County councils to be axed?
WORKERS, MAR 2006 ISSUE
JUST AS THEY did in Dunfermline last month, Labour's hugely unpopular policies on issues such as health, education and Iraq will lead to a disastrous showing in the forthcoming local elections in May, when all council seats in London are up for grabs. Labour currently controls the Association of Local Government by one seat. While Labour propaganda implies this will be converted into a handsome majority (which ignores their plummeting vote in recent Greater London Authority, national and MEP elections), more sinister plans are in train.
The Labour Party at present controls only 18% of local authorities in Britain. According to a leaked government memo the Labour Party is proposing to abolish all county councils. Leaving aside the issue of whether 1,000 years of democratic history, flawed though it may be, should be erased, it could get rid of Tory and Liberal Democrat opposition at a stroke by breaking up the mostly Tory stranglehold over the Shires.
Labour is proposing to abolish a further 230 district councils and replace them with single-tier unitary authorities. Multiple-member council wards are to be abolished, to be replaced with single "super-councillors".
London could see the reduction of the 32 boroughs to less than half that number, all under the EU-style office of "The Mayor" - more akin to Gotham City and Batman than the real needs of Londoners. The Cabinet and Mayoral system is to be extended. Currently the elected Mayor of the London Borough of Newham is paid a salary of £70,000+ – so much for an ethos of committed public service! American-style chief executives will be introduced – after all why have a political viewpoint when you can select a brand off the supermarket shelf?
In the name of modernisation and reform, huge geographic authorities are to be created, providing core services from any source (that is, the free market) without any democratic overview. After services like housing, cleansing, social care, planning, transport, construction, environment and policing have been stripped out, any remaining local authority powers will be devolved to new neighbourhood councils.
In the name of democratic renewal and efficiency savings, greater fragmentation is planned to address "local" issues. In London this will speed up the ghettoisation of areas. Overall it will further depoliticise and alienate workers who already recognise the lack of real democracy in any institution from the parish through to Parliament itself.