The Crisis of Local Government: Uneven Development and the Thatcher Administrations

Abstract

Relations between local and central government have occupied a relatively peaceful backwater within British politics over most of the last fifty years. Despite occasional ripples of discontent, as when Labour-controlled Clay Cross refused to implement Conservative legislation on council house rents, or Conservative-run Tameside opposed Labour’s comprehensive education policy, local government seemed deeply embedded in the post-war political consensus. With the coming of a fully fledged welfare state, a wide range of public services were provided and administered locally. Both major parties seemed happy with this system, and were content to give (when they occupied Westminster) and to receive (when they controlled town halls) local discretion over service provision. Even the major reform of local government undertaken under the Local Government Act of 1972 followed uncontested Whitehall commissions and aroused little debate. All this has now changed.