Waiting for CrowtherAuthor(s): Edwin BrooksSource: Area, Vol. 2, No. 2 (1970), pp. 13-15Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20000438 .

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Waiting for Crowther Edwin Brooks, Member of Parliament for Bebington

In these civilised and permissive days of sublimated Ids, it is hard to remember that once upon a time politics was all about power, patronage and pork barrels.

Yet in those distant and dark days before the white heat of technology was even a pale pink glow, democratic politicians actually believed that conflict and argument were good things. They even fashioned institutions, such as trade unions, which saw friction as a stimulus to freedom, and they accepted Acton's dictum that without a constitutional framework of countervailing power, there would arise the absolute corruption of despotism.

This was all a long time ago. Today efficiency is everything, and it is time notably to tidy up the medieval boundaries and bucolic image of local govern ment. But before the jet set flush away the parish pumpers, it might be worth asking a few questions about the timing and the strategy of the upheaval we are promised in our democratic institutions during the seventies.

One of the most obvious dilemmas we face is the massive uncertainty over Europe. The crystal ball remains as murky as ever, not only in terms of British entry into the E.E.C., but equally in terms of the long-term evolution of Euro

pean parliamentary institutions. The democratic argument for a Federal U.S.E. seems overwhelming, if only to provide a counterpoise to the massive concen trations of economic power which will occur with the supra-national companies and cartels.

To envisage any significant surrender of sovereignty from Westminster (and Whitehall) may seem fanciful, given the present mood of English public opinion. Yet without some such growth of a strong, centralised European Parliament, the democratic political case for British entry into Europe is fatally weakened.

In any case, however undesirable it may seem to the stirring ranks of English nationalists, British entry into the E.E.C. is bound to mean substantial economic restraints exercised over the powers and functions of both national and local government. The future of preferential assistance to Development Areas is but one of the many policies likely to be cast into the melting pot, as will budgetary and taxation matters generally. Although speculation at this stage about the

precise form of such restraints is clearly premature, it might equally follow that

any radical re-shaping of local government in Britain should await the outcome of the forthcoming negotiations in Brussels.

For example, is it sensible to devolve powers from London on the eve of Britain being meshed in unprecedented and challenging relations with powerful Continental states? No doubt this is the sort of question being currently explored by the Crowther Commission on the Constitution, and it is fundamental to the executive role we eventually define for the provinces.

Even if Britain never enters the E.E.C., there is an overwhelming case for deferring any action on Maud until Crowther reports. Simply to defer action on those sections of Maud which dealt with provinces, is to miss the point. The

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14 Waiting for Crowther

basic issue is the eventual distribution of power throughout the entire hierarchy of government, and to proceed with either unitary authorities or two-tier

Metropolitan Regions is to risk pre-empting the optimum distribution of power at all levels including the provincial.

Again, the future of local government is surely linked with financial resources and commitments. Local government which is limited for its income to a regres

sive and unpopular rating system, and which can only spend when permitted to

do so explicitly by central government, is a weak and emasculated tool. The

Government has now promised a Green Paper on this vital problem later in

1970, and if, as is implied, this is to be a discussion document rather than a final

statement of intent, there is small chance of anything definitive emerging during

the critical gestation period of Maud. There are still further arguments in favour of deferring any final decision on

Maud. The Green Paper on the future of the National Health Service, which

would have major repercussions on present local authority health services (not least family planning), has only recently been debated in the House of Commons.

The Bill to implement the Seebohm Committee's recommendations on local authority personal social services, has not yet seen the statutory light of day. In

other words, the reforming juggler has still many balls in the air, and until the

Crowther Commission enables us to pronounce on the basic constitutional

strategy (with or without the E.E.C.) there is much to be said for keeping the

major options in play. This is not an argument for complacency, nor am I urging a complete mora

torium on reform in the next year or two. The Seebohm proposals, for example, are valuable in themselves as a means of improving the status of all-too-often

neglected services, and despite the difficulties of eventual re-adjustment of committee structure following local government reform, there is a convincing case for proceeding with the new social service departments without delay.

But the Maud proposals are quite a different matter; and the Government's

White Paper, which departs significantly from Maud in several crucial respects,

succeeds in emphasising the dangers of over-hasty action in advance of Crowther.

A notable example of this is seen in the proposal to behead the Metropolitan Districts of education and rating, and I suggest that this departure from the

Maud recommendations is evidence of a bureaucratic rather than a political and democratic approach to reform. These proposals, together with the recom

mendations of Maud for major planning, transportation and housing policies to

be determined at Metropolitan upper-tier level, will mean lower-tier authorities of up to one million inhabitants being denied virtually all the strategic and

important local government functions. They will be left with little more than the

Seebohm duties, and it seems unlikely that such truncated authorities will

attract the able and dynamic officers and councillors needed to give the social

services the impetus and status they need. The South Merseyside District for example, is planned to hold about half a

million people between Chester and Wallasey. Yet this area will have no

responsibility for the education services at any level, including the nursery stage.

The close relationship between education provision and the work of Children's or Welfare committees was stressed repeatedly by Seebohm, and the Maud

Commission was equally in no doubt about the virtue of a single authority for education and the personal social services. Maud held to this view even in the

Metropolitan Regions, despite the argument in favour of placing further

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Waiting for Crowther 15

education under the upper-tier authority, and the Government's decision to disregard this advice must not go unchallenged. It is precisely in the great urban areas that the need for liaison between education and general social welfare will be most necessary, and where the voice of local lobbies such as parent-teacher associations needs to be encouraged and heard.

But the real case against Maud goes much deeper than this critique of the Government's revisionist approach might imply. The real issue is whether size is a good thing, and here Maud and the Government speak the same language.

The proposed unitary authorities are big and will inevitably be remote from many of their inhabitants. Seventeen of them will be larger than the state of Luxembourg, and their powers will be overwhelming in terms of the local community councils. These belated gestures by Maud to vox populi seem destined to be poor shrivelled things, at best lightning conductors where cranks and enthusiasts can harmlessly earth themselves.

It is said that such wholesale obliteration of small authorities is necessary if rational planning is to succeed against the entrenched parochial perversity which the present system reputedly encourages. But if 'rational' planning means devising an administrative structure for stilling the voice of opposition, then democracy is endangered by such rationalisation.

The test of a democratic local government system-as distinct from a com puterised administrative delegation of Whitehall bureaucracy-is that it provides an arena of conflict designed to permit the right battles to be fought. Since many of the battles are at local level-and this is the stuff of our community experience -then the local community councils must be given a measure of executive responsibility for settling those battles.

I suspect that the key to these well-known dilemmas may yet be found in the future role of the provinces, since the creation of a provincial government structure-with all that implies for providing an effective political counterpoise to London power would have profound implications for the Metropolitan and unitary authorities as favoured by the Government. Once the powers and func tions of these proposed authorities are called into question, and this must await the Crowther Commission, it will be time to stake out the claim afresh for local community councils with teeth as well as jaw.

Maud must stay awhile in the garden, in other words, until we have had a chance to hear the proposals of Crowther. We may yet have to bury her out there.

Population Pressures in Developing Lands Copies of A Symposium on Population Pressures upon Physical and Social Resources in the Developing Lands; an abridged version of the discussions held 18-23 September, 1967 at the Pennsylvania State University edited by Wilbur Zelinsky, Leszek A.

Kosinski, and R. Mansell Prothero (xii and 132 pp.) are now available at $2.50 each. Prepaid orders should be addressed to Wilbur Zelinsky, Department of Geography. Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802; cheques to be made payable to the Population Geography Trust. This mimeographed document is to be considered as an adjunct to a larger volume entitled Geography and Crowding

World: Essays on Population Pressures in the Developing Lands, which is being pub lished in mid-1970 by Oxford University Press of New York City.

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