Google – AFP, Judith Evans (AFP), 19 March 2013
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The coat of
arms on the Guildhall, home to the City of London Corporation,
pictured in
central London on March 2, 2013 (AFP/File, Leon Neal)
|
LONDON —
For almost a thousand years the City of London Corporation has run the British
capital's financial hub, winning hearts with opulent banquets and parades of
red-robed dignitaries, pikemen and musketeers.
But
campaigners want to open up the secrets of this arcane organisation, arguing
that its medieval structures are helping one of the world's top financial
centres avoid reform after the global crisis.
Dating from
when Londoners lived in huts of wattle and daub, the City of London survived
the Black Death and the Great Fire of London to emerge as a powerful but opaque
force in modern Britain.
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The
Guildhall buildings, home to
the City of London Corporation,
pictured in
central London on March 2,
2013 (AFP/File, Leon Neal)
|
But critics
say it has failed to respond to the problems in the financial industry laid
bare following the global crisis, instead protecting its own.
"The
machine of the City of London serves the dealmakers," said William
Campbell-Taylor, a Church of England vicar and longtime critic of the
corporation.
"The
myth of (finance as) the goose that lays the golden eggs is one that is
nurtured in the Guildhall", the 15th-century banqueting hall where the
corporation was traditionally based, he said.
The
corporation plays a key role as a forum for top-level financial and political
networking, often carried out at lavish banquets or through visits abroad by
the Lord Mayor, its ceremonial envoy.
But
reformers criticise the secrecy of some of its operations, including parts of
its accounts and the allocation of votes to City workers in elections -- as
well as its unorthodox blend of private and public functions.
Elections
for the councillors and aldermen who run the corporation are held without
political party affiliations.
The City
Reform Group, which was formed last year in the wake of the financial crisis by
a group including a Conservative lawmaker and a former fund manager, has seized
on elections this month as an opportunity to push for change.
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The
Guildhall buildings, home to the
City of London Corporation, pictured
in
central London on March 2, 2013
(AFP/File, Leon Neal)
|
The reform
group's top demand is the release of full accounts for the "City's
Cash", an 800-year-old, £1.3 billion ($1.9 billion, 1.5-billion-euro)
endowment fund which is cloaked in secrecy.
Today, the
fund which includes income from the corporation's 11,000 acres of British land,
aims to promote Britain's financial services, on which the corporation says it
spent £12 million in 2012.
But critics
say the City has succeeded in lobbying for the status quo despite widespread
calls for changes to the way banks in particular are regulated.
"We
think the corporation should be leading standards in the way that the guilds
and the livery did," says writer and reformist Jonathan Myerson, who will
be standing in the elections.
London's
ancient guilds or livery companies -- where the corporation has its roots --
were set up to provide guarantees of quality for different professions from
goldsmiths to fishmongers.
The
corporation itself sees its role promoting the finance industry as a success
story.
"Most
of (the lobbying work) is about getting business into Britain," Mark
Boleat, the corporation's policy chief, told a debate about the City's future
in February.
Financial
services brought in more than 10 percent of Britain's tax take in 2009-10,
according to studies by accountants PwC.
The
corporation is now wooing Chinese banks to set up London offices, and it has
also been instrumental in the arrival of a clump of new skyscrapers on the
skyline.
 |
The
Guildhall buildings, home to the
City of London Corporation, pictured
in
central London on March 2, 2013
(AFP/File, Leon Neal)
|
He said the
"soft diplomacy" of banquets and parades was a way of
"sustaining the mystique of the City. It's hard to believe that doesn't
have beneficial impacts, but it's hard to measure".
Demands for
change have emerged before, but a 2002 deal with the then-ruling Labour party
-- whose policy had once been to abolish the corporation altogether --
entrenched many of its peculiarities in law.
For many
locals, exactly how the corporation works is far from the forefront of their
minds.
"People
are more worried about whether their company is still going to be here
tomorrow," said Robert Bates, 42, an insolvency partner at an accountancy
firm, drinking in a busy City pub.
But David
Pitt-Watson, a reformer and ex-fund manager, believes change is inevitable.
"London's
economic future depends on the reform of financial services," he said.
"The alternative to reform (of the corporation) is not the status quo,
it's revolution."
Related Article:
"... The Rothschild faction of the Illuminati, which governed its empire from London and the Vatican, lost its media foothold along with its other powers in that part of the world. A section of the Illuminati’s Rockefeller faction, headquartered in Washington, DC, and New York City, still has influence on major media in the US as well as on Wall Street; and their lingering foothold in Congress is evident in the intransigence that has stagnated progress. ."
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In this photo provided by the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore
Romano, cardinals attend a meeting at the Vatican, Monday,
March 4, 2013. (AP Photo/L'Osservatore Romano, ho)
|
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