Medieval Unaccountable Corporation Of London Ripe For Protest

This links to an article, dated October 31, 2011, in the online version of The Guardian (UK).

The author, George Monbiot, makes the following points:

1.  Almost none of the citizens of Great Britain "has any idea of what the Corporation of the City of London is and how it works."

2.  Known as "the Square Mile,"  divided into 25 electoral wards, in 21 of which corporations, not people, vote.

3.  There are four layers of elected representatives:  common councilmen, aldermen, sheriff, and Lord Mayor.

4.  The Mayor must first have served as alderman and sheriff.  It helps if he is rich, since he is supposed to make some kind of financial contribution.

5.  The Corporation "possesses a vast pool of cash, which it can spend as it wishes, without democratic oversight. As well as expanding its enormous property portfolio, it uses this money to lobby on behalf of the banks."

6.  The Corporation "handles issues in Parliament of specific interest to the City, such as banking reform and financial services regulation."

7.  "As Nicholas Shaxson explains in his fascinating book Treasure Islands, the Corporation exists outside many of the laws and democratic controls which govern the rest of the United Kingdom. The City of London is the only part of Britain over which parliament has no authority. In one respect at least the Corporation acts as the superior body: it imposes on the House of Commons a figure called the remembrancer: an official lobbyist who sits behind the Speaker's chair and ensures that, whatever our elected representatives might think, the City's rights and privileges are protected. The mayor of London's mandate stops at the boundaries of the Square Mile. There are, as if in a novel by China Miéville, two cities, one of which must unsee the other."

8. Clement Atlee is quoted as saying, "over and over again we have seen that there is in this country another power than that which has its seat at Westminster." Monbiot goes on to say, "The City has exploited this remarkable position to establish itself as a kind of offshore state, a secrecy jurisdiction which controls the network of tax havens housed in the UK's crown dependencies and overseas territories. This autonomous state within our borders is in a position to launder the ill-gotten cash of oligarchs, kleptocrats, gangsters and drug barons."

9. The financial arrangements in the City of London allowed US banks to avoid rules set by the government.  "Lehman Brothers couldn't get legal approval for its off-balance sheet transactions in Wall Street, so it used a London law firm instead. No wonder priests are resigning over the plans to evict the campers. The Church of England is not just working with Mammon; it's colluding with Babylon." (There were protesters camped out at St. Paul's, and the Church was seeking to have them evicted.)

10.  The Corporation could not stand the strictures of a written constitution.  Which is why the British do not have one.


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