, at least, the same kind of intelligent interest, continuously given to local affairs, as is bestowed by citizens who claim to be reasonably patriotic on Imperial affairs. For the cultivation of such interest the daily newspapers, or some of them, afford a fair amount of material ; but if their accounts are too meagre, they can be supplemented by those of London weekly journals in which the proceedings of the County Council are regularly reported with considerable fulness. Of course, the information obtained by the reading of such reports may, and probably will, often need to be supplemented and corrected by conversation with in- telligent neighbours who are applying their minds to the same subjects. Doubtless all this takes time and trouble, and we readily allow that great numbers of citizens may find it difficult to secure intervals in their daily occupa- tions and amusements for the bestowal of that kind of attention on local affairs for which we plead. But unless they do so there can be no security whatever that local affairs will be efficiently managed. Even if choosing municipal candidates by their party colour were a good method of discriminating among them, the candidates elected cannot be expected to do their work satisfactorily unless they are followed and criticised, blamed or sup- ported, by an intelligent public opinion. And if enough citizens exert themselves sufficiently to form such a public opinion, then they will have little or no difficulty, as the elections come round, in deciding for whom they should give their votes. If the good government of London is not, by the bulk of its citizens, thought worth the trouble needed for the discharge of civic duty in such ways as we have indicated, the outlook, not only for London, but for a democratic England, is a poor one.
We do not wish to strain our point too far. There are, we may suppose, really a considerable number of citizens who, from the pressure of unavoidable business, have been unable in the past to follow local affairs with any care, and are now honestly unable to make up satisfactorily for that regrettable omission. We are prepared to allow that such citizens are justified in deciding as between two candidates before them, as to whose relative claims they may have no other information on which they can depend, by their political colour. It is generally a less irrelevant consideration than the colour of their hair. Elections may occur under circumstances making it a good deal less irrelevant. But the approaching elections for the London County Council do not afford, in our opinion, a favourable example of conditions in which a party fight can be waged with a balance of probable advantage. Now, and as a rule, what we want in the case of candi- dates for the County Council is a good test of their qualifications, not, be it always remembered, as legis- lators, but as administrators of powers defined by various Acts of Parliament. Issues may arise from time to time in the course of County Council work, in which division, more or less closely following the lines of political cleavage, is natural, and even in- evitable. But for the most part a man is a good or a bad County Councillor for the same kind of reasons that would make him a good or a bad Civil servant, railway director, or trustee of a large estate. In none of these capacities would a man's political opinions be deemed to have anything to do with his fitness. It is well known that not a few of those high permanent officials who have been and are most justly valued by the Unionist party are strongly attached to Radical and Home-rule opinions. It is related, and we believe truly, of one of the most distinguished members of the present Government that, on its being remarked to him that A. B.. a member of the staff of his Department, was a man of extreme opinions, he replied that he did not care a straw about his political opinions,—he was a first-class man for every job which he had to do. Only the other day the new Secretary of War, in making up a small Committee to consider and report to • him on matters of prime importance in connection with Army adminis- tration, selected at least one well-known Radical, Mr. iather, the head of the great Salford Iron- works. Such freedom from political considerations is universally recognised as right and laudable in connection with the working of our most vital national Services. An equal, but not greater, detachment is to be observed in regard to the principal control of our leading railway systems. The same clearness and breadth of view, the same businesslike grip, as are rightly deemed to be the qualifications of first importance for successful work in the spheres to which we have just referred, are those which are of first importance in the domain of municipal administration, and it is to such things that the electors should direct their attention. Just in so far as they look aside at other and irrelevant, or, at any rate, greatly less relevant, considerations, will the chances of securing that really progressive administration at which most candidates profess to aim be diminished.
At the same time, as we are all human, and as the average citizen has only a limited amount of mental energy available for the consideration and treatment of public affairs of any class, national and local, we bold it most desirable that some steps should be taken to economise that energy. To that end a good deal might be done by the-co-operation of persons who hold with us that party politics ought to be brought as little as possible into municipal administration. They might form organisations, with broader and more enlightened aims than those of the old Ratepayers' Associations, but resting on the same foundation, out of which committees would be appointed composed of persons whose recom- mendations in regard to candidates might be relied on by citizens who really were not able to inform themselves directly. But further, we regard it as of the greatest importance that there should be a reduction in the number, and therefore a concentration, of the elections in which citizens are called to take part. In the provinces this concentration could possibly be carried further than in London. But everywhere there is abundant reason for the accumulation of responsibilities on a single body instead of their division among two or three, when the same area is concerned. In the creation of County and City Councils endowed with powers covering the educa- tional field, as well as the other ordinary branches of municipal administration, is to be found, we believe, the best solution of the problem of educational reorganisa- tion, the surest means of enlisting the best civic abilities in all branches of local service, and the most likely method of attracting and retaining the steadily intelligent interest of the largest number of citizens in the management of local affairs.
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