KILLING A COUNTY ?
• By G. H. PEACOCK
AN English county, invited to connive at a plan for its own extinction, announces its objections to hara-kiri and states its intention to fight any proposal to the bitter end. • The county is Herefordshire: the plan for its abolition has been put forward by the Boundary Commission. And other English and Welsh counties, some of whiCh, indeed, have already found themselves drawn into the fray, are girding up their loins lest they too should have to face unpleasant attack. The Commission's next report is due in a few weeks. Herefordshire is doing its energetic and vociferous best to prevent the inclusion in it of proposals whereby Herefordshire shall disappear from the map and be amalgamated with the greater part of Worcestershire, so as to form a new local government unit. It was the county's leader in this particular fight who used the hara-kiri simile in his exposure to the County Council of the Com- mission's suggested plan and it was he who, sensing the countrs indignant reaction, said that instant attack was better than later defence and bluntly adjured the councilors assembled at a special meeting :—" Let us be confident in the justice of our cause and let us try to destroy this bastard scheme* while it is still in the womb of the Boundary Commission."
Such is the Herefordshire battle-cry. If the Commission have in mind the truncation of other areas, that cry will be heard widely throughout the land. Certainly other counties and areas are becoming seriously concerned as to their future status, wondering whether this bomb which on explosion would pulverise Herefordshire preludes similar attacks on what they deem to be their democratic liberties, their traditions, their pride, their administrative efficiency and their interest in local government. As the interests of so many other areas are like those so suddenly thrust into the limelight in the West Midlands, a survey of the Herefordshire position may have value.
It was as recently as the middle of last November that Sir John Maude, Deputy Chaiiman of the Boundary Commission, met a deputation of the Herefordshire County Council's representatives to discuss, in the usual preliminary stage, points in the Commission's considerations of the local position. The suggestions put forward by Sir John gave the councillors a considerable shock. Briefly, they made reference to the relatively small population and the low rateable value of Herefordshire, laying those considerations down as reason or excuse for amalgamating the county with others. Three ideas were mooted by Sir John. One was for amalgamation with certain Welsh counties, another was for merging with Shropshire, a third for incorporation with Worcestershire or a portion thereof. This third suggestion, said Sir John, producing a sketch plan, merited very careful consideration, and he asked that it should be discussed at a Council committee, but not, at that stage, at County Council level.
The deputation of councillors, at the head of whom was Alderman . Dr. E. W. Maples (President of the County Councils Association and former chairman of that body for three years), would have none of it. They at once indicated their view that the proposals were "inexpedient." They "received the proposal not only with amaze- ment but almost with incredulity." It was not many minutes before every one of the councillors was offering protests against it. " We pointed out the lack of access, that local interest could not be . maintained, and that there was no community of interest." They were asked to submit their considered judgement and to regard the matter as confidential. This they refused to do. They said they were not.prepared to go further into the matter except at County Council level, with every member having an opportunity of express- ing his tor her views. And so, in December, the Commission announced that it would welcome an early expression of the County Council's views. It has now had them. A special meeting of the Council was held just before Christmas, when Dr. Maples, whose eminence as an exponent of local government affairs is recognised by Ministers and authorities everywhere, presented a case with which everybody in the Council and, as has since become evident, everybody in the county, is in thorough accord. One of its features was the answer to the Commission's conclusion that if a local authority was to be able to carry out the major services of local government it should possess a population of approximately a quarter of a million and its product of a penny rate should amount to £8,000 to £to,000. The councillors' reply was that in the three major services of roads, public health and education, Herefordshire's standard was in every way comparable with that of counties with even higher population. Details were furnished in proof.
Numerous other features of the resistance movement are bound up in one way or another with the consideration that the Commission'. proposals injure the county's pride. Here is a community which for a thousand years has been homogeneous and a living entity, with its own particular and well-defined a aracter. • " I know no land more full of bounty and beauty than this red land, so good for corn and hops and roses. Whenever I think of a perfect Human State I think of parts of this county," said the Poet Laureate, himself a son of Herefordshire, in a prose poem delivered when some years ago he was made a Freeman of Hereford. In an age when Whitehall planners take first place as against the Seers, the people of Hereford- shire have greater faith in the insight of the poet than in the cold- blooded schemes of those who view government , in terms of the reduction of the nation's communities to the lowest common de- nominator, calculating reforms with the aid of a yardstick, little regarding human relationships and conditions. They are meeting the reformers on their own ground, too, for instance, in the matter of access to a convenient administrative centre. Thus we are shown by an amalgamation such as has been adumbrated how a compact, characterful area, with a centre—the ancient city of Hereford---easy of access, would be turned into a dreary administrative waste, over which the local legislators would have to travel long and time-taking distances to do their work. If the administration of the newly shaped area were to be conducted from Worcester, representatives from the western districts would have to travel over 8o, 90 and even 1o6 miles.
This threatened abolition of a whole county is a bigger matter than the merging of city and county administrations among them- selves. It outrages a local patriotism which springs from the real conviction that Herefordshire forms a unit taking care of itself very well, one too valuable to the nation to be lost in a local government morass. Citizens are fortified in their views in this respect by state- ments contained in the book, English County, an exhaustive compila- tion issued in 1946 by the West Midland Group on Post-War Reconstruction and Planning. Thus :—
" It has been suggested that the comparatively limited and tardy development of industry in Herefordshire is influenced by the ex- tremely limited range of mineral wealth, and the influence of this purely negative factor on the economy of the county is likely to persist in the future. On the other hand, Herefordshire possesses the highest proportion (and largest absolute area) of first-class land of any of the West Midland counties. This fertility constitutes s positive asset of the highest significance both to the county and to the whole country, and it would seem that the county's major con- tribution to the national economy is likely to lie in the adequate utilisation of this asset. . . . Agriculturally and scenically, the poten- tialities of the county are unrivalled in the West Midlands, perhaps in the country, and it is upon' the realisation of these assets that the future land-use planning of the county should be based."
So, conscious of the faot that their own local government is well suited to the county's peculiar social' and economic conditions, and that dominated, as they believe they would be under the amalgama- tion scheme, by bodies with whom they have no affinities, the people of Herefordshire are ready to fight to the death. They have at any rate jumped into the fray at its very beginning, even before the Com- mission had come out into the open. Discussions between the Com- mission and the Councils concerned are now in progress. It remains to be seen whether Herefordshire has strangled " this bastard " as it is born or not
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