Identifier: futureoflocalgov00cole (find matches)
Title: The future of local government
Year: 1921 (1920s)
Authors: Cole, G. D. H. (George Douglas Howard), 1889-1959
Subjects: Local government -- Great Britain
Publisher: London, New York (etc.) : Cassell and Company, Ltd.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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y Mr. and-Mrs. Webb. It is all very well to say that the electionof the single representative within the proposed smallunit would provide for full public control; but fullpublic control appears to me to involve for the electorsfar more than a direct control over the particularindividual whom they elect. It involves also controlover the body charged with the work of administra-tion, acting in its corporate capacity. This controlwould, I fear, be utterly destroyed if Mr. and Mrs.Webbs proposals were adopted. For, in order that abody of persons may control those whom they chooseto exercise administrative functions on their behalf, itis indispensable that the whole body of electors shouldpossess a community consciousness, and should becapable of uniting in order to bring the pressure ofopinion to bear upon their elected representatives,collectively as well as individually. This can onlybe secured, it appears to me, if the whole of theelectors concerned in the choice of all the members 160
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The Future of Local Government of the administrative body in question are in a positionto communicate their ideas one to another and toconfer together, and if they regard themselves ascitizens of a clearly defined social unit, possessingcontinuous functions over the whole sphere of LocalGovernment services. If I have to combine with oneset of people for one group of civic functions and withanother set of people for another group of civicfunctions, it will be difficult for any of these sets ofpeople to develop that habit of common action whichis indispensable to the exercise of real control overthe elected persons by those whom they are supposedto represent. I believe, therefore, that, in practice, Mr. and Mrs.Webbs proposal, so far from ensuring real publiccontrol over the paid full-time Local Government re-presentatives to whom they desire to see the workof administration entrusted, would go a very longway towards destroying the possibility of such con-trol, and would inevitably tend

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