On the Council

In the early decades of the 20th century guild socialist notions of giving service to the community could be taken for granted. In all walks of life, people set about doing the things that needed to be done in the household, on the farm, in the small and medium-sized business, in schools, medical practices, churches and faith communities of all persuasions, on magistrate's benches and within the council chambers of local government. Outside the mills and mines of the waged slave-driven mass production economy, there was no sharp distinction between paid and unpaid labour. Traditional notions of giving service to the community at large continued to permeate local provision of goods and services. In the Spring 1946 edition of The Countryman, for example, the following thoughts appeared under the title "After One is on the Council":

IT may interest those who have received invitations to stand for their rural district council, and think that the duties of a councilor begin and end with attending the monthly (or fortnightly) meeting, to consider the diary of a man who is by no means the most active member of a council of twenty-four. First, meetings; council (from home from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m.), general purposes committee (9 a.m. to 3.30 p.m.), sub-committees (11.30 a.m. to 6 p.m. and 12.30 p.m. to 6 p.m.). Meeting in village 7 p.m. to 9.30 p.m. Then callers and letters, not including routine correspondence from council officials: man complaining that his small boy had been unmercifully beaten at school; woman complaining that her child, sent to school clean, came home with lice every night; man complaining that children taking school meals were not supervised and that his own little girl had forgotten her table manners. Man, newly demobilized, with trouble over a housing site. (Action, telephone conversation with surveyor, appointment made with town planning officer, and notice given of a question to be asked at the next meeting.) Member of Men's Guild asking for a date for a talk on local government. Two villagers with a demand for larger council houses. One of them also demanded transport for school children. The other, having been told that a certain orchard was once common land, demanded that it should be taken over by the council and made into a playing-field. Woman with a long and involved history of family troubles asking for help in obtaining an allowance for a grandchild living with her. (Action, report written.) Local builder (six times) with appeals for help in remedying injustices. Almost daily questions and reports on requisitioned houses. Caravan-dweller wishes a complaint made that the coalman with whom he has registered has failed to deliver 'even a spoonful of coals'. Star turn: A young soldier, home after four years in a German prison camp complaining that our council houses still have bucket lavatories and saying: "Even in the old Stalag we had flushes". This is a rough record of three weeks. Letters and telephone calls on routine matters have not been included. Extract from The Countryman, Vol XXXIII No 1 1946, p 99-100.

We cannot put the clock back. But we can certainly study our local history with a view to putting economic and technological 'progress' into perspective. That will make it possible to lay the foundations for a realistically sane and sustainable social order of the future. Presently, the Nanny State provides the waged and salaried worker slaves necessary to run the global corporations world. We may have more money that we had when the councilor wrote of his experiences way back in 1946. But are we better off in any others sense?

The 1940s, 50s and 60s were a period of local community building. Education, welfare, transport, health and public libraries, museums, art galleries, parks and allotments were provided by the local people for the local people. Springing from nowhere, the Local Government Act of 1974 set about taking financial powers clean out of the hands of locally elected councilors, placing it instead with central government. As a result, we now have a National Health Service, a National educational curriculum and national welfare services administered by faceless bureaucrats in the pay of centralised administration. The system leaves many families powerless, destitute and confused, incapable of both receiving or giving help to others. Fortunately, a host of questions are being asked by well-informed 'ethical individuals'. (See Maria Lyons, "Living With Intention", The Social Artist, Spring 2015 on the https://www.douglassocialcredit.com/ website at Spring 2015.