Democracy is in retreat all over the world – from Hong Kong to Afghanistan;.Even the USA has seen an outgoing president challenge the democratic process.
The reorganisation of local government in North Yorkshire should be seen in this context. The UK has no written constitution. We have become an elective dictatorship where the government is all powerful – and can do what it likes without any real constitutional checks on its power.
In the 1980’s, the Thatcher government tried to make local government more democratic. The rule was established that every decision making committee had to be “politically balanced”. In other words, every political group on a Council had to be represented proportionately on all decision making committees. Tony Blair changed all this. His government allowed councils to appoint “executives” from a single political party to run the authority. These are sometimes called “cabinets”, but the word “politburo” best describes them. In authorities with politburos, the councillors not on the politburo are marginalised and virtually powerless. North Yorkshire has a politburo of just ten exclusively Conservative members for Britain’s largest county. This is not democratic.
A growing number of statutes has given the government almost dictatorial powers. Dictators cannot stand criticism, and opposition has to be crushed. So, for a rural county like North Yorkshire, where the opposition parties are slowly gaining ground at district council level, the government has seen fit to abolish the districts so as to permanently embed its political control of the county.
This has been a thinly disguised top-down process. Bids for unitary status were invited and County applied. The districts put in a counter bid for an east/west split. The status quo was not even considered.
The criteria for the decision were financial savings, credible geography and popular support. There was a brief consultation but no popular vote. So, public support for either option could not be properly assessed.
The backers of both options produced inflated savings estimates. Like all dictators, the government’s argument is that autocratic control is more efficient than democracy.
George Orwell’s 1984 nightmare has arrived. Computers provide the means of control which enables centralised power to do away with democracy and dispense with local opinion.
As regards geography, it is difficult to see how Britain’s biggest County could have a single identity, particularly when the economies of districts like Craven are more closely connected to cities like Bradford, while Ryedale, York, Scarborough and Selby are more closely connected to Leeds along the A64 corridor.
The part of the Secretary of State’s decision letter approving the single county option contains just three paragraphs.
On 29th June last year the government had been asked about the size of new unitary authorities. The answer, given by Simon Clarke MP was: “as a rule of thumb, substantially in excess of 300 thousand -400 thousand people”. Now York has a population of less than 200,000 and North Yorkshire has a population of 600,000. The decision letter reads that the “population of the new council is just over the range of population size”.
It is outrageous that towns with long histories, like Harrogate or Scarborough, will no longer be able to run their local services. Their valuable assets will be confiscated and administered by a distant authority in Northallertton– or simply sold – much of it to developers.
We are told this is progress. In fact this reorganisation is a backwards step. It embeds the politburo system established by Tony Blair, and leaves local decisions with officials instead of democratically elected local councillors. Before the 1974 reorganisation planning was done by county through area committees of county councillors. The 1974 reorganisation changed this to allow elected district councillors to make decisions for their own districts. This allowed far more debate and local public participation. Now, we are going back to the old county area committee system – or worse.
This is important, as planning battles which we have had in the past on, for example, Ryedale’s superstore saga and the fracking debate would have been far more difficult to win if County had been in complete control of local planning – regardless of the merits of the debate.
We are now told to accept this flawed decision. The Conservatives don’t want a public debate. So they raise the dalek war cry: “resistance is futile: you will be exterminated!” This cannot be accepted. History is full of examples of right triumphing over overwhelming odds – both nationally and locally. Democracy is under challenge. As one American president said, “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance”. There needs to be a legal challenge. We need a campaign to save democracy in our country – particularly local democracy. We need somebody with charisma to lead this campaign. Who will it be?
