Liberal Justifications for Local Government in Britain: The Triumph of Expediency over Ethics

Ethics and Expedience

By an expediential justification is meant those arguments that value an activity or institution only to the extent that it serves the purposes of another institution or activity. In the context of local government, this is, for example, to justify the institution as a means to secure efficient delivery of services on behalf of central government. A direct ethical justification is, as used here, one which values an institution or activity because it fulfils a morally desirable purpose in itself regardless of its value to other organisations. An expediential justification may, nevertheless, have an ethical value. Given that stable liberal democracy is an ethically justified mode of government and its stability is greatly enhanced if there is a system of local government within the democratic system, there is an indirect ethical argument for local government. However, it follows that if an organisation's value is purely expediential, then it would be reasonable for the institutions which the organisation was set up to support to step in and change that organisation if it were not fulfilling that ethical purpose. If the role of local government is to create efficient service delivery for the nation as a whole or secure stability and legitimacy for the nation state, then it is legitimate for the government of the state to control and order the arrangements for local government to secure this aim. However, if there is a direct ethical justification for the existence of local government irrespective of the needs of the state, then the state has no ethical justification for interfering in the activities of local government as they apply to their ethical raison d'être but must respect its integrity and morally legitimate activities.

The Nineteenth-Century Legacy

The emergence of liberal radicalism had by 1832 placed Jeremy Bentham's utilitarian constitutional values at the forefront of debate on the restructuring of local governance in accord with more democratic principles. Although Bentham's fragmentary writings never develop a thorough justification for local government, his utilitarian logic of the greatest happiness of the greatest number led him to the conclusion that a parliament should, in the final analysis, override the interests of locality (Parekh, 1973, p. 210). A community was after all but ‘the sum of the interests of the members who compose it … it is vain to talk of the interest of the community without understanding the interest of the individual’ (Bentham, 1967, pp. 127–8). If a democratically elected legislature was the only organisation with the moral authority to determine the greatest happiness for the nation, then any local council that wished to act contrary to the legislature must be acting to defend the interests of a select few against the wishes of a majority. Bentham by 1823 envisaged local authorities composed of large regionally sized districts, areas and finally small parish-sized communities. Each tier would have powers delegated to it by parliament and act as an agency for central government on some issues. Local variations in policy were possible, as these could be in the interests of the greatest happiness for society as a whole, but the arrangement vested final authority on the governance of local issues within the national parliament (Parekh, 1973, pp. 224–7). Bentham's utilitarian framework for modern centralist democratic government had its zealous practical champions, not least of whom were Edwin Chadwick and Joseph Parkes. ² In practice for these utilitarians the value of local government was expedient for the better government of the nation as a whole.

Utilitarian liberals had, however, from the outset to battle against not only entrenched conservative Whig and Tory opposition to a change within the dual polity but also radical reformers with non-utilitarian values. A liberal framework for a less expediential justification for local government had been set within the United States through the federalist concerns of Madison and even more strongly by Jefferson, aimed at establishing a system that prevented domination of individual liberty by a central state (Syed, 1966). Their values favouring a balance of powers that included both federalism and what may now be described as subsidiarity were given further currency by Alexis de Tocqueville's enthusiasm for the capacity of direct democracy within New England townships to allow citizens to determine freely issues that affected predominantly their own, rather than any wider community (Tocqueville, 1994, pp. 66–7). Where a community's interest infringed upon its neighbours higher levels of representative government would resolve the common interests of the lower tier of communities.

The view that individual freedom from arbitrary state control was best secured by strong and independent community government was also strongly embedded in debate concerning the evolving British Constitution in the mid-nineteenth century. The most influential and theoretically systematic writer favouring this direction was the now much-neglected Joshua Toulmin Smith. ³ Smith's principal thoughts on local government ⁴ have none of the intellectual rigour of Mill, but should not be dismissed as simply illogical romanticism. Smith, like Mill, claimed that the liberty of the individual was central to moral and political analysis, arguing in his major work, Local Self-Government:

Smith not only argues that a group should be free to undertake actions that solely affect members of that group but also that members of a community are better able to discern what is in their interest than any external organisation.

Smith's ideas on liberty do not differ that substantially from those of Mill, who similarly argues in On Liberty that, inasmuch as individuals should be free to pursue any self-regarding action, so also should a community determine those decisions that affected the community itself and did not harm others external to it:

Mill's assertion that communities ought to be free to regulate themselves in respect to actions regarding that group can be applied to any number of differing types of community including the nation itself. Mill's definition of what constitutes a nation does not provide a rationale that it has any superior capacity to govern the self-regarding communities within it.

Such a definition can also be applied to a local government within a nation as a group of individuals who for certain purposes wish to cooperate and form a government that determines exclusively those decisions for themselves.

In the writings of both Smith and Mill it is, therefore, possible to establish an ethical argument that local government ought to be valued as it ensures that members of a community must be free to make decisions that affect that community, provided that they do not harm others outside that community. Such an argument can form the basis for a strong non-expediential direct moral justification for local government which gives a rationale for determining what administrative tasks and policy decisions ought to be taken by the state, which should be the exclusive remit of smaller communities and also how these communities should be layered and relate to one another.

The implications of a justification for local government based on the freedom of communities to make self-regarding decisions, as with many other morally founded arguments, requires extensive analysis in terms of its practical application. Issues arise as to what grouping of people should constitute a community for any particular purpose and which functions can be determined jointly by a community that will not seriously harm those outside that community. Liberty for a group must also be constrained by the need to respect other moral imperatives such as personal freedom and justice as fairness. These are extensive issues that must await further analysis and are not to be further developed in this article, which is primarily concerned to show how arguments for local government have become largely based on expedient rather than more direct ethical values.

Mill and Expediential Justification

Although Mill could have developed on the basis of his ideas in On Liberty a justification for local government with strong similarities to Smith, his reinterpretation of Bentham's position, especially within his ‘Essay on Representative Government’ (Mill, 1975b), set the agenda for future thoughts on the role and function of local government along a very different path. Following Bentham, Mill accepted that administrative decentralisation was essential for efficient government since parliament and national government could not be overloaded with the minutiae of local administration and their members would have insufficient knowledge of local circumstances to govern effectively on matters of local concern. ‘It is but a small portion of the public business of a country that can be well done, or safely attended to by the central authorities’ (Mill, 1975b, p. 361). It is argued by Warren Magnusson (1986, p. 2) that Mill's argument followed ‘the tendency to understand local government in economic terms and to make economic welfare the main criterion for assessing political arrangements’. This view is, however, too simplistic to encompass the complexities of later utilitarian thought, let alone that of New Liberals and Idealists or Fabians. The central justification for local government discretion in the British liberal tradition is not simply to secure economic efficiency but the problems of developing a society which could sustain and nurture a rational morally educated society. A stable liberal democracy could only reach perfection if participants had attained a high level of cultural and moral understanding. Like many intellectual Victorians, Mill differed from Smith in that he could not accept that local minds could be trusted to establish ethically principled policies. The central justification for local government in Britain is for Mill, as it is for most succeeding theorists, the higher goal of securing within a democracy a morally cultured society.

The value of democracy in itself is at root for Mill based on a practical concern to secure political stability and efficiency. Autocratic government is but rarely controlled by the wisest and most humanitarian despot (Mill, 1975b, p. 207). Stability and progress is also unlikely if citizens have no voice within the political process. ‘Let a person have nothing to do for his country, and he will not care for it’ (Mill, 1975b, p. 181). A central value for local government for Mill was, therefore, its capacity to enable a far greater number of citizens to participate in at least their more parochial resolution of conflicts given that few could be directly active in parliament. Political participation ensured stability as it gave citizens a belief that they were in some way helping to make government decisions, and had a further important role in educating, or as it might be interpreted, socialising, future generations of political activists to value the political system and respect its mode of operation. A further gain from local participation was that it served as a recruiting ground for the national political arena by educating and filtering out the most able politicians supporting the rules of the game.

In developing his justification for democracy Mill was being stalked by the Victorian fear that democracy might open the way for a ‘tyranny of the majority’. The process of representative elections to parliament would, it was hoped, stop the uneducated from attaining the highest positions in government but substantive local autonomy might unleash a tyranny of the uneducated masses over the cultured minority at the more parochial level. Any organisation based on a relatively small local community would not be as likely to harbour or select the most able legislators as the state as a whole.

Thus the implementation of matters of local importance needed to be delegated to the local authority on the basis of:

Why Mill's Expediential Views Prevailed

Mill was aware of the argument that communities ought to be free to determine issues regarding solely the community and had favourably reviewed de Tocqueville's Democracy in America on two separate occasions. ⁵ He explained his caution in developing the logic of his arguments on freedom into a strong defence of decentralisation as the consequence of the need to defend social change ‘such as the great Poor Law Reform of 1834, against an irrational clamour grounded on anti-centralization prejudice’ (Mill, 1924, p. 164).

The ‘irrational clamour’ derived from many sources, some of which were concerned with the preservation of self-interest from contractors who built fortunes around serving small local authorities effectively under their control. There were, however, bitter theoretical arguments concerning the developing constitution which Mill would not have been able to accept. The increasingly fashionable ideas of Spencer condemned all aspects of government as a means of furthering repressive self-interest. ⁶ There remained, especially among the rural poor, support for the small yeoman farmers' and labourers' view cherished by Cobbett. ⁷ However, the central concern for Mill was probably the activities of the Anti-Centralisation Union steered by Smith which was approaching the zenith of its activity at the time Mill was writing ‘Representative Government’. Smith and Mill seem to have moved like ships in the night that refused openly to acknowledge each other's presence. ⁸ Their ideas were modelled on very similar principles but derived from widely separate sources. While Mill's analysis is based on rigorous logic and resonates with a firm scientific and classical tone, Smith's writings display more of a Wagnerian Teutonic romanticism and an attachment to law derived from precedent and custom that was never likely to place him in the forefront of political thinkers. ⁹ The romantic notion held by Smith that the open parish vestry should form the basis for local government was never realistic, especially to advanced liberal thinkers of the late nineteenth century who saw the parish and its attendant poor law as a major barrier to the capacity of the poor to better their lot. Smith died in 1869 and much of the zeal behind the anti-centralisation movement died with him. Mill was, in contrast, moving with and shaping the tide of evolving political thought which was beginning to establish the interventionist New Liberal values that suggested that the state should be the guarantor of liberty to those without the resources to educate and better themselves.

Liberalism Post-Mill

Intellectual criticism of the individualist liberalism advanced by either Mill or Smith began to gain in popularity from the 1870s probably largely through Unitarian ideas on the value of charity and community. Exhortations on the value of community within the sermons of Nonconformist ministers George Dawson and Robert Dale in Birmingham had great influence on Joseph Chamberlain when mayor of Birmingham. ‘A great town exists’, argues Dawson,

For Dale the prosperous citizen should demonstrate Christian purpose for the good of the nation and the community in which they worked and lived. Building a thriving municipality so as to facilitate education, access to culture and sound environmental services was a Christian virtue to be admired (Hennock, 1973, pp. 61–79, pp. 154–69). These sentiments did not in practice differentiate the proper sphere of interest of the town as opposed to the nation and could be held by any politician concerned for wider communal and national, as opposed to laissez-faire, values.

The ideas of Dawson and Dale found more intellectually rigorous expression in the values of New Liberal thought on the interdependence of the individual and the state which began seriously to undermine the wholly anti-statist values of Spencer and erode some of Mill's concerns on liberty. T. H. Green's argument that the ethical goal for all individuals was self-development and that the state had a duty to provide the means to secure this imperative, should that be beyond the personal means of an individual, prefigured the welfare state and opened considerable potential for state and local government action. These values raised the potential for extensive local government involvement in social development. Green was, like all radical liberals, opposed to a system of local government that in rural areas sustained the primacy of the unelected magistrate over administrative as well as judicial matters (Green, 1997, p. 265) and, as a member of Oxford Borough Council, dedicated himself largely to ensuring better secondary education in the town and also to the popular campaigns against the demon drink (Green, 1997, p. 274). Despite his membership of a local authority, Green never developed a justification for local government in his writings and certain aspects of his view of rights and the state tend to militate against the idea of substantive local autonomy. If, as he argued, a right is only possible if it did not undermine what might be for the general good of all and was consummated in the will that underlay the state, it follows that, apart from a right to life and liberty, ¹⁰ the development of further rights cannot be fully sustained except by the agency of a state (Green, 1931, p. 48, p. 123, pp. 154–5). In such circumstances it may be argued, as did Hobhouse, that the discretion of local government must always be limited by the state.

Green's successors in forwarding New Liberalism, perhaps rather misleadingly according to Matt Carter (1999), are categorised into two camps, the more conservative Idealists who continued to preach the ideals of self-help and the more active proponents of state intervention such as Hobhouse and Ritchie. The leading exponent of Idealism in political theory, Bernard Bosanquet, furnished a substantive ethical argument for the development of local community government but also hedged his argument with reservations on practicalities. Bosanquet believed like Smith that a problem with central government was that those who established rules for communities at the centre were not part of that community and stood apart from its interests. Social support for the community must be undertaken by individuals who were themselves a part of that community. This view, although most strongly expressed in his earlier work (Morrow, 2000, pp. 312–6), remains within The Philosophical Theory of the State:

However, as with Mill, this idea is tempered by the widespread concern that small localities are unlikely to harbour the most sagacious political leaders:

While Bosanquet saw an ethical value in local government, L. T. Hobhouse, following Green's view that rights were dependent on the will that underlay the state, considered that any independent action of a community that clashed with the values of the state as expressed by the legislature must in some way be harmful. Hobhouse recognised that within any state separate communities may exist but these must be subject to regulation by the larger community.

For Hobhouse the status of central government as the community of communities implies that central government has the right to regulate the rules of the game in which local communities operate.

Rejection of de Tocqueville's and Smith's dual polity ideas was also compounded by the New Liberals' acceptance of Mill's view of higher pleasures outweighing lesser pleasures. Green and the more conservative British Idealists were nothing if not high minded concerning the importance of ensuring that society was controlled by highly educated citizens with morally enlightened pleasures and sensitivities. Green's emphasis on the importance of constructing society so that each individual had the capacity to perfect their potential in pursuit of the intellectual and moral high ground fitted well with Mill's conception of a democratic parliament peopled by the intellectual and moral elite. Hobhouse explicitly accepted that democratic government must be arranged so that those with greatest learning and hence susceptibility to the higher pleasures must rise to the summit of political decision making. In Democracy and Reaction he argues that it is:

From somewhat different perspectives in the development of New Liberalism both Hobhouse and Bosanquet accepted, therefore, the practical reservation to allowing substantive independence to local government as forwarded by Mill. Local opinion was not necessarily sufficiently well formed to govern well in practice. This view of local government was firmly embedded in the minds of the New Liberal politicians and administrators such as Churchill, Morant and Addison who were influencing Lloyd George to begin construction of the interventionist welfare state. Addison, as Minister of Health, drew the attention of Lloyd George to:

Social Democracy

The emergence of an influential stream of social democratic thought alongside New Liberal values did little in the long run to establish an ethical foundation for local government. Despite their differences with the Bosanquets concerning the poor law, ¹² Sidney and Beatrice Webb in the 1920s valued a measure of independence for local government on principles already suggested by Bosanquet concerning the greater interest of local people in their community. The Webbs observed, on what they termed ‘the principle of neighbourhood’:

Harold Laski, who acknowledged his debt to the Webbs in his thoughts on the value of local government, referred to a similar notion as the ‘genius of place’ (Laski, 1934, p. 412).

There remains, however, considerable ambiguity in the ideas of the Webbs in particular, and British social democrat intellectuals in general, in respect to subsidiarity. Social and economic equality, as a central goal for Fabians, was a value that did not sit easily with justifications for extensive local discretion. The Webbs (1975) and George Bernard Shaw (1908) were much influenced by the socialist possibilities of larger local authorities such as the London County Council which they saw as a valuable instrument for securing the common ownership of the means of production and the equitable delivery of socially necessary services. Thus, a particular concern that cut across the appeal for local independence was the danger that conservative authorities, whether Labour, Conservative or Liberal, would provide poorly funded sub-standard services. Anticipating and perhaps influencing David Blunkett and Tony Blair 80 years later, parliament needed to establish a national minimum of service provision (Webb and Webb, 1975, p. 244).

At least, unlike Mill, Bosanquet or Hobhouse, the Webbs and Shaw did not fear the tyranny of an uneducated majority and were of the opinion that recipients of a superior education may not necessarily be any the wiser than the downtrodden working class. Many of Shaw's plays, such as Major Barbara or Pygmalion, demonstrate that the educated working class may be equally as dim as the educated middle class. The Webbs argued for paid councillors in order to remove those wealthier businessmen from power who, they argued, dominated councils to maintain their own local interests in slum property, building contracts and public houses (Webb and Webb, 1975, p. 211). Laski (1934, p. 425) considered that local governments should be advised by professional committees of experts working alongside local representatives and also representatives of the consumers of their services. The Fabians just as much as Mill looked towards executive governments being controlled by the well educated.

The following generation of social democratic writers continued to develop a train of thought that emphasised the need for efficiency in the delivery of productive services rather than the value of community. G. D. H. Cole (1947, p. 45), rather like the Webbs, considered that local government should be valued as a means ‘to deal with a wide range of things that people can use in common and can weave together into the texture of the sort of living they value’, but this point is never elaborated into an argument for liberty as a value but rather sees the local authority as a means to ensure popular interests can be secured that are not provided by the private sector market or conservatively orientated charitable largesse. Local authorities, he argued, build estates with shops whereas the private sector has built urban sprawl without social facilities (Cole, 1947, pp. 46–7). W. A. Robson (1954, p. 28) similarly favourably quotes the Webbs on the value of neighbourhood but also undermines this idea by insisting that most local authorities were too small to cope efficiently with the demands of a modern economy and communications.

Acceptance of political justifications based on these expedient rather than ethical values was in step with the emergence of sceptical positivist analysis of ethical theory accompanied by hostility to ideological extremes of fascism or communism. These trends were typified by an increasing aversion within society for clear moral and ethical pronouncements concerning constitutional issues. With the undermining of community-based values and declining interest in municipalisation, as opposed to nationalisation of productive and many redistributive services, justifications for local government fell back on arguments for efficiency and democracy. Typically Mackenzie concluded:

Local Government as an Adjunct to Liberal Democracy

Normative justifications, where they were advanced at all, were increasingly encompassed in the framework of the now dominant ideology of liberal democracy. Lord Bryce argued that ‘the best school of democracy, and the best guarantee for its success, is the practice of local self-government’ (Bryce, 1921, p. 150). C. H. Wilson emphasised at the time of the Attlee government that, while efficiency was not the central purpose of local government:

Similarly D. N. Chester (1951, pp. 20–1) argued that ‘Local Government is not just a method of administration, it is also a major element in the democratic way of life … for democracy implies active and interested citizenship’. A paper suggesting that there ‘appears to be no justification for asserting that there exists an inevitable tie of reciprocal dependence between democracy and local government’ written from a French viewpoint (Langrod, 1953) was roundly criticised by Keith Panter-Brick who, among other points argues that local government:

These views may be summed up most succinctly by Herman Finer (1945, p. 6) who observed that the purpose of local and national government is the same, ‘to make the nation as a whole a better place to live in’. Such a position values local government as a means of securing democracy within the nation, but not as having an independent justification to that of the central state.

By the 1970s R. A Dahl's pluralist theory created an added interest in participation as an important aspect for the justification of local government. While pluralism and Dahl's (1970, p. 93) image of Chinese boxes were compatible with American values concerning local government, the theory, despite the widespread debates it engendered in Britain, was often but half-heartedly accepted as mirroring democratic practice ¹³ and rarely spilled over into ethical debate. L. J. Sharpe (1970, pp. 160–2) accepted in his study of local government theory, written in the context of the Redcliffe Maud Report, that there was some merit in de Tocqueville's and Dahl's view that the smaller local authority allows more individuals to participate seriously in the political process than the populous nation state. However he sees the value of such behaviour in terms of Mill's enthusiasm for participation in local government as a source of political education and stability. Sharpe's central argument for the retention of local government is based on the, by then, well-established position that it makes a contribution to efficiency and democracy for the nation as a whole.

Over a decade later, as a response to Margaret Thatcher's inroads into local government, George Jones and John Stewart similarly base their arguments for more independent local government partly on the value of local authorities in ensuring efficiency and economy in the use of resources but also stress the contribution local government provides in ensuring liberal democracy through:

Desmond King and Gerry Stoker's Rethinking Local Democracy (1996), as its title demonstrates, continues the tendency to justify local government in terms of its value to the state as a whole rather than directly as an ethical institution in itself. The edited work considers how local government can fulfil the needs of efficiency (Walsh, 1996), secure full participation (Phillips, 1996) or, in a valuable contribution to the normative debate by David Beetham, the enhancement of democracy (Beetham, 1996). Beetham argues that key components of democracy, accountability, representation and responsiveness can be better secured if a central government which, quoting Mill, he argues to be too remote to deal with matters of detail, leaves decision making on matters that differentiate localities to local government. Beetham's argument, while as valid as it was in Mill's day, does not, however, resolve some of the problems that are inherent in Mill's original argument. While Beetham does not suggest that local opinion is necessarily inferior to opinion in Westminster and Whitehall, the argument provides little guidance as to what ought to be the sphere of local as opposed to national action. He recognises, for example, that:

However, as with the Webbs, this position can be, and indeed is with Best Value, a Trojan horse which may allow central government to interfere increasingly in local matters on the basis of securing equality and minimum standards.

The Third Way, Communitarianism and New Labour

New Labour has accepted in Third Way pronouncements the established twentieth-century expediential justifications for local government but the far from homogeneous New Labour movement also includes elements of communitarian thought that derive from a United States tradition and contain the roots of a more direct ethical justification. However, both Anthony Giddens' concept of the Third Way and communitarianism, as adapted to British values, also contain the long-standing suspicion of competence in local institutions. Giddens on the one hand maintains that ‘the democratising of democracy first of all implies decentralisation’ (Giddens, 1998, p. 72) but later, as with many preceding theorists, places serious practical limitations in opposition to such a principle.

The Third Way and the Blair government, as both Samuel Beer (2001) and Alan Ryan (1999) have argued, rather than being particularly new, resemble more the values of New Liberalism and the policies of Lloyd George. As with the New Liberals, New Labour can similarly value decentralisation in theory but in practice shows but limited enthusiasm for local government.

Communitarian theory is a broad church but harbours some potential for a justification of local government based on the value of freedom of action for communities that require common policies. ¹⁶ However, as with J. S. Mill, other aspects of this ideology have forestalled much enthusiasm for local government as opposed to local governance. There is within the communitarian debate a widespread suspicion of the trend to oligarchy within organised society and hence any representative political organisation must be viewed with caution. Most communitarians recognise that there should be some form of organised government. A sense of goodwill and mutuality among individuals within the bounds of a community cannot be guaranteed and must require some compulsive element to prevent the break-up of community. However, Amitai Etzioni observes:

Communitarian argument can, in this context, be seen as authoritarian in the sense of ‘forcing people to be free’. If it is the collective voice of the community that must determine moral behaviour, then there may be fears that the individual, the Peter Grimes of the Borough, can be persecuted as a consequence of common values harboured by that community as to what is morally or aesthetically proper and, at the most intolerable, such a community may be blighted by a common human feeling to identify personal worth through a capacity to denigrate minority individuals and groups. Some communitarian theorists harbour even stronger suspicions of the role of organised governments that absorb much of the elitist critique of democracy.

Local governments, especially given their organisation in Britain as large bureaucracies, can similarly not be regarded as a basis for developing the democratic community. Theorists such as Henry Tam (1998, pp. 160–1) envisage a network of differing community governments for differing purposes rather than multi-purpose communal government.

It remains to be seen whether New Labour interest in communitarian thought will reshape thinking as to the ethical value of local government. New Labour seems rather divided in relation to the status of local government with some policy-makers, embedded in the idea of local authorities as a means of securing efficient government as a whole, interested in developing city regions while, in contrast, communitarian values ensure that some senior politicians are enthusiastic about the erosion of multi-purpose local authorities in favour of local strategic partnerships. In the context of a justification for local government a more substantive direct theory in support of the institution would need robust support to overcome a strongly ingrained culture, originating from Mill and embroidered by New Liberal and social democratic thought, that justifies local government expedientially as an organisation serving the needs of the state in securing stable liberal democracy led efficiently by educated professionals.

Conclusion

Justifications for local government in Britain are based largely on expediential arguments rather than direct ethical theory concerning the right of communities to determine their own values. Local government in Britain has throughout the twentieth century been valued by most political theorists on account of the contribution it can make to efficient and stable liberal democratic government at national level rather than more directly as an institution that has value in its own right regardless of its relationship to the state.

Theorists of liberal democracy in the nineteenth century such as Bentham and J. S. Mill valued local government partly because devolution of local problems to those with local knowledge is more efficient than central management. Mill, however, also established the view that the principal role of local government was to contribute to stable liberal democracy. Local understanding of matters of principle would be inferior to the understanding within a national elite and expose democracy to the fear of a ‘tyranny of the majority’. Mill valued local government as a means of legitimising liberal democracy by facilitating participation, albeit in local affairs, and educating citizens in civic responsibility. The system would also produce among its leaders candidates capable of stepping into power nationally. Concern over the capacity of local communities to make sound decisions on principles has, with but few exceptions, underlain the dominance of expediential theories of local government in Britain throughout the twentieth century. New Liberals tended to follow Mill's concerns over the wisdom of local interests. Social democrats such as the Webbs feared that too much local autonomy would promote inequality and also many within the movement feared that localities would harbour unacceptable values. By the second half of the twentieth century, the dominance of liberal democratic ideology continued to forge, as it had with Mill, justifications by Sharpe or Jones and Stewart based on the capacity of local government to create legitimacy for democracy by facilitating participation in political life and the education of citizens and political leaders within a polity that was at root highly centralist. New Labour Third Way values have not revised this rationale and the impact of communitarian values is uncertain. Given this trend within justifications for local government in Britain, there is consequently an absence of effective argument that would rationally restrain central government interference in local matters.

There is, however, the basis for an ethically sound theory of local government within the writings of J. S. Mill and more substantively in the neglected works of Joshua Toulmin Smith and more recently some elements of communitarian theory. The justification is premised on the view that inasmuch as individuals should be free to follow their beliefs, provided these do not harm others, then communities with self-regarding interests should also be free to pursue their ideas. Such a theory could, if developed, establish a much clearer rationale for determining the structure and functions of differing tiers of community within and including the state.