BANKSIDE POSTSCRIPT
By WILSON HARRIS, M.P.
THE Government has declared finally, in the face of appeals by all persons and all public bodies best entitled to make appeal, that the Bankside power-station is to be constructed according to plan. The universal public protest has produced one modification only. The power-station is to be oil-fired instead of coal-fired. The purpose of that change is to avoid dirt and grit and the obvious destruction to amenities arising from the unloading of coal-barges on the edge of the gardens which are to intervene between the power- station and the river. But what the effect of oil-fuelling will be no one knows. The Lord Chancellor admitted in the House of Lords that oil-burning on anything like this scale is new in this country, and that an experimental plant will have to be run up to see how to eliminate the sulphur fumes which oil-fuel emits in greater volume than coal-fuel. Mr. Alfred Bossom, who has had a long and success- ful career as an architect in the United States, said in the House of Commons debate that all attempts to eliminate sulphur-fumes had completely failed in America. A well-known Australian has told me since the debate that experience of oil-fuelling in his country shows that fumes emerging from the chimney produce a thin film which settles on everything in the neighbourhood. In view of that some importance may attach to the undertaking extracted from the Minister in the course of the Commons debate that the construction of the power-station shall not go forward till he is satisfied that the difficulty of the elimination of sulphur can be satisfactorily over- come. The one thing that is known with certainty about oil-fuelling, for the Lord Chancellor has given the figures in the House of Lords, is that it will cost anything from £400,000 to £5oo,000 a year—the equivalent of a capital sum of between £16,000,000 and £20,000,000— more than coal-fuelling. But that, of course, can just be dumped on the back of the taxpayer, for the Government will have taken over all electricity before the new station is built.
Since the Government has shown itself inexorable there is little purpose in canvassing the inherent demerits of the Bankside scheme further. But there is considerable purpose in examining some of the implications of the Bankside discussion. Nothing that has happened since this Parliament was elected has shown more decisively how arbitrarily this country, under what purports to be a demo- cratic system, is ruled by an oligarchy. Our Cabinet system must, of course, involve that to some extent. Parliament in these days initiates nothing, for the private Member's right has been eliminated completely. The Cabinet decides policy, and its majority in the House of Commons endorses it after discussion forcibly curtailed by guillotine or otherwise. In the case of Bankside this process has been carried to unprecedented lengths. Here if anywhere the voice of democracy outside •the House of Commons was decisive. The new power-station, if built, would serve primarily the immediate locality, which is the Borough of Southwark,—and the Southwark Borough Council. a democratically elected body with a Labour majority, is solid against the scheme. It would serve secondarily the whole Greater London area,—and the London County Council, a democratically elected body with a Labour majority, was all but unanimous against the scheme. The Corporation of the City of London, another democratically elected body, was equally adverse. So, incidentally, was every society and organisation concerned with amenities and aesthetics in London. So was virtually the whole of the London Press.
Where in relation to all this does the Government, and where does the House of Commons, stand? The House of Lords has, of course, discussed the scheme fully ; the Government is not in a position to control discussions in that Chamber. In the debate there, of the unofficial speeches eight were against the scheme and one in favour of it. The House of Commons has had a two-hours discussion in a House inevitably almost empty on the eve of a holiday. There, of the unofficial speeches six were against the scheme and two in favour, with several more opponents of the pro- ject kept silent by the time-limit. There could be no better demon- stration of the impotence of the House of Commons. Nearly two hundred M.P.s had put their names to a motion appealing for re- consideration of the Bankside plan, but there is no means of getting
such a motion discussed unless the Government chooses to give time for it, which in this case was the last thing the Government would do. The Opposition could, of course, have put down a vote of censure, but that would at once have turned an essentially non- party question into a party question, and the usual party vote in the lobbies would have resulted. The only other possibility was for some private Member to try to raise the matter either in the half- hour conceded to private Members at the end of public business (which may be at two o'clock in the morning) every day, or on the day before the Whitsun adjournment, when by custom five hours and a half are allowed to private Members, divided among some five or six subjects at the discretion of the Speaker. In this cast a private Member—myself in point of fact—was successful in getting• a place on the Whitsuntide adjournment. The result, as I have said, was a two-hour discussion in a House four-fifths of whose members had already gone off for their holiday.
Actually the debate would have been futile in any case. The Minister, it is well-known, had made up his mind before it began that he would not yield an inch. In the House of Lords four days earlier the Lord Chancellor had gone so far as to say that he would draw the attention of his Cabinet colleagues to what had been said in that House and ask that they should consider, in the light of that debate, whether the scheme ought to go on. What consultation there was in the four days has not been disclosed. In any case the Commons received even less consideration than the Lords, for there was no suggestion that anything said in the debate in the demo- erotically-elected House would have the smallest effect on the Minister or any of his Cabinet colleagues. What then is the power of demo- cracy, under a democratic system of government, in regard to a matter which, for all its public importance and the public concern it arouses, is not a major issue seriously affecting the position of a Government? The answer is that democracy in such a case is power- less. There is not a shadow of doubt that on a free vote of the House of Commons the power-station scheme would have been defeated. When the Minister was asked whether he would agree to a free vote he naturally (and accurately) replied that the procedure of that day's debate did not admit of it, adding that this would be "a stupid and inefficient" way of doing business. When he was faced with the almost unanimous opposition of every democratically-elected body concerned he dogmatically asserted his belief, without a shadow of evidence, that the House and the country as a whole were in favour of the scheme. How, in such circumstances, can democracy impose its will? Is it condemned in all such cases to pure impotence? Only one answer seems possible.
But there are other issues that deserve a moment's attention. What, in the face of this decision, is the future of planning by local bodies? Here was the greatest piece of town-planning ever framed in this country, framed on behalf of and endorsed by the greatest municipal body in the world. The outstanding feature of the whole scheme was the treatment of the south bank of the Thames, designed, in conjunction with the new City plan for the north bank, to redeem a stretch of the river which today is London's shame and turn it into something that would for all time be London's pride. The outstand- ing feature of the treatment of the south bank was the treatment of Bankside, every square inch of which, incidentally, is historic ground. On that, in view of its associations, and in view of the prominence it assumes on a curve of the river, catching the eye from above and below as well as from the opposite bank, the planners had rightly concentrated, deciding on one fundamental principle—that industry should have no place on the river frontage here, being left to develop, with ample scope, on the stretches below London Bridge. This principle, as the result of Mr. Silkin's decision, lies shattered. Even if it were a bad principle, which it was not, what does this mean? If a coach and horses can be driven through the London plan here why not anywhere else? This is the first assault on it, and the Government has given the assault its full endorsement. Where does the L.C.C. stand in regard to its plans? Where does any local authority stand in regard to the area for which it possesses and exercises responsibility? These are questions which municipalities all over the country will ask with some insistence, and rightly.
Where, finally, do organisations concerned for the preservation or the embellishment of the face of England stand? On the Bankside question they are unanimous, and they are contemptuously dis- regarded. Where, in particular, does the Fine Art Commission stand? The design of the new power-station is to be submitted to it, but the design is not much contested ; Sir Giles Gilbert Scott has shown what he can do in the way of a power-station at Battersea, and his hand is not likely to have lost its cunning since. But what voice is the Commission to have regarding the siting of the station? Will it be permitted to express its view as between a power-station and, let us say, university buildings for Bankside? The answer, once more, is not in doubt. No one knows whether university buildings would in fact have been erected at Bankside, though it is far from improbable, and the L.C.C. would unquestionably have welcomed them warmly. But the Government has settled that once for all, for it is certain that no educational institution will ever choose a power-station for neighbour. The Government, indeed, by its anti- democratic decision, has settled more than it perhaps realises, and settled it calamitously.
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