Raising the civic sword

Guest Columns by Sauvik Chakraverti,

The Newindpress on Sunday, 2007-2008

Raising the civic sword

They lie when they say that we follow the ‘Westminster model of democracy’. British parliamentary democracy cannot be understood without a deep comprehension of the ancient institutions of local self-government upon which it is based, the oldest of which is the Lord Mayor of the City of London, the ancient city of just one square mile dating back to the Londonium of Roman times, which still maintains all its ceremonial traditions and is possessed of its own police force: the ‘Bobby’ of metropolitan London is not allowed within. The City of Westminster, which lies well outside the boundaries of this ancient City of London, did not exist when Henry Fitzalwyn was elected the first Lord Mayor of London in 1189.

The modern-day tourist to London is bound to see the entire agglomeration as one huge city. He will see the Palaces of Westminster, where the House of Commons sits, and think this is London. Few will undertake city tours to discover the ancient City of London that lies deep within, where both the economic epicentre of Britain as well as the political epicentre of English local self-government are located. Its traditions and privileges date back to early feudal times, when democracy was unimaginable. Long, long before Britain had a prime minister, London had its Lord Mayor. The title ‘lord’ was not given by the King; it is how the citizenry have always addressed their mayor, who upholds the Civic Sword within the city. Till today the King of England cannot march his army through the ancient City of London without the permission of the Lord Mayor. Whenever the monarch visits the ancient city, the Lord Mayor meets him at Temple Bar where he ceremonially surrenders the Civic Sword and allows the monarch in. Within the city he is therefore ranked second only to the King.

As already mentioned, the ancient city maintains its own police force. It is an example of civic independence that tells us a great deal about how political liberty was obtained in England by merchants, thereby enabling the transition from feudalism to capitalism well before democracy of the Westminster-type.

The year 1189, when Henry FitzAlwyn took office as the first Lord Mayor of London, is 26 years before the Magna Carta. Richard the Lionheart was an ‘absent king’, always away on crusades. On one of these he was captured and held to ransom. It was FitzAlwyn as Lord Mayor who raised the money to pay the ‘King’s Ransom’. The merchants were rich. They were not political clients. They headed an honest ‘body politic’ in their own right.

In 1189, constitutional progress, in the form of the Magna Carta, had not begun. Yet, the principal walled city of England obtained the liberty to conduct its own affairs. This was reaffirmed in the Magna Carta wherein Clause 13 gave London the liberty to trade freely by land and sea, and to maintain its ancient traditions and customs. These liberties played a crucial role in the furtherance of England’s commercial culture and the development of a ‘body politic’ within feudal covers where civic government was bourgeois.

History bears this out. Rowland Heyward, Lord Mayor in 1598, chaired the meeting held to discuss the formation of the East India Company. Sir John Swinnerton, Lord Mayor in 1612, was one of the founder members of the East India Company in 1599, and the Company’s offices were initially located in the house of Christopher Clitherow, Lord Mayor in 1635. Most Lord Mayors during the days of the Empire were on the boards of firms like the East India Company, the Muscovy Company, the Levant Company, the Merchant Adventurers, and all the various other firms that had opened to trade with the Far East, the Middle East and the new colonies of America. The Virginia Company, for example, could only succeed because a Lord Mayor, Sir Humphrey Weld, ventured seven ships.

The ‘Glorious Revolution’ was yet to come, and when it did, in 1688, and the new monarch imported from Holland called a ‘Convention Parliament’, the Corporation of London, with its Lord Mayor and all the Aldermen, sat in the House of Commons as a separate estate of the realm, the only body in the country to be possessed of constitutional government. This was the beginning of parliamentary government and, though ‘democracy’ was still a foreign word, capitalism had kicked in real hard. All because of ‘civil government’ — the title of Locke’s treatise of 1690.

The tourist in London should go into the old City to search for Guildhall, the ‘parliament of shopkeepers’ that has been annually electing a Lord Mayor, two Sheriffs and 50 Aldermen for over 800 years. If he is lucky to be there when a new Lord Mayor is elected, he will see him parade in his ceremonial finery, preceded by a Swordbearer holding aloft the Civic Sword. It is in these traditions that the keys to political liberty and capitalism lie. Our Lok Sabhas and Vidhan Sabhas are modeled after Westminster; they are meaningless without Guildhalls in every city and town, each electing its own mayor. Civil government means upholding the Civic Sword. This is the prerogative of a mayor.

Do note that these Lord Mayors were neither clients of the state nor underlings of any political party. They were always among the richest men of the realm. Many lent vast sums to the Crown. To be Lord Mayor was never to hold an office of profit; indeed, upholding the Civic Sword meant personal financial loss, as one could not ‘mind one’s business’ during this period, and one was also obliged to host lavish hospitality at one’s own expense. Thus, ‘panchayati raj’ is nonsense. Poor villagers will always be political clients. For real local self-government and capitalism, India needs mayors of the ‘London model’.

Not just Britain, the story of western civilistion is one of cities and towns run by mayors. The trend began in Rouen in France in the 11th century, England followed, and then came the Germans. The common factor was that the monarch lived outside the cities, constantly on the move between his various, closely-guarded castles. The mayor lived within the city, and was well known and respected. Europe for a brief time experienced a civilization of free trading cities without monarchs and nation-states, the Hanseatic League — an enterprise that centred around German cities like Lübeck and Hamburg, both of which still call themselves Hansastädt or Hansa City. (Hamburg is also a full state in the German federation). I saw three flags flying atop the impressive and very old mayoral building in the heart of downtown Frankfurt-am-Main,: the flag of the European Union, the flag of Germany, and the flag of the City of Frankfurt. The future of the Indian Union should be such.

The writer is the author of Antidote: Essays Against the Socialist Indian State, and its sequel, Antidote 2: For Liberal Governance