Local governance in England up to

In England, as in most other European countries, royal charters granted cities

additional privileges before local ‘government’ became established in the way that we would recognise it today. In particular, urban areas were outside the jurisdiction of counties (Seeley, 1978, Norton, 1994), which meant that they enjoyed greater autonomy than rural areas. As a result, many established ad hoc municipal

corporations to oversee public facilities such as turnpikes and street lighting, as well as the police and fire services. By 1800 there were around 200 of these single-purpose public authorities, which were not very well co-ordinated and overseen by an elite group of prominent men elected on a very limited franchise (Skelcher, 2003). In addition, since Britain’s constitution was (and remains) uncodified, the role of elected bodies in the overall governing framework was unclear. For example, these bodies had no legal basis to promote general well-being, and were established primarily to control the various ad hoc institutions that had developed over previous centuries (Norton, 1994).

The industrial revolution, which resulted in serious public health problems in urban areas, stretched this piecemeal system to breaking point (Norton, 1994, Aidt et al., 2010). In particular, the rapid migration of large numbers of people from the

countryside to the towns placed unbearable pressure on the rudimentary services that were in place at the time. For example, only six of the 50 largest towns in England and Wales had a pure water supply in 1845, meaning that ‘living conditions were filthy and squalid, with a consequent danger of cholera and the plague’ (Seeley, 1978, p. 5). Alongside these public health concerns, the Reform Act of 1832 increased pressure for elected representation at the local level, and the development of the railways led to growing demand for better roads and other transport infrastructure.

In response to these pressures, the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 set out a model for elected town councils that became widespread throughout England and Wales. This gave municipalities responsibility for policing (though not justice),

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lighting, the management of corporate property and local bye-laws to prevent what would now be described as anti-social behaviour. The Act applied to 178 larger towns and cities (excluding London), many of which were granted additional powers later in the century (for example the Museums Act 1845 gave larger boroughs the right to establish museums (S. Eckersley, 2012)). The franchise was limited at first, but authorities had a reasonable amount of autonomy over the services for which they were responsible.

Crucially, the 1835 Act established the founding principles for modern English councils, and these shaped the nature of local government for well over a century thereafter. They included a reliance on committee-based decision-making (in contrast to the strong Magistrat in Prussia) and – crucially – the status of municipalities as ‘creatures of Parliament’, which meant that ministers could reform or abolish them quite easily. Indeed, the lack of a codified constitution meant that English

municipalities were in a much weaker legal position than their Prussian counterparts.

1800 1850 1871 1911 England & Wales 9.7 22.6 32.6 43.8

Prussia 1.8 3.1 4.8 21.3

Table 3.1: The percentage of the population in Prussia and England & Wales who lived in cities of over 100,000 inhabitants, 1800-1911 (adapted from Gildea, 1987)

In addition, English local authorities were primarily established in order to deal with perceived social problems of behalf of the centre – largely the sanitation and crime concerns associated with rapid industrialisation. Indeed, legislation such as the 1848 Public Health Act gave municipal corporations specific responsibilities for providing water supply and drainage. Since urbanisation occurred much later in the German confederation than in England and Wales (see table 3.1), Prussian cities did not face the same challenges of overcrowding and poor sanitation as their English counterparts – at least initially. Yet Prussia established modern local authorities several decades before Britain, thereby illustrating that German municipalities were not created to respond to the negative externalities of the industrial revolution. Instead, as section

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3.2.1 discussed, Stein and his disciples felt that empowering the local level would stimulate economic development and promote civic pride. As such, they viewed municipalities as a means to accelerate the process of industrialisation, rather than a necessary response to its negative consequences.

Related to this, municipalities were only permitted to undertake those activities that were expressly set out in legislation. If a council stepped outside this framework, even if it was demonstrably to the benefit of its residents, it would be acting ultra vires

(outside the law) and could be prosecuted and fined. Together with their status as ‘creatures of Parliament’, this meant that English municipalities were more dependent on the whims of central government ministers than their Prussian counterparts.

Indeed, the constitutional guarantee of lokale Selbstverwaltung gave local government in nineteenth-century Prussia a much higher status and stronger position vis à vis the centre than in England – and this difference between the two countries still applies in the present day.

Nonetheless, English councils were able to extend their activities into a range of areas, often working on the legal basis that they were dealing with public health concerns. As a result, they provided services such as clean water, public

transportation, gas works, electricity, sewage systems, cemeteries, highways, waste management, public toilets and housing. This activism led to the late nineteenth century being described as the ‘golden age’ of local government in England and Wales (Norton, 1994), due to the scale of public services that authorities were able to deliver and the differences they made to citizens’ lives. The city of Birmingham, particularly under the leadership of Joseph Chamberlain between 1873 and 1876, is often cited as the prime example of a municipality that was able to transform the urban environment and consequently the health of its inhabitants (Skelcher, 2003, Palmowski, 2002) – and it was certainly not the only borough to do so (Norton, 1994). Moreover, as was the case in Prussia, these services were all delivered by the

municipality (rather than any contracted external provider), and therefore Victorian local government in England demonstrated its capacity to implement policy objectives

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Although central government set out a number of national standards for sewage disposal and clean water, there were few other obligations on the municipalities. In addition, the differentiated impact of the industrial revolution across England led to a general acknowledgment that municipalities were best placed to respond to the issues that arose in their own jurisdictions. This meant that local representatives were allowed to decide on the extent of service provision within each area, and some cities were more inclined than others to increase local rates to fund public amenities (Doyle, 2001). Since central grants only constituted about 5% of municipal revenues up until 1888, any decision to spend money on local infrastructure projects or public health initiatives would have significant implications for local taxation or lead to higher charges for municipal services such as public transport or utilities (Aidt et al., 2010). The result was significant variation across the country and a situation that led Bulpitt (1983) to describe Britain as a ‘dual polity’, since local and central government operated largely independently of one another. Indeed, the Victorian model of local authorities as multi-functional, politically strong entities was much admired elsewhere in Europe (Wollmann, 2004, Norton, 1994, Page and Goldsmith, 1987).

This variation, together with the very fact that the local franchise differed so much from city to city (Wollmann, 2006a, Aidt et al., 2010), suggests that English municipalities were able to operate largely autonomouslyduring the nineteenth century. In other words, although ministers may have established local authorities for overwhelmingly functional reasons, councils were able to exercise a large degree of

independence for most of the rest of the century, and they had sufficient internal capacity to achieve their political objectives alone. Such a characterisation appears to reflect a Type I approach to multi-level governance, rather than the Type II model that would normally be associated with England.

However, the seeds of greater dependency were sown in the 1835 Act, because municipalities remained creatures of Parliament and were therefore subject to the whims of government ministers. In addition, the Local Government Act 1888 began a process of local authorities becoming increasingly dependent on central government for resources, by establishing the ‘assigned revenues’ system of grant funding that meant councils would be allocated 40% of specific national taxes (Seeley, 1978). Another Local Government Act in 1894 clarified that the different tiers of council

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were responsible for distinctly separate functions, and therefore districts did not need to interact very much with counties in order to co-ordinate service delivery. This functional separation has continued to the present day – at least in those parts of England where two-tier local government has survived. Notably, the lack of an integrative culture means that English authorities are much less likely to co-operate vertically than their German counterparts (see section 3.3.1 for a discussion of the prevalence of Politikverflechtung in Germany’s public sector). Indeed, this lack of

support and capacity from vertical governance actors has meant that English municipalities need to rely more on horizontal stakeholders to achieve their policy objectives – as chapters 4, 5 and 6 illustrate in the context of climate policy in Gelsenkirchen and Newcastle.

Furthermore, the 1894 Act increased the size of councils significantly and therefore increased the distance between local communities and their elected representatives to a scale unmatched elsewhere in Western Europe. Indeed, subsequent restructures since the 1970s have meant that municipalities have become bigger still (see Norton, 1994, section 3.4.2 of this thesis). As a result, the lowest statutory tier of government in England now caters for an average of seven times the number of people of its German counterpart. This illustrates how central government ministers illustrated a preference for administrative units that are perhaps more likely to deliver services effectively and efficiently, rather than authorities that reflect ‘natural’ community and local boundaries. In other words, English councils were viewed increasingly as

agencies with a responsibility for overseeing public service delivery rather than the democratic embodiment of their local communities.

These developments do suggest that the two tiers were becoming more

interdependent: ministers expected councils to implement policy on their behalf, and the municipalities were becoming increasingly reliant on central funding to finance their activities. However, the lack of an embedded constitutional relationship between central and local government, together with the increasingly asymmetrical nature of resource dependencies, meant that ministers were in a much stronger position than municipalities. As figure 3.1 shows therefore, although English councils had significant de facto freedom during the nineteenth century along the verticalsub- dimension, their de jure autonomy was largely determined by central government in

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an increasingly dependent relationship. In contrast, Prussian councils were integrated into the constitutional framework and had the right to do anything that was not expressly prohibited by legislation. This reflects the different geneses of local

government in both countries (see table 3.2) – and, as section 3.4.2 of this chapter will demonstrate, has allowed the UK Government to restrict the capacity of English municipalities significantly since the 1970s.

Figure 3.1: Vertical dependency relationships for nineteenth-century local government in England and Prussia

Notably, however, local government in both countries during the Victorian era had significant capacity to achieve their policy objectives independently of other

horizontal actors (see figure 3.2). Municipalities were archetypal Type I ‘multi- functional authorities’ along this sub-dimension, since they provided a whole range of different services directly to residents, and did not have to rely on other organisations for support. Although this fits with the ‘typical’ characterisation of German local government, we might have expected English municipalities to be located closer to the interdependence pole because this better reflects Type II arrangements (as illustrated in figure 2.5 on page 59). However, as later sections of this chapter will demonstrate, they did move in this duration as the twentieth century progressed.

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Table 3.2: Contrasting characteristics in nineteenth-century English and Prussian local government

Figure 3.2: Horizontal dependency relationships for nineteenth-century local government in England and Prussia