Advocating rurality? The repositioning of rural local government

Jmmtal of Rural Studies, Vol. 14, No. I, pp. 13-26, 1998 © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Grcat Britain. All rights reserved 0743-0167/98 $19.(X) + 0.00

Pergamon PII: S0743.0167(97)00044-2

Advocating Rurality? The Repositioning of Rural Local Government Michael Woods Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Aberystwyth SY23 3DB, UK

Abstract - - Since 1979 the local state in Britain has experienced a period of considerable restructuring in which the power of elected local government has been severely diminished. As a new system of local governance, characterized by self-organising networks transcending the state, private and voluntary sectors, has emerged, so elected local government has had to re-imagine its role. This paper suggests that one strategy that has been adopted has been to re-position local councils as 'pressure groups', lobbying external actors on behalf of local interests. Furthermore, it is argued that in rural areas the restructuring of the local state has coincided with a wider social and economic restructuring and hence an intensified contesting of rurality. As such, it is argued that rural local government has become concerned not only with advocating local interests, but with advocating particular discourses of rurality. These assertions are discussed in the context of a case study concerning strategic planning for housing development in the district of Taunton Deane in Somerset. © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved

Introduction

The changing regime of local governance

In recent years the process of local governance in rural Britain has come under increasing academic scrutiny. Rural local government, once regarded as a quiet backwater - - more stable, less 'political' and less controversial than its urban counterpart - - has, like urban governance, been transformed by extensive central-state-directed restructuring over the past 20 years. As a 'new local governance' has emerged, characterized by self-organizing networks embracing the state, private and voluntary sectors, so elected local government has been forced to re-imagine its role. This paper focuses on the consequences of local state restructuring for the political role of elected local councils, suggesting that one strategy adopted has been to reposition themselves as 'pressure groups', lobbying external actors on behalf of local interests. Through examination of a case study concerning strategic planning for housing development in Somerset, I further argue that in rural areas, elected local government has found a role not just in advocating local interests, but in advocating particular discourses of rurality.

The restructuring of the local state in Britain in the late 20th century has been well documented (Cochrane, 1993; Goodwin, 1992; Mart, 1995; Stoker, 1996). Between 1979 and 1997, the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, influenced by the 'New Right' discourse of the minimalist state, continued the process of restructuring initiated under the previous Labour administration introducing a series of reforms which have restricted the autonomy of elected local government, reconfigured the organizational structure of the local state, expanded nonelected bodies, privatized or imposed competitive tendering for local state services, and promoted 'active citizenship' and the role of the private and voluntary sectors in local governance. The consequence has been the emergence of a 'new local governance', in which influence over the economic and social development of a locality is exerted not only by the formal institutions of the elected local state, but also by a complex web of other actors including the central state, non-elected govern-

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Michael Woods

mental organizations at both central and local levels, voluntary organizations, private businesses, ad hoc campaigning groups, the European Union, and private individuals. Furthermore, the terminological shift from 'government' to 'governance' emphasizes that, not only do these other actors exist, but that they have become increasingly influential in affecting the character of local areas (Goodwin and Painter, 1996). The transition from 'local government' cannot, however, be analysed in isolation, or solely with regard to the ideological motivations of the Thatcherite project. Rather the restructuring of the local state in Britain must be considered in the broader context of social and economic change. In particular, it has been argued that the 'new local governance' can be seen as a response to the crisis of the Fordist mode of regulation, and the need for a new 'postFordist' regulatory structure for local economic activity (Goodwin et al., 1993; Painter, 1991; Peck and Tickell, 1992; Stoker, 1989; Stoker and Mossberger, 1995). This work draws explicitly on the French and German schools of 'regulation theory' associated with Aglietta and Lipietz and Hirsch respectively (see Jessop, 1990 for an overview). Defined broadly, regulation theory is concerned with how the inherent contradictions of capitalism are resolved through prolonged temporary periods of stability, 'regimes of accumulation', regulated by particular ensembles of structural forms, 'modes of regulation', extended beyond the economic into social and political spheres (see Aglietta, 1979; Boyer, 1990).* Aglietta (1979) argues that the 20th century was dominated by a Fordist regime of accumulation, based on mass consumption underpinned by a state-interventionist mode of social regulation; but that the last 30 years have witnessed the crisis of Fordism, with the emergence of a new, 'postFordist' regime of accumulation based on economic strategies such as flexible accumulation, and demanding new structures of social regulation. Although the applicability of 'purist' regulation theory to the analysis of local state restructuring in Britain is debatable, Painter and Goodwin (1995), for example, observing that 'the explanation of changes in the local state and local governance falls outside the scope of regulation theory' (p. 347); it is none the less possible to adopt a generic concept of regulation from which particular statements about local state restructuring can be developed (Goodwin and Painter, 1996). From this perspective, it is argued that the local state played a key role in the *It should be noted that there is considerable divergence between the various regulationist schools beyond this broad principle (see Jessop, 1990).

regulation of British Fordism, acting as an agent of the Keynesian welfare state through the provision of social housing, thus helping to underwrite mass consumption, and other services for which there was a political demand but no profit-motive, and through infrastructura! provision and planning regulation. Equally, local government was influenced by the Fordist mode of regulation, mirroring hierarchical, bureaucratic and corporatist organizational forms (Goodwin and Painter, 1996; Painter, 1991). However, the transition to a post-Fordist mode of regulation has fostered new requirements for local governance, promoting the development of entrepreneurialism, targeted consumption, limited stateservices, devolved management, deregulated labour markets, and the social goals of privatized consumption and active citizenry (Goodwin and Painter, 1996). Furthermore, in a rural context, the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism has been identified with the diversification of the rural economy away from intensive agriculture and the commodification of rurality, with both the state and the wider actors in local governance playing prominent roles in both processes (Cloke and Goodwin, 1992). It is not in the scope of this paper to critique nor to contribute to the regulationist analysis of local state restructuring. Rather in accepting this interpretation of the changes in British local governance over the past 20 years, I want to consider the consequences of the 'new local governance' for local political action and in particular for the political role of elected local authorities. Traditionally, localist political discourses have imagined the role of local government to be that of a provider. Elected local government in particular was supposed to respond to local needs through the provision of services and facilities, a role which became immortalized in the built landscape through the construction of schools, hospitals, bridges, roads, industrial estates, libraries, swimming baths, and a host of other 'public' facilities. At its most fervent this perception of local government's role became the municipal-socialist vision of the citizen walking on municipal pavements or through municipal parks, using municipal water, gas and electricity, travelling by municipal tramway, shopping in the municipal market, telling the time by the municipal clock, and relaxing in the municipal library, art gallery or museum - - their every need catered for (for example see Webb, 1987). Although the degree of state intervention was lesser in rural areas, the principle of local government as provider was the same, with rural district and county councils gradually assuming the paternalistic function from landowners as the great estates disintegrated. Those landowners who remained frequently became the leading figures

Advocating Rurality? on councils, exercising their paternalistic benevolence through the apparatus of the local state (Woods, 1997). This conceptualization of the function of local government was reflected in the role perceptions of local councillors, with members of non-partisan rural councils in particular perceiving their role to be that of 'serving local people' and doing 'what is best for the local area' (Grant, 1977). The restructuring of the local state has, however, curtailed the ability of elected local government to perform this role as 'provider' in four ways. First, services traditionally provided by elected local authorities have been transferred to non-elected organizations. Thus elected local government's role in health provision was ended by the removal of council representatives from health authorities, and the creation of NHS Trusts; further education has been removed from local authority control, with schools given the option of 'opting-out' and obtaining 'grant maintained' status; and police authorities and national park authorities have been given 'independence' from county councils, with local council representatives reduced. Secondly, the introduction of competitive tendering and the privatization of certain council services means that even if an elected council is still responsible for providing a service, such as refuse collection or leisure services, it may not actually itself physically deliver that service. The sale of council houses to tenants and transfer of remaining stock by some councils to housing associations may also be included in this category. Third, there has been an increasing emphasis placed by the central state on the role of the private and voluntary sectors in the provision of public services. Thus social housing is now largely seen as the responsibility of housing associations. Fourth, the ability of elected local councils to respond to local needs within their remaining areas of competence has been severely restricted by the imposition of tight financial constraints by the central state. Consequently, elected local government has had to discover a new role for itself, in order to continue to legitimize its political power and influence within localities, and also in order that individuals may continue to be motivated to stand for election to local councils. One option is to pursue the 'New Right' vision of the 'enabling authority', as articulated by Nicholas Ridley when Environment Secretary. As Cochrane (1993) describes, Emphasis is placed on enabling appropriate groups to do whatever is necessary, stressing the importance of competition. The intention is to encourage the growth of a much wider range of agencies capable of delivering services currently directly provided by local government. In some cases it may be tha! local government involve-

15

ment is no longer required, but in general it is suggested that councils would retain a regulating and contracting role, with the expectation that they would pursue it 'fairly, efficiently and swiftly without stifling initiative and enterprise' (Cochrane, 1993, p. 52). The function of the local council is hence minimalized, with the role of councillors being reduced to that of regulators - - choosing between bids to provide services and monitoring their delivery, the potential to intervene being restricted by the terms of the contract. Thus although the concept of the 'enabling authority' is appealing to Conservative politicians and to some senior local government managers, who see their role being given an additional prominence, it has little attraction to councillors unhappy at their marginalization in this model. The preferred tactic of many local councillors and political activists has, therefore, been to re-imagine the role of an elected local authority to being akin to that of a pressure group, lobbying central government, private corporations, the European Union, local non-elected bodies and other actors with power in the locality, on behalf of the local people who elected them. This concept is articulated by two councillors in Somerset: We've had to obviously change our role as powers have been taken away from us, so that we're no longer formulating policies, because we're bound up by Whitehall. It's not unreasonable for us to become a strong lobby, to become a pressure group, to be the strong organ which uses whatever means are at its present disposal to say, 'this is nonsense', and fulfill that function. It is relatively easy to do that, even though we can't actually stop them, because we no longer have the power to do so... The debate in local government is one very much of community leadership rather than actual policy-making. (District Council Leader). We will probably serve a useful function as a sort of rallying point for people to speak out. Which instead of being a classic civic leader, you know, the one with dark glasses on, you really will be...alongside the people saying, 'we're the, sort of, advocate of the poor, defenceless citizen,' who's got no recourse through the ballot box to the quango, but at least we still have some identity as a local government district, we carry some legal clout or something, and therefore we will speak out as glorified pressure groups. (District Councillor). These visions raise two interesting conceptual points. First, they are seeking to reposition elected local government vis-it-vis the state. Local government is not imagined here to be an agent of the state, performing administrative tasks on behalf of the state, a function which indeed includes complicity in the ordering and repression of local people, but as an organization which stands alongside local people against the state. The ambiguity of local government's relation to the state has been observed by Duncan and Goodwin (1988), in their identification of the 'interpretive' and 'representa-

16

Michael Woods

tion' roles of the local state, and in Kirby's (1993) concept of the 'chaotic state' as 'a complicated political, legal and administrative jigsaw puzzle that contains a vast number of pieces.' (p. xiv). Kirby sees the relation between the local and central states as being a fundamental, defining, tension within the state system and argues for an 'interpretation of the local state as being both within and beyond the state.' (p. 103). This appears to be the same tightrope being walked by the Somerset councillors. They have rediscovered their Hegelian roots as an expression of civil society, wanting to position local government beyond the state, yet the imagined power of local government as a pressure groups depends on the resources and networks available to it as part of the state. This last point relates to the second observation, that the concept of power implied in the councillors' comments is reminiscent of the associative concept of power promoted by Latour (1986), Law (1994), Callon (1986) and other actor-network theorists. They contend that power is vested in associations rather than in entities because in order for an actor to achieve any desired outcome a network of entities must be constructed: When you simply have power -- in potentia - - nothing happens and you are powerless; when you exert power in actu - - others are performing the action and not you...Power over something or someone is a composition made by many people...The amount of power exercised varies not according to the power someone has but to the number of other people who enter into the compositon. (Latour, 1986, pp. 264-265). -

-

This model is implied in the idea of local government as pressure group in three ways. First, it emphasizes the position of the local state as part of the central state's network of implementation and thus raises the possibility of dissidence (although the central state has other networks of coercion which it can draw upon to compel the local state to comply). Second, it emphasizes that the traditional 'power' of elected local government was dependent on a particular ensemble of actors some of whom have been re-defined such that they can no longer be enrolled in the same manner. Instead to now exercise 'power', elected local government must create new networks oriented around new objectives. Third, it suggests that extra-state pressure groups will only be successful in their ambitions if they enrol the local council to their coalition and thus draw into their network particular administrative and legal resources which the council controls. The potential for local councils to act as lobbyists for local interests as part of a wider network of actors is demonstrated by the role played by Manchester City Council in bidding for the city to

host the Olympic Games. As Cochrane et al. (1995) describe, the city council became a key actor in a private-sector led network, including private businesses and business organizations, and local 'quangos' such Training and Enterprise Councils and the Urban Development Corporation, which organized the Olympic bid. The council, which would not have been able to mount such a bid as an individual actor, contributed to the network a sense of democratic legitimacy as well as particular resources, especially with regard to publicity, infrastructural development and planning. The council was able to justify its involvement by claiming that hosting the Olympic Games would benefit the people of Manchester through the construction of new sport facilities and infrastructural services, and through jobs created by the association economic development. While academic literature has tended to concentrate on this kind of pro-development lobbying by local authorities in the context of the so-called 'entrepreneurial city' - - not only through high profile schemes such as the Manchester Olympic bid, but also in competition for European Union and central government grants (Ward, 1997) - - the repositioning of local councils as 'pressure groups' can also be witnessed in rural areas. In contrast to urban areas, however, where councils have lobbied for economic development in response to the demands of both local people and local businesses; for rural authorities the objective has more frequently been to oppose development, responding to a wider debate within the locality about the nature and preservation of 'rurality'.

Contesting rurality through the local state The restructuring of local governance in rural areas over the past 20 years has coincided with a renewed intensification of the contesting of rurality within rural society, which is in turn a consequence of social and economic restructuring. The large scale migration into rural areas since the 1960s of people with no agricultural background together with the decreasing number of locally born people employed in agriculture or related industries, means that for the majority of present-day rural residents the traditionally hegemonic, agriculturally oriented, discourses of rurality are increasingly irrelevant (see Marsden et al., 1993; Mormont, 1990). It would be erroneous to suggest that the discursive contesting of rurality follows a simple incomer/local dichotomy, or an agricultural/non-agricultural dichotomy. Individuals construct their own images and expectations of rurality and these are shared ideas across social

Advocating Rurality? and economic boundaries (as well as disagreements within groups). None the less, such individual constructs draw upon shared cultural perspectives which frequently reflect social and economic backgrounds; moreover, distinctions between the views of 'incomers' and 'locals' are made by local politicians and inform their actions and strategies. As such, the crude shorthand of 'in-migrant and non-agricultural residents' versus 'long-standing residents' will be employed in the discussion below for the sake of clarity, but should not be read as a definitive categorization (see Bell, 1994; Harper, 1988; Jones, 1995; Savage et al., 1992). For many non-agricultural rural residents, the countryside is viewed as a space of consumption. The landscape, wildlife, farm animals and 'natives' are attractions to be consumed, through leisure activities such as walking, or simply by living in a rural village (see Cloke and Milbourne, 1992; Newby, 1988). For in-migrants in particular, the act of buying property in rural area is an act of consumption, often motivated by idyllic notions of rurality, and having invested both emotionally and financially in that dream they will fight to protect rurality as they imagine it from perceived threats:* The incomers - - and I count myself as one, we've only been here about twelve years - - we tend to want development to cease as from the moment we arrive because, as I say, we look around when we arrive in the village, look for a house, 'oh, this looks nice, yes I could live here', and that defines what you want. You don't want it to change, you don't want a housing estate up there, you don't want the road widening, you don't want streetlamps, you don't want a traffic crossing there, because this all introduces a measure of urbanisation from which you might have come. (District Councillor) I've often said that fifty houses were built in the village over five hundred years and the next fifty were built in about five months, you know, the housing boom... They were quite wealthy people that retired down here, plus people commuting to Bristol with both husband and wife having to work at high-powered jobs to pay the mortgage, but as it's shaken out, as those people have had children who've gone to the village school, and they've wanted to take an interest in the village hall, if you like, they've become integrated. But their interests are maintaining footpaths which nobody has walked on foryears. (Conservative activist) In contrast, for many longer-standing residents, especially those working in agriculture, the rural is a space of production, on which the local economy - and frequently their direct employment - - is dependent. In order to maintain the traditional 'organic rural community' both noixious activities - *All quotations are taken from interviews with local political activists in Somerset conducted between November 1994 and September 1995.

17

creating noise, smells and limited pollution - - and a degree of development are necessary: a position which conflicts directly with the discourse of rurality expressed above: An interesting thing about planning in the village is that so often people come to settle in a village and they want development in the village to stop as from the moment they got there. They came there because they liked it and they don't want it to change. People who are indigenous to the village, quite often they don't worry. They have seen during their 30-40-50 years they've been living in the village, they've seen houses go up and they've seen new estates develop and they've seen infilling and they've seen roads being widened and they take that as part of the natural evolution of things. (Taunton Deane Borough Councillor) The people who've lived in villages for quite a long time don't actually mind something which creates employment in their village. They regard villages as working villages and as places where people must stay and used to work, no doubt still work. In many cases it's the newcomers who want to pick up the NIMBY attitude, who want it to look roses-round-the-door chocolate box image, they bought it like that and woe betide anyone who changes anything. (Taunton Deane Borough Councillor) A lot of the people who come, think 'oh we're moving to the country and it's going to be lovely and this, that and the other and then they find aspects of it which they don't like, like crickets which make a noise. (Former County Councillor) The irony of it really is that in many cases people who have bought the barn conversions, so they've got this nice little bit of the countryside, are the first to scream loudly when a neighbouring farmer wants to put up a genuine agricultural building for him to carry out his livelihood, very close to their boundary. And they are the ones who chose to come and live in the countryside. The countryside does consist of animals and mud and things like that. (Taunton Deane Borough Councillor) This contestation of rurality becomes political partly because of the importance to both sides of planning policy, responsibility for which is attributed to the local council; and partly because rural local government has traditionally been dominated by elites closely connected with agriculture and business and identifying with pro-development discourses of rurality. As such, many Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors were first motivated to become politically active because they felt that their opinions, their communities and their ideas of rurality were not being represented by the existing elite, some of whom may have been the same individuals with whom they were in conflict over access to a footpath or a housing development. Thus one Somerset councillor described how she became active in local politics: We had moved into a very large new housing estate area and the parish council really existed in the old

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Michael Woods

country village of the locality. And all the councillors lived in the old village area and Galmington at that stage had not become at all political or motivated in any way, people were still moving in and they hadn't got themselves interested in local affairs. And what happened was that Galmington was putting forward some money to Trull Parish Council and getting none of the benefits, it was all being spent in the old village part... Galmington had to get a number of parish councillors on to that parish council in order to get proper representation. (Liberal Democrat Councillor) The in-comer and non-agricultural groups began to achieve that representation by ousting from office councillors drawn from agricultural and business elites under whose direction the rural state had throughout most of the 20th century actively, if subtly, supported traditional discourses of the rural as a space of production. Under the new leadership in elected local government, that alignment has become broken but no new discourse of rurality has yet become hegemonic. Rather the contesting of rurality has been taken to the heart of rural local governance. Ironically, new councillors have found that their capacity to directly formulate and implement policies reflecting their ideas of rurality has been strictly limited to minor projects to improve footpath signposting and symbolic gestures of environmentalism - - many of which have anyway been part of national initiatives. As they have realized the extent to which rurality is shaped by external agencies beyond the local state, so they have demanded that councils play an increasingly active political role in lobbying those agencies, and have used their own power within councils to engage them in lobbying activities. Thus recent years have seen rural councils become involved in lobbying central government, corporations and the European Union in support of local agriculture, fishing and commerce; lobbying central government on behalf of 'underprivileged' sections of the community such pensioners over issues such as VAT on domestic fuel; opposing developments such as nuclear power stations, airport extensions and quarrying and activities including the export of live animals and hunting; and in lobbying for the designation of areas as protected landscapes and for external financial support for environmental initiatives. In the remainder of this paper I want to concentrate on a further area where rural councils have adopted an active role in contesting central state policy - that of strategic planning for housing development. Using a case study of the reaction in the district of Taunton Deane in Somerset to the publication in 1993 of the central government's proposed housing targets for the period up to 2016, I will discuss how the government's proposals were contested locally not through a technical discourse but in the context of social constructions of rurality, and how the

county and district councils were forced by the limits to their own power to join the protest network and actively lobby central government for a reduction in the proposed target.

Housing development in Taunton Deane In common with many areas of rural England, the south-western county of Somerset has experienced considerable social and economic restructuring in recent decades, which has been accompanied by a significant development of the built environment. Between 1981 and 1989 over 24000 new houses were built in Somerset, over 5000 of them in the district of Taunton Deane, which includes the county's largest town and administrative centre, Taunton, and has good road and rail links with the rest of the country (Table 1). The trend is expected to continue into the next century, with the Department of the Environment (1995) projecting that 58000 new households will be created in Somerset between 1991 and 2016, making it the tenth fastest growing county in England.* Since 1968, housing development in England has been controlled through a dual system of statutory planning, with targets for housing and the allocation of new housing t o districts proposed in a county Structure Plan, prepared by the county council for the Department of the Environment, and the identification of suitable sites for housing developments and framework for planning control outlined in Local Plans produced by the district councils (Fig. 1) (Cloke, 1983; Rydin, 1995). The initial Somerset Structure Plan proposed the construction of 36750 Table 1. New houses built in Somerset, 1981-1989

Area Taunton Wellington Wiveliscombe Taunton Deane total Mendip Sedgemoor South Somerset West Somerset Somerset total

New houses completed July 1981-April 1989

Average annual rate

4430 490 115 5035 4740 5485 8205 1135 24,600

572 63 15 649 612 708 1059 147 3174

Source: Somerset County Council (1990). *The projected figure for household growth represents a 22.5% increase on the 1991 total. The counties predicted to experience greater growth are Cambridgeshire, Buckinghamshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Shropshire, Cornwall, Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire (Department of the Environment, 1995).

Advocating Rurality? ACTOR\’

DOCUMENTS

PhoningPdieyGuidance (PPC) Outlines central state p&y

on

19

1991 the county council began a full review of the structure plan to cover the period up to 2011 - and the reaction to these new proposals was rather different.

plEUUWlg

RegiondFlatming Guidance (RPG) Provides broad develomental for next 15 years.

framework

.

I struchlrePlan setoutgeneral policy for development at county level, including allocating housing targets to districts

Local Plan

I

Specifies location of

land

designated for new development

Figure 1. The prbcess of strategic

development

planning for housing in rural England (After Rydin 1993)

houses in Somerset between 1981 and 1996, of which 7600 would be in Taunton Deane. This figure was revised in two alterations to the plan during the 198Os, after consultation with local councils, pressure groups (notably the Council for the Protection of Rural England, the Country Landowners’ Association and local civic societies - all organizations with close ties to established elites),* and house builders. Although concern was expressed about environmental protection, there was broad agreement on the need for development and no major campaign against the housing totals. However, in *The position of the Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) is interesting. Founded in 1926 it aimed to preserve rural areas in the interests of agriculture against urban expansion and initially was supportive of moderate modernization in the countryside. It has always heen closely associated with traditional landowning rural elites, and has explicitly sought to lead rather than represent local opinion. Thus although it has been active in contesting development strategies at both local and national scales, its objectives have generally fallen within a discourse of rurality which is very different to the radical environmentalism of groups such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, whose members are more likely to be drawn from service class in-migrants and which are closer to Labour and Liberal Democrat political elites. Conventionally the CPRE has attempted to ‘civilize’ economic development, rather than oppose it outright, and in this respect the prominent opposition of the Somerset CPRE to the proposed housing targets for 1991-2016 is significant because it suggests that the proposed development was regarded as threatening the construct of rurality embodied in the discourses of the ‘traditional rural elite’ (see Allison, 1975; Hall ef al., 1973; Lowe, 1977; Matless, 1990).

The new proposals are part of a modified system of structure plans which emerged from central state attempts to streamline the planning process during the 1980s. Under the initial proposals, structure plans would have been abolished and replaced by regional guidance plans issued by central government. This was considered to be politically unacceptable at the time and instead a reformed system of downgraded structure plans was introduced, focusing on ‘strategic’ issues and able to be approved at county level without submission to the Secretary of State. However, under the new system, structure plans also have to be consistent with regional guidance issued by the Department of the Environment. While local councils are involved in advising the central state on the formulation of the regional strategy, advice is also taken from business organizations, development interests, agricultural groups and conservation interests (Marsden et al., 1993). Hence the reform of the planning system has been consistent with the broader trends of increasing central control and widening the number of actors involved in local governance. Thus the process of planning housing development in Taunton Deane started in July 1991 with the publication of the document ‘Towards a Draft Regional Strategy’ by the South West Regional Planning Conference, a body composed of representatives of the region’s county councils and limited district council representation. In this document a figure of 363,000-400,000 new houses was proposed for the South West region, including 47,000-52,000 for Somerset. In the final strategy, published in March 1993, a target of 50,000 houses was allocated to Somerset by the Department of the Environment. This figure was reproduced in the consultation draft of the structure plan review published in 1995, in which the proposed development was divided between the county’s five districts, with 12,600 houses being allocated to Taunton Deane (Somerset County Council, 1995). At this stage the process entered the realm of public debate, and as it did so the nature of debate changed. In the development of, and consultation about, first the central government’s Planning Policy Guidance and then the regional strategy, attention had focused on the level of housing need, which was the main factor in what is essentially a demand-led process. The debate between the various state institutions, business and development interests and established conservation organizations therefore

Michael Woods took the form of statistical calculations challenging the ‘official’ figures, and technical papers questioning the methodology employed (see for example Bramley and Watkins, 1995), reflecting the prioritizing of technical representations in official discourses of state policy-making also observed in the case of the Buckinghamshire structure plan by Murdoch (1997). However, when the housing development proposals became a subject of public debate following the publication of the structure plan consultation draft, the debate became cloaked in the language of social constructions of rurality. This occurred on two levels. First, the projections at county and district level were represented as posing a threat to the ‘rural’ character of those areas. Second, the general debate was punctuated by a series of situated protests against specific housing developments, again represented as being in conflict with perceived ideas of rurality. The mobilization of idyllic notions of rurality in opposition to specific housing developments at a local scale is illustrated by the comments of protesters against three proposed developments in villages around Taunton. In all three cases the protesters represent further development as contrasting with a discourse of rurality in which villages are necessarily associated with smallness, peace, privacy, cleanliness, wildlife and ‘scenic views’, conforming to the imagery of the ‘rural idyll’: We object to any development at all. We came here from an estate in Taunton for the views and the privacy and that didn’t come cheap. (Resident opposing Housing Association development, quoted in Somerset County Gazette, 16/6/95)

People don’t want any more housing, they want to keep it as a village. We would rather see sheep than houses, we need to preserve Mill Lane, it’s a unique rural setting. (Resident quoted in Somerset County Gazette, 1217196)

We won’t be seeing any kingfishers, herons and badgers round Sherford stream once the bulldozers arrive. (Letter to Somerset County Gazette, 1414195)

The same arguments, however, have been abstracted to a higher scale and used to oppose the projected housing development in Taunton Deane in general, portraying it as threatening ‘rural life’: Let’s. stick together on this one and oppose overdevelopment which will spoil lovely villages, whether or not we life in them ourselves. (Letter to Somerset

(Chair, Somerset

CPRE,

quoted

in Somerset County

Gazette, 312195)

Concerns about the loss of rural identity are most acute with regard to the identification of sites for housing development in locations around Taunton. Emotive language is employed to convey visions of surrounding villages being ‘sucked’ into an ‘urban sprawl’ - the term being used laden with negative connotations of city life: There are certainly fears from established Tauntonians that if you take things much further villages which stood alone would just get sucked into the general morass of the town. ..On the outskirts of Taunton you’ve got villages of some substance, villages like West Monkton and Creech St Michael which at the moment stand on their own, and have their own identity, but if the housing proposals envisaged for the next 15 years are taken to their logical conclusion, you could see them just becoming totally sucked into the town. (Local newspaper editor)

The concern is not just about the loss of village identity, but also that Taunton itself will lose what remains of its perceived ‘semi-rural’, ‘market town’, identity as it increases in size: Local proposals will. . . add to the congestion and pollution within the town and at the same time detract from the semi-rural atmosphere of the county town. (Residents’ Association Secretary, quoted in Somerset County Gazette, 2518195)

I think there is a group ranging from the Friends of the Earth at the extreme environmentalist group, I’m a great Friends of the Earth supporter, don’t get me wrong there, who are saying, ‘look, enough is enough, we cannot actually physically absorb anything more in Taunton anyway, we are going to undermine the quality of life if we go down that path.’ (Taunton Deane

Borough Councillor) Moreover, these concerns about the threat to ‘rural life’, have been directly tied to the discourses of rurality held by incomers moving into the area. Two surveys conducted in the autumn of 1995 found that the countryside was the greatest attraction in bringing people to Somerset, and that housing development was considered to be one of the greatest threats to the Somerset environment (Sustainable Somerset Group, 1996). This point is echoed by local politicians: There seem to be two strategies -

expanding major

Housing balance must be right to protect rural life. (District Councillor in letter to Somerset County Gazette,

settlements including Taunton, or building a little bit on existing settlements.. You can only carry on doing that for so long because after a while you reach a crunch point where that policy starts destroying the framework of the countryside people want to move into. (Director, Community Council, quoted in Somerset County Gazette,

2413195)

l/12/95)

The way of rural village life which has slowly evolved over the centuries is going to be wiped away at a stroke.

Objectors, which include the Green Party, say such a massive building programme will destroy the very coun-

County Gazette, 2114195)

Advocating Rurality? tryside and quality of life people come to Somerset to enjoy. (Somerset County Gazette, 31/3/95) The regional planning directive is for 50,000 more houses in Somerset, it's not going to be the Somerset people want. (Taunton Dearie Borough Councillor) The importance of these observations is not just that they reflect the influence achieved by in-comers' representations, but also because they implicitly challenge one of the assumptions behind the calculation of the projected figures - - that in-migration to Somerset will continue at a steady rate. Indeed, the strength of this factor in the calculations provoked the adoption of a localist standpoint to proposed housing: These housing targets are not to provide homes for local people, but will be used by people relocating from areas like the South East who will merely use villages as a convenient dormitory. (Chair, Somerset CPRE, quoted in Somerset County Gazette, 3/2/95) We're supposed to be building housing for migrants, but no one is providing for people who live here already. Until we meet local planning needs there should be a moratorium on providing migration housing. (Labour councillor, quoted in Somerset County Gazette, 31/3/95) These representations of the perceived 'threat' from the proposed housing developments to the socially constructed 'rural' character of the district were mobilized in a number of ways by a range of actors. At one level it involved individuals writing to local newspapers and to councillors and Members of Parliament. At another level it involved single-cause local action groups opposing specific developments who disseminated these representations through letters and interviews in the local media, and the direct lobbying of councillors. At a third level, it involved established campaigning groups, such as Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, the Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) and the Green Party acting at a county and district level both through the media and through formal and informal contacts with local and central state actors. In March 1995, Friends of the Earth, the CPRE and the Green Party came together to launch the Campaign Against Unwanted Development at a public meeting in Taunton (see Table 2). Notably the meeting was also addressed by senior Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Labour politicians, indicating that it had become a crucial issue in local politics. However, the participation of the major political parties was paradoxical in a number of ways. The stance of the Conservative Party, for example, had to be negotiated from three contradictory influences: first, loyalty to the central government which

21

was ultimately responsible for the development target; second, a traditional identification with business and development interests and hence with a moderate pro-development strategy; and third, the fact that the provisional identification of sites for development in Taunton Deane had placed the bulk of the burden on fairly exclusive villages around Taunton in Conservative-held wards. With elections to the district council due to be held in May 1995, the Conservatives considered that failing to oppose the proposals risked losing electoral support, whilst aggressive opposition might help re-gain marginal Liberal Democrat wards. Thus the leader of Taunton Deane Conservatives plumped for Table 2. Key dates in debate over housing development in Taunton Deane, 1993-1996 July 1991

South West Regional Planning Conference publishes draft regional strategy March 1993 Final regional strategy proposes 50,000 new houses to be built in Somerset 1991-2016 October 1993 Somerset County Council expresses concern about target of 50,000 houses September 1994 Taunton Deane Borough Council opposes County Council housing targets for the district October 1994 Concern expressed at Wellington Town Council meeting about housing targets for area January1995 Sites for housing development ear-marked CPRE launches campaign against housing targets Chair of TDBC Strategic Planning Ctte voices opposition to housing targets February 1995 County Council publishes Consultation Draft of Structure Plan Review, including housing allocations TDBC attempts to force public inquiry Taunton MP expresses opposition to housing targets March 1995 Campaign Against Unwanted Development launched at public meeting in Taunton, calling for the housing allocation for Somerset to be cut by 10000. County Council planners defend proposals May 1995 Conservatives make housing development a major issue in their local elections campaign August 1995 SCC Environment Committee approves Structure Plan Review, including target of 50,000 houses December 1995 Secretary of Somerset Community Council warns a planning conference that housing strategy risks destroying Somerset as people want it June 1996 TDBC calls for housing targets for Somerset to be reviewed, claiming that the projection of in-migration is wrong

22

Michael Woods

opposing development in favour of supporting 'human scale communities where the individual is still significant and feels a sense of community.' (Somerset County Gazette, 22/9/95).* The Conservatives' campaign was entirely directed at the Liberal Democrat-controlled county and district councils and not at the central government. This highlighted the equally paradoxical position of the Liberal Democrats. The party's rapid advance in local government in Somerset during the 1980s and early 1990s had been partly a result of their involvement in similar 'rural conflicts' in which they had represented the incomers' 'idyllic' construct of rurality. Furthermore, a number of senior Liberal Democrat councillors were members of Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth and were instinctively opposed to the scale of development implied in the structure plan. Yet at the same time as the administration on both councils they were forced to implement the proposals with no power to substantially change them. The Liberal Democrats hence embarked on a complex strategy of distancing themselves from plans which their administration was preparing to implement. Defence and explanation of the housing targets and the structure plan proposals was left solely to planning officers whilst councillors, including the chairs of Taunton Deane's planning and strategic planning committees, aligned themselves with the anti-development campaigners, mobilizing the same representations of an 'idyllic' rurality threatened by over development, but directing their campaign at the central government and local Conservative MPs. In this strategy, the council's lack of power was turned to their advantage, the leader of Taunton Deane Borough Council identifying the housing targets as an issue around which popular opposition to the increasingly centralization of local government could be mobilized: There is such unanimity of opposition to this which is right across the parties, I think it's united us in a way that is perhaps the crest of the wave of pique at centralisation. And I think there is greater and greater recognition that the process of centralisation is going too far and therefore it's easier for us to be very much more forceful, we're much less frightened of responding now if we don't agree with something.., it's not been difficult to mould our opposition to this, to come out strongly. Thus, in the council leader's own description, the debate over housing development became an issue on which the council deliberately abandoned a pretence of governance and repositioned itself as a *The campaign against the housing development proposals was cited after the district elections by one Conservative councillor as 'the secret of my success' (Somerset County Gazette 19/5/95).

pressure group, opposing a central state policy which it was required to implement. The features of this strategy were three-fold. First, the status of being the ruling party was exploited in gaining media publicity. This was supported by local campaigning, such as collecting petitions, by party activists and through Liberal Democrat literature. Hence the council positioned itself as the focal point of opposition to the housing targets, defending local interests against the intervention of the central state, and moreover defending a particular social construct of rurality. Second, the resources of the council were mobilized to contest the proposals on technical grounds, for example using the expertise of the planning department to challenge both the calculations of housing need and the assumptions used in the government's calculations. Third, the council manipulated their position as part of the state system in order to gain access to central state actors to make their representations. However, the episode also illustrated the limitations of the 'pressure group' strategy. It is a role which does not actually gain any power for local councils, only the possibility of influence. In the case examined here, the allocation of 50,000 new houses to Somerset had been firmly established by the publication of the regional strategy in 1993; there was very little possibility that the figure would be changed after that date, and the campaign to reduce it proved unsuccessful. But at a local level, what was important was that Taunton Deane Borough Council was seen to be opposing the proposals, and that it positioned itself on the side of 'local opinion' against the central state, not as an agent of the central state imposing an unpopular policy.

Conclusions

The public debate surrounding future housing development in Taunton Deane provides an illustration of one possible way in which elected local government may be argued to be responding to the processes of restructuring in both local governance and rural society more generally. Indeed, it may be argued that these two processes have become entwined as public reaction to a process of state regulation became articulated around discourses of rurality, and the powerlessness of elected local government to change a policy it was charged with implementing, in response to public opinion, forced the council to discursively reposition itself as a 'pressure group' lobbying central government antidevelopment protesters. In this conclusion I want to consider whether that specific case has any wider relevance for the future of rural governance,

Advocating Rurality? through posing three questions: Does the idea of 'local government as pressure group' mark a significant departure from the way in which local government has acted in the past? If so, can this be related to a transition between modes of regulation, as has been suggested for local state restructuring more broadly? And finally, how important is the rural dimension? It must be recognized that lobbying external actors on behalf of a locality has always been part of the function of local government, through what Duncan and Goodwin (1988) identified as the local state's 'representational role'. Mostly this has been performed discretely through official channels of representation, although periodic conflicts have arisen, most notably when left-wing councils, such as Clay Cross, Poplar, Liverpool and the Greater London Council, have actively resisted central state policies. However, the activities of rural local government in cases such as the one described above should be placed in the context of the historical domination of rural local governance by Conservative elites. As such, the question becomes one not only of changing local governance practice, but also of changing local governance ideology. Traditionally, the lobbying function of rural local government has been restricted by three factors resulting from the Conservative hegemony. First, rural local government was dominated by local elites who for most of the 20th century have shared the political ideals of the national government. Second, the rural power structure has only ever been partially formalized through the local state; considerable influence has remained with informal elite networks whose upper reaches have entwined with national elite networks. Consequently, whilst local elites have been involved in lobbying for 'local' interests, local government has not been regarded as the primary vehicle for such activity. Third, local government has instead been perceived to be concerned with the delivery of those public services that could not be delivered profitably through private or paternalistic means. Furthermore, it was argued that in order to perform tfiis role properly, local government needed to be apolitical - - a discursive construct that enabled Conservative elites to fend off socialism whilst ensuring their own position, but which also prevented local councils from becoming involved in 'national' politics. This perception of the role of local government, its relation to the central state, and the role of local councillors, is still articulated by some Conservative activists in Somerset: 1 originally stood for the council because 1 felt the council wasn't doing the job that I believed it should be doing for the community. And I still believe that that

23

message has not come across to the majority of the electorate, or to the majority of members, come to that. I don't believe that they honestly, sincerely, think that they go in there to improve, or at least deliver, quality services to the community. Which is what local government is all about... Local government is local issues, it's not national issues, it's not national politics. (Independent councillor) There is only one government of this country, and that is the Westminster government. It is a misnomer to call these other things governments, they aren't governments, they are local administrations. (Former County Council Chair) [My motivation] is service to the community. Your elderly Conservative candidate, one whose been over 20 years or so old over the last twenty years, I think would say...'we give something back' (Conservative councillor) Including explicit opposition to elected local government adopting a campaigning stance: Once you politicise [local authorities] they take off on their own and central government really cannot afford to have a whole load of UDIs dotted around its country. I know no one takes any notice of it, but it was absurd to find counties, for instance, declaring themselves Nuclear Free Zones. I mean, I bet Mr Khruschev trembled in his boots when he heard that.., but it's silly to do that kind of thing because its none of your damned business. (Former Conservative councillor) This restricted discourse of the role of local government has only really been challenged in rural areas by the election to power of Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors (and to a lesser extent of more ideologically minded Conservative councillors recruited into politics through Thatcherism), whose motivation for becoming active in local politics was to 'change things' or to 'represent local people' and who on finding that their capacity to significantly alter the direction of local state policy has been curtailed by the removal of powers from elected local government, have re-focused their attention on external actors. Control of local councils has hence become a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. Thus, there has certainly been a discursive re-positioning of rural local government which may be more important than any change in local governance practice. In describing the recent history of rural local government in this way, a number of connections to the regulationist account of local state restructuring begin to emerge. The role traditionally attributed to rural local government under the Conservative hegemony is essentially one of regulation as understood within a Fordist paradigm. It was charged with ensuring social order, developing infrastructure and generally acting in line with the interests of agriculture and the service economy of market towns - -

24

Michael Woods

while being denied any kind of independent political identity which could have threatened the position of local elites. Therefore, if the traditional discourse of local government as provider can be linked to the Fordist mode of regulation, can the idea of 'local government as pressure group' be linked to a postFordist mode of regulation? Such a connection is easier to argue in the context of the 'entrepreneurial city', where the priority given by elected local government to place-marketing, competing for central government and European Union grants and lobbying corporations for investment in the locality, may be regarded as a response to a footloose economy. Equally the role of rural local state institutions, both elected and non-elected, in bidding for EU and central government grants or rural development area status, or in promoting economic development can be seen as part of the same process. But the connection is less immediately apparent with regard to anti-development lobbying by councils, as witnessed in the Taunton Deane case. However, Cloke and Goodwin (1992) argue that a feature of rural economies under post-Fordism is the commodification of rural environments to meet the demands of contemporary consumption. This includes profiting from recreation, leisure and tourism, but also 'the development of particular styles of living through special niches in the rural housing market (such as service class or retirement development)' (p. 329) (see also Goodwin et al., 1995). While such a strategy requires a degree of development, it also requires that development should be regulated such that rural localities remain relatively exclusive (in terms of the affordability of house prices), and that the rural environment should be managed in a way consistent with a discourse of rurality derived from the ideal of the rural idyll. This argument is developed further by Murdoch and Marsden (1994), who contend that the regulation of housing and economic development in Buckinghamshire contributes to the sustaining of the locality as an exclusive 'middle-class space'. A similar reading could be applied in Somerset, both to the extent that the regulation of housing development has restricted supply and imbued a number of villages with a disproportionately middle-class character, and to the extent that the protection of this middle-class environment was the primary motivating factor behind the involvement of some actors, such as Conservative councillors, in the campaign against the housing proposals. However, the protection of middle-class space was a lesser factor than a desire to defend a particular discursive vision of rurality, which transcended class interests - - but which was

none the less sectional. Thus in aligning itself explicitly with the campaign against large-scale housing development, and adopting their rhetoric, the council denied any form of official representation for other discourses of rurality, in which development was claimed to be necessary for 'progress' and placed above environmental protection. In this way, the strategy adopted by the council can be seen to have cultural as well as economic imperatives: for most of the district it was consistent with the development of specialist middle-class housing niches, yet in other areas, such as the Somerset Levels, the desire to protect cherished landscapes and aesthetic imaginings of rurality precluded even that degree of development. The rural dimension is hence fundamental to understanding the political role of elected local government in processes such as strategic planning for housing development. In seeking a role for itself as local, state restructuring has diminished its autonomy to act as a provider, elected local government in rural areas has re-positioned itself not only as an advocate of local people and local interests, but of a particular discourse of rurality. This has been demonstrated in Somerset, not only by the involvement of Taunton Deane Borough Council in contesting central government's housing allocations, but also in a number of other incidents over recent years. These include Taunton Deane's opposition to a proposed chicken-litter power station; and Somerset County Council's attempt to ban staghunting on its land (see Woods, forthcoming), opposition to the construction of a third nuclear reactor at Hinkley Point, and its explicit identification of itself with an idyllic representation of rurality in its campaign against abolition as part of local government reorganization. If the involvement of elected local government in advocating particular discourses of rurality can be identified on a wider scale, then it might be suggested that the restructuring of the past 20 years has produced not only a 'new local governance' on a national scale, characterized by dispersed responsibilities, networking, public-private partnerships, increased central influence and entrepreneurialism; but also a 'new rural local governance' in which a primary concern of elected authorities has become the discursive regulation of 'rurality'. Such an assertion cannot be made from a single case study, but the debate surrounding housing development in Somerset may prove to be a glimpse of a larger picture. This paper has attempted to explore how elected local government has sought to redefine its role and confirm its political legitimacy in the context of a restructured rural polity. It has had to respond to challenges posed by the Thatcherite restructuring of

Advocating Rurality? the state, which has undermined its traditional discursive role as a provider, and by the social and economic restructuring of the countryside, which has produced increasing demands for the state to intervene in support of particular discourses of rurality. One strategy that has been adopted, as demonstrated by the case study from Taunton Deane, has been to re-imagine the role of local government to be akin to that of a pressure group, representing the interests of local people to external actors. Yet, the adoption of such a strategy does not in itself resolve the problematic that exists at the core of the rural local state - - its contradictory obligations both to represent the interests of local constituents, and to implement the policies of the central state. It is this problematic that gives the local state its dynamic character; indeed, its irresolvability is a function of the nature of local state power. Understood from a Latourian perspective, the local state does not possess any power, but must achieve power through acting as part of wider networks. For such networks to be successful they must secure the compliance of both the central state and the local population - whose interests may often be opposed. These conflicting pressures mean that there is no consistency of action in the local state - - that the direction of policies will differ over time, and that different sections of the local state may be working towards different outcomes. Yet in order for elected local government to maintain its discursive power and its popular legitimacy, it must create the impression of coherent action. Repositioning local government as an advocate of local people and local opinions is one strategy for creating such an impression, exploiting the tensions that exist within the chaotic state and ensuring that rural local governance remains a space of dynamic discursive competition.

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