The tributes paid to Queen Elizabeth by King Charles and senior members of the House of Parliament on 9th September were, I thought both moving and sincere, giving grounds for cautious optimism that they may herald a new era in the politics of the days to come. When the Queen came to the throne in 1952/3, my school friends and I were just embarking on secondary education. Since that date, she has been a constant source of encouragement to citizens of all walks of life in the UK and Commonwealth nations. It is up to those living today to ensure that constitutional rights are guarded in the times to come.
To that end, it could be interesting to review the history of the various local government services then being made available by local people and for local communities across the length and breadth of the UK. In this connection two books spring to mind. Michael Bradford's 1988 The Fight for Yorkshire, and The Pickles Papers, by Tony Grogan (1989). Sadly, Michael Bradford is a political ignoramus, but he does, almost accidentally, provide some fascinating clues about the devastation caused to local government by the 1972-4 Local Government Acts.
The primary, secondary, further and adult education services on offer to us in 1952/3 were provided by a range of local authorities who raised local taxes and spent them according to the perceived needs and wishes of the local government of the local community. In addition to education, local government raised local taxes to provide transport (buses and trams), museums, parks, gardens, allotments, swimming baths and wash houses, art galleries, theatres, libraries, cottage hospitals, sewage disposal, and health services (and any amount more that you can think of). Meanwhile, local churches and faith communities provided community support and taught a basic philosophy of life. And banking administration was undertaken by local banks, locally managed by locally identifiable individuals. Cash payments were the order of the day.
It might be interesting to draw up a picture of local the authorities in the city, town or county area in which you presently live. Up to the rein of Queen Elizabeth, and for a further two decades after her accession, local government services were financed and administered according to the needs, wishes and intentions of local communities. The two books mentioned above start to tell the story of the devastation and havoc wrought upon those services out of the blue by an unaccountable centralised government. The time has certainly come to look again at the possibilities offered by a return to local community provision of local government services through a mixture of local finance coupled with that sense of service that has been so sadly lacking in recent decades.
On a Personal Note
As some will have noticed, we are no longer producing the quarterly journal The Social Artist (formerly The Social Crediter). Illness, death and covid have decimated the group that supported me as Editor from 2001 to 2020. Nevertheless, back numbers of the journals are available electronically on the website https://www.douglassocialcredit.com/ (see PUBLICATIONS PAGE) They are full of short articles and reviews introducing useful references to the work of key authors and interest groups of the past few decades. Comments welcome.
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