Daunton M. The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Volume 3: 1840-1950
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for the baby Austin replacing the more conventional offspring. The motor
vehicle also dictated the shape of the town as housing often clung to the sides of
main roads leaving towns – the new arterials and bypasses – as this provided a
route back to the centre for the commuter. Hence the ribbon development
which Priestley commented upon in his English journey of ,
145
and which
caused town planners some concern.
The growth of motor transport, combined with rising costs in the city centres,
led firms which needed more space to move to the outskirts themselves, either
to industrial estates or to line the highways. They could employ road transport
to carry their goods back into the city centre or to nearby docks or railway goods
yards. Where their deliveries were too scattered or they did not run to their own
van or lorry, firms like Pickfords or Carter Paterson were available, now using
motor vans rather than horse-drawn vehicles and offering a variety of qualities
of services.
146
Thus cheaper rents and rates more than offset any extra costs of
distribution. In similar vein their workforce could be drawn from the surround-
ing suburbs, or use bus, bicycle, tram or motor bike to reach the new location.
Employers often lobbied for improved public transport provision to the estates
or along the roads and were generally successful, though a problem was already
beginning to be evident in the ‘rush hour’ or peak demand, as noted by the
Barlow Commission.
147
To meet the demand for public transport in the early
morning to go to work and then again in the late afternoon to return home
required many more vehicles than were needed in the rest of the day. Hence
transport undertakings had excess capacity which made these services uneco-
nomic. Another problem with motor transport was the rising number of acci-
dents and the injuries and deaths which resulted. By there were over ,
fatalities and , injuries in the LCC area alone.
148
This and the growing con-
gestion caused by the vast increase in motor vehicles led to government action
which had an impact on the appearance of towns, in the form of street furni-
ture. To control and channel traffic various devices were introduced, such as
traffic lights, zebra crossings with Belisha beacons, signs and bollards. Another
downside of motor traffic was the competition between bus operators which
could take the form of sharp practices such as running just ahead of a competi-
tor to cream off its passengers, not stopping to let passengers alight, racing, etc.
149
These dangers became so acute that in London was dealt with in a separ-
ate act and the rest of the country in . So regulation and quantity licensing
John Armstrong
145
J. B. Priestley, English Journey (London, ), p. .
146
G. L. Turnbull, Traffic and Transport (London, ), pp. –.
147
W. Ashworth, The Genesis of Modern British Town Planning (London, ), p. .
148
Weightman and Humphries, Making –, p. .
149
R. Graves and A. Hodge, The Long Weekend (Harmondsworth, ), p. ; J. Hibbs, ‘The
London independent bus operators, –’, Transport History, (), –.
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were introduced
150
and the London Passenger Transport Board was established
in to coordinate and control London’s passenger traffic of all modes.
Thus the interwar period saw the amplification of previous trends. The
growth of city size continued as suburbs spread ever wider, supported by both
public and private transport. The motor vehicle had already started its rise to
dominance and gave warning of its need for wider and straighter roads as well
as its danger in terms of accidents, congestion and pollution. It also had its impact
on the look of the city as street furniture and garages proliferated. Although
undoubtedly a facilitator and liberator in this period, perhaps because ownership
was so limited, motor traffic served notice of its future ability to strangle the city.
(vii)
The dominant theme of the years since the Second World War in intra-urban
transport must be the growth of road traffic, especially the private motor car,
causing the demise of the tram, trolley bus and horse-drawn vehicles. The same
theme applies to interurban passenger transport, with the long-distance coach
increasingly gaining market share along with the private car at the expense of
the train. The number of motor cars registered rose four and a half times
between and with powered two wheelers increasing fourfold between
and .
151
At one level this symbolised greater mobility and freedom of
movement for many both within and between urban centres. As a result of rising
real wages, the desire for a more rural life style and the ability to afford greater
transport costs, the emptying of city centres as residential locations speeded up.
The scale of towns increased as yet more acres of houses with garages and asso-
ciated drives and roads spread around the outskirts of existing cities and new
towns were designated. With the real cost of cars falling as to both purchase and
running, thanks partly to a very active second-hand market and readily available
consumer credit, the motor vehicle played an ever larger role in life styles.
Public transport reached its apogee in the late s while petrol rationing,
austerity and the export drive kept the home market starved of private vehicles.
In it was estimated that three-quarters of all passenger miles were per-
formed by rail and public road transport.
152
In the s and s this began to
be eroded as petrol rationing ended in and the skilled working classes
became able to enter car ownership. The effects were liberating in that workers
could choose from a wider range of residential possibilities and at weekends or
Transport and the urban environment
150
C. Mulley, ‘The background to bus regulation in the Road Traffic Act: economic, politi-
cal and personal influences in the s’, Journal of Transport History, rd series, (), –.
151
B. R. Mitchell and H. G. Jones, Second Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, ), p.
.
152
Derek H. Aldcroft, British Transport since : An Economic History (Newton Abbot, ), p. .
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evenings could leave the urban areas to visit seaside resorts or country beauty
spots, becoming independent of public transport and taking with them their
own picnics, folding chairs, kettles and other paraphernalia. In this way they
became liberated from the towns but also isolated from the new locations. The
rise of private transport aggravated problems already beginning to be apparent
in the interwar period. The most pressing was that the towns which had devel-
oped in the era of horse transport were not suitable for motor vehicles. This was
particularly true of city-centre streets, especially when motorists assumed unre-
stricted and often anti-social parking. This clogged the traffic arteries and so
reduced average speeds. The response was to introduce parking restrictions
which made the high street less attractive as a shopping centre and began the
move to out of town shopping centres or ‘malls’ which aggravated the decay of
city centres. In addition, the sheer volume of traffic contributed to the arterial
sclerosis so that roads were widened, and underpasses, flyovers and roundabouts
built. They began to change the shape of towns, rather like the railways earlier,
needing land which often necessitated the demolition of houses and cut up
neighbourhoods. As traffic accidents rose (there were about , fatalities in
road accidents in and nearly , in )
153
further measures were taken
to control traffic – with more traffic lights, one-way streets and crossings – and
also to separate it from the foot traffic. Hence some sections of town were made
into pedestrian precincts and the motor vehicle excluded from these areas. The
concern over pollution in which motor fumes mingled with the emissions from
coal fires to create a killing mixture of ‘smog’ also encouraged pedestrianisation
and, more effectively, clean air legislation. It also speeded the move to the
suburbs and encouraged the construction of bypasses to take through traffic
around those towns which were mere staging posts on main routes.
Another effect of the growth of traffic levels and with it the associated dangers
to pedestrians was to remove the streets from children as informal playgrounds.
Increasingly, hopscotch, football or cricket, skipping and marbles had to take
place in designated areas such as parks or playgrounds rather than in the street.
This broke up the spontaneous play and interaction of the children, requiring it
to be more planned and formalised. This form of alienation also began to extend
to the adult population as streets became less congenial locations to gossip and
exchange news. In addition, as people used their own private transport for com-
muting and leisure trips they had less opportunity for friendly interaction as they
were isolated in their mobile steel box. Thus the ability to pass the time of day
and socialise was much reduced. Indeed, the car was often claimed to promote
antagonisms rather than amities. So concerned were the government and various
pressure groups about the role of the motor car in the city that a study group
was set up under Colin Buchanan at the Ministry of Transport. The report, pub-
John Armstrong
153
W. Plowden, The Motor Car and Politics – (London, ), p. .
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lished in ,
154
became famous and much read and quoted but surprisingly
little acted upon. His analysis of the growth of the problem was widely accepted
but his remedies were seen as expensive by a fag-end Conservative government
and too minimalist in support of public transport by the incoming Labour
administration. In retrospect, some of his ideas seemed impractical, such as ver-
tical separating of traffic types, and the density of road construction advocated
was expensive and environmentally unfriendly. What was important and lasting
was that it carried the debate about the role of the motor vehicle in the city to
a higher level of analysis and demonstrated the great complexity of the problem.
That issue continued to provoke much discussion and remained unresolved over
the next few decades.
Transport and the urban environment
154
C. Buchanan, Tra ffic in Towns (London, ).
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Governance
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·
·
Central government and the towns
(i)
I
Sidney Webb offered an imaginary but by no means fanciful parable
of urban life. He described the movements of ‘the Individualist Town
Councillor’ who
will walk along the municipal pavement, lit by municipal gas and cleansed by
municipal brooms with municipal water, and seeing by the municipal clock in the
municipal market that he is too early to meet his children coming from the munic-
ipal school hard by the county lunatic asylum and municipal hospital, will use the
national telegraph system to tell them not to walk through the municipal park but
to come by the municipal tramway, to meet him in the municipal reading room,
by the municipal art gallery, museum and library, where he intends to consult some
of the national publications in order to prepare his next speech in the municipal
town-hall, in favour of the nationalization of the canals and the increase of the
government control over the railway system. ‘Socialism, sir,’ he will say, ‘don’t
waste the time of a practical man by your fantastic absurdities. Self-help, sir, indi-
vidual self-help, that’s what’s made our city what it is.’
1
A century later water and gas would be in private hands, the hospital would be
managed by an unaccountable trust and the school might have opted out of local
authority control. Progress would have seen off the trams, but the buses that
replaced them would have been privatised and deregulated. The municipal
brooms would have been put out to tender and the surviving local authority ser-
vices would probably be strictly cash-limited. The ‘Individualist Town Coun-
cillor’ would know to watch his step on the municipal pavement and not to rely
upon the town hall clock.
Whilst it is possible that a city large enough to have indulged itself in this
degree of municipal provision by might have developed a prestige transport
1
S. Webb, Socialism in England (London, ), pp. –.
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project like the Newcastle Metro or the Manchester Metrolink in recent years,
it is impossible to deny the recent evaporation of Webb’s ideal of comprehensive
municipal provision. Nor can it easily be denied that much of the responsibility
for this is down to Whitehall’s suspicion of local pluralism and local authority
initiative over the last twenty years. Those critical of modern centralism join a
lengthy tradition running back through local government analysts like Webb’s
intellectual heir W. A. Robson to Joshua Toulmin Smith virtually at the start of
our period.
2
Much of their work is simplistic and verging on the polemical.
Reaction to it from the s onwards took the form of a subtler appreciation of
the ambiguities within British administration and the practical limits to its appar-
ent centralisation.
3
Still more recently the restraints placed upon local govern-
ment during the Thatcher and Major years have once again underlined the
pronounced central bias within a system characterised by the dependence of vir-
tually all municipal action upon statutory sanction, by central government’s veto
powers over local borrowing and some other local authority actions, by the
weakness of the local taxation system in its successive forms and by local author-
ities’ consequent dependence upon central government grants. What is note-
worthy about Webb’s example, though, is how many of the local powers that he
cites – and others gained later – had been removed from municipal control by
, when this volume ends. Gas, water and electricity were nationalised before
they were privatised. Local authorities lost their hospitals to the National Health
Service and their long-established poor law powers in stages to the
Unemployment Assistance Board and the National Assistance Board. Much of
the damage was done by a post-war Labour government which broadly shared
Webb’s vision of comprehensive public provision of social services and which was
not moved by any hostility towards local authorities. Whatever is true of the
Thatcher/Major years, it would be inaccurate to ascribe the erosion before
of the Victorian tradition of urban municipal enterprise to any central hostility
to its aspirations or even to central suspicion of local authorities themselves. The
truth is more complex.
(ii)
What Webb was describing was the local manifestation of a process of govern-
ment growth – in public health, welfare, education, local transport, etc. – in
response to the effects of industrialisation and urbanisation. This process had a
national as well as a local dimension. Ambitious as Webb’s local agencies were,
they were not entirely autonomous. At the very least they could do nothing that
John Davis
2
W. A. Robson, The Development of Local Government, rd edn (London, ), pp. –.
3
E.g. G. W. Jones, ed., New Approaches to the Study of Central-Local Government Relationships
(Farnborough, ); R. A. W. Rhodes, Control and Power in Central-Local Government Relationships
(Farnborough, ).
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was not prescribed or allowed by statute law – the doctrine of ultra vires – while
in respect of some services they acted as little more than executors of policies
composed by central government and endorsed by parliament. No local opera-
tion could be undertaken without regard to the central state, defined to include
both parliament and central government.
What impressed Josef Redlich, describing English local government to
German readers at the turn of the century,
4
was not, therefore, the lack of central
supervision but the absence of any legal hierarchy of authorities.
5
Where most
British commentators, then and since, have seen ultra vires principally as a con-
straint upon local authorities, Redlich stressed the equality of central and local
authorities before the law. To modern eyes his view appears rather quaint and
over-theoretical, underplaying the ability of a government with a working
majority to get its way even in the Victorian parliament, but Redlich does
provide a valuable reminder of the extent to which Victorian government
depended upon negotiation rather than decree to implement its wishes in the
localities. These constitutional limitations were reinforced by a general political
presumption in favour of restricting the power of central government, evident
less in the familiar Victorian commitment to laissez-faire – usually subject to
qualification in respect of the social services – than in the view voiced by Joshua
Toulmin Smith and other defenders of local democracy that central dirigisme was
un-English (normally meaning French) and represented a threat to Saxon liber-
ties. Mid-Victorian governments themselves saw the political case for decentral-
isation: ‘it is evidently wise’ Sir Charles Wood assured Lord John Russell in
‘to put as little on the Government whose overthrow causes a revolution as you
can and to have as much as you can on the local bodies which may be over-
thrown a dozen times and nobody be the worse’.
6
Such an attitude was feasible
in an age when central rate support was minimal and when national governments
ran little risk of being held to account for the failings of local authorities. It
ensured that in the nineteenth century the lion’s share of governmental expan-
sion was effected by and through local bodies.
The principal difficulty was the functional one that no uniform network of
local authorities existed to receive devolved powers. In the shire counties of
England and Wales, admittedly, a more or less uniform network of justices of the
peace existed, with various local administrative powers – over police, highways,
asylums, etc. – but the JPs were not elected and mid-Victorian governments felt
reticent about extending their powers, and particularly about extending the
powers of these rural grandees over the towns. Urban communities were en-
titled to seek incorporation on the standardised terms of the Municipal
Corporations Act, one of the attractions of which was exemption from the
Central government and the towns
4
References are to the English edition, translated by Francis Hirst, which appeared as J. Redlich
and F. W. Hirst, Local Government in England, vols. (London, ).
5
Ibid., , p. .
6
Quoted by P. J. Waller, Town, City and Nation (Oxford, ), pp. –.
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