Only local authorities have the flexibility and common sense to organise the practical help communities need during times of crisis, says David Walker

The ‘August events’ have shown local government at its very best. Wherever communities secretary, Eric Pickles – or leader of the Opposition, Ed Miliband, for that matter – were looking, last week’s lawlessness on the streets of England demonstrated the necessity of elected local representatives being able – at best – to voice the concerns and demands of areas during times of need and adversity.

That much was demonstrated clearly in Haringey, in Enfield, in Lambeth and in Ealing – but also, in rather different ways, in Westminster and Croydon, as well as outside London in Manchester, Nottingham and Birmingham.

The list is highly illustrative and it shows that the great beauty of local government is, and remains, its tremendous diversity and the way it is coloured by very different local conditions.

Amid all the mayhem, myths were busted and some important truths were being affirmed. Local authority manual staff – and those working for their contractors – were shown to be ultra-flexible and uncomplainingly hard-working.

In places afflicted by riot and organised theft, council crews were on the streets from the small hours, cleaning up, making a start to the work of putting places back together again – a good few hours before those volunteers who attracted much of the publicity had got out of bed.

If union leaders, Dave Prentis or Heather Wakefield, care to make a negotiating point of this, they are entitled to. Big philosophical points about the local state were being underlined. In times of social stress, what other local agency has the capacity or nous to step in and provide help?

There is none.

Who else can mobilise basic assistance to social tenants, or small business. Who can strive to co-ordinate other public agencies and who, except for councillors, can be on the spot to listen, sympathise and articulate the needs of communities, and then try to deliver what they require?

It is not that councillors will always succeed – but they showed their functionality in just being there. Only they possess the legitimacy that springs from local elections and the natural authority to ‘speak for’ residents and their communities.

Without denigrating the important role of charities and community self-help groups, somebody has to supply structure and organisation.

That phrase, bandied by Enfield’s leader, Doug Taylor, came into its own. When services are fragmented, the ‘co-ordinating council’ is needed more than ever.

Councils would be entitled to point out the disturbances were predominantly urban, which surely ought to be a key factor when it comes to discussions about the distribution of grants or fiddling with business rate income.

Here was raw evidence that urban local government is more difficult, more costly, and more demanding as compared – let’s say it plainly – with the shires. And that remains true, despite, we note, outbreaks in such places as Gloucester, an enclave of relative deprivation.

The events – again let’s put it starkly – demand to be ‘used’. Chairman of the Local Government Association, Sir Merrick Cockell, will have to steer a careful course. As a leading Conservative of what

I would imagine to be a ‘Heseltinian’ cast of mind, he ought to carry a blunt message to Mr Pickles. Enough of this triviality about bin-emptying. Let’s get real about what urban local government does, and what it costs.

Whether your emphasis is on order or the social causes of crime and dislocation, we need strong councils. That doesn’t necessarily mean retreating from the model of pluralist provision of services, or ceasing to encourage voluntarism.

It does, however, mean an end to DCLG’s petty denigration of councils and Mr Pickles’ financial opportunism.

But we mustn’t get carried away in identifying councils’ role in the events and awarding undue praise. The riots and mass criminality showed also just how distant town halls are from some groups and communities in their areas.

How many ward councillors, however diligent, are fully in tune with the social dynamics which put young people – and not just young people – on the streets intent on damage and theft?

It is tempting to hark back to [ex-Tory minister] Michael Heseltine’s response to the disturbances of 1981. Tempting, because the comparison is unlikely to favour his departmental successor, Mr Pickles.

I confess, I had been planning to write this column noting the anniversary of Mr Pickles’ announcement of the abolition of the Audit Commission, an act of headline-grabbing spitefulness which has blown up in his face.

But let’s remember Lord Heseltine’s response was strongly centralist. The riots 30 years ago proved, he thought, that councils were inept. They couldn’t handle urban deprivation. A new start was needed, through the agency of quangos, the urban development corporations.

In 2011, as government, both central and local, pick over the causes and responses to recent events, councils have a strong case to make for their practical performance, but if debate heads into wider questions of order, social structure, equality and breakdown, they may struggle to offer a coherent ‘localist’ response.

David Walker is former director of communications at the Audit Commission