The place of local government in the British Constitution is both ambiguous and ambivalent. Britain is a small, densely populated island with a powerful central government. Little recognition is given to regional or national variations in culture, language or economic structure, yet systems of local government have existed since the Norman Conquest. They have long been regarded as bulwarks protecting us from centralised tyranny. The local control of the police, for example, has traditionally been valued as protecting us from the control of the state’s entire machinery of coercion by a single minister. Again, local autonomy has ensured that educational structures and methods can be developed in a wide variety of different ways, in terms of the school curriculum, patterns of school organisation and teaching methods. Above all, local
government provides a means whereby citizens can exercise control over their local affairs and express their will, through their votes as well as by lobbying their local authority, especially when they are disaffected from the policies of the central government (Stewart, 1983).