Pressures and Controversies — the traditional system

Abstract

THE majority of the items dealt with by the Council over the whole period were non-controversial: routine administrative matters or policy decisions which had been worked out thoroughly in the departments by the officials, and in the Council’s committees and sub-committees by the elected members. After scrutiny by the Finance and General Purposes Committees and then by the Groups, they passed quickly through the Council with little comment and no opposition. Over the whole period it would have been most exceptional for a single Council meeting to have witnessed divisions or more than four issues. At least 95 per cent of Council business was non-contentious. However, over sixty years there was a slight decline in the number of divisions and a large change in the types of issue which resulted in a division. Around the turn of the century there were more divisions on a wider range of issues but provoking less intense reactions than fifty or sixty years later.