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- Herausgeber: Biteback Publishing
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
This year, London's elected mayor and assembly turn twenty. But has London's mayoralty lived up to the expectations that were set for it? Have its three mayors been able to get to grips with the city's challenges? How have they responded to crises in the past – and what does the future hold? This important new book marks the twentieth anniversary of London's mayor and assembly and investigates the relative successes and challenges of the mayoralty to date, before asking what comes next for London. It combines analysis by experts with reflections from those closely involved in setting up, running and working with the Greater London Authority, alongside those who have held the position of Mayor of London themselves.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
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Centre for London and Professor Tony Travers would like to extend our thanks to this project’s sponsors, without whom this book would not have been possible: Argent LLP; Gensler; Gerald Eve LLP; Herbert Smith Freehills; Landsec; London Communications Agency; Stanhope PLC; and the project’s academic partner, the School of Politics and Economics, King’s College London.
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CONTENTS
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Patricia Brown is director of Central, providing strategic advice to civic and business leaders on urban change. She has over twenty-five years of experience thinking about, influencing and improving London. From 1994 she was a founding director of London’s first inward-investment body, helping promote London as a premier business destination. She became CEO of the Central London Partnership in 1997, leading a cross-sector partnership on maintaining the capital’s position as a global world city. She has been at the heart of many of the initiatives that have been part of London’s successful urban evolution, including the establishment of the Business Improvement District model in the UK, and the pedestrianisation of Trafalgar Square.
Neale Coleman CBE worked for the GLA from 2000 to 2015 advising Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson on the bid for, delivery and legacy of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. He was a board member of the Olympic Delivery Authority throughout its life, and following the games he was deputy chair and chair of the London Legacy Development Corporation.
Isabel Dedring has been Arup’s global transport leader since 2016 and a member of the group board since April 2019. Prior to Arup, she was deputy mayor for transport and deputy chair of the Transport for London board. In London government her major transport projects included creating and delivering a £1 billion cycling programme, a £4 billion progressive roads investment programme, and leading on xmajor transport construction projects such as extensions to the underground and devolution of rail services. She also instigated and led on the London Infrastructure Plan 2050. Isabel is a native New Yorker, a qualified lawyer and a fellow of the Institute of Civil Engineers.
Michèle Dix CBE started her career at the GLC after completing her PhD in transport and land-use planning. She joined TfL in 2000 as co-director of congestion charging. Michèle led TfL’s strategic thinking on the transport needs of London, testing and challenging solutions and providing clear direction on appropriate transport solutions for the future. Michèle is now responsible for developing Crossrail 2 and gaining funding and powers for it. She is a visiting professor for UCL and recently joined the Major Projects Association as a board member and became a trustee for the London Transport Museum.
Tim Donovan is BBC London’s political editor. His interest in the capital’s mayoralty began when he was asked to make a behind-the-scenes film about the inaugural 2000 campaign. He spent several weeks traipsing after Ken Livingstone with a small camera. Two decades of intense interest have followed.
Stephen Glaister CBE was chair of the Office of Rail and Road from 2016 to 2018 and remains on the board. He is emeritus professor of transport and infrastructure at Imperial College London and is an associate of the London School of Economics. He was director of the RAC Foundation, a member of the TfL board from 2000 to 2008 and a non-executive director of London Regional Transport from 1984 until 1993. He has published widely on transport policy and also on regulation in the telecommunications, water and gas industries.
Robert Gordon Clark is executive chairman of PR firm London Communications Agency (LCA), which he founded in 1999 just before the xiGLA was created. Before that he was deputy CEO of London First and has over thirty years’ experience working on the London agenda. LCA – now a 45-strong team – has advised a wide range of businesses and public sector bodies on their work in the capital, providing media relations, public affairs and design services. The company has also supported the work of organisations such as Centre for London, London Councils and New London Architecture (NLA) to help promote the capital.
Dave Hill is an experienced freelance journalist who runs the website OnLondon, which covers the capital’s politics, development and culture. He was previously, for nine years, The Guardian’s London commentator, winning awards for his columns and work on transport issues. Dave is also a board member of the London Society and is the author of Zac Versus Sadiq: The Fight to Become London Mayor, an account of the 2016 London mayoral election campaign.
Leah Kreitzman is mayoral director for external and international affairs, having previously been a senior advisor to Sadiq Khan’s campaign to be Mayor of London. Before this, Leah was director of public affairs for UNICEF UK. She has led advocacy campaigns for international NGOs, such as Save the Children and ONE, and worked for the UK’s leading international development think tank, the Overseas Development Institute. Leah has also been a strategic communications advisor to the shadow Cabinet on criminal justice, human rights and constitutional reform. She has an MSc in international relations from the London School of Economics and a BSc in philosophy and politics from the University of Bristol.
Kit Malthouse has been the Conservative MP for beautiful North West Hampshire since 2015. In January 2018, Kit was appointed parliamentary under-secretary for family support, housing and child maintenance and was promoted to minister of state for housing and xiiplanning in July 2018. Following the election of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister in July 2019, Kit became minister of state for policing, crime and the fire service. Formerly deputy mayor of London for policing and business and enterprise, he is a chartered accountant, and founded a Midlands-based finance company twenty years ago, which he now chairs. He is married with three children.
Nick McKeogh is co-founder and chief executive of NLA, London’s centre for the built environment. He is also a trustee of the London Society and a director of Pipers Model Makers. Nick studied civil and environmental engineering at UCL, before joining his father at Pipers in 1996. Nick has managed the delivery of the London stand at MIPIM since 1998 and led the transformation of the London Architecture Biennale into the annual London Festival of Architecture and its subsequent integration into the NLA in 2019. He established the London Real Estate Forum in 2013 and continues to oversee the event.
Dr Rick Muir is director of the Police Foundation, the UK’s independent policing think tank. He has been a public policy researcher for most of his career, focusing on policing, criminal justice and public service reform. He was previously associate director at the Institute for Public Policy Research. Prior to that he completed a DPhil in politics at the University of Oxford. He is currently a visiting professor at Northumbria University and was previously a local councillor in both Oxford and Hackney.
Ben Rogers is an urbanist, researcher, writer and speaker, with a particular interest in urban life, citizenship, public service reform and the built environment. He founded Centre for London in 2011 and was previously an associate director of IPPR and subsequently led strategy teams at Haringey Council, the Department for Local Government and Communities and the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit. Ben is the author of several acclaimed books on philosophy, history xiiiand democracy, and is an experienced journalist and broadcaster. He has been a contributing editor to Prospect magazine, a visiting fellow at the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the London Finance Commission.
Bridget Rosewell was chief economist for the GLA from 2002 to 2012 and was responsible for setting up GLA Economics. In that role she worked extensively on the case for Crossrail and the role of agglomeration in the city, on the Thames Gateway Bridge and on various London Plans. She is now a commissioner on the National Infrastructure Commission.
Kath Scanlon is distinguished policy fellow at the London School of Economics. An economist and planner, she specialises in understanding the impact of housing policy at local and national level. Her first LSE research project in 1999 looked at the setting up of the Greater London Authority; she has been following London governance and policy ever since. Kath has carried out research for a range of UK and international funders including the GLA, several London boroughs, Homes for Scotland and the Council of Europe Development Bank.
Deyan Sudjic is professor of architecture and design studies at Lancaster University, and director emeritus at the design museum. He is a former director of the Venice Architecture Biennale, and of Glasgow UK City of Architecture and Design. He was part of the Urban Age team at the LSE. His books include The 100 Mile City, The Endless City (edited with Ricky Burdett) and The Language of Cities.
Dr Tim Williams is head of cities for Arup in Australasia. From 2011 to 2017 he was CEO of the Committee for Sydney, Australia’s main cities think tank. Between 1998 and 2003 he was CEO of the Thames Gateway London Partnership and between 2005 and 2010 worked for various housing and planning ministers as a special or specialist xivadvisor. In the run-up to the London Olympics he advised a number of host boroughs on legacy strategies and advised the CEO of Lendlease on the building of the Athletes’ Village. He lives in Sydney and regards himself as a Cambrian-Australian London intellectual.
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
FOREWORD
TONY BLAIR
Could we imagine not having a Mayor of London today? Or fighting and winning the 2005 bid for the Olympics in London without one? Or hosting it in 2012? Yet, there was no elected Mayor of London before Labour took office in 1997. We engaged as a government in the biggest constitutional reform Britain had ever seen in modern times. Scottish and Welsh devolution, together with the introduction of the Northern Ireland Assembly following the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, are often the most noticed of the reforms; but the creation of a London mayor was just as significant.
It is a great example of the change which can be made by progressive politics if it has the discipline and strategy to win power and retain it. Never forget that the position of a London mayor was at the beginning politically controversial – the 1980s had seen the abolition of the GLC – and three terms of government were important in bedding the institution down. Now its abolition would be unthinkable.
As part of the broader policy aim of putting power in the hands of local communities it was felt that there was a particularly urgent need to make change in London. As we set out in our 1997 manifesto, at that point London was the only Western capital without an elected city-wide government. Our aim was that both the elected assembly and the mayor would speak up for the city and its needs, plan for the future and take responsibility on city-wide issues, such as economic regeneration, planning, policing, transport and the environment.xviii
Both of these reforms came into effect in 2000 after a referendum and legislation had passed in Parliament.
In the twenty years since there is much for us to look at and reflect on in terms of successes and areas for improvement.
It seems clear that the mayor has been a powerful and effective political voice and advocate for the capital, both domestically and internationally. Within the mayoral remit of powers there have also been important successes: the congestion charge, bike hire and both a broader and better offering of public transport.
With the next stage of Brexit on the horizon it is the right time to think about the next phases of devolution, both at a micro and macro level.
At a micro level, does the Mayor of London have enough powers, for instance? What can be improved in the capital and learned for other municipalities across the UK?
At a macro level we must ensure that the spirit of regional and local devolution remains undiminished. It is a critical route to bringing more people into the political process, as well as ensuring accountability and leadership on local issues.
So, twenty years on from the establishment of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly, the existence of both are almost unquestioned in reasonable political debate. They have changed the landscape of political life in the city for the better. With the benefit of all we have seen over that time, and with deep change in the UK on the horizon, now is the time to deepen devolution, creating a new political settlement across the country.
INTRODUCTION
JACK BROWN, TONY TRAVERS AND RICHARD BROWN
On 3 July 2020, the Mayor of London turned twenty years old. Following a referendum on 7 May 1998, the introduction of legislation to establish the Greater London Authority the following year, and the first mayoral election on 4 May 2000, this was the day when the GLA formally (and finally) came into being.
This book marks twenty years of the mayoralty, a notable landmark that provided a good opportunity to review progress to date, and to consider what might, and perhaps should, happen in the next phase of London’s devolved city-wide governance. But it has also been written, in large part, during a global pandemic. It is therefore also a time of great uncertainty, for the mayoralty, for London, and some would argue for cities themselves all around the world. We hope that this makes it even more interesting, but it has not necessarily made it easier to write.
We have endeavoured to include a wide range of voices in the writing of this book, blending independent expertise with first-person experience. We hope that this makes for a diverse, interesting and nuanced final product. We also made extensive efforts to engage with all three of the individuals to have held the office of Mayor of London to date. While former mayor (and current Prime Minister) Johnson was understandably unavailable, we have endeavoured to engage widely with members of his former mayoral team, and ensure that their views are also represented within the book.xx
This book has been written by a number of contributors and thus benefits from a number of perspectives and styles. Inevitably, individual writers have had to consider the same policies and events, albeit from different angles. As a result, there will be some repetition of elements of the history of London’s mayor at twenty. Thus, for example, the analyses of housing and planning since 2000 each consider policies and developments which, rightly, affect the two related spheres of city government. Similarly, the way in which the GLA was created in the years from 1997 to 2000 (and the purposes that the new institution was intended to serve) overlaps to some extent with the way that the three mayors have operated the machinery of government. The editors decided it would be better to leave these varying perspectives in rather than to adapt them to remove all instances where the same event or policy is analysed from different points of view. We have also asked external authors to analyse their particular mayoral policy areas from the creation of the mayoralty up to the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, which while potentially transformative for London is also an ongoing and rapidly changing situation. Some early thoughts on the longer-term impact of the pandemic are offered in the book’s conclusion.
PART ONE
DESIGN
2
1
THE ROAD TO REFORM
TONY TRAVERS
Over the last two centuries the governance of London has been constantly evolving. Public health epidemics when the city was governed by mid-nineteenth-century parishes generated the impetus to create the Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW). Concerns about the lack of accountability of the MBW paved the way for the London County Council (LCC). The LCC was superseded by the Greater London Council (GLC) following years of campaigning about the lack of coherence in the government of the capital’s metropolitan sprawl. The GLC was abolished by a government which felt that the council was inefficient and ineffective. Finally, the Greater London Authority (GLA) was created to re-establish city-wide government and also to introduce a new kind of leadership.1
The origins of the 2000 reform of London government can be found in the abolition of the GLC in 1986. Margaret Thatcher’s radical centre-right administration abolished the GLC and six other metropolitan counties to ‘streamline’ city government. In reality, the abolition of the GLC was an overwhelmingly political reaction to the activities of Ken Livingstone’s radical centre-left leadership at County Hall.2 The GLC had only existed since 1965 and the metropolitan counties, governing six other big English cities, since 1974. As the millennium approached, a very British unwillingness to tinker with the structures of sub-national government had left London and other major cities with no city-wide authorities since 1986 apart from a series of clunky joint committees.4
GLC ABOLITION AND THE LONDON OF 1986
In London, abolition initially triggered a sense of gloom about the capital’s future. Not only had the GLC gone, but the thirty-two boroughs and the City of London were separated into two distinct groups, each with its own representative organisation. Thus, from 1 April 1986, not only was there no London-wide government but (for the first time since soon after the Metropolitan Boroughs Standing Joint Committee was set up in 1912) the boroughs were segregated.
Moreover, by the mid-1980s, London’s population had dropped to 6.6 million from a pre-war high of 8.6 million.3 Despite housing and commercial office building in the 1950s and 1960s, many parts of inner London were seriously deprived and showed signs indicating that this deterioration would continue. London’s docks had declined dramatically by the 1970s, as had many other traditional industries. As if to emphasise the enfeebled state of the city’s government, Mrs Thatcher had imposed the pro-market London Docklands Development Corporation on a number of riparian boroughs. In 1984, London Transport, which had been GLC’s responsibility since 1970, was taken away from it and turned into a nationalised industry with a government-appointed board, becoming known as London Regional Transport.4
As it turned out, 1986 was a nadir for London both in terms of the fragmented nature of its government but also the city’s resident population. Indeed, the resurgence of the capital can be dated from around this time. A third of a century on, the abolition of the GLC can be seen as an incidental, if highly political, change which had the effect of paving the way for a more modern and effective form of city government.
London’s resurgence, which occurred from the late 1980s onwards, has created a contemporary ‘global’ city on a par with New York, Paris, Toronto, Hong Kong and Singapore. The vacuum created by the abolition of the GLC triggered a debate about London which, by the late 1990s, delivered a form of government for the city that better suited 5the globalised political culture of the 2000s than the GLC’s cumbersome leadership and huge bureaucracy. Mrs Thatcher may in the end have been right, albeit for constitutionally questionable reasons.
AFTER ABOLITION: CURIOUS CONTINUITY
In the immediate aftermath of GLC abolition, not much changed. County Hall, the council’s gigantic headquarters on the South Bank, continued to run most of the services that the GLC had responsibility for at the point of its demise. The Inner London Education Authority (ILEA), which had been a special committee of the GLC, became a directly elected authority in its own right. Almost everything else the GLC controlled became the responsibility of the London Residuary Body (LRB), a government-appointed body set up to handle the winding-down of GLC services. The London Fire Brigade became the responsibility of a joint committee of the boroughs. Statistics and research were handed to another borough committee, as were grants to voluntary organisations. Thus, in the late spring and summer of 1986 the officers of the GLC continued to operate from the long corridors of County Hall, albeit answering to different political masters.5
With the benefit of hindsight, it is remarkable how little changed after the GLC was gone. The reason for this was that Thatcher’s government, though it liked to be seen as radical, was cautious about upsetting those who benefited from the council’s services. Any failures in, for example, housing, the fire service, education or the funding of voluntary organisations, would have been attributed to the political decision to get rid of the GLC. Every aspect of the former authority’s key provision was carefully protected by the LRB, ILEA and a number of joint committees which were created to ensure continuity.6
The institutional evolution of London’s government has been considered extensively in earlier studies.7 The array of quangos and joint committees spawned by abolition effectively sustained city-wide 6government. Some Whitehall departments adapted by creating London divisions to deal with planning, waste disposal and transport. Between 1986 and its own demise in 1996, the LRB (which also handled the disposal of assets and responsibilities following the abolition of the ILEA in 1990) disposed of all GLC land and buildings, while negotiating the placement of a number of responsibilities with bodies such as individual boroughs and, particularly, the apparently immortal City of London Corporation.8
Looking back from the period during which the GLA was created, between 1997 and 2000, the decisions taken between 1985 and the early 1990s to ensure the continuity of GLC services was of significant importance. It was as if most of the GLC’s valuable assets had been carefully packed away until a new owner came along to return them to their rightful place under the control of an elected and accountable institution.
When the political battle surrounding GLC abolition ended, there was a brief lull in the debate about the capital’s government, and a general sense of acceptance that what had happened had happened. During this time, Labour councils attempted, with only limited success, to protect some of the initiatives and funding streams favoured by Ken Livingstone’s administration during the council’s final five years. This was largely done through the Association of London Authorities (ALA), which represented all the Labour boroughs, and which had John McDonnell as its chief executive (long before he became shadow Chancellor under Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership). All the Conservative, SDP–Liberal Alliance, and ‘no overall control’ councils, plus the City of London, remained within the London Boroughs Association (LBA) which had existed since the boroughs had been created in 1965. Barking and Dagenham, eccentrically, was a member of both.9
The Conservatives were returned with a large majority in the 1987 general election, suggesting no lasting damage to their reputation as the result of the abolition of the GLC and the six metropolitan counties. Labour’s 1987 manifesto promised to ‘establish a new 7democratically elected strategic authority for London and consult widely about the most effective regional structure of government and administration in England and Wales’.10 The SDP–Liberal Alliance manifesto also committed the party to a new London-wide authority. Although it was barely a year since the GLC’s demise, opposition politicians were already, if somewhat mechanistically, arguing that the void left by abolition had to be filled.
A NEW NORMAL: TENTATIVE EVOLUTION OF LONDON’S GOVERNANCE
Elsewhere, one of the post-GLC joint committees was establishing itself in offices in Romford. The London Planning Advisory Committee (LPAC) had been statutorily established to provide planning advice to Whitehall as central government had become responsible for the capital’s strategic planning after abolition. LPAC – a joint committee of the thirty-two boroughs and the City – cautiously set about creating a research base and delivering advice to central government. This task was challenging, given the politically charged nature of politics at the time and also because the relevant ministers, notably the environment secretary Nicholas Ridley, were unconvinced by the concept of ‘strategic planning’.11
LPAC’s work was to prove to be a key building block in the intellectual evolution which occurred in relation to London from the late 1980s up to 1997. By developing a consensus about the capital’s development and self-image that all the boroughs and the City signed up to, LPAC demonstrated that there were benefits to research-led planning. The LPAC-commissioned London: World City Moving into the 21st Century report, published in 1991, provided a popular, outward-looking analysis of how planning could shape London and expand its economy.12 The report was published just as it became apparent that London’s population was beginning to rise again and that the 1986 ‘Big 8Bang’ reforms to financial services had created a dynamic and globally focused sector where London was a world-leader.
Separately, the two London borough representative organisations began to work together more cooperatively. As wounds healed after the struggle over the abolition of the GLC, the LBA and the ALA – led, respectively, by Sir Peter Bowness (leader of Croydon Council) and Margaret Hodge (leader of Islington Council), both of whom went on to important parliamentary careers – increasingly found common cause, for example in negotiations with central government over financial settlements. Business organisations were also becoming more active. The Confederation of British Industry’s London region and the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry produced policy on a range of issues, but in the interregnum after 1986 both organisations became more concerned with issues such as London’s international representation and marketing.13
Indeed, the business sector made a significant move in 1992 by creating London First and its marketing arm, London First Centre (LFC), which were to become key players in the emerging consensus about the need for a new and reconstituted London-wide government.14 London First was formed by a number of London-based international business leaders, notably Allen Sheppard (chief executive of Grand Metropolitan) and Colin Marshall (chair of British Airways). The proposal was that London First would act as a research-based promotional institution which would work with the boroughs, central government and other agencies to ensure that London’s business voice was heard both nationally and internationally.
By the early 1990s, and particularly in the wake of the publication of LPAC’s London: World City, dozens of reports were published by organisations such as London First, London Regional Transport (LRT), the London Research Centre, the King’s Fund, the City of London, the boroughs’ associations, academics and voluntary organisations. The vacuum created by a city as large as London having no city-wide government or thought leadership encouraged other players to step 9in. Reports were published and conferences held as these bodies vied for prominence in the ‘London industry’ that flourished from 1990 onwards.
AFTER 1990: MODERATION RETURNS
Another key reason for the growth in this kind of activity was the change in national and local politics. Margaret Thatcher had been dethroned in November 1990, to be replaced as Prime Minister by the more emollient John Major. Major had, coincidentally, been a well-regarded housing chair in Lambeth during the period the Conservatives were in control from 1968–71.15 Labour’s under-par performance (after eleven years in opposition and with the poll tax causing the government major problems) in the borough elections in May 1990 had, separately, convinced a number of the party’s London politicians that the time had come to move away from the left’s more radical policies in councils such as Lambeth, Southwark and Brent and instead to concentrate on the delivery of decent local services.16 Thus, from the end of 1990 onwards the stage was set for a more rational and considered approach to politics in the capital.
The government created the post of transport minister for London, in part to implement investment policies outlined in the Central London Rail Study, which had been published in 1989.17 The publication of the study was another important stage in the recovery of London following the decline of the 1970s and 1980s. The report suggested the creation of new rail lines for the capital and focused a debate on the need to modernise the existing Tube and commuter rail services in the capital. Steven Norris was appointed as London’s minister for transport by Major to oversee the building of the Jubilee Line extension and to drive forward other improvements such as the Heathrow Express. The City of London was active at this time lobbying for the proposed east–west Crossrail to be built. Separately and competitively, Olympia & York, the 10developers of Canary Wharf in Docklands, were also lobbying for both the Jubilee Line extension and Crossrail.18
In 1993, environment secretary John Gummer began to style himself as ‘minister for London’, and took particular interest in projects such as the pedestrianisation of Trafalgar Square and the strategic planning of the Thames. One of the less successful outcomes of the abolition of the GLC had been the difficulty of ensuring the central boroughs aligned their policies on matters such as development along the river and, more prosaically, parking charges in the West End.
With abolition-era politics now well in the past, the Major government concluded that Whitehall needed better government mechanisms to deal with London. Although both the Department of the Environment and the Department of Transport had their own, separate, regional offices for the capital it was decided to create a ‘Government Office for London’ and, indeed, for other regions of England. Crucially, the Government Office for London (GOL) would be headed by a civil service deputy secretary, a rank higher than in other regions. From 1994 onwards, GOL became an influential conduit of policy between central government and the capital’s proliferating governance institutions such as the boroughs, business organisations, NGOs and London Regional Transport.19
The roles of Norris, Gummer and the GOL, backed up by demands for infrastructure investment coming from organisations such as the City of London and London First, collectively implied that the post-abolition governance arrangements needed better coordination and leadership. By the mid-1990s, London’s population was rising each year and a new service-based economy was replacing more traditional industries lost between the 1950s and 1980s. In Docklands, the Isle of Dogs was emerging as a glitzy cluster of towers, a monument to Americana (or more accurately, given Olympia & York’s origins, Canadiana).20 A broad consensus about London was emerging: the city had begun to self-style itself as an open, international, finance-rich, tolerant, ‘world’ city. The publication of a London Pride Prospectus in 111995 – which was signed by a long list of government, borough, business and voluntary organisation leaders – can be seen as marking the apogee of the post-1986 transition from a grey city of politicised decline to one fit for the films of Richard Curtis.
NEW GOVERNMENT AND A MAYOR FOR LONDON?
In 1994, Tony Blair had become leader of the Labour Party following the death of John Smith. Smith had been a careful moderniser of a party which had by this time been out of office for fifteen years. From the start, Blair lifted Labour in the polls and appeared to be on course for a victory at the next general election. Much has been written about his apparent non-ideological approach and his government sought to ensure that there was no risk that a number of Labour councils would slip back into extremism or inefficiency.21 As a consequence, it appears that he was an easy convert to the possibility that a new, elected, London-wide government might be led not by the leader of its majority party but by a directly elected mayor.
In April 1996, Labour published ‘A Voice for London’, a consultation document which outlined a new Greater London Authority, with the tentative proposal for an elected mayor for the city. At a mass public meeting entitled ‘London in the 21st Century’, held at Central Hall, Westminster, organised by the Architectural Foundation and the Evening Standard in May 1996, Blair endorsed the principle of an elected mayor.22 By this time, it was widely assumed that Labour would win the 1997 general election and that the Conservatives would be out of office for the first time in almost two decades. Labour was also committed to devolution for Scotland and Wales, while the Liberal Democrats strongly supported the restoration of city-wide government, if not a mayor, in London. A sense that a Labour victory would change Britain’s constitutional arrangements meant that any London government reform was seen at this time as being part of a wider modernisation of government 12rather than an attempt to ‘recreate the GLC’. No one close to power within Blair’s Labour leadership wanted to return to the style of government which had ended at County Hall only a decade previously.23
The fact that the Conservatives had been in power for so long was important in understanding the steps towards reconstituting London-wide government. Many commentators, including senior Conservative figures, had expected to lose the 1992 general election. They won it, although the period from 1992 to 1997 badly damaged the party’s reputation for economic and political competence.24 By the time they lost office in 1997 to a moderate and attractive Labour leader, the Conservatives were worn out. Their political power and influence had reached a nadir. This factor gave Blair’s ‘New Labour’ government (which had a majority of 179) the capacity to drive through reform with little hindrance from the Tories, who had suffered their worst election result since 1906. Given the radical nature of the proposed London government reforms, which meant not just restoring a system that the Conservatives had abolished eleven years before, but also adding an American-style elected mayor, the enfeebled nature of the new opposition was an important factor.
WAS A MAYOR INEVITABLE?
The narrative summarised above suggests a logical and inevitable series of steps from the abolition of the GLC on 31 March 1986 to the election of the new GLA members on 4 May 2000. But, of course, it was not like that at all. History often looks neat when it is chronologically laid out from year to year but feels chaotic and random as it is happening. In the immediate period after the demise of the GLC there was little expectation that a replacement would be put in place for many years. Senior Conservatives, particularly in boroughs such as Bromley and Westminster (who had been instrumental in lobbying for abolition) were adamant that London had no need for a new 13metropolitan authority. The London Boroughs Association, representing all the capital’s Conservative authorities, were willing to take part in the leadership of joint committees and other replacement bodies, but showed no interest in discussing further reform.25
Even national Labour politicians were circumspect. The reputational damage to the party that had resulted from extremism within a minority of Labour councils and the GLC, whether real or imagined, made party leader Neil Kinnock wary of accidentally re-empowering the left. The party was committed to the restoration of London’s city-wide government in both its 1987 and 1992 manifestos, but Kinnock and the mainstream elements of the party were fearful of anything that looked like a return to Ken Livingstone’s GLC.26
What moved the debate on was the coincidence of London’s return to population growth, a decisive shift in the make-up of the city’s economy, the emergence of a new ‘global city’ narrative, greater moderation of politics at the national and local government levels and, inevitably, time. By the mid-1990s London Labour councils were increasingly pragmatic and were embracing pro-growth policies via large developer-led schemes. The schism between Labour boroughs and those run by Conservatives or Liberal Democrats was finally removed by the creation of a single Association of London Government (ALG) in 1995 and also by the success of the London Pride Partnership, which also embraced the private sector. The ALG was subsequently re-named London Councils, today’s moderate, efficient, representative body.
As the Conservatives’ power corroded after 1992, Labour’s grew in strength. A perception that Labour would almost certainly win the next general election meant that its policies were treated with great seriousness. Senior shadow Cabinet members went on a ‘prawn cocktail circuit’ to meet leading figures in the City of London.27 Any threat to abolish the ancient City Corporation disappeared as the New Labour leadership sought to reassure the financial markets and businesses more generally. It is almost certain that a John Smith-led Labour 14Party would have won the 1997 general election, though possibly not with the vast majority won by Tony Blair. If Smith had not died, it seems likely that any new London-wide government would have been a more traditional authority with a leader drawn from its majority party. Blair, as leader, facilitated the arrival of the concept of ‘mayor’ in Britain.
The Conservatives continued to oppose the restoration of metropolitan government in their 1997 manifesto. The main manifesto did not specifically refer to the issue but it did commit the party to privatise London Underground.28 A separate London manifesto reiterated the view that a new city-wide authority was unnecessary. Once the election had been lost and the party went into opposition, it became necessary to respond to the new Labour government’s paper offering a mayor and assembly for the capital. Given the new government’s mandate, the Tories accepted the new authority (including the idea of a mayor) though they did unsuccessfully attempt to replace the proposed assembly with a committee of borough leaders.29
Thereafter, the Conservatives had to come to terms with the need to field candidates for mayor and for the assembly. Former transport minister Steven Norris was instrumental in convincing his colleagues that they would appear foolish if they did not now enter into the fray to win both the mayor and assembly positions. Gradually, the Tories came to accept that the abolition of the GLC was part of history and that they now needed to live in a new political world.
THE PARADOX OF GLC ABOLITION
The irony is that the Conservative decision to abolish the GLC created a political space within which it proved possible for Labour to build a government institution rather more powerful, more constitutionally resilient and arguably more appropriate for the political conditions of the 2000s. Instead of a 92-member council with a huge bureaucracy 15and a track record of being uncertain about its own role, the Blair government devised a small administration with clear responsibilities, led by a mayor.
The Mayor of London has become one of the most powerful and visible offices in British politics, given legitimacy by its vast electoral mandate. The GLA was to be given responsibility for transport, fire and emergencies, spatial planning and, for the first time ever for any London authority, aspects of policing. Latterly, strategic housing policy was also added to the mayor’s duties.30
Creating the new mayor’s office machinery at Romney House and City Hall is considered in the following chapter. But there can be little doubt that the recent history of the GLC played a powerful role in shaping what came next for the governance of London. A fear of political extremism, a concern not to recreate an over-large bureaucracy, the risk of a continuing cycle of reform and the need to avoid parochialism (an issue that has affected the capital for over two centuries) all influenced the thinking of the ministers and civil servants who created the GLA.
No London government system has proved permanent, and definitive. In one of the world’s most centralised democracies the UK Parliament, often with misgivings, from time to time feels the need to try another institutional settlement for the ominously large city in which it is located. The Metropolitan Board of Works survived thirty-three years, the LCC seventy-six, the GLC twenty-one, an ‘interregnum’ fourteen and the GLA (to date) has managed twenty. During the lives of these city-wide institutions London grew to become the largest city in the world, then reduced sharply in population end economic power before resurgence took it to a population of 9 million in 2020. The future today looks more complex than at any point since 1945. This challenge will be considered in the final chapter of the book.16
NOTES
1 Tony Travers, The Politics of London: Governing an Ungovernable City (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 21–42.
2 Ben Pimlott and Nirmala Rao, Governing London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 31–43.
3 ‘Population Growth in London, 1939–2015’, Greater London Authority, January 2015, https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/population-change-1939-2015 (accessed September 2020).
4 Ibid., p. 104.
5 Michael Hebbert and Ann Dickins Edge, Dismantlers: The London Residuary Body (London: Suntory-Toyota International Centre for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE, 1994), pp. 31–2.
6 Michael Hebbert and Tony Travers (eds), The London Government Handbook (London: Cassell, 1988), pp. 3–4.
7 See, for example: David Owen, The Government of Victorian London 1855–1889: The Metropolitan Board of Works, the Vestries and the City Corporation (London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982); Ken Young and Patricia L. Garside, Metropolitan London: Politics and Urban Change 1837–1981 (London: Edward Arnold, 1982); and John Davis, Reforming London: The London Government Problem, 1855–1900 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).
8 Michael Hebbert and Ann Dickins Edge, Dismantlers: The London Residuary Body.
9 Michael Hebbert and Tony Travers (eds), The London Government Handbook, pp. 136–9.
10 ‘1987 Labour Party Manifesto: Britain will win with Labour’, Labour Party, 1987, http://www.labour-party.org.uk/manifestos/1987/1987-labour-manifesto.shtml (accessed August 2020).
11 Michael Hebbert and Tony Travers (eds), The London Government Handbook, pp. 79–81.
12 Tony Travers, The Politics of London: Governing an Ungovernable City, p. 34.
13 John Hall, ‘The Role of Business in London Local and Regional Government: How it Became Recognised as a Significant Player’, Local Government Studies (June 2006), vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 311–40.
14 Tony Travers, The Politics of London: Governing an Ungovernable City, p. 33.
15 Andrew Hosken, Ken: The Ups and Downs of Ken Livingstone (London: Arcadia, 2008), p. 28.
16 See: ‘London Borough Council Elections 3 May 2018’, Greater London Authority, 2018, borough results tables, p. xi.
17 ‘Central London Rail Study’, Department of Transport, January 1989, https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/DoT_CentralLondonRailStudy1989.pdf (accessed August 2020).
18 Christian Wolmar, The Subterranean Railway: How the London Underground was Built and How it Changed the City Forever, (London: Atlantic Books, 2004), p. 308.
19 Scott L. Greer and Mark Sandford, ‘The GLA and Whitehall’, Local Government Studies (June 2006), vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 239–53, p. 244.338
20 Tony Travers, London’s Boroughs at 50 (London: Biteback Publishing, 2015), p. 219.
21 See: ‘Local Government’ by Tony Travers, in Anthony Seldon (ed.), The Blair Effect (London: Little, Brown, 2001), p. 123.
22 ‘London in the 21st Century: London’s Future’, Architecture Foundation, 17 April 1996, https://www.architecturefoundation.org.uk/programme/1996/london-in-the-21st-century/preparing-for-the-21st-century-londons-future (accessed September 2020).
23 Ben Pimlott and Nirmala Rao, Governing London, pp. 62–78.
24 Philip Johnston, ‘Black Wednesday: The day that Britain went over the edge’, Daily Telegraph, 10 September 2012.
25 Tony Travers, George Jones, Michael Hebbert and June Burnham, The Government of London, (York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 1991), p. 66.
26 Tony Travers, The Politics of London: Governing an Ungovernable City, pp. 43–5.
27 Richard Wachman, ‘Is now the time for another prawn cocktail offensive?’, The Guardian, 10 March 2002.
28 ‘1997 Conservative Party General Election Manifesto: You can only be sure with the Conservatives’, Conservative Party, 1997 http://www.conservativemanifesto.com/1997/1997-conservative-manifesto.shtml (accessed August 2020).
29 The Conservative Party’s 1999 proposals for the assembly can be found in Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 19 January 1999, vol. 323, cc. 728–84.
30 Mark Sandford, ‘The Greater London Authority’, 05817, House of Commons Library, 7 June 2018, pp. 16–17.
2
CREATING THE GLA
RICHARD BROWN
‘A new dawn has broken, has it not?’
The New Labour government that was elected on 1 May 1997 was an administration in a hurry. It was determined to make its mark and to usher in the ‘new era of politics’ that Tony Blair promised when he spoke to the victory party outside the Royal Festival Hall, in the dawning light of the morning after the country went to the polls.
The government was quick to get to work, and a flurry of announcements and legislation followed over the first 100 days. The Bank of England was granted independence, welfare to work plans were announced, a new Department for International Development was created, and the Department for National Heritage relaunched as the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The government banned landmine exports, signed up to the EU’s ‘Social Chapter’ (a charter of employment rights), announced plans to incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law and introduced bills for Scottish and Welsh devolution.1
On 29 July, just ninety days after the general election, the government issued its green paper, ‘New Leadership for London’, which proposed an elected mayor and assembly for the capital.2 The mayor and assembly, who would together form a ‘Greater London Authority’, would be a new type of strategic organisation, the paper argued. It would be streamlined but high profile, working through consensus, influence and voice as well as through direct powers.18
This chapter looks at how those proposals became a reality but also at their origins, at their genesis as well as their journey from policy to reality. The account is not wholly objective; I worked in the transition team responsible for setting up the new arrangements from summer 1999, but I have sought to distinguish researched narrative from passages relying on my own memories or perceptions.
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The 1986 abolition of the GLC had left a void in its place. However much Margaret Thatcher’s government resented the municipal socialism of the GLC, and the impertinent challenge that was posed by County Hall thumbing its nose at Westminster from across the river, its abolition left London with a diminished voice, atomised accountability and deteriorating infrastructure. London, almost uniquely among global capital cities, had no unified civic government.
Authority was dispersed between the thirty-two London boroughs, the venerable City of London, and numerous joint committees, agencies, quangos and government departments. The capital’s transport and police services – public services employing thousands of people – lacked any local accountability. Len Duvall, leader of the London Borough of Greenwich from 1992 to 2000 and a London Assembly member since then, recalls annual consultation meetings with the Met Police:
Interactions with the Met Police were a yearly meeting between the boroughs and the Receiver of the Metropolitan Police, usually an old borough treasurer, who’d tell you how much money they would ask for [from council tax], and you’d have biscuits and it would be a nice chat. Until one of the meetings, when Toby [Harris, then leader of Haringey] and I started asking questions about the budget. This clearly wasn’t the done thing; you were meant to be nodding it through. And with London Transport there was even 19less engagement. So it was a messy situation and things did need to change.3
Alongside the democratic deficit, concern was rising about London’s decaying infrastructure. Opening a 1991 debate in Parliament, Dagenham MP and shadow environment secretary Bryan Gould said: ‘Our great capital, once the world’s greatest city, which has so much going for it and so great a heritage upon which to draw, is gradually grinding to a halt,’ adding that London’s attempt to bid for the 1992 Olympics ‘could not be taken seriously as long as there was no one to speak for London’.4
Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil sounded an apocalyptic note in an open letter to the government:
No one governs London … what’s to be done? Roads are seizing up. For those living in the city, crime, vandalism and litter are at their worse … In quiet residential streets, there seems to be virtually no control over what people can do to ruin their houses and the appearance of whole streets … There is a strong feeling that nobody is in control, that London, once one of the world’s best-planned and best-run cities, has run out of control.5
As these problems became more widely debated, ideas for renewed civic leadership began to circulate. Looking back to how things were under the GLC was treated as a taboo, avoided for fear of resurrecting old enmities, but there was a widespread acknowledgement that something or someone needed to take control, to give London a voice, a sense of direction and purpose.
The 1991 London: World City report argued that London needed a ‘strategic planning and transportation body’ to help it keep up with its global competitors. Sociologist Ralph Dahrendorf (who gave a television lecture entitled ‘Does London need to be governed?’ in 1990), and Labour MP and former GLC member Tony Banks, argued 20for a new mayoral model of government, but others were shy of institutional solutions. For example, in The Crisis of London, Michael Hebbert argued for a polycentric government by the boroughs, with a reformed Corporation of London taking on a coordinating function, while others in the same volume advocated for private sector-led growth coalitions and a greater role for community organisations.
The problem was clear, even if the solutions were not. By the time of the 1992 general election, both of the main parties were proposing reforms to London’s government. Labour argued that London – ‘the only European capital without the advantage of its own elected authority’ – needed a new ‘Greater London Authority’.6 The previous year, Bryan Gould had set out more detail:
A streamlined, professional, proactive, enabling authority that will take in hand the strategic planning of land use and economic development, the planning of our transport needs and the provision of our fire, police and emergency services. That authority will encourage our cultural life and will adopt an overall strategy to protect our environment.7
The Conservative Party manifesto rejected ‘Labour’s plan to recreate a bureaucratic and wasteful GLC’. Instead it set out detailed plans for investment in and reform of London’s transport system – partly in response to the King’s Cross Fire of 1987 – and committed to a private sector-led ‘London 2000’ initiative to promote the capital, alongside a new cabinet committee, and a dedicated minister for transport in London.8 After the Conservatives’ unexpected victory, this post was occupied by Epping Forest MP Steve Norris, who was immediately thrown into rescuing the Jubilee Line extension project following the collapse of Canary Wharf developers Olympia & York.
Five years later, the 1997 Conservative manifesto was silent on London’s government, promising only to privatise London Underground. But Labour’s manifesto laid out the essence of its plans for the capital: 21
London is the only Western capital without an elected city government. Following a referendum to confirm popular demand, there will be a new deal for London, with a strategic authority and a mayor, each directly elected. Both will speak up for the needs of the city and plan its future. They will not duplicate the work of the boroughs, but take responsibility for London-wide issues – economic regeneration, planning, policing, transport and environmental protection. London-wide responsibility for its own government is urgently required. We will make it happen.9
The adoption of the mayoral model had been hard fought. Following the death of John Smith in 1994, Tony Blair’s leadership marked a change in direction with the abandonment of the Labour Party’s totemic commitment to ‘common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange’ under Clause IV of the party’s constitution. Blair’s roots were not in the trade unions or local government, the traditional proving grounds of Labour politicians, and he came to power believing that Labour could be its own worst enemy. While a new generation of pragmatic council leaders had come to the fore in the 1990s, after the rise of Militant and the rows over rate-capping in the 1980s, Blair continued to regard local government leaders with suspicion.
Simon Jenkins, former editor of the Evening Standard and The Times, and persistent advocate for devolution, recalls going to talk to the new Labour leader in 1995:
I had chaired a commission on local democracy, and the one thing that came up repeatedly was mayoralty as a dominant force – in France, in the US, in Germany. I had worked for John Lindsay [New York Mayor from 1966–73], and he was very impressive, far ahead of anything we had in England. I wanted to know why London couldn’t have one of these people.
But when I met with Blair he was quite hostile to the idea. He had brought about what I regard as his finest achievement 22– revolutionising the Labour Party. But he was worried about local parties and local party leaders, and Labour-led councils, who didn’t like him, and he didn’t like them.
I remember saying that the whole point about local mayors is that in a sense they supplant party politics in local government. He said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Well anyone can stand for mayor. You normally stand with a party’s support, but anyone can stand, including independents. And either way because it’s a direct election, if you decide to stand as mayor, you’re going to have to be reasonably plausible and charismatic in your own right.’ And Blair almost leapt out of his chair; he bought it lock stock and barrel. ‘But,’ he said, ‘I don’t think Frank [Dobson, Holborn and St Pancras MP, and then shadow secretary of state for the environment] is going to approve of this.’ And I said, ‘Well you need to get it in the manifesto, otherwise it will just die a death.’ And he undertook to put it in the manifesto there and then.10
Tony Blair began talking about the potential for mayors in London and other cities. His arm was strengthened in 1996, when Ian Hargreaves, former Financial Times deputy editor, published his proposals for a ‘governor’ for the capital.11 Study visits to US cities and the rise of successful European mayors like Joan Clos in Barcelona and Francesco Rutelli in Rome helped to strengthen the case. Nick Raynsford, Greenwich MP and then shadow minister for housing and construction, describes walking across Trafalgar Square with the mayor of New Orleans: ‘Suddenly he was mobbed by some people from the city who were in London on holiday. I remember saying at the time that I can’t imagine any local government leader in the UK being recognised like that, let alone mobbed.’12
While Labour’s policy document, ‘A Voice for London’, was more tentative in making the case for a mayor rather than a traditional ‘leader of the council’ model for London’s new strategic authority, Tony Blair began to push the idea more assiduously throughout 1996. 23At the ‘London in the 21st Century’ debate hosted by the Architecture Foundation and Evening Standard, he made the case for strong civic leadership to ‘provide vision and direction for London’s future, to drive the development of the city, to pull together the partnerships to make things happen … for a vision, there does need to be a voice’.13
The contrast between tentative policy papers and bolder public pronouncements reflected the unease that some in the Labour Party felt over the idea of a directly elected mayor. As Blair surmised, Frank Dobson didn’t like it, telling Simon Jenkins that it would happen ‘over my dead body’, and some borough politicians and officials shared this suspicion, worrying that a mayoralty would inevitably take influence if not power away from elected borough leaders. The tensions within the party can be seen in the care the manifesto took to emphasise that the new authority would not duplicate the work of the boroughs, and the commitment to a referendum to test public opinion on the matter.
This uneasy compromise limited the amount of preparatory work that could be done as the 1997 election approached. Nick Raynsford recalls briefing meetings with civil servants:
I had meetings with [Department of the Environment permanent secretary] Andrew Turnbull in the run up to the election, official meetings where the opposition discuss their policies. We talked about housing and construction, and for both of those I produced a little paper. When we reached the third one, London government, he asked where the paper was, and I told him I couldn’t produce it because of the Blair–Dobson differences. But, I said, in my view there was an absolute commitment to restore democratic government, and that if the party leader has his way it will be a mayoral system, but that he would have to put together a team of people who could develop the policy, because we don’t have a rubric.14
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24
