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February 27, 2008
Local Democracy
In today's Guardian, Simon Jenkins comments on the lack of local democracy in Britain, saying that the closest thing most communities have to local government is the police. He argues that having elected local leaders with power is necessary for communities to be able to enforce social responsibility and communal discipline amongst themselves and their young people. Here are some key points to his column:
Something is missing from this cacophony and I know exactly what it is. A tier of social control has been lobotomised from British public life. There is nothing between the individual or family unit on one hand and the central state on the other. Britain has fallen into De Tocqueville's trap of an atomised society, where "every man is a stranger to the destiny of others. He is beside his fellow citizens but does not see them ... while above them rises an immense and tutelary power, that of the state". We have lost the habit of association.
The nearest any British community has to local government these days is the police force. Local leadership is a 999 call. Whether it is a rape epidemic, an unruly school, trouble with immigrants, a released paedophile or bingeing teenagers, the community appears before the world as a police officer. There may be walk-on parts for a firefighter, a priest and, bringing up the rear, a national MP. But the figure of reassurance and authority in any British town nowadays is in uniform (which is why Muslims turn to their mullahs).
The still stumbling urban revival in Britain requires anonymous party-based councils to plead with regional offices of central government. Local elections no longer make an appreciable impact on policing, health, education or economic development. Councils retain no fiscal discretion to aid communities with social clubs, sports halls, libraries, parks or playgrounds. In my London borough, not only have we no neighbourhood council but we are not allowed to elect our own councillor lest he or she "represents" us alone. We are merged with neighbourhoods elsewhere. This is no incentive for civic leadership.
Of all nationalisations in British history, none has been so corrosive of the public good as the nationalisation of social responsibility. I am not starry eyed about the vigour of local democracy abroad. It is messy, bureaucratic and often corrupt. But it appears to yield communities more able to discipline themselves and their young, and more satisfied at the delivery of their public services. They do not throw nearly so many people in jail. Local newspapers are not, as in Britain, filled with impotent whinges against central government. Local leadership is considered a duty by citizens permitted to exercise it.
Posted by joshloewenstein on February 27, 2008
