London County Council

“ The London County Council showed the people of England what great powers for good lay in the hands of municipalities. We became a terror to all the monopolists who had fattened on London for generations. We struck at slum-owners, ground landlords, the music-hall offenders, food adulterators, and those who robbed the poor by unjust weights. We swept the tramway and water companies out of London, and by substituting public control gave the people better and cheaper services. ”

“ The boys who get committed to reformatories still find themselves under Crooks's eye. While the Asylums Board looks after them when under remand, the London County Council becomes responsible once the lads are committed. ”

“ They are all boroughs, and possess a mayor and corporation of their own, each with a townhall to support the dignity. They have a certain amount to say in local affairs, the more important being under the control of the London County Council, who in turn hold themselves responsible to Parliament. ”

“ We who are not politicians, much less ex-Premiers, must make our own proposals then. Last year's criticism of the London County Council began, I believe, to educate public opinion to the necessary point. ”

“ Ritchie, as President of Local Government Board in last Ministry, made London County Council possible. Happy thought to play him in, as it were, with County Council debate.
"Been out of it nearly three years now, Toby," said Ritchie, when, one of a score of old members, I went to shake hands and bid him welcome; "just the same old place; perhaps a little duller at the moment. What they want is new blood, or, perhaps, better still, a re-infusion of old blood. Can't give them a new County Council Bill; must try and make them somehow sit up." ”

“ When those words were written, the London County Council had just begun its work. I served on it till March, 1895; and during those six years it had proved in practice what a right-minded Municipality can do towards brightening and sweetening human life. It cut broad roads through squalid slums, letting in light and air where all had [Pg 362] been darkness and pollution. It cleared wide areas of insanitary dwellings, where only vice could thrive, and re-housed the dispossessed. It broke up the monotony of mean streets with beautiful parks and health-giving pleasure-grounds. ”

“ Progressives, and one was a Moderate; so the total result was a "Progressive" majority of 41.
By the time of which I write I had become, by habitual residence, a Londoner; and I hope I was as keen on Social Reform as anyone in London, or outside it. But, after what I said in an earlier chapter, it will surprise no one that I declined to be a candidate for the London County Council. My dislike of electioneering is so intense that nothing on earth except the prospect of a seat in Parliament would tempt me to undertake it ”

“ To begin with, it is not a city by organization; it is a collocation of overgrown villages lying side by side. It had, until this year (1900) , no center, no heart, no representative body, no mayor, no aldermen, no council, no wards; it has not inherited Folk’s Mote, Hustings, or Ward Mote; it has therefore no public buildings of its own. There are vestry halls and town halls, but they are those of the separate hamlets—Hackney or Stratford—not East London. It has no police of its own; the general order is maintained by the London County Council. ”

“ When we speak of a town as growing rapidly we refer to the growth in relation to the area of the town, not in relation to the area of the country. I reiterate this point because, when it is once realised, we see our way as a community to an exceedingly simple solution of many important problems. We speak of the enormous size of London. As a matter of fact, the whole area administered by the London County Council is but 75,000 acres. ”

“ These proportional figures show that though a considerable number of labourers have been housed, the great majority of the occupants of London municipal dwellings are of a superior class. The mean weekly rent in London County Council dwellings is 2s. 101/2d. per room against 2s. 4d. in dwellings erected by other agencies. The most important feature of the County Council’s policy in recent years has been the acquisition of suburban sites for the erection of cottages. There are four such sites, two on the south, one on the north and one on the west side of London ”

“ Though the London County Council have effected amazing "improvements," constructing a street which nobody wants and nobody uses, and spending millions in widening Piccadilly; though private enterprise pulls down ancient dwellings and rears huge hotels and business premises in their places—it is still possible to conjure up the memories of the past, and to picture to ourselves the multitudinous scenes of historic interest which Old London has witnessed. ”

“ In 1871 its preservation as an open space was insured after several years’ dispute, when the lord of the manor gave up his rights. An act of parliament transferred the ownership to the Metropolitan Board of Works, to which body the London County Council succeeded. ”

“ The only way in which a Federal Solution, such as we all desire, can be brought about is to convert the existing House of Lords—no change being made in its constitution—into the supreme and only legislative assembly of the whole Empire. The House of Commons, of course, would cease to sit, or it might take the place of the present London County Council. This is the true plan. All others are absurd. It is useless for people to say they do not want this. We insist on their having it. ”

“ Things, however, are much better than they used to be. The London County [438] Council has done a good deal in pulling down rookeries and rehousing large areas—as, for instance, the famous Boundary Street area between Shoreditch and Bethnal Green. The Mansion House Council for the Dwellings of the Poor has done much through its local committees to stimulate local effort; and the district authorities are far more active than they were, and alive to the responsibilities which fall upon them. ”

“ The lord mayor is more ornamental than useful. The local government is more like our State organization, with one legislative body, consisting of 118 county councillors elected by the boroughs, and another of nineteen aldermen appointed by the council. As London has about five times as many people as Kansas and much harder problems of administration to be solved, the government is a big thing. ”

“ The Rural Parish Councils, which were created in 1894, and which represented a reversion by the Liberal Party to the older type of democratic thought, have been a failure, and will either be abolished or will remain ineffective, because no real administrative powers will be given to them. But if we omit the rural districts, the inhabitant of a 'county borough' will soon vote only for parliament and his borough council, while the inhabitant of London or of an urban district or non-county borough will only vote for parliament, his county, and his district or borough council. ”

“ It enabled the Vestries or District Boards to take proceedings before a magistrate for the clearing and demolition of single houses unfit for human habitation, and obstructive buildings, and empowered them and the County Council to undertake schemes for the improvement of areas too small to be dealt with by the Council. ”

“ Outside Greater London the powers and duties of local authorities under Part IV of the Justices of the Peace Act 1949 shall be vested in the councils of non-metropolitan counties and metropolitan districts, but for the purposes of Schedule 5 to the Criminal Justice Act 1948 , where a combined probation and after-care area constituted under that Schedule is co-extensive with, or includes, a metropolitan county, the local authority, so far as relates to the area of the metropolitan county, shall be the county council alone. ”

“ The result is that on nearly every city council, and on a great number of county councils, London borough councils, urban and rural district councils, boards of guardians, and parish councils, there are working-class representatives, while women members have been elected to the great councils of Liverpool and Manchester, and sit on many boards of guardians and parish councils. ”

“ The mayor, and some of the inhabitants of the borough, are also magistrates and attend to police cases; while the town council looks after matters connected with sewers, lighting, paving, and cleansing the streets of the town. It has now also charge of educational affairs in many of the big towns, a committee of each county council being the educational authority in all other parts of the country.
In London and large towns, where there is much police court business, there are special magistrates, trained lawyers, who attend to nothing else. ”

“ Municipal Socialism is the watchword of the future; and instead of being jealous of the existing powers of the County Council, I would increase those powers tenfold; for without the widest kind of power, and even of despotic power, invested in some central authority, the chaotic expansion of London will go on to the enrichment of the few and the abiding injury of the many. ”

“ Ch. ccxxi. (Part iii.) . Leamington Corporation. Ch. cxlii. (Part ii.) . London County Council (General Powers) . Ch. clxxxviii. Saint Anne's-on-the-Sea Improvement. Ch. ccxlviii. South Shields Corporation. Ch. l. (Part viii.) . Wallasey Urban District Council Promenade. Ch. ccix. Weston-super-Mare Urban District Council, Ch. ccli. [For Act confirming Provisional Order under Inclosure Acts 1845-1882, see Class 19 (8) .]
Class 12.—Parish Affairs.
Nil.
[For Acts confirming Provisional Orders under the Elementary Education Act, 1870, and Poor Law Acts, see Class 19 (4) , (10 (b) (c) ) .] ”

“ This being so, in my mind, I find the suggested postponement of rural Local Government a course open to the deepest suspicion; the preference given to London government an error in tactics of the largest kind. No one in the country, or in London either, cares a damn about a London municipality, nor would many municipalities attract them. But county government, involving as it does a redistribution and relief of burdens, to which every man of our party is deeply pledged, is without doubt anxiously expected by the constituencies, and will not brook delay. So I would say about land law reform. ”

“ In Henry II.’s reign London was taxed by both methods, the barones majores by head, the barones minores through the wardmoot. The pressure of taxation led in the 13th century to a closer definition of the burghal constitutions; the commons sought to get an audit of accounts, and (in London) not only to hear but to treat of municipal affairs. By the end of the century London had definitely established two councils, that of the mayor and aldermen, representing the old borough court, and a common council, representing the voice of the commonalty, as expressed through the city wards. ”