ABSTRACT
London has to tackle the problem of the greatest city in the world with a machinery of self-government less adapted to its functions than that of a smaller English borough. That is the anomaly, and the grave handicap, of municipal government in the metropolis. The local authority must function within a rigid system of judicial and governmental controls. The controlling hand of the appropriate government department is felt in every section of a local authority’s activities, although the method of control varies with the different types of municipal activity. The structure of London’s government imposed its own limitations, the magnitude of the metropolitan scale of things added to its complexity, and even the enabling legislation presented a more formidable barrier than was the case with any other authority in Great Britain. The co-opted members of the School Management Committees are drawn from every walk of London’s life.
