What is Mr Crosland up to?
The art of politics—at least in opposition —is as much concerned with choosing the right issues as it is with choosing the right policies. By this criterion, above all, the Conservative leaders' well-publicised pil- grimage to Croydon last week-end can be accounted successful. Law and order, taxation, the trade unions—here are three key areas of public concern, in each of which the more the Tories sound like Tories (within reason) the more popular they will be; and Mr Heath and his men have made a good start. Indeed, the oniy notable omission from the Selsdon Park Hotel menu was the environment—an issue on which so far the Conservatives have allowed Mr Wilson to make all the running.
Not that he can be said to have run very far, having so far confined. himself to speechifying on the subject (where it tends to look a little too obviously like a device to avoid any topic on which he made an election pledge in either 1964 or 1966) and appointing Mr AnthonrCrosland as en- vironmental overlord. Understandably, having allowed himself to be manoeuvred into a non-ministry, a man of Mr Cros- land's calibre could hardly have been expected to throw himself heart and soul into what, on these terms, can only be a pre-election public relations job. Yet there is a genuine issue here. one of growing urgency (as, indeed, this journal pointed out when we published, in July 1967, Dr E. J. Mishap's important article The Rights of Man and the Rape of his En- vironment), and one of mounting public concern. The Conservatives should lose no more time in taking a stand on it; and they could do worse than start by making it clear that concern for the environment will substantially colour their approach to the whole question of the reform of local government, on which the same Mr Cros- land has this week published a most un- satisfactory White Paper.
At the present time, the problem of the environment is in danger of being dis- cussed (a la Nixon) wholly in terms of pollution—whether of the air, or water or whatever. Now pollution is certainly a most important issue for governments to tackle—as indeed it always has been: in the 1870s Disraeli campaigned successfully under the banner of 'pure air, pure water, the inspection of unhealthy habitations and the prevention of the adulteration of food'. But the characteristic of pollution is that, given the right legislation, and the national will to pay the price, it can always be abolished or brought under control. Nothing is irrevocable.
This is not the case, however, with the other threat to the environment of this overcrowded island to-day: legalised vandalism. The countryside, once wrecked, can never be restored—as the residents of Stansted, and now Wing, are well aware. Nor is the threat confined to the despolia- tion of the countryside: the Londoners up in arms against the motorway box pro- posals have a precisely analogous concern with the quality of their own urban en- vironment, which, once wrecked, can equally never be restored. And this, irre- vocable, form of environmental threat, far more than pollution, can only effec- tively be met within a specifically local framework. National legislation can only be peripheral : strong and sensitive local government, possessed of a conviction that conservation of its own local environment is of prime importance, is essential. Any proposals for local government reform should be fashioned with this in mind.
Mr Crosland's, manifestly, are not. With small variation, he has accepted the Redcliffe-Maud Commission's proposal that the greater part of England, outside London, should be divided into large `unitary areas' with sovereign local govern- ment powers, plus a large number of virtually powerless 'local councils' to act as local sounding boards. This was widely criticized at the time on the grounds of the size and remoteness of the 'unitary' authorities, the powerlessness of the local councils, and the consequent domination of the small by the large—and in par- ticular of the country by the town.
Now, to some extent these defects, brought about in the interest of efficiency, could be mitigated by the encouragement of a higher calibre of men into local government. This will not happen of its own accord. Radcliffe-Maud rather wist- fully hoped to bring it about by suggesting modest salaries for key councillors and the creation of vast 'provincial authorities' to which the central government might devolve some of its powers (thus making local government more important). but shied away altogether from the crucial question of making local government less dependent on the central government for finance. But the Crosland White Paper does even less: local government finance is to be the subject of a future 'Green Paper' (ie a White Paper in which not even the Government believes), the 'provinces' are eliminated in favour of waiting for the Crowther Commission on the Constitution to report, and payment for councillors is ruled out. It is true that some welcome minor concessions are made in the nature of Whitehall's financial control over local authorities; but in general the present Government is clearly committed—as, for instance, over the forthcoming Compul- sory Comprehensive Education Bill—in reducing rather than increasing the quan- tum of local independence.
Perhaps most remarkable of all, the Crosland White Paper succeeds in attenu- ating still further the pathetically small degree of freedom even Redcliffe-Maud allowed the local councils. Mr Crosland has the admirable vision of a proliferation of small, vigorous, community councils, on whom would inevitably largely rest the burden of fighting the environmental or conservationist battle (among others). But in practice the effectiveness of any such community councils will depend on the calibre of the individuals involved; and what sort of people are going to waste their time on a body that would not even be able to decide to preserve a single tree without first securing the remote unitary authority's permission?
In one sense. of course, the whole White Paper is academic, since no legislation is intended until well into the next parlia- ment. by which time a different govern- ment is likely to be in office. But this makes it all the more important for the Tories to define their own attitude now. To some extent, they can point out that less chance is needed—certainly in the matter of local boundaries, over which Radcliffe-Maud throws history and senti- ment into the dustbin. They can also justly argue that the thorny problems of the finance of local government, the calibre of its personnel, and the constitutional relationship between local and central government must be tackled first. Never- theless, at the end of the day a major reorganisation will still be needed, and one in which larger main authorities and smaller 'community' councils make sense. But they will do so only if the genuinely local councils are first equipped to fight the conservationist battles which Mr Crosland, for all his environmental overlordship, seems unaccountably to have overlooked.
Previous page
