LORD SALISBURY AND LONDON GOVERNMENT.
rilllogE who entertained fears that the Government 1. were contemplating a scheme for the disintegration and disorganisation of London—for splitting London, that is, into three or four cities of the well-to-do and seven or eight cities of the very poor—may now feel perfectly satisfied that no such steps are to be taken. The answer given by Lord Salisbury to the deputation from the Vestries which waited on him on Wednesday last was entirely satisfactory. Lord Salisbury repudiated in the strongest possible way the notion that the Govern- ment were going to embark upon a policy of disruption. • What the Government propose to do is simply to glorify the Vestries,—to put a little gilding on those bodies, and to call them municipalities. They hold that by doing so they will considerably improve the character of the Vestries, and will create a better tone generally in regard to local affairs. Unquestionably there is a good deal in names, and it may be that a man who will not consent to sit on a Vestry, or be the Chairman of a Vestry, will feel quite different about a Town Council and a Mayor. The public, too, will take the Mayor of such-and- such a district far more seriously than they do the Chair- man of the Vestry, and will expect and exact from him a higher standard of public duty. Probably the actual results which will flow from this glorification of the Vestries will be less than certain enthusiasts expect, but at any rate no harm will be done, and the tendency will be wholly in the right direction,—provided always that the unity of London is not broken up or its fiscal system disorganised. Fortu- nately there is, as we have said, now no fear of disintegra- tion. To use Lord Salisbury's words,—" Everybody must feel that the separation of rich and poor, in itself a great evil, would be an evil enormously exaggerated if the result of it was to throw upon those who are less able to bear it an undue and excessive portion of the common burden. The contrary has been increasingly felt to be the right course to pursue in recant times, and that is to help the poorer part of the community to bear the burdens which rest upon them." Those who desire the grant to municipalities of honours and dignities, disclaim, he added, any intention to set up a number of rich and poor municipalities, or any intention to disturb the beneficent operation of the Act for the relief of the poorer communities,—i.e., the Equalisation of Rates Act Lord Salisbury in another part of his speech touched upon the need for decentralisation in London affairs. He hopes that when the Vestries have become municipali- ties it may be possible to devolve on them some of the duties which are now carried out by the County Council. In theory we are quite with him. The more you can decentralise, and the more you can make the men who are physically on the spot responsible for their strictly local affairs, the better. When, however, one descends from theory to practice, the difficulties are enormous. The essential thing to remember about London is that, as Lord Salisbury fully admits, it must be treated as a fiscal unity. In effect there must be a common purse, or some- thing very like it, for most London purposes. But the common purse means that the body which raises the money must also to a very considerable extent spend it. Experience shows that if one set of men raise a rate and another set spend it, the spending is sure to be extrava- gantly done. But extravagance in expenditure is a thing we dare not encourage in London. A county or a borough might go bankrupt, and the nation be undisturbed, but the soundness of London finance is a national concern. We doubt very much, then, if it will be found possible to take much work away from the County Council in order to give it to the new municipalities. When the devolution of a power belonging now to the Council is pro- posed it will, we venture to think, be found either that the power is one which common-sense shows ought to be exercised by all the London localities in combination, or else that it is one which would involve the throwing upon the localities of a burden now borne by the central body. We expect, then, that when the matter comes to be considered at close quarters, it will not be found possible to give the Vestries, even though they have become Mayors and Corporations, very much more power • than they now possess. But to say this, of course, is not to object to the proposal, for their present powers are quite considerable, and would not in any way disgrace a Town Council. There is, nevertheless, one way in which we think that something like devolution might be carried out successfully. We do not see why the County ,Council should not have power to delegate portions of its work to the local municipalities, keeping, however, still the final responsibility, and by a mechanism of con- trol and inspection seeing that the local bodies did the work delegated to them wisely and well. The analogy would be the attitude of the Home Office to the police forces of the counties and cities. The Government gives grants for the police, but they do not let the localities spend it as they will. The grant involves inspection and controL If in any way the County Council could be used to supervise the work of the local municipalities, it appears to us that no little good would result. The County Council has had a very disagreeable Works scandal of its own. If it were given a right of inspect- ing and checking the works executed by the locali- ties, its past experiences might help it to prevent local scandals.
Though we willingly acquiesce in the scheme for creating a number of municipalities within the Metropolis, and think it possible that the new bodies may call forth that feeling of local pride and patriotism so much wanting in London, we remain, as we always have been, convinced that London is a single entity, and that some day or other it should be endowed with a sense of corporate life. We have no objection to glorifying the Vestries, but we should also like to glorify the County Council and to endow its Chairman with the civic tradition and the civic attributes of state and honour. It would surely be absurd to let the chief and central body in London remain the only body without municipal form or dignity. If a Vestry is not good enough for Shoreditch, it is not good enough for all London. We are not in a hurry, but ultimately there must be a City Council and Lord Mayor of all London. Whether this shall come through federal forms or by director means, we are not prepared to say just now. It might be a wise plan to let all London elect a. Mayor by a popular vote, and then give him a veto on all municipal ordinances, resolutions, and official acts. Again, the Lord Mayor of all London might be chosen from the Mayors of the sub-municipalities, either by them- selves, or by the Central City Council. Either of these plans would work, and both would give London the sense of unity in diversity which belongs to it of right, but which it cannot be said to enjoy when its functions are presided over by a Chairman. The Metropolis wants a Lord Mayor of all London, and it ought to have it. As has been suggested, the spectacle of the Lord Mayor of all London going in state to hear a sermon at St. Paul's, attended by all the other Mayors, and by all the City office-bearers, would be a spectacle worthy of the pride which Londoners in their heart feel for this great, rich, wise, cumbrous elephant of a city,—a town at once ponderous and sensitive, inert and full of intense vital force, a province as well as a, capital.
But while we write of London's distant future, the question of the County Council Election is drawing near. We are not bitter enemies of the Progressives, much less of the Council as a whole, but for all that we sincerely hope that the Moderates will have a homogeneous majority. The victory of the Pro- gressives just now might too greatly encourage the Collectivists. The London ratepayers, if they are wise, will make it clear that they will not have any form of Socialism imported into the government of their city. The fiasco over the Works Department is an excellent example of the sort of muddle which is likely to come of giving Collectivist ideas an opportunity in the work of governing London. We are quite willing to admit that no one on the Council had anything whatever to do with the scandalous parts of the scandal, and we are fully aware that the Committee did not consist of professed Collectivists. That, however, does not alter the fact that its legitimate operations were based upon the Collectivist ideal, that the spirit in which it was worked was that of absolute antagonism to the contractor, and that if it had succeeded it would have been made the base for a demand that London should supply all its own needs directly. It is not fair to make accusations against any member or members of the Council with reference to the Works Department, but it is right and fair to point to that Department as an example of Collectivism in operation on a small scale, and to ask the electors whether they wish their city to be administered in accordance with the ideals underlying that experiment.
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