Explaining local government

Local government in Britain since 1800

J. Chandler

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781847795892
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Explaining local government, available at last in paperback, uniquely presents a history of local government in Britain from 1800 until the present day. The study explains how the institution evolved from a structure that appeared to be relatively free from central government interference to, as John Prescott observes, 'one of the most centralised systems of government in the Western world'. The book is accessible to A level and undergraduate students as an introduction to the development of local government in Britain but also balances values and political practice to provide a unique explanation, using primary research, of the evolution of the system.

1
Local government before 1832

There is little left of the Roman administrative legacy for the provinces of Britain. Towns were established under Roman practice as coloniae and municipium for retired soldiers who were granted citizenship of the Empire.¹ Other townships, civitates, established by Britons were recognised as following local tribal laws:² ‘A large measure of local government was conducted by the British themselves with official supervision and encouragement.’³ All that remains of the Roman legacy are some of the towns themselves, including London as the capital city. The break up of the pax romana by the fourth century AD, and invasions by Anglo Saxons and, later, Vikings ensured that for most purposes towns and villages in Britain were self-governing. For many communities this involved domination by whoever had ownership of the land and control of armed men to keep farmers and labourers in check. As they grew in power the Anglo-Saxon kings established sufficient authority over the landowners to divide their territories into areas in which they established a lieutenant to protect the royal interest. Wessex was divided into shires before King Alfred’s birth in 849⁴ and Edgar I ordained in the tenth century that these should be divided into hundreds and smaller tithings,⁵ and then sub-divided again into wapentakes, wards, lathes and rapes.⁶ The growth in power of Wessex spread this territorial arrangement into the remainder of England, although it was not until perhaps the eleventh century that the Mercian kingdom was structured in this way.⁷ During this period a legal distinction began to emerge between what was to be regarded as a ‘town’ as distinct from a large village: a town was regarded as a corporate body by the King or the nobility, and could act in law as if it were a single individual; thus, the town as a whole could own property, sue and be sued, and provide collective services. The term ‘borough’, derived from an earlier term meaning ‘fortified place’, emerged in the late Anglo-Saxon period to identify this form of community. Many smaller communities were also developing in later Anglo-Saxon England parishes as both ecclesiastical and temporal units of administration.⁸

By the time of the Norman Conquest practices for controlling local areas had emerged in a form that was in some respects still recognisable in the eighteenth century. The pattern was based on principles that had taken root in many areas of Europe. Landowners interfered in communal government according to local economic dominance and inclination. The Lord was not so inclined to be primus inter pares within the community but was rather its absolute ruler governing through his local court leet and appointing a bailiff to implement his authority.⁹ Castles might be established within potentially rebellious towns to ensure their good behaviour.¹⁰

Parishes were based around the manor houses of landowners who had established churches on their lands to cater for the spiritual needs of themselves and their dependent communities.¹¹ They emerged as the administrative as well as ecclesiastic lower tier of administration after the ravages of the Black Death had emancipated the remaining peasants from dependence on their feudal serfdom. In areas where the manor and the court leet had declined, the parish took over as the unit of communal representation.¹² However, in some areas, even into the nineteenth century, as in Manchester, the court leet survived as a legally recognised unit of local governance.¹³ By the fourteenth century larger towns that were centres of trade or manufacturing, with economic importance to rival the influence of landed interests, were able to exert a measure of self-government as boroughs, or burghs in Scotland, even though they were still relatively small communities partly restricted in size by the logistics of maintaining good water supplies, sanitation and fire precautions. London at the end of the fourteenth century had a population of around 35,000, and only York and Bristol had populations approaching 10,000.¹⁴

Above the community level the county and its divisions were the administrative units representing central government, and hence the monarch. In practice, the power of the monarch over a county or, in a few cases, larger towns acting effectively as counties in their own right, could be delegated to one or a number of powerful landlords. These communities as boroughs often received from the Crown a charter of incorporation establishing their rights and form of government. During the Middle Ages, as aficionados of the legend of Robin Hood will be aware, the King’s senior representative in a county was normally the Sheriff;¹⁵ but by the sixteenth century their frequent failure to rally the local gentry to support the Crown in times of need¹⁶ led to a decline in the Sheriffs’ political importance. Their influence was superseded by that of the Lord Lieutenant, the monarch’s direct representative in the county and below them the justices of the peace (JPs), appointed usually at the Lord Lieutenant’s nomination. The Lord Lieutenants were expected to report on the custody of county government to the King’s representatives at the assize courts.¹⁷

The Civil War and its consequences

During the Tudor dynasty the Crown had become a powerful unifying political force and within this framework the county and the parish were expected to do the bidding of central government. The capacity of Elizabeth’s Governments to establish the Poor Law shows that ‘both parishes and property owners were agents of the central government; and that government could communicate a consistent policy to them, and commit them to it’.¹⁸ The Civil War did much to unravel this trend. The political settlement that emerged from the strife of the 1640s and the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 ensured that the King must govern with the consent of a Parliament selected largely from major landowners. The unwise attempt by James II to revive his father’s quest for absolutism prompted the revolt of the vast majority of landed and commercial interests, and the transfer of the monarchy to the firmly protestant William III who understood the need to protect his executive power by working with, rather than against, Parliament. These events put an end to the possibility that Britain would be governed by a powerful centralising monarchy, as in Louis XIV’s France. The Crown’s power was limited by the conventions that taxes were determined by Parliament and that those in government would respect landowners’ interests in local matters in the parts of the country in which they held their estates. The quarter sessions, which were the courts under the immediate control of JPs in a county and, in some cases, a borough, dealt with both criminal cases and, for each county, local governance. Only the most serious felonies were sent for trial at the assizes, the courts established under direct control of central government, and by the eighteenth century a system of grand juries ensured that agents of landed interests could determine whether a case went to trial at an assize.¹⁹ Power rested increasingly with landowners. The monarch could influence foreign policy, the army and the navy, but had little impact on local issues such as the development of local roads or the distribution of poor relief.

Parliament was dominated by aristocrats holding large estates. The grandest landowners acquired peerages and seats in the House of Lords, but wealth could also buy land or favours that ensured representation in the House of Commons. Not all landed gentry represented ‘old money’: successful merchants and adventurers could use wealth from trade and commerce to buy estates in order to gain political power and social status.²⁰ Although tensions between old and new money were socially significant, they were never so great as to generate conditions that would lead, as in France, to a revolution to overthrow the monarchy and aristocracy. Large landowners with an incentive to increase their fortune sought extra capital by borrowing or promoting joint-ventures with the commercial classes and consequently came to have an interest in the growth of the trade and commerce of the socially inferior merchant class. Both benefited greatly from political stability at home in securing the development of land and the commercialisation of agriculture, and in creating the means to wage war globally and secure fortunes through overseas trade and colonisation.

Central–local relations

Liberal and Fabian commentaries of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries suggest that the eighteenth-century system of local government resulted in growth of bizarre local customs and practices that generated serious inequities throughout the nation.²¹ This view has a measure of truth but the situation was not, as such authors suggest, due to an absence of central control. At one level the relationship between central and local government might be characterised as that of a dual polity in which central government dealt with issues of high politics, such as the defence of the realm, the protection of the colonies and the encouragement of trade, leaving counties, parishes and boroughs responsible for low politics, such as the relief of the poor.²² However, such a view is misleading from the perspective of the poor and the powerless, since Parliament was carefully constructed to ensure that those who controlled the local political systems acted in the interests of the landed elites. As Prest observes, ‘the relations between central and local government were worked out in Parliament’.²³ Any substantive change to traditional land-holding patterns, especially the enclosure of land, required Parliamentary sanction. Extensions to the powers of a borough or measures to by-pass its moribund corporation through the formation of some improvement commission similarly required private Acts. The building of canals, turnpikes and railways which affected the established rights of communities and individuals were also processed by such an arrangement. The eighteenth-century Parliament was far from reluctant to deal with local matters but it was opposed to making blanket statutory public Acts that imposed nationwide uniformity on the diverse legal and traditional arrangement that had evolved over time. This attitude flowed into the nineteenth century when, between 1800 and 1854, almost twice as many private as public acts were passed by Parliament.²⁴

The acquisition of a private act involved a complex procedure that required evidence of local support and could, for a corporation, necessitate a local referendum. The proposal had to be drafted in accord with legal conventions and was closely scrutinised by a parliamentary committee. The bill was best defended by supportive MPs. The process was often facilitated by a paid parliamentary agent, usually a lawyer specialising in this task.²⁵ Costs often deterred organisations from pursuing improvements in this way.²⁶ Private legislation was, therefore, feasible primarily for the wealthy landowner, businessman or corporation. An impecunious parish had little chance of raising the funds needed to oppose a private Act or to foster their own schemes for improvement. By the early nineteenth century this cumbersome and expensive procedure was beginning to be undermined. Legislation had been poss...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• 1 Local government before 1832
• 2 The impact of industrialisation
• 3 Compromise and confusion: the ad hoc local governments of mid-Victorian Britain
• 4 Municipal government to its zenith
• 5 Restructuring local government
• 6 The turning point: growth with decline
• 7 The slow road to ‘modernisation’
• 8 War and social democracy
• 9 ‘Modernising’ the system 1951–79
• 10 Professionalism and alienation
• 11 Thatcher and Major
• 12 New Labour
• 13 Accounting for the evolution of local government in Britain
• Appendices
• Bibliography
• Index