The governing authority of a great city like London should have its own coat of arms – not only to celebrate its centuries of history as our capital city but to project London 's corporate image in the future, not least with the 2012 Olympics fast approaching. I’m campaigning for the Greater London Authority to resume the long-established convention that London as a whole has a coat of arms. I’m glad to have the support of assembly members Brian Coleman and Roger Evans in this endeavour.
Even under Ken Livingstone in the 1980s the then GLC possessed a coat of arms, as did its predecessor London County Council. Therefore, it’s hard to think of a reason why the GLA should now not have a coat of arms. Since the creation of the GLA in 1999, London has been a combined capital city and administrative region with an incorporated authority but no coat of arms. This is unusual among great European cities and probably unique among European capitals (not to mention the fact that many city and town councils across the UK have their own arms).
The creation of the GLA should have been accompanied by the transfer of the old GLC arms, or the creation and grant of a new design. The College of Arms told me that it had written to the Mayor’s office to raise the matter in May 2008 following the election of Boris Johnson but after a couple of months heard back from a City Hall official that there were no plans to seek a coat of arms for London.
Thus while the Cities of London and Westminster – and every London borough – has a coat of arms, the capital itself, viewed as a regional metropolis, does not. Let me give one example of the anomalies this gives rise to. In 2010 the Royal Mint is issuing four new pound coins for general circulation. The reverses show respectively the coats of arms of Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast and London but the latter is represented by the arms of the City of London – in my view inappropriately, because the City – the Square Mile – is not the location of our national and regional government bodies.
I strongly believe that a city of London’s global stature – now that it is a political entity again – needs the formal alternative that a coat of arms offers. Furthermore, speaking as a Conservative MEP representing London, surely a Conservative-led London should welcome the sharing of our common European ancient heraldic traditions and which form part of our own glorious British traditions as a constitutional monarchy with London as its capital.
All over western Europe (and much of the rest of the world) a coat of arms, consisting at the least of a shield with a civic crown over it, is recognized as the standard mode of formal visual identity for a city. However, unlike Paris, Rome and Berlin – all of which possess arms despite being capitals of republics – Greater London is not a particularly ancient entity and there is not even an unofficial coat of arms it can avail itself of. Having recourse to the arms of the City of London will inevitably perpetuate even more confusion of the exact sort that I would have thought the GLA’s decision-makers and image consultants would be very keen to avoid.
It seems to me it is a matter that ought to be resolved in time for the Olympics by 2012 at the latest, ideally with separate but related coats of arms for the London Assembly and LDA (curiously the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority proudly possesses and uses one, which simply piles anomaly upon anomaly). I sincerely hope that the decision not to seek a coat of arms for the GLA was not motivated by a misplaced sense of political correctness, and I have written to Boris Johnson asking him to reconsider this matter.
