CHAPTER I. The London County Council and the Need for a
County Hall
County Hall was hailed as the 'Hôtel de Ville' of London
in 1922 when it was officially opened by King George V
and Queen Mary. For over sixty years it was the tangible
expression of metropolitan government for Londoners of
all political persuasions.
While it is no part of the scheme of this book to recount
the history of the London County Council (LCC), or that
of its successor, the Greater London Council (GLC), the
story of County Hall is inextricably bound up with those
Councils' duties and responsibilities and their Members'
perceptions of their role in local government. In order to
understand first the drive to build a headquarters and then
the chronic inability of the LCC to house all its own staff
in County Hall, it is necessary to look at the political and
administrative movements which created and enlarged the
LCC.
The London County Council was established by the
Local Government Act of 1888 to meet the long-standing
need for a centralized London government, an objective
of reformers over the previous fifty years or so. It held its
first meeting on 21 March 1889 in the board-room of the
offices of its predecessor, the Metropolitan Board of Works
(MBW), at Spring Gardens, Westminster. The Council's
first Chairman, the Earl of Rosebery, recognizing the need
for a new headquarters building for the Council and its
staff, said 'We meet in a very small and in a very inadequate
room, but that is not altogether unfitting. Our physical
position at this moment resembles our political position.
We shall go into greater premises, and we shall assume
greater political power'. (fn. 1) Though the need was eventually
realized in the construction of County Hall, this did not
solve the LCC's immediate accommodation problem. As
powers were piled on to the willing shoulders of local
authorities in the early years of the twentieth century, so
the LCC's need for space became increasingly acute.
However, the self-confidence of both Members and officers
grew with the breadth and extent of its responsibilities.
This was reflected in the scale and appearance of the
building, and in Herbert Morrison's description of it as
'the headquarters of the greatest municipality in the world
.. almost the home of a parliament and a government
rather than a municipality'. (fn. 2)
The Creation of the
London County Council
There was no London-wide administration before the
establishment of the Metropolitan Board of Works in
1855. Outside the City, local government was conducted
variously by the Justices of the Peace, the Parish Vestries,
innumerable Commissions for the paving, cleansing and
lighting of the streets and seven separate Commissions of
Sewers. Responsibility for poor relief was transferred from
the vestries to district Boards of Guardians following
the Poor Law Act of 1834, but in all other respects the
administrative arrangements in the capital were untouched
by the changes imposed upon other English urban authorities by the Whig administration of the 1830s, including
the reforming Municipal Corporations Act of 1835. (fn. 3)
The changes in metropolitan administration which were
effected in the mid-nineteenth century were made largely
because of concern over public health. In particular, outbreaks of cholera, which first appeared in 1832, drew
attention to the unsatisfactory state of the sanitary arrangements in most English cities, including London, and led
to Edwin Chadwick's crusade for centralized authorities
to tackle the health hazards caused by inadequate arrangements for sewage disposal and water supply. This campaign culminated in the establishment in 1848 of the
Metropolitan Commission of Sewers, but the sewageladen state of the Thames and the loss of life in the cholera
epidemics of 1849 and 1854 clearly showed that a more
powerful body was required. (fn. 4) In 1855 Sir Benjamin Hall's
Metropolis Management Act established the Metropolitan
Board of Works as the upper tier of London's government,
with jurisdiction over the area which the Registrar General
then treated as the capital for the purposes of the Weekly
Returns of births and deaths, but excluding the City. The
Board's members were elected indirectly, by the thirtyseven district boards of works and vestries which were
constituted by the same legislation as the lower tier authorities. (fn. a) The MBW was charged chiefly with the construction of a system of main drainage – a responsibility
which it performed admirably – and it was entrusted with
a number of other functions, including the embankment
of the Thames, street improvements and the oversight of
building regulations. Other duties were added later. In
1866 it took over the fire-fighting operations of the
insurance companies and established the Metropolitan
Fire Brigade; in 1874 it was entrusted with the regulation
of slaughterhouses and in the following year it was designated as the authority for the implementation of the
Explosives Act and the Artisans' and Labourers' Dwellings Improvement Act. It also developed responsibilities
for parks and other open spaces, the Thames crossings
and the regulation of places of entertainment.
Nevertheless, the Board's role was limited and its position was not strengthened by the creation of independent
administrative bodies to operate within its area, such as
the Metropolitan Asylums Board (1867), the School Board
for London (1870), and the Port of London Sanitary
Authority under the supervision of the Corporation of the
City (1872). Nor was support for it increased by occasional
imputations of corruption against some members of staff.
Indeed, the period from 1855 to 1889 was to be dominated
by the struggle over the shape of London's government,
between the advocates of a stronger centralized authority
and those opposed to the establishment of a potentially
powerful metropolitan tier of local government.
The Government's intentions to follow up the 1855
Act with some reform of the Corporation of the City
foundered, and none of the Private Member's Bills that
were introduced into Parliament between 1860 and 1888,
with the object of partial or complete re-organization of
the system, reached the statute book. Such attempts at
reform could not succeed without government support
and the failure of Gladstone's Liberal ministry of 1868–
74 to tackle the question slowed the impetus towards
change. (fn. 5)
It revived during the early 1880s, however, stimulated
by the creation in 1881 of the London Municipal Reform
League, which absorbed the flagging Metropolitan
Municipal Reform Association, founded in 1865. The
League, under the presidency of the vigorous and skilful
campaigner, J.F.B. Firth, (fn. b) had considerable success in
publicizing and co-ordinating the demands for a central
municipal government for the capital. There were few
who wished to retain the MBW, and revelations in 1886–7
that some of its officers had been guilty of corruption in
the granting of contracts undermined what residual
support the Board did have. On the other hand, attempts
to alter the constitution of the City Corporation were
likely to meet with stiff and well orchestrated opposition.
Nevertheless, in 1884 Sir William Harcourt, Home Secretary in Gladstone's second ministry, introduced a Bill
which proposed to establish a new arrangement for
governing the capital by reforming the Corporation and
greatly extending its jurisdiction, thereby creating a
County of the City of London. Although the Bill was
withdrawn before it reached the committee stage, its introduction had aroused the active opposition of the City and
the vestries and the alarm of a considerable body of opinion
which still viewed the centralization of London's government with strong suspicion. (fn. 7)
Following the failure of Harcourt's attempt to reform
the City and introduce a metropolis-wide authority, and
the fall of the Liberal ministry in 1885, it seemed likely
that London government reform would be delayed for
some time. In fact, it was Lord Salisbury's ministry which
established the London County Council, as a part of its
measures to reconstitute the administration of the counties
and larger boroughs by creating county councils and
county boroughs. Ironically, it was one of the leading
critics of Harcourt's Bill and a prominent opponent of
centralization in local government, C. T. Ritchie, who, as
President of the Local Government Board, prepared and
piloted through Parliament the Local Government Act of
1888 which created the LCC. (fn. 8) The solution to the problem
presented by the City was to grant it a status by which it
retained its autonomy, with a relationship to the LCC that
was essentially the same as it had been to the MBW.
Ritchie did not, however, develop his early ideas to set up
district councils within the LCC area, to balance the
powers of that Council, and so the vestries and district
boards of works were left virtually untouched. (fn. 9) Thus the
LCC came into being through the back door opened by
the reform of county administration, rather than as a part
of the complete overhaul of London's government so
earnestly desired by the municipal reformers. It inherited
the MBW's boundaries unaltered, together with its powers
and the entire range of its administrative functions. In
addition, it was given the right to oppose Bills in Parliament.
The arrangements made in 1888 did not satisfy everyone. The reformers wished to continue with their programme by widening the LCC's powers and area,
particularly by bringing the City within its jurisdiction
rather than by leaving it 'as an excrescence on the new
system'. There was a proposal to this effect during Rosebery's Liberal ministry of 1894–5, but the Government
fell before a Bill could be introduced. Once again, it
was a Conservative Government which, by the London
Government Act of 1899, carried through a reform of
metropolitan administration by replacing the vestries and
district boards with twenty-eight Metropolitan Borough
Councils within the County of London. The powers of
the LCC were not extended and the City was left
untouched. The establishment of the Metropolitan
Borough Councils was intended not only as a necessary
reform of the lower tier of local government in London,
but also as an administrative and political counterweight
to the LCC. (fn. 10)
The first elections to the Council were held early in
1889 and the provisional Council's inaugural meeting took
place at Spring Gardens on 31 January. (fn. 11) The Act allowed
the MBW to continue for another two months, overlapping with the provisional LCC, but its rather mischievous intention to issue contracts for the construction
of the Blackwall Tunnel, which would have been binding
on its successor, were forestalled by advancing the date of
its abolition slightly, to 21 March 1889. (fn. 12) Thus it was that
the first meeting of the LCC was held on that date. The
Earl of Rosebery was chosen as its first Chairman, for,
although Firth was a strong candidate, his outspoken
advocacy of centralization made him politically unacceptable; to have chosen him would have been 'a red flag
to the City'. (fn. 13) Firth was given the salaried position of
Deputy Chairman, but he died a few months later. (fn. 14) The
Council consisted of 118 directly elected Members, who
chose 19 Aldermen. In 1919, following the widening of
the franchise, these numbers were increased to 124 and
20 respectively. (fn. c)
Rosebery was not alone in hoping that it would not
divide along party political lines, but two more or less
coherent party groups were formed almost immediately,
the Progressives and the Moderates. (fn. 15) The Progressives
contained almost every shade of Liberal and Radical
opinion, and attracted the support of a number of Fabians;
the Moderates was the title adopted by the Conservative
party in the LCC. Party discipline was relatively loose in
the early years of the new Council and the whip was
not strictly applied. Nevertheless, the organization of the
parties soon came to resemble that of their Parliamentary
counterparts, and, by the mid–1890s, both the Progressives
and the Moderates operated with definite party leaders.
It was not until the Standing Orders of 1934, however,
that the positions of 'Leader of the Council' and 'Leader
of the Opposition' were given official recognition. (fn. 16)
The Progressives took roughly two-thirds of the seats
in the 1889 LCC elections and remained in power for the
following eighteen years. Their success may have been
partly due to the overhaul of the Liberal party organization
in London following its poor results there in the general
election of 1885. (fn. 17) The Conservatives responded in kind,
making strong efforts in support of the Moderates' campaigns in the triennial elections to the LCC, and strengthening their organization in the capital by the setting up of
the London Municipal Society in 1894. (fn. 18) In the 1895
election the Moderates and Progressives won equal
numbers of seats and the latter retained control of the
Council only because they had a majority among the
Aldermen. At the elections of 1898 the Progressives reestablished a comfortable majority. However, in 1907,
their opponents, now known as the Municipal Reformers,
won a majority of forty seats. The Progressives' efforts
may have been weakened by the election to Parliament of
a number of their most able members in the Liberals'
general election victory in the previous year, but their
defeat was also attributable to the shift in voting patterns
in London, for, in electoral terms, the capital had become
predominantly Conservative. (fn. 19) The Progressives never
regained power. In 1925 they were replaced by Labour as
the second largest party on the Council, a reflection of the
general decline in the Liberals' electoral support and of
the enlarged electorate produced by the extension of the
franchise. In 1934 Labour came to power with a clear
majority in a Council to which, for the first time, no
Progressives were elected. The LCC remained under
Labour control until its replacement by the GLC in 1965,
when the system of local government established by the
Acts of 1888 and 1899 was superseded. (fn. 20)
The Functions of the London County Council
As a county authority, the LCC discharged the administrative duties formerly carried out by the Justices of
the Peace. It also took over the MBW's functions and
developed them. It carried through a number of major
street improvements, rebuilt six bridges over the Thames,
constructed vehicular and pedestrian tunnels at Blackwall,
Rotherhithe, Greenwich and Woolwich, continued the
Board's work in maintaining sewerage and drainage
systems and operating the fire brigade, added to the
number of parks and open spaces under its control and
acted as the authority for the implementation of legislation
on building regulations, the storage of dangerous substances and the licensing of places of entertainment.
Further duties were added, most notably the responsibility
for education in London, which was transferred to the
LCC on the abolition of the School Board for London in
1904. A range of welfare services formerly carried out
by the Metropolitan Asylums Board and the twenty-five
Boards of Guardians in its area, together with their hospitals, asylums, workhouses, infirmaries, dispensaries and
residential schools, passed to the LCC in 1930. Between
the two World Wars the Council obtained new powers
respecting town planning and greatly expanded its operations in the provision of housing, both within the County
of London and beyond it. By 1938 it had provided 86,700
new houses and blocks of flats, the vast majority of them
within the previous twenty years. (fn. 21) On the other hand, the
Royal ('Ullswater') Commission on Local Government in
London of 1922–3 offered an opportunity to expand the
Council's jurisdiction, which was not taken. (fn. 22)
The increasing range and scale of the LCC's duties
added considerably to the size of its staff and budget. In
1891 the total number of its employees was 3,700, by
1938–9 the corresponding figure was 78,000, and its annual
expenditure rose from less than £2 million in its early
years to £37 million in 1937–8. (fn. 23) With this expansion
came growing self-confidence among its Members and
officers, reflecting the current feeling in local government
at the time. Indeed, the optimism and sense of purpose
which characterized much of the work of the early County
Councils probably reached its zenith in the mid-twentieth
century. In a volume published in 1935 to mark the
centenary of the passing of the Municipal Corporations
Act, William Robson wrote that:
the local government service will grow substantially in size, in
status, in esprit de corps, in professional excellence. Municipal
officers will find themselves entrusted with great new responsibilities. They will have to develop qualities of creative leadership
for preparing and carrying out the policy of the council beyond
almost anything we now know. They will acquire new skills for
the performance of new tasks. They will deepen their knowledge
and broaden their outlook. They will have to strive to develop
that imaginative insight into the processes of civilized life which
is the true mark of the educated mind. (fn. 24)
Four years later Sir Gwilym Gibbon and Reginald
Bell produced a history of the LCC to mark its Jubilee,
summarizing its work and proudly declaring that 'What
stands out above all ... is growth, and still more growth.
The progress of the Council has been like that of a great
river taking in tributary after tributary on its way'. (fn. 25)
Not all of the tributaries had flowed in to the LCC's
river, however, for the control of the Metropolitan Police
remained with the Home Secretary and a number of
independent authorities had been created, such as the
Metropolitan Water Board (1902), the Port of London
Authority (1908), the London and Home Counties Traffic
Advisory Committee (1924) and the London Passenger
Transport Board (1933), which took over the Council's
tramways. On the establishment of the National Health
Service in 1948, the LCC surrendered some aspects of the
health services which it had inherited in 1930 and had
subsequently transformed, most notably the Poor Law
hospitals. On the other hand, the Second World War had
greatly added to the Council's work, both through the
measures taken for civil defence during the war and, most
significantly, because of the scale of the planning and
reconstruction required in the aftermath of wartime
destruction.
The long-term planning implications of reconstruction
in London and south-east England were set out in two
reports, the County of London Plan of 1943 – which was
prepared under the auspices of the LCC – and the Greater
London Plan of 1944, which covered a wide area around
the capital. As well as the preparation and implementation
of planning procedures, the LCC was also involved in the
provision of new homes and the rebuilding and developing
of new schools. Post-war redevelopment also provided
the opportunity to reconstruct areas badly in need of
improvement. One of these was that part of the South
Bank close to County Hall, an area that had formerly been
'a large heap of rubble and a lot of semi-derelict buildings',
which was transformed under the LCC and GLC into an
arts complex. (fn. 26) Similarly, the development of the Council's Lansbury Estate in East London as a show place of
'living architecture' for the Festival of Britain expressed
the self-assurance and energy of the Architect's Department. There was, indeed, no loss of confidence within the
LCC in the post-war years. One young Council Member's
impression in the 1950s was that the building and the
reputation of the County Council were somehow inseparable: 'Twin bastions of democracy we thought – the
Palace of Westminster and County Hall – equally imperishable ... Local Government was then a proper source
of pride, and County Hall a visible embodiment of the
pride'. (fn. 27)
The Greater London Council
The case for a regional planning authority in the London
area had been made before the Second World War. (fn. 28) Postwar reconstruction was closely linked with this concept
and the wider aspects of planning, such as the implementation of the Green Belt around the capital as set out in
the 1944 Greater London Plan and the implications of the
New Towns Act of 1946. (fn. 29) It was in respect of the emphasis upon regional planning in particular, that the organization of London's local government was questioned once
again. The White Paper Local Government in England and
Wales during the Period of Reconstruction (1945) stated that
'the problems ... of reconstruction, have made it clear that
a reconsideration of the allocation of functions between the
[metropolitan] boroughs and the county is overdue'. (fn. 30)
There was, therefore, some pressure for change for practical administrative reasons, apart from political considerations. No changes were made during the immediate
post-war years, however, for it was not part of Labour
Government policy to alter London's system of local
administration. (fn. 31) The Conservatives were more willing to
countenance some change, partly because of their lack of
success in elections in the capital since the mid-1930s,
when both the control of the LCC and the majority of
seats on the metropolitan borough councils had been won
by Labour. An overhaul of the Conservative party's organization in London in 1945, when the title of Municipal
Reform Party was abandoned, did not produce an electoral
victory. (fn. 32) Indeed, it seemed that the migration from the
LCC area to outer London by many amongst those sections of the electorate which consistently voted Conservative would make it difficult for the party to regain
control of the Council. It did, however, appear that an
extension of the LCC's boundaries would redress the
electoral balance. (fn. 33) Thus, in the 1950s, the perceived need
for a strategic planning authority coincided with the political will required for change, and in 1957 Henry Brooke,
Minister of Housing and Local Government in Harold
Macmillan's Government and a former Conservative
Leader on the LCC, set up a Royal Commission to
examine the local government arrangements in Greater
London.
The Commission reported in 1960 and its essential
recommendations were incorporated in the 1963 London
Government Act. The London County Council was
replaced by the Greater London Council consisting of one
hundred directly elected Members and sixteen Aldermen:
twenty-nine Metropolitan Borough Councils were created
as the lower tier authorities. The area within the GLC's
boundaries was 616 square miles, compared with the 117
square miles of the LCC's jurisdiction, and its electorate
of almost 5,500,000 was double that of the LCC election in
1961. (fn. 34) Some of the outer areas included in the boundaries
recommended by the Royal Commission were excluded
from the GLC as actually established and, partly for that
reason, its electorate did not contain an inbuilt Conservative majority. Labour won control in the elections
for the first GLC in 1964, was replaced by the Conservatives three years later, and held power again in
1973–7 and 1981–6. (fn. 35)
The Powers of the Greater London Council
The GLC was established primarily as a planning authority for the London region having a wide brief with
respect to planning, redevelopment, housing, highways
and traffic. Other responsibilities were transferred from
the LCC. Control of education within the former LCC
area was allocated to the Inner London Education Authority, a new body separate from, although related to, the
GLC. Outside the former County of London, education
was administered by the boroughs. Amongst the initial
proposals which did not come to fruition was one which
would have included water provision within the GLC's
responsibilities. (fn. 36) The most significant addition to the
GLC's functions was made in 1970, when various aspects
of transport in London were brought under its control.
Some of its responsibilities were subsequently removed.
Those relating to main drainage, sewage disposal, the
control of river pollution and the discharge of effluent
were transferred to the newly established water authorities
in 1973. This took away from the GLC the main purpose
for which the MBW had been created in 1855. Similarly,
also in 1973, the new regional health authorities took over
from the Council the operation of the London Ambulance
Service. Responsibility for the capital's public transport
system was removed from the GLC's control in 1984, on
the creation of London Regional Transport.
The Abolition of the Greater London Council
The removal of these various powers from the GLC,
doubts about its success as a strategic planning authority
for the London region, and continued political opposition
to the upper tier of local government led to an examination
of its position. In 1977 the Council, which was then under
Conservative control, commissioned a review of London
government from Sir Frank Marshall. (fn. 37) His report
recommended that the GLC should be retained and
strengthened. (fn. 38) No action was taken to pursue its recommendations in Parliament, however, either by the
Labour Government then in office or by its Conservative
successor that came to power in 1979. Following the
Labour victory in the 1981 GLC elections, and that of the
Conservative party at the general election two years later,
it was the alternative of abolition of the upper-tier local
authorities which was adopted and was effected in 1986.
The Inner London Education Authority was not abolished
with the GLC, but, by a separate measure, was dissolved
in 1990. (fn. 39)
The Council has no permanent successor, although a
temporary organization, the London Residuary Body, was
created to operate during a transitional phase in which the
GLC's functions were redistributed. The County Hall
was designed and used as the headquarters of a Londonwide administrative body, but that role necessarily came
to an end when the Inner London Education Authority
left the the building. Its future use is at present uncertain.