A history of the mayoralty

A history of the mayoralty

One of my first assignments as a young reporter more than half a century ago was to interview the retiring Mayor of Peterborough and when I asked how his year in office had gone, he replied: "It was like being king for a day". His assessment has stuck with me ever since for it sums up the unreality of a situation in which you are suddenly thrust into the limelight by being given a job in which you are feted like royalty but one that has no official parameters other than to be seen and heard.

A mayor was originally an overseer or bailiff and stems from the Norman maeur or mair although there is an alternative explanation that it comes from the Latin major meaning greater or superior. These derivations invite the assumption that the mayoralty we know today is an extremely ancient institution whereas it is a comparatively late development in local government organisation yet still has connotations of Ruritania and even Toytown, for those of us old enough to remember the popular BBC Children's Hour radio series of that name.

The position of mayor in England was largely governed by the Local Government Act of 1933 that required the council of every borough to make it their first duty at each annual meeting to elect a mayor who normally holds office for one year but may be re-elected. There have been changes since, consistent with the various re-organisations of local government, and so the title of mayor is now usually reserved for the head of an urban administration, one that has been granted district or borough status by royal charter, or a town mayor that has been granted special dispensation by government.

The system is different in the United States where the mayor is the elected head of a city or town and in 1999, the Labour government in Britain floated proposals for directly-elected mayors, a method that is now being adopted by some of the larger metropolitan authorities, notably in London where the controversial Ken Livingstone was elected by public vote in May 2000. The latter system is also prevalent in Europe and ostensibly enables decisions to be made without the red tape of committee and council meetings and is therefore meant to be a faster and more efficient means of running local affairs. It is unlikely that small towns such as Bourne will ever get a directly elected mayor and so the present arrangement will remain with us for the foreseeable future.

The mayoralty in Bourne dates back only 32 years. From 1899, the town was administered by Bourne Urban District Council which had a chairman but under the local government re-organisation of 1974, all urban authorities in England were replaced by district councils and from then on, Bourne's affairs came under the control of South Kesteven District Council based in Grantham.

The town however, retained a parish council which, because of its historic status, was given permission to become a town council with a chairman who is also the mayor, and this authority took over the Coat of Arms and civic regalia previously enshrined in Bourne UDC. Our first citizen, therefore, is no more than the chairman of the parish council but by recent tradition, is elected as town mayor by his peers.

Apart from taking the chair at council meetings, the mayoral duties are ornamental rather than practical and extend to attending public functions as a representative of the town council, garden fetes, concerts, dinners, coffee mornings, and the like, and therefore involve a constant round of glad-handing and the risk of putting on pounds while navigating the rubber chicken circuit, culminating with the Civic Ball at the end of the term, when those who have been of help during the year are thanked personally for their support.

The office then, is one of adornment rather than achievement, as exemplified by the silver chain of office he or she wears during their tenure. It is filled by rotation on a basis of seniority rather than merit, a case of Buggins's turn, and as council seats are liable to change, it is possible to become mayor twice in a short space of time, as has happened to seven councillors in Bourne since 1974. There is also no requirement to be elected by the people, as with the present council which has 15 members, all of whom have been returned unopposed without a single vote being cast.

In 2006, there was a departure from past tradition in which the deputy mayor automatically succeeded, in this case Councillor Guy Cudmore, but he failed to win the confidence of his colleagues who voted at a secret meeting in January that year not to support him and Councillor Brian Fines, a former army officer, was parachuted in as a replacement at short notice. This was seen as an early elevation because he was a comparative newcomer to local authority work having been nominated for the town council as recently as May 2003 and winning a seat on South Kesteven District Council as a Conservative member for Bourne West in the same year although he soon became vice-chairman of the development control committee. Nevetheless, his appointment was the result of expediency rather than experience.

Some who are elected tend to get carried away with the euphoria of office and may be forgiven for promising the unattainable when donning the silver chain for the first time, however well-intentioned these aims and objectives may be. One mayor, for instance, said that he wanted to put Bourne on the map although it was a safe bet that the status of this town would not have changed one iota when he left office twelve months later, which proved to be the case. Other aims to which they have aspired were also unlikely to materialise because the mayor has no more powers to make them happen while in office than he did as a mere town councillor but it does sound good at the time and is therefore worthy of a round of applause and headlines in the local newspapers. Reality is a little different.

What then can we expect from our mayors in the future? The answer is very little, except a high public profile and there is little wrong with that. The title is far more important than the job itself. But all organisations need a figurehead and in Bourne, that role is filled by the mayor. The office may be an anachronism but if Parliament can have its pomp and ceremony, then why cannot we have a little of the same. It achieves nothing but the chain of office does symbolise a dignity and a civic pride in our town and for that reason alone, it is worth keeping.

New mayors have a duty to involve all sections of the population although there is evidence in Bourne that some of our first citizens do not. This is a pity because the chain of office is identified as the connection between the Town Hall and the people and if the person who wears it does not address everyone, then those who are excluded will fear, and rightly so, that the mayoralty exists only for the select few which is far from the original intentions of this now traditional office.

REVISED SEPTEMBER 2010