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fabian tract 419 

towards participation


in local services 

Stephen Hatch 1 introduction 
Peter Marris 2 new forms of governmentRudolf Klein 3 health services : the case for 

a counter bureaucracy 
Peter Levin 4 opening up the planning 
process 1 
Harry Salmon 5 participation in educational 
institutions 2 
Nick Derricourt 6 tenants and housing 

management 3 
Peter Jewell 7 self management in day centres 4 
William Hampton 8 popular participation in local 

democracy 4 


/() 

~ I 6 I 5 I I ( 1( ~ 

this pamphlet, like all publications of the Fabian Societ 
represents not the collective view of the Society but only tt 
view of the individuals who prepared it. The responsibility c 
the Society is limited to approving publications it issuE 
as worthy of consideration within the Labour movemen 
Fabian Society, 11 Dartmouth Street, London SW1 H 9Br 
February 1973 ISBN 7163 0419 


1. introduction 
Stephen Hatch 

Traditionally, socialist parties have aimed 
ito concentrate power, for only by creating 
a strong state could they attack the entrenched 
positions of the more privileged 
cla~ses. Today, paradoxically, many on 
the left advocate the decentralisation of 
power through greater participation. Yet 
this argument between the two strains of 
socialist thinking is not new: it has a 
long pedigree, dating at least from the 
split between Marx and Bakunin that 
broke up the First International a hundred 
years ago. Why today does the pendulum 
seem to be swinging towards the 
decentralisers? Is it only another Utopianaberration, or are there aspects of modern 
society which make a different and 

· stronger case for participation? 

That is one fundamental question. But 
,there is a prior one. Under the banner of 
participation march a motley crowd, with 
a variety of objectives and programmes.
In order to answer any more generalquestions these different and sometimes 

. conflicting aspirations need to be disentangled. 


To some extent for almost everybody, and 
exclusively for some, participation is an 
end in itself-one of those universallydesired and desirable concepts like democracy 
which do not need to be justified 
in terms of other objectives. But this is a 
naive position. For some people the 
vision of small, self-governing communities 
is what is attractive about the notion 
of participation. This may represent a 
yearning for a non-industrial society, as 
with William Morris in the last century 
and parts of the commune movement 
today. Alternatively there is a more hard 
headed belief in direct participation as a 
means of self-realisation, as somethingthat brings psychological benefits to the 
participants, and thereby alters the quality 
of life and society. The arguments for the 
participation of old people in the running 
of day centres described by Peter Jewel 
in this pamphlet seem to be essentially 

of this kind, as are those advocated elsewhere 
by Carole Pateman (Participationand democratic theory, CUP, 1970). 


Another kind of argument for participation 
is concerned with knowledge and 

communication. Planners and decision 
makers cannot know what people want 
without first canvassing the views of 
those who will be affected by their decisions 
and debating exhaustively alternative 
possibilities. In this sense participation 
is a way of getting better decisions out of 
the machine by basing them on fuller information. 
The Skeffington Report and 
Peter Levin's contribution seem to · be 
based to a large extent on this position. 

The third argument for participation is 
concerned explicitly with power, rather 
than information and knowledge, thoughof course knowledge can be seen as a 
form of power. For some this means 
mobilising new political forces in an attack 
on existing politcal institutions. Less 
radically, it means supplementing and 
giving recognition to conventional pressure 
group activities. Rudolf Klein's proposals 
for institutionalising consumer 
interests in the health service are an 
example of the sort of thinking involved 
here. 

If there are different aspirations behind 
the label of participation, so also there 
are differences in the desired forms of 
participation. An important distinction is 
that between direct participation in decision 
making and exerting influence on 
decision makers. The latter is essentially 
pressure group activity which is a longpractised and well understood part of the 
democratic process. Some would say that 
this is not what is meant by participation, 
and would confine the term to direct 
involvement in decision making. But in 
practice the distinction is often ignored. 
Thus only the most radical of those who 
advocate participation in planning actually 
suggest that the people directly affected by 
planning decisions should themselves take 
planning decisions or be representedamong the decision makers. More commonly, 
what is advocated is giving greater 
opportunities for the people affected to 
express and press their views and listening 
to these views more attentively. Participation 
schemes therefore take a number of 
forms, among them : 

1. Setting up neighbourhood councils ; 
that is, representative bodies covering 

small areas, but with wide terms of 
reference. 

2. Adding consumers to decision making 
bodies (see contributions by Nick Derricourt 
and Harry Salmon). 
3. Devolving responsibilities to groups or 
committees of consumers (Peter Jewell). 
4. Encouraging the articulation of particular 
interests by steps, like recognising 
certain groups for consultation purposes 
(Nick Derricourt, Harry Salmon, Rudolf 
Klein and Peter Levin). 
5. Improving the flow of information 
through meetings, surveys and so on 
(Rudolf Klein and Peter Levin). Activities 
of this kind cannot properly be described 
as participation, though they may be conditions 
for it to occur effectively. 
The fact that proposals for participationin housing and education occur, both in 
categories two and four, points to a 
real dilemma, between on the one hand 
recognising tenants' representatives for the 
purposes of consultation and on the other 
adding tenants' representatives to committees 
that make decisions or devolvingcertain management functions to tenants' 
representatives. The essence of the 
dilemma is this. If the " participants " 
take on management responsibilities or 
functions, will their perspectives not be 
altered so that they cease to be effective 
representatives of the tenants? Where 
there are sharp conflicts of interest the 
dual role will become difficult, if not 
impossible. 

The same problem has been central to debates 
about industrial democracy. For 
some this has meant-workers' control, that 
is direct participatory democracy: for 
others recognising the essentially opposition 
role of trade unions, but strengtheningthis through improved processes of jointconsultation. 

Debates about workers' control raise another 
issue for contemporary arguments 
on participation-that is, who is to participate. 
To answer " everybody " fudges a 
potentially critical conflict. This pamphlet 

is concerned with the participation of the 
consumers or beneficiaries of services, 
but some advocates of participation are 
more concerned with the participation of 
those who provide services, that is 
workers' control. The kind of conflict that 
can arise on this score is well illustrated 
by the famous dispute between the 
teachers and black parents at Ocean Hill/
Brownsville in New York. No comparableconflict has yet occurred in this country, 
but it would be wrong to ignore -the 
potential difference of interest between 
the providers and the consumers of services. 
At present this difference may be 
masked, as with social work, when it is 
the radical social workers who are prominent 
in claiming a larger say both for 
themselves and also for their clients. However, 
the opposition within the teachers' 
unions to having parents in the classroom 
is an example of the sensitivity of professionals 
to encroachments on their 
domain. The growing professionalisation 
of local services is unlikely to lessen this 
sensitivity. Hence the progress of participation 
will not depend simply on the inter-
meshing of arrangements for participationwith the machinery required to make 
decisions through the formal representative 
processes. It will also require different 
attitudes on the part of providers of 
services, not only regarding what theyfeel to be their own domain but also, as 
shown by Harry Salmon's contribution, 
in the way they relate to " participants." 

The role of professionals raises the issue, 
touched on in the opening paragraph, of 
the underlying reasons for the growingdemands for participation. These fall into 
two categories. One is the continuing extension 
of social provision and of planning, 
affecting both services providedfrom public funds and " private " activities, 
which goes hand in hand with 
growing bureaucratisation and professionalisation. 
The way this can distance and 
alienate the ordinary citizen, even the 
intended beneficiaries of local services, is 
perceptively analysed by Peter Marris. 
The important question is whether arrangements 
for participation will necessarily 
improve the situation. Some 
attempted exercises in participation increase 
rather than decrease frustration, 


for instance the public meeting which 
aims to sound out local feeling but leaves 
Local residents more confused and uncertain. 
It will be important to ensure 
that the cause of participation does not 
founder on the experience of ill conceived 
and half hearted gestures in that direction. 
In this respect, the contributors to this 
pamphlet go some way in sorting out the 
wheat from the chaff. 

The second category of reasons for the 
growing pressure for participation concerns, 
putting it very broadly, changes in 
the relationship between the political 
system and the social structure. These 
have been analysed more fully by Barry 
. Hindess (The decline of working class 
politics, Paladin, 1971). Put in brief, there 
has in recent years been a significant
change in the social composition of the 
active membership of the Labour Party,
reflected in the increasingly middle cla s 
social background of MPs and of Labour 
. councillors in many local authorities, particularly 
in London. Although systen1atic


· evidence on a national level is lacking, it 
does appear that the Labour Party i now 
much less of a class party, more of a 
loose populist coalition led by progressives 
drawn from profe ional occupations. 


The other ide of the coin is a decline in 
the homogeneity and cohe ivene of the 
working class. Immigration ha created 
ethnic divisions among the working clas , 
evident particularly in inner city area . 
In addition many of the controversial 
issues of urban politics are ones that 
divide rather than unite the working class. 
John Rex in his analysis of hou ing 
classes (Race, community and conflict, 
OUP, 1967) points out that a person'position in the housing market, for intance 
whether he is a furnished tenant or 
living on a good local authority estate, 
· has significant implications for his political 
interests ; and that housing class in 
this sense often cuts across class defined 
in occupational terms. Disputes over the 
eligibility of furnished tenants for rehousing 
during slum clearance illustrate 
the kind of conflict that may occur within 
the working class. These are not easilycontained within the Labour Party, and 

the consequence is to be seen in the 
growth of groups that are isolated from 
the political process. Such groups are most 
numerous in the inner city. The percentage 
voting in general elections has declined 
steadily since 1950, but has been sharpest 
in inner city areas. Thus between the 
general elections of 1959 and 1970 average 
turn out in the 12 safest Labour seats in 
the former London County Council area 
fell from 67 per cent to 52 per cent, 
whereas nationally the fall was from 79 
per cent to 72 per cent. In the past there 
was a close coincidence between under 
privilege and membership of the working 
class, and the Labour Party could legitimately 
claim to be the political instrument 
of the under privileged. But it was not a 
passive instrument: it helped to forge and 
mould the political aspirations of the 
working class. Today this is less true. The 
Labour Party aims pragmatically to capture 
the middle ground in an era of issue 
rather than class politics. Consequently, 
the under privileged seek political expression 
outside the formal syste1n, through 
incursions into participatory politics. But 
these are fragmentary and therefore weak. 
Following a community activist on what 
may be only an ego tdp is not an effective 
substitute for mobilising a mass party. 

conclusion 

To conclude, the development of participation 
is a necessary response to the 
growth in scale of the services provided 
by government and the presence of 
increasing groups of the population isolated 
from the political system. But these 
two forces do not necessarily point in the 
same direction. It i the middle cla ses 
who have the skill to manipulate bureaucratic 
systems: indeed much of the pre sure 
for participation is the middle classes 
responding to the extension of planning. 
They alone will benefit from the growth 
of participation if styles of partidpationare adopted that suit only the middle clas 
activist. Public meeting , exhibitions of 
plans, opportunities to make representations 
and pre ent alternative proposals 
are of little use to people who lack the 
skills and the resources to present their 
views at the requisite level of formal 


abstraction, or to influence the ways in 
which issues are defined. 

The politically isolated will be the losers 
unless first, there are people who deliberately 
take on the role of catalysts, advocates 
and community developers on their 
behalf, and second, fresh political alliances 
can be forged which unite the politicallyisolated with the Labour Movement and 
give it a new impetus. 

But the contributors to this pamphlet are 
not primarily concerned with the arguments 
for and against participation. Discussion 
of participation has now continued 
long enough to make it more important 
to ask how rather than why. It is time to 
get to grips with the problems and possibilities 
of implementation. This pamphlet 
is a step in that direction. It does not 
offer final answers: no-one would pretend 
anyway that participation is a panacea for 
the ailments of a democratic society.
Rather it shows how participation might 
be advanced. Thence, later on, we shall 
be able to ask more searching questions 
of actual experience concerning who 
benefits, in what ways and under what 
circumstances. 


.2. new forms of government 


Peter Marris 

'There are trends in highly industrialised 
societies which, as it seems to me, tend to 
undermine the viability of our traditions 
of government. Unless we can establish 
new forms of government, democratic 
institutions risk becoming increasingly ineffectual, 
beset by continual budgeterycrises, cynically manipulative, but weaklyresponsive to pressure and regarded with 
contempt. We shall have neither confidence 
in government, nor confidence in 
our liberty. The argument should fit any 
highly industrialised democracy, but I 
want to apply it to Britain particularly. 

the dilemma of costs 

As industrialised societies grow richer, the 
proportion of needs met directly or indirectly 
by government tends to increase. 
Education and health care for instance, 
once the privilege of those who could 
afford it, come to be seen as universal 
rights and only government intervention 

· can secure a more or less equitable distribution 
of them. Social justice apart, too 
gross a disparity would threaten social 
cohesion. So, the most important desires 
which growing prosperity can satisfy tend 
to be provided as a public or quasi-publicservice. At the same time, the industrial 
wealth itself puts new demands uponpublic amenities: to control pollution,
dispose of waste, preserve parkland, provide 
roads, water, and generally to protectthe people of a crowded island, with more 
and more money in their pockets, from 
making life intolerable for each other. 
Economic development creates a more 
complexly interdependent society, and 
hence a growing need for comprehensiveregulation. My first assumption, then, is 
that government will become an increasingly 
obtrusive agent of what we most 
want and so, also, of what some will not 
want at all. 

Secondly, the relative costs of governmentprovision will increase, because the most 
crucial of them are services such as health 
care and education, where the productivity 
of labour is hard to improve. But the 
people who work in them will still expect 
their pay to keep in line with wages in 
manufacturing where higher productivity 

meets the cost. And the goods which 
government provid~s, such as cheap housing, 
tend to be just those where labour is 
comparatively unproductive, which, J 
suppose, is why private industry is reluctant 
to take part. So, government is faced 
with growing demands at growing costs, 
and has continually to search for more 
revenue. 

It then risks a taxpayer's revolt. Politically, 
it cannot easily either raise more 
taxes or cut back the services which people 
still demand. In this dilemma it tends to 
make small cuts in provision which hurt 
some without substantially reducing its 
costs ; and to revert to regressive taxation 
such as user charges which do not so 
immediately unite everyone in opposition.
At worst, no budget can be passed at all ; 
the conflicting pressures are deadlocked. 
The crisis arises because people do not 
feel that they control the use government 
makes of their money, and so mistrust the 
costs without lessening their demand for 
service. 

the paradox of efficiency 

The dilemma provokes a search for 
greater efficiency. If more could be done 
with the same money, the costs would be 
politically more manageable. Some suggest 
introducing the mechanisms of the 
market into government provisions, stimulating 
efficiency through competition. I 
think the opportunities to do this are 
likely to be few. The important choices 
are often indivisible and so binding on 
everyone: he may be free to choose 
whether to use it, but not whether to payfor it and accept its effect on his life. 
Even where choice is conceivable, in 
education or health care, more freedom 
seems to make for less equitable distribution. 
Government then has to redress the 
inequity by selective assistance, and this 
turns out to be either very inadequate or 
very expensive. In both private and publicprovision, the pressure towards rationalisation 
must lead to a search for wider 
control intrinsically incompatiOle with the 
conception of a free market. So I believe 
that above all government will seek to 
rationalise its services-through planning, 


coordination, research. If we had better 
information, understood the consequences 
of intervention, organised services more 
coherently, resources would surely be less 
wastefully used. This would not resolve 
the political problem however because 
paradoxically it increases the cost, and it 
removes services even further from democratic 
control. 

The Seebohm Committee's report on personal 
social services illustrates the relationship 
between efficiency and cost. It arguesfor an integrated service, replacing the 
confusion of overlapping, poorly coordinated 
agencies with a single comprehensive 
service to which people can bringtheir needs. Yet just because it is more 
efficient it will reveal a host of unmet 
needs, because its structure is n1ore comprehensive 
in scope, it cannot so easilydisclaim responsibility, leaving problems 
in a limbo between jurisdictions. So the 
Seebohm report repeatedly emphasi es 
that its reform implies a commitment of 
larger resources. I .think the same argument 
must apply wherever the presentprovisions are poorly organised, ignorethe underlying causes of needs, and are 
under pressure to make immediate economies. 
Thus the budgetary pressurewhich provoke the search for a more 
efficient use of resources end by placing 
even heavier demands on the budget. The 
institutional resistances to reform, too, 
are much harder to overcome without 
expansion; with a static or dec1iningbudget, change are more immediatelythreatening than when innovation is 
incremental. 

Conversely, cuts in provJston are likely 
to mean worse value for money. The lo s 
of efficiency is disproportionately greater 
than the saving in cost. Fewer book , 
more crowded classrooms for instance, do 
not save very much money, but create 
frustrations which seriously damage the 
quality of education. 

Rationalisation, however, al o tend to 
make government seem even more remote 
from popular control. It depends on 
knowledge and techniques of analysiwhich few people have mastered. It lends 
more authority to the expert, who justifie 

his proposals by logic rather than popularfeeling. It also makes for centralisation, 
where the interests of any individual voter 
are merged with so many others, in so 
many issues, that he can no longer use his 
vote to express any particular demand. 

1 

efficiency means intelligent coordination, 
it leads towards attempts at planning of 
wider and wider scope because everything 
is dependent on everything else, both 
geographically and functionally. Hence 
physical planning merges with social and 
economic planning, towns merge with 
counties, counties with regions, and the 
crucial decisions become further and 
further abstracted. These decisions bind 
the future too. A man finds that his back 
garden is to be cut off to make a main 
road, for reasons he cannot follow, 
worked out by people he never elected, in 
the interest of others he knows nothing of 
and he is told that if he objects to this, he 
should have said so several years ago. 

weakness of representative 
democracy 

So the expansion of government service , 
and their rising cost, leads to a search for 
efficiency which generates further expansion, 
and a further alienation of the taxpayer, 
whose reluctance to pay for it all 
posed the problem in the first place. In 
themselves, more and better services, regulated 
with a concern for social justice and 
the common good, and intelligentlyplanned may broadly represe'nt what 
people want. However, the traditional 
principles of representative democracy can 
not cope with the trains this evolution 
puts on them. They were designed for an 
age when government defended the realm, 
maintained law and order, protectedpeople from gross exploitation, but was 
not itself a major provider of every day 
needs, nor continually intervened in the 
shaping of people's surroundings. Universal 
suffrage legitimised government, as 
the expression of the sovereignty of the 
people, and provided a sanction against 
the abuse of power. It was conceived as a 
means of determining leader hip, not as a 
means by which people would control the 
allocation of resources. But once government 
becomes a major provider, it stands 
in much the same relationship to each 


individual citizen as any private bu iness, 
except that he cannot take his cu tom 
elsewhere. He can only protest his intere t. 
For the most part, he must buy at the 
government's price, whether he personally 
wants the provision or not. He even has 
to pay his share of things he abhors. 

To some extent, the same evolution i 
taking place even in non-government provisions. 
In the interests of efficiency, companies 
merge into larger and larger units, 
forcing a greater aggregation of consumer 
demand: and the customer finds himself 
remote from the supplier. His per onal 
needs carry less weight, and his complaints 
fall on the deaf ears of a computer.
Hence, people are beginning to turn 
against great corporations as they turn 
against government, out of the same 
resentment at their own impotence. 

weakness of administrative 
traditions 

The administrative structure which repre. 
sentative democracy has developed seem 
equally inadequate. So long as democracyis principally conceived to assert the 
overeignty of parliament, the regulationof its bureacracy through specialised, hierarchical 
departments, responsible to the 
political leadership ensures the subordination 
of admini trators without constant 
upervision. The limits of official discretion 
are carefully hedged by elaborate 
rule and restricted judsdictions. The ystem 
works well for routine functions. But 
once the administration becomes an 
instrument of planning, the segregation of 
departments, the circumscribed regulation-
bound vision of the bureaucrat, hi dependence 
on the manipulation of privileged 
information to secure his ends. and 
his preoccupation with the defence of 
jurisdictional boundarie become severe 
handicaps. The structure inhibits the exchange 
of information and any wide-
ranging analysis of social need , di torting 
all is ues into que tions of departmentalinter-relationships. Nor, i a bureaucracyautomatica1Iy required to inquire into the 
uccess of the policies it implements, 
which i a political question. It need only 
,how that it ha carried out instructions. 
Tt i generally a poor monitor of it own 

functions, defensive and protective of it 

political masters, nervous of any research 

whose que tions and conclusions it cannot 

control. Yet government relies very

heavily on its civil service to plan, inform 

and innovate; and there is a character-

i tic, often stultifying tension between the 

civil service and the government's external 

advisers (whose vision may be wider but 

innocent of administrative politics). 

Thus the traditions of representative demo


cracy are ill-adapted both politically and · 

administratively to the demands of a ' 

ociety where government i principle pro-t 
vider and planner. 

the evolution of government 

All this leads up to my central concern: 
the evolution of a pattern of governmentthat can better reconcile intelligent col-' 
lective action with a sense of personal 
autonomy. But the "fashionable preoccupation 
with participation " (as Briti h 
politicians are inclined to disparage it) is 
not simply a matter of ideological fashion. 
It reflects fundamental trends in societywhich cannot help but raise these issue . 
They will become increasingly critical a 
the part government plays in everydaylife grow in scope and cost, and the paradoxes 
of rationalisation play themselve 
out. 

How, then, might the conflicts between 
planning and democracy, effectiveness and 
cost, collective and per onal choice be 
managed better? It seems to me that three 
inter-related kinds of change, especially, 
would be needed: to break administration 
down into a looser network or more opendecision-making bodies; to institutionalise 
the arbitration of conflicting intere ts far 
more comprehensively than ever before, 
at every level ; and to establisl\ new rights 
of intervention in the processes of 
government. • 

I . •
The current concern with decentrah at10n 
and participation, planning and the u e 
of legal advocacy to defend a common 
interest; with the evaluation of social 
policies, and the theory of systems and 
their regulation ; experiment in com



munity action and the militant refusal of 
protesting groups to abide by public decisions 
all seem to reflect these issues. We 
are at once seeking continually to enlargethe scope of integrated management, in 
desperate need of international systems of 
regulation, and at the same time, to break 
systems of government down into sets of 
relationships which will be humanly responsive 
and comprehensible. 

Not that most of us, most of our lives, 
want to participate in government. Rather, 
we want a social environment which as it 
most immediately impinges on us largely 
seems to regulate itself, where the relationships 
are predictable, and the adjustments 
we must make within a familiar range ; 
where we have a sense of confidence and 
autonomy, internalising the constraints it 
imposes on us, and where the threats to 
that environment can be contained bydefences which need only occasionally be 
mobilised. If the price of liberty is eternal 
vigilance, we mostly leave it to a few 
watch keepers, responding sluggishly to 
their alarms. Everyone wants an active 
part in the government of his family, most 
want a part in the government of their 
work ; elsewhere we commonly delegate 
the defence of our interests, ready, more 
or less willingly, to mobilise our politicalresources when those interests truly seem 
threatened. This presupposes a loose 
integration of society, organic rather than 
hierarchical, where the survival of the 
whole allows for a large measure of self-
regulation in its parts. Nothing else seems 
humanly possible, except perhaps by an 
overwhelming sacrifice of liberty. No 
closely integrated system of governmentcould begin to muster the complexity of 
relationships on so vast a scale, assimilate 
and respond to information in time and 
act intelligently ; it could only blunder on 
with a crude and brutal insensitivity. Yet 
our models of government are still characteristically 
of this kind. They have survived 
so long only because we left the 
greater part of life to take care of itself,
in a manner that now threatens to overwhelm 
us. 

The crucial issue then is not simply participation 
in government, but the way in 
which participation can influence the re


lationship between the formal or informal 
systems of regulation through which we 
conduct our lives. For if these systems 
must be partly autonomous, if they are to 
be manageable, they are also interdependent, 
and the survival of the whole 
depends upon the nature of the transactions 
across their boundaries. 

All such transactions are mediated bypeople whose part it is to act across the 
boundaries. It is not necessarily possible 
for them to promote both the coherence 
of the larger system and of the subordinate 
system ; their actions then are either 
destructive or abortive, and they destroy 
themselves too. At best it is never easy. 

But if I am right, these mediators will 
play the most crucial role in the government 
of society-the community leaders, 
community organisers, arbitrators, planners, 
royal commissioners, policy advocates, 
experts, trade union leaders-everyone 
whose concern is not with the maintenance 
of a system of relationships, so 
much as its interdependence with other 

· systems. We seem to understand such 
roles poorly, and to have studied them 
little. There is the politically passivecitizen, who finds he must turn outward 
from his private life to involve himself, 
for a while, in a public issue that touches 
his immediate interest ; the community or 
interest group leader, who must negotiate 
with the larger system on behalf of his 
following; the community organiser, as 
paid official, whose loyalty is divided 
between his paymasters and those he is 
appointed to help and encourage ; the 
civil servant who represents his department 
before lobbies, protest groups, community 
interests, and represents their 
views to ills colleagues ; the expert who 
tries to turn his expertise to practicalaccount in a politicised setting ; the royal 
commissioner; the arbitrator, the planner 
confronting the variety of public interests; 
and the politician too when he negotiates 
between party policy and the interests of 
his constituents. If I am right, the quality 
of government depends on the skill and 
sensitivity with which these mediatingroles are played, and on the possibility 
that they can be played, without abortive 
and self -destructive conflict. 


3. health services: the case 
for a counter bureaucracy 
Rudolf Klein 

Once it used to be accepted that historyrepresented the inevitable, inexorable and 
irresistable march of progress, from primitive 
savagery to enlightened civilisation. 
Now this approach is no longer fashionable. 
But historians of medicine, with 
more reason than most, still tend to see 
developments in terms of an evolution 
. from the witch doctor to the scientist. 
· Generally it is difficult to quarrel with this 
interpretation. But in terms of the rela, 
tionship between the doctor and the 
· patient, between the service and the con: 
sumer, this evolutionary view clearly is 
not tenable. In this respect the history of 
the medical services, in Britain, at least, is 
one of regression, with the medical profession 
successfully asserting its autonomy 
and capturing control of the system, at 
the expense of the client or customer. 

Before Lloyd George's introduction of 
national health insurance, the system of 
providing medical care outside hospital-
an incomplete, partial system admittedly 
-was a network of workingmen's clubs, 
medical and friendly societies and institutes 
which often hired their own doctors. 
This machinery of lay control was 
resented by the medical profession. However, 
in 1911-when various clubs and 
societies had to register under the 
National Insurance Act-this co-operative 
welfare system was still an example of 
what might now be called self-helpthrough participation in co-operativeenterprises. There were 2,600 approved 
societies, with 14,400 branches. By 1922, 
when the Royal Commission on National 
Health Insurance was investigating the 
situation, the number of societies and 
branches had dropped by half. Even so, 
and despite the dominance of bureaucratic 
giants like the Prudential, there 
, were still 630 societies with a membership 
of between 50 and 1,000-the Airdale 
Oddfellows, the Ravenstone Druids, the 

· Pride of the :Hill, the Mayfield Temperance, 
the Phoenix Iron Works and all the 
rest. 

To read this roll call is not just to indulge 
in nostalgia. It is to remind oneself that 
participation-the middle-class luxury of 
the second half of the twentieth century-
was a working class necessity of the nine


teenth century. It is also to stress that 
there is no natural, inevitable progression 
from bureaucracy to participation ; that 
the evidence, for what it is worth, suggests 
the opposite development. The system 
that was undermined by the 1911 Act and 
later replaced by the National Health 
Service did not work very well despite or 
because of (depending on one's point of 
view) the large element of participation. 

Moreover, contemporary evidence from 
very different health systems in other 
countries tends to undermine any belief 
in the automatic efficacy of participation.
In West Germany, today's sick funds (the 
equivalents of yesterday's approved societies 
in Britain) are self-governed, autonomous 
organisations run-in theory at 
any rate-by the representatives of the 
insured. However, "participation in voting 
is very low ; candidates are generally 
proposed by labour unions. Most of the 
representatives identify themselves with 
their sick funds rather than with the consumers 
of services" (M. Pflanz, "German 
health insurance," International journal of 
health services, vol 1, no 4, 1971). In 
Saskachewan, Canada, more than 50 community 
sponsored group practices were 
born as a result of the doctors' strike in 
the early 1960s. Only three remain today, 
and the consumer has very little voice in 
their operation. In New Zealand, health 
councils are directly elected, but interest 
in voting is low. 

Indeed the case for more participationusually rests on two sets of largely unargued, 
and very dubious, assumptions or 
propositions. The first is that participationsomehow is a natural human need, drive 
or instinct: in that homo sapiens is also 
homo participans, The other, supporting 
or alternative, assumption is that participation 
is a moral imperative, that to value 
democratic institutions is also to feel a 
sense of obligation to take part in their 
running: that people ought to participate 
even if they do not feel like it spontaneously. 
Before examining the health services 
in detail it is worth looking at these 
propositions critically. 

To begin with the evidence about people's 
desire to participate seems, at best, to be 


ambiguous. On the whole, despite the 
periodic agitations by students and other 
activists-most people simply ignore existing 
opportunities to participate. Apartfrom trade unions, where often there is 
no choice, membership of clubs and 
organisations tends to be low: for 
example, in civic or community groups it 
ranges from 2 per cent for residents' club 
to 4 per cent for parents' associations-
though participation tends to be higher 
among white-collar workers. Even in 
trade unions, passive membership is onlyexceptionally translated into active participation. 
More striking still is the experience 
of the Consumers Association, the 
prototype, one might think, of an organisation 
with a membership dedicated to 
the idea of involvement and participation.
Currently, the Consumers Association ha 
250,000 subscribers entitled to become 
voting members: yet of these fewer than 
2,500-or one per cent-have chosen to 
become such members and only some 200 
of this minority turn up at the Association's 
annual meeting. 

In this passivity non-participants are behaving 
more rationally than the all out 
advocates of participation. For moving 
on to the second proposition in favour of 
participation-the moral imperative approach-
the arguments in its favour seem 
even more dubious than that for the first. 
In the first place, the individual participator 
in any except small groups has verylittle chance of affecting decisions. Then 
again, to participate effectively means acquiring 
information; but acquiring information 
is a time consuming and 
expensive business where the effort involved 
very seldom brings any equivalent 
returns (which is why most citizens invest 
so little in acquainting themselves about 
the details of politics: an ignorance which 
tends to shock moral participators but 
is far more rational than attempts to 
acquire knowledge that could be put 
to no practical use). Lastly, most 
decision making machinery works onlybecause of the large element of non-
participation: for instance, the House of 
Commons depends upon the willingnessof a large number of MPS to be lobbyfodder, leaving active participation in 
peech making to a rather mall minority. 

So far this discussion has deliberately side 
stepped the question of what participationactually means. Most definitions are unsatisfactory. 
For example, the Skeffington ' 
Committee's " the act of sharing in the 
formulation of policies and proposals " is 
a tautology. What does" sharing" mean? 
At one end of the spectrum it can mean 
the right of being informed or consulted. 
This is an important concept in itself,
particularly in a closed political systemlike the British. But it still represents the 
weak concept of participation-which at 
the other end of the spectrum surely 
means involvement in the decision makingitself, conceivably even (on the model of 
the Polish diet) the right to veto. 

Perhaps this difficulty of defining the 
means of participation is inevitable, giventhe confusion about the aims of participation. 
If one rejects the view that participation 
is a natural human need andI or 
a sort of moral Swedish drill, then perhaps 
the most useful working concept is 
to think of participation as a means for 
securing benefits or advantages. These can 
be psychic benefits (a sense of doing good,
the satisfaction drawn from manipulatingother people). Or they can be material 
benefits (control of resources, access to 
power which will bring resources). Either 
way this approach allows one to look at 
the problems of participation in the 
National Health Service-or any other 
area of activity-in a non-mystical way.
Rather than assuming that the case for 
participation does not need arguing, it 
starts from the proposition that participation 
has first to be shown ·
··to be in the 
interests of the potential participator-a 
seemingly crashing platitude which yet is 
so often ignored. 

The conventional case for participation in 
the NHS can be easily sketched out. Here 
is a £2,000 million a year organisation,
whose raw material is human beings:
5,000,000 people a year go into hospital 
as in-patients and 32,000,000 visit them as 
out-patients, with another 200 million 
contacts between the general practitionerand his clients. Yet Parliamentary control 
is largely mythical, and a series of reportsinto hospital scandals has now shown that 
the lay representatives on management 


committees are often ineffective representatives 
of the consumer intere t. Further,
the emphasis in present proposals for 
changing the administrative machinery of 
the NHS is on improving management, 
not on reinforcing consumer influence 
or power. 

But consumer influence or power over 
. what? Here it is important to stress what 
is a crucial distinction between the allocation 
of resources and their use at the point 
·of delivery. The consumer of health services 
(and of any other publicly provided 
services, for that matter) has a double 
interest. The first is to get the maximum 
possible in the way of resources for him. 
self, his family and his community-
more hospitals, more GPs, more nurses 
and so on. Although the simple equation 
of " more resources equal a better 
. service " does not hold, other thingsbeing equal, he will benefit from increas. 
ing his share of what is going in the wayof medical manpower and other services. 
The consumer's other interest is to have a 

· say in how resources are organi ed and 
administered-the way in which services 
are run. 

If in fact we were prepared to contemplate 
more local consumer influence or 
power over the allocation of resources,
then it would be logical to assun1e a high 
degree of participation-and to design our 
system of health care accordingly. The 
American experience of community action 
suggests that participation is high when it 
involves access to extra resources of 
health or education or money for the 
blacks and other poor sections of the 
population, but that the whole experiment 
tends to turn sour when in fact those in 
power are not prepared to concede 
control. 

But in the British context is it possible to 
conceive giving more control over the 
allocation of resources to the local consumer? 
In education, despite the existence 
of elected bodies, this has not happened; 
on the contrary, the central Government 
prevents Local Education Authorities 
from improving the , quality of their services 
beyond a certain point. In health, 
almost exclusively Treasury financed, it 

is even more difficult to see the Department 
of Health allowing any local discretion 
in this respect ; the present drift 
of policy is in precisely the oppositedirection-all the emphasis is on ironing 
out the historical inequalities in the provision 
of medical services. 

Here then is the dilemma. The logic of 
encouraging participation in decisions 
about the allocation of resources is to 
encourage also-or at the very least, to 
accept-inequality, perhaps even to increase 
it. It is to accept, for example, a 
community paying to keep a local hospital 
open (much as it can already pay, out of 
rates, to keep a local bus line operating) . 
If this were to become the accepted 
pattern if in fact participation were linked 
to local self-interest-as it is in Finland, 
where the hospital service is run by local 
authorities many of which are no bigger 
than a parish council-then a highdegree of public involvement would be 
linked with a degree of inequality in the 
level of provjsion: by and large, one 
would expect middle class communities to 
take out a sort of collective BUPA policy 
to improve their local health service 
facilities. In short, it is possible to conceive 
of a policy deliberately designed to 
bring about greater participation and a 
greater flow of funds for public services 
by deliberately exploiting what has been 
called the " law of consumer differentiation 
" (Anthony Downs and R. JosephMonsen, " Public goods and privatestatus," The public interest, no 23, Spring 
1971). 

A great deal of existing evidence can be 
mustered in support of this view. Take the 
field of town planning, where participation 
through local groups has been perhaps 
most effective in recent years. It has been 
effective for two reasons. The participators 
have had a direct self-interest, usually 
economic, to defend their own interest 
(this motorway will disturb the peace of 
my garden and lower the value of myhouse). Equally participation in planning 
protests is usually· a classic example of 
consumer differentiation : the protesters 
usually want someone else to ~?-ave t~e 
motorway and its accompanying clis:.. 
amenities. In the NHS, similarly, perhaps 


the only hitherto successful examples of 
spontaneous, participatory protest movements 
occur when a local hospital or 
casualty out-patient department is threatened 
with closure: again a specific local 
interest is being defended-the right of a 
particular community to have a "better" 
service is being asserted, even at the cost 
of perpetuating what may be an unequaland inefficient allocation of resources as 
measured by the quality of the medical 
service provided and the wasteful use of 
scarce manpower. 

Hence what seems to be the first law of 
participation. participation will increase in 
direct proportion to the resources at stake, 
and to the ability of the participators to 
affect the distribution of those resources. 
If we want a bureaucratically rational 
distribution of resources, if we want to 
put the emphasis on egalitarianism, then 
it is both futile and hypocritical to t~lk 
about participation except in the weakest 
sense as a programme of public consultation 
and education. 

Equally, to encourage participation (however 
defined) in decisions about the allocation 
of resources might well increase 
the existing bias toward~ those parts of 
the NHS which service the needs of the 
majority of the population as distinct 
from minorities. By definition it is the 
consumers of acute hospital services as 
distinct from the mentally handicapped, 
the chronically ill or the aged, who are 
best able to assert themselves. To introduce 
participation, in place of the present(reasonably benevolent) political bureaucratic 
paternalism, which could therefore 
lead to an even greater imbalance in the 
distribution of resources. 

So much for participation in decisions 
about the allocation of resources. But 
what about decisions about how those 
resources should be used? Here again it 
is important to distinguish. In the health 
service, decisions about the use of resources 
fall into two main categories 
though they may be taken by the same 
people: 

1. Technical or professional decisions 
about treatment. 
2. Administrative decisions about the 
organisation or delivery of care. 
The first category is largely that of decisions 
made by members of the n1edical 
profession (though other health professionals, 
nurses, for instance, may have an 
occasional say). It is in this respectthat the health service is, if not unique, 
very much a special case-interesting and 
important precisely because it raises in a 
highly developed form a problem which 
is only beginning to make itself felt in 
education and other social services. 

Put very simply, the problem is that posedby a universal service where a profession 
manages to establish both a monopoly of 
technical know how and control of entry.
As a result, the health service is perhaps 
the only example in Britain of effective 
workers' control : consultant syndicalism 
in action. To discuss consumer participation 
in the NHS is therefore to discuss, in 
effect, the relationship between the patientand his doctor: to ask whether a profession 
can be ma:de answerable for its 
performance. 

At present patients only " participate " in 
the sense that churchgoers " participate " 
in the mass. There may be a mystic communion, 
but there can be no doubt as to 
who is in charge of the service. Althoughmuch of modern medicine is no more 
mysterious (though perhaps more complex) 
than car engineering, the profession's 
approach still bears the imprint of 
its pre-scientific past when, indeed, a 
doctor's manner and authority was probably 
the most effective tool of his trade. 
Equally, one of the main effects of the 
introduction of the NHS in Britain so far 
has been to weaken the bargaining position 
of the consumer. 

To equate the strength of the consumer's 
bargaining position with a fee paying 
system of medical care is, of course, to 
make a misleading over-simplification.
Even assuming that it were possible to 
give consumers the necessary economic 
resources for successful bargaining-by a 
system of health vouchers, for example-
the patient's position is still much weaker 
than that of a shopper or voter. Neither 


the acutely ill nor the geriatric patient (to 
take the two extremes) is in a position to 
bargain ; only in the middle-the area of 
what might be called optional, convenience 
or cosmetic medicine-does the 
participation through consumer choice 
model begin to make sense. What is more, 
a market system may often work against 
the consumer interest. 

However, to acknowledge the weaknesses 
of this model should not mean ignoringthe flaws in the NHS model. Admittedly, 
the British system does not give the doctor 
any incentive to exploit the patient, for 
instance by carrying out unnecessaryoperations and procedures. But neither 
does it give him any incentive to pay anyheed to the wishes of the patient. The 
NHS has enlarged the doctor's area of 
choice (since he is no longer restrained by 
his patient's lack of means) but not that 
of the consumer. Arguably indeed the 
consumer's choice is shrinking the whole 
time as the organisation of the health 
service becomes technically, if not necessarily 
socially, more ''rational." For 
rationalisation means closing down hospitals, 
enlarging group practices, concentrating 
resources with medical supermarkets 
eliminating the small shopkeeper and so 
reducing the area of choice. 

Moreover, the consumer's role is also being 
diminished, irrespective of the nature of 
the medical care system, by the growing 
technical complexity of much of medicine 
today. What may be called the information 
costs of any attempt at participatingin medical decisions are growing the 
whole time. In other words, a patient has 
to acquire a considerable amount of 
expertise in order to be able to argue with 
his doctor which means devoting more 
time than most people can afford to the 
acquisition of what will be only sporadically 
useful knowledge. 

In short, it is rational for the averagepatient to remain ignorant. For as a consumer 
of medical services he is in a 
different position from that of a consumer 
of most other services in a number 
of respects. For example, he is only going 
to use medical services from time to time. 

o he has little incentive to acquire information 
in advance of use-since this 
may (if he is fortunate) be information 
wasted. But when he has to use those 
services, he will often be in no position 
to acquire the information needed to 
establish an effective dialogue with his 
doctor: a man in an acute care unit, to 
take an extreme example, is not well 
placed to read the literature about heart 
disease. 

Hence the position of power occupied by 
the medical profession. Not only does the 
consumer of medical care lack the knowledge 
required to participate effectively in 
decisions about treatment-quite apartfrom any emotional deference. But the 
sensible consumer of medicine is not 
going to waste his time acquiring that 
knowledge. For even if he had the required 
knowledge to discuss techniquesof treatment with his doctor, it is uncertain 
whether he could affect the medical 
decision. And what might be called 
the second law of participation is that 
investment in information is proportionate 
to the chances of changing any 
decision: the greater the odds on changing 
the decision, the more _rational it is to 
invest in information, and vice versa. 

The possibly depressing conclusion seems 
to be that prospects of more patient participation 
in treatment decisions are 
dim. On the other side of the balance 
sheet, though, the fastest growing areas 
of medical care are those which maypersuade doctors actively to seek the cooperation 
of their patients in treating or 
preventing disease: coronary disease and 
cancer are the outstanding examples, 
where the medical profession will have to 
try to educate and involve the consumer 
in an attempt to modify habits. Paradoxically, 
therefore, the medical profession 
may have to take the initiative in this 
direction, though this carries the implication 
that the task may be defined paternalistically 
as " educating " the patient, 
rather than an exercise in consumerI 
producer co-operation. 

The consumer is, however, much better 
placed when it comes to the organisation 
or administration of medical care. For 
here, in a sense, the patient automatical1y 


acquires the information needed for participation 
by the very fact of being a 
patient. If waiting times are excessive, if 
meals are bad, if staff are rude or uncommunicative, 
if appointments cannot 
be made for weeks to come, if visiting 
hours are inconvenient, who is better 
placed to know than the patient? The 
consumer may lack the knowledge about 
whether he is getting the right treatment 
but he certainly knows whether or not 
the treatment is being delivered in the 
right way though to judge from the evidence 
about the present high rate of consumer 
satisfaction with the NHS, patientexpectations are pitched on the low side 
and the most common attitude is that it 
would be ungrateful to complain. 

So if there is scope for pa6ent participation 
anywhere in the NHS, it is clearly in 
this area. Indeed in a very tentative and 
haphazard way, there have already been 
some moves in this direction. One hospital 
has set up a patient's affairs department ; 
another has experimentally interviewed 
patients on discharge to find out their 
views about their stay. However, the prospect 
of regular surveys of patient attitudes, 
carried out as a matter of routine 
in all hospitals, seems remote ; h i 
still exceptional to find hospitals which 
analyse patient complaints in a systematic 
way or treat them positively as basic 
management information about customer 
wishes, instead of regarding them as 
a nuisance. There is no problem about 
prescribing ways in which patient partidpation 
could be extended. For example, 
why not have a patient doctor committee 
attached to every new health centre? Why 
not invite patient comments and discussion 
about such matters as the organisation 
of appointment systems or waitinglists. However, it would again be over optimistic 
to ignore the potential obstacles. 
To begin with (to repeat and elaborate an 
earlier point) it is misleading to talk about 
the consumer of health services-in the 
sort of way that it is possible to talk of 
the consumer of other, more standardised 
services. There are different consumers 
whose interests may well be different: for 
example, the elderly and mothers of small 
children might have very different ideas 
about the organisation of waiting rooms. 

hen, again, different con umer vary in 
their capacity to participate effectively: 
clearly the mentally handicapped or 
acutely ill patient is not well placed to 
make his or her views felt (which is not 
to say that it should be automaticallyassumed, as so often now, that they have 
none to which it is worth paying attention). 
Again the parent who invests time 
participating in a school comn1ittee knows 
that this will have a definite pay-off, in 
that the children will be there for a 
spedfic nun1ber of years ; but it is difficult 
to be certain about the return on 
effort in the health service-any wou1dbe 
participant who does a cost-benefit 
exercise could well decide that it is not 
worthwhile arguing about a casualty department 
(say) which he may never use. 
Lastly, there is the recurring and endemic 
problem which is peculiar to the health 
service, although it may spread to other 
public services as these become more 
profession-dominated. To the extent that 
the NHS is an example of producer-participation, 
and the junior doctors and nurse 
are now trying to extend the principle of 
workers' control to cover themselves as 
well as the consultants, so it is difficult to 
introduce consumer-participation. For 
even organisational issues can affect the 
professional autonomy of the staff. Arguments 
about appointment systems are 
often arguments about whether the time 
of doctors or patients is more valuable ; 
arguments about visitors or waking hours 
are often arguments about whether the 
convenience of the staff or of the patients 
should be the decisive consideration. There 
is a direct conflict of interest here, particularly 
since the existence of the NHS 
guarantees the professional staff a captive 
clientele and there is no need to try to 
attract customers by making the service 
more attractive and consumer orientated. 
Given that a monopoly profession is 
responsible for a monopoly health service 
and has a virtual monopoly of technical 
expertise and information, .it is difficult to 
be hopeful about the ability of the consumer 
to become an effective participant 
in the running of the NHs-however 
desirable this might be in theory. 

Given the inevitable weakness of the consumer 
in a service like the NHS, given the 


problems of obtaining and u ing the information 
required for effective participation, 
it may be that a rather different 
approach is required. This is to acceptthat consumer participation is bound to 
be sporadic and unsystematic, a reaction 
to specific events and developments rather 
than an on-going process, a matter not o 
much of committee work but of protests 
and pressures when something happen 
which allows a health lobby to be n1obHi 
ed. For once it is realised that participation 
is neither a moral duty nor a natural 
instinct or drive, that it is exceptionalrather than routine, it is then possible to 
devise machinery for deliberately strengthening 
the consumer's position in the NH • 
For what the NHS, and perhaps any monopoly 
service needs, is a counter-bureaucracy. 
The need appears to be for an 
organisation which exists to service the 
consumer of public monopolies like the 
NHS, which has the resources of manpower 
and expertise required to analysetheir performance from the point of view 
of the user. As the experience of the 
nationalised industries has shown, there is 
little point in setting up consultative cmnn1ittees 
and all the other paraphernalia of 
participation if they then lack the independent 
resources required to conduct a 
dialogue on equal terms. Similarly, it is 
difficult to be optimistic about the role 
of the proposed community health coundls 
if these were to lack the means of 
measuring the performance of the services 
in their area against some benchmark 
(however crude) of what wa de irabJe 
from the point of view of the con umer 
and the best practices el ewhere. 

At present it is the absence of publiclyaccessible information about the performance 
of the health services at a local 
level, where it matters most to the conumer, 
that is remarkable. Even the mo t 
elementary facts about comparativelengths of waiting lists, staffing and so on 
are lacking (leaving aside the explosive 
ubject of information about the clinical 
performance of doctors to obtain which 
not only a counter-bureaucracy but an 
anti-profession would be needed). Some 
regional hospital boards do not even issue 
an annual report ; many of the Executive 
uncil , respon ible for general practice, 

issue nothing at all. On the whole even 
the members of hospital managementcommittees, let alone would be participators, 
are singularly badly equipped to 
evaluate the services provided on an 
independent, comparative basis and have 
to rely on the information provided by the 
professionals who run the hospitals. Nor 
is this surprising given the medical profession's 
own restrictions on doctor providing 
inforn1ation about their activitie 
to potential clients. 

Hence the case for deliberately setting 
out to create a counter-bureaucracy.
Indeed what might be called a consumer 
information or protection service seems 
to be much more urgent in the near 
monopoly area of public services like 
health than in that of the competitivemarket ; it is a pity that this whole issue 
has been so neglected by the consumer 
movement in this country which in effect 
has concentrated on the consumer a 
buyer to the exclusion of the consumer of 
public services. Yet arguably the latter i 
in an even more vulnerable position. 
Some of the elements of a counter-bureaucracy 
already exist. There is the school 
inspectorate. There is the Hospital Advisory 
Service. There is the Parliamentary 
Commissioner, soon to be reinforced by 
the Health Commissioner. An inspectoratefor local government has been proposed. 
But one of the main characteristics of 
most of these institutions is their lack of 
direct responsibility to those actually using 
the services : thus the Hospital Advisory 
Service submits its detailed findings to the 
health authorities, not to the consumer 
of health services : its annual report gives 
general conclusion not the details relevant 
to local users. 

The role of a counter bureaucracy hould 
not be to interfere administratively or 
judicially, with the operation of the 
health service, It should be, though, to 
alert the public to specific weaknesses and 
to provide the information required by 
the consumer if he is to assess the quality 
of his local service. This at least would 
provoke informed debate and feed local 
pressure groups with evidence for ammunition-
perhaps the best form of 
participati n which we can hope f r. 


4. opening up the planning 
process 

Peter Levin 

Every proposal for significantly changing 
the physical environment in Britain has to 
pass through a prescribed procedure of 
some kind. These offer varying degrees of 
scope for public involvement. In the case 
of projects sponsored by central or local 
government or statutory undertakers, the 
procedure usually provides an opportunityfor the public to register objections,
generally followed by a public inquiry, 
and a formal decision from the appropriate 
government minister. Ordinary development 
proposals have to be submitted 
to the local planning authority for planning 
permission. Refusal, or the attachment 
of conditions to going ahead, maylead to an appeal to the Secretary of 
State for the Environment, and the appeal 
will be the subject of an inquiry prior to 
decision. (Certain planning applications 
are " called-in " by the Secretary of State 
for his own decision, the application itself 
-rather than an appeal-being the subject 
of the inquiry which is generally held.) 
Then there are the statutory development 
plans, which indicate the local planning 
authorities' proposals for the way that 
land should be used. Development plans 
have invariably been subjected to a public 
inquiry before receiving ministerial approval. 
The development plan system is 
currently in the throes of major change, 
but the public scrutiny of proposals will 
continue to play a major part. All of the 
current procedures have been criticised 
as offering too little scope for public involvement: 
this chapter sets out to show 
why this scope is as restricted as it is and 
to suggest how it might be extended, . in 
particular by the modification of procedures 
and by ttte action of citizen 
groups. 

the nature of the planning 
process 

Stautory procedures are only part of the 
planning process. One needs to look 
further to discover how, in practice, 
actions that change the physical environment 
get determined-how a particulardevelopment comes into being, and why 
it takes that form and not another. One 
well known approach to the problem is to 
look for decisions. For example, one 
might ask the Town Clerk of the Muni


icpal Borough of Exbury what the decisions 
were that resulted in the buildingof a certain housing estate consisting of 
six tower blocks for his Council. The 
conversation with him might run alongthe following lines: 

" When did the Council decide to goahead with the scheme?" 

" The final decision, I suppose, was when 
the Council accepted the contractors' 
tender in 1965 after hearing that the 
Ministry of Housing had no objection to 
our doing so. But after hearing from the 
Ministry our acceptance was virtuallyinevitable, since the figure was what the 
Council expected when tenders were invited. 
We already had planning permission 
from the County Council, of course." 

" Was going out to tender the result of a 
formal decision?" 

" Yes indeed. That was the decision to 
proceed on the basis of the scheme 
recommended by the Housing Committee, 
The scheme itself had been drawn up by 
a firm of consultant architects, who had 
been commissioned by our Chief 
Architect." 

" Was that decision to proceed the crucial 
decision?" 

" Well, it was important. Actually there 
was some suggestion of scrapping three of 
the towers and having long, low blocks 
instead, but the Council more or less had 
to accept the scheme as it stood, because 
if they'd wanted major modifications the 
design work alone would have set the 
scheme back 6 or 9 months. And discussions 
would have had to be reopened with 
the Ministry's regional architect, who had 
already given his informal approval. We 
would also have had to go back to the 
County Council for fresh planning permission. 
Moreover the contractors who 
were coming towards the end of the 
Council's previous building project had 
been given to understand in fairly clear 
terms that they would be able to carry on 
with this one without a break, using the 
same industrialised building methods. So 
in practice the Council didn't have much 


choice so far as the design was concerned, 
given that they wanted a housing 
scheme in the first place. They'd have 
looked pretty silly if they'd suddenly decided 
to abandon the whole thing." · 

"The crucial decision must have been 
taken earlier, then. Was it the HousingCommittee's acceptance of the final 
scheme?" 

· " That was important too. But the 
Housing Committee would have been 
faced with the same deterrents to modification 
or abandonment at that point as 
the full Council were shortly after. And 
it was they who had already agreed at the 
draft layout stage on a six tower block 
scheme. On the basis of their agreement 
planning permission had been obtained 
from the County Council, an informal go 
ahead received from the Ministry'sregional architect, and a great deal of 
work put into producing the detailed 
design." 

" So the Housing Committee's decision to 
accept the draft layout was a crucial 
one?" 

" Well, fairly crucial. But their options 
were limited. The consultant architects 
submitted five draft schemes, of which 
only one did not feature tower blocks 
and that one was demonstrably inferior 
on several counts, for example in making 
less provision for children's play and car 
parking. They emphasised very strongly 
that in their professional judgment tower 
blocks offered the best architectural solution 
to the problem." 

~~ It sounds as though the choice of 
architects was a crucial decision too." 

" Certainly commissioning them set the 
seal on the Council's desire to have the 
housing scheme, and the choice certainly 
had an important influence on the design. 
But, as our Chief Architect subsequently 
pointed out, the size and shape of the site 
definitely made it more difficult-though 
not nnpossible-to devise a non-tower 
block scheme. In fact, it might have been 
possible to buy some adjoining land, but 
the opportunity wasn't taken." 

"A crucial non-decision, perhaps?" 

" It was another important influence on 
the design, yes. Like the fact that at the 
time it wasn't our practice to involve the 
Housing Manager in briefing the consultant 
architects on such schemes. He 
already knew very well of the problems 
of families with young children in tower 
blocks, and had discovered how difficult 
it was to find tenants for the tower blocks 
the Council had already built. He would 
have warned the Housing Committee off 
tower blocks for sure." 

Although this story is fictitious, it represents 
a compressed "collage" of experiences 
that are by no means untypical of 
real life. It shows how the administrative 
context of the design process can influence 
the product of that process. And it 
illustrates the well known fact that once 
a proposal takes shape administrative 
procedures and the passage of time can 
endow it with a " momentum " that 
makes it very difficult to alter. 

For the purpose of charting the progress 
of a planning process, the concept of 
"momentum," although graphic, is not 
entirely satisfactory. It will be more useful 
to employ another concept, that of 
" commitment." An individual has a 
commitment towards taking a particularaction if he perceives a penalty to be 
attached to not taking that action. (It maybe a penalty for himself personally or for 
the group to which he belongs.) Commitment 
towards a course of action is a 
relative quantity, and its strength will be 
measured by the penalty perceived to be 
associated with substituting another action 
or no action at all, before it is implemented. 
Once it is fully implemented 
commitment to it is complete-! 00 per 
cent-since no change will thereafter be 
possible. The existence of commitment, 
it should be noted, does not actually 
determine that the action takes place: it 
will sometimes be considered worth 
paying the penalty. 

In the above example, councillors di covered 
when they came to take the final, 
formal decision that they already had a 
very strong commitment towards accept



ing the scheme as it stood, with six tower 
blocks. Had they rejected it they would 
have borne responsibility for delaying the 
rehousing of families in need and for the 
waste of money involved ; they would 
have risked forfeiting the confidence of 
others by breaking a gentlemen's agreement; 
and they would have suffered los 
of " face " through failing to defend 
plausibly a decision for which they had 
been responsible, let alone the unpleasantness 
of having to destroy their psychological 
attachment to an action n which 
they had resolved. 

Given the commitment generating nature 
of the planning process, the problem of 
how to achieve participation in planning 
acquires a new dimension. The fundamental 
equation is this : the scope for 
influencing a prospective action decreases 
as the decision making body's commit! 
ment to going ahead strengthens. Un1 
fortunately for participation, many cur/ 
rent planning procedures are very effec


tive at producing commitment ; theymight almost have been designed to do 
so. Seen from the point of view of the 
public, the people on the receiving end, 
many planning procedures are simply 
strategies for generating commitment, 
more or less secretly-strategies, in other 
words, for reducing the scope for public 
participation. 

strategies for generating 
commitment 


Some commitment generating strategies 
will already be apparent from the tower-
block story. Here is a " classified " list. 

1. Administrative investment. This strategy 
involves investing scarce administrative 
resources in a project before a formal 
decision has been taken, resources such as 
the time and effort of not to be alienated 
senior and specialised staff. To take a 
formal decision that substitutes a different 
project would then be to throw time and 
effort down the drain and to incur the 
penalities of responsibility for this waste 
and the alienation of people on whose 
support and goodwill one depends. Administrative 
investment is one of the 
elements of the process that Lord Bridges 
described in The Listener (25 June 1964) : 
" The experience of anyone who has 
worked in Whitehall is that there is an 
early stage in any project when things are 
fluid; when, if you are in touch with 
those concerned and get hold of the facts 
it is fairly easy to influence decisions. But 
after a scheme has been worked on for 
weeks and months, and has hardened into 
a particular shape, and come up for 
formal decisions, then it is often verydifficult to do anything except either approve 
it or throw it overboard." Lord 
Bridges might have added that there is 
invariably a penalty-the loss of the 
administrative investment-attached to 
throwing the scheme overboard. In other 
words, there is a commitment towards 
accepting the scheme rather than rejectingit, as well as a commitment towards 
accepting that schen1e rather than anyother. 

2. Multiple clearance. This strategy, which 
is the second element of the process described 
by Lord Bridges, involves getting 
approval for a project from as many influential 
officials and politicians as possible 
before it is made public and its 
contentiousness becomes apparent. Approval 
together with positive support may 
be given in return for support for another 
person's project: in effect a bargain is 
struck, with both sides incurring a commitment. 
Sometimes adn;1inistrative procedures 
will actually require a proposalto be cleared with other officials before it 
has been properly investigated or exposedto public view: for example, a new town 
proposal will be submitted to the Cabinet 
for approval and to the Treasury for an 
allocation of funds before being subjected 
to detailed study and public scrutiny. The 
effect of such multiple clearance procedures 
is obviously to increase the nun1ber 
of people who have staked their 
judgment on the project and who therefore 
have something to lose by subsequently 
acknowledging defects in it. A 
potentially dangerous form of n1ultipleclearance can arise in a developmentcontrol situation, if some arrangementsuch as a joint working party consisting 
of developers and their architects and 
local authority planners is formed to 
work on a scheme to be submitted for 

planning perm1sswn. The schcrr.e sub


! mitted will embody some of the planning 
officers' recommendations and conform 
in significant respects to their professional 
judgment. The members of the planning 
committee will inevitably be under some 
obligation to heed their officers' views, 
and therefore will find themselves committed 
in some degree to allowing the 
scheme to go through. The scheme will 
not have been publicised until formally 
submitted to the council (possibly not 
even then), so this commitment will have 
been generated in virtual secrecy. It i 
likely to require a very powerful and 
widely suported protest to prevent the 
giving of planning permission at this stage 
-as did in fact occur in the ca e of the 
Piccadilly proposals produced in May
1972, proposals that were the fruits of 
close collaboration between Westminster 
City Council's planners and three firm of 
developers. 



3. The single proposal procedure. Development 
proposals have to be putthrough various administrative procedures, 
most of which are designed to deal with 
only a single proposal. Most public inquiries, 
for example, are inquiries into a 
single proposal only or into objections to 
a single proposal only. If a proposal is 
rejected after the inquiry, it will take 
several months-if not a year, or even 
two-to bring an alternative proposal to 
the same stage, a substantial part of this 
period being taken up with repeating the 
statutory procedures. The proposal funnelled 
into such a procedure may be 
shown at the inquiry stage to be plainly 
inferior to others, but it will possess a 1 
head start by virtue of the fact that it can 
be implemented sooner. As the Minister 
of Transport (Barbara Castle) put it when 
rejecting the recommendation of her 
Inspector, Sir John Evans, after a public 
inquiry, that the M3 motorway from 
Sunburry Cross to Popham should be 
diverted at its London end: " To abandon 
the published route and adopt the more 
southerly route in Surrey would mean 
republication of the scheme and this 
would delay construction of the motorway 
by at least a year, with a consequential 
loss of its benefits to the community." 
It does indeed happen on occasion that 
despite the attendant penalty a proposalis abandoned following an adverse reportfrom a public inquiry. One can safely say 
that if an alternative is then put throughthe procedural obstacle course the likelihood 
of its being rejected will be exceedingly 
small, not only because of the delayeffects but because of what is at stake 
psychologically and politically. This mayhave interesting effects. Roy Gregory, in 
his recent book The price of amenity(Macmillan 1971), describes how the 
Central Electricity Generating Board's 
application to build a power station at 
Holme Pierrepont was turned down after 
a public inquiry, while their second application, 
to build at Ratcliffe-on-Soar 
instead, was accepted. Gregory suggests-
and his argument is very difficult to resist 
-that had the order of the applications 
been reversed, so might have been the 
outcome. In other words the one proposal 
at a time procedure was such as to generate 
an overwhelming commitment to the 
proposal that happened to be put forward 
the second time round. One may note that 
the inhabitants of Ratcliffe-on-Soar participated 
hardly at all in reaching the 
decision on Holme Pierrepont, which was 
to generate so great a commitment towards 
the Ratcliffe-on-Soar site. 

4. The limited study. The technique here 
is to commis ion a study with terms of 
reference that guarantee a favourable 
re ult. There will be a good chance that 
the storm will not break until the report 
on the study is actually published. Although 
objectors and inspectors who hold 
public inquiries may argue that further 
study is needed, such pleadings are easily 
rebuffed. To quote from the Minister of 
Housing's decision letter on the Central 
Lancashire New Town: "It would require 
further detailed and extensive study 
to establish how satisfactory and economical 
a form of development could be 
devised for the town as a whole ... The 
Minister is not persuaded that the point 
advanced by the Inspector indicate the 
prospect of a more satisfactory and 
economical form . . , The Minister is not 
persuaded that further examination of the 
possibility . . . is justified." A limited 
study is often presented in the guise of a 
"feasibility study," a term which suggests 

that it is commitment free, implying as it 
does that no decision has yet been taken 
and that the only outcome of the study 
will be information. In practice virtually \ 
anything is feasible-it is feasible to build 
a new town practically anywhere in 
Britain, although the costs and benefits 
would vary-and once a desired course 
has been shown to be feasible it will be 
quite easy to discover reasons for not 
investigating others. So the outcome of 
the study is not merely information but 
commitment too. 

5. The deadline. The point about a deadline 
is that a penalty is paid if the deadline 
is not met. A common, recurringdeadline for government bodies which 
operate on annual budgets is the end of 
the financial year, by which point a yearly 
allocation of finance may have to be 
spent or it will be forfeited (and next 
year's allocation possibly reduced). A 
non-recurring deadline is created when, 
for example, notice is given that an 
Exchequer subsidy is to be withdrawn, It 
was the approaching end of the hotel 
building subsidy in March 1971 that led 
to Bristol Corporation giving outline planning 
permission for an 8-storey hotel in 
the Avon gorge only 22 days after the 
application was submitted. The nearer to 
a deadline that a body takes (or causes 
another body to take) a decision, the 
greater the probability that a penalty will 
be paid if the decision is re-opened. A 
skilled senior civil servant or local government 
officer will be able to create administrative 
deadlines by arranging that the 
work of his department-the more the 
better-will be held up if a decision is not 
given by a certain point in time. In recent 
years this art has been dignified by the 
title of ~,critical path programming."
Originally-and ostensibly still-aimed at 
increasing efficiency by minimising the 
overall time taken on a multi-activityproject, the technique involves identifying 
the particular sub-sequence or " path " of 
activities on which the overall time critically 
depends and then ensuring that these 
activities follow one another without 
intermission. The effect is to interlock the 
total programme of activities in such a 
way as to maximise the disruption caused 
by a delay. The use of such techniques 
clearly ~'uts a great deal of power into the 
hands of the officials and technical experts 
who prepare and execute them. In an 
article in Community Action (July-August1972), Bob Hudson, a Sunderland City 
Councillor, has described how his Council 
submitted a Compulsory Purchase Order 
to the Department of the Environment 
five weeks ahead of the time indicated on 
the critical path programme that had been 
drawn up. This was done, it seems, in 
order to forestall a movement by councillors 
opposed to the Order-who 

· 
assumed that they had five more weeks to 
work in-to have the matter reconsidered. 
The five year rolling programme is another 
management device that could concentrate 
power in the hands of officials,
both in central and in local government. 
Nothing that results will enable the 
politician who participates in drawing it 
up to get any credit by the time that he is 
up for re-election. So his attention maywell be diverted to more immediatelypressing matters. But once the programme 
has got under way he or a new politician 
coming into office is liable to find that it 
has gathered so much commitment that 
he can do very little to modify it, let 
alone halt it. 

6. The unpublicised decision. The most 
elementary way of generating a commitment 
secretly is simply to take a formal 
decision without publicising the fact. This 
does sometimes happen with applications 
for planning permission that are approved 
by the local planning authority and not 
called in by the Secretary of State, and so 
are not the subject of a public inquiry. 
Many authorities, although by no means 
all, do make a point of notifying individuals 
and groups whom they consider are 
likely to be affected if a planning application 
goes through, but even in these 
cases notification is likely to be patchy. 
Thus when a landlord puts in an appli-1 
cation to redevelop his property, adjoining 
owners may well be notified while 
tenants actually living in the house are 
not. The Stevenson Committee found that 
it was " quite possible for an importantproject to be approved by the local 
authority without any of those likely to 
be affected being' aware of it " (Fiftymillion volunteers, HMSO, 1972). A new 

variation on the unpublicised decision has 
come into prominence recently in connection 
with schemes for building large 
office blocks in London. These are 
r schemes for which the developer has to 
get an Office Development Permit from 
the Secretary of State for the Environment 
before he can apply for planning permission 
to the local planning authority.
Under the Town and Country PlanningAct 1971 the Secretary of State, in exercising 
his discretion, has only to "have 
particular regard to the need for promoting 
the better distribution of employmentin Great Britain," but the way in which 
some ooPs have recently been handed out 
(notably in connection with the Piccadilly 
scheme) demonstrates clearly that local 
planning considerations were taken into 
account and that the permits were part of 
a bargain between the developers, the 
Secretary of State, and the local planning 
authority (the " multiple clearance " strategy 
at work). There is no provision for 

. public participation in ODP decisions, or 
even for publicity for ODP applications, so 
if giving the permit is part of a bargainthe local planning authority will thereby 
incur a strong commitment towards giving 
planning permission even though formal 
application for it has not yet been made. 
If the local authority should refuse planning 
permission, the developer can appeal 
to none other than the Secretary of State 
for the Environment. And if he has taken 
planning considerations into·.account when 
reaching-in virtual secrecy-his decision 
to give an ODP he will be strongly committed 
towards allowing the developer's 
appeal. 

7. The obscured decision. This is a 
strategy for obscuring a very specificdecision behind another decision-possibly 
at a general or " policy " level-
from which it will necessarily follow and 
hence is the subject of a strong but hidden 
commitment. For example, rather than 
put forward a plan showing a new housing 
estate on the edge of a town connected to 
the existing road network by a link road 
that can only be placed where it will 
obliterate a children's playground, or a 
small wood, or a group of attractive cottages, 
a local authority might put forward 
imply the policy of re-zoning the 

" white " land for housing. Such a policy 
could well arouse no opposition, and be 
ratified without difficulty. Only when the 
inevitable implications became apparentwould there be an outcry, but at that 
stage, numerous penalties of one kind or 
another may have to be paid if the policy 
decision is to be reversed. 

8. The segregated decision. Strictly speaking, 
this is a variation on the obscured 
decision, the obscurity arising out of the 
fact that the decision is on the face of it 
concerned with a different and separate 
area of community life or local authority 
activity. Thus, a decision to clear "undesirable 
elements" out of a neighbourhood-
low income, overcrowded furnished 
tenants, let us say-could be manifested 
as a decision to create an environmental 
area, complete with tree planting, 
cobblestones, flowers in tubs and the 
exclusion of through traffic. This would 
be a " planning decision," not a " housing 
decision," ostensibly for the benefit of 
all those living within the area. Onlywhen, through the workings of the housing 
market, the furnished tenants were supplanted 
by well to do owner occupiers,
would the nature of the original decision 
become apparent. By which time it would 
manifestly be too late to do much about 
reversing the changes. 
9. The contractual bind. A local planning 
authority has at its disposal various ways 
of binding itself to carry out or permitthe development of a particular site. The 
granting of planning permission is one 
such way. The bind arises through the 
fact that once permission is granted, to 
revoke it generally carries a penalty in 
that compensation is payable by the 
authority for the loss or damage that 
results. When the permission is for an 
office block in central London, the cost of 
revoking it can run into million of pounds. 
Accordingly, just as a route for a motorway 
can be safeguarded by refusing planning 
permission for development in its 
path, possible alternative routes can be 
made more costly by making a point of 
giving planning permission for development 
in their paths. This strategy lends 
itself to use in other situations too. Consider 
the case of a local council which 

22 


forsees itself being compelled to provide 
a camping site for gypsies and has identified 
two pieces of open land in its area 
that are suitable for the purpose. One of 
them might be particularly well suited 
but happens to be located near a "highclass " residential area where several 
councillors happen to live. By arranging 
for planning permission for housing to be 
sought for that site, and seeing that it is 
given, councillors can raise the cost of 
acquiring it and therby tilt the scales in 
favour of using the other. Even where the 
bind comes in the guise of an informal 
undertaking it may be no less strong,
since no public authority wishes to gain a 
reputation for failing to honour such 
undertakings, especially if it has manydealings with other authorities or developers 
and is dependent in any way 
upon them. 

10. Direct action. The principle here is to 
bring about changes in the physical environment 
or in behaviour patterns before 
embarking on the formal decision making 
process for a planning scheme. Then when 
the time comes for the formal decision, 
the costs and benefits of the range of 
possible schemes have been altered in 
such a way as to favour strongly the 
scheme originally prepared. This is the 
strategy to which the actions of the 
Ministry of Transport in recent years over 
the Archway to Mill Hill stretch of the 
Al conform. Eleven years ago the Ministry 
formulated a general plan (never subjected 
to a public inquiry) to widen the whole 
of this stretch. In places where there was 
no organised opposition it went ahead 
with widening and with improving junctions 
and alignments, which naturallyattracted more traffic to the route as a 
whole. By the time that a public inquiry 
was held, three years ago, in connec6on 
with the proposed widening of the Al 
where it ran through Hampstead Garden 
Suburb, these actions had succeeded in increasing 
significantly the penalty attached 
to not going ahead with the Ministry's 
scheme-a penalty measured not merelyin terms of traffic congestion and delay 
but also in terms of the waste of road 
capacity already provided elsewhere and 
not fully utilised. Another form of direct 
action is the engineering of planning 
blight, Pending a decision as to whether 
an area of Victorian housing is to be 
redeveloped, say, or to have a motorway 
run through it, a local council can cease 
to give mortgages or improvement grant 
on houses in the area. After some years 
of uncertainty, the area will have run 
down so far that when the time comes for 
a formal decision demolition is the only 
possible thing that can be done. Where 
the local authority owns the housing it 
can short-circuit this process by simply 
moving the tenants elsewhere and destroying 
all the fixtures and fittings, nominally 
to discourage squatters. This was the procedure 
adopted by the Greater London 
Council earlier this year in the case of 
Trentishoe Mansions, overlooking Can1bridge 
Circus in Charing Cross Road, 
after deciding to sell the site to a property 
company which wished to build a nineteen 
storey office block there. 

All these strategies have one thing in 
common. Their effect is to generate commitment 
to a proposed course of action-
to create a penalty for switching to an 
alternative-and to do so before the 
public come to appreciate the existence of 
the proposal. Benefits for the consumer 
would be deferred or lost, and the government 
would be held responsible; further 
study would be needed ; issues alreadysettled would have to be reopened; valued 
officials would be offended and alienated 
if work they had done were wasted ; 
credibility and " face " would be lost if 
the Council were to back down ; the trust 
of other officials or developers would be 
forfeited; long cherished dreams would 
have to be abandoned. 

A number of those commitments do of 
course vanish when control of governmentchanges hands from one party to another, 
since a new government does not inherit 
all the obligations of the old. The same is 
true when a ministerial post or committee 
chairmanship changes hands. But with 
costs and benefits for the consumer it is a 
different matter. These can be created, destroyed 
or otherwise irreversibly changed 
by direct action or simple delaying tactics. 
It is important to bear in mind, when told 
that issues should be considered on their 
merits, that merits are by no means 


intrinsic and unchangeable attribute of a 

proposed course of action. 

It would of course be quite wrong to 
· uggest that local and central govern. 
ments are staffed by sinister men, intent 
on putting one over on the citizen, and 
such a suggestion should not be read into 
what has been said earlier. The participa


•tion inhibiting strategies that have been 
described admittedly lend themselves to 
abuse, but often they are as much a trap 
for politicians and admini trators as for 
anyone else. It would seem to be in the 
best interests of all concerned, therefore, 
if administrative procedures could be 
modified in such a way as to suppress
· these strategies, 
or at least minin1ise their 
harmful effects. 

.improvements to 
·administrative procedures 

In the case of public authority projects it 
should be perfectly possible to devise 
procedures that restrict the amount of 
· administrative investment that may be 
n1ade in a single project prior to anyformal decision, for instance by splitting 
the formal decision into an interim decision 
(such as on a short list or outline 
but not ruling out additions to the short 
list or modifications to the outline as 
further investigations are made) as well as 
a final decision, with as wide participation 
in the interim decision as in the final one. 
There is a case too for ensuring that the 
process of getting initial approvals for a 
project is less secretive than at present. It 
has been repeatedly demonstrated that the 
single proposal procedure for publishingproposals and holding inquiries on them 
is quite inimical to genuine public participation 
; an inquiry into the merits of 
alternatives is far superior from that pointof view. When studies are commissioned 
their terms of reference ought to be widely 
publicised, together with some illustrations 
of what the findings could be and 
what they could lead to, which would 
certainly be a far greater stimulus to participation 
at a formative stage than the 
n1ere announcement that a study has been 
commi sioned, When a number of projects 
are combined in a long term pro-
gramme, a tock pile of approved im


plementation ready ones should always be 
maintained, so that if a new project i 
held up in the decision making proces 
the resources that it would have utilised 
can be diverted to one in the stock pile, 
thereby diminishing the penalty caused by 
the delay. There should be an onus on a 
promoting authority to show that the 
project it is putting forward is not merelya section of a greater project and to justifytreating it on its own, since tackling projects 
piecemeal is a procedure that lends 
itself to obscured and segregated decisions. 
Finally, there should at the very least be 
some form of check to prevent an authority 
from incurring without some over 
riding justification a contractual commitment 
that will skew the distribution of 
costs and benefits associated with an 
impending project, or from taking direct 
action to a similar effect. 

In the case of developn1ent control a 
further set of recommendations can be 
made. There is a need for a stringently 
enforced code of practice governing the 
interaction between local authority members 
and officials on the one hand and 
developers and contractors on the other, 
with the aim of preventing " multiple 
clearance " of proposals prior to the forlnal 
decision on planning applications. A 
public, compulsory register should be kept 
of the financial interests of members and 
officials in property and in companies 
with property and development interests ; 
and a record kept of all pre-decision negotiations 
with developers, especiallywhere there are joint officialIdeveloperworking parties. The deadline problem a 
it affects the treatlnent of planning applications 
would be eased considerably if the 
subsidy, for example, were tapered off 
over a period of 6 or 9 months : the promoter 
could hardly say convincingly that 
his interest would cease the moment the 
subsidy was reduced by 5 per cent. There 
hould be no place in development control 
procedures for the unpublicised decision 
making that occurs when planning applications 
are inadequately advertised and 
when the Secretary of State for the Environment 
takes decisions on Office Development 
Permits. In the former case 
what is needed is a full check list of 
categorie of people who might be affected 


by a proposal, and prescribed measures 
for ensuring that the information reaches 
them. In the latter case the application for 
planning permission and for the ODP 
should be treated together, with the Secretary 
of State making a practice of callingin the planning application for his own 
decision and holding a public inquiry in 
all but the most patently innocuous cases. 

A full critique of the new developmentplan system would take up far more spacethan is available here. But it must be said 
that the new system would seem to offer 
opportunities for deploying many of the 
commitment generating strategies listed 
above. The division of development plans 
into " structure plan " (a written statement, 
illustrated by diagrams and not bymaps) and "local plan " (more detailed 
and based on a map) will undoubtedly 
lend itself to the taking of "obscured 
decisions," while the corresponding division 
of planning powers between the new 
counties and districts could lead-depending 
on what staff sharing arrangements 
are adopted-to a great deal of " multiple 
clearance." There is nothing to preventauthorities at both levels from treating the 
plan making process as a single proposal 
procedure, while the public examination 
to which structure plans will be subjected 
is liable to exhibit the characteristics of a 
" limited study," since participation in it 
will be only at the invitation of the 
Secretary of State or of the person or 
persons conducting the examination. The 
same is true of the local plan inquiry, the 
purpose of which is to consider objections 
to the plan, not the plan itself. If the precedent 
of the new town designationinquiries is followed, no defence of the 
plan will be made, and objectors will find 
themselves beating the air. In short, it is 
clear that the new development plan 
system will offer a number of opportunities 
for the generation of hidden commitment. 


counter strategies 
for citizen groups 

Fortunately (from the point of v1ew of 
encouraging participation) there are 
several things that citizen groups can do 
to open up the planning process-to 

prevent the generation of hidden commitment, 
or to counter such commitment 
when it is discovered. Some of these 
counter-strategies are outlined below. 
While their main function is to preventpublic participation from being stifled, 
such strategies are necessarily closelyallied to strategies for participatingeffectively, and the points that are made 
are applicable in that context too. 

1. Intelligence gathering. One of the prices 
of effective participation is constant 
watchfulness. As much information as 
possible should be gathered about what a 
local authority and private developers are 
up to, with the object of establishing what 
schemes they are committed to, and how 
strongly they are committed. The registerof planning applications should be monitored, 
reports of the planning and housing 
committees scrutinised, an eye kept open 
for advertisements for staff ·(which often 
give useful clues as to what an authorityhas in mind). A look out should be kept 
for surveyors, minor road works that maybe the precursor of something bigger, 
opinion and data gathering household 
surveys, traffic counts (if a " cordon 
survey" is being carried out it may mean 
that there are plans for action within the 
cordon).. 
2. Publicity. Whatever criticisms one maymake of central and local government in 
Britain, one must concede that it is highly 
sensitive to charges that issues .have been 
pre-judged and that formal decisions not 
yet taken will be no more "than the rubber 
stamping of faits accomplis. Hence to 
publicise discoveries of the strength of a 
public authority's commitment to a plan 
. or specific project may yield some disowning 
(or destruction) of that commit-
ment-in the shape of formal undertakings-
and some measures to ensure 
that alternatives are not lost sight of. The 
press and broadcasting are the obvious 
media for such publicity: the message 
can be highlighted by protest meetings, 
demonstrations, or devices such as the 
unofficial structure plan examination to 
look at the issues left out by the official 
one. The other important purpose of publicity 
is to alert the public. This presents 
no problem if the plans are for a specific 


project, but if the proposals take the form 
of a draft structure plan its generality and 
technicality and the lack of a map are 
likely to make it incomprehensible to the 
layman. If the public are to appreciate the 
true significance of the plan it will only 
be through a group of people working out 
the likely or feasible implications-in 
terms of actual physical and social 
changes in specific locations-and publicising 
their conclusions. To make a study 
of this kind requires expertise, and the 
question of how to secure this is discussed 
below. 

3. Mobilisation. The necessity for mobilisation 
arises out of the need to create a 
body capable of exerting some politicalmuscle, of putting the decision-makingbody under an obligation to heed its views. 
Mobilisation involves getting the opponents 
of a project to join in supporting (sharing 
in a commitment to) an alternative 
scheme. Whereas an unmobilised set of 
opponents might, if asked separately, each 
opt for a different alternative, mobilisation 
allows each to take into account the 
probability of his preferred alternative 
mustering sufficient support to succeed. It 
is the ability to place the decision making 
body under an obligation that enables the 
opposing group to extend their commitment 
to that body, for whom it will be a 
counter commitment to their existing proposal. 
(A commitment represents a 
" cashed " obligation, so to speak.) For 
maximum effectiveness a mobilised group 
must be a representative one. It may be 
representative by virtue of its membership 
comprising a very high proportion of a 
particular homogeneous segment of the 
population (like the parents of children at 
a particular primary school), or by virtue 
of being elected by the residents of a particular 
" community " (like a parish or 
neighbourhood council), or by virtue of 
embracing some cross section of the population 
of the authority's area (like a panel 
consisting of a randomly selected one per 
cent sample of the population of the area 
over the age of 12). A problem arises, of 
course, in promoting the mobilisation of 
those segments of the population to whom 
such an activity does not 6ome naturally. 
The Skeffington Committee, in its report 
People and Planning (HMSO, 1969), sug-

I 


gested the appointment of communitydevelopment officers "to secure the involvement 
of those people who do not 
join organisations. Their job would be to 
stimulate discussion, to inform people in 
their neighbourhood, and to give people's 
views to the authority." The definition of 
community development that this statement 
implies is a very narrow one, but the 
tasks suggested could well fall within a 
wider community work brief. And this 
suggests that these tasks would be best 
carried out by community workers, people 
who would moreover see proposed physical 
change in the context of other social 
policies and of the (changing) social structure 
of the area. Their position would, 
however, be very difficult if they were act 
countable both to the local authority and 
to the people with whom they worked, and 
\' would be impossible if they were financed 
~ by the social services department and 

found themselves severely at odds with 
the planning department. Some method 
of financing them would need to be found 
whereby independence of the local planning 
authority was assured. 

4. Cultivation of neutrals. The existence 
of neutrals is always important to a citizen 
group that finds itself in conflict with a 
government authority. Neutrals may play 
the role of umpire, making sure that the 
authority plays fair and abides by the 
rules of the game, or the role of 
conciliator, suggesting compromises and 
taking part in negotiation generally. In the 
former category are to be found the 
Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration, 
who deals with complaintsagainst central government, and the forthcoming 
Local Commissioners for Administration; 
who will deal with complaints 
of maladministration by local 
authorities. The Council on Tribunals is 
another body with important umpiring 
functions in that it has the power to look 
into complaints about the conduct of 
statutory inquiries and similar procedures 
(including structure plan examinations). 
Members of the second category of neutrals, 
those able to perform a conciliatory 
role, may include local councillors and 
MPS and others who, although not party 
political activists, are nevertheless not 
without influence. The cardinal rule for a 

citizen group is to avoid driving potential 
neutrals of this kind into the opposing 
camp and thereby consolidating the 
"enemy." It should not be taken for granted 
(although it commonly is) that those 
who are not with the group are against it. 
Genuine potential neutrals should be 
given a vested interest in neutrality, byholding out to them the opportunity of 
earning respect by keeping an open mind 
and giving a fair hearing to the group, 
respect which would be forfeited if theyprematurely incurred a commitment towards 
supporting the authority's proposal. 
Should a stalemate be reached at 
some point, neutrals will be well placed 
to break it (and will often have a positive 
incentive to do so) by suggesting compromises 
or safeguards or by adding new 
ingredients to the mix of possible measures 
and thereby opening up the mix to 
further negotiation. 

5. Analysis and criticism. If a citizen 
group is to succeed in restraining the 
growth of a public authority's commitment 
towards implementing or permitting 
a particular project, it must be able to 
bring expert analysis and authoritative 
criticism to bear on the facts (jncluding 
the choice of facts), assumptions and 
logic underlying the specification of the 
proposal. It is helpful too if alternatives 
can be suggested that are less open to 
such criticism. The object is to lessen the 
psychological attachment to the project of 
those who have promoted or espoused it 
(psychological attachment being of course 
one element of their total commitment). 
If manifest errors or ommissions can be 
incontrovertibly demonstrated, then the 
promoters will be forced to back down. 
It is much more common, however, for 
disputes over facts, assumptions or logic 
to boil down to questions of judgment.
The opening phase of the debate is crucial 
here. From the moment that the planners 
of the project first publicly resist an 
attack, the more forcefully and persistently 
the attack is mounted the more 
strongly-not less-will they become committed 
on that point. The more theydefend it, the more " face " they stand to 
lose by giving way. A challenging group 
may chalk up a moral victory each time 
the local planning officer, say, has no 
more substantial an answer than " myprofessional judgment " when pressed to 
explain his reasoning, and the planner 
may wish more and more fervently that 
he had never thought of the scheme in the 
first place, but he is no nearer to backing 
down. Moreover the more "face " that 
the planning officer stands to lose, the 
more strongly his political masters wm 
feel obliged to support him in public..
Privately, however, the latter are likely to 
feel themselves pushed into a more neutral 
position, with an interest in finding a 
compromise solution. Lacking a pretextfor putting one forward (such as an unforeseen 
change of circumstances), it will 
fall to the citizen group to provide one. 
An invaluable strategy for this purpose is 
the demonstration of strength of feeling.
he effective deployment of analysis and 
criticism requires a degree of expertisewhich is unlikely to be found in many 
areas, for example those where · semiskilled 
and . unskilled workers tend to 
predominate. It is areas such as these-
especially in the inner parts of cities, 
where the standard of environmental 
quality (particularly of housing) tends to 
match the standard of incomes-that 
attract the attention of developers and 
local authorities as being ripe for redevelopment 
of one kind . or another. 
Consequently it is the inhabitants of these 
areas who are most in need of help in 
order that they and their interests may be 
effectively represented in the planningprocess. This need is particularly apparent 
when the question arises of where to 
locate urban motorways, since it is often 
a matter of choice between deprived areas 
and areas inhabited by members of the 
professional classes, who are able to 
mount a well organised and well financed 
campaign in defence of their property. 

F. J. C. Amos, President of the RoyalTown Planning Institute 1971-72, has expressed 
the view that " it would do much 
to make the planning process more democratic 
and more sensitive to its effects if a 
free planning advice service could be made 
available to those in need" (Journal of 
the Royal Town Planning Institu(e, 
November 1971). This suggestion clearly 
has everything to commend it. The onlyreal problem is to decide what conditions 
a community or group ought to J satisfy 


in order to be eligible for aid of this kind. 
In the case of development plans, the 
inhabitants of an area that is proposed to 
be (or has already been) designated as an 
action area might automatically qualify ; 
in the case of " one-off " projects such as 
. motorways the amount of aid mightdepend on how high a threatened area 
scored on an index designed to reflect its 
, socio-economic structure. The aid itself 
could be dispensed through a regional 
r consultancy and advocacy service. To 
those who would object that this would 
be to create another bureaucratic structure 
the reply is given by Stafford Beer: 
the best way to control a system of fifteen 

' 
men in red jerseys is by means of fifteen 
men in white jerseys (Decision and 
control, Wiley, 1966). 

6. Demonstration of strength of feeling.
This strategy serves two purposes. The 
first is simply to influence the climate of 
opinion in which the politicians and planners 
are working. However objective and 
detached a planning team may set out to 
be, there is almost always a sense in 
which it follows the line of least resistance 
in formulating proposals (like by taking 
account of local authority boundaries, or 
by giving greater weight in a cost benefit 
analysis to the costs and benefits falling 
to the more influential sectors of society). 
If the planners are made aware from an 
early stage that a particular line will meet 
very strong resistance, they may well become 
particularly alert for others that 
will not. Accordingly the citizen group's 
views may make their mark before much 
commitment is generated, thereby avoiding 
the problem of how to bring about a 
climb down later. But thi strategy does 
have an application too when a proposal 
has reached the stage of being well defined 
and carrying a considerable weight of 
commitment. This, the second purpose, is 
to provide, at an appropriate point in 
time, a pretext on which the promoters 
of the scheme-or a decision makingbody-may diminish their commitment, 
perhaps by undertaking to reconsider 
alternatives which had earlier been rejected, 
or. by introducing the possibility of 
a compromise scheme. Under the " rules 
of the game " there is less loss of face in 
a climb down if it is made in response to 

strength of feeling than if it acknowledgedefeat in argument. Accordingly a demonstration 
of strength of feeling will provide 
an opportunity for politicians to reconsider 
a proposal without necessarily 
implying that the planners have failed to 
do their job properly. 

7. Direct action. A citizen group obviously 
has far less scope for direct action 
than a local authority or central department. 
But there are two kinds of thingthat it can do. The first is to follow the 
example of the squatters, and change the 
situation in such a way that for the 
authority (say) to reinstate it is more 
trouble (or more expensive) than it is 
worth. Squatters are of course helped in 
this by the legal difficulty of removing 
them, a protection that is not available jf 
the direct action takes a more destructive 
form. The other available course of action 
is to use delaying tactics to counter a 
commitment that has arisen through one 
course of action being perceived as capable 
of speedier implementation than another. 
This involves determined exploitation 
of the full range of legal safeguard 
of property rights, of safeguards again t 
maladministration and unauthorised expenditure, 
of technicalities and loopholes 
in the law, and of the opportunities for 
obstruction that are sometin1es available 
to Members of Parliament. 
conclusions 

This chapter has shown how commitment 
generated in the course of the planning 
process denies the public an influence on 
changes in the physical environment. It i 
of course unrealistic to expect that the 
hidden generation of commitment in the 
earlier stages of the process can be entirely 
avoided. Planners will alway have personal 
preferences for particular approache 
to problems: a completely open mind ~ 
liable to be a completely empty one. It 1 
a fact of political and official life that 
ensitive negotiations cannot be conducted 
in the glare of publicity, and a fact of 
human nature that few people are willing 
to expose themselves by making a public 
initiative until they have assured themselves 
of at least some support. It mu t 


be said, too, that commitment seems to 
play an essential part in stimulatingcitizens into action: if it is absent so is 
the sense of urgency that rouses people to 
participate. The existence of a small 
degree of commitment when a project is 
first revealed should accordingly be taken 
neither as evidence of conspiracy nor as 
inherently inimical to participation. It is 
the secret build up of a strong commitment 
that militates against genuine participation, 
and administrative structures 
and procedures can aid this secret buildup, 
or indeed in some cases necessitate it. 
Greater openness in the planning process 
requires the reform of structures and procedures. 
It requires that public authorities 
refrain from exploiting the opportunities 
that they will inevitably have for frustrating 
participation. And it requires action 
by citizen groups. 

This chapter has been devoted to participation 
in physical planning, in the process 
by which actions to change the physical 
environment become determined. But 
planning comes in other forms too. Education, 
medical care and personal social 
service systems, for example, do getplanned, although one sometimes wonders 
whether the decision makers are 
conscious that they are going through a 
planning process, and many of the points 
that have been made here apply with 
equal validity to these other planning 
processes. 

In conclusion, it is worth reminding oneself 
of the reasons why public participation 
in planning is needed. The lesson of 
Stansted, of Piccadilly, of Covent Garden, 
of practically any motorway or new town 
proposal, is that the smaller the group 
that participates in the planning process 
the more likely it is that the outcome will 
be constricted by pre-conceptions, will be 
directed to only a narrow range of problems, 
and will satisfy only a tiny minority 
of interests. Administrative proceduresand strategies can make it difficult, sometimes 
impossible, to halt the process when 
the outcome becomes apparent, because 
of the commitment they have generated. 
Public participation is not and cannot be 
a panacea: it does not provide a way of 
satisfying everybody, nor does it provide 

a substitute for decision making. It takes 
time and it costs money. But it brings undoubted 
benefits. It means that no bodyhas power to bring about changes solely 
by virtue of controlling the administrative 
apparatus-by virtue of the ability to 
manipulate deadlines, to limit the terms 
of reference for studies, to prejudicefuture decisions. It means that preconceptions 
and perceptions of problems are 
examined and challenged, that the distribution 
of costs and benefits is closely 
scrutinise~ that conflicts and areas of 
disagreement are made explicit, that possibilities 
of trade offs and compromises 
are fully explored. In many cases, admittedly, 
no trade off or compromise will 
be possible, and the decision making body 
will have to decide that one group or the 
other has to give way. But it will at least 
be clear to everyone why-and clear too 
if one particular interest group consistently 
comes out on top or if one is consistently 
over ridden. The outcome hopefully 
will be a little more of that old 
fashioned virtue, natural justice. 


5. participationin educational institutions 
Harry Salmon 

When the Government's community development 
project began in Coventry in 
January 1970, the local authority had 
already obtained sanction to spend urban 
aid money on the provision of a play 
· centre and nursery centre in the inner. 
city redevelopment area in which the 
project was to be based. I had been doing 
community work in the area for four 
· months, and it was apparent that such 

· facilities were required. 

. 

' Almost before work had started on the 

· buildings, the project director had raised 
with the director of education the need 
for working out ways in which residents 
could share in the management of these 
two establishments. Community groupswere only just beginning to emerge, and 
discussion about management took place 
among professionals without any pressure 
from residents for participation. 

the model 

The Director of Education agreed that a 
model should be worked out involvinglocal people and for this he gained the 
consent of his committee. It had been 
assumed that there would be separate 
management committees for the two 
places. (Although they were only 300 
yards apart, the play centre was located 
on ground at the centre of a large flat 
~omplex and the nursery centre was set 
outside its perimeter. The former was 
intended for the children in the flats, but 
the nursery centre was for the whole of 
Hillfields.) However, it was decided that 
there should be one management committee 
for the two institutions. As the 
management committee was to consist of 
only eight people (three councillors, one 
representative of voluntary agencies and 
four residents), this meant local participation 
on a small scale. Largely to broaden 
the base of local involvement, the Director 
of Education proposed that advisory 
group of local residents hould be set up 
for the two place . Each group would 
nominate two people to serve on the 
management committee. This produced 
a tidy looking administrative structure. 

Within the community we had no appro


priate machinery for setting up advisory 
groups, and therefore it was decided to 
convene public meetings for this purpose. 
The nursery centre public meeting was 
attended by abouf sixty people, and was 
handled well by the Director of Education . 
As the meeting was a diverse group drawn 
from different parts of Hillfields, it was 
not realistic to have elections and therefore 
the Director invited people to volunteer 
to serve on the advisory group. Some 
dozen people volunteered, includingtwo Asian men. Most parts of Hill(ields 
were represented, but with half of the 
volunteers from the flats. 

An attempt to have a public meeting 
about the play centre was abortive. The 
meeting had been publicised by leaflet 
throughout the flat complex, but onlythree officers of the tenants' association 
committee turned up. It was then agreed 
that the Director of Education should raise 
the question of an advisory group at the 
next public meeting arranged by the 
tenants' association. This was primarilyabout rents, and few of the 40 people 
present were interested in the play centre. 
Four people volunteered to go on an 
advisory group, and one later withdrew 
and a second failed to attend a meeting. 
At the first meetings of the advisory 
groups, representatives were nominated 
for the management committee. In the 
case of the advisory group for the play 
centre, it was a case of the two people 
who attended! 

The management committee was appointed 
through the normal LEA channels, 
and consisted of two Conservative councillors, 
one Labour councillor, myselfrepresenting voluntary agencies and the 
four nominated residents. At the first 
meeting, the Conservative councillor, who 
represented a local ward, was appointedchairman on the nomination of the 
second Conservative councillor. 

An assistant director of education saw 
himself as the per on who hould work 
with the advisory group . The first two 
meetings of the play centre advisorygroup were largely abortive because they 
consisted only of two residents and the 
A istant Director. The community associ



30 
ation's community workerIplay advi r 
attended two of the early nur ery centre 
advisory group , but sensed that her 
presence was re ented by the A si tant 
Director of Education. Her impression of 
these meetings was that through the 
Assistant Director acting a chairman, 
secretary and giver of information, there 
was little scope for the group to develop 
its own style of operation or to challenge 
policy. However, they made recommenda-
tions on charges and hour to the Jnana-
gers and also nominated their own repre-
tentatives to this body-a young Indian 
father and a local n1other. 
The advisory group wa never given an 
opportunity to develop without a repre-
sentative of the LEA being pre ent. Now 
the group has en1erged into omethingresembling a PTA. 
We have now had six meeting of the 
management committee, but it might be 
best to concentrate mainly upon one f 
these. I will take the econd meetingwhen the main item was the interviewing 
of candidates for the post of head teacher 
at the nursery centre and leader for the 
play centre. 
a management committee 
meeting 
Apart from one re ident, there wa a full 
complement of manager for the econd 
1neeting. In addition to seven managers, 
there were four enior professional 
pre ent-the Director of Education, an 
a sistant director, someone responsible for 
nursery school , and a director from 
another department. Thi n1eant that there 
were three inexperienced resident pre ent 
and eight other people who were familiar 
with this kind of situation. 
Before interviewing began, the chairman 
made it clear that he would begin by 
giving the profe ional an opportunity to 
put que tion , and he did thi in hier-
archical order. Re ident obviously found 
it difficult to formulate que tions but were 
not encouraged to do so by a general,
" does anyone else want to a k anything?" 
There were f ur candidate for the p t 
of head teacher at the nursery centre. In 
all, 35 substantial questions were put bythe eleven people present. 26 of these 
can1e from the professional advisers. Only 
nine came from the managers, and four 
of these were put by me in an attempt to 
bring something out relevant to the 
resident . No resident put a question. It 
was apparent that in the pre-interviewessions with the candidates, the officers 
of the LEA had made little of the role of 
the advisory group. 
In the interviewing and sub equent a e -
ment of the candidates, the Director of 
Education was helpful and fair in hi 
relationship to the committee as a whole. 
It proved to be a difficult decision. The 
profe sional advisers obviously favoured 
a particular candidate but her profession-
alism, and strong middle class value 
caused me to have reservations. The three 
residents all opted for a different can-, 
didate, and the councillors were not clear 
in their choice but the Labour councillor 
was prepared to defer to my view. During 
the discussion, the chairn1an had a side 
conver ation with me in which he sug-
ge ted that we made a nomination of 
deputy head at the same time and offered 
this post to the person I tended to favour. 
After more discussion, the committee 
agreed to do this. 
Recently we had to appoint another 
deputy head due to the first one resigning. 
We had a full management ~ommittee, 
but we also had five professional advisers 
present. The pattern was much the arne 
as on the previous occasion with me as 
the only manager to ask a question of all 
the candidates. The four resident put 
one question. We had three candidates. 
Two were easily eliminated. On balance, 
the professionals were prepared to advi e 
the appointment of the third person, and 
the committee went along with this. I did 
not vote and at least one re ident had 
re ervation , but did not feel a thoughhe could voice them. When I mentioned 
to two of the resident that they had not 
asked any questions, they aid, "Well,
you don't feel a though you can after 
they (the professionals) have fini hed." 
On the ca i n when the managem nt 
30 
ation's community workerIplay advi r 
attended two of the early nur ery centre 
advisory group , but sensed that her 
presence was re ented by the A si tant 
Director of Education. Her impression of 
these meetings was that through the 
Assistant Director acting a chairman, 
secretary and giver of information, there 
was little scope for the group to develop 
its own style of operation or to challenge 
policy. However, they made recommenda-
tions on charges and hour to the Jnana-
gers and also nominated their own repre-
tentatives to this body-a young Indian 
father and a local n1other. 
The advisory group wa never given an 
opportunity to develop without a repre-
sentative of the LEA being pre ent. Now 
the group has en1erged into omethingresembling a PTA. 
We have now had six meeting of the 
management committee, but it might be 
best to concentrate mainly upon one f 
these. I will take the econd meetingwhen the main item was the interviewing 
of candidates for the post of head teacher 
at the nursery centre and leader for the 
play centre. 
a management committee 
meeting 
Apart from one re ident, there wa a full 
complement of manager for the econd 
1neeting. In addition to seven managers, 
there were four enior professional 
pre ent-the Director of Education, an 
a sistant director, someone responsible for 
nursery school , and a director from 
another department. Thi n1eant that there 
were three inexperienced resident pre ent 
and eight other people who were familiar 
with this kind of situation. 
Before interviewing began, the chairman 
made it clear that he would begin by 
giving the profe ional an opportunity to 
put que tion , and he did thi in hier-
archical order. Re ident obviously found 
it difficult to formulate que tions but were 
not encouraged to do so by a general,
" does anyone else want to a k anything?" 
There were f ur candidate for the p t 
of head teacher at the nursery centre. In 
all, 35 substantial questions were put bythe eleven people present. 26 of these 
can1e from the professional advisers. Only 
nine came from the managers, and four 
of these were put by me in an attempt to 
bring something out relevant to the 
resident . No resident put a question. It 
was apparent that in the pre-interviewessions with the candidates, the officers 
of the LEA had made little of the role of 
the advisory group. 
In the interviewing and sub equent a e -
ment of the candidates, the Director of 
Education was helpful and fair in hi 
relationship to the committee as a whole. 
It proved to be a difficult decision. The 
profe sional advisers obviously favoured 
a particular candidate but her profession-
alism, and strong middle class value 
caused me to have reservations. The three 
residents all opted for a different can-, 
didate, and the councillors were not clear 
in their choice but the Labour councillor 
was prepared to defer to my view. During 
the discussion, the chairn1an had a side 
conver ation with me in which he sug-
ge ted that we made a nomination of 
deputy head at the same time and offered 
this post to the person I tended to favour. 
After more discussion, the committee 
agreed to do this. 
Recently we had to appoint another 
deputy head due to the first one resigning. 
We had a full management ~ommittee, 
but we also had five professional advisers 
present. The pattern was much the arne 
as on the previous occasion with me as 
the only manager to ask a question of all 
the candidates. The four resident put 
one question. We had three candidates. 
Two were easily eliminated. On balance, 
the professionals were prepared to advi e 
the appointment of the third person, and 
the committee went along with this. I did 
not vote and at least one re ident had 
re ervation , but did not feel a thoughhe could voice them. When I mentioned 
to two of the resident that they had not 
asked any questions, they aid, "Well,
you don't feel a though you can after 
they (the professionals) have fini hed." 
On the ca i n when the managem nt 

committee has dealt with issues other than 
appointments, the contributions of residents 
have tended to be few and pitchedin a low key. This in spite of the fact that 
the two representatives from the play 
centre have been deeply involved in its 
emotional history since it was opened, and 
have quite strong feelings n certain 
matter . 

play centre advisory group 

This group cannot be ignored in any 
attempt to describe and evaluate the 
model. It has functioned in a very different 
way from the nursery centre advisory 
group which has been ab orbed 
into the system, and is no longer in a 
position to represent the views of the 
consumers. There was no initial enthusiasm 
for serving on the play centre 
advisory group. The Assistant Director of 
Education called two meetings which were 
attended by two residents. No machineryexisted for electing more people on to the 
group, and the tenants' association for the 

· fiats complex had earlier turned down a 
uggestion that they should be involved 
with it. They were critical about the location 
of the centre, and wanted to be f rcc 
to act in regard to it as they thought 
In January 1971 we used a tudent on a 
community work placement to timulate 
interest in the play centre which was now 
being built. Six people agreed to join the 
advisory group, and their names were ent 
to the Director of Education in ebruary.
He replied warmly and aid that his 
assistant would invite them to the next 
meeting. Actually, it was at lea t three 
months before a meeting wa held, and bythat time one or two of the people had 
lost intere t. None of them i on the 
advi ory group now. 

A 25 year old school teacher was appointed 
as play leader and he started 
work in June. He had clear idea about 
play and quickly establi hed good relationships 
with children and local people. 
He lacked a capacity to handle admini tration 
and to cope with the pre ure 
under which he found himself, but he was 
eager to co-operate with local group and 
was sensitive to the aims of the com


munity development project. After three 
months, he decided to re ign. 

During his time at the centre, the advisory 
group became a significant unit. He toolr 
it seriously, and did not feel threatened by 
it. He sought the help of those of us engaged 
in community development, and it 
was agreed that I should give community 
work support to the group. We had al o 
decided that the advisory group should 
meet at its own behest and not when convened 
by the education office ; that it 

hould have its own chairman and secretary 
; and prepare its own agenda. The 
leader convened the first meeting, drawing 
on our list and his own contacts. He 
guided the meeting at which officers were 
appointed or-more likely-volunteered. 
It was agreed that people from the education 
office would be invited a and when 
required, but they should not be present 
as a right. The play organiser for the city 
found thi hard to tolerate. The playleader attended meeting , but he never 
tried to dominate them. In fact, orne of 
the group used to appeal to him for more 
authority and guidance. 

Since then there have been about twentymeetings of the group. Member hip ha 
kept changing with anything from five to 
fourteen people attending meeting . Sometin1es 
decisions have not been followed 
through, often things have been chaotic, 
there have been internal problems, but the 
group ha survived and ha in i ted on 
being taken seriously. They have had to 
face one crisis after another. 

Landscaping round the centre, admi ion 
charges, the problem of coping with teenagers, 
what to do about" problem " children 
inviting a pre-school play group to use 
the'centre and a consequent battle with the 
education office and the present leader 
about rent and storage space, the right to 
approach the education office direct-are 
ju t some of the issues with which they 
have had to deaL They have had meetingwith the Director of Education and the 
chairman of the manager . On other occaions, 
they have agreed to have educational 
officials present to discuss matters on 
which they have been in conflict. At lea t, 
they have established that it is their group, 


and though one assistant director of education 
is quick to emphasise that they are 
only an" advisory" group, they are determined 
to be more than that. 

evaluation 

In attempting a critical assessment of this 
model, we can begin with such general 
observations as apply to any attempts 
to involve local people in managementcontrol. 

1. Residents feel uncomfortable because 
they have no experience in this field and 
find the procedures, language and ethos 
of formal groups strange. 
2. In this situation, residents can be 
"controlled" because they lack the confidence, 
expertise and information to challenge 
statements made either by professionals 
or people familiar with formal 
structures (like councillors). 
3. "Grass roots" leaders are internallyoriented and their authority is within the 
local community. Often they have neither 
the inclination nor the orientation to 
enable them to operate alongside people 
from outside the community. 
the community development 
project role 

1. Though the idea about local participation 
in the control of institutions had 
come from the community development 
project nothing had been done to preparelocal people for this kind of experience. 
2. The functions of the advisory groups 
had not been worked out with the education 
people, and there is still no consensus 
about how they should operate. The 
danger in the word " advisory " should 
have been seen and it should have been 
realised that this could become an expression 
of tokenism. 
3. It was not clarified clearly with the 
Director of Education before the model 
was set up who would work with the advisory 
groups and how they would relate 
to the education office.· The expectation 
was that a community worker would 
operate with each advisory group rather 
than an education official. However, this 
did not appear to be acceptable to the 
officers of the LEA. 

4. The role of a community worker could 
have been crucial in the early days of the 
advisory groups, and would have been 
quite different from that of an educationalist. 
The community workers concern 
would have been with process-how the 
members of the group participated, the 
degree of inter-action, growing ability to 
cope with the situation and to run their 
own group-whereas the Assistant Director 
of Education's concern was with goal 
achievement-professional competence,
efficiency, getting everything tied up in a 
minimum of meetings and without raising 
too many difficult questions. The community 
worker would also have been 
seen by the group in quite a different way 
from the representative of the education 
department. 
5. To ensure the n1aximum contribution 
from the community (and that is why the 
advisory groups were mooted in the first 
place) the situation required that a community 
worker should have operated with 
the residents, and that someone from the 
education department should have been 
available as a consultant. 
6. Two years ago we lacked the experience 
to anticipate what pattern of behaviour 
would be likely to emerge in a 
management committee constituted as 
previously outlined. 
7. The significance of the communitywork role can be seen by contrasting the 
history and fate of the two advisory 
groups. 
the official's role 

1. It was the Director of Education who 
first agreed to an experiment in resident 
participation, and he gained the backing 
of his committee. His own role was helpful 
and he was skilful in handling his 
face to face relationships with local 
people. However, one repeated1y gained 

the impression that the officers with more 
direct responsibility for the centres were 
chary about the experiment, and resented 
some of the activities of the play centre 
advisory group. 

2. Some of the problems which have 
occurred have been attributed either to the 
involvement of residents or to the presence 
of myself. Certainly it has been an uncomfortable 
experience for some education 
officials. 
3. It has been apparent that even reasonably 
sympathetic officials have conceptions 
of participation which rarely move 
beyond tokenism. There has been a willingness 
to consult the advisory groups, 
but not to give them power to make 
decisions on any substantive matters like 
who should use premises, provision of 
storage space for pre-school play groups, 
criteria for admission of children to the 
nursery centre. 
4. There has been a remarkable inability 
' on the part of the education office to deal 
with the problems arising from a small 
£18,000 play centre with the minimum of 
effort. On occasions three officers of the 
department have been involved in dealing 
with the centre, and there seems to have 
been no clear delegation of responsibility. 

5. In eight months the play centre has had 
two leaders and a temporary part time 
leader. Experiences with three different 
leaders have demonstrated that the nature 
and extent of residents' participation depends 
as much upon the outlook of the 
professional in immediate contact with 
residents as upon the policy of senior 
officers. 
6. In the management committee the role 
of professional advisers has been crucial. 
The character of the meeting is changedby the introduction of articulate, wellinfomed, 
middle class professionals. Most 
residents are overawed, and there is also 
a temptation for some to defer to the 
views of those who are identified with 
power and status. A sensitive chairman 
could do something to redress the balance 
but the situation is still one which 
can be exploited by the professional. 
One cannot but be tremendously impressed 
by the difference in the performance 
of residents in their own cultural 
setting and in one which is alien to them, 
between their contribution in an advisorygroup controlled by them and in a management 
committee where they are in a 
minority. In the former they can be articulate, 
confident and constructive ; in the 
latter, hesitant, uncomfortable and negative. 


In More power to the people (FabianSociety 1963) John Edmonds sums up the 
limitations of joint supervisory councils 
from the workers' point of view: " Whatever 
safeguards are written into the constitution, 
the manager's near monopoly of 
administrative expertise will inevitablygive him substantial power. To enforce its 
will against the administrator's determined 
advice a representative council has to 
clamber over the bureaucratic obstacles 
placed in its path, brush aside the forecast 
of dire results, and refuse to believe 
the premature judgments of failure. This 
requires an enthusiasm, a persistent alertness 
and a co-ordinated effort which most 
part time assemblies of changing composition 
normally and understandably lack." 
These remarks are almost as relevant to 
the question of residents' participation in 
management structures. 

alternative models 

I would not wish to see this model replicated 
in disadvantaged areas. The management 
committee structure might be 
satisfactory in those suburban areas 
where people are available with the appropriate 
skills and experience. Even in 
these situations, only one consultant/
adviser should normally be present from 
the education department, and mere 
"advisory" groups should be avoided. 

In working class areas, in localities where 
there are large numbers of people unfamiliar 
with middle class styles of operating, 
we must continue to search for 
alternative forms of participation. Here 
are a few possibilities. 

1. Increa e number of councillor on 

Management Committees for educational 
institutions and tighten their relationship 
and answerability to the local community. 

2. Develop the Neighbourhood Council 
concept, and draw managers from the 
people who have been elected on to such 
bodies. 
3. Appoint to managing bodies local re i-
dents who are externally oriented. In 
every area, there are those who relate 
more easily and willingly to structures 
and people outside the community. Often 
they are mobile people (students or 
young professionals), or aspiring people. 
The danger is that they may not reflect 
fully the mood of the community, but 
they are more likely to be able to exploit 
the management committee situation. 
4. Set up " consumer " groups which 
could be supported by a communityworker and call upon resource people as 
necessary. The function of such groups 
would be to influence the policy of management 
bodies through informed criticism, 
pressure and conflict. 
5. Division of management responsibilities 
between two groups-a community 
group and a professional group. Success 
would depend upon a careful delineation 
of responsibilities, and would depend upona willingness on the part of the Education 
Committee to put more power in the 
hands of local people. Such a structure 
would take into account that there are 
matters (like professional qualifications, 
terms of employment, technical issues) 
over which residents cannot have jurisdiction, 
but there are other matters (like 
use of buildings, hours of opening of a 
play centre or nursery, involvement of 
parents) which could be locally controlled. 
This model might be particularly suitable 
where community schools are being developed 
as in Coventry. 
In working out forms of participation, 
we are faced with the problem that theyare likely to degenerate into expressions 
of tokenism unless we can from the beginning 
build in areas in which consumers 
have power and control. The people who 
normally control services usually mean 

something very different by participation 
from what we do. It means a drastic 
adjustment on their part, if consumers 
are going to have a real say in the 
provision and deployment of services. 


6. tenants and housing 
.management 


·Nick Derricourt 

For 3-! years until August 1971, as Secretary 
of the Association of London Housing 
Estates (ALHE) I was employed by 
local authority tenants, and although I 
am no expert in housing management, 
finance or maintenance, I had a chance to 
see the issues from the tenants' point of 
view and also had to get to grips with 
some of the problems myself. 

What local authority tenants " a a body 
want " is unclear, mainly because of the 
diversity of the localities involved. Some 
tenants favour direct control of housingestates, some a cooperative solution, and 
·most just want a better service from their 
landlords. I say " just a better service " 
but I can hear some of my erstwhile 
employers cracking up at that, because 
many tenants associations have been hammering 
away at that for years with little 
sense of success. I propose therefore to 
accept the assumptions made by the ALHE 
that tenants do have a point of view, and 

provided they have adequate resources to 
· do so, can express this point of view. I 
. is also assumed that this point of view 

will be modified as their experience of 
their predicament grows, and that their 
perception of effective solutions will grow 
along with this experience. 

what's wrong ? 

It's important to recognise the generalisations 
one makes when one talks about 
5-! million tenants. Over a million local 
authority householders or a fifth of the 
total of council tenants, are in receipt of 
a Supplementary Pension, which means, 
in effect, that their rent increases are paid 
by the Exchequer. Of the remainder, the 
great majority are fairly tightly bunched 
around the average wage, and yet somewhere 
a very small minority of comparatively 
well off tenants doe exist, although 
the size tends to grow in the heat of the 
debate. 

Council tenants are said to pay a " ub idised" 
rent, and are expected to thank 
their lucky stars for it. If you live on a 
" nice " estate, like Churchill Gardens on 
the Thames Embankment, you might feel 
lucky, but if you live on one of the grin1 

inter-war flatted estates in the decaying 
parts of London you could probably be 
forgiven for not feeling lucky. But both 
nice and nasty have something in common. 
The provision of public hou ing i 
made in a way which cannot avoid some 
pressure upon the tenants to conformity. 
The aim is to provide a public service 
equitably; the result is to make tenants 
irresponsible, in the sense that usually

.they are given no scope for involvingthemselves responsibly in the decision 
affecting their immediate environment. 
Although their housing, unlike other sorts, 
is directly controlled by democratically 
elected members of the council, they have 
no say in the most salient aspects of their 
home environment-no say in the choice 
of colour schemes, in the time and frequency 
of repairs and maintenance, in the 
design, provision and management of 
amenities. They have little or no means 
of consultation with management when 
it comes to changes in services, such as 
caretaking and cleaning schemes, or rent 
collectors being replaced by rent collection 
offices . 

It is quite common to hear h using department 
officers complaining that tenant 
tend to ignore property, don't report disrepairs 
unless they are affected personallyby them, and turn a blind eye to 
vandalism. 

So in spite of the variety of individual 
drcumstances which they repre ent, local 
authority tenants have at least one thing 
in common. The way that their housing 
is provided pushes them into the role of 
recipient without responsibility. They are 
on the receiving end of standardj ed and 
accountable procedures which are designed 
to take advantage of economy of 
scale, and which are often insensitive to 
individual cases. The problem of justifying 
the cost of provision re-inforce both 
the procedures and the roles of tenant and 
landlord. Before going any further, J 
would like to say that I believe mo t 
housing department staff to be very 
competent, conscientiou , and harrassed 
people. But there is some evidence that 
housing services are susceptible to bureaucratic 
pressures which irritate both housing 
officials and tenants. For instance, 


problems of feedback are often due to 
structural divisions in the council's administration 
as, for example, where the 
Borough Engineer's Department is responsible 
for dealing with job tickets made 
out by the Housing Department. 

It could be countered that a hidebound 
relationship between tenant and landlord 
does no harm to anyone provided that the 
standard of provision and management is 
high. But it is important to remember 
that standards are not always as high as 
housing officials would like them to be,
and often this happens because elected 
members have difficulty in justifying increased 
costs to non-tenant ratepayers. So 
standards of management practice, the 
criteria of which are anyway by no means 
universally agreed, vary a good deal between 
localities. Hence there have been instances 
when housing officers have found 
it difficult to justify in housing management 
terms, measures which cost conscious 
housing committees are " forced " to 
adopt to avoid increasing the rate contribution 
to the housing revenue account. At 
least one London Borough's housing department 
has staff who regret the end of 
door to door rent collecting, because it 
was a means of keeping close contact with 
tenants and gaining knowledge about repairs 
problems at first hand. Another 
council put an end to its door to door 
system after several attacks on its collectors. 
Rather than make its door to door 
system more secure, the council opened 
rent offices, on the grounds that tenants 
could take or send their rent. Some of the 
offices are a fair walk away from the 
estates they serve, and they are only open 
during the working day, which makes the 
system difficult for the elderly and 
households all at work in the day-time. 
Incidentally, throughout the changeoverfrom one system to the other, no consultation 
was initiated by the council, and 
several overtures by tenants associations 
were turned down. It was this last act 
which led the ALHE's Executive Committee 
to write a letter to the council concerned, 
which contained the following sentence: 
.. The organisation cannot support any 
management policy changes (by that 
authority) affecting tenants without prior 
consultation with the Association." 

Housing management problems which 
originate in cost and departmental structure 
are clearly not going to be resolved 
just by involving tenants in decision 
making procedures. None should expect 
that preventative maintenance, as opposed 
to maintenance in response to complaint,
would begin the following month. Nor 
would it be easy to affect the amount of 
money available to a housing department 
for maintenance. But many of these difficult 
problems are made worse by the gulf 
fixed between tenants and local authority 
landlords. This situation benefits nobody. 

a little progress 

The idea of participation in management 
is not new. A Political and Economic 
Planning tract in 1948 advocated that 
councils assign management functions to 
local committees on which tenants should · 
be directly represented. The Milner Holland 
Committee, and the Prices and 
Incomes Board (Report no 62, Cmnd 
3604) not only ascertained tenants' views 
but gave them careful consideration. The 
PIB found that tenants' complaints justified 
a suggestion that machinery should be set 
up for dealing with complaints-but this 
proposal appears to have been forgotten. 
However, the sub-committee of the estin1ates 
committee, in undertaking its massive 
examination of housing subsidies in 
1969 (the first examination since 1946),
did not consider it worthwhile. to call for 
any evidence from tenants. More recently, 
Professor Cullingworth appeared to endorse 
the GLC and borough policy of omitting 
to consult tenants when considering 
a proposal to transfer 46,000 tenants 
from one landlord to another. 

At a time when the absolute power of 
central government nominees and the 
Rent Scrutiny Committees of the Housing 
Finance Act threaten to take away from 
the tenant what political influence he has 
at local level and his consumer influence 
on the market, Dick Leonard (MP for 
Romford) has been trying, so far unsuccessfully, 
to introduce a private member's 
bill, the Council Housing (Tenants' 
Representation) Bill, into Parliament. 
The latter Bill requires all local author



ities to introduce an element of tenant 
participation into their housing manage-
ment. There are two main provisions-
first, that housing advisory committees be 
established, at least half of whose mem-
bers should be council tenants, and,
secondly, at least two tenants should be 
coopted on to every housing management 
committee. Dudley Savill, the presentOrganising Secretary of the ALHE, has 
described the need like this: " The aims of 
tenant participation must be in the first 
place to lessen the degree of alienation,
secondly, to change the view that poorpeople are fed into council housing at the 
· entrance, and after a period of processingare expected to exit as whole and pros-. 
. perous families capable of making their 
way in a competitive society which it is 
the major function of management to see 
done; thirdly, to change the psychology 
of management by complaint to manage-
ment by consensus ; and fourthly to estab-
lish proper channels of communication by 
allowing tenants increased opportunities
·to exercise some degree of control over 
their circumstances." 
In a proposed "Council Tenants' Charter" 
drawn up by the ALHE, the Association's 
own policy on tenant representation ap-
pears : " It is essential that machineryshould be set up to enable council tenants 
to be involved in the decision making 
~ tages of local authority housing policies, 
by representation on housing committees. 
Council tenants are frequently and justi-
fiab!y aggrieved at the standards of repairand maintenance which are in practice 
applied by the local authorities. Provision 
should therefore be made for tenants' 
epresentatives to take a responsible part 
·n the management of their own estates, 
e consulted about the provision of 
amenities and have executive powers over 
nancial expenditure (my italics). But have 
:enants shown any signs that, given en-
1 ;:: ouragement, they might have enough to 
..,ontribute, or enough interest in their 
estates and the management of local 
r 1uthority housing? The answer is a firm 
' Yes." In fact, the evidence is more 
-emarkable because many of the initiative 
1ave come from tenants' associations. 
:>ne South London estate devised a park-
ng plan which would ease the parking 
3·7 
space problem on the estate. The council 
concerned agreed to look at the plan,
which was duly submitted, after several 
months' careful homework by the tenants. 
The housing committee shelved the plan 
on the grounds that it would cost thous-
ands of pounds to implement ; the tenants 
association replied that it had thought of 
this, and pointed out that the expenditure 
could be recouped by the end of three 
years through the charges made on the 
increased number of car parking spaces. 
Although the matter has taken yearsrather than months to argue out, it seems 
that the council is now prepared to imple-
ment the plan. 
Another example can be seen in an exer-
cise carried out between the ALHE and the 
Department of the Environment. One of 
the staff asked the Department's Research 
Unit whether they would allow a number 
of tenants who were housewives to com-
ment to planners and architects of a high 
density housing estate on the appearance 
of a scheme at Granby Street, Bethnal 
Green. After the meeting, the architects 
were openly impressed by the amount of 
information that the women had been able 
to give them. The housewives for their 
part only expressed regret that they could 
not be involved in the planning of the 
interiors as well. 
consultation or control ? 
Until quite recently tenants in the ALHE's 
membership tended to regard better con-
sultation as the aim. This issue has been 
discussed intensively within the ALHE, as 
it has among many tenants groups else-
where, and there is growing evidence to 
suggest that while recent experiences have 
toned down expectations of consultatior1, 
a large number of tenants associations are 
becoming eager to move from a consul-
tative model to an executive one. The 
events of the last few years, and particu-
larly the debate leading up to the passage 
of the Housing Finance Act, have served 
as a stimulus to both the consultative and 
the executive schools of thought. It seems 
likely that both attitudes and leadership 
have changed relatively quickly, which 
means that negative evidence about ten-
ities to introduce an element of tenant 
participation into their housing manage-
ment. There are two main provisions-
first, that housing advisory committees be 
established, at least half of whose mem-
bers should be council tenants, and,
secondly, at least two tenants should be 
coopted on to every housing management 
committee. Dudley Savill, the presentOrganising Secretary of the ALHE, has 
described the need like this: " The aims of 
tenant participation must be in the first 
place to lessen the degree of alienation,
secondly, to change the view that poorpeople are fed into council housing at the 
· entrance, and after a period of processingare expected to exit as whole and pros-. 
. perous families capable of making their 
way in a competitive society which it is 
the major function of management to see 
done; thirdly, to change the psychology 
of management by complaint to manage-
ment by consensus ; and fourthly to estab-
lish proper channels of communication by 
allowing tenants increased opportunities
·to exercise some degree of control over 
their circumstances." 
In a proposed "Council Tenants' Charter" 
drawn up by the ALHE, the Association's 
own policy on tenant representation ap-
pears : " It is essential that machineryshould be set up to enable council tenants 
to be involved in the decision making 
~ tages of local authority housing policies, 
by representation on housing committees. 
Council tenants are frequently and justi-
fiab!y aggrieved at the standards of repairand maintenance which are in practice 
applied by the local authorities. Provision 
should therefore be made for tenants' 
epresentatives to take a responsible part 
·n the management of their own estates, 
e consulted about the provision of 
amenities and have executive powers over 
nancial expenditure (my italics). But have 
:enants shown any signs that, given en-
1 ;:: ouragement, they might have enough to 
..,ontribute, or enough interest in their 
estates and the management of local 
r 1uthority housing? The answer is a firm 
' Yes." In fact, the evidence is more 
-emarkable because many of the initiative 
1ave come from tenants' associations. 
:>ne South London estate devised a park-
ng plan which would ease the parking 
3·7 
space problem on the estate. The council 
concerned agreed to look at the plan,
which was duly submitted, after several 
months' careful homework by the tenants. 
The housing committee shelved the plan 
on the grounds that it would cost thous-
ands of pounds to implement ; the tenants 
association replied that it had thought of 
this, and pointed out that the expenditure 
could be recouped by the end of three 
years through the charges made on the 
increased number of car parking spaces. 
Although the matter has taken yearsrather than months to argue out, it seems 
that the council is now prepared to imple-
ment the plan. 
Another example can be seen in an exer-
cise carried out between the ALHE and the 
Department of the Environment. One of 
the staff asked the Department's Research 
Unit whether they would allow a number 
of tenants who were housewives to com-
ment to planners and architects of a high 
density housing estate on the appearance 
of a scheme at Granby Street, Bethnal 
Green. After the meeting, the architects 
were openly impressed by the amount of 
information that the women had been able 
to give them. The housewives for their 
part only expressed regret that they could 
not be involved in the planning of the 
interiors as well. 
consultation or control ? 
Until quite recently tenants in the ALHE's 
membership tended to regard better con-
sultation as the aim. This issue has been 
discussed intensively within the ALHE, as 
it has among many tenants groups else-
where, and there is growing evidence to 
suggest that while recent experiences have 
toned down expectations of consultatior1, 
a large number of tenants associations are 
becoming eager to move from a consul-
tative model to an executive one. The 
events of the last few years, and particu-
larly the debate leading up to the passage 
of the Housing Finance Act, have served 
as a stimulus to both the consultative and 
the executive schools of thought. It seems 
likely that both attitudes and leadership 
have changed relatively quickly, which 
means that negative evidence about ten-

38 
ants' desire to participate gathered a 
recently as 1970 is probably already out 
of date. (Marjorie Mayo, " Some funda-
mental problems of community work in 
housing estates in Britain," Communitydevelopment journal, January 1972.) 
Several local authorities have in the last 
few years begun to experiment with con-
sultation, justifying the step with one or 
n1ore of the following hopes : 
1. That they would be able to get u eful 
information from the consumers of their 
service, and so provide a more efficient 
erv1ce. 
2. That tenants would be able to let off 
team. 
3. That they would be able to break down 
the " us and them " relationship. 
4. That they would reduce the nun1ber f 
mall complaints by channelling a rep-
resentative sample of complaints through 
a central point. 
The tenants' groups concerned would , I 
suspect, report varying success, but most 
of them were disappointed to find that 
they could not make much impression on 
the bigger issues which affected them. 
Indeed, when a council felt that a change 
was too costly, or against the interests of 
the wider electorate, or where an estab-
lished departmental procedure or an 
ideology was being called jnto questioi1 
by tenants, it i very unlikely that succe s 
would be achieved. 
One of the reasons why tenants have been 
encouraged to go beyond consultation has 
been the comparatively radical format of 
the Camden Borough Council's cheme 
( ee below) in which four district com-
mittees have executive function as well 
as advisory. Some members of the ALHE 
are now beginning to look further ahead, 
and to think in terms of the local 
authority ]easing each estate to a manage-
ment committee of tenants. According to 
this suggestion, the management com-
mittee would be responsible (and account-
able to the local authority) for aJI manage-
ment functions, · except allocation of ten-
ancie , which would remain in the hand., 
of the local authority. 
This raises several problems. A move fron 
a consultative model to an executive on 
is bound to create serious tensions whkl 
participants will have to learn to handle 
How will it affect the role of the tenant~ 
association? It is quite possible that th 
management committee would become a · 
clique of estate worthies, whose attitude~ 
are impugned as often as those of th · 
housing department previously. There i, 
a possible solution. First of all, it is eas) . 
to see that the tenants who want to pla) 
a significant executive part in managing 
or controlling their estates are taking o 
a lot, and I would not expect many tc 
succeed without some support and tech : 
nical help. This help must be available o : 
their terms, and they must control the 
resources they use. In this context, th~ : 
ALHE's experience is helpful, not least fOJ. 
the fact that the way that it is funde 
(mainly through central and local govern 
ment grants) clearly represents a class)<
community work dilemma. Secondly, wil 
tenants' involvement or control lead in ~ 
evitably to greater interest on the part o 
the rank and file tenants? Nothing is mon 
obvious than that people only participat( 
if they stand to gain something by it 
whether it is better provision, better re 
pairs service, cheaper rent, or greatesatisfaction in having the place the wa~ 
you like it. People will involve themselve 
as long as these benefits seem to procee< 
from the effort that they apply, and a 
long as these benefits mean something t< 
them. Ultimately a longer term questiotwill have to be solved, because the bene 
:fits will have to stand comparison witl. 
the benefits received for a similar per · 
ceived input of effort by people in othe . 
sectors of housing. In other words, tenant • 
will ask either that they receive a share it 
the appreciation of the flat they live in ·_ 
or that other ectors are reformed. 
national decision making 
The passage of the Housing Finance Ac 
taught the tenants as ociation movemen · 
a lesson which it had learnt often enougl 
already. There was no concerted nationa · 
38 
ants' desire to participate gathered a 
recently as 1970 is probably already out 
of date. (Marjorie Mayo, " Some funda-
mental problems of community work in 
housing estates in Britain," Communitydevelopment journal, January 1972.) 
Several local authorities have in the last 
few years begun to experiment with con-
sultation, justifying the step with one or 
n1ore of the following hopes : 
1. That they would be able to get u eful 
information from the consumers of their 
service, and so provide a more efficient 
erv1ce. 
2. That tenants would be able to let off 
team. 
3. That they would be able to break down 
the " us and them " relationship. 
4. That they would reduce the nun1ber f 
mall complaints by channelling a rep-
resentative sample of complaints through 
a central point. 
The tenants' groups concerned would , I 
suspect, report varying success, but most 
of them were disappointed to find that 
they could not make much impression on 
the bigger issues which affected them. 
Indeed, when a council felt that a change 
was too costly, or against the interests of 
the wider electorate, or where an estab-
lished departmental procedure or an 
ideology was being called jnto questioi1 
by tenants, it i very unlikely that succe s 
would be achieved. 
One of the reasons why tenants have been 
encouraged to go beyond consultation has 
been the comparatively radical format of 
the Camden Borough Council's cheme 
( ee below) in which four district com-
mittees have executive function as well 
as advisory. Some members of the ALHE 
are now beginning to look further ahead, 
and to think in terms of the local 
authority ]easing each estate to a manage-
ment committee of tenants. According to 
this suggestion, the management com-
mittee would be responsible (and account-
able to the local authority) for aJI manage-
ment functions, · except allocation of ten-
ancie , which would remain in the hand., 
of the local authority. 
This raises several problems. A move fron 
a consultative model to an executive on 
is bound to create serious tensions whkl 
participants will have to learn to handle 
How will it affect the role of the tenant~ 
association? It is quite possible that th 
management committee would become a · 
clique of estate worthies, whose attitude~ 
are impugned as often as those of th · 
housing department previously. There i, 
a possible solution. First of all, it is eas) . 
to see that the tenants who want to pla) 
a significant executive part in managing 
or controlling their estates are taking o 
a lot, and I would not expect many tc 
succeed without some support and tech : 
nical help. This help must be available o : 
their terms, and they must control the 
resources they use. In this context, th~ : 
ALHE's experience is helpful, not least fOJ. 
the fact that the way that it is funde 
(mainly through central and local govern 
ment grants) clearly represents a class)<
community work dilemma. Secondly, wil 
tenants' involvement or control lead in ~ 
evitably to greater interest on the part o 
the rank and file tenants? Nothing is mon 
obvious than that people only participat( 
if they stand to gain something by it 
whether it is better provision, better re 
pairs service, cheaper rent, or greatesatisfaction in having the place the wa~ 
you like it. People will involve themselve 
as long as these benefits seem to procee< 
from the effort that they apply, and a 
long as these benefits mean something t< 
them. Ultimately a longer term questiotwill have to be solved, because the bene 
:fits will have to stand comparison witl. 
the benefits received for a similar per · 
ceived input of effort by people in othe . 
sectors of housing. In other words, tenant • 
will ask either that they receive a share it 
the appreciation of the flat they live in ·_ 
or that other ectors are reformed. 
national decision making 
The passage of the Housing Finance Ac 
taught the tenants as ociation movemen · 
a lesson which it had learnt often enougl 
already. There was no concerted nationa · 

trategy for opposition, although many of 
the local groups and federations lobbied 
hard. And now that a greater measure of 
control of local authority housing policy 
has passed to Whitehall, there i an even 

tronger case for an effective national 
body to represent tenants. After all, it is 
now national policy that will govern the 
context in which local administrative and 
management decisions are made. 

A most difficult obstacle is that of re


ources. The issues which have to be 
dealt with at this level are often very 
complex, and only an organisation that 
can afford to u e advocates even on a 
temporary basi can seriou ly enter the 
lists. 

conclusions 

I The schemes described below place di. 
ferent emphases on consultation and exe. 
cutive responsibility, so that experience' of them should give clues to the difficult 
·questions. What real benefits doe each 

I 

side get from each scheme? Will h be 

possible to suggest a univer al model for 

differing localities? Or has tenants' rep


resentation merely served to diffu e th 

conflict, and to enable the council con


. cerned to preserve the status quo? 

There is usually a marked di parity between 
leadership styles of poor working
class people, and the ideal democratic 
behaviour which they are expected to 
· adopt on local authority committees. This 
can lead to ineffective participation of 
locally influential people who are actual1y 
representative ; it can also lead to " co. 
~pting," whereby a formerly representa


tive local person adopts the style of the 
; • committee, and becomes unable to rep1 
' resent the people he is uppo ed to be 
, ' repre enting. 

.How will tenants' associations interpret

the discovery that only local i sue are 

usceptible to local solution ? Will it 

merely serve to localise their interest, or 
~~ will they also attempt to deal on a wider 
tl. basi with problems which can only be 
hI • olved by dealing with regional or national 
11 Issues? 

FIVE EXISTING SCHEMES 


The following examples of schemes for 
involving tenants in decision making or 
consultation are taken frmn a paper prepared 
by the ALHE. 

Camden 

For at least five years the council ha had 
a tenants' consultative committee which 
started as a forum to discuss rent increases. 
This group soon raised its sight 
and the evident improvement in communication 
channels was seen in the fact that 
the chairmanship of the committee alternated 
between tenants and councillors at 
successive meetings. This has now developed 
into four district managementcommittees which possess both advisory 

and executive functions. 

Executive 

1. Maintenance of open pace , e tate 
amenitie and play provision within the 
budget notified by the director of hou ing, 
being a proportionate amount of the 
council's approved estimate . 
2. Repair to properties within the co t 
range of £1 ,000 to £3,000, in luding que · 
tions of priority. 
3. Encouragementmunity activitie . 
of social and com-
4. ontrol of use of amenitie on estate . 

5. Jnspection of e tate and properti s 
within the management di trict. 
6. Regular contact and meeting with 
individual tenants' a ociation . 
7. Such other matters as may be referred 
to the district committee by the hou ing 
committee. 
8. Interpretation on district ba i f 
c uncil' policy on housing management. 
Advisory 

Any matter on which tenant feel their 


40 
views would be of assistance to the coun-
cil, especially: caretaking ; observance of 
tenancy rules; problems from redevelop-
ment and rehabilitation as referred by the 
housing committee including plans for 
new estates and improvement areas ; 
matters in excess of the budget or out-
side council's normal programme in re-
spect of executive functions 1 and 2. 
Composition of committee 
6 Councillors (one who must be a mem-
ber of the housing committee and one 
who is a member of the works and ser-
vice committee). 
3 Tenants' representatives. 
Non-voting: the chairman or a repre-
sentative from the· tenants' associations 
within the area ; the principal assistant 
housing manager ; the district housingofficer. 
The meetings are held every two months 
and are serviced by the town clerk's de-
partment. 
Wandsworth 
The general intention of the scheme is to 
provide liaison between tenants, council 
and housing department. A three-tiered 
structure has been set up which consists 
of: 
1. Four district housing panels to discuss 
local repairs, maintenance and so on, con-
sisting of two representatives from each 
tenants' association in the district and six 
councillors, one of whom is appointedchairman by the council. 
2. Borough housing panel to consider 
wider issues concerning borough housingpolicy. This comprises one representative 
of each tenants association, housing man-
ager and officials from the housing de-
partment, the four district housing panel 
chairmen, the chairman and vice-chairman 
of the housing committee, plus minority 
party housing committee members to 
make equal representation. The chairman 
is the chairman of the housing committee. 
Meetings of both district panels and the 
borough panel are three-monthly. 
3. The borough panel has the right to 
elect two tenant members to be observers 
on the housing committee ; they also 
attend the management sub-committee 
and development sub-committee. 
The only tenants' association representa-
tives who are included in the above 
scheme are those who represent one third! 
of the households on their estates, and 
they must be elected annually. A " reason-
able amount of time " will be allowed for 
the representatives to increase their mem-
bership to allow the one third represen-
tation. 
Lambeth 
This scheme was set up by the housing 
management sub-committee in consulta-· 
tion with the Lambeth borough estates 
group. There are five joint area housingcommittees, consisting of councillors from 
both the majority and the minority partiesand two tenants' representatives from each 
association (majority affiliated to the 
ALHE). These committees 
1. Discuss matters relating to tenancy,
estates' maintenance and improvements in 
the environment to the mutual benefit of 
the council and its tenants. 
2. Advise the council on the propose 
programme of works of improvements to 
be included in the annual estimates for 
each estate. 
Greenwich 
This is a unique scheme as the machineryis being et up for an individual estate. 
The estate concerned has had a reputation 
of being a "multi-problem" one. The 
council approached the estate's improve-
ment group and invited them to a meet-
ing and to submit their proposals for 
a scheme. The improvement group de-. 
dared as a first principle that in order to 
be anything more than a "talking shop,": 
the joint management council must have 
40 
views would be of assistance to the coun-
cil, especially: caretaking ; observance of 
tenancy rules; problems from redevelop-
ment and rehabilitation as referred by the 
housing committee including plans for 
new estates and improvement areas ; 
matters in excess of the budget or out-
side council's normal programme in re-
spect of executive functions 1 and 2. 
Composition of committee 
6 Councillors (one who must be a mem-
ber of the housing committee and one 
who is a member of the works and ser-
vice committee). 
3 Tenants' representatives. 
Non-voting: the chairman or a repre-
sentative from the· tenants' associations 
within the area ; the principal assistant 
housing manager ; the district housingofficer. 
The meetings are held every two months 
and are serviced by the town clerk's de-
partment. 
Wandsworth 
The general intention of the scheme is to 
provide liaison between tenants, council 
and housing department. A three-tiered 
structure has been set up which consists 
of: 
1. Four district housing panels to discuss 
local repairs, maintenance and so on, con-
sisting of two representatives from each 
tenants' association in the district and six 
councillors, one of whom is appointedchairman by the council. 
2. Borough housing panel to consider 
wider issues concerning borough housingpolicy. This comprises one representative 
of each tenants association, housing man-
ager and officials from the housing de-
partment, the four district housing panel 
chairmen, the chairman and vice-chairman 
of the housing committee, plus minority 
party housing committee members to 
make equal representation. The chairman 
is the chairman of the housing committee. 
Meetings of both district panels and the 
borough panel are three-monthly. 
3. The borough panel has the right to 
elect two tenant members to be observers 
on the housing committee ; they also 
attend the management sub-committee 
and development sub-committee. 
The only tenants' association representa-
tives who are included in the above 
scheme are those who represent one third! 
of the households on their estates, and 
they must be elected annually. A " reason-
able amount of time " will be allowed for 
the representatives to increase their mem-
bership to allow the one third represen-
tation. 
Lambeth 
This scheme was set up by the housing 
management sub-committee in consulta-· 
tion with the Lambeth borough estates 
group. There are five joint area housingcommittees, consisting of councillors from 
both the majority and the minority partiesand two tenants' representatives from each 
association (majority affiliated to the 
ALHE). These committees 
1. Discuss matters relating to tenancy,
estates' maintenance and improvements in 
the environment to the mutual benefit of 
the council and its tenants. 
2. Advise the council on the propose 
programme of works of improvements to 
be included in the annual estimates for 
each estate. 
Greenwich 
This is a unique scheme as the machineryis being et up for an individual estate. 
The estate concerned has had a reputation 
of being a "multi-problem" one. The 
council approached the estate's improve-
ment group and invited them to a meet-
ing and to submit their proposals for 
a scheme. The improvement group de-. 
dared as a first principle that in order to 
be anything more than a "talking shop,": 
the joint management council must have 

he powers to act upon its decisions. They 
wanted training procedures written into 
.he machinery, and saw their terms of 
reference as covering estate and com-
munity planning as well as administration. 
This was broken down as follows : 
Estate planning 
1. Design, provision and management of 
amenities like play areas, laundry facilities 
and so on. 
2. Consideration of possible alteration of 
·application of particular flats. 
3. Seek means of reducing the very high 
·density of population. 
4. Selection of tenants inwards and out-
wards. 
Community planning 
·1. Encourage and assist the integrationof tenants into the estate and the local 
community. 
2. Attempt to improve the estate's image 
with a view to raising the morale and local 
pride of the tenants. 
3. Define policies that will help to stabilise 
the community, reducing the resident 
turnover on the estate. 
4. Seek improved means of dealing with 
social problems that will have a lastingeffect. 
5. Establish a good working relation-
ship between tenants, tenants' groups, the 
joint management committee and the local 
council. 
Administration 
1. Decide on the responsibility of both 
tenants and local council, and then seek 
ways to ensure that these are honoured. 
2. General day to day management. 
3. Seek improved arrangements for car 
parking, refuse disposal, caretaking and 
porterage. 
41 
4. Seek ways in which emergency repairs 
and general maintenance problems can be 
dealt with promptly and efficiently. 
Their suggestion for membership of the 
joint management committee was: 
6 councillors (including chairman of the 
housing management committee and 2 
councillors from the ward in which the 
estate was situated). 
6 tenants' representatives (3 voting and 
3 non-voting). 
This scheme is very much a pioneering 
one, and obviously cannot be used for 
every estate. However, it will be a veryvaluable learning situation. Once it has 
been evaluated it may well provide useful 
guidance for the future. 
Southwark 
The Southwark scheme has been opera-
ting for a period of three years. It consists 
of a meeting held every three months 
between the council's housing committee 
elected representatives including the chair-
man, permanent officials including the 
housing manager and members of each 
tenants' association affiliated to the ALHE. 
This includes Greater London Council 
estates and is the only scheme where 
tenants from such estates are encouraged 
to participate. This does not happen in 
the other models and the Greater London 
Council has no such machinery. 
There is a prepared agenda and associa-
tions may submit items for the agenda 
providing they give two weeks notice. 
These items mainly concern issues relating 
to repairs, maintenance and amenities 
connected with individual estates. Policy 
matters can be raised mainly on a con-
sultative basis but within a limited in-
fluence. Tenants are given no say in the 
allocation of resources as is the case with 
the Camden and Greenwich schemes 
which include executive powers. 
The Southwark group of the ALHE agreethat the present relationship provides a 
sound basis, and would like to retain the 
he powers to act upon its decisions. They 
wanted training procedures written into 
.he machinery, and saw their terms of 
reference as covering estate and com-
munity planning as well as administration. 
This was broken down as follows : 
Estate planning 
1. Design, provision and management of 
amenities like play areas, laundry facilities 
and so on. 
2. Consideration of possible alteration of 
·application of particular flats. 
3. Seek means of reducing the very high 
·density of population. 
4. Selection of tenants inwards and out-
wards. 
Community planning 
·1. Encourage and assist the integrationof tenants into the estate and the local 
community. 
2. Attempt to improve the estate's image 
with a view to raising the morale and local 
pride of the tenants. 
3. Define policies that will help to stabilise 
the community, reducing the resident 
turnover on the estate. 
4. Seek improved means of dealing with 
social problems that will have a lastingeffect. 
5. Establish a good working relation-
ship between tenants, tenants' groups, the 
joint management committee and the local 
council. 
Administration 
1. Decide on the responsibility of both 
tenants and local council, and then seek 
ways to ensure that these are honoured. 
2. General day to day management. 
3. Seek improved arrangements for car 
parking, refuse disposal, caretaking and 
porterage. 
41 
4. Seek ways in which emergency repairs 
and general maintenance problems can be 
dealt with promptly and efficiently. 
Their suggestion for membership of the 
joint management committee was: 
6 councillors (including chairman of the 
housing management committee and 2 
councillors from the ward in which the 
estate was situated). 
6 tenants' representatives (3 voting and 
3 non-voting). 
This scheme is very much a pioneering 
one, and obviously cannot be used for 
every estate. However, it will be a veryvaluable learning situation. Once it has 
been evaluated it may well provide useful 
guidance for the future. 
Southwark 
The Southwark scheme has been opera-
ting for a period of three years. It consists 
of a meeting held every three months 
between the council's housing committee 
elected representatives including the chair-
man, permanent officials including the 
housing manager and members of each 
tenants' association affiliated to the ALHE. 
This includes Greater London Council 
estates and is the only scheme where 
tenants from such estates are encouraged 
to participate. This does not happen in 
the other models and the Greater London 
Council has no such machinery. 
There is a prepared agenda and associa-
tions may submit items for the agenda 
providing they give two weeks notice. 
These items mainly concern issues relating 
to repairs, maintenance and amenities 
connected with individual estates. Policy 
matters can be raised mainly on a con-
sultative basis but within a limited in-
fluence. Tenants are given no say in the 
allocation of resources as is the case with 
the Camden and Greenwich schemes 
which include executive powers. 
The Southwark group of the ALHE agreethat the present relationship provides a 
sound basis, and would like to retain the 

present framework of quarterly meetings 
with council representatives. But the 
group wants to develop the relationshjp 
in the spirit of the aims set out in the 
ALHE's tenants charter; the tenants would 
like to have representation on the housing 
committee and any sub-committees with 
full voting rights. This would be in line 
with paragraph 30 of the Ministry of 
Housing Local Government Circular 
37/68. Furthermore, provision alreadyexists in Section 85 of the Local Government 
Act 1933 for a local authority to 
co-opt tenants' representatives on to their 
housing committee, provided that at lea t 
two-thirds of the members of the committee 
are members of the authority. 



il. self managementn day centres 
Peter Jewell 
fhis chapter is about my experiences with 
.he day centres in the Welfare Depart-
neat-as it was then-of one of the inner 
London boroughs. As Deputy Principal 
~ocial Worker between 1965 and 1971 I 
had delegated to me a special responsi-
bility to develop the work being done in 
this field with groups of clients. In the 
main they are elderly people, but include 
the physically handicapped, many of 
whom are also in the higher age range and 
for whom transport is available. Certainly 
I chose not to distinguish between these 
two categories of members for it seems 
appropriate that groups of people should 
not be segregated from each other in what 
is primarily a social setting. This does not 
account, however, for the small number 
of younger physically handicapped mem-
bers, for whom, ideally, in my opinionand their own, special provision would be 
preferable. 
The day centres offer a setting for groups. 
·The purpose of attendance is, broadly, 
social rehabilitation. This in itself speaks 
poorly of society's attitude towards the 
elderly. I don't need to describe the disa -
trous effect that retirement poorly pre-
pared for can have on many individuals,
who may have led very full and active 
lives in the field of employment and who 
suddenly find themselves with a greatly 
reduced outlet for physical, mental and 
social energies. Various attempts are being 
made today to prepare people for this 
change, but in the area in which I have 
been working, where there is a large pro-
portion of elderly people living alone, so 
far these attempts have had little impact. 
Especially in the cases of elderly people 
who are housebound or even emi-house-
bound, they can very quickly lose contact 
with others and become extremely isolated 
and lonely. 
Society stigtnatise the elderly by cutting 
ff their activity and involvement in the 
everyday life of the community, and 
thereby their feeling that they are con-
tributing to communal life. Elderly pe ple 
are thrown back on their own device justat a time when their initiative, social con-
tacts, knowledge of resources and ability 
to move through normal social channels 
i more limited. It eems quite extra-
ordinary that society views old people 
very much in this light, tacitly as umingthat they have no contribution to make, 
that they are " helpless " and requiringhelp, and only rarely noting that they may 
be able to offer or provide help. The 
emphasis in the phrase ., old people " i 
more often on the first word than the 
second, and in any case little distinction 
is popularly made between people in their 
sixties and people :in their nineties. The 
elderly are put in the position of having 
to take or to receive but rarely to givehelp, and this one way relationship is 
damaging to the personality. 
Traditionally this attitude has permeated 
welfare provision for the elderly, especi-
ally in the clubs run for elderly people. 
The tendency in the past has been for 
clubs to be ~~ run for " elderly people. It 
seems to me more appropriate for club 
or day centres to be run " by " their 
members rather than run for them. It 
should be no surprise that there are mem-
bers perfectly capable of taking a hand in 
the management of day centre , for n1any 
members have led extren1ely active live 
and indeed some may have had man-
agerial or committee experience. What we 
have arrived at therefore is a situation 
where the tables need to be turned, and 
instead of the staff-social workers or 
whoever-providing for the members of 
day centres, a joint relationship is 
attempted between staff and members. 
There is an obvious parallel here with the 
casework situation. 
The designation of taff employed in thi 
work was formerly that of" centre organ-
iser," and symbollically in my departn1ent 
we chose to change the designation to that 
of" centre social worker." At the time the 
change was more symbolic than real, a 
the staff in fact remained the same, but it 
was an indication of a change of role. The 
po sibilities of the change in policy were 
discussed with staff concerned for orne 
time before they were put into effect. 
Staff participation in thi context i cer-
tainly a important a and a neces ary 
forerunner of client participation. It wa 
agreed that the experiment would require 
the setting up of committee of member 
in order that discu i n and deci i n 
il. self managementn day centres 
Peter Jewell 
fhis chapter is about my experiences with 
.he day centres in the Welfare Depart-
neat-as it was then-of one of the inner 
London boroughs. As Deputy Principal 
~ocial Worker between 1965 and 1971 I 
had delegated to me a special responsi-
bility to develop the work being done in 
this field with groups of clients. In the 
main they are elderly people, but include 
the physically handicapped, many of 
whom are also in the higher age range and 
for whom transport is available. Certainly 
I chose not to distinguish between these 
two categories of members for it seems 
appropriate that groups of people should 
not be segregated from each other in what 
is primarily a social setting. This does not 
account, however, for the small number 
of younger physically handicapped mem-
bers, for whom, ideally, in my opinionand their own, special provision would be 
preferable. 
The day centres offer a setting for groups. 
·The purpose of attendance is, broadly, 
social rehabilitation. This in itself speaks 
poorly of society's attitude towards the 
elderly. I don't need to describe the disa -
trous effect that retirement poorly pre-
pared for can have on many individuals,
who may have led very full and active 
lives in the field of employment and who 
suddenly find themselves with a greatly 
reduced outlet for physical, mental and 
social energies. Various attempts are being 
made today to prepare people for this 
change, but in the area in which I have 
been working, where there is a large pro-
portion of elderly people living alone, so 
far these attempts have had little impact. 
Especially in the cases of elderly people 
who are housebound or even emi-house-
bound, they can very quickly lose contact 
with others and become extremely isolated 
and lonely. 
Society stigtnatise the elderly by cutting 
ff their activity and involvement in the 
everyday life of the community, and 
thereby their feeling that they are con-
tributing to communal life. Elderly pe ple 
are thrown back on their own device justat a time when their initiative, social con-
tacts, knowledge of resources and ability 
to move through normal social channels 
i more limited. It eems quite extra-
ordinary that society views old people 
very much in this light, tacitly as umingthat they have no contribution to make, 
that they are " helpless " and requiringhelp, and only rarely noting that they may 
be able to offer or provide help. The 
emphasis in the phrase ., old people " i 
more often on the first word than the 
second, and in any case little distinction 
is popularly made between people in their 
sixties and people :in their nineties. The 
elderly are put in the position of having 
to take or to receive but rarely to givehelp, and this one way relationship is 
damaging to the personality. 
Traditionally this attitude has permeated 
welfare provision for the elderly, especi-
ally in the clubs run for elderly people. 
The tendency in the past has been for 
clubs to be ~~ run for " elderly people. It 
seems to me more appropriate for club 
or day centres to be run " by " their 
members rather than run for them. It 
should be no surprise that there are mem-
bers perfectly capable of taking a hand in 
the management of day centre , for n1any 
members have led extren1ely active live 
and indeed some may have had man-
agerial or committee experience. What we 
have arrived at therefore is a situation 
where the tables need to be turned, and 
instead of the staff-social workers or 
whoever-providing for the members of 
day centres, a joint relationship is 
attempted between staff and members. 
There is an obvious parallel here with the 
casework situation. 
The designation of taff employed in thi 
work was formerly that of" centre organ-
iser," and symbollically in my departn1ent 
we chose to change the designation to that 
of" centre social worker." At the time the 
change was more symbolic than real, a 
the staff in fact remained the same, but it 
was an indication of a change of role. The 
po sibilities of the change in policy were 
discussed with staff concerned for orne 
time before they were put into effect. 
Staff participation in thi context i cer-
tainly a important a and a neces ary 
forerunner of client participation. It wa 
agreed that the experiment would require 
the setting up of committee of member 
in order that discu i n and deci i n 

about the development of day centres 
could take place with representatives of 
the membership as a whole. The idea 
may not sound very startling, but such 
committees are not widespread in myexperience, even today. 

Throu_gh a committee of members it was 
hoped that their ideas, suggestions and 
criticisms of the existing daily routine of 
the day centre could be examined, and 
be altered according to their wishes. 
And in fact this is what happened. Very 
quickly it became apparent that centre 
committees did have ideas, did hope for 
changes in some areas, and according to 
their capabilities and to the quality of the 
relationship between the committees and 
staff, were able to work towards achieving 
their objectives. In addition, through the 
committees the membership as a whole 
were kept informed and were also able to 
participate in the new activities that 
emerged. 

Initially, caretaker committees were set up 
in most of the day centres, made up of 
members hand picked by the centre staffs; 
and an informal constitution was then 
pieced together. At the start of the 
Council year, new committees were democratically 
elected, a process that has been 
repeated annually when the retiring committee 
has the opportunity of presenting 
an annual report to a general meeting of 
the members of the day centre. It was 
agreed that the chairmanship should 
change annually, providing an opportunity 
for various members to hold this position. 
The centre social worker generally acted 
as secretary. The raising of centre funds 
which are used to subsidise various 
activities such as outings, was seen as a 
function of several committees The sort 
of group activities which take place in 
day centres are as follows: singing concert 
groups, cookery, discussion groups, 
drama, film making, gardening, handicrafts, 
indoor sports and games, industrial 
outwork, music and movement, old time 
dancing, percussion band, social groups, 
bingo and whist drives. 

The members of the ten day centres in the 
borough jointly publish a magazine known 
as the Centre News. Inter-centre competi


tions take place, enabling members to visit 
each other and vie for a shield awarded , 
to the centre that comes " top of the 
league." Gratifyingly, the magazine is 
written, edited, roneod and stapled entirely 
by members themselves (though it 
is not always typed by them as yet) : and 
the inter-centre shield was designed and 
brought into being as the result of an 
inter-centre competition. 

Another very simple example of the , 
change implicit in this policy are the out-, 
ings and Christmas parties traditionally 
enjoyed by members. Formerly, arrangements 
for these had been made by staff, 
with the best will in the world, on behalf 
of members; now they have the oppor-i 

1

tunity to discuss and to decide themselves 
where they will go for their outing and 
what they will eat at their Christmas 1 
Party. Almost before we knew it, we were 

J 

discovering untapped knowledge and skills 
among members that had not emerged , 
earlier because there was never an oppor-jtunity for this to happen. More recently · 
and more significantly we have been able , 
to involve members in, for example, discussions 
on types of vehicles most suited 
to their needs and in discussions with 
architects and others on the equippingand design of new day centres. 

The picture it not entirely rosy however. 
Some dangers in the committ~e structure 
were foreseen, like the following: 

1. Misrepresentation. The members of the 
committee might fail to understand that 
they represent the centre members, and 
act as spokesmen for them as weU as 
bringing their own ideas. 
2. Committee elite. The members of the 
committee might feel that they are in 
some way privileged members of the day 
centre. 
3. Personality difficulties. Relations between 
members in the centre might not 
always be cordial, and could be aggravated 
by election of committee members. 
4. Staff Manipulation. Centre staff may 
be tempted to impose their own ideas, 
rather than listening sympathetically to 

eas contributed by members and givingplanations when their suggestions are 
ot taken up. 

)n occasions these things have happened 
.nd caused friction, requiring skilful 
Landling from the staff concerned. But 
hen it would always be "tidier," less 
10thersome and superficially more satisying 
to organise and take credit for the 
lay centre oneself, allowing members 
ittle or no say in the general proceedings. 
]lis method answers the needs of the 
aember of staff rather than the needs of 
he members. And at a higher level, the 
1entre committees have not always been 
een as a progressive development. Senior 
fficers and councillors in my experienceLave sometimes felt threatened by the 
· power " given to groups of clients or 
onsumers and, either prefer the quietife or fear that the recipients of social 
ervices will bite the hand that feed 
hem! Which brings me full circle back 

o the theme of stigmatisation-" clients 
hould know their place." At best thi 
.ttitude is " charity " or at worst " social 
:ontrol," but not in my view "social 
:roup work" which i what day centres 
.re all about. 
:;-inally, there is scope for wider cmnnunity 
participation. For example, as 
>art of a social studies exercise, pupils at 
. local school arranged the inter-centre 
lWZ one year, making out the questions, 
.cting as quiz n1aster, scorer and time·
eeper, providing refreshments and taking 
he old people on a tour of the school. At 
he end of the afternoon's proceedings, a 
entre member gave a vote of thanks and 
hallenged the pupils to a return match 
or which the old people would in turn 
1repare the quiz and refreshments, and so 


10. This took place, and links with the 
chool are continuing. The pupils per-
armed old time songs for the old people, 
.nd the day centre members responded 
'Y putting on some pop numbers in 
eturn. 
~o my way of thinking this represents a 
wo-way and more healthy relationship 

•etween the elderly and the rest of society, 
nd in a very small way exemplifies what 
he Seebohm Committee meant by " enabling 
the greatest possible number of 
individuals to act reciprocally, giving and 
receiving service for the well being of the 
whole community." 



8. popular participation 
in local democracy 
William Hampton 

"There is certainly a difficult link to be 
forged between the concepts of popularparticipation and traditional representative 
democracy " (Seebohm Report, para494). 

The services provided by local authorities 
closely affect everyday life. The house 
we live in may be provided by the council 
or affected by their planning proposals: 
the roads we travel to work on are built 
and maintained by the local authority; 
our children are educated in local chools, 
and cared for by local clinics ; the local 
cleansing department is responsible for 
sweeping the roads and our rubbish i 
taken away by local dustmen; our water 
may flow through local authority pipe , 
and we may travel on municipal tran port 
; in the larger cities, our theatres and 
concerts will be dependent upon local 
subventions ; if we need practical assistance, 
or guidance through an emotional 
problem, then the personal social services 
are available; and finally we may rest in 
locally controlled burial grounds or disappear 
into local crematoria. Such a li t 
is not exhaustive, but it indicate the 
pecial significance of the argument in 
favour of a greater measure of public

• participation. 
The revival of intere t in participatory, 

as opposed to representative, democracy 

has not been confined to local politics. 

Anthony Wedgwood Benn has recon


noitered the implications for our parlia


mentary institutions in a previous Fabian 

pamphlet (The new politics, a socialist 

reconnaisance, Fabian tract 402); indus


trial disputes, in some cases, take the form 

of work ins rather than strikes, while 

workers' participation in managen1ent, 

and even workers' control, are again being 

discussed by advanced trade unionists; 

young people everywhere, whether at 

chool, college, or work, refu e to accept 

traditional hierarchical arrangements.

They expect to be consulted before ded


ions are taken which affect them. The 

argument from authority carries little 

weight in our developing society ; and 

rank takes few tricks. 

uch development will n t em trar ge 
t th e. who are familiar with the writ


ings of Rousseau or G. D. H. Cole, to 

name but two advocates of participatory

democracy, but conventional wisdom' fiad 

beg to overlay their theories with the 

dust of anachronism. The practice of 

Herbert Morrison, no less than the theory 

of Schumpeter or the empiricism of Dahl, 

defined democracy as "the rule of the 

olitician." In this view of representation, 

the public are restricted to voting periodi


cally to elect a government ; once the 

govermnent takes office then direct inter


vention by the general public in policy 

making becomes at best inefficient and at 

worst undemocratic. Schumpeter believed 

his analysis of democracy to be an accu


rate reflection of reality in the modern 

industrial state, but he went further to 

argue that it was also the way in which 

democracy ought to work (Capitalism, 

socialism and democracy, George Allen 

and Unwin, 1943). His views had a re


markable influence; accounted for, no 

doubt, by the predilection of elites to 

believe their ascendency to be both bene


ficial and inevitable. 
~ 

During the 1960s the views of the elitists 
began to be challenged. The disciplineddecades of the 1930s and 1940s, when 
organisation seemed necessary to defeat 
the twin enemies of political fascism and 
economic stagnation, gave way first to the 
" end of ideology " apathy of the 1950s, 
when material affluence was hailed as the 
solution to all social problems, and then 
to the revival of interest in anarchism and 
citizen participation. The resurrection of 
the fashions and music of the 1920s is now 
being accompanied by a re-reading of 
those socialist authors who wrote with 
optimism before Stalin and Hitler donlinated 
political consciousness. · 

The interest in participation a a political 
method has been accompanied by activities 
affecting locally provided services. 
This is not surprising. Theorists of partici-. 
patory democracy have always stressed 
the importance of local government as a 
tneans of enabling people to enter the 1 
political process at a level which most of 
them find meaningful. We all participate 
most readily in those matters which affect 
us directly. As we have seen, the services 
provided by local authoritie affect each 


nd every one of us throughout our daily 
ves. When we look for example of the 
ew approach towards participatory 
emocracy we are drawn irresistibly,
1erefore, towards the activities of local 
roups. Parents organise pre-school play-
roups, or seek to influence policy throughJcal Advancement of State Education 
ranches. Tenants form associations to 
emand consultation about rents and 
·ther matters affecting their e tate . Re i-
ents start action groups to protest at 
::>cal development plans and proceed to 
~ roduce alternative plans of their own for 
h.eir neighbourhood. Those who have a 
pecial need for personal social ervices 
rganise for self help or to put pressure 
tpon government agencie . There are 
::>cal groups for the disabled, for un-
upported mothers, for the parents of 
tandicapped children, and many other . 
· n this chapter we are principally con-
erned with the impact of these develop-
nents upon the existing institution of 
ocal democracy, and with the attitudes 
vhich the Labour Party should be en-
:ouraging both nationally and locally. Jn 
me sense, of course, the movement to-
vards independ~activity implie a criti-
·ism _QLexisting institutions and of poli-
icians who have been slow to accept the 
1articipatory possibilities of local govern-
nent. Local authorities, with some hon-
mrable exceptions and whatever their 
eputation as service provider , have not 
>een an outstanding success as organ iser 
>f mass involvement in popular demo-
'facy. Thi is a har h judgment and we 
nust review the evidence upon which it is 
msed. 
[he Committee on the Management of 
~ocal Government conducted urvey into 
he attitudes of both councillors and 
~eneral public. They found that the 
~eneral public were not knowledgabletbout the activities of their local author-
ties nor about the services they provide.
rhe public were aware of their ignorancetnd in some cases concerned about it. 
~bout two-thirds did not beUeve that theylad sufficient knowledge to make full use 
)f council services, and over one-third 
lid not even believe that they knew 
mough to use their vote to the be t ad-
rantage ("The local government election," 
47 
Management of local government, vol 3, 
pp 9-14 and 39, HMSO, 1967). Thi lack of 
confidence and information is reflected in 
the low turnout at most local elections. 
The proportion voting averages forty per 
cent, but polls far below thi figure are 
not uncommon. 
The councillors interviewed for the om-
mittee agreed with the self -assessment of 
the general public. Two-thirds of the 
councillors thought that the public knew 
insufficient to make good use of existingcouncil services, and over half believed 
that the public did not know enough to 
vote in an informed way at local election . 
On a more general level nearly all the 
councillors thought that the level of 
knowledge shown by the public was in-
sufficient to enable them to obtain a 
balanced picture of council affairs (" The 
local government councillor," Manage-\ 
ment of local government, vol 2, p 230). J 
The level of con1munication between the 
councillors and their electorate clearlyleaves much to be desired. 
Who is to blame for a ituation of uch 
mutual mi understanding, where the coun-
ciHor is depicted in popular caricatures a 
an interfering, incompetent, bumble . 
Many councillors blame the public ; yet 
many members of that public expre s a 
wish to know more about their local 
councils (op cit p 38). The councillor 
believe that the necessary information is 
available (op cit, p 234), but the public 
complain of secrecy, of committees which 
meet in private, and of council meeting 
incomprehensible to anyone without the 
background of the committee discussion . 
The upsurge of interest in local participa-
tion has taken place against this backcloth 
of mutual confusion and distrust. Manyof the self-help organisation , and of 
course the action group , have developed 
con ciously outside the exi ting local 
government framework. In some ca es 
they refuse to allow ward councillors to 
participate in their proceedings. Local 
councillors, for their part, are ambivalent ) 
about the new developments. They wel-
come the interest shown in their activities, 
but they find difficulty in integrating the 
demands for participation into their e tab-
lished concept of repre entative demo-
nd every one of us throughout our daily 
ves. When we look for example of the 
ew approach towards participatory 
emocracy we are drawn irresistibly,
1erefore, towards the activities of local 
roups. Parents organise pre-school play-
roups, or seek to influence policy throughJcal Advancement of State Education 
ranches. Tenants form associations to 
emand consultation about rents and 
·ther matters affecting their e tate . Re i-
ents start action groups to protest at 
::>cal development plans and proceed to 
~ roduce alternative plans of their own for 
h.eir neighbourhood. Those who have a 
pecial need for personal social ervices 
rganise for self help or to put pressure 
tpon government agencie . There are 
::>cal groups for the disabled, for un-
upported mothers, for the parents of 
tandicapped children, and many other . 
· n this chapter we are principally con-
erned with the impact of these develop-
nents upon the existing institution of 
ocal democracy, and with the attitudes 
vhich the Labour Party should be en-
:ouraging both nationally and locally. Jn 
me sense, of course, the movement to-
vards independ~activity implie a criti-
·ism _QLexisting institutions and of poli-
icians who have been slow to accept the 
1articipatory possibilities of local govern-
nent. Local authorities, with some hon-
mrable exceptions and whatever their 
eputation as service provider , have not 
>een an outstanding success as organ iser 
>f mass involvement in popular demo-
'facy. Thi is a har h judgment and we 
nust review the evidence upon which it is 
msed. 
[he Committee on the Management of 
~ocal Government conducted urvey into 
he attitudes of both councillors and 
~eneral public. They found that the 
~eneral public were not knowledgabletbout the activities of their local author-
ties nor about the services they provide.
rhe public were aware of their ignorancetnd in some cases concerned about it. 
~bout two-thirds did not beUeve that theylad sufficient knowledge to make full use 
)f council services, and over one-third 
lid not even believe that they knew 
mough to use their vote to the be t ad-
rantage ("The local government election," 
47 
Management of local government, vol 3, 
pp 9-14 and 39, HMSO, 1967). Thi lack of 
confidence and information is reflected in 
the low turnout at most local elections. 
The proportion voting averages forty per 
cent, but polls far below thi figure are 
not uncommon. 
The councillors interviewed for the om-
mittee agreed with the self -assessment of 
the general public. Two-thirds of the 
councillors thought that the public knew 
insufficient to make good use of existingcouncil services, and over half believed 
that the public did not know enough to 
vote in an informed way at local election . 
On a more general level nearly all the 
councillors thought that the level of 
knowledge shown by the public was in-
sufficient to enable them to obtain a 
balanced picture of council affairs (" The 
local government councillor," Manage-\ 
ment of local government, vol 2, p 230). J 
The level of con1munication between the 
councillors and their electorate clearlyleaves much to be desired. 
Who is to blame for a ituation of uch 
mutual mi understanding, where the coun-
ciHor is depicted in popular caricatures a 
an interfering, incompetent, bumble . 
Many councillors blame the public ; yet 
many members of that public expre s a 
wish to know more about their local 
councils (op cit p 38). The councillor 
believe that the necessary information is 
available (op cit, p 234), but the public 
complain of secrecy, of committees which 
meet in private, and of council meeting 
incomprehensible to anyone without the 
background of the committee discussion . 
The upsurge of interest in local participa-
tion has taken place against this backcloth 
of mutual confusion and distrust. Manyof the self-help organisation , and of 
course the action group , have developed 
con ciously outside the exi ting local 
government framework. In some ca es 
they refuse to allow ward councillors to 
participate in their proceedings. Local 
councillors, for their part, are ambivalent ) 
about the new developments. They wel-
come the interest shown in their activities, 
but they find difficulty in integrating the 
demands for participation into their e tab-
lished concept of repre entative demo-

cracy. They are concerned to protect the · attend meetings on details while the broad 
primacy of the elected representative, and principles are forgotten. In such circumin 
so doing they project an image of stances, it is argued, public participation 
paternalism or arrogance. There is seldom produces inferior and more expensivea genuine interchange of views in the de-policies than traditional representative

tvelopment of policy ; the more usual methods, and this surely cannot be the 
pattern is for the public to be invited, if intention of those who wish to participate.
they are lucky, to comment on fairly firm Such practical objections can be overcome 
council proposals. Some councillors seem by practical action if the political will is 
to hope that if they smile, and wait, the present. The opportunities for participawhole 
thing will simply go away. I tion can be allowed for in a time tabling 
of the decision making process. Such a 
Generalisations about local government time tabling was proposed for planning 
are always difficult to substantiate. The decisions by the Skeffington Committee 
variety throughout the country provides (People and planning, HMSO, 1969). De-
easy confutation of dogmatic assertion. cisions, planning or otherwise, are not 
So we may find examples which contradict made overnight, and the delays associated 
the previous paragraph. Local councillors with consultation are more often caused 
reading these lines will wish to draw atten-by inviting public discussion at too late a 
tion to the different circumstances obtain-stage rather than by the process of partiing 
in their area. In my experience each cipation itself. Such a process will cost 
council is always "special"; councillors money: more documents will be prepared 
are always convinced of their readiness and circulated ; meetings must be organ-
to implement, or indeed their anticipation ised ; exhibitions will be designed ; more 
of, whatever reforms are being discussed. staff will undoubtedly be needed ; but 
Of course there are local authorities where such expenditure is itself a matter for 
easy relationships exist between council-public decision. If the end of participationlors and those members of the public who is desired then we can vote the means. 
wish to participate, but there are probably Nor are all the cost arguments so obvimore 
authorities where the atmosphere on ously against participation. Many wrongboth sides is one of thinly disguised con-(in the sense of unwanted by the public) 
tempt. The bulk of local authority areas decisions may be prevented by wider 
fall between these two extremes ; what is consultation. A consequent saving of 
needed is for the councillors and public public funds may be effected ; it is easier 
in these areas to examine self -critically to amend a proposal in response to sugthe 
difficulties of forging links between gestions before the work is started, than 
popu1ar participation and traditional rep-to make alterations later in response to 
resentative democracy. public pressure. 

The objections to an extension of public The extra officers employed will need to 
participation in the provision of local combine a technical competence with the 
services are of two main types. First, there temperament and skills necessary to in-
are the instrumental objections, those volve the general public in genuine dis-
which suggest that participation would not cussions. Student planners are alreadyachieve the ends intended. Secondly, there showing a great interest in this aspect of 
are the objections based upon a fear of their work and demands may be heard 
faction. The view which led Rousseau to from the planning schools for more 
declare : " . . . if the general will is to politics and sociology to be included in 
be clearly expressed, it is imperative that { the syllabus. An associated argument is 
there shou1d be no sectional associations the need for confidentiality. This arguin 
the state." The most common objections ment is at its strongest in planning matters 
are based upon the practical difficu1ties of where premature disclosure of an author-
implementing popular participation. Dis-ity's intentions may affect property values, 
cussion takes time ; delay causes expense ; but it may also be heard elsewhere. Per-
the professional skills of local government sonal details affecting individuals shou1!i 
officers are dissipated as they constantly be treated with respect, but sometimes this 


~able intention produces curious re-
hlts. It has been argued, for example,
1at students should not have an extended 
ght of appeal against academic exclusion 
i this would involve public disclosure of 
ersonal matters. Many junior university 
aff object strongly to being involved in 
iscussions affecting individual promo-
ons on the grounds that personal em bar-
l.Ssment might be caused to the candi-
ates concerned. When such argumentsrevail the consequence is obviously to 
cr-engthen the elitist character of our in-
.itutions. A more open society will of 
ecessity involve a loss of privacy for 
me people. We may seek to preventrivate economic exploitation of publicecisions, and to protect individuals from 
mbarrassment, but ultimately we must 
reigh such loss of privacy in the balance 
gainst the gains we expect from wider 
ublic participation. We may discover 
urselves less sensitive than we thought 
1 the process. 
>ther instrumental objections to partici-
ation are more openly political. Those 
ho participate cannot be certain of 
chieving all their objectives. The political 
~ rocess involves inevitable compromises. 
Vill those who participate and fail be-
orne more alienated than if they had re-
ained apathetic? The obverse of this 
rgument is a fear that the skills of estab-
'shed local politicians will enable them to 
aanipulate a consensus where none is 
stifled. The sting of political conflict 
1ver policy choices may be drawn. Poten-
ial leaders of radical politics may settle 
or the shadow of participation rather 
llan contest the reality of political power. 
~on-political groups, it may be felt, are 
o substitute for party organisation in the 
·1olitical process. Such objections are basic-
lly elitist and defeatist. They deny the 
otentiality of the general public to 
.chieve the greater political maturityhich it is the declared aim of socialists 
o encourage. To achieve maturity one 
nust pass through adolescence with all 
he uncertainties and extravagances which 
his brings. Local politicians must not act 
he heavy parent ; nor should they mis-
ake their own style of politics for the 
mly one possible. At some local levels 
ormal party organisation may be an in-
49 
appropriate method of participation at the 
present time. This does not mean that the 
overall effect of action groups, for 
example, or of more widely based school 
management boards, is any the less 
radical. Even in narrow party terms,
Labour is likely to gain from such activi-
ties despite the lack of harmony which 
may be expected from time to time bet-
ween the local groups and the partyorganisation. 
The Rousseauean fear of faction expressesitself in two ways in relation to local 
participation. First, there is the fear that 
only the middle class will seek to influence 
local policy by these methods. Those 
whose occupations encourage them to 
develop managerial ability and communi-
cation skills have an obvious initial ad-
vantage when entering the political pro-
cess, though the organisational experience 
gained through trade union membership 
should not be forgotten. 
Both the Skeffiington Committee and the 
Seebohm Committee, who advocated a 
greater measure of popular participation 
in the personal social services, recognised 
the possibility of accepting the views of 
the articulate minority for those of a par-
ticipating majority. They both suggeste 
ways, including the employment of com 
munity development officers, in which th 
views of those participating could be made 
more representative. The title of com-
munity development worker covers a wide 
variety both of occupations and skills. 
Some of these workers are seeking tradi-
tional social work ends through an in-
volvement with a local community ; 
others are youth workers, probation offi-
cers, or adult education officers, " un-
attached " to any particular office or insti-
tution ; and a few are concerned with 
encouraging participation in the planning 
process. Whatever their specialism, how-
ever, they are all stimulating people to 
think and act for themselves. 
Here again is a difficult situation for many 
councillors to accept. A successful com-1munity development officer may amelior-1 
ate certain social problems, but he may 1 
also provide a spark which fires opposition l to certain council policies. Indeed the two 
~able intention produces curious re-
hlts. It has been argued, for example,
1at students should not have an extended 
ght of appeal against academic exclusion 
i this would involve public disclosure of 
ersonal matters. Many junior university 
aff object strongly to being involved in 
iscussions affecting individual promo-
ons on the grounds that personal em bar-
l.Ssment might be caused to the candi-
ates concerned. When such argumentsrevail the consequence is obviously to 
cr-engthen the elitist character of our in-
.itutions. A more open society will of 
ecessity involve a loss of privacy for 
me people. We may seek to preventrivate economic exploitation of publicecisions, and to protect individuals from 
mbarrassment, but ultimately we must 
reigh such loss of privacy in the balance 
gainst the gains we expect from wider 
ublic participation. We may discover 
urselves less sensitive than we thought 
1 the process. 
>ther instrumental objections to partici-
ation are more openly political. Those 
ho participate cannot be certain of 
chieving all their objectives. The political 
~ rocess involves inevitable compromises. 
Vill those who participate and fail be-
orne more alienated than if they had re-
ained apathetic? The obverse of this 
rgument is a fear that the skills of estab-
'shed local politicians will enable them to 
aanipulate a consensus where none is 
stifled. The sting of political conflict 
1ver policy choices may be drawn. Poten-
ial leaders of radical politics may settle 
or the shadow of participation rather 
llan contest the reality of political power. 
~on-political groups, it may be felt, are 
o substitute for party organisation in the 
·1olitical process. Such objections are basic-
lly elitist and defeatist. They deny the 
otentiality of the general public to 
.chieve the greater political maturityhich it is the declared aim of socialists 
o encourage. To achieve maturity one 
nust pass through adolescence with all 
he uncertainties and extravagances which 
his brings. Local politicians must not act 
he heavy parent ; nor should they mis-
ake their own style of politics for the 
mly one possible. At some local levels 
ormal party organisation may be an in-
49 
appropriate method of participation at the 
present time. This does not mean that the 
overall effect of action groups, for 
example, or of more widely based school 
management boards, is any the less 
radical. Even in narrow party terms,
Labour is likely to gain from such activi-
ties despite the lack of harmony which 
may be expected from time to time bet-
ween the local groups and the partyorganisation. 
The Rousseauean fear of faction expressesitself in two ways in relation to local 
participation. First, there is the fear that 
only the middle class will seek to influence 
local policy by these methods. Those 
whose occupations encourage them to 
develop managerial ability and communi-
cation skills have an obvious initial ad-
vantage when entering the political pro-
cess, though the organisational experience 
gained through trade union membership 
should not be forgotten. 
Both the Skeffiington Committee and the 
Seebohm Committee, who advocated a 
greater measure of popular participation 
in the personal social services, recognised 
the possibility of accepting the views of 
the articulate minority for those of a par-
ticipating majority. They both suggeste 
ways, including the employment of com 
munity development officers, in which th 
views of those participating could be made 
more representative. The title of com-
munity development worker covers a wide 
variety both of occupations and skills. 
Some of these workers are seeking tradi-
tional social work ends through an in-
volvement with a local community ; 
others are youth workers, probation offi-
cers, or adult education officers, " un-
attached " to any particular office or insti-
tution ; and a few are concerned with 
encouraging participation in the planning 
process. Whatever their specialism, how-
ever, they are all stimulating people to 
think and act for themselves. 
Here again is a difficult situation for many 
councillors to accept. A successful com-1munity development officer may amelior-1 
ate certain social problems, but he may 1 
also provide a spark which fires opposition l to certain council policies. Indeed the two 

so 


effects are part of the same process. The 
professional integrity of the officer should 
prevent him pro elytising for any particular 
political point of view, but the corollary 
'of this is a willingness on the part of 
the councillors to accept the activities 

rwhich may result from his efforts. Once 
people are encouraged to participate it 
is difficult to control the lines upon which 
they will develop ; nor would manipulation, 
as opposed to guidance, be de irable. 
Councillors need considerable self-control 
to accept some of the situations which 
occur, and may blame the communitydevelopment officer for an unwarranted 
intrusion into politics. 

Community development work i based 
upon an understanding of the closely circumscribed 
neighbourhood within which 
most people conduct their daily life. In 
the larger towns and cities such neighbourhoods 
are unlikely to be larger than 
a ward, and are often much smaller. 
Within these areas people are interested 
J in local affairs, or can be encouraged to 
be so by a community worker, but it is a 
social rather than a political interest. This 
is why the public activities which adse 
can often be unfamiliar to local politicians: 
the activities are often confined 
to one or two objectives within the neighbourhood, 
and lack a wider political perspective. 
The faction here is one of area 
rather than of social class, but it againallows councillors to emphasise their 
responsibility to a wider constituency. 

There are many occasions when the sum 
of the individual interests of those who 
participate may not correspond to the 
interests of the population as a whole. In 
uch circumstances it is often tempting to 
ask for a plebiscite to elicit the views of the 
silent majority ; the temptation should 
usually be resisted. Local governmentprovides the few examples of referenda 
being used in the British political process: 
the experience is not encouraging. Recently, 
for example, polls have been held 
in some peripheral areas to determine the 
boundaries of the new local authorities. 
The future planning needs of the areas 
are unlikely to have been foremost in the 
minds of those voting, and their decisions 
may affect far wider interests than their 

own. Another example of the use of a 
referendum in local government may be 
taken from the town poll often held when 
a private bill is being promoted. The 
electors are asked to vote on a measure 
which may have over a hundred diverse 
clauses. Understandably, the turnout on 

·such occasions is low, and heavilyweighted towards those who object to 
some part of the bill. Plebiscites are essentially 
conservative and emotional in the 
face of complex issues. Their use should 
be confined to relatively simple issue 
which affect only the inhabitants of a 
clearly defined community ; and even then 
the difficulties of framing an objectivequestion to place on the ballot papershould be remembered. 

The movement towards a greater measure 
of participation in the provision of local 
services is raising fundamental questions, 
therefore, about the nature of our democracy. 
The simple answers, either of those 
who demand participation or of those 
who vigorously oppose, will not be suffi


1 
cient. The first need within the Labour 
movement is to reiterate the pluralistic 
nature of the social democratic view of 
democracy. Methods must be found to 
integrate representative and participatoryapproaches into a satisfactory framework. 
At all times, emphasis should be placed on 
the transitory character of democratic 
arrangements. There is no" right" answer 
which will survive for generations. We 
should regard ourselves, therefore, a 
" labouring indefatigably to discover the 
undiscoverable," (R. Michels, Political 
parties, p 368, Collier books, 1962), encouraging 
among councillors. the flexibility 
of mind shown by Alderman Harold 
Lambert of Sheffield when he wrote: 
"Participation's .ultimate form is at the 
moment obscure ... Our experience in 
the city has shown a different approach 
by different groups, but out of these experiences 
will grow a greater liaison 
between the local authority and citizens 
and a new role for the elected representative. 
The surgeries of the councillor for 
dealing with personal problems must 
continue but the contact with the electors, 
as envisaged by the old ward meetings, is 
diminishing and to replace this, one can 
see emerging a more broader-based meet



1g of electors in wards, with the elected 
epresentative as liaison officer."'' 
~ontact with the electors is not the onlyunction of an elected representative. He 
) publicly accountable for the policies of 
e local authority and will remain re-
ponsible for decisions affecting the broad 
.llocation of resources. In considering1articipation we should consider, there-
ore, two parallel developments. First, 
mproved c;.onsultation leading to artici-
m wn 1 ec1s10n rna 1ng _Rrocess 
ven w ere e power to a e he nal 
lecisiori continues to rest with the coun-
illors. Secondly, the deleg,ation of ower 
o communities, eit er runctionall or 
erritorially based, where the decisions to 
,e a en affect exclusively those within 
he community. 
mproved consultation over the more 
~eneral decisions may involve an increased 
·ecognition of the role of pressure groups 
n local affairs. The major producer 
~roups have long been accepted as an 
nfluence in our larger towns and cities : 
he trade unions through their links with 
he Labour party, and local industry and 
. ;ommerce through their connections with 
: onservative councillors ; many other 
· ocal organisations assume a political role 
when the need arises. Despite this activity, 
:he process of pressure group involvement 
s relatively undeveloped in local govern-
ent. Much of the influence of the groups 
s exercised through members who are 
:1.lso councillors, and other approaches are 
1sually of a routine nature. The elitist 
;haracter of all pressure group activity is 
1ccentuated, therefore, in their relation-
;hip with local authorities. A two fold 
ttpproach is needed to overcome this prob-
, em. First, there should be an increase in 
:he formal opportunities for consultation 
:hrough joint committees, working parties, 
1nd so on. Secondly, there should be a 
iefinite attempt on the part of local 
:mthorities to encourage new groups, so 
:ts to provide more institutional links with 
:he general public. As Rousseau reminded 
s: " if there are sectional associations, 
t is wise to multiply their number . . . " 
Local councillors could also take more 
;eriously the wide powers of co-optionwhich are available to them. 
51 
Within the reformed local government 
structure, local authorities will be pre-
cluded from delegating their functions to 
other authorities, but this will not prevent 
them from decentralising certain powers 
to administrative bodies within their areas. 
Examples of the initiatives which coun-
cillors should be taking may be givenfrom the recommendations of the See-
bohm Committee: area social work com-
mittees could be created, with peoplefrom the neighbourhood appointed both 
to these and to management bodies of 
residential institutions. With a little in-
genuity possibilities for participation can 
be extended in local authority services. 
The system of school managers and 
governors recently established in Sheffield 
provides an excellent example. The sys-
tem is intended " to promote the widest 
participation in the running of schools 
by parents, teachers, trade unionists, 
people from all walks of life within the 
locality" (Peter Houston, Sheffield for-
ward, July 1969). The managers and 
governors include nominees of the politi-
cal parties, the head teacher of each 
school ex officio, elected representatives 
of the assistant teachers, non-teaching 
staff, and parents, and people drawn from 
other local organisations. Each managing 
or governing body is allowed to make two 
co-options and in some comprehensiveschools this power has been used to invite 
senior pupils to join the governors. Few 
of the boards include more than one or 
two councillors out of a membership of 
between twelve and sixteen. 
Local authorities in towns and cities 
should also be supporting the develop-
ment of neighbourhood councils. The idea 
of a council without statutory functions 
is foreign to many councillors, who ridi-
cule the creation of "mere talking shops," 
but they should be encouraged to think 
again. Neighbourhood councils based 
upon an extension of the parish cou~cil 
concept into urban areas could provtde 
a vital participatory infrastructure within 
the larger representative units of a re-
formed local government. This will 
create a demand for the provision of 
relevant adult education courses. Indeed 
such courses can be one method through 
1g of electors in wards, with the elected 
epresentative as liaison officer."'' 
~ontact with the electors is not the onlyunction of an elected representative. He 
) publicly accountable for the policies of 
e local authority and will remain re-
ponsible for decisions affecting the broad 
.llocation of resources. In considering1articipation we should consider, there-
ore, two parallel developments. First, 
mproved c;.onsultation leading to artici-
m wn 1 ec1s10n rna 1ng _Rrocess 
ven w ere e power to a e he nal 
lecisiori continues to rest with the coun-
illors. Secondly, the deleg,ation of ower 
o communities, eit er runctionall or 
erritorially based, where the decisions to 
,e a en affect exclusively those within 
he community. 
mproved consultation over the more 
~eneral decisions may involve an increased 
·ecognition of the role of pressure groups 
n local affairs. The major producer 
~roups have long been accepted as an 
nfluence in our larger towns and cities : 
he trade unions through their links with 
he Labour party, and local industry and 
. ;ommerce through their connections with 
: onservative councillors ; many other 
· ocal organisations assume a political role 
when the need arises. Despite this activity, 
:he process of pressure group involvement 
s relatively undeveloped in local govern-
ent. Much of the influence of the groups 
s exercised through members who are 
:1.lso councillors, and other approaches are 
1sually of a routine nature. The elitist 
;haracter of all pressure group activity is 
1ccentuated, therefore, in their relation-
;hip with local authorities. A two fold 
ttpproach is needed to overcome this prob-
, em. First, there should be an increase in 
:he formal opportunities for consultation 
:hrough joint committees, working parties, 
1nd so on. Secondly, there should be a 
iefinite attempt on the part of local 
:mthorities to encourage new groups, so 
:ts to provide more institutional links with 
:he general public. As Rousseau reminded 
s: " if there are sectional associations, 
t is wise to multiply their number . . . " 
Local councillors could also take more 
;eriously the wide powers of co-optionwhich are available to them. 
51 
Within the reformed local government 
structure, local authorities will be pre-
cluded from delegating their functions to 
other authorities, but this will not prevent 
them from decentralising certain powers 
to administrative bodies within their areas. 
Examples of the initiatives which coun-
cillors should be taking may be givenfrom the recommendations of the See-
bohm Committee: area social work com-
mittees could be created, with peoplefrom the neighbourhood appointed both 
to these and to management bodies of 
residential institutions. With a little in-
genuity possibilities for participation can 
be extended in local authority services. 
The system of school managers and 
governors recently established in Sheffield 
provides an excellent example. The sys-
tem is intended " to promote the widest 
participation in the running of schools 
by parents, teachers, trade unionists, 
people from all walks of life within the 
locality" (Peter Houston, Sheffield for-
ward, July 1969). The managers and 
governors include nominees of the politi-
cal parties, the head teacher of each 
school ex officio, elected representatives 
of the assistant teachers, non-teaching 
staff, and parents, and people drawn from 
other local organisations. Each managing 
or governing body is allowed to make two 
co-options and in some comprehensiveschools this power has been used to invite 
senior pupils to join the governors. Few 
of the boards include more than one or 
two councillors out of a membership of 
between twelve and sixteen. 
Local authorities in towns and cities 
should also be supporting the develop-
ment of neighbourhood councils. The idea 
of a council without statutory functions 
is foreign to many councillors, who ridi-
cule the creation of "mere talking shops," 
but they should be encouraged to think 
again. Neighbourhood councils based 
upon an extension of the parish cou~cil 
concept into urban areas could provtde 
a vital participatory infrastructure within 
the larger representative units of a re-
formed local government. This will 
create a demand for the provision of 
relevant adult education courses. Indeed 
such courses can be one method through 

52 
which local authorities can encourage par-
ticipation from beyond the already confi-
dent circle of present activists. There is a 
need to provide adult education in local 
government and planning matters. Such 
education, of course, should not be in-
fluenced by a particular party politicalviewpoint, but the idea of educational 
courses for citizenship is very much partof the Fabian tradition, and should be 
strongly supported in the present context. 
Examples could be given from many partsof the country, but again to quote Shef-
field. The Local Education Authority, the 
Workers' Educational Association, and 
the Department of Extramural Studies, 
University of Sheffield, either individually 
or in cooperation, have provided many 
courses to service those who wish to par-
ticipate in the administration of local 
services. When the local authority Plan-
ning Department recently announced an 
action plan for one area of the city, the 
adult education service engaged a Poly-
technic lecturer to give talks in the locality 
on the planning process. They wished to 
stimulate Skeffington-style participation. 
The LEA and the Extramural Departmenthave organised conferences and 'lecture 
courses for school managers and gover-
nors. Other courses, ranging from five to 
twenty-four meetings, have been arranged 
on housing policy, welfare rights, and 
various aspects of planning. 
The attendance at these courses has been 
encouraging ; most of them attract several 
dozen registrations. But even when atten-
dances are low they should not be com-
pared with the large audiences at publicmeetings held in crisis situations: the 
rent increase protest, or defence against 
the planners rally. We are concerned here 
with educational courses for those who 
carry on the regular work of consultation 
and pressure group activity after the 
excitement dies away. The response, here 
as elsewhere, suggests a readiness to be-
come involved which is far wider than the 
relatively narrow circle of those accepting 
the responsibility of elected office. The 
next few years are going to be a time 
of great change in local government. Some 
great authorities, and most small ones,
will disappear ; all will be struggling with 
the consequences of changes in boundaries 
or functions. In these circumstances the 
councillors and officers will be endeavour-
ing to maintain services amidst adminis-
trative upheaval: it will not be easy. Ag-
ainst this background the further changesof attitude discussed in this chapter may 
seem too much to add to an already heavy 
burden. In the present government's view 
" it would be best to allow the new district 
councils to become firmly established " 
before proceeding to a general review of 
the parish pattern, and they have indicated 
a preference for non-statutory consultative 
bodies rather than a fully developed 
pattern of neighbourhood councils in the 
larger urban areas (The future of parishesand neighbourhoods, May 1971, DOE). 
The caution is understandable, but should 
be contested. The pressure on local auth-
orities to adopt a more open attitude to-
wards local administration, and to allow 
a greater measure of citizen participation, 
will not be satisfied with promises that 
something may happen in five years' time. 
The present atmosphere of reform pro-
vides an opportunity to integrate the 
movement towards participation with the 
new local government structure, but the 
opportunity may be missed through lack 
of imagination or through undue delay. 
There would then be a danger of the 
action groups and other participatoryorganisations developing into a paralleland potentially antagonistic system within 
the urban areas; they, too, would claim 
to represent the electorate. Every effort 
should be made to prevent such a division 
developing between formal institutions 
and grass-roots enthusiasts. The ensuingfrustration would produce either destruc-
tive conflict or renewed apathy. 
52 
which local authorities can encourage par-
ticipation from beyond the already confi-
dent circle of present activists. There is a 
need to provide adult education in local 
government and planning matters. Such 
education, of course, should not be in-
fluenced by a particular party politicalviewpoint, but the idea of educational 
courses for citizenship is very much partof the Fabian tradition, and should be 
strongly supported in the present context. 
Examples could be given from many partsof the country, but again to quote Shef-
field. The Local Education Authority, the 
Workers' Educational Association, and 
the Department of Extramural Studies, 
University of Sheffield, either individually 
or in cooperation, have provided many 
courses to service those who wish to par-
ticipate in the administration of local 
services. When the local authority Plan-
ning Department recently announced an 
action plan for one area of the city, the 
adult education service engaged a Poly-
technic lecturer to give talks in the locality 
on the planning process. They wished to 
stimulate Skeffington-style participation. 
The LEA and the Extramural Departmenthave organised conferences and 'lecture 
courses for school managers and gover-
nors. Other courses, ranging from five to 
twenty-four meetings, have been arranged 
on housing policy, welfare rights, and 
various aspects of planning. 
The attendance at these courses has been 
encouraging ; most of them attract several 
dozen registrations. But even when atten-
dances are low they should not be com-
pared with the large audiences at publicmeetings held in crisis situations: the 
rent increase protest, or defence against 
the planners rally. We are concerned here 
with educational courses for those who 
carry on the regular work of consultation 
and pressure group activity after the 
excitement dies away. The response, here 
as elsewhere, suggests a readiness to be-
come involved which is far wider than the 
relatively narrow circle of those accepting 
the responsibility of elected office. The 
next few years are going to be a time 
of great change in local government. Some 
great authorities, and most small ones,
will disappear ; all will be struggling with 
the consequences of changes in boundaries 
or functions. In these circumstances the 
councillors and officers will be endeavour-
ing to maintain services amidst adminis-
trative upheaval: it will not be easy. Ag-
ainst this background the further changesof attitude discussed in this chapter may 
seem too much to add to an already heavy 
burden. In the present government's view 
" it would be best to allow the new district 
councils to become firmly established " 
before proceeding to a general review of 
the parish pattern, and they have indicated 
a preference for non-statutory consultative 
bodies rather than a fully developed 
pattern of neighbourhood councils in the 
larger urban areas (The future of parishesand neighbourhoods, May 1971, DOE). 
The caution is understandable, but should 
be contested. The pressure on local auth-
orities to adopt a more open attitude to-
wards local administration, and to allow 
a greater measure of citizen participation, 
will not be satisfied with promises that 
something may happen in five years' time. 
The present atmosphere of reform pro-
vides an opportunity to integrate the 
movement towards participation with the 
new local government structure, but the 
opportunity may be missed through lack 
of imagination or through undue delay. 
There would then be a danger of the 
action groups and other participatoryorganisations developing into a paralleland potentially antagonistic system within 
the urban areas; they, too, would claim 
to represent the electorate. Every effort 
should be made to prevent such a division 
developing between formal institutions 
and grass-roots enthusiasts. The ensuingfrustration would produce either destruc-
tive conflict or renewed apathy. 

fabian society 
'he Fabian Society exists to further 
ocialist education and research. It is 
ffiliated to the Labour Party, both nation-
lly and locally, and embraces all shades 
f Socialist opinion within its ranks-left, 
ight and centre. 
:ince 1884 the Fabian Society has enrolled 
h.oughtful socialists who are prepared to 
iscuss the essential questions of demo-
ratic socialism and relate them to prac-
ical plans for building socialism in a 
hanging world. 
· Jeyond this the Society has no collective 
•olicy. It puts forward no resolutions of 
. L political character, but it is not an organ-
sation of armchair socialists. Its members 
Lre active in their Labour Parties, Trade 
·Jnions and Co-operatives. They are rep-
esentative of the labour movement, prac-
ical people concerned to study and dis-
;uss problems that matter. 
['he Society is organised nationally and 
ocally. The national Society, directed by 
m elected Executive Committee, publishes 
>amphlets, and holds schools and con-
:erences of many kinds. Local Societies-
. here are one hundred of them-are self 
~overning and are lively centres of dis-
:ussion and also undertake research. 
3nquiries about membership should be 
1ent to the General Secretary, Fabian 
iociety, 11 Dartmouth Street, London, 
iW1H 9BN; telephone 01-930 3077. 
the authors 
Nick Derricourt is a lecturer at Birming-
ham Polytechnic. He would like to ex-
press his thanks to the present staff and 
to Dudley Savill, the organising secretary, 
of the Association of London Housing 
Estates for allowing him to use material 
relating to recent developments. 
William Hampton is a senior lecturer at 
Sheffield University. 
Stephen Hatch is a research fellow at 
Brunei University. 
Peter Jewell is an area team leader in 
Southwark Social Services Department . 
Rudolf Klein i a senior fellow at the 
Centre for the Study of Social Policie . 
Peter Levin is a lecturer at the London 
School of Economics. 
Peter Marris works at the Centre for 
Environmental Studies. 
Harry Salmon is a community worker in 
Coventry. 
Cover design by Dick Leadbetter. Printed 
by Civic Press Limited (To), Civic Street, 
Glasgow G4 9RH. 
I BN 7163 0419 8 
fabian society 
'he Fabian Society exists to further 
ocialist education and research. It is 
ffiliated to the Labour Party, both nation-
lly and locally, and embraces all shades 
f Socialist opinion within its ranks-left, 
ight and centre. 
:ince 1884 the Fabian Society has enrolled 
h.oughtful socialists who are prepared to 
iscuss the essential questions of demo-
ratic socialism and relate them to prac-
ical plans for building socialism in a 
hanging world. 
· Jeyond this the Society has no collective 
•olicy. It puts forward no resolutions of 
. L political character, but it is not an organ-
sation of armchair socialists. Its members 
Lre active in their Labour Parties, Trade 
·Jnions and Co-operatives. They are rep-
esentative of the labour movement, prac-
ical people concerned to study and dis-
;uss problems that matter. 
['he Society is organised nationally and 
ocally. The national Society, directed by 
m elected Executive Committee, publishes 
>amphlets, and holds schools and con-
:erences of many kinds. Local Societies-
. here are one hundred of them-are self 
~overning and are lively centres of dis-
:ussion and also undertake research. 
3nquiries about membership should be 
1ent to the General Secretary, Fabian 
iociety, 11 Dartmouth Street, London, 
iW1H 9BN; telephone 01-930 3077. 
the authors 
Nick Derricourt is a lecturer at Birming-
ham Polytechnic. He would like to ex-
press his thanks to the present staff and 
to Dudley Savill, the organising secretary, 
of the Association of London Housing 
Estates for allowing him to use material 
relating to recent developments. 
William Hampton is a senior lecturer at 
Sheffield University. 
Stephen Hatch is a research fellow at 
Brunei University. 
Peter Jewell is an area team leader in 
Southwark Social Services Department . 
Rudolf Klein i a senior fellow at the 
Centre for the Study of Social Policie . 
Peter Levin is a lecturer at the London 
School of Economics. 
Peter Marris works at the Centre for 
Environmental Studies. 
Harry Salmon is a community worker in 
Coventry. 
Cover design by Dick Leadbetter. Printed 
by Civic Press Limited (To), Civic Street, 
Glasgow G4 9RH. 
I BN 7163 0419 8