Local

Government in Northern Ireland Declan Carroll

From 1921 until 1972 the system of local government in Northern Ireland remained largely unchanged from that introduced under the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898. As a consequence by the late 1960s for a population of some 1.5 million there were some 73 local authorities across Northern Ireland.

However by the 1960s the system of local government had become synonymous with gerrymandering of electoral boundaries, discrimination in the allocation of public housing and appointments to public sector employment. Eligibility to vote in local elections continued to be based on certain practices abandoned in the rest of the United Kingdom since 1946, i.e. the franchise was based on the ratepayer suffrage and the company vote.

Ratepayer suffrage meant that, with some exceptions, only those who were owners or tenants of a dwelling (or their spouses) were entitled to vote in local government elections. Thus lodgers and grown up children still living with parents had no vote. In addition some large property owners had more than one vote. In 1967 while there were 909,842 voters on the parliamentary electoral register, there were only 694,483 on the local government register.

By the mid-1960s a succession of groups had emerged urging reform of the political system calling for “One Man One Vote”. As the Civil Rights movement became more vocal in its demands traditional communal tensions escalated and by 1969 Northern Ireland witnessed the breakdown of law and order as the two communities clashed. In this environment the much needed reform of local government was delayed until 1973. A wide ranging report by Sir Patrick Macrory in 1970 advocated a major overhaul with 26 district councils replacing the existing structures. The first election to these new bodies took place in May 1973 with the franchise widened to embrace universal adult suffrage.

These new councils which replaced the former complex local authority structure found their responsibilities drastically limited. Their functions were reduced to little more than the emptying of bins, the burying of the dead and the administration of community and leisure centres.