Before the Flood: Local Government up to 1974

Abstract

Local government has always had an ambiguous position within the British constitution. In a unitary state, local government theoretically exists only by the good grace of central government. Our unwritten (or more accurately, ‘part-written’) constitution gives the institutions of local government no special protection, as the abolition of the Greater London Council and other metropolitan authorities in 1986 graphically illustrates. However, one of the quirks of a ‘flexible’ constitution is that practices and conventions tend to acquire an almost mystical force. Local democratic institutions may be an anomaly in a unitary system, but their long existence has endowed them with a legitimacy almost the equal of any codified mention in a written constitution. The concept of local democracy, no matter how tarnished or under siege the institutions of local government may have become, continues to hold a special place in Britain’s political culture. Central governments can attack the institutions of local government, although it’s a dangerous pastime, but the principle of local democracy itself remains sacrosanct.KeywordsLocal GovernmentLocal AuthorityCentral GovernmentLocal CouncilLocal EliteThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.