Power and Party in an English City

An account of single-party rule

David G. Green

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415417419
• eBook ISBN: 9781135668273
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Power and Party in an English City provides an account of how decisions are taken by the state at the level of locality. More specifically, it is an account of the private policy-making activities of a ruling Labour group of councillors in the major English city of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. Despite the fact that local government in most of the towns and cities of England is one-party government, very little is known abotu the private behaviour of ruling party groups. In this book David Green provides a penetrating empirical study of the realities of local government.

The author seeks to examine and analyse the importance of party discipline, the relationship between the Labour group of councillors and the party outside the council, the power of the committee chairmen, the role of local patronage and the openness of the local policy-making process. The government of Newcastle is perhaps the most closely association in the public mind with T. Dan Smith, the corrupt local politician. In fact, Smith had left local politics in Newcastle in teh mid-1960s. How was the city being run a decade or so later?

This study is however much more than an inside view of the affairs of a single authority. The last part of the book is devoted to a discussion of aspects of some traditional and modern theories of democracy and specifically to what author sees as the inadequate advocacy of participatory democracy in recent years. Green makes a major contribution to our thinking about the kind of democracy that is possible in modern large-scale societies, explores weaknesses of moder theories and puts forward some original modifications to modern democratic theory, in the light of a theory of knowledge which is seen as more appropriate for modern natural and social scientific activity.

This book was first published in 1981.

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

Throughout the world, in the name of progress, men who call themselves communists, socialists, fascists, nationalists, progressives, and even liberals, are unanimous in holding that government with its instruments of coercion must, by commanding the people how they shall live, direct the course of civilization and fix the shape of things to come … the premises of authoritarian collectivism have become the working beliefs, the self-evident assumptions, the unquestioned axioms, not only of all the revolutionary regimes, but of nearly every effort which lays claim to being enlightened, humane, and progressive.

(Walter Lippman, 1937, pp. 3–4)

Any account of an important aspect of reality must be selective unless it is to be swamped by a mass of irrelevant details. What is important is that the factual beliefs and personal preferences which have determined the particular choice of relevant research material and from which any critical or analytical comments emerge should be made explicit. Hence the next few pages contain an account of the factors which have influenced this interpretation of local government in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Empirically the study is an attempt to contribute to the task of filling a gap in the now growing body of literature on the government of our towns and cities. Local government, in the overwhelming majority of towns and cities in this country, has for many years been one-party government (Maud Committee, 1967, Vol. 1, pp. 6–8 and 106–15) with ruling groups of councillors typically deciding in private what policies they will support. Newcastle upon Tyne was no exception. To paint an accurate picture of the way in which the local authority utilised its powers it was therefore necessary to study not only the authority’s official decision-making apparatus but also the internal decision-making machinery of the majority party. The latter field of study is the principal area which has so far been neglected.

No doubt one of the main reasons for the limited extent of the work in this field is that it is very difficult to obtain access to the internal decision-making processes of controlling groups. The present author has been able to overcome this problem by becoming a member of a controlling group of councillors: the Labour group in Newcastle upon Tyne. By acting as a participant observer I have been able to experience directly how Labour councillors conducted themselves.

Although membership of the Labour group of councillors provided information which would otherwise not have been available it also had a disadvantage, namely, that similar access to the private activities of the minority Conservative group of councillors was thereby ruled out. Clearly it was not possible to be an insider to both Labour and opposition councillors at once. This might be thought to be a serious limitation but because Newcastle City Council was run on very strict party lines members of opposition parties only had such influence as the Labour group allowed them. In practice, opposition participation was negligible and its influence slight. This meant that few, if any, insights of importance into how decisions were arrived at could have been obtained by having access to the Conservative party’s internal decision-making activities.

Participant observation was not the only method of research employed. Documentary sources were also used where appropriate and, more important, in the autumn of 1977 forty of the forty-four Labour councillors were interviewed by means of a questionnaire (see Appendix). The findings yielded by the questionnaire and by the author’s direct observations more or less equally provide the basis for this account of local government in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Two main linked concerns lie behind the author’s approach to carrying out the study. I have attempted to summarise these concerns below before dealing with them in more detail.

A major factor has been a growing sense of dissatisfaction with the disappointing results brought about by the expansion of state power since the Second World War. At the same time, however, I have remained sympathetic to the collective provision of goods and services where this is the best way to cater for people’s needs and I have therefore been unsympathetic towards contemporary theories which are in essence simply hostile to all forms of collectivism. To accommodate these somewhat conflicting concerns I have attempted to adopt a critical stance towards state activity which is essentially favourable to collective provision where it is the best way to provide for popular needs and yet at the same time suspicious of the state as a potential menace not only to individual liberty but also to individual well-being.

The second factor which has determined my approach to the study has been a sense of dissatisfaction with many modern theories of democracy. John Stuart Mill advanced a developmental theory of democracy which stressed the value of participation as a means to self-improvement and the necessity for the machinery of government to allow men of intellectual and moral worth in the community to exercise a continuing influence on the conduct of government. Mill’s theory gained wide currency in England and America and enjoyed predominance until it began to be replaced from the Second World War onwards. It lost ground to a theory resting on belief in the overriding importance of recognising the realities of government as they were then being experienced. This theory focused on the competition between elites for power by means of elections. Supporters of this ‘pluralist’ perspective were in their turn attacked for their undue emphasis on mere description. They were accused of being too willing to accept men as they were. The antipluralists advocated participatory theories of democracy, often returning to Mill and also to Rousseau for their inspiration. Participatory theories of democracy are now widely supported but they have been susceptible to the charge, advanced by democratic elitists, that it is unrealistic to advocate a more participatory style of government because it would be inefficient. Advocates of participatory theories have tended to share this presumption and laid stress on participation as a means of self-improvement and development rather than on its value for efficiency. I will attempt to argue below that participation (of the kind the present author wishes to advocate) can be justified not only on ethical grounds but also on grounds of efficiency, that is, that better government will result.

THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT

C. Wright Mills stressed the importance of studying human activity in its wider social and historical context. He wrote:

Try to understand man not as an isolated fragment … Try to understand men and women as historical and social actors … Before you are through with any piece of work … orient it to the central and continuing task of understanding the structure and the drift, the shaping and the meanings, of your own period, the terrible and magnificent world of human society in the second half of the twentieth century.

(Mills, 1970, pp. 247–8)

What are the salient features of this ‘terrible and magnificent world’ and how is this study related to them?

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries England began to develop into a market economy: ‘More than a century before Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations men were ready to accept ‘self interest and economic freedom as the natural basis of human society’ (Lipson, 1947, p. 1xvii). The old society based on custom and status took time to die but by the nineteenth century England had become a fully-fledged market economy (Thompson, 1968, p. 73). Freedom of choice had become the dominant principle:

Individuals were free to choose their religion, their pattern of life, their marriage partners, their occupations. They were free to make the best arrangements they could, the best bargain they could, in everything that affected their living.

(Macpherson, 1966, p. 6)

This transformation led to a change in the form of government. By revolutionary action in the seventeenth century arbitrary government — ‘England’s relatively weak version of royal absolutism’ (Barrington Moore, 1973, p. 4) — was ended and the liberal state inaugurated. During the eighteenth century a liberal system of government was firmly established. Its essential characteristics were these. Governmental power was in the hands of individuals subject to periodic elections at which there was a choice between candidates and parties. The electoral system was underpinned by the existence of political freedoms which made it possible to organise effectively against the powers that be. The state recognised fields of personal and collective behaviour which were beyond the province of the state. The government provided and enforced the legal and other conditions necessary for the free market economy to function. The electorate was not democratic and the society not equal. The interests served were largely those of the commercially minded landed upper class.

However within the logic of the system there were no defensible grounds for withholding the vote from other sections of society (Macpherson, 1966). Liberal society was justified as a form of social organisation which provided equal individual rights and equality of opportunity. Freedom of association, freedom of speech and publication had been demanded in principle for everybody. These freedoms were used by the disenfranchised majority to demand the vote. It took many decades but ultimately the vote was achieved for all. At about the same time as the mass of working men were winning the right to vote, and partly as a result of their success, a new transformation began to take place.

Much pre-Victorian libertarian writing was concerned with controlling the state because, with its monopoly on the use of coercion, it was seen as the principal threat to individual freedom. But during the nineteenth century writers and activists who placed individual freedom first found themselves forced more and more into socialistic modes of thinking as a result of what the Webbs described as ‘the devastating torrent of public nuisances’ produced by the Industrial Revolution (Webb and Webb, 1963, p. 72). As Hobhouse pointed out, ‘liberty without equality is a name of noble sound and squalid result’ (Hobhouse, 1911, p. 86). Perhaps no other leading figure of that period exemplifies this transformation better than J. S. Mill. He began his life as a Benthamite Liberal but, as he records in his autobiography, during his later life he classed himself ‘decidedly under the general designation of socialists’ (Mill, 1924, p. 196). Such thinking led individuals who were concerned to protect and promote individual freedom to concentrate their efforts on extending the power of the state to control the activities of private persons and organisations which threatened the individual liberty of others, and on advocating increased direct provision by the state of goods and services not catered for by market forces. Dicey — writing in 1905 — described the period from 1865 to 1900 as the ‘period of collectivism’. ¹ By the end of the nineteenth century, in his view, the collectivist approach was firmly established (Dicey, 1905, pp. 62–9 and pp. 258–301).

Since then collectivist attitudes have continued to enjoy preeminence and the level of state activity has grown steadily. By the 1950s Britain had a fully-fledged welfare and regulatory state. Peacock and Wiseman have undertaken the complex task of measuring this growth in public expenditure since the end of the last century. Total government expenditure grew, as a proportion of the gross national product, from just under 8 per cent in 1890 to about 37 per cent in 1955 (Peacock and Wiseman, 1967, p. 42). In recent years public expenditure, as a proportion of gross domestic product, has risen sharply to a peak in the mid-1970s. An OECD study shows that general government expenditure in the United Kingdom, as a proportion of gross domestic product, increased from 34 per cent in 1962 to 44 per cent in 1975 (OECD, 1978, p. 16). The expenditure of local authorities is a significant element in total public expenditure. In 1951 the current expenditure of local government disposed of about seven per cent of the gross domestic product. In 1961 the figure was about 9 per cent. Since 1961 the proportion of gross domestic product being disposed of by local authorities has risen rapidly from 9 per cent to 19 per cent in 1974. An examination of employment statistics reveals a similar picture. An increasing number of people now find employment in the public sector. By 1975 this figure had reached about 32 per cent of the total workforce. Of public sector employees, about 40 per cent are employed by local authorities.

Thus the arbitrary state gave way to the liberal state as a result of pressures generated by the rising competitive market society. This liberal state conceded the democratic franchise; and the liberal-democratic state was transformed into the modern welfare and regulatory state.

Whether or not state power will continue to grow remains to be seen. At the time of writing the Conservative government elected in May 1979 was showing signs of controlling the growth of state activity and of reducing the proportion of gross domestic product taken up by public expenditure. But even if they implement the most radical measures they have proposed so far the state will remain a dominant force in contemporary Britain.

Just as the state is a pervasive force in contemporary Britain, so the local state in Newcastle upon Tyne is a pervasive force on Tyneside. Newcastle upon Tyne is the regional capital of the north east of England. In 1979 the local authority was by a long way the largest single employer in the area, employing about 18,000 people across a wide range of occupations. Of the 110,000 dwellings in Newcastle about half were owned by the authority. With its control of housing, schools, the personal social services and recreation facilities, its planning powers and more, the authority’s impact on the lives of Newcastle’s population of just under 300,000 was tremendous.

Most socialists have regarded growing state power as relatively unproblematic. Indeed, many regarded criticism of abuses of state power as disloyal, a tendency attacked by Richard Crossman, writing in 1956:

Far too many socialists regard it as reactionary (or at least as no part of a socialist’s duty) to take up the cudgels for the individual citizen who feels that his rights have been violated by a Department of State, a public board or a semi-public authority.

(Crossman, 1956, p. 20)

‘Socialism’, Crossman asserted, ‘must challenge power which is either irresponsible or only semi-responsible — in whatever hands that power rests’ (p. 7). Bertrand Russell would have agreed with him. Four years earlier he had warned socialists that, unless action were taken to prevent it, the former power of capitalists which they had fought to control might be simply taken over by officials:

This tyranny of officials is one of the worst results of increasing organisation, and one against which it is of the utmost importance to find safeguards if a scientific society is not to be intolerable to all but an insolent aristocracy of Jacks-in-office … The increased power of officials … has the drawback that it is apt to be irresponsible, behind-the-scenes, power, like that of Emperors’ eunuchs and Kings’ mistresses in former times … Liberals protested, successfully, against the power of kings and aristocrats; socialists protested against the power of capitalists. But unless the power of officials can be kept within bounds, socialism will mean little more than the substitution of one set of masters for another: all the former power of the capitalist will be inherited by the official.

(Russell, 1976, pp. 46–7)

The view that the power of the state is unproblematic is no longer tenable by anyone concerned to enhance and protect individual freedom. Certainly significant threats to the freedom of the individual remain outside the public sector but the state itself must also be regarded as a menace of at least comparable magnitude. This point of view is beginning to find wider acceptance on the left of the Labour Party. Judith Hart, in an article in Tribune, wrote: ‘We have witnessed, and indeed created, in our lifetime the growth of a state … apparatus which exercises great economic and social power over the lives of individuals.’ She describes this apparatus as ‘formidable’, and ranks it along with the power of multinational corporations as one of two major threats to individual freedom in modern Britain (Hart, 1977).

If state power is accepted as potentially problematic, at least two major questions are raised. First, is state activity problematic by virtue of its scope and, if so, should it be reduced? The issue of the proper scope of government activity is of great importance, but it is not the subject of this book. Secondly, given the scope of state power, and given the inevitability of a high level of state activity for the forseeable future, how well is this power being exercised? In carrying out this study of the state at the level of the locality I have concentrated on this second question. Later in this introduction I have set out the factors which influenced the way in which I went about answering it. Before doing so I have reviewed the intellectual context in which the study is set.

THE INTELLECTUAL BACKGROUND

It was not until the early nineteenth century that significant theorists began to accept that ‘one man, one vote’ need not be a danger to property (Macpherson, 1977, p. 10). Bentham and James Mill were the first systematic thinkers to take this view, although they did so with reservations. They saw society as a collection of individuals constantly seeking to maximise their own wealth and power at the expense of others. Social good was regarded as the greatest happiness of the greatest number and the rightness of actions depended on their contribution to the attainment of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Happiness was regarded as the amount of individual pleasure minus pain. They wanted a political system which would produce governments able to protect and promote the competitive free market society which they favoured and which also enabled citizens to protect themselves from tyrannical acts committed by the government. Bentham assumed that governments were prone to ‘depredation and oppression’ (Bowring, ed., 1962, Vol. 9, p. 47) and argue...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Dedication
• 1 Introduction
• Part One The Local Party
• Part Two The Group
• Part Three The Committees
• Part Four The Individual Labour Councillor
• Part Five The Group and the Citizen
• Part Six Some Conclusions and Possible Reforms
• Appendix The Questionnaire
• Bibliography
• Index