ABSTRACT
If an extra-terrestrial had visited Britain in 1951 and happened to read a textbook on British govenment, he would have found little, if any, mention of local government and would have dismissed it as quite unimportant. Local government was viewed as administration, concerned overwhelmingly with the delivery of services to the locality. At best, it was ‘low politics’, nothing of real concern to those in central government, something which could safely be left to local worthies to oversee, assisted by their competent, apolitical administrative aides. Returning 30 years later he would have found local government at the very centre of a fierce political controversy—politicians haranguing each other, front-page articles, television programmes, public meetings, protest marches, newspaper advertisements accusing the government of bad faith and of even worse practice, and a small academic industry pouring forth on the subject.
