As 
historian Niall Ferguson writes in his 2011
book, “Civilization: The West and the Rest”,
the city of London was an outback in the 15th
century compared to some of China’s great
cities.
Then with international trading led by The
British East India Company money flooded in,
as did people of different nationalities.
The population is estimated to have been 50,000
in 1530 and then in 1605 it was around 225,000
people.
Throughout the industrial revolution London
became the center of the world and from around
1825 to 1925 it had the largest population
of any city on Earth.
The British Empire faded, but London has always
been a powerhouse culturally, but also economically.
According to the Global Financial Centers
Index, London is still the largest financial
center in the world- but what is this great
city truly about?
Welcome to this episode of the Infographics
Show, What is the city of London corporation?
It may come as a surprise to some of you that
London is not just a city but also a corporation.
Those that don’t know are probably thinking
right now what is this corporation?
Does it function like the Microsoft Corporation?
Does it hire and fire and post annual profits?
Does it have a main headquarters and a CEO?
Let’s find out.
So, the Corporation of London or in legal
terms the Mayor and Commonalty and Citizens
of the City of London, is the governing body
of London’s financial district which is
sometimes referred to as the “Square Mile.”
Within that mile around 8,000 live, although
around 400,000 people commute into that area
for work every day, according to the corporation’s
own website.
London is divided into 33 areas, or boroughs,
and this area is one of them.
On its website the corporation is perhaps
extremely vague when it answers the question
concerning what it is responsible for.
The answer it gives is, “Providing services
for residents (and City businesses) in the
Square Mile, but not those of other boroughs.”
And yep, you can apply for a job in this corporation,
just like any other.
It has bosses in a sort of way and lots of
staff.
But let’s rewind a little.
We have to go back a long way when we look
at how this corporation began.
In fact, it’s often called the “world's
oldest continuously-elected democracy and
predates Parliament.”
The city of London school website writes,
“The Corporation's structure includes the
Lord Mayor, the Court of Aldermen, the Court
of Common Council, and the Freemen and Livery
of the City.
The City of London developed a unique form
of government which led to the system of parliamentary
government at local and national level.”
We’ll make a long story short here.
2,000 years ago, the Romans founded a trading
post in what is now southern England and they
called it Londinium.
They did what they did best and built roads,
walls, bridges, and made this place an excellent
hub of trading.
For hundreds of years the city endured and
when William the Conqueror arrived in the
11th century he quite liked it, too.
He created the city of London and gave Londoners
their privileges and rights so long as they
accepted him as King.
Done deal.
He built towers around the place, including
the Tower of London, and fortified the rest
of London.
The city of London was a special old place,
and this started a kind of agreement that
it should remain a power unto itself.
Later monarchs to some extent feared this
powerful city and they created Westminster,
which is west of the city of London.
You then had two cities.
The city of London still had a lot of freedom,
which, according to one website, was “an
essential requirement for all who wished to
carry on business and prosper in trade within
the Square Mile.”
Freemen there could do their business not
impinged by outside influence.
It was in 1191 that the Corporation announced
itself as a commune, only one rung on the
ladder below the sovereign.
It judged itself, it was in a way a law unto
itself.
It became so powerful that in 1632 the crown
asked if the corporation might extend its
privileges to other areas of London, but it
refused.
These privileges we are talking about were
mainly related to laws.
As more people flooded into London, many of
them refuges from the poorer Midlands and
the North, the corporation was asked if it
might extend its boundaries.
In 1637 it rebuffed that proposal, and this
became known as “The Great Refusal”.
It’s when the corporation of London in some
ways turned its back on the rest of London
and that’s why people sometimes talk about
“A Tale of Two Cities.”
One historian writes, “From that point on
the people of London lacked any democratic
unitary municipal authority.
Business and, most particularly, finance,
in contrast, had the most ancient political
institution in the kingdom at their disposal.”
There were attempts to reform this gilded
city, but the corporation stayed.
In the 18th century London was flourishing,
but it was the corporation that really flourished,
bolstered by free trade.
And it went against the monarchy at times,
making it a kind of rogue entity in England.
It supported George Washington and the American
revolution, even sending over men to fight
for American independence and also sending
over lots of money – something it wasn’t
short of.
This was pretty much treason, but it got away
with it.
The corporation was untouchable.
Soon Parliament replaced the Crown as the
highest power and democracy supplanted the
Divine Right of Kings, but still the Corporation
of London remained a power unto itself, and
the state didn’t want to make it subject
to its practices and laws.
The privileges and all the assets the corporation
remained in-tact.
It worked for itself, not exactly always serving
the people of Britain.
This of course has inspired a lot of criticism,
and that criticism we hear today.
Political writer George Monbiot offers us
this stark line when talking about the Corporation
of London: “It's the dark heart of Britain,
the place where democracy goes to die, immensely
powerful, equally unaccountable.”
He then adds that it’s doubtful even one
in ten Brits knows it exists.
Are any Brits nodding their head right now?
Monbiot explains that there are 25 electoral
wards in the Square Mile area, but only four
of them contain the 9,000 (we read 8,000 before)
people that can vote.
All the other votes are not people, they are
business, mainly banks and finance companies.
And no, it’s not the workers inside the
businesses that vote, it’s the bosses.
The bigger the company, the more votes it
gets.
This is what is known as a Plutocracy.
So, even though the corporation calls itself
a democracy, it’s really just an entity
ruled by the most rich and powerful.
It gets stranger, though, and that’s why
there are tons of conspiracy theories about
this corporation.
So, there are different layers of elected
people.
They are the common councilmen, the aldermen,
the sheriffs and the Lord Mayor.
To get into any of these positions you must
be a freeman.
What the hell is a freeman?
The corporation’s own website writes, “The
medieval term 'freeman' meant someone who
was not the property of a feudal lord but
enjoyed privileges such as the right to earn
money and own land.
Town dwellers who were protected by the charter
of their town or city were often free – hence
the term 'freedom' of the City.”
Nowadays if you want to apply to become a
freeman, you must either show exceptional
servitude, inherit the title or be nominated
by a Livery company…hmm, and what exactly
is a livery company?
They came out of medieval guilds, developed
into trading and crafts companies and are
now basically just powerful entities that
embrace trade and commerce.
There are 110 of them in London.
They have lavish dinner parties and mostly
speak in a kind of archaic posh English that
is sometimes mocked by the rest of the country.
At the head of the table you might find the
Prime Warden of the Goldsmiths, Lord Sutherland
of Houndwood.
You get the picture, this is ancient, ritualistic
England, a kind of Eyes Wide Shut scenario
to those who might also believe the Queen
is a lizard.
It’s definitely a bit anachronistic and
strange to most.
So, to become a freeman you must also get
approval by an alderman, who has already gotten
approval from a livery company.
If you want to become the Lord Mayor, you
must have gotten approval from everyone.
You must also give a lot of money away, which
basically means you need to be very, very
rich to get that position.
As Monbiot says, it’s all about being in
what the Brits call an “Old Boys Network”,
which is a derogatory term meaning upper-class
men that have made connections with other
posh men in expensive schools and those connections
are carried into adulthood.
These are the people that run the corporation
of London.
With money as their lodestar it’s not surprising
this network isn’t always playing a straight
game, after all, they were partly behind the
financial crisis.
Even after that crisis, the Lord Mayor’s
job is partly to be an advocate for liberalization.
That means deregulation.
This can encourage corruption.
That’s why the corporation is so often criticized.
In the documentary “The Spider's Web: Britain's
Second Empire” the creators take a dim view
of the Corporation of London, saying that
after the empire collapsed it was this corporation
that still pulled the strings in the world’s
finance sectors.
And it wasn’t always ethical.
This was corroborated in the book, Treasure
Islands, which says that because the corporation
is a law unto itself, it can virtually get
away with anything.
The government is sometimes powerless to intervene.
What goes on in the corporation stays in the
corporation.
Monbiot writes, “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.”
We’re talking about billions and billions
of dollars, money laundered through the corporation
with absolute impunity.
That’s what the critics tell us anyway.
The documentary we just mentioned says this
cash isn’t just the money of oligarchs,
but also drug barons, gangsters, and sometimes
money from African despots who have mined
their poor countries’ resources but have
no intention of putting the money back into
their country.
All this aided and abetted by this superpower
within a square mile of London.
We might add that a lot of cash that should
have been taxable could have gone back in
Great Britain, which some critics say is a
reason some of the country’s poorer areas
look almost third world.
The author of Treasure Islands writes about
this, saying the relationship between offshore
islands such as the Cayman Islands and the
corporation can’t be understated in terms
of how important it is for those involved
and how it is detrimental to the British people.
“This relationship is of massive, almost
transcendental importance for the UK,” he
said.
It’s not that the City of London Corporation
is directly an offshore business, it’s just
the special rules it works under allow it
to direct money to tax havens.
Will it change?
One critic wrote, “I have observed British
officials blocking attempts to strengthen
international cooperation on tax information
exchange by keeping discussion on offshore
trusts off the agenda.
This happened as recently as 2015.”
It's not just islands far away, either.
Most people know large companies can find
a tax haven next door on the islands of the
Crown Dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and
the Isle of Man.
The Occupied Times writes that these three
islands, “provided net financing to UK banks
of a staggering $332.5 billion in the second
quarter of 2009.”
It’s not exactly secret, either.
You can read on the Jersey Finance website
that it provides services for, “corporate
treasurers, institutional bankers and treasury
specialists, fund promoters, brokers and other
corporate financiers, Jersey represents an
extension of the City of London.”
According to critics hundreds of billions
of dollars of cash is not getting taxed, while
the Brits complain about late trains, NHS
cutbacks and dole scroungers.
We’ll leave you with this line from Treasure
Islands:
“‘There is nothing we can do’ is the
typical response to those who say that the
UK cracks down on the criminality, abuse and
corruption run out of these places.
And behind it all lies the City of London,
anxious to preserve its access to the world’s
dirty money.”
So, what do you think about this?
Can you add to the story?
Let us know in the comments.
Also, be sure to check out our other video
Oldest Companies That Still Exist.
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t
forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time.
