The London Boroughs

The governance of London hath long been a matter of singular complexity, and in our present age it hath grown into something approaching absurdity. Three-and-thirty boroughs — many too small to command the resources, the talent, or the standing and authority that modern government requireth — attend upon a city of nine millions, each jealous of its own prerogatives, each duplicating the offices and functions of its neighbour. A recent report hath proposed the consolidation of these boroughs into ten or twelve great authorities, following the principles now applied elsewhere in England through the programme of Local Government Reorganisation. The intent is sound; the method less so.

For to reduce London to a mere ten authorities is to create units of such vast population — approaching a million souls apiece — that they should be ungovernable from any council chamber, and unrecognisable to any citizen as his own place. The purpose of reorganisation is not merely to achieve economy of scale, but to restore to local government a measure of coherence, identity, and accountability. These proposals therefore set down a middle course: the consolidation of London's boroughs into eighteen authorities, each of a size more nearly answerable to the new unitary councils being established across the rest of England.

But the greater ambition of these proposals is this: that where the government's hand falleth upon the map, it should not erase the ancient lines but rather restore them. The Hundreds — Ossulstone, Brixton, Becontree, Blackheath, and the rest — are not antiquarian curiosities. They were the administrative geography of this land for the better part of a thousand years, from the Domesday survey until the Victorian reformers swept them aside in favour of their own rational inventions. The boundaries of the Hundreds reflect real communities, real watersheds, real patterns of settlement and commerce. They are, in short, a better map than most of what hath replaced them.

It is the conviction of your servant that we may move with the times and yet honour what came before us. The reorganisation of London's boroughs representeth precisely such an opportunity — to build authorities that are modern in their capacity, historic in their identity, and rooted in the genuine geography of the places they serve. The proposals for England beyond London's bounds are set forth in Item IV and Item V.