With trust in national politicians at a low ebb, elected local government offers a solution to a number of British democracy’s current problems, writes Tony Travers
At last week’s LGC Awards, John Stewart and George Jones were given a lifetime achievement award. Both of them are now retired, though they continue through their publications to maintain pressure for the improvement and extension of local government.
The award reminded those attending of the historic importance of local democracy, as opposed to the many ‘new local’ initiatives of recent years.
The Jones-Stewart combine has, since the 1970s, supported a traditionalist view of local government - in the sense that they have argued for proper, formal, local democracy. By being traditional, they have paradoxically been radicals, having fought against the prevailing orthodoxy of centralism.
Electoral legitimacy lies at the heart of the Jones-Stewart view of the world. Local government and Parliament are the only directly elected elements within the British democratic system and it has been the primacy of elections that has always driven the duo. They have also been strong supporters of effective political organisation and, separately, of independents.
Local government in Britain has had to face centralisation, more or less consistently since 1945. As a result, it has become increasingly easy to see weak local democracy as the norm. John Stewart and George Jones have always refused to accept this apparent new settlement. They are to some degree fundamentalists, arguing for a return to formal local democracy.
They are surely right to do so. The proliferation of quangos, micro-quangos and a chaotic sprawl of public-private bodies generated in the past 20 years does not equate to a form of localism that can be viewed as democratic. With trust in national politicians at a low ebb, elected local government offers a solution to a number of British democracy’s current problems.
Jones and Stewart first met when they sat on the Layfield Committee between 1974 and 1976. The Layfield report included the case for a move to a far greater degree of local autonomy in Britain, although the then Labour government rejected reform. But all is not lost. As contemporary governments struggle with the internal contradictions of hyper-centralism, local democracy may yet have its day. In the meantime, the case for decentralisation must continue to be made.
Tony Travers, director, Greater London Group, London School of Economics
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