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Fabian Society 
No. 511 


Managing Local Socialism 


Alan Alexander 


t---\ S.S. 
Fabian Tract 511 ~~q\ 
A'3+. Managing Local Socialis 
Chapter 
1 Is There a Problem about Local Democracy? 
2 Members and Officers: Differences & Interactions 
3 Policy Implementation in Local Government 
4 Politicising the Bureaucracy? 
5 Conclusions: A Code of Conduct 
Alan Alexander is a lecturer in Politics at the University of Reading and is 
the author of Local Government in Britain since Reorganisation and The 
Politics ofLocal Government in the U K. He is currently working on a 
book on the chief executive in British local government. He is a former 
leader of the Labour group on Berkshire County Council. 
1 
5 
10 
17 
21 
This pamphlet like all publications of the Fabian Society represents not the 
collective view of the Society but only the views of the individual who prepared 
it. The responsibility of the Society is limited to approving the publications it 
issues as worthy for consideration within the labour movement. 
Cover photo: Courtesy of the London Borough of Islington 
Mayl9~-~ 
I~N0716305119 ./ 
ISS!'l 03tl/4'523 -
Typeset by Character Typesetting Ltd. 01-253 1766 
Printed by Blackrose Press (TU) 01-251 3043 
Published by the Fabian Society, 11 Dartmouth Street, London SW1H 9BN. 
t---\ S.S. 
Fabian Tract 511 ~~q\ 
A'3+. Managing Local Socialis 
Chapter 
1 Is There a Problem about Local Democracy? 
2 Members and Officers: Differences & Interactions 
3 Policy Implementation in Local Government 
4 Politicising the Bureaucracy? 
5 Conclusions: A Code of Conduct 
Alan Alexander is a lecturer in Politics at the University of Reading and is 
the author of Local Government in Britain since Reorganisation and The 
Politics ofLocal Government in the U K. He is currently working on a 
book on the chief executive in British local government. He is a former 
leader of the Labour group on Berkshire County Council. 
1 
5 
10 
17 
21 
This pamphlet like all publications of the Fabian Society represents not the 
collective view of the Society but only the views of the individual who prepared 
it. The responsibility of the Society is limited to approving the publications it 
issues as worthy for consideration within the labour movement. 
Cover photo: Courtesy of the London Borough of Islington 
Mayl9~-~ 
I~N0716305119 ./ 
ISS!'l 03tl/4'523 -
Typeset by Character Typesetting Ltd. 01-253 1766 
Printed by Blackrose Press (TU) 01-251 3043 
Published by the Fabian Society, 11 Dartmouth Street, London SW1H 9BN. 

1. 
Is There a Problem about 
Local Democracy? 
Since the election of the Conservative Government in 1979, local 
government has been under sustained attack from the centre: 

• spending has been limited; 
• support for local services from general taxation has been reduced from 
over 60 per cent to under SO per cent of operating expenditure; 
• compulsion has replaced persuasion and discretion in such areas as 
council house sales and the workings of direct labour organisations; 
• the power to set a local tax rate has been limited by rate-capping; 
• one tier of elected local government has been abolished in the major 
English conurbations. 
Most recently, the attack has been directed towards the way decisions are 
made in local government as well as at the decisions themselves. 
The Conservative attack, expressed most 
strongly in the Centre for Policy Studies 
pamphlet, by Charles Goodson-Wickes, 
The New Corruption, has achieved a 
degree of official respectability with the 
appointment in 1985 of the Widdicombe 
Committee of Inquiry into the Conduct of 
Local Authority Business. The Government 
has already legislated, ostensibly in 
response to the interim report it demanded 
from Widdicombe, to outlaw 'propaganda 
on the rates'. 

Local government, then, is embattled. 
How can it be defended against such 
attacks? What changes need to be made? 
Is there evidence that the way local 
authorities are run and the way they make 
decisions needs to be modernised , modified 
and improved? 

One development is beyond dispute: 
political parties at local level, especially 
but not exclusively in urban areas, have 
been increasingly programmatic and 
policy-oriented. They come to office in 
councils with a manifesto and they try to 
use the existing machinery to implement 
it. This pamphlet is an attempt to address 

the management problems thrown up by 
that development. It concentrates on the 
experience and problems of majority 
Labour groups, but many of the issues are 
raised also by right-wing Conservative 
councils with a clearly defined manifesto-
based programme. 

The committee system

Traditionally and historically, British local 
government has relied upon the committee 
system of decision making supported 
by an implementing bureaucracy 
rather than by a political executive. Such a 
system of decision making implies the 
availability of consensus: it assumes that 
once a committee representative of all 
shades of opinion, or of all the areas 
represented on the council, or of all local 
interests, or of whatever, has been presented 
with expert advice and recommendations 
it will reach a unanimous 
decision on policy and that the policy will 
then be implemented by the expert 
bureaucracy which tendered the advice 
and recommendations. 


It is, of course, a very long time since 
local government in most of Britain 
actually worked this way. From the middle 
of the nineteenth century, and increasingly 
with the rise of Labour as a 
political and governmental force in the 
twentieth, party politics and the disciplines 
associated with partisanship have 
become superimposed upon a system 
ill-designed to accept them. 

Informally the leadership of controlling 
or majority parties has become the political 
executive, at least in the sense of 
determining the priorities and policies of 
authorities, but not in their implementation. 
This last has been left to the 
apolitical, expert and impartial 
bureaucracy -the local government 
officers -who constitute the local civil 
service. This process of gradual and 
informal change in the machinery has led 
to an assumption that local politicians are 
increasingly unwilling to accept and one 
that most students of the policy process 
would view with deep scepticism: that it is 
possible completely to separate policy and 
implementation. Associated with this unconvincing 
assumption has been the assertion 
that it is possible to separate the 
processes of advice giving and decision 
taking. It is implied that elected members 
take an informed responsibility for the 
policies of their authorities and that 
professional officers also serve by standing 
and waiting for the requests for advice 
that come from their political masters. 
This is, of course, a caricature of the way 
in which local government actually works. 

The survival of the committee system of 
decision making well into the era of local 
partisanship was probably the result of the 
fact that even after local authorities came 
to be organised on partisan lines, the 
policy stance of political groups, whether 
in control or in opposition, was reactive 
rather than pro-active or initiative. More 
often than not, political organisation went 
no further than ensuring that partisans 
demonstrated a unified response to an 
agenda generated by the professional 
officers. In some areas, to be sure, local 
leadership was sometimes, though seldom 
continuously, innovatory. The impact of 

the leadership of Joseph Chamberlain on 
the planning and rebuilding of nineteenth 
century Birmingham and the domination 
by Herbert Morrison of the London 
County Council after 1935 are early 
examples of a style of political leadership 
that has become commonplace, even 
normal, in the years since the reorganisation 
of local government between 1972 
and 1975. But it was not widespread 
enough for it to stimulate changes to the 
machinery of local government as a 
whole. 

The changing role of officers 

What was subject to widespread change 
was the role and position of the professional 
officers in the processes of local 
policy making and decision taking. With 
the triumph of the public health · reform 
movement and the victory of compulsion 
over voluntarism in the provision of basic 
local services, local government officers 
assumed an agenda-setting and initiating 
role in local government. From about 
1880, the relative positions of members 
and officers were reversed as the local 
government bureaucracy grew and diversified 
into many specialisms. This process 
was assisted by the central government 
practice of laying obligations on local 
authorities and of specifying the appointment 
io authorities of particular officers. 
This began in 1872 when it became 
obligatory for councils to appoint a 
Medical Officer of Health. Even where 
the appointment of a particular officer was 
not compulsory, the growing complexity 
of local administration made it almost 
impossible for an authority to do without 
certain kinds of expert advice. Thus, no 
authority could do without a clerk, whose 
primary function was the provision of 
reliable legal advice, and the fact that the 
clerk was at the centre of the administration 
led to a steady enlargement of his 
leadership and advice-giving responsibilities. 


At the same time, the abolition in 1882 
of almost all property qualifications for 
election began to bring to urban councils 
more radical members. As Labour in


2 


creased its local representation so it began 
to organise to maximise its impact. It was 
often Labour that introduced the practice 
of political groups meeting to consider the 
agenda before the council met. Then as 
now, Labour's unwillingness to accept the 
procedural status quo was argued by those 
who already had local power to be 
politicisation of a process that was somehow 
neutral and apolitical. 

In the thirty years following the Second 
World War local government services 
experienced a period of virtually unbroken 
expansion. Vastly increased expenditure 
led to a growing concern with 
the co-ordination and planning of policy, 
especially in the all-or multi-purpose 
authorities (principally the county 
boroughs and the county councils). 
Decision-making models imported from 
other fields, especially corporate business 
and major public service bureaucracies, 
began to be applied to local government. 
In 1964, the Government set up two 
committees to examine the internal working 
of local authorities: one on staffing 
(the Mallaby Committee) ; the other, the 
more important, on management (the 
Maud Committee). These enquiries were 
in the mainstream of the drive in the 
sixties to improve and modernise the 
performance of public sector institutions 
and their reports in 1967 marked the 
beginning of a relatively short period 
during which the whole structure and 
process of British local government was 
radically reformed. 

From the appointment of Maud and 
Mallaby through the Royal Commissions 
on Local Government in England and 
Scotland to the completion of structural 
reorganisation in 1975, the emphasis was 
on the streamlining, co-ordination and 
improvement of the decision-making processes 
of local authorities. Generally, 
therefore , it focused on the role and 
function of the professional officers: in 
particular, it assumed an enhancement of 
the position of those officers who work at 
the centre of local authorities rather than 
those who are responsible for the delivery 
of specific services. To an extent, this 
emphasis merely recognised the pre


eminent position that had been assumed 
by the clerk as a consequence of the 
nineteenth century changes referred to 
above. But the specific adoption of what 
became known as a 'corporate approach' 
to the management of local authorities 
implied a capacity to manage more efficiently 
not only the implementation of 
local policy but its formulation. 

The zenith of this reform movement 
came with the publication in 1972 of the 
Bains Report , The New Local Authorities: 
Management and Structure. Published on 
the eve of the comprehensive structural 
reorganisation of local government which 
became effective in England and Wales in 
1974 and in Scotland in 1975, it had an 
enormous initial impact on the form of 
decision-making processes in the new 
county and district councils. There was 
almost uniform adoption of the three main 
innovations proposed by Bains: 

• the creation of the post of chief 
executive; 
• the establishment of a management 
team of chief officers; 
• the introduction of a policy and resources 
committee. 
Two of these innovations -the office 
of chief executive and the management 
team-were clearly designed to improve 
the impact of professionals on the local 
policy process. The third -the policy 
committee -was a recognition of the 
need to co-ordinate the process of political 
decision making and to provide a guaranteed 
point of access through which the 
joint influence of chief executive and 
management team could be exerted. It 
could also be used to provide clear 
political direction for the authority. 

'Chief executive' was not to be simply 
another title for the town or county clerk. 
In particular, the chief executive was to be 
the 'principal policy advisor' to the council, 
leading a cohesive team of professionals 
in preparing policy advice across the 
whole range of local responsibilities. In 
the same way , the policy committee, on 
the analogy of the Cabinet at national 
level, was to put an end to the incremental 
decision making that was said to 
characterise the committee system. It 

3 


would determine the broad direction of 
policy in which the spending departm~nts 
were to go. 

Partisanship 

These structural changes came at a time 
when local authorities were increasingly 
organised on more party political lines 
than had been the case with their predecessor 
authorities. There were two basic 
reasons for this. First, the reduction in the 
number of local authorities in England 
and Wales from over 1400 to just over 400 
created local government units of a greater 
average size. The greater size of 
authorities pushed them towards the sort 
of policy co-ordination that was most 
easily achieved through the medium of 
party politics. 

Second, the introduction of a county-
based system of local government deprived 
the towns and cities of their historic 
independence of the counties and ensured 
the transfer to county councils of the 
partisan competition for long the norm in 
urban areas. Thus partisanship became 
much more widespread in the new local 
government system: councils were increasingly 
organised into party groups 
with the party holding a majority of the 
seats constituting the administration, and 
the other party or parties providing the 
opposition. (London local government 
had been reformed in 1964, and partisanship 
in council politics was in any case 
well established there. Nevertheless, the 
qualitative changes in local partisanship 
and leadership were evident both in the 
London boroughs and, rather later, in the 
Greater London Council.) 

In addition, there were external factors 
impinging on local party politics such as 
the effect on central-local relations of the 
price inflation associated with the 'oil 
shock', grass-roots disillusion with the 
performance of the Labour Government 
of 1964-1970, and the decision of the 
Labour Party in 1971 to abolish its list of 
proscribed organisations. These stimulated 
an important change in the quality of 
partisanship in some important and influential 
urban authorities. 

The combination of disillusionment 
with the Wilson Governments, and the 
end of proscription in particular, accelerated 
the rapid radicalisation of grass-roots 
Labour politics which in turn stimulated 
the rise of manifesto or programmatic 
local politics. Such a local politics was 
impatient with a form of council policy 
making where the agenda was set by 
professional officers and where the role of 
local political leadership was purely reactive, 
often policy-neutral, and sometimes 
dedicated to management by patronage. 

This was accentuated by the introduction 
in the Local Government Act 1972 of 
attendance allowances for members. Despite 
the failure of the Labour Government 
to maintain their real value between 
1974 and 1979, allowances made it possible 
for leading members to become full-
time councillors, committed not" only to 
the determination of local policy but also 
to the supervision of its implementation. 
This trend was confirmed by the decision 
in 1980 to allow authorities to pay special 
responsibility allowances to leading members. 


At the same time as successive governments 
manipulated the allocation of central 
funds in support of local services and 
sought to contain, and finally to reduce, 
local government expenditure, the nature 
of the central-local relationship profoundly 
altered. From 1973 onwards that relationship 
became increasingly adversarial, 
with local assessments of needs challenged 
and sometimes frustrated by national 
perceptions of the need to contain public 
expenditure. Council leaders came to 
believe that the only way to give expression 
to the increasingly programmatic 
politics of grass-roots activism was to 
oppose the local implementation of 
national policies. They thus not only 
confirmed the nature of the new local 
leadership, they also set a course which 
was clearly at variance with the predispositions, 
administrative preferences and 
professional values of many local government 
officers. 

This change, from a reactive to a 
pro-active or initiative style of local leadership, 
presented a clear challenge to the 

4 


continued acceptance of the myth of local 
decision making outlined above. Quite 
explicitly, the separability of policy and 
administration was denied. More implicitly, 
the independence and neutrality of 
professional officers came into question. 

The new style of leadership demands a 
clear understanding of the nature of the 
relationship between officers and members 
and it is to that relationship that we 
now turn. 

2. Members and Officers: 
Differences and Interactions 
The committee system of decision making in British local government is 
aimed at bringing consensus on policy out of the interaction between 
policy preferences and expert, professional advice. As with any system of 
decision making, the impact of any participant or group of participants 
on the content of policy depends upon the resources they bring to the 
process and on the determination and success with which they use them. 
It depends, also, on the degree to which these resources and their 
deployment are regarded as legitimate and upon whether they are 
accepted as such by others engaged in the process of policy formation. 

For the purposes of this part of the 
argument, the policy process in local 
government is assumed to be bilateral: 
there are two 'sides' -the members and 
the officer . In strictly constitutional 
terms, these two 'sides' are far from equal. 
The members, by virtue of their election 
by secret ballot, are supreme. The officer 
, by virtue of their paid employment, 
are the ervants of the members. Members 
propose, committees and council 
dispose, officer advise and implement. 

This configuration, however, is simplistic: 
it ignores important differences between 
members and officers. These differences, 
which are essential to the accountability 
of local government, may inhibit the 
development of a good working rela


tionship. The Bains Report , in its emphasis 
on the need for a 'partnership' 
between officers and members, assumed 
that a co-operative relationship would be 
easy to establish. But the senior local 
government officers who wrote the report 
failed to con ider the differences. Similarly, 
those local political leaders who have 
come into open and ometimes acrimonious 
conflict with their officers have not 
adequately recognised that each side ha 
both rights and duties. In both cases the 
root of the problem has been an imperfect 
appreciation of the relationship between 
policy determination and policy implementation. 
An understanding of that 
relationship can be assisted by a clear 
perception of how the two sides differ. 

5 


Recruitm~ntprocessesThe first difference is signalled by the 
distinction in constitutional status mentioned 
earlier. The fact that members are 
elected and officers appointed has important 
operational consequences for the 
relationship. These consequences assume 
an even greater importance where political 
parties, their elected councillors and 
their local leaderships take a programmatic, 
initiative stance in relation to the 
policies of the local authority. The nature 
of the difference here becomes clear when 
the processes of recruitment are examined. 


An inevitable consequence of the party 
politicisation of local government is that 
political parties dominate the recruitment 
process for councillors . Local selection 
committees typically give close attention 
to the ideological position of potential 
candidates, especially those who will contest 
winnable seats on authorities where 
the party expects to secure a majority. 
They want to know that those who 
become councillors are committed to the 
policy goals set by the local party. So far so 
good , for such an approach has the 
advantage of being consistent with the 
inseparability of policy determination and 
policy implementation. Problems arise, 
however, because such a process of recruitment 
may not give enough attention 
to the ability of the individual actually to 
do the job of being a councillor. 

A simple example will illuminate the 
point being made here. Party activists 
tend to be more concerned about ends 
than means. They may not , therefore, 
have a clear understanding of the constraints 
under which local authorities 
work. They may not be aware of the 
extent to which the council to which they 
wish to be elected is constrained by 
national legislation and inhibited by central 
government regulations. They may 
not know that even the firmest local 
mandate may be powerless in the face of a 
determined national government. This 
factor may, moreover, be of even greater 
importance where the local political system 
is undergoing major change, for the 
change from a reactive to a pro-active or 

initiative leadership style is often accompanied 
by the shedding of councillors 
whose long-term service may have given 
them an understanding of the workings of 
the system which they could, in turn, pass 
on to new members. Some long-serving, 
traditionalist members may have accepted 
too easily a narrow, officer-led view of the 
nature of statutory constaints and the 
limited scope for local initiative. Such a 
change in leadership style, moreover, 
often demands the rejection of established 
usages. 

In this process, members may not 
distinguish between procedures that are 
determined by the nature of the local 
government system and those which are 
defined by political choice or leadership 
style. Ideological purity and leadership 
ability may be no guarantee of a capacity 
to make an immediate and constructive 
impact on the local policy process. In 
short, selection processes in the Labour 
Party (and in the other political parties, 
for that matter) are not always designed to 
choose the best horses for particular 
courses. 

The contrast with the selection and 
appointment of local government officers 
is stark. Especially at the chief officer 
level , the selection process is apparently 
rigorous, involving advertisement, job 
specification, person specification, interview 
and re-interview. These are sometimes 
supplemented by the use of recruitment 
consultants or 'headhunters', 
psychometric testing, role-playing and the 
whole paraphernalia of executive search, 
often imported from the private sector 
with little consideration for its appropriateness 
for local authorities. In addition, 
members will attempt to import to the 
selection process judgments about how 
well an individual applicant will be able to 
work with the majority party and the 
degree of his or her 'commitment' to its 
policy objectives. It is not important at 
this stage to judge how successful these 
techniques are. What is significant is that 
they are designed to choose the best 
individual to fill a particular and clearly 
specified post. 

Underlying the difference here is the 

6 


fact that while the member is chosen for 
his or her ideological stance or commitment 
to particular policies, the officer is 
chosen primarily for professional expertise. 
These differences need to be clearly 
recognised. Ifthey are not, the expression 
of a legitimate and soundly-based professional 
view may be interpreted not as 
advice on practicability and desirability 
but as opposition to the substantive content 
of policy. 

Sources of authority

The different processes of recruitment 
highlight the fact that members are 
amateurs and officers are professionals. 
This means that their sources of authority 
differ. It also means that the policy 
options for members may appear to be 
broader and more varied than those of 
officers. 

The authority of members is derived 
from the ballot box. At a deeper level, 
their authority derives from the moral 
strength and power of the democratic 
process. That process confers the right to 
decide policy and the duty to be accountable 
for it. 

The authority of professional officers 
derives from their expertise, professional 
competence and from the fact that they 
have been chosen very specifically to do a 
particular job. They are expected to bring 
their expertise and competence to bear on 
the formulation and implementation of 
policies chosen by the members. The 
rights of officers are specified only in their 
terms and conditions of employment. The 
interpretation of these rights will depend 
upon the relationship which the controlling 
group on an authority wishes to establish. 
Officers, however, may have duties 
which conflict with the right of members 
to determine the nature of the relationship. 
For example, those local government 
officers who are lawyers are constrained 
by their position as officers of the 
Supreme Court and, thereby, have a duty 
to advise the council on the legality of any 
action which they propose to take. By 
extension, this confers a right not to be 
obliged to take any action which is in itself 

unlawful. That this is a practical point 
became clear during the rate-capping 
rebellion of 1985 , when Labour councils 
which refused to set a legal rate were 
consistently and publicly advised by their 
officers that they risked prosecution and 
surcharge. 

Similarly, local authority treasurers 
have a duty, once a rate has been set, to 
inform ratepayers as expeditiously as 
possible of their rate liability. Rate demands 
are often prepared at the time that 
members are seeking re-election and thus 
their preparation and delivery may be 
politically sensitive. But any attempt by 
members to use their authority to delay 
transmission of demands will come upagainst the treasurer's duty to send them 
out as soon as possible. 

In general, moreover, many local government 
officers would argue that they 
owe their ultimate duty to the council as a 
whole. In practice this may be interpreted 
by officers as giving them a right to state 
publicly their professional opinions on the 
legality, practicability, expense or desirability 
of policies chosen by members. If 
officers take this view there is considerable 
scope for tension and friction between 
officers and those members who, by 
virtue of their party majority, are in 
control of the authority. Such a claim by 
officers arises very directly from their 
position as professionals, in very much the 
same way as a claim by councillors to have 
a mandate to oppose government policy 
arises from their position as elected members, 
legitimised by the democratic process 
and so made representative of the 
community to which they are ultimately 
accountable . 

The doctrine ofthe mandate 

Members, however, may attempt to use 
the mandate as a means of extending their 
policy options far beyond what can be 
inferred from the general law and beyond 
what will be regarded as legitimate by 
officers. When, for example, the local 
mandate is interpreted by local political 
leaderships as giving them a right and a 
duty to oppose the local government 

7 


policies of central government, conflict 
between officers and members may occur 
long before anyone contemplates action 
which is plainly unlawful. In such circumstances, 
where political action short 
of illegality is considered by elected 
members, a clear understanding of the 
respective roles of officers and members, 
and of the sources of their authority, may 
be necessary to avoid public controversy. 
Until the law was changed to specify a date 
by which a rate must be fixed, a decision to 
delay rate-fixing was not unlawful. But 
where members delayed as a political 
tactic, their officers would publicly advise 
against such a course. 

The essentially electoral basis of the 
doctrine of the mandate suggests the third 
difference between officers and members 
-the fact that members are transient and 
officers permanent in their attachment to 
either a specific authority or to local 
government in general. For the member, 
the planning horizon is no further away 
than the next election; for the officer, it is 
less distinct, being defined by the light in 
which he or she sees a developing career. 
Importantly, also, the shortness of the 
time horizon for members is not greatly 
affected by the likelihood or unlikelihood 
of their party losing power at the next 
election. In other words, the competitiveness 
of the local electoral system does not 
always affect the way elections are 
viewed, especially where, as is increasingly 
the case with the Labour Party in urban 
areas, the controlling group on council 
defers in the determination of policy 
objectives to the management committee 
of the local party. For there, the selection 
(or deselection) process acts to shorten 
the planning horizon. 

We come here to a potential area of 
deep conflict -that between a professional 
orthodoxy which sees a need to plan 
the policies of an authority over the 
longest possible period and a political 
commitment to the regular revision and 
publication of a manifesto for the authority, 
determined by the party, legitimised 
by the electorate and implemented by 
local government officers. 

Ifsuch a conflict arises it can be resolved 

by the incorporation of the corporate 
plan, rolling programme or whatever any 
planning document prepared by officers 
may be called, into the process of manifesto 
making. Or it can be settled by the 
adjustment or amendment of any such 
policy plan in the light of the manifesto 
published by the party as the basis of its 
successful appeal to the electorate. Either 
way, it will be necessary to resolve the 
differences of outlook that arise from the 
permanence of officers and the transience 
of members. 

Full-time councillors 

The fourth and final significant difference 
between officers and members is one 
which is beginning to disappear in many of 
the authorities affected by the change to 
programmatic or manifesto politics. Historically, 
however, officers have been 
full-time and members have been part-
time in their commitment to local government. 
This difference of commitment was 
a natural concomitant of the neat division 
of labour that assumed that policy decisions 
were made by members and implemented 
by officers. As more and more 
local politicians become convinced of the 
impossibility of separating policy and 
implementation, as they come to believe 
that the nature and content of policy is 
affected by the way in whch it is implemented, 
and as they see implementation 
as an integral part of their policy 
commitment (in, for example, the field of 
employment and job creation), they are 
less likely to accept that these objectives 
can be achieved without their continuous 
and full-time commitment to council 
work. 

For local government officers, the involvement 
of members in the implementation 
of policy may be unwelcome and 
threatening, for it calls in question basic 
tenets of professional orthodoxy. But it 
cannot be avoided, and some of its 
implications are considered further in the 
next chapter. For the moment, it is 
enough to note that the arrival of the 
full-time councillor is an obvious way of 
dealing with the conflicts that arise from 

8 


the traditional difference in the commitment 
levels of officers and members. 

Clearly, the major differences between 
members and officers demand a complex 
range of interactions if their relationship is 
going to enable them to decide policies, 
implement them and be accountable to 
the public. 

Many of the interactions and relationships 
that currently exist in British 
local government are intended to cope not 
only with the differences described here 
but also with the inappropriateness of the 
committee system ofdecision making for a 
highly politicised local government. The 
importance of these interactions and relationships 
will become clear from the 
discussions of policy implementation and 
the possible politicisation of the 
bureaucracy in the two following chapters. 
There are, however, some general 
points to be made here. 

Leaders and chief executives 

The position of leader of the council, 
usually held by the leader of the majority 
group (or sometimes by the leader of the 
largest single group) has become indispensable 
in highly politicised authorities. 
And as leaders have become full-time they 
have begun to act as a political executive, 
being highly visible, commonly speaking 
publicly and to the media on behalf of the 
council and its policies and taking a 
leading part in the political and administrative 
management of the authority. 

In most authorities , the presence of a 
leader of the council makes for a natural 
relationship between the holder of that 
office and the chief executive, for they are 
the respective heads of the two 'sides' with 
which the present discussion began. No 
matter how the tasks of policy making and 
policy implementation are divided between 
officers and members , a close 
continuous relationship , based on mutual 
trust and confidence, between leader and 
chief executive is essential to the smooth 
operation of an authority's processes of 
decision making. Such a relationship is not 
always easy to establish, especially where 
the prerogatives, rights and duties of each 

'side' are not clearly understood and 
respected. It will not work, for example, if 
the leader seeks to determine the nature 
of the chief executive's relationship with 
other chief officers in the management 
team or to specify too closely the form of 
advice that the chief executive will offer 
and the forum in which he or she will offer 
it. Nor will it work if the chief executive 
fails to recognise the reality of programmatic 
leadership to the extent where 
he or she attempts to usurp the political 
leadership's power to set the local agenda 
within the broad context of the authority's 
statutory duties. 

A close relationship will often mean 
daily contact, especially where the leader 
is full-time. The relationship may then 
resemble that between a minister and a 
permanent secretary. The consultation 
process will be continuous and will involve 
both policy decision and policy implementation. 


The leader and the chief executive must 
be clear about their respective roles , 
especially in regard to the public presentation 
of council policies. It is entirely 
legitimate for the chief executive to take 
the view that the leader should explain 
and publicly defend both policy and its 
impact. This may be unwelcome to political 
leaders , but they may have to accept 
that it is an essential part of a strongly 
initiative stance in relation to local policy 
making. 

Two further avenues of interaction 
should be noted. Some local leaderships 
have attempted to insist that they be 
represented on the management team. 
This is not always successful. It is resented 
by officers as an unacceptable crossing of 
the boundary between the professional 
and the political and it may lead officers to 
meet privately to discuss council policy 
before the meeting at which the political 
leadership is present. It is difficult to know 
how this could be avoided short of a 
legally enforceable definition of what 
constitutes a formal meeting, such as is 
sometimes employed in council-manager 
cities in the United States. If things 

reached such a pass, of course, the 

relationship would already have deterio


9 


rated beyond the point where it was worth 
restoring. 

Finally, it has become commonplace for 
chief executives, in addition to their 
continuous relationship with the leader of 
the council, to attend meetings of the 
controlling party group. Such attendance, 
the implications of which are considered 
in the next chapter, necessitates a redefinition 
by chief executives of their professional 
standing, duty and ethics, but it is 
an inevitable consequence of the in


creased politicisation of local government. 
It is also a way of attempting to 
ensure that local policy making, led by 
politicians who have a very clear view of 
what they want to achieve, can be made 
effective and accountable. And it raises 
questions of who should be chief executives, 
how they should be appointed and 
of whether politicians also need other 
sources of expert advice. These issues are 
considered in the next two chapters. 

3. Policy Implementation in 
Local Government 
The early years of the reorganised local government system were heavily 
influenced by the advice on management and decision-making structures 
contained in the Bains Report. As well as providing a model job 
description for the chief executive, the Report offered model management 
structures and committee systems for each of the new classes of 
authority in England and Wales. (In Scotland, similar advice was offered 
by the Patterson Report.) Looked at in the light of the increased 
politicisation that has characterised the system since 1974, these latter 
models have one startling omission: in none of the charts is there any 
mention of the controlling party group. In the text of the Report, 
moreover, references to the contribution of parties to the formulation 
and implementation of policy in local authorities are cursory and 
unhelpful, limited to only two paragraphs headed, rather coyly, 'The 
Political Element'. 

The models assumed that the committee mand to which councillors were subject. 
system of decision making remained fully This was to graft a distortion of reality on 
operative: if the party group or caucus was to a system which was already inappropriconsidered 
at all, it was given no greater or ate to the political situation in which it had 
different significance than any other to work. It was also to deprive the party 
source of information, pressure or de-group of some of its legitimacy as a 

10 


participant in the local policy process. 
This led to a great deal of scepticism and 
cynicism among members about the Bains 
prescriptions. And these attitudes were 
deepest among Labour members who saw 
the management-based recommendations 
as incompatible with a strongly pro-active, 
manifesto-based local politics. 

Where councils run on partisan lines 
wish to implement policies contained in a 
manifesto drawn up by the local party and 
endorsed by the electorate, controversial 
decisions are made not in committee but 
in group meetings. For this reason , any 
discussion of how policies are implemented 
must assess the benefits and 
cost of accepting the high importance of 
the majority group in the workings of the 
council. 

The discussion in this chapter makes a 
number of assumptions and is, therefore, 
directed specifically at those local authorities 
which have been affected by the 
change in the Labour Party to a more 
programmatic, policy-oriented and innovative 
local politics. It assumes, first , 
that the authority has a majority controlling 
Labour group; second, that there 
exists a manifesto or programme setting 
out the objectives of the Labour Party in 
the locality in question; and third , that 
there are close links between the local 
Labour Party and the Labour group. It is 
in authorities where these factors are 
found that the problems of managing local 
socialism have raised administrative and 
political difficulties. 

Group decision making

Ifdecisions are made in the usually closed 
meeting of the controlling party group, a 
whole range of important issues is raised, 
about both the internal workings of the 
authority and the authority's accountability 
to the wider public. How, then, do 
party groups make decisions on local 
policy? 

Private meetings of party groups are not 
a new phenomenon. In most politically 
competitive urban authorities they had 
become a common feature of internal 
decision making by the beginning of the 

Second World War. Their increased importance 
for the functioning of local 
authorities arises from the change from a 
reactive to a pro-active political style. 
Only since reorganisation has it become 
common for party groups, particularly 

controlling ones, to do more than discuss 
and form views on agenda items presented 
to them by the officers. Since the 
nineteenth century, the professionals had 
carried out the task of local government 
agenda building, usually in the light of the 
known policy preferences of the majority. 
These policy preferences were often no 
more specific than a general commitment 
to the maintenance of service levels or the 
containment of rate levels. 

Agenda building now takes place outside 
the local authority. Much of what a 
council must do is specified by central 
government; the way in which it should do 
it , and the way in which it should exercise 
any discretion remaining to it , is often 
specified by the local party and interpreted 
by the controlling group. Decisions 
on major items of policy such as, for 
example, the level of the rate or the level 
of subsidy to public transport before that 
decision was made subject to central 
prescription, are made by the majority 
vote of the controlling group. In the 
Labour Party such a decision is binding on 
members but it may sometimes represent 
the end of a more complex and sophisticated 
policy-making process. 

Full group, especially in authorities 
where the controlling party is heavily 
dominant, may be an ineffective decision-
making body. Effectiveness is influenced 
by size , by the length and complexity of 
agendas, and by limitations on the duration 
of meetings. Some groups have 
responded to these difficulties by setting 
up a range of sub-committees, panels and 
working parties. Co-ordinated and supplemented 
by the group executive, these 
bodies recommend to the full group the 
decisions that ought to be taken. In some 
cases there is effectively a parallel or 
alternative committee system, which considers 
documents prepared by the professional 
officers of the council (sometimes 
with council officers present) and makes 

11 


recommendations to the full group. 

As suggested in the previous chapter, 
the leadership of the group -especially 
when it is composed of full-time councillors 
-will have a close working relationship 
with senior officers, in particular 
with the chief executive. Details of policy 
will be discussed across the officer-
member line as they arise rather than after 
the group has reached conclusions. 

Finally, when the group reaches the 
point of decision, the chief executive and, 
sometimes, other appropriate chief officers, 
will often attend the group to give 
advice directly, though not always to 
participate in the discussion or debate that 
leads up to a decision. 

It can be seen even from this oversimplified 
description of the group 
decision-making process that it can be 
effective in a number of important respects. 
First, it is well-designed for the 
process of converting policy demands into 
policy decisions. The demands are expressed 
in the form of the manifesto or 
programme published by the local party 
before the election. They are legitimised 
by the democratic process which gives the 
controlling group, exercising the legal 
powers of the council, a mandate to 
convert party policy into council policy. 
Since this form of local politics gives great 
importance to the policy-making prerogatives 
of the local party and the implementing 
functions of the controlling 
group, the decision-making system at 
council level has to incorporate liaison 
between party and group. This is achieved 
by having a number of observers from the 
local party present at group meetings. 

Second, where it is possible to reach 
agreement between the political leadership 
and the chief officers that the group 
and its sub-groups will be provided with 
officer advice and assistance, this 
decision-making process provides an 
effective means of bringing together the 
political will of the controlling group and 
the professional advice and expertise of 
the local government officers. 

Third, this process may effectively link 
policy making and policy implementation. 
The group, with officer advice, has to 

work out how best to put party policy into 
action. It also has to consider whether 
policies determined by the party are 
practicable, desirable and likely to work. 
Local manifestoes, as the Liverpool experience 
in 1985 suggests, may sometimes 
pay too little attention to the financial and 
legal implications of the policies they 
propose. In such cases, the group ought to 
consider both ends and means. But its 
capacity to do so may be compromised by 
a rigid interpretation of the doctrine of the 
mandate and an inflexible adherence to 
the manifesto. 

Public accountablity

This form of decision making is , of course, 
a closed one. It is closed because it is a 
development of the local party . system 
rather than of the local government system 
and because parties historically and 
understandably regard their internal processes 
of decision making as being confidential 
unless and until they decide that 
they should be open to public scrutiny. It 
is this aspect of the processes arising from 
increased politicisation that has caused 
disquiet and there is little doubt that it 
raises important issues of public accountability. 


For although group decisions must be 
endorsed by the council before they can 
become council policy, a dominant controlling 
group can effectively exclude 
opposition members and the wider public 
from any effective participation in the 
local policy process by the manipulation of 
standing orders. This is an important 
issue, for public accountability surely 
demands that the public have some knowledge 
not only of what decisions are taken 
but also of how they are taken . Councils 
have almost total discretion in the setting 
of their standing orders and in the decisions 
they make about the composition of 
committees (except in those cases, like the 
composition of education committees and 
police committees where discretion is 
limited either by the need to get ministerial 
approval for the general shape of the 
committee or by specific statutory prescription). 


12 


It is this unfettered discretion that has 
allowed some controlling groups to establish 
committees-most commonly policy 
committees -composed solely of councillors 
drawn from the majority party. 

It is difficult to see why a party with a 
working majority on a council needs to 
exclude opposition members from the 
formal processes of council decision making. 
Given the strength of group discipline 
(not to mention the constant oversight of 
group behaviour by the local party) in the 
Labour Party, a group with a majority will 
have no difficulty in getting its policies 
adopted. Moreover, once a strongly proactive 
leadership style is adopted and 
accepted , it has the effect of further 
clarifying the role of the opposition councillors: 
they are there not to contribute to 
the development of an imaginary consensus 
that is the underlying expectation of 
the committee system but to scrutinise, 
criticise and oppose the policies of the 
majority. Any system of decision making 
which denies to the opposition the level of 
access that will allow it to do its job is 
indefensible. 

Clearly, then , some of the new forms of 
decision making have the disadvantage of 
compromising, reducing and in some 
cases eliminating the rights of the opposition 
and therefore of the electors whom 
the opposition represent. The unfettered 
discretion of councils in making standing 
orders and designing committee systems 
has, however, been limited by the courts. 
In a 1985 case involving the London 
Borough of Hackney, the High Court held 
it to be unlawful for a majority to deny to a 
minority access to council papers. Given 
the size of Labour's majority on that 
authority , it was puzzling that it felt the 
need to act as it did. For when issues of this 
sort reach the courts they usually result in 
restrictions rather than extensions to the 
powers of local authorities. 

Observers and co-optees

If a closed system of group policy making 
effectively renders redundant the formal 
committee system, this inevitably raises 
questions of rights of participation in the 

policy process and of access to and 
confidentiality of documents. Labour 
group standing orders specify the attendance 
at group meetings of observers from 
the local party. This raises fewer problems 
than the practice of the eo-option of party 
representatives to group working parties, 
sub-committees and the like, for it is at 
this lower level that the detailed consideration 
of council policy takes place. Ifno 
distinction is made between those party 
members whose presence on the council 
has been legitimised by election and those 
who are there by eo-option, the value of 
the democratic process is undermined. 

This point applies , perhaps with even 
greater force , when standing orders are 
used to allow party members, community 
representatives and trade unionists to be 
eo-opted to council committees and subcommittees. 
There is a statutory limitation 
that no more than a third of the 
membership of a spending committee may 
be eo-opted. But where a sub-committee 
is the location of a vital stage in the 
policy-making process, decisions will not 
be affected by whether it spends its own 
money or recommends expenditure from 
the budget of its parent committee. 

A related question is the attitude of 
local government officers to attendance 
at, and · giving advice to, party meetings 
attended by party members who are not 
also councillors. Chief executives sometimes 
specify that they will attend full 
group meetings only if there are no 
non-councillors present. Labour Party 
standing orders, however, specify that 
observers from the local party should 
attend group meetings. That is a fact of life 
which should not be used by chief executives 
as a reason for denying themselves 
the opportunity to give their best professional 
advice at the point of decision. 

Different criteria should, however, be 
applied to the participation of noncouncillors 
at earlier, more sensitive and 
more detailed stages of the local policy 
process. This distinction arises from the 
fact that whereas party observers are 
present to monitor the implementation of 
manifesto commitments, elected members 
are there to make decisions on behalf 

13 


of the voters by whom they have been 
elected. If there is to be no practical 
distinction between observers and councillors, 
or for that matter between eoopted 
and elected members, the purpose 
of local elections becomes questionable. 
However, rather than take the risk that 
local government officers will deny to the 
controlling party professional advice at 
the most important and formative stages 
of policy making, the Labour Party itself 
should say clearly that where council 
policy is effectively determined by the 
group and merely legitimised by the 
council, decisions should be made by 
councillors directly advised by local government 
officers. Otherwise, it is likely 
that the internal workings of local authorities 
will be specified in new legislation, 
perhaps introduced as a response to the 
final report of the Widdicombe Commit


tee. This would be a further restriction of 
an already limited local discretion. 

Conflicts of interest? 

It is sometimes argued that the routine 
attendance by officers at party meetings 
has the effect of blurring the distinctions 
between officers and members. Clearly, 
there are circumstances where such blurring 
can only be to the benefit of the local 
policy process and so to the public interest. 
But there is a specific form of 
blurring which has arisen with the creation 
of a two-tier system of local government 
almost everywhere in Great Britain. This 
is the increasing incidence, most notably 
in London, of officers of one authority 
serving as councillors on another. 

This phenomenon is especially preva


lent in areas where the Labour Party is 

dominant at both levels of local govern


ment and where there is a large number of 

authorities in a conurbation. It has been 

argued that this leads to undesirable 

conflicts of interest and that rather than 

helping to establish a co-operative and 

productive relationship between officers 

and members it may inhibit it. On the 

other hand , one positive outcome of the 

introduction of two-tier local government 

in urban areas was to end the exclusion 

from elective office at local level of large 
numbers of citizens, especially teachers 
and social workers, who were disqualified 
from election to their employing authority. 
Conflict of interest would certainly 
arise if employees of an authority could 
also be members of it. The seriousness of 
such conflicts has been greatly exaggerated 
, however, since some of the potential 
difficulties could be overcome by careful 
selection of committee appointments and 
by strict adherence to the declaration of 
interest provisions. It would be unfortunate, 
and inimical to the health and 
strength of local democracy , if exclusion 
were extended to prevent local government 
officers from serving as members of 
any local authority. 

There remain the cases of members 
whose responsibilities as councillors are 
very close to their professional concerns: 
the personnel officer of one authority who 
chairs the staffing committee of another; 
the senior social worker or even director 
of social services who chairs the social 
services committee in a neighbouring 
authority; the town planner who is a 
leading member of the development control 
committee of another council. Those 
members who are in such positions will 
invariably argue that their capacity to do 
both jobs is enhanced by the very fact that 
they do both, and it is true that involvement 
in both policy making and policy 
implementation may enhance performance. 
But they have to be aware of 
allegations of conflict or duality of interest 
that may arise from the public perception 
that they are part of the same political 
network. Where a leading Labour member 
of one council is appointed to a senior 
position on another Labour-controlled 
council, allegations of collusion and malpractice 
are easy to make. Such an 
appointment may be said to be in the 
political interest of both controlling 
groups in that one gets a sympathetic 
officer and the other gets a member who 
will have little difficulty in taking the time 
off work to commit himself or herself 
full-time to the job of being a councillor. 

The establishment of a good, clearly 
understood and productive relationship 

14 


between particular officers and members 
may be inhibited by such appointments. 
The essence of the officer-member relationship 
is that each side should recognise 
where its responsibilities begin and end. 
Leading members ought not to want to do 
the job of senior professional officers in 
advising upon and implementing policy. 
Chief officers ought not to attempt to do 
the members' job of making policy or 
deciding priorities. Confusion of roles is 
much more likely where officers from one 
authority take on committee responsibilities 
in another in their own areas of policy 
and service provision. The nature of the 
relationship between, say, a director of 
social services and his or her committee 
chairman will almost certainly be affected 
by the fact that the chairman is the 
director of social services in another local 
authority. Lines of accountability both 
within the authority and to the outside 
world will be confused by such a relationship. 


Political parties in general, and the 
Labour Party in particular, ought to 
consider carefully the implications of 
these possible dualities. Any legislative 
change would be likely to be all-inclusive, 
for it would be difficult to frame and to 
enforce any selective regulations. It would 
simply debar local government officers 
from election as councillors, thus making 
it impossible, for example, for a social 
worker in Lambeth to be a backbench 
councillor in Kent. It would be much 
better for the Party to draw up a code of 
conduct designed to ensure that the public 
interest and the public reputation of local 
government and its officers and members 
were protected while not unreasonably 
narrowing the range of backgrounds from 
which elected members might be drawn. 
As with statutory prescription of decision-
making processes, legislation in this area 
will only further weaken the autonomy 
and discretion of local government. 

An administrative culture 

Thus far, the discussion in this chapter has 
concentrated upon the relationships from 
which policy emerges. It has, in other 

words, been concerned more with policy 
making than with implementation. The 
remainder of the chapter addresses the 
management problems that may arise 
during the process of implementation in 
local authorities controlled by a strongly 
policy-oriented Labour group. The issue 
is a simple one, and one that is often raised 
both within Labour groups and within the 
wider party: can policy, however effectively 
it is made in a partnership between 
politicians and their professional advisors, 
be effectively implemented by permanent 
officials? 

The links between officers and members, 
and between policy decision and 
policy implementation are inevitably and 
necessarily close in a party-managed and 
pro-actively led local authority. Where 
members are full-time, they will be involved 
to some extent in the implementation 
of policy, in the sense that matters of 
timing, incidence and discretion will be 
discussed with the political leadership on a 
continuing basis. Local government, 
however, has a prevailing administrative 
culture, or value system, whose guardianship 
rests with the professional officers. 
That culture is, in a subtle but 
important sense, regarded by them as part 
of their conditions of employment and 
professional ethos and expectations. 

The nature of that culture was hinted at 
earlier when reference was made to the 
possibility that chief officers might take 
refuge from the rising tide of politicisation 
in the assertion that they are servants of 
the authority rather than of any group 
within it. Such a position is unacceptable if 
it is used as a pretext for refusing to advise 
a democratically elected majority group. 
If, on the other hand, a local government 
officer's professionalism and lack of 
attachment to any one group is expressed 
in an insistence that lines be kept open to 
groups other than the majority, this ought 
to be accepted. 

The most effective means of keeping 
the lines open in this way is to accept that 
officers may attend the meetings of groups 
other than the controlling group. The 
leadership of the controlling group can 
accept this only if it has established a 

IS 


relationship of trust and confidence with 
the chief executive and with other cP.ief 
officers. It may have to be specified that 
officers will advise minority groups only 
on matters that are already on the council 
agenda, ie those actively under consideration. 
Otherwise, the legitimate right of the 
majority to set the agenda could well be 
compromised. Any breach of confidence, 
for example by revealing to one group the 
nature of the discussions at another, 
would have to be regarded as a serious 
disciplinary offence and it is unlikely that a 
chief officer who acted in such a way could 
remain in post. 

The concern of local government officers 
to maintain contact with groups other 
than the majority is an inevitable consequence 
of the democratic nature of local 
government and of the committee system 
of decision making. Neither officers nor 
members should be so arrogant as to 
assume that control of the authority will 
never change -especially given the 
electoral volatility of the 1980s which has 
left over half of the shire county councils 
without any controlling group. If it does 
change, officers will have to work either 
with a new controlling group or without 
any controlling group at all. In this last 
eventuality, the simple objective of keeping 
the council in operation may depend 
upon the extent to which the chief executive 
and his most senior colleagues are 
regarded as able to act as honest brokers. 

The protocols of party politics make it 
impossible for a controlling group publicly 
to concede that it will ever lose power. 
Equally, an acceptance that officers will 
advise the opposition group or groups 
need not be justified because of the 
desirability of maintaining relations with a 
possible successor administration. For, 

returning to a point made earlier, strongly 
pro-active leadership of the controlling 
group has the important side effect of 
more clearly defining the job of the 
opposition. And the opposition has a 
strong claim to professional advice in 
doing that job, in a complex and multipurpose 
agency like a local authority. 

Once again, given the capacity of a 
group with a majority to get its policies 
through , a desire to obstruct the opposition 
can only be explained in terms of 
factors external to the council. It may arise 
from a wish to prevent the opposition 
from presenting its policies in the best 
light to the electorate. If so, it is unacceptable 
in a democracy and democratic 
political parties should say so. 

Demands by senior officers to be able to 
advise the opposition, then , are legitimate. 
The advice they give may have to be 
circumspect and bounded by the need to 
maintain confidentiality -especially, 
perhaps, where the advice given to the 
majority has been rejected. This must be 
seen as a consequence of the change to 
manifesto-based, pro-active leadership. 
What happens is that the close involvement 
of officers with the making and 
implementation of party policy pushes 
them towards a more aggressive assertion 
of their professionalism. To put it another 
way , the more they assist in the implementation 
of overtly partisan policy, the 
more they must emphasise their professional 
neutrality as regards the content of 
policy. Leading members and controlling 
groups may have to accept this as the only 
alternative to a politicisation of the local 
government bureaucracy, the pros and 
cons of which are considered in the next 
chapter. 

16 


4. Politicising the Bureaucracy? 
When local Labour parties change towards a manifesto-based, proactive 
stance, the change is often accompanied by an unwillingness to 
accept that policy can be separated from implementation, or decision 
making from bureaucracy. Such a position has a respectable pedigree, in 
both intellectual and pragmatic terms. Those who take it have a realistic, 
if sometimes imperfectly formed, view of the local government policy 
process. Difficulties arise, however, when that position leads to the 
conclusion that if the process of decision making is to be completely 
politicised to implement the programme agreed by the local party, it will 
also be necessary to politicise the bureaucracy. 

Politicising the bureaucracy is likely to be 
a difficult and controversial task , for it 
directly questions the strong administrative 
culture that has developed in British 
local government since the end of the 
nineteenth century. It would also have an 
uphill task at the bar of public opinion, for 
despite the widespread and long-standing 
politicisation of local government , the 
British press, and particularly the local 
press, regularly deplores the politicisation 
of councils and of the policy process (often 
as cover for opposing policies that are 
other than Conservative ones). Overtly 
political appointments at officer level 
attract an even more hostile press on the 
relatively rare occasions that they can be 
identified. It is alleged that there is 
something particularly sinister about policising 
the officer side of local government. 

Underlying this hostility, of course, is 
the fear that politicising the appointment 
of permanent officials may undermine the 
democratic process by ensuring that even 
if the temporary politicians are seen off by 
the electorate, their appointees will continue 
to impose policies that have been 
repudiated at the polls. Such a view is 
naive. 

Distinctions need to be made between 
overtly and covertly political appointments 
and between the politicisation of 

the process of appointment to permanent 
positions at a senior level up to and 
including chief executive and the creation 
of new and inherently political posts, the 
holders of which are to give policy advice 
only to the controlling group. These 
distinctions are, of course, more difficult 
to maintain in practice than in theory, but 
they provide points of reference for the 
discussion that follows. Also , it is the 
marginal cases, those that are difficult to 
categorise, that raise the most interesting 
questions about the relationship between 
radical politicians and the local bureaucracy. 


Politicisation of the bureaucracy is not 
as inherently sinister as some commentators 
(mainly Conservative ones who seem 
to regard the local government officer as a 
brake on the undesirable radicalism of 
left-wing politicians) would suggest. So 
long as those who take the decisions are 
regularly subject to the discipline of the 
ballot box, and so long as those whom they 
appoint are directly answerable to them, 
the democratic principles of accountability 
are satisfied. The difficulty in British 
local government is not one of principle, 
but one of practice. A change to an overtly 
political bureaucracy would signal a more 
basic change in the nature of British local 
government than many party activists 

17 


have been prepared to admit. Perhaps 
because of this , strongly pro-active grouJ:>s 
have been more likely to approach the 
'problem' of the bureaucracy less directly, 
by seeking in the normal processes of 
appointment to choose senior officers who 
appear sympathetic to the controlling 
group's policies or by appointing policy 
advisors who will operate in parallel with , 
and sometimes in opposition to, the 
permanent local government bureaucracy. 
The remainder of this chapter deals 
with these two approaches. 

The appointment process

There is no doubt that many strongly 
manifesto-based Labour groups attempt 
to ensure that they appoint to senior 
positions officers who are sympathetic to 
their policy stance. This is particularly so 
in the case of chief executives, where local 
authorities are less constrained than they 
would be with service professionals, 
where there is a need to see a convincing 
track record in the provision of a particular 
service. From the beginning of the 
appointment process Labour groups may 
signal their policy position by including in 
the advertisement a reference to the 
authority's socialist policies. Further particulars 
may include more specific references 
to the need to work closely with a 
committed political leadership. The interview 
process may attempt to elicit the 
political views of shortlisted applicants. 
The party political grapevine may be used 
to supplement formal references in a way 
which purports to reveal the 'real' views of 
those being considered for appointment. 

Having done all that, however, members 
may still find it difficult to make a 
political appointment at, say, chief executive 
level. Given the democratic basis of 
British local government, it would have to 
be on a fixed-term basis since a change in 
political control would entail the possibility 
of a change in the office of chief 
executive. This would import the practice 
that is common in American cities, where 
the city manager, in effect, serves at the 
pleasure of the council ; a resignation or 
dismissal because of a policy dispute with 

the employing council, far from being a 
black mark, is often regarded as evidence 
of the strength and integrity of the 
individual's professionalism. Such a 
change would entail the development of 
an entirely new set of contractual relationships 
between councils and their 
senior professionals, and it is unlikely that 
such a change can be effected piecemeal as 
a result of the preferences and actions of 
individual councils. Those authorities 
which have, for whatever reason, attempted 
to appoint senior officers on a fixed-
term basis have often found that this has 
seriously restricted the field of applicants, 
except where they have been prepared, 
unusually, to depart from nationally 
agreed salary and conditions. 

In other words , the rules of the game, or 
the prevailing administrative and professional 
culture militate against the· overt 
politicisation of the appointment process. 
Covert politicisation , by seeking to establish 
the political leanings of applicants 
who offer themselves in response to public 
and general advertisement, is scarcely 
likely to be more successful. Most applicants 
can give the answer that members 
want to hear and most members, whether 
they admit it or not , are affected by the 
prevailing culture and are reluctant to be 
too openly partisan in the questions they 
ask. Finally, applicants for senior local 
government posts are usually realistically 
self-selecting. An opponent of privatisation 
is unlikely to offer himself to an 
aggressively right-wing Conservative authority 
and an individual who is against 
the use of local authority money to 
promote economic development and job 
creation will not apply for a job in a 
Labour council committed to that kind of 
policy stance. 

Policy advice 

The second sort of politicisation , and one 
which, like the appointment of special 
advisors to ministers at national level has 
alarmed the professionals, is the creation 
of posts specifically designed to provide 
policy advice to the controlling group. It is 
important to be clear about both the 

18 


nature of the e post and the reason why 
the permanent bureaucracy feel 
threatened by them . 

If the policy proce sin highly politici ed 
Labour local authorities is een to run 
from the creation by the local party of the 
manifesto, through the legitimation of 
that manife to by the party' victory in an 
election, to it implementation by the 
permanent bureaucracy, it is not immediately 
clear where policy advice to the 
controlling group fit in. 

Policy advice from sources other than 
the permanent officials is usually required 
becau e it i believed that professional 
officer may attempt to frustrate the 
policy objective of the controlling group 
in the proce of implementation. Profes


ional orthodoxy, the existence of a 
corporate plan for the authority or an 
e tabli hed procedure for making formal 
deci ion may rai e the u picions of local 
politician . The controlling group may 
also fear that the officer will use the 
processe of policy making and implementation 
to influence the local party on 
what should be included in the next 
manife to. 

If tho e who are appointed to po t of 
thi sort are recruited in a publicly 
accountable way, which mean almo t 
invariably by public adverti ement, the 
local policy proce ma be improved by 
bringing to tt committed profe sional 
who accept that the po t depend on the 
continuation in ffice of the controlling 
group to which it i attached. They will 
know that by bemg open! identified with 
one polttical party they may be circum cribing 
thetr future career pro pect . 
The e factor will mevitably act as selection 
critena. But i ue of legitimate 
public c ncern are rai ed when po t of 
thi sort are not adverti ed but are filled 
on a patronage ba i within the part . 

More dtfficult problems arise when 
app mtment are not clear! in etther of 
the tw categone so far con tdered. For 
example. tf the part · local mantfe to 
commttments mandate the controlling 
group to enter a nevv ervt e area. tt ma)' 
w t h to reate nev. and poltttcally commttted 
post 'l.amples mclude economtc 

development, women' upport group , 
police monitoring unit and equal opportunitie 
for minoritie of variou kind and 
are u ually funded from the discretionary 
twopenny rate which all local authoritie 
are permitted to rai e and to spend on 
anything that they judge to be in the 
intere ts of their area. Here the r le of the 
new officers recruited i not olely advi ory, 
although their policy area ari e from 
the partisan proces of policy choice 
rather from the statutory re pon ibilitie 
of the authority. However, ince po t of 
this ort arise from the exerci e of parti an 
discretion it is likely that they will not 
survive a change of control. everthele , 
the principles of public accountability 
dictate that the public have a legitimate 
interest not only what i done by public 
authorities but also in how it is done. 
Given the public perception of the Party it 
would be useful for the Labour Party to 
make two principle clear: fir t, that it 
support the right of local authoritie to be 
innovatory in this way; and econd, that 
the posts created a a re ult of the exerci e 
of uch di cretion hould be filled by 
public advertisement. For if the indi pen-

ability of political partie to the proce of 
local government policy making i to be 
accepted then political partie will have to 
demon trate that they accept the right of 
the public to crutini e how they discharge 
their re ponsibilitie . 

In the end, of cour e, there i no way of 
pre enting local authoritie from makmg 
political appointment unle the proce 
of appointment is removed entirely from 
the local level. The Republic of Ireland 
ha a Local Appointment ommt ton 
with almost unlimited power over the 
appointment of enior local government 
officer . That olutton, however, 1 

trongly centrali ing and the Labour Party. 
both locally and nationally, hould 
beware of acting in uch a way a~ to make 
it eem attractive a a mean of guaranteemg 
the wtder publtc intere t 

Aparallel bureaucracy

There remam to be con~tdered the 
apprehen ton on the part of profc tonal 

19 


local government officers about the establishment 
of a parallel bureaucracy over 
which they have no control and no 
influence. These apprehensions take four 
distinct forms and if the Labour Party is to 
be committed to both the appointment of 
political advisors and the establishment of 
new posts that blur the line between the 
professional and the political it will have 
to take them seriously. 

First, local government professionals 
may fear that any extension of the practice 
of making political appointments will 
seriously damage their career prospects. 
This seems exagerrated, for any such 
extension would be likely to affect only a 
small minority of authorities. Also, if 
appointment to such posts -whether 
permanent or tied closely to a particular 
party -is competitive and if the achievements 
of post holders are recognised, 
there is no reason to believe that they will 
necessarily exclude those who hold them 
from appointment to more conventional 
jobs. Nevertheless, professionals may still 
regard application for overtly political 
posts as entailing some degree of risk. 

Second, professional officers may fear 
that if controlling groups come to rely too 
heavily or even exclusively on the advice 
of political appointees, they will make 
policy decisions on the basis of advice 
which is incomplete or which is not based 
on a full understanding of what is possible 
in the context of, for example, the history 
of the authority in question . Labour 
politicians should take such fears seriously 
and make it clear that although they 

greatly value the advice they receive from 
their political advisors, they do not regard 
it as necessarily comprehensive or exclusive. 


Third, and closely related to the previous 
point, chief officers may feel that the 
establishment of a parallel and politically 
appointed bureaucracy will have the effect 
of reducing or removing their access to the 
decision makers. Power and influence in 
the policy process rely upon access, and 
local government professionals may fear 
that they will be excluded from direct 
influence on group leaders, controlling 
groups and local parties and so be reduced 
in status from participants in the local 
policy process to mere implementers of 
policy made without their involvement. 
Again this is a genuine and reasonable 
fear and one which may affect the attractiveness 
of the local government officer's 
job and so have an effect on recruitment. 

Finally, the creation of a parallel 
bureaucracy may have a deleterious affect 
on the general relationship between members 
and officers. Programmatic Labour 
politicians ought to beware of this possibility, 
for it would be important even if 
they wished unwisely to exclude permanent 
officers entirely from the process of 
local policy formation . Policy still has to 
be implemented and it will be implemented 
more smoothly and reliably if 
the relationship between political leaders 
and permanent officials is a good one. 
This , of course, is one more example of 
the inseparability of policy making and 
policy implementation. 

20 


5. Conclusions: ACode of 
Conduct 
The change from a reactive to a pro-active leadership style in local 
authorities presents considerable problems for a management and 
decision-making structure ill-designed to accommodate it. Local agendas 
are set outside the authority. Some are specified by the centre and no-one 
at local level, whether member or officer, has any control over them, 
though they may, through the national representation of local government 
seek to influence their content. Others, more significantly, are 
made by the local party, legitimised by the electorate in the form of a 
mandate to a controlling group and converted by the council machinery 
into local policy. That policy is then implemented, principally by the 
permanent local government bureaucracy. 

It is at the second and third stages-those 
of the conversion of the manifesto into 
council policy and of implementation that 
difficulties may arise which some 
commentators have seen as inimical to the 
health, strength and values of British local 
government. Indeed, the Widdicombe 
Committee has undertaken an investigation 
of the conduct of local authority 
business. That investigation was prompted, 
in large measure, by criticism in the 
press and in the Conservative Party, of the 
way in which some urban local authorities 
controlled by democratically-elected, left-
wing, manifesto-based, policy-oriented 
Labour groups were going about the 
business of implementing the manifesto 
for which they claim a mandate from the 

local electorate. 

These fears, while not wholly unfounded, 
have been greatly exaggerated. Some 
Labour groups have attempted unreasonably 
to exclude the opposition from 
participation in the decision-making process, 
and Conservative groups have, in 
some less well documented cases, done 
much the same. Itcan be shown, however, 
that such exclusion is not necessary to 

ensure the implementation of party policy, 
so long as the party has a majority on 
the council. But there is no strong case for 
legislation to specify the way in which 
local authority business ought to be conducted. 


Acode of conduct 

There is a strong case, however, for the 
Labour Party preparing and pul;>lishing a 
code of conduct which would supplement 
and clarify the existing Standing Orders 
for Labour groups. For there is a degree of 
public disquiet about the way in which 
some Labour-controlled authorities are 
being run. No doubt some of that concern 
is synthetic, disguising a distaste for the 
substance of local policy as concern for the 
health and strength of the democratic 
system. But there are also genuine reasons 
to fear that in their zeal to implement 
socialist policies some local politicians 
may sometimes give crucial democratic 
values and processes short shrift. 

Such a code of conduct would cover 

things like: 

21 


• the need to establish a clear and 
productive relationship with the permanent 
local bureaucracy; 
• the importance ofspecifying very clearly 
those posts which are attached to the 
controlling group and which to the authority; 
• the desirability of filling posts paid from 
public funds by competitive public advertisement; 
• the need to recognise the rights of the 
opposition to play a part, even if it is only a 
critical and scrutinising part, in the local 
policy process; 
• the expectation that the chief executive 
will advise the controlling group and the 
acceptability of the chief executive advising 
the group meetings of other parties ; 
• the need to ensure that when local 
government officers become elected 
members in other authorities, no duality 
or conflict of interest arises. 
None of these principles would in any 
way inhibit a majority Labour group from 
implementing a manifesto framed by the 

local party and supported by the local 
electorate. Moreover, they would clearly 
re-emphasise the Party's commitment to 
democratic values. 

None of this should be left to be 
imposed by legislation. The specification 
by Parliament of the way in which local 
authorities should conduct their internal 
affairs would be bound to be centralising 
and would circumscribe the scope of local 
initiative upon which experiments with 
socialism at the local level depend. The 
Labour Party, even in the context of the 
increasingly centralised state created by 
Mrs Thatcher's Government, has been 
able to ameliorate at local level the worst 
effects of national policy. It would be a 
tragedy if its capacity to achieve results of 
real substance and importance at the local 
level were to be restricted because an 
insufficient regard for democratic values 
was employed as a spurious justification 
for further restricting the discretion of 
British local government. 

• -"· ·~·· J.· ;. 

22 


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Managing Local Socialism 

Local government in Britain is largely structured on a committee system of 
decision making and a sharp demarcation line between the elected members and 
the professional officers. Yet events have largely overtaken this model, with 
increasing demands on local authorities from central government and the 
development of a pro-active and programmatic approach by political parties at 
local level. 

New forms of decision making have evolved as a result, with the formation of 
sub-committees, panels and working parties. These often include non-elected 
people such as representatives of the local Labour party and trade unions; at the 
same time, they may in some cases exclude members of the minority parties. And 
increasingly, councils seek to ensure that local government officers are 
sympathetic to the authority's programme -especially where discretionary 
activities are concerned. The result is that the distinction between policy making 
and implementation has become blurred. 

These changes have aroused criticism in the press of democratically-elected 
Labour authorities seeking to implement their manifestoes, and· led the 
Government to set up the Widdicombe Committee of Inquiry into the Conduct of 
Local Authority Business. In this analysis of the problems of managing local 
socialism, A/an Alexander argues that these fears have been greatly exaggerated. 
But he advocates a new code of conduct for Labour groups to emphasise the 
Party's commitment to democratic accountability and the professional rights of 
local government officers. 

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