10 - The changing functions of urban government: councillors, officials and pressure groups

Summary

Municipal Boundaries – legal, administrative and physical – have never been simple or fixed, shifting as the local and central polity responded to the changing economic, social and demographic imperatives of the developing urban form. Thus, between 1830 and 1950 urban governance in Britain was transformed from a system of locally initiated, semiprivate structures with very limited powers and scant state or democratic supervision, through an era of proliferating single purpose boards, to the powerful, unified and democratically elected bodies which reshaped the urban environment in the early twentieth century. In the course of this transformation, local government took on a bewildering array of powers; raised, borrowed and spent thousands of millions of pounds; and ultimately employed an army of almost 1 million workers. Furthermore, this revolution was almost entirely the result of local initiative, for whilst all local government powers had to be sanctioned by parliament, the central state imposed few obligations on the municipalities. In these circumstances service provision varied over time and place, with many similar authorities playing very different roles in terms of utility provision, sanitary improvement, slum clearance, housing, recreation facilities, poor relief benefits or hospital management. This patchiness is usually attributed to the inadequacies of local politicians who, despite the urgings of enlightened central bureaucrats or passionate local socialists, skimped on expenditure in order to ease the rates bill. However, this view has come under increasing scrutiny with revisionists emphasising how much, not how little, was done, given the unequal distribution of resources across the country and the often unhelpful and centralising tendencies of the national state.