Constitutional change: rediscovering localism.
| Author | Tomaney, John |
| Position | LABOUR TRADITION OUTSIDE BIG CITIES |
Labour must rediscover the labour movement tradition of using local government to improve people's lives, develop strong foundational economies, and develop civic pride. This requires reforming and empowering local government, as well as constitutional reforms to central government, in order to reverse the long trend towards centralisation.
Since 2010, the agenda of constitutional reform in England has been owned by the Tories. The governance of England has been reshaped, partially, by the Osborne approach of creating Combined Authorities and Metro-Mayors based on devolution 'deals' with groups of local authorities. Although these are weak bodies, lacking serious powers and resources, they have been politically successful in creating Tory bridgeheads in Labour heartlands, such as the West Midlands and Teesside. Their creation, though, was tied to a particular economic agenda which prioritised 'city-centrism', based on urban property development and the growth of the service sector. (i) Large parts of England, beyond the major cities, have been left out of these developments politically and economically. Many of these neglected places turned their backs on Labour in 2019, but as Labour Together's Election Review 2019 showed, this reckoning had been coming for a long time. (2) Traditionally, Labour has been the party of regional development and committed to limiting geographical inequalities, but now the Conservatives also own the 'levelling-up' agenda, invoking FDR, promising a 'New Deal', and reaping electoral dividends.
Municipal socialism
The story of local government is often missing in the historiography of the welfare state and the rise of Labour in the twentieth century. In his revisionist history, The Rise and Fall of the British Nation, David Edgerton notes that life chances in Britain were transformed in the period 1900-1959, especially due to falling infant mortality. In the interwar period, he argues, 'the Liberal-Conservative and Conservative governments created and adapted a remarkably comprehensive welfare system'. (3) But while the interwar settlement was founded on enabling legislation, it was acted upon unevenly by local governments. The fastest and most extensive social improvements in this period were delivered by local governments such as the London County Council under Herbert Morrison and Durham County Council under Peter Lee. (4) Many Labour councils pushed the new powers to their limits as they grappled with severe social needs, and the transformation they enacted locally was key to the consolidation of Labour heartlands. In County Durham, which had the worst housing in England and Wales, with chronically overcrowded and unsanitary colliery houses, Labour-controlled district councils used the powers granted by the Addison Act (1919), the Wheatley Act (1924) and the 1930 and 1935 Housing Acts to build council housing at twice the rate of the England and Wales average. Despite mass unemployment and industrial strife, Durham experienced massive improvements in the quantity and quality of housing, especially in the areas of greatest need. By 1939, 300,000 people (20 per cent) of the population were living in council housing. (5) Similarly, County Durham had rates of infant mortality higher than the national average, but the fall in deaths by 1939 was faster than that in England and Wales as a whole in this period.
Local government in places like County Durham was embedded in wider associa-tional and cooperative networks that developed reciprocally. The Durham Miners' Association established the Durham Aged Mineworkers' Homes Association in 1898, for miners and their families who were denied colliery housing when their employment ended. G.D.H. Cole noted that, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, the Durham and Northumberland coalfields were at the centre of growth in the cooperative movement. By 1942, according to Cole, in 'the Northern Counties' (Northumberland, Durham, Cumberland and Westmoreland), 29 per cent of the total population were members of a cooperative society, the highest percentage in Britain - twice the rate of South East England. (6)
Labour local government was closely connected to the needs and aspirations of communities. This was the age of municipal socialism. In 1935, the City of Manchester published its annual, 'How Manchester is Managed', showing how the council was directly responsible for the provision of public housing, town planning, roads, schools and technical colleges, libraries and art galleries, hospitals, public baths and washhouses, parks, farms, and police and fire services. It distributed public assistance and pensions. Municipally owned companies supplied or managed gas, water, sewage, electricity, buses and trams, an airport, wholesale markets, and the port of Manchester. As a result, the council held extensive landholdings. In short, the 'foundational' or 'everyday' economy - the goods and serves that underpin quality of life - was built and managed locally, albeit within the framework of enabling national legislation and subventions. Local government at that time was comparatively powerful, although not all councils chose to exercise the powers available to them. Manchester was exceptional in the range of its activities, but Labour local government - and sometimes Conservative or 'Ratepayer' administrations - did not just provide services but gave expression to powerful civic identities symbolised by grand town halls and municipal enterprise.
The story after the Second...
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