Welsh Journals

The inability of Labour authorities to obtain money for social reform can be best exemplified by the experience of one of the Urban Districts of Monmouthshire where the product of a penny rate amounts to only £ 36, and therefore the sum of £ 500 necessary to be spent is equal to a rate of nearly Is. 2d. in the £ This lack of financial resource is responsible for the terrible sanitary condition of many of our urban districts. One can quite under- stand the unwillingness of many of these small authorities to launch forth schemes for the better housing of the people and the destruction of insanitary dwelling houses, when one recognises their serious lack of finance under the present conditions. This creates also a desire to continue to foster the spirit of allowing a large number of public services to remain in the hands of private enter- prise, and municipal enterprise is greatly discouraged. The position in the industrial valleys of Wales may be exceptional, but the boundaries between the various local authorities are almost always the rivers running through the valleys. These boundaries were the old boundaries dividing the different estates of individual landlords, and they are the boundaries of the old rural parishes which have been allowed to become the boundaries for local government purposes, though the people living on each side of the valley have a community of interest, still they are governed by two separate authorities, with separate sets of official advisers, and oft times professional jealousy between the advisers of their respective authorities prevents the active co-operation necessary for improvement of the public services. The establishment of refuse destructors, the establishment of an efficient system of dealing with sewerage, the construction of arterial roadways, the development of housing schemes, and the establishment of transit through the industrial and populous areas, are rendered extremely difficult and expensive, and improve- ments of this character have been delayed for years as the result of these overlapping boundaries. In considering this question, it is necessary that one should steer clear of two possible evils, namely, the retention on the one hand of areas so small in their character as to remain parochial in their conception of civic duty, and on the other hand to prevent the creation of areas so large as to constitute grave difficulties in the control of such areas by the duly elected representatives of the people, with the ultimate result that the areas may become largely under bureaucratic govern- ment, as unfortunately, is the tendency in many county administrative areas to-day. I may interpose here with the remark that already suggestions are being put forward with a view to dividing certain of the larger counties and especially that of Glamorgan for the purpose of administration on similar lines to that of Yorkshire where the county is divided into three sections known as Yorkshire North Riding, York- shire East Riding, and Yorkshire West Riding, and it may become necessary to treat the Glamorgan, Monmouth and Carmarthen Counties on similar lines unless the movement for the creation of a number of county boroughs is adopted, which would then absorb practically the whole of the large industrial centres, leaving the rural areas to be administered by the County Councils. The latter idea, I am personally not very much enamoured of, as the tendency will be to leave the rural districts in a very starved position so far as finance is concerned. Dealing with the smaller areas as they exist to-day, it is desirable that where a number of small urban areas are grouped together in close proximity that they should be unified into one authority. The aquisition of urban powers in the industrial districts has followed industrial developments in certain rural parishes which have sought and obtained urban powers; and the difficulties that exist to-day are largely due to the lack of vision or perception on the part of the responsible authorities in visualising the developments of their par- ticular districts and in being too circumscribed in their selection of areas to be included within the district seeking urban powers. I could give a number of instances in this direction, though in regard to a number of County and Municipal boroughs their schemes are too ambitious in this respect. The conflict between private interests and municipal interests in the development of large schemes with regard to such undertakings as the supply of gas, electricity, and the construction of transit system, either electric tramways, railless cars, motor services and such like, will make it imperative that these schemes should be on such a scale as to reduce the cost to the lowest possible minimum. The waste of energy by the present multiplicity of authori- ties I can illustrate from my own personal experience in the valleys of Monmouthshire, where one public authority had a municipal electric plant erected within 50 yards of its boundary supplying energy and light within its own area, whereas the neighbouring authority to-day continues to light its district by the obsolete method of oil lamps, whilst there is a reserve power in their neighbour' s electrical plant that could supply the whole district with light and power. In the development of our roads a number of instances could be given where because of the number of authorities that are interested, very necessary developments in this respect are being seriously retarded, and the trading community seriously inconvenienced in the industrial valleys. It is not uncommon for miles on the eastern side of the valley to be under the control of one authority and miles of the western side of the valley to be under the control of a separate authority, although there are villages on each side of the valley that have a community of interest. I have in mind a case where for a distance of eight miles there is no intercommunication for the vehicular traffic between each side of the valley, simply because it is governed by two separate authorities who have no interest apart from their side of the valley. The same might be said with regard to the housing schemes, although authorities have the power to go outside their own area for the purpose of erecting houses for the needs of the people excellent sites that are situated in close proximity to the congested districts, but which are situated in another urban authority's area, are not utilised because the authorities responsible for providing the houses refuse to transfer the population of their area to