[j.a. yelling] slums and redevelopment policy and(bookfi.org)

SLUMSand

REDEVELOPMENT

Policy and practicein England, 1918–45,

with particular reference to London.

J.A.YellingBirkbeck College,

University of London

SLUMSand

REDEVELOPMENT

© J.A.YellingThis book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

No reproduction without permission.All rights reserved.

First published in 1992 by UCL Press

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.

UCL Press LimitedUniversity College London

Gower StreetLondon WC1E 6BT

The name of University College London (UCL) is a registeredtrade mark used by UCL Press with the consent of the owner.

ISBN 0-203-21311-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-27021-5 (Adobe eReader Format)ISBN: 1-85728-010-5 (Print Edition)

A CIP catalogue record for this bookis available from the British Library.

v

C O N T E N T S

List of plates vii List of figures viii

List of tables ix Acknowledgements x

1 Introduction 1Documentary sources

2 The inheritance: problems and remedies 9 Clearance and unfit housing Overcrowding and housing supply

3 Reconstruction: the pattern of the future 22

Slums and homes for heroes Re-establishing housing programmes

Town planning and redevelopment

4 Decentralization, reconditioning and slum clearance1923-33 38

The vicissitudes of slum clearance Chamberlain and reconditioning

Decentralisation and the Greenwood Act

5 Money matters: property values, compensation andhousing costs 57

Prices, compensation and housing costs Politics and finance

6 Rebuilding and rehousing 1918-1933 73

Setting the standard Adjusting to rents Tall flats

7 A new deal 1933-5 87

The 1933 Act and the slum campaign The Moyne Report and reconditioning

The 1935 Act: overcrowding and redevelopment

vi

8 Action against the slum:programmes and distributions 108Unfit housing and slum clearanceClearance in LondonOvercrowding and multi-occupation

9 Landlords and property (with Mona Paton) 130Property and the slum campaignLandlords in the East End

10 Tenants and estates 146Tenants and rehousingBuilding standards and costs

11 Redevelopment and town planning 164Redevelopment areasObsolescence and redevelopmentEstates and communities

12 War-time plans 184The County of London planHousing and planning

Review 203

Index 205

vii

L I S T O F P L AT E Sbetween pages 100 and 101

1 Crossett Place, Southwark, 1923 (part of the China Walk scheme)

2 Alvar Street, Deptford, 1934

3 Pellew House, Collingwood Estate, Bethnal Green, 1925;two photographs showing front and back

4 Balcony Styles: (top) China Walk Estate, Lambeth, 1934;(foot) Downs Estate, Hackney, 1938

5 Interiors at the Honor Oak Estate, Deptford (top) kitchen, 1936;(foot) Type 1 kitchen with bath, 1936

6 A little house in Chelsea(from Randall Phillips The house improved 1931)

7 Royal Visit to Vauxhall Gardens Estate, Lambeth, 1938(Ewart Culpin second left, Lewis Silkin right)

8 White City Estate, Hammersmith, August 1939

viii

L I S T O F F I G U R E S

2.1 County of London, population density 1901(after K. Grytzell) 16

8.1 Slum clearance in England and Wales: County Boroughprogrammes 1933 (by population) 112

8.2 Index map of boroughs and districts in the County ofLondon 121

8.3 London: population in slum-clearance areas declared1920–30, by borough 121

9.1 London auction prices, 1895–1938 132

10.1 Development costs and wages, 1895–1938 157

12.1 Congested areas in the County of London 1943(after E.J. Carter and E. Goldfinger) 189

ix

L I S T O F TA B L E S

5.1 Freehold rents and auction prices in London, 1892–1925 595.2 Land costs in London clearance schemes, 1922–5 625.3 Land costs in London clearance schemes, 1926–8 636.1 Cost of a three-room tenement in London, 1895 and 1924–5 778.1 Slum clearance in England and Wales: Acts of 1930 and

1935–6 1098.2 Slum clearance in the 1930s: leading cities 1108.3 Slum clearance in the 1930s: county boroughs by

conurbation and region 1118.4 Slum clearance in London: population in clearance areas

1920–39 1228.5 Overcrowding and multi-occupation 1931–6: leading cities 1248.6 Overcrowding and multi-occupation 1931–6: county

boroughs by conurbation and region 1249.1 Freehold rents and auction prices in London, 1933–8 1319.2 Land costs in London clearance schemes, 1934 and 1938 1339.3 Compensation payments to London landlords, 1938 13410.1 LCC tenant groups: family composition and income 14710.2 LCC tenant groups: rehousing changes 14810.3 Occupation rates in LCC clearance areas, 1923–38 14910.4 Rent changes on slum clearance ehousing: Bethnal Green,

Shoreditch and Southwark in the 1930s 15011.1 House production in Greater London, 1930–9 16911.2 LCC building and rehousing, by district, 1934–9 17011.3 LCC slum clearance rehousing, by district, 1920–1939 180

x

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

I should like to acknowledge the help of a number of people andorganizations in the production of this book. As usual, my thanks go firstto Genevieve and Emily for supporting me through the long period ofpreparation and writing. I am grateful to Mona Paton for agreeing tocontribute to Chapter 9. Richard Dennis provided me with some importantadvice at a crucial stage, and Roger Jones has been a very helpful editor. Ishould like to thank various members of the Geography Department atBirkbeck College for their assistance, and particularly Teresa Connolly andTina Scally for indispensable work on the computer preparation of the textand diagrams. Lucy Isenberg has been a very thorough copy editor, andany remaining errors are my own. Like others who engage in this kind ofwork, I have also relied heavily on the staff of various libraries and recordoffices. In particular I should like to thank those of the Greater LondonRecord Office, including its Modern Records Section. I am grateful to theGreater London Photographic Library for permission to reproduce thephotographs in Plates 1–5 and 7–8, and Country Life for Plate 6. I alsothank Lund Studies and Penguin Books Ltd. for permission to reproducematerial in Figures 2.1 and 12.1 respectively.

1

C H A P T E R 1Introduction

This book forms part of a long-term study of slums and of the policiesdesigned to counter them. It leads on directly from my previous account ofSlums and slum clearance in Victorian London (1986), and will be followed bya further volume covering the period since 1945. The title Slums andredevelopment is meant to evoke several themes which together define thecontent of the book. In the narrowest sense reference is made to the processof slum clearance and the building of replacement dwellings. The 1930sare one of the three key periods in the history of this process in England,and over a million people were displaced and rehoused at this time. Thistherefore provides a core theme. However, slum clearance itself took anumber of different forms. Most importantly, reconstruction sometimestook place on site, and at other times occurred through suburban building.In the latter case, slum clearance was connected to decentralization, andindeed at the beginning of the period the “decongestion” of cities was oftenthought of as more important in countering slums than the removal ofunfit d wellings. In turn, the reconstruction of d wellings on site links witha wider theme of “redevelopment”, a term applied to larger-scale rebuildingof inner-city districts. Such redevelopment was still of a kind essentiallydirected to the improvement of housing conditions, but it involved largerconsiderations than the removal of unfit dwellings, considerations fallingwithin the province of town planning equally with that of housing. If slumclearance clearly had its intellectual and practical origins in the nineteenthcentury, then inner-city redevelopment of this kind may be said to haveoriginated in the 1930s.

The title Slums and redevelopment also indicates limits to the range of thebook. It is essentially concerned with the fields of housing and townplanning. Many other aspects of “slums”—their place in the division oflabour, social networks and behaviour, education, welfare, and so on, arenot objects of investigation. To some extent this follows contemporarypractice in which the term “slum” itself tended to privilege the aspects of

Introduction

2

habitation and territory, and to seek remedies in those spheres for mattersof social inclusion and exclusion that might now be approached morewidely. These strong connections between housing and the slum wereestablished in the Victorian period through the sanitary movement, andlater widened through attempts to relieve congestion by decentralization.At this stage intervention was linked to municipal enterprise, and becamean important factor in local politics. Council housing, rent controls, andlater the “homes for heroes” campaign and the rise of the Labour Party,ensured that housing was to become equally important in national politicsbetween the wars. Indeed, a feeling that intervention was rather narrowlyconcentrated in this direction contributed to the interest in town planningwhich, in a limited way, allowed certain other aspects such as socialprovision and “community” to be brought into consideration. Theconcentration on housing and town planning is thus not meant to suggestthat slums could be remedied within these spheres alone. The restriction isone of practicality, recognizing that the treatment of slums within thesefields is important, complex and wide-ranging, and something that needsto be subject to closer scrutiny.

The high profile of housing in politics was certainly partly due toempirical considerations which weighed with the voters, and whichreflected the scale and industrial character of British cities, and the longhistory which now often lay behind them. However, housing was alsoimportant in politics as a field over which larger battles could take place. Itinvolved the widest form of property ownership, a matter not only ofmajor financial interest, but also deeply imbued with social significance.Housing was a sphere in which a rôle for government and municipalinitiative vis à vis private enterprise was accepted, but at the same timestrongly contested. It was in this situation that the term “slum” occupiedan important place in political discourse, and it is used in this book (as inits predecessor) as a political rather than a technical term. “Slum” is takensimply to mean conditions conceived of as “unacceptable”. Theseconditions are emphasized with the implication that something should bedone about them. In this sense, it is important not to define slums simplyin terms of “unfit housing”, because this immediately privileges oneaspect and line of emphasis. Instead, the term will be taken to include bothquantitative and qualitative deficiencies, and to vary in use in scale as wellas scope, slums being seen in some cases as small and scattered territories,and in others as major parts of cities. Throughout, problem and remedywere closely connected, and various strategies were put forward, eachwith a supporting rationale and set of empirical referents.

In Slums and slum clearance in Victorian London, I examined nationalpolicy in terms of the requirements of the capital. Indeed, it would be fair

Introduction

3

to say that such pieces of legislation as Torrens’ Act (1868) and Cross’s Act(1875) were mainly aimed at London, while provincial cities took forms ofaction (often earlier) under their own specific local Acts. By the beginningof the twentieth century, however, there was already a greater strength tonational politics, and between the wars housing policy was largelydetermined at that level. An examination of national policies and politicsis therefore the first task of the book. Following Marian Bowley’s foundingtext, there has been in recent years a whole series of books which have setout the main framework of national legislation and policy. These haveincluded three specifically addressed to the slum, by English et al., D.Kirby, and by Gibson & Longstaff.[1] All three, however, are summarytexts largely devoted to the period after 1945. I have, therefore, sought anew beginning based on a detailed study of contemporary writings,parliamentary debates, and particularly on the Public Records at Kew.Despite the pioneering efforts of P.R. Wilding, these still have muchrewarding material to yield.[2]

In my previous book I made use of the term “paradigm” in examining achange of policy in London from slum clearance and rebuilding based onCross’s Act to the increased housing supply and decentralizationadvocated by the Progressive Party at the end of the Victorian period. Anadvantage of “paradigm” as a concept is that it connects methods of actionto ways of seeing and describing, so that characteristic patterns ofconceptualization, remedy and empirical description can be recognized,which revolve around an emphasis on certain key themes. Ideologicalprinciples are not separated from empirical problems, but broughttogether with them. There is also the useful notion that, once established, aparadigm creates a largely “taken for granted” context within whichroutine thought and action take place. Finally, the concept of “paradigmshift” is useful in many ways. Although new paradigms have a longgestation, often based on difficulties experienced in implementing aprevious paradigm, a shift usually takes place quite rapidly over a limitedperiod. The reason for this seems to lie in the fact that a paradigm shiftinvolves not merely new empirical or ideological developments, butabove all a reordering of old priorities. Change of emphasis is veryimportant, and old arguments that have been pushed aside become newlyrevitalized. One might say that it is the importance of emphasis, and henceboth of developing contexts and plurality of aims and values, thatdistinguishes this approach from normal theoretical methods.

The disadvantages in the use of the concept of paradigm revolve largelyaround possible interpretations along monolithic lines. It should beevident that the kinds of paradigm under discussion here—relating tohousing policy-are not meant to be seen as isolated developments. Neither

Introduction

4

should they be thought of as occupying frozen blocks of space and time, akind of fixed programme determining everything that happened.Allowance must be made for variation and gradual development, but stillwithin a similar framework. However, it is clear that, even within the samefield of time and space, developments cannot always be parcelled up sothat one evident paradigm neatly succeeds another. Questions arise as tocompeting paradigms, or as to the existence of periods in which there is novery dominant model for action.

My approach to these matters has been pragmatic—I am not concernedwith the methodology as such, but only insofar as it is useful in promotingunderstanding of the topic. In Victorian London there was a clear case ofparadigm shift at the end of the nineteenth century, and I presented it inthat way. In national terms, however,the position in the early years of thiscentury was less clear. There were three main positions: that of theProgressives, the “Liverpool” model based on slum clearance and onsiterebuilding, and a “Birmingham” model based particularly onrehabilitation or reconditioning and the general approach of JohnNettlefold. However, these policies were not simply adaptations to thecircumstances of each locality, they were becoming incorporated intomore definite national policies, with a clearer separation between thepolitical parties. My approach to this was to see the Progressive model asthe dominant paradigm, even at national level, with the others shapedaround it. This is probably too strong, but it reflects not only the generalenthusiasm for suburban solutions in the period, but also the crucialsignificance of the rôle of council housing in shaping housing policiesmore generally. From this time different approaches to the rôle of councilbuilding became a dominant strand in general policy formation, andindeed one of the main reasons for its increasingly national character. InChapter 2 of the present book I have presented an overview of theinheritance of problems and remedies from the Victorian and Edwardianperiods, for what follows needs to be understood in terms of itsrelationship to these antecedents.

In considering policy after the First World War I have found it useful tothink in terms of the development of the three models mentioned in theprevious paragraph. The progressive model is still largely dominant onthe left, and most Labour Party thinking occurs within its generalorientations. By contrast, slum clearance is at first largely associated withthe Conservatives, and for reasons close to the rationale of the “Liverpool”model. A third strand of policy formation, largely associated with theactivities of Neville 55 Chamberlain, can be linked to the “Birmingham”model. From the late 1920s these two alternatives offer a much strongerchallenge to the progressive model, and lines of division that had been

Introduction

5

evident since the beginning of the century become more blurred. TheChamberlain approach was followed in the recommendations of theMoyne Committee (1933) and then largely set aside. But what is to bemade of the successive reformulations of policy in Greenwood’s Act of1930, in Hilton-Young’s Acts of 1933 and 1935, and finally in the majorplanning documents of the Second World War? Should one think in termsof a return to slum clearance, of attempts to find a compromise betweenclearance and elements of previous policy, or in terms of the emergence ofsomething new?

Whereas in the 1920s most attention was given to increasing housingsupply and decentralization, by the end of that decade there were growingpressures to shift the emphasis of public housing to give more directattention to inner-city districts and poorer groups of the population.Greenwood’s strategy, however, retained strong progressive orientations,even in the approach to slum clearance, and this had important effects onthe clearance actually carried out in the 1930s. The 1933 Act was designedto limit public action, as well as to channel it towards clearance, and itsmain significance was to break further the progressive tradition. I shallargue, however, that something new appeared in the 1935 Act, whichintroduced an overcrowding standard and redevelopment areas. Throughthe concept of redevelopment areas, inner-city rebuilding becameestablished as a means of overcoming quantitative deficiencies in housingas well as qualitative ones. Moreover, an important original divisionbetween the progressive position and that of the advocates of slumclearance now became blurred. The progressives had not only pointed toincreased housing supply rather than replacement as the correct course toadopt, but also saw the slum (as the locale of housing deficiencies) inmuch wider terms—not as something limited to relatively small clearanceareas. The progressive stance involved a switch of attention from thenarrower population targeted by slum clearance to the wider working-class population subject to housing deficiencies, and the loss of impetus inthe late 1920s was closely connected with a failure to maintain thisemphasis.

By the late 1930s, however, redevelopment of inner cities could beoffered as a programme of action which was more widely based, muchmore an alternative to decentralization and less simply a narrowing of thefocus of action. Extensive redevelopment proposals became a normal partof planning discourse to a much greater extent than is generally realized,and in a relatively rapid manner which bears many of the hallmarks of aparadigm shift. The 1935 Act was an important spur to this development,but it was also a tentative measure which drew on various ideological andempirical themes of the period supporting redevelopment. By contrast,

Introduction

6

the war-time plans for London drawn up by Abercrombie and Forshawattempted to construct a more coherent pattern of interlocking problemsand remedies. These plans might themselves be regarded as establishing anew paradigm, which by offering something to most parties became anessential basis for post-war consensus. Alternatively, they can be seen as acompromise between two separate paradigms: one of which (closelyallied to the progressive tradition) runs back from the Barlow Report toHoward’s garden cities, and the other emerging from the new approach toinner-city redevelopment in the 1930s.

Although national policies occupy centre-stage between the wars, thereis still much that needs to be studied within the context of localgovernment. Local studies serve to sharpen both the empirical referencesand the political dimensions of policy formation. It is here that the book’sLondon orientation begins to come into play because, even for the majorcities, the circumstances of housing and the complexities of local politicscannot be established without much labour. My approach has been to relyon secondary texts and material accessible through the British Library foran account of developments in the major provincial cities, particularlyBirmingham, Leeds and Liverpool. By contrast, I have aimed to establishthe position in London in much more detail, using primary records. I havemade use of the records of the London Labour Party and the LondonMunicipal Society, and particularly of the papers presented to the LondonCounty Council (LCC) Housing Committee. These form a series runninginto some 170 volumes for the period. As in my previous book, I see theLCC as a particularly rewarding organization to study. For one thing, asthe most important single unit of English local government, it was alwaysconsulted in national policy formation and in several instances had animportant effect on the policies that emerged. Right at the start of theperiod, for instance, new compensation terms for slum clearance wereimplemented at the request of the LCC, and at its end Forshaw andAbercrombie’s County of London plan was one of the principal planningdocuments of the Second World War.

The LCC was, however, also a body responsible for the implementationof policy, for instance between the wars it carried out some 70 per cent ofslum clearance within the county, and its programme was much morecontinuous through the period than that of any other English authority. Itsrecord,therefore, provides indispensable material on the effects ofimplementation, and this can be compared and sometimes contrastedwith what is known of the effects in other major cities of the country.Implementation is of particular interest because there was a strongtendency to present the slum as something rather isolated from the rest ofsociety, which could be removed in a rather self-contained manner, and

Introduction

7

often without emphasizing the strong links which necessarily connectedthe old and the new. In practice, any policy, whether of decentralization orclearance and rebuilding on-site, was bound to have major implicationsfor landlords and tenants, and not only for those directly affected. Thenew terms for compensation established in 1919 obviously had directeffects on landlords and traders, and reactions from these groups had animportant input into the politics of slum clearance. The compensationterms, however, also had wider implications for the valuation of olderproperty and the future of leasehold. Similarly, decentralization, bydrawing off particular groups of tenants, had wider effects on the marketfor inner-city property. Narrower issues, such as slum clearancecompensation, have thus to be fitted into larger frameworks: the moregeneral effects of sanitary legislation, of rent controls and of new housingsupply in the suburbs. The financial and management implications ofolder housing, and possible differences between types of owner, are alsomatters which require investigation.

Rebuilding and rehousing present major issues which at the beginningof the period seemed a very long way from satisfactory solution. Largecompensation costs impacted on rebuilding, and even though most ofthese costs were absorbed by the local authority, the gap in rents betweenold and new was often formidable. In the years before the First World War,Liverpool Council claimed to be able to reconcile clearance costs,rebuilding standards and the rehousing of the tenants displaced, althoughPooley has shown that such claims were exaggerated.[3] In London,however, there was little doubt that clearance and rebuilding took place atthe expense of the displaced tenants. The question therefore arises as to theextent to which new patterns were brought about in the inter-war period.Was there, indeed, some kind of satisfactory transition in which actionagainst the slum may be seen in terms of a “welfare state” rather than a“sanitary” perspective? Or were there still large problems of reconcilingrebuilding standards, rents and other aspects of change, so that olddeficiencies tended to prolong themselves in new developments? Howwas progress achieved in practical terms, and what part did land costs,building costs and new subsidies play in the process? All these are mattersclearly central to an assessment of the different policies and programmes,but they play a surprisingly small part in the contemporary literature anddocumentation of policy making. One purpose of the book is therefore toinclude separate investigation of these issues, while attempting also tolink them back to the policy debate.

All these various aims can be brought together in a brief presentation ofthe chapter structure of the book. Certain chapters concentrate mainly onpolicy formation, or provide a narrative of the manner in which policies

Introduction

8

and programmes developed. Chapters 3 and 4 thus examine the periodfrom 1918 to 1933, Chapter 7 is concerned with policy in the crucial period1933–5, and Chapters 11 and 12 deal with the wider issues ofredevelopment and town planning that emerged during the later 1930sand the Second World War. Chapter 8 stands on its own as an account ofthe nature, extent and distribution of clearance activities during the 1930s,both in London and the country as a whole, and it looks similarly atovercrowding and multioccupation. Two chapters then deal with theacquisition of slum property, compensation costs and property owners.Chapter 5 looks at these matters in the period following the introductionof site-value compensation for unfit housing in 1919, and examines thepolitics of property. Chapter 9 carries the questions of compensation,maintenance and improvement into the 1930s, and also contains a studyby Mona Paton of landlords and management in London’s East End.Finally, Chapter 6 examines rebuilding in the 1920s, and Chapter 10contains studies of slum clearance tenants and of rehousing andrebuilding in the main period of clearance activity during the 1930s.

Documentary sources

Most of the documentary material is located in the Public Record Office(PRO) or Greater London Record Office (GLRO). The minutes of the LondonCounty Council (LCC) are indicated in the notes by MM, and the PresentedPapers of the Housing Committee by HC. Both are located in the GLRO.

Notes

1 Bowley, M. 1945. Housing and the state: 1919–1944. London: Allen & Unwin;English, J., R. Madigan & P. Norman 1976. Slum clearance: the social andadministrative context in England and Wales. London: Croom Helm; Kirby, D.1979. Slum housing and residential renewal. London: Hutchinson; Gibson, M. &M. Longstaff 1982. An introduction to urban renewal London: Hutchinson.

2 Wilding, P. R. 1970. Government and housing: a study of the development ofsocial policy, 1906–1939. D. Phil. thesis. University of Manchester.

3 Pooley, C. 1985. Housing for the poorest poor: slum clearance and rehousingin Liverpool 1890–1918. Journal of Historical Geography 11, 70–88.

9

C H A P T E R 2The inheritance: problems

and remedies

In the early 1970s, with the triumph of rehabilitation as a method ofprocedure, it became customary to talk of a century of slum clearance. Theyears 1875–1975 do indeed neatly enclose the main period of clearanceand associated redevelopment, although in other respects the story of theslum and its treatment might be started in the 1840s or perhaps the 1860s.Even beginning in 1875, however, it is evident that 1918 is a point welladvanced in the history of the movement. This is important because thestory of slums and redevelopment is one in which the historical element,the shaping of new policies in relation to an inherited set of preoccupationsand constraints, is essential to any understanding. It is for this reason thata chapter has been included on developments preceding 1918. It is notintended to be a review of previous work, but simply to recall some of themain themes that are important in the inheritance of problems and remediesfrom the Victorian and Edwardian periods.

Clearance and unfit housing

In December 1911 the medical officer presented the Housing Committee ofthe London County Council (LCC) with three large volumes in which wereenumerated the “insanitary and congested areas” of the county. Over athousand areas containing 19,678 houses were thought to be in need ofimmediate action, and taken together with those thought to require actionin the near future, the total was raised to 25,734.[1] This, of course, was asmall proportion of the houses in the county, but it was geographicallyconcentrated: the boroughs of Bermondsey, Bethnal Green, Finsbury,Shoreditch and Stepney had more than 10 per cent of their housing stockenumerated. Moreover, for a programme of action it represented an

The inheritance: problems and remedies

10

impressive figure, 25,734 houses roughly corresponding to the total of unfithouses scheduled for clearance in London during the large slum clearancedrive of the 1930s.

In this survey we see the slum in one of its characteristic guises: as aseries of unhealthy areas or unfit dwellings tracked down and located bymedical officers. There was, however, a second characteristic guise thatmay be illustrated from a work The housing problem in England published in1907 by E. Dewsnup. In this he says of the “residuum”:

They cannot be allowed to continue permanently in their insanitaryand overcrowded conditions of living, frequently conducive ofimmo rality, if for no other reason that they form a plague spot inthe midst of the community…there is a heavy percentage ofcriminals amongst this class, and the condition of many others isthe result of drunkenness, laziness and wasteful expenditure…it isto the public benefit that they should be driven out of their warrensinto the light of day. [2]

These were never the only ways in which slums, or parts of slums, weredepicted or remedies were sought. Nonetheless, they of ten recur, and linkback to ways in which the slum was targeted as a specific problem aroundthe beginning of the Victorian period in the wake of the new Reform Act of1832. The Poor Law Amendment Act (1834) was the key piece of legislationof that period, and an important influence throughout the nineteenthcentury and beyond. Not surprisingly there are many links betweenattitudes to the poor and attitudes to slums. Indeed, Dewsnup’s approachto the residuum seems similar to some of the motives MacDonagh attributesto Chadwick:

to depauperize the able bodied, to force them out of their fatalprotective cover, to drive them into the open labour market and tocompel them to fight for their living and develop their skills,industry and exertion.[3]

Slums were to be bound in more closely with housing policy through thesanitary movement. John Simon, Medical Officer of Health in the City ofLondon, was one of the first to think systematically about these connections,and to identify “houses and localities…which are irredeemably bad: placeswhich the uninterrupted presence of epidemic disease has stamped asabsolutely unfit for human habitation”.[4] Simon believed that suchconditions required intervention, but at the same time had great respectfor economic laws so that it was “among the first conditions of good


11

government that the community shall sharply distinguish between thoseof its body who are self-supporting…and those who more or less dependfor support on pubic alms”.[5] His solution was to erect sanitary lawalongside economic law, not so much by tempering one set of principlesby appealing to another, but rather through delimiting spheres within whicheach principle would be paramount. For Simon, sanitary law would protectthe poor from the temptation of living in unfit dwellings, just as they werealready protected against diseased or rotten food. However,

in the supply of dwellings, as in the supply of food, for theselfsupporting labourer, when once the conditions of qualitativefitness are duly secured by law and administration, facts ofquantitative sufficiency are for ordinary commercial enterprise tomeet.[6]

This was a very tempting line of division, and one that often appealed tolater thinkers. Even in Simon’s time, however, it was one that reformerssuch as Lord Shaftesbury found impossible to draw, and model dwellingscompanies found difficult to hold. In the wider sphere of sanitary actionconflicts with economic interests and principles were rather the norm. InFraser’s classic formulation of municipal reform the strong pressures onboth sides are reconciled by being displaced in time. There was thus acyclical fluctuation: economies in one period, later expenditure pushedforward by sanitary pressures.[7]

Another well-known feature of Victorian social reform was theimportance attached to agents rather than systems, to administrationrather than law. Sanitary principles could be fitted into this reasoning. Itwas the responsibility of government to enforce sanitary standards, butsuch responsibilities attached to all those who lay in the chain of authoritythat stretched down to the slum, and by which responsible citizensenforced standards on the irresponsible. Local government formed part ofthis chain, but so did the property owner. He occupied a key position ofauthority over the tenants and hence of duties and responsibilities. It wasthis which lent weight to the later debate over the relative responsibilitiesof ground landlord and leaseholder, and to the relish with whichProgressives later greeted the discovery of slums on the estates of theDuchy of Cornwall, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and other notables.

The difficulty of the landlord’s position was shown very definitely inTorrens’s Act (1866). This firmly laid responsibility on the landlord for thestate of his dwelling. If it was judged unfit, he should be given anopportunity to remedy matters through effecting repairs. Failing this thelocal authority could condemn and demolish the property without


12

compensa tion, leaving the owner with the land. The Act was an attemptto apply to London certain forms of action already adopted in someprovincial cities through local legislation. It was not much used in thecapital, but it was very important in political debate, and measures ofenforced reconditioning and selective demolition were practised in someprovincial towns in the late nineteenth century, for instance Manchesterand Hull.[8]

The form of direct action of most importance in London was that whichstemmed from Cross’s Act (1875). This Act sought to achieve rehousing onthe cleared sites, and for this purpose local authorities were to declareclearance areas, demolish the buildings, compensate the owners and thensell the sites to model dwellings companies, whose ambitions played amajor part in the origins of the legislation. Cross made much of the pastfailure of legislation to set appropriate standards in regulating the originalbuilding plan. In this way he made a connection with the new by-lawstandards that were being concurrently pressed, and emphasized the“narrowness, closeness and bad arrangement of dwellings” which bylawsshould have prevented, and which could now only be eliminated by ageneral scheme of redevelopment. This, of course, was an important factorin providing sites for rehousing, but there were also other implications. Inshifting attention from the individual house, the Act also shifted attentionfrom the individual landlord, who could thus be compensated at marketvalues, with certain deductions. The state took the burden ofresponsibility on itself, and Cross could say that

when these slums, the accumulation of centuries, have been clearedaway, unless there be great neglect in the administration of theordinary law, and new slums be allowed in consequence to grow up,this Act will have done its work.[9]

From this viewpoint the slum became more than ever a mistake of thepast, divorced now not only from economics but also from the managementof dwellings and the responsibilities of ownership.

Cross’s Act sought to address aspects of the slum that were of realimportance: there was a built structure inherited from the past that wasnot always appropriate to modern conditions. This was one of thefoundations of all slum clearance. However, the implementation of the Actwas to reveal that slums were equally bound into contemporary economicand social systems. Contemporary economics pushed its way back inthrough the high cost of compensation. This came from the location ofmany of the chosen sites close to the central business district, and hencethe presence of industry and business usages and high-rented multi-


13

occupied houses. Economics also necessarily came back in through therebuilding programme. In introducing his Bill, Cross had seemed to adoptSimon’s view of sanitary policy: it was “not the duty of the Government toprovide any class of citizen with any of the necessities of life…but] no onewill doubt …the right of the state to interfere in matters relating to sanitarylaws”.[10] In fact, Cross did incorporate rebuilding and the needs of themodel dwellings companies were important in obtaining the Act, as willbe discussed in the next section. Nonetheless the state’s duty to removeslums was separated as much as possible from the supply of newdwellings: there was to be a new start in which the dwellings weremanaged on sound economic principles. This meant, however, that thelocal authorities suffered large losses on the land, while there was virtuallyno rehousing of the persons displaced.

These large losses resulted in a battle with national government overthe reform of the Act and the extent to which it should be applied. Onetendency was to seek to reintroduce into Cross’s legislation some of theprinciples of landlord responsibility (and hence of reduced compensation)which had been incorporated in Torrens’s legislation. In the meantime theflow of new schemes dried up. It now seemed impossible to reconcile thedesire for clearance with its costs, the desired standard of new buildingwith rents at which rehousing would be possible for at least some of thepoorer groups which, by definition, the slum contained. This resulted inone of the characteristic bouts of oscillation between periods of action andinaction, between periods of higher building standards and buildingdown so as to rehouse some of the poorer groups.

The work of Octavia Hill was one of the most important features of thisperiod. She had been involved in the origins of Cross’s Act through theCharity Organization Dwellings Committee (1873), and later in attemptsto build cheap tenement blocks for the poor. However, the failure of theseattempts brought her back to a set of principles that were often referred toin the post-1918 period. The condition of the poor was best treated inordinary houses, it could only be improved by gradual steps, and inaccordance with increased capacity to pay. An emphasis on the reciprocalrights and duties of landlord and tenant was basic to the system, andwomen house managers stood between landlord and tenant, ensuring fairplay, and improving the tenant (and if necessary the landlord) as well asthe building. It was a method with a number of attractive points: it is aboutpeople as well as buildings, management is brought back to the centre ofattention, and it seems to offer a practical and realistic programme. It wasalso, however, strongly set within very Victorian constraints. Attention tothe tenant occurs within a framework of hierar chical authority based onproperty—it derives from the well-known paternalist concept that


14

“property has its duties as well as its rights”. Above all, there can be notransfer of resources to the poor, directly or indirectly: the system is fixedand unyielding, and salvation can only come through individualimprovement.

It was the reform of London government, itself provoked in part by theapparent failure of the Board of Works, that produced the last importantburst of slum clearance in the nineteenth century: the famous BoundaryStreet scheme in Bethnal Green. Cross’s Act had itself reflected a desire ofthe Disraeli Government to respond to the growing urban electoratefollowing the franchise reform of 1866. The Progressive Party, which woncontrol of the first LCC in 1889 and kept it until 1907, strongly reflectedthese new urban electoral influences. Very important was the presencewithin the party of a strong band of land reformers, favouring landtaxation and anxious to break down the landlords’ monopoly throughvarious forms of municipal enterprise. This section of the party was morenaturally oriented to Torrens’ than to Cross’s legislation, but the BoundaryStreet scheme was adopted because it was to incorporate municipalbuilding as well as municipal clearance, and provide a clear symboldistinguishing an active LCC from an inactive Board of Works. In this itwas partly successful. The Boundary Street scheme showed thatmunicipalities were indeed capable of rebuilding as effectively as thedwellings companies, and in an architecturally superior and morehumane manner. But it also revealed that neither municipal enterprise northe amended provisions of the 1890 Housing Act could overcome themajor difficulties in clearance and rebuilding schemes. The setting of therent levels at Boundary Street in March 1893 punctured the larger hopesand brought back harsh reality. There was a return to impasse, withperiods of clearance action alternating with periods of recoil. From 1893,however, stronger efforts were made to try and produce an alternativepolicy, and to understand this movement it is necessary to go back andfollow another line of development focused on the issue ofovercrowding.

Overcrowding and housing supply

In the Census of 1911, in the county of London 758,786 people were foundto be living in tenements with more than two occupants per room. Theymade up 17.8 per cent of the whole population. In the inner ring ofhighdensity boroughs surrounding the City, the proportion was muchhigher. It reached 39.8 per cent in Finsbury, was over 30 per cent in BethnalGreen, Shoreditch and Stepney, and 20 per cent or more in Bermondsey,

Overcrowding & housing supply

15

Holborn, Islington, Poplar, St Marylebone, St Pancras and Southwark.Overcrowding had eased somewhat since 1871, as family size reducedand living standards improved, but overcrowding figures remainedamong the indicators which most obviously pointed up the large-scalenature of housing deficiencies. This was also a striking feature of thestatistics on London compiled for the Unhealthy Areas Committee (1920–1). In this work, pressure on space was measured by congestion, absenceof space not only within the dwelling but without. “Black” wards withover 350 people and an average of 53 houses per acre contained 295,860people, and 92 wards with over 200 people per acre housed a populationof 1,165,319.[11]

Unfit dwellings and overcrowding were the two main aspects of slumhousing to be emphasized in the Victorian period and later: the onerepresenting unacceptable quality, the other unacceptable limitations ofspace. Often the two went together, the one compounding the other, butthere was also a sense in which acceptance of low quality allowed higherspace standards and vice versa. Certainly, it was important in policyformation that the remedies for unfit housing and overcrowding oftenseemed to point in different directions, and that they could be linked todifferent factors in the process of slum formation. Whereas the mappingout of unfit housing in London in 1911 seemed to lead downwards tosmall and scattered areas, the Unhealthy Areas Committee’s depiction ofLondon’s unhealthy areas is concerned with a much larger scale. There isno necessary reason why quantitative and qualitative deficiencies shouldbe distinguished in this way—it would be possible to pick out patches ofintense overcrowding or alternatively to recognize whole zones markedby some degree of qualitative inadequacy. In part the difference comesbecause the two descriptions are embodied in different strategies ofreform.

Similarly, although both quantitative and qualitative aspects of slumhousing can be seen as a product of historical circumstances, andcontrasted with modern conditions, in another way the notion of unfithousing is more definitely linked to the inheritance of built structures fromthe past, whereas overcrowding was linked to processes continuing in thepresent. From this point of view, it is useful to recall the fundamentalchanges that were taking place in the economic and social geography ofVictorian London, and which on a lesser scale were also evident in othermajor cities. These changes are well illustrated in the maps of Londonpopulation densities that were prepared by K.G. Grytzell, Figure 2.1 beingredrawn from his map of 1901.[12] This shows very clearly a tendency tolarge-scale zonation of densities, reflecting a similar zonation of land uses.A low-density core marks the development of the central business district

16

based on the City, and around it occurs a distinct zone of high density,itself giving way to low-density residential suburbs beyond. Something ofthis could be seen in the map of 1851, but to a much lesser extent, so thatthis kind of structure is very much the product of the intervening halfcentury.

Overcrowding, like unfit housing, was highlighted in the earlyVictorian period by sanitary and moral considerations. Like poor housingconditions generally, it could be regarded as the product of low moralscruples on the part of the poor themselves. However, the significance ofLord Shaftesbury’s campaigning was that it also became tied in tocontemporary events—notably the displacement of population by streetimprovements or later by railway activities. These represented the earlynegative aspects of the integrated development of central businessexpansion, extension of public transport and suburban residential growth.It became accepted by reformers that if the loss of accommodation in thecentre was not countered by some replacement housing thenovercrowding was bound to persist, and possibly get worse. It was nocoincidence that the peak of railway demolitions in 1859–62 saw renewedimpetus in the model dwellings movement through the formation of the

Figure 2.1 County of London, population density 1901 (after K. Grytzell, 1969).


17

Peabody Trust and the Improved Industrial Dwellings Company. Thecompanies attempted to show that replacement housing could be built incentral London on a semi-commercial basis, but the link to thedisplacement was still an indirect one. A problem was, however, how tobuild without adding to the displacements which were occurring. Therewere a number of “windfall” sites which could be obtained in centralLondon thanks to the generosity of the movement’s supporters, andwhich offered land that was both cheap in relation to its potential value,and provided a large “housing gain”. Limitation to such sites, however,restricted the scope of the movement, and it was this which was to lead tothe fatal decision to seek the link with slum clearance. Cross was promisedby the Charity Organization Society’s Dwellings Committee that

it was certain that by systematic distribution, by economy of space,and greater elevation of structures, one half more people might belodged in a comfortable and wholesome manner where the presentoccupants are huddled together in dirt, discomfort and disease.[13]

The dwellings companies had never envisaged a direct link betweendisplacement of population and rehousing. Nonetheless, the process ofclearance inevitably forced attention to such links, and when comfortablehopes and notions regarding the Act were brought down in itsimplementation, the problem of the slum was more sharply emphasizedthan before. There was, however, no very clear alternative remedy. Attemptsto cut costs and building standards themselves soon failed, but politicaland ideological constraints still ruled out building subsidies. Alfred Marshalland Charles Booth advanced rather desperate schemes to remove some ofthe poor from London in order to shore up the position of the rest of theworking class. The Royal Commission on Working Class Housing 1884–5sought to bring the issue of overcrowding back to the fore, but it couldonly recommend a renewal of administrative will. It was when BoundaryStreet showed that this remained insufficient that an alternative strategybegan to be more forcefully pressed. Even then, it took some time for theold paradigm to be replaced, and in 1898, when the Progressives pledgedto increase housing supply, one half of this policy still consisted of rebuildingon slum sites.

The alternative strategy that was to appear was quite clearly a lateralmove, conceptually as well as literally, and one’s attitude to thesubsequent development of housing policy depends a good deal on howthis move is judged. It did not involve confronting or breaking down someof the main obstacles that had inhibited previous reform. This was partlybecause key participants in the strategy did not want to do so—for


18

instance, they remained opposed to the use of subsidies. There was alsothe question, however, whether these obstacles were not in reality so greatthat any attempt to confront them directly was bound to end incompromise and shoddy failure. This involves first of all the questionwhether it was possible to achieve direct action on housing in the centre ofcities without first drawing off overcrowded populations and reducingland values. It involves secondly the question whether “Victorian”economic, sanitary and moral attitudes, as revealed in attitudes towardsthe slum, were so deeply entrenched that they could best be weakened byfirst shifting attention elsewhere.

The works of William Thompson present a view of the world leadingup to the conclusion that “the organized dispersion of the population bymunicipal action is the only practical and satisfactory remedy for presentevils”.[14] Attempts to remove slums or force up the sanitary standard ofexisting dwellings during a house famine could only increase rents andrebound to the advantage of the landlord, so that “the tenants in manycases are the strongest opponents to sanitary inspection and improvementof their houses”.[15]

Developments in transport, made it possible to escape from thisimpasse. Transport alone, however, was not enough, for it could simplycarry speculation outwards, raising land values and so leading, as far asthe working class was concerned, to colonies of cheap houses whichwould soon turn into slums themselves. Instead, transport undermunicipal control should be directed to opening up new areas wheremunicipalities could buy land cheaply on which they could build houses.This would enable the working class to escape from the control of thelandlord, and establish a new standard of housing which itself wouldbecome a focus for further advance. Also, in this way, the Progressivescould develop a strategy which enabled them to connect the “landquestion” with “municipal trading”, and to resume their rôle as the partyof municipal action.

Thompson’s strategy therefore parallels the more famous vision ofEbenezer Howard—only from the basis of a new start would it be possibleto reform the existing city. Neither man worked out in detail how thiswould happen. They simply did enough to sketch in lines of developmentwhich would support the new paradigm without raising the difficultieswhich might reduce enthusiasm. In the case of Thompson this meant thatif “half the workers could be induced to leave the congested districts ofLondon exorbitant rents would fall, overcrowding would be diminished,and the health of the people enormously improved with little or no loss tothe rates”.[16] As it was, there was to be an almost immediate reminderthat escape from the existing world would not be so easy. Both Letchworth


19

and the new LCC suburban estates were adversely affected when the turnof the century boom, which had carried suburban development andpolicies to a peak, subsequently fell away and collapsed in slump. With itcame the rapid fall in property prices, eventually lasting down to FirstWorld War, which has been analyzed by Avner Offer.[17] This will bediscussed again in Chapter 5, but it would seem that what began as aneconomic downturn was later compounded and prolonged by politicalfactors. In terms of material effects, the relationship of the slump toThompson and Howard’s projects seems highly paradoxical. These weredesigned as long-term cost-cutting measures taking society away from theimpasse created on the one hand by land and property speculation and onthe other by rising rates. Both, however, required a front-loading of capitalexpenditure which rendered them vulnerable, and both ran the risk ofpremature closure by the very forces of speculative boom and slump theywere designed to combat.

Martin Gaskell is surely right to emphasize that the various projects fornew types of suburb and town at the turn of the century represented anattempt to meet the latent desire of the lower middle classes and parts ofthe working classes for a manner of living already established amongwealthier groups.[18] From this point of view, the new Progressivestrategy laid down an important political challenge to property. The rôleof municipal enterprise was brought centre stage, and although the cycleof action and inaction could produce the kind of ratepayers revolt thatousted the Progressives from power on the LCC in 1907, a longer-termstrategy was also required. One possibility was to accept the view thatmunicipal enterprise had a rôle in suburban development, while denyinga rôle for municipal housing. This was the line taken by Charles Boothwho supported the development of a complete system of transport ownedby the LCC, and now favoured moving out the artisan rather than thepoor. Other ways in which municipal initiatives could supportdecentralization without municipal building were put forward inBirmingham. They included using the potential of town planning as ameans of promoting the kind of developments fostered by Cadbury atBournville, and making them more general. John Nettlefold wasparticularly active in developing such policies and he also created animportant link between this promo tion of decentralization andcompulsory reconditioning of some of the older inner properties usingPart II of the 1890 Act (the old Torrens legislation). Before the war theMunicipal Reform LCC had shown an interest in these policies, but Part IIpowers in London lay mainly with the boroughs, and there was thefurther difficulty that they seemed to require a more active municipalinvolvement in suburban promotion than most of the party wanted to see.


20

A much more attractive policy line to most London MunicipalReformers was that opened up in Liverpool. In 1896 the council theredecided to press forward with clearance and rebuilding schemes“restricting the use of the dwellings to the persons actually turned out”.This, it was claimed, satisfied the builder because it ensured that the newdwellings “should be for the poorer classes, for whom they could not anddid not want to provide”.[19] On the other hand it satisfied the tenantswho wanted to be rehoused in the old neighbourhoods. By the time of theCommons debate on housing in 1903 there were signs that this was beingpromoted as a national Conservative policy, resulting in a much clearerdivision in party political attitudes. Taylor, the Liverpool housing leader,emphasized that the slum problem was “the real problem for themunicipalities to deal with”. He was followed by Keir Hardie for Labourwho took the Progressive line and urged local authorities to “cater for thebetter class of artisans”, “instead of playing the part of scavenger to theprivate housebuilder and taking charge of the refuse out of which theycould not make a profit”.[20] In 1910 Griffith Boscawen as HousingChairman of the LCC forged definite links with Taylor, and it was thisalliance that was largely responsible for the Housing Bill presented to theCommons by Boscawen on behalf of the Unionist Party (Conservatives).For the first time national government subsidies for housing wereenvisaged, but these were to go on the one hand to rural cottage buildingand on the other to urban clearance schemes. It was in this context that thesurvey of unfit dwellings with which this chapter began was undertaken,and that the large Tabard Street scheme in Southwark was begun.

The development of the Progressives’ suburban policy was thus a majorevent in housing history, the significance of which is still only partiallyappreciated. In some ways it constituted the moment when housingpolicy in the modern sense was born. Afterwards, the rôle of councilhousing itself became one of the major pivots around which other aspectsof policy were arranged, and this was also a key factor in pushing housingon to the national agenda, as opposed to leaving it to local councils todetermine. In the immediate term, a tension between a wider rôle forcouncil housing as part of some kind of liberation from the existing city,and a narrower rôle concentrated on slum clearance and rehousing was tobe a dominant feature. A secondary tension, essentially within theConservative Party, lay between clearance and reconditioning policies, thelatter often being linked to public promotion of decentralization. Thesepositions were to be modified, particularly as a result of the war, but theywere not to be essentially changed until the 1930s.


21

Notes

1 HC Dec. 1911 (3 vols).2 Dewsnup, E. 1907. The housing problem in England, 223. Manchester:

Manchester University Press.3 MacDonagh, O. 1977. Early Victorian government 1830–1870, 100. London:

Weidenfeld & Nicolson.4 Simon, Sir J. 1887. Public health reports. Vol. 1, 1st annual report, Nov. 6th 1849,

56. London: Sanitary Institute of Great Britain.5 Simon, Sir J. 1897. English sanitary institutions., 2nd ed., 449–50. London: John

Murray.6 ibid., 445.7 Fraser, D. 1979. Power and authority in the Victorian city, 69–70. Oxford: Basil

Blackwell.8 Simon, E.D. & J. Inman 1935. The rebuilding of Manchester, 16–17. London:

Longman Green.9 Cross, R. 1884. Homes of the poor. Nineteenth Century 15, 157.10 Hansard, 222 col. 99. 8th Feb. 1875.11 Registrar General. Census of England and Wales 1911. Vol. 8, 534–64; Unhealthy

Areas Committee. Final Report (Apr. 1921), 21–4.12 Grytzell, K.G. 1969. County of London population changes 1801–1901, Lund

Studies in Geography, Series B, Vol. 33, 103.13 Charity Organization Society 1873. Report of the Dwellings Committee, 12.14 Thompson, W. 1900. Powers of local authorities. In The house famine and how to

relieve it, Fabian Tracts 101, 25. London: Fabian Society.15 ibid., 19.16 ibid., 25.17 Offer, A. Property and politics 1870–1914: landownership, law, ideology and urban

developent in England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.18 Gaskell, S.M. 1977. Housing and the lower middle class, 1870–1914. In The

lower middle class: Britain, G.Crossick (ed.), 159–81. London: Croom Helm.19 City of Liverpool Housing Committee 1913. Artisans’ and labourers’ dwellings

and insanitary property, 7.20 Hansard, 120, cols 941–5, 2 Apr. 1903.

22

C H A P T E R 3Reconstruction:

the pattern of the future

In 1915 the government imposed controls on the rents of working classhouses in Britain and on the mortgages of their owners. It thus preventedthe inflation of the war period feeding through into rents and propertyprices. This had important financial repercussions, for money wages afterthe war were more than double those of five years before. A second shockcame in 1919 when Lloyd George’s coalition government committed itselfto building 300,000 subsidized suburban cottages, and local councils ratherthan private enterprise became the main provider of homes. Caught up inpost-war inflation, the programme was terminated only two years laterwhen Addison, the Minister of Health was forced to resign, shortly followedby the whole Lloyd George Government. These dramatic events havealready been thoroughly studied by Orbach and Swenarton, and need notbe treated here.[1] Some aspects are, however, of considerable importanceto our theme. Links between “homes for heroes” and pre-war Progressivepolicies need to be examined and carried through into the partialresurrection of the government commitment to housing in 1924. There is arenewed emphasis on slum clearance as an alternative focus of action, thisbeing particularly associated in the early days with the Municipal Reform(Conservative) dominated LCC. Rent controls, subsidies and a newcompensation code had major long-term financial implications which needto be briefly reviewed, although the bulk of this discussion is left to laterchapters. Another important theme is the new interest in town planning.Here too, although the decentralists clearly held the field, they were alreadybeing challenged by advocates of redevelopment and tall flats. In manyways, events in these fertile years foreshadow the agenda for the rest of theperiod.

Slums and homes for heroes

23


For both Orbach and Swenarton, homes for heroes represented “aninsurance against revolution”. It was clearly much more than a housingprogramme, for unemployment and the potential difficulties ofdemobilization were significant considerations. Nonetheless, it wasimportant that, in a moment of crisis, it should be a major housing campaignthat was the focal point around which the nation was expected to unite.Moreover, the centre of attention was the divide between working-classand middleclass housing, and a narrowing of the differences between thetwo. The emergence of the Labour Party as a political force at the end ofthe war increased the chances that these concerns would be carried intoperiods of more normal electoral activity. The arrival of universal adultsuffrage might also be expected to raise the political profile of housing,which was thought to be an issue especially appealing to women.

Politicians were always keenly aware of the potential significance of theworking-class and female vote, but the actual course of events wasdetermined by success at the polls, depending of course on many issuesother than housing alone. Despite this, the politics of housing was asignificant factor in the alternation of governments in the 1920s, ensuringa continuing commitment in this field. It was briefly threatened by theLabour Party’s debacle in 1931, but shortly afterwards the NationalGovernment again sought to unite the nation and prolong its ownexistence through a major housing campaign, this time focused at a lowersocial level. The Second World War then brought a renewed period ofheightened expectations, re-focusing on the middle-class/working-classdivide. These political developments form the major milestones aroundwhich the housing policies and practices of the period were structured.

Homes for heroes, with the twin concerns of housing shortage andhousing standards, was perfectly compatible with the pre-war Progressiveapproach to the slum. In the immediate post-war period, and during acoalition government, there was no need to emphasize this—the policycould easily be justified in more general terms. At the heart ofreconstruction, however, lay a tension between two polarities: one whichemphasized the relief of the housing shortage due to the war, and lookedto a restoration of pre-war conditions, and another which sought a newstart through which the qualitative and quantitative deficiencies of pre-war housing might be tackled. For those who adopted the latter position,whatever their political party, relief of overcrowding was the key to thesolution of all other housing problems, and any attempt to solve thequalitative defects of the older housing in the centre of cities was viewedas counter productive until housing pressures had first been relieved. This

Reconstruction: the pattern of the future

24

was certainly Addison’s position, and it provided some justification forthe title of his account of the defeat of his programme: The betrayal of theslums. [2]

The docile manner in which the homes for heroes programme wasoriginally received by Parliament has often been underlined, and equallythere seems to have been little opposition from the main provincialcouncils. However, this was not the case in London, probably because ofthe heightened awareness produced by pre-war battles over the housingissue. The LCC refused to acknowledge a quantitative deficiency in pre-war housing, unless it be attributable to Lloyd George’s attempt tointroduce a land tax. It insisted that “the accommodation provided duringthe whole period 1902–13 was more than sufficient for the increase in theworkingclass population”.[3] Indeed, at the start of the war it was seekingto reduce a commitment to slum clearance, and battling with the LocalGovernment Board (LGB) over a projected scheme at Brady Street(Bethnal Green). In 1918 many of the borough reports to the council inresponse to the LGB’S promptings on post-war action were similarly non-interventionist in tone. Camberwell decided that “overcrowding does notexist to any large extent”. There was also “very little overcrowding” inKensington, and Hackney “consider that private enterprise will provideall that will be needed”.[4] In an extensive survey of existing conditions inOctober 1918, the LCC refused to make any estimate of the number ofdwellings required to relieve overcrowding, although its own tablesshowed that 758,000 people in the county were living at over two to aroom in 1911. [5]

In May 1918 Hayes Fisher, then president of the LGB, attempted to winthe council’s support for the government’s policies by arguing thatimmediate post-war economics ruled out the private builder, and that“when the time came for the gradual demobilization of millions of armedmen... it would be better to provide them with employment than tomaintain them in camps or huts doing nothing”. This had some effect onthe Housing Committee Chairman H. de R. Walker, who advised that “thequantity problem must first be tackled, although the London problem is innormal circumstances one of quality”.[6] However, the council refused toaccept this, and when a deputation met Hayes Fisher in July 1918 they putto him that, provided the government’s financial support was extended toclearance and rebuilding,

the Council might be disposed to adopt for the seven years followingthe declaration of peace a policy of spending £3.5 million inclearing...insanitary areas and erecting dwellings in place.


25

A sharp division then emerged, for “the official attitude in regard to theextension of the government grant was distinctly hostile”. “The Presidentdesired that the Council should take a wide view of its position in the matter,extending practically to assuming some responsibility for the housing ofall people of the working classes working in London”. His attitude was“distinctly more favourable to a scheme for the supply of additional housesthan to any scheme for the clearance of insanitary areas”.[7] Nonetheless,Walker stuck to the council’s view that action should be directed againstunfit housing, as “it is a kind of work to benefit most those who are poorestand most unsuitably housed; it belongs peculiarly to local governmentauthorities”. Any increase in housing supply was to take place “on sitesconvenient of access from the boroughs concerned with a view to facilitatingenergetic action for the closing and demolition of insanitary houses”.[8]As late as February 1919, the Finance Committee queried whether thepurchase and development of 143 acres at Roehampton “will not absorb adisproportionate amount of the total sum which the Council has agreed toexpend upon housing for the whole county within the period of sevenyears”. At the same time the ViceChairman of the Housing Committee,Edwin Evans, a future leader of the Property Owners Protection Association,widened the argument: “the State or municipal building of houses shouldonly be embarked upon as a purely temporary measure.” For,

Votes at elections are obtained by Socialist agitators promising allsorts of relief to the working classes…the more distributed theownership of small houses, the better for the country and the surer ofdomestic peace we shall be.[9]

When Addison met council representatives at the end of January 1919, hewas prepared to compromise to some extent. The council was promisedthat financial aid would be extended to cover clearance and rebuildingand that legislation would be introduced to cheapen acquisition of unfitproperty. Walker promised to bring forward definite proposals in this area,and indeed officials had already been at work, starting from the basis ofthe Progressive’s “Freeholder Scheme” of 1900. In February they reportedthat “under the present basis of compensation…slum landlords are notdeterred by the prospect of their property being taken, and the price whichthe local authority is called upon to pay is unreasonably high”. The principalrecommendation was that unfit property should be acquired at the valueof the site for working-class housing. Although the sites often had highmarket value for commercial purposes, this was largely hypothetical, andlocal authority intervention provided


26

that purchasor for whom the owner might otherwise have had towait many years…this factor, combined with the blame attached tothe owner by reason of his neglect, is of such prime importance thatit should to a very considerable extent discount the alleged marketvalue.[10]

It was proposed that the compensation be apportioned amongst the variousinterests, and that there should be a period of grace before the new lawbecame effective, to enable proprietors to put their houses in order.

It was at this point that the council received the LGB circular of 5February 1919 setting out new terms of government financial assistance.The replacement of 75 per cent deficit financing with the centralfunding of expenditure above 1d. rate was welcomed by provincialauthorities, but was very bad news for the LCC. The Comptroller reportedthat it was “altogether inconsistent with the programme approved by thecouncil in July last”. The product of a penny rate in London would fund anannual capital expenditure of over £5 million.[11] With the arrival of astate subsidy, the council had lost its freedom of action in the housingfield.

Immediate developments now awaited the results of the Councilelections, notable for the advance of Labour at the expense of theProgressives, and the government’s Housing Bill introduced in March.Afterwards, every effort was devoted to the construction of a largeclearance programme. In addition to Tabard Street (still incomplete) andBrady Street, attention was directed to 22 other clearance areas containing40,000 people. It was calculated that sites might be acquired at a rate of£250,000 a year for seven years beginning in 1920–1, and that this wouldentail provision of rehousing accommodation for 50,000 persons. It wasquite clear, however, that no clearance programme could meet the capitalexpenditure required by the council, for quite apart from politicalconsiderations, the complicated procedures for acquisition, displacementand rehousing could not be pushed through at the necessary speed. On3rd June the Housing Committee reported that “circumstances of the timehave made it necessary for us to bring before the Council a proposal ofvery great magnitude”. This comprised a five-year scheme involvingcapital expenditure of some £30 million. The suburban cottageprogramme would account for by far the larger part, with £5.37 million forslum clearance. Despite opposition from Addison, who wanted thebalance of the scheme altered to provide more new houses, it waseventually agreed by the ministry in January 1920.

Re-establishing housing programmes

27


After the demise of the homes for heroes programme in 1921, there was animportant period, lasting until 1925, in which the broad outline of a newhousing policy was determined. The two main contenders were on the onehand, increasing supply through suburban council housing and, on theother, reviving private enterprise and redirecting the municipal programmeto slum clearance. There was, however, a third policy strand which wasfavoured within the Ministry of Health, and particularly by I.G. Gibbon.Gibbon was to be a key figure in the promotion of town planning withinthe ministry between the wars, and he attempted to shift policies towardsa longer-term approach in which planned decentralization would becombined with efforts to prevent deterioration of existing conditions andeffect some gradual improvement.[12] In August 1918, he procured theappointment of the Unhealthy Areas Committee under NevilleChamberlain, which proceeded to make recommendations along theselines.[13] Chamberlain’s presence was important in underlining continuedsupport within the Conservative Party f or decentralization, a supportwhich did not much favour municipal building, but did embrace municipalinitiatives in other directions. Thus although the committee’s reports werenot to be of immediate significance, they provide a link with pre-war policiesin Birmingham, and foreshadow a line of thinking that was to be ofconsiderable importance in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

The Unhealthy Areas Committee was a means by which the Ministry ofHealth could renew its struggle with the LCC over slum clearance. Thecommittee also visited Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool and Cardiff, but itgave them cursory attention. London was the main centre of congestion inEngland, and hence the principal target of town planning, but it was alsothe only centre in which slum clearance was then an active policy issue.The committee took a strongly decentralist line, emphasizing the extent ofovercrowding in London (as discussed in the previous chapter). It stressedthe limitations of slum clearance, which should be delayed until housingpressures had been substantially relieved. It was also the first official bodyto raise doubts about the new compensation provisions, which it regardedas unjust. Instead of immediate clearance, existing houses should besubject to a programme of limited reconditioning in improvement areas.This was welcome news to property owners’ organizations, but there wasa sting in the tail in the committee’s enthusiasm for the “Octavia Hillsystem of management”. It went together with a distinctly unfavourableview of the ordinary private landlord, and a willingness to bringreconditioning within a framework of local authority ownership:


28

it is not to be expected that areas will be satisfactorily improvedunder private ownership, which is almost always subdivided Evenwhen large blocks of property are held…improvements are generallycombined with a change of user, which prevents any contributionbeing made to the solution of the problem.[14]

I have stressed the links between the politics of reconstruction and thedifferent policy orientations that first opened up at the turn of the centuryand were to be of continued importance throughout the 1920s. The FirstWorld War had massive significance, but the events of the time do need tobe understood in terms of previous developments. Englander has thusshown that long-term tensions over rent and security of tenure underlaythe political significance of the Rent Restrictions Act.[15] Even moreimportantly, Offer demonstrated a massive fall in London property valuesbetween 1903 and 1913, which he thought marked the onset of a crisis inprivate landlordism.[16] The nature of the crisis has been debated, and itsimplications have yet to be fully unravelled.[17] However, it certainlyinvolved political considerations which bear on our central concern: policiesrelating to quantitative and qualitative defects in existing housing provision.Without the war, change would have been far less dramatic and somecyclical recovery would probably have occurred. The absence of war,however, would not have relieved political pressures that were a quitelegitimate response to the extension of the franchise, and this would havehad important economic repercussions, as Offer showed. These are complexmatters which will receive further discussion in Chapter 5. What isimportant here is to emphasize that the fall in property values before thewar, enhanced and anchored by the Rent Acts, and later prolonged by otherfactors, was of fundamental significance. There was, empirically, a majorstructural divide between the late Victorian period and the regime of lowland and property prices that subsequently prevailed for nearly 70 years.All housing and planning programmes, and particularly slum clearanceand redevelopment, have to be examined in this context.

The main features arising from the war were rent control and a newattitude to subsidies, but both of these had a conflicting impact on existingpolicy orientations. Pre-war Progressive policy had seen the expansion ofhousing supply as a means of reducing rents and capital values. With theintroduction of rent restrictions, the position became rather reversed:expansion of housing supply was needed to keep rents from rising. Thiswas variously viewed as intrinsically useful or politically necessary, but italso coincided with a Treasury interest in counter-inflation policies.However, the links between decentralization and the pre-war landcampaign were now distinctly weaker. Paradoxically, the new


29

compensation code obtained by a Conservative council was the only realgain made in this direction as a result of the war. Old faithfuls were left tobewail the abandonment of the true path of reform in favour of theslippery slope of subsidies and charity rents. Yet subsidies also in someways reinforced the progressive position. They increased the possibility,depending on allocation practice, that suburban council housing couldtake on a hybrid character, reflecting not only ability to pay but alsohousing need. This sounds paradoxical, but the Rent Acts had broughtabout new conditions in which those with larger incomes could notnecessarily obtain the accommodation they needed by outbidding othersin the market. Moreover, councils might be regarded as more legitimaterecipients of subsidies than private landlords or their tenants. Councilhousing could be used directly as an instrument of policy, and there wasreduced likelihood of subsidies feeding through into enhanced rents andcapital values.

For the advocates of slum clearance, the new developments also hadmixed implications. The heightened political climate now made itimpossible to contemplate schemes which did not rehouse at least asubstantial portion of the displaced tenants, and this was reinforced by theeffect of the Rent Act on security of tenure and the reduced level ofempties. That same Act, however, kept property prices down, a resultenhanced by the new compensation provisions. This was extremelyimportant, given the major impact of acquisition costs on the economics ofrebuilding. Both measures had adverse effects on property owners, raisingan important source of political opposition. But equally, opposition wasweakened in another direction, since it was less easy to claim thatlandlords profited from clearance. Subsidies were now available to coverboth building and acquisition, and there was much potential in the claimthat they should be directed to those in greatest need, and hence to thoseleast able to move to suburban areas. Once building costs had returned tomore normal levels after 1921, slum clearance became a difficult but by nomeans impossible proposition.

The new housing policy announced by Mond in July 1921 recognizedan “urgent necessity for making what improvements are possible underpresent financial circumstances in slum areas”. An annual sum of £200,000was allocated to meet deficiencies. A clear distinction was made betweenthe “problem of slums”, which was an appropriate sphere of public action,and “the question of housing” in which “private enterprise can be taken ason the way to ensure its normal position”.[18] When Boscawen was madeMinister of Health, these links with pre-war Conservative policies werereinforced in a directly personal way. In the 1922 crop of elections, Labourattacked the “betrayal” of the government over housing, but in a climate


30

of retrenchment it made little headway. There were much greaterdifficulties for the Conservatives, however, once the immediate appetitefor economies had been assuaged. Addison pointed out the main problem:

the Government prevents the accumulated shortage being madegood by state or municipal assistance, and by prolonging theshortage, commits the community to the continued operation of thatstatute [the Rent Act] which effectively prevents its being met byprivate enterprise.[19]

Not unnaturally, the government tried to escape from this dilemma bytransitional measures. It adopted a policy of “gradual decontrol”, while anew state housing scheme, more oriented towards private enterprise, tidedover the remaining period of housing shortage. But before this could bebrought into effect, Boscawen was defeated in the Mitcham by-election ofMarch 1923, and it was left to Neville Chamberlain to introduce the newHousing Bill in April. The spectacular by-election losses of early 1923pointed up the continued political importance of housing. They convincedthe Coles that “the housing question is the most acute, though not the mostfundamental, domestic issue of the day. It has shown its capacity to arousedeep political feeling”. They argued that “the knowledge that rents cannotbe decontrolled until some new houses have been built is the chief reasonfor bringing forward a new housing scheme”.[20] From an opposite pointof view, the Estates Gazette also had “an uneasy suspicion that control willnever be relaxed and that sufficient political pressure will always beforthcoming to prevent its removal”. Except for slum clearance, councilhousing was not desirable, and any new arrangements should allow forcouncil houses to be sold to their tenants, since “it is our duty to makeoccupying ownership easy and natural. No nation need have any betterbulwark against discontent than to be a nation of occupying owners.”[21]

Chamberlain duly represented housing as one of the most obstinate“problems which the War has left behind it”. His aim was to institute atransition to “normal conditions”. This would be done by “theencouragement of private enterprise and the stimulation of thedesire…among large sections of the population to be able to own theirown homes”. Subsidies would be available both to private enterprise andlocal authorities, but the latter would “have to satisfy the Minister that theneeds of a particular area can best be met in that way”. Lower rents wereessential to meet demand, and would be produced by reduction ofsubsidies, so lowering costs, and by building smaller houses. Ironically, hehad to announce that slum clearance would go ahead as already planned,but he made the point that this was not his last word on the subject.[22]


31

Wheatley, replying for the opposition, saw housing as “really a problem offinance. It is part and parcel of that great social problem by which, at everystep, we are baffled by poverty at one end and exploitation at the other.”This was not a product of the war, and the Bill’s arrangements would“stereotype poverty in housing for half a century”, and give“parliamentary acceptance to the permanency of class distinctions in thiscountry”. He was particularly scathing over slum clearance:

housing reformers of a certain type always appeal to ones emotionsby talking of the poor folk in the slums, but…this is not the way todeal with the housing problem at all. The way…is to provide healthyhouses, and to say to the people in the slums, come out of thesewretched dens…and then you say to the owners of these houses, asyou would say to the owners of diseased meat, we are not going toallow you to make a profit out of these unhealthy houses, but aregoing to pull them down and remove them at your own and not atthe public expense.[23]

As it was, the later defeat of the government, and the advent of a minorityLabour government, was to provide an opportunity for a temporary modusvivendi. Wheatley left the Chamberlain Act on the statute book, while atthe same time through his own Act in 1924 he restored the local authoritiesto a central rôle in house production, albeit with rather reduced subsidiesand standards compared to the Addison scheme. When the Conservativesreturned to power shortly afterwards, they in turn left the Wheatley Actintact, accepting the necessity for public housing provision in the immediatefuture. At this stage, however, the two main parties were still far apart intheir approach to the slum. Wheatley’s views could have been taken straightfrom any pre-war Progressive polemic, and in so far as colleagues such asHerbert Morrison departed from this, it was only to go further and advocatenew towns.


Although the immediate priorities of the housing programme pushed townplanning into the background, the context of reconstruction also favoureda wider review of urban futures. The best known product of this was theUnhealthy Areas Committee, but it is important to recognize that its worktook place against the background of a larger debate. The committee itselfsummed up the issues in a generally agreed form:


32

in view of the excess population in the crowded areas of London, it isclear that there are only two main alternatives before us by way ofremedy. The one is to allow the population to expand verticallyinstead of horizontally; the other to remove a large part of it bodilyelsewhere, re-arranging what is left on the old sites, but withadequate accommodation including the requisite open spaces.[24]

The committee’s answer was to favour planned decentralization in whichhousing provision was linked to transport and to the location of industry.In this way, support could be given to “self contained garden cities”, andcongestion relieved without a continuous spread of the builtup area. Thissolution, however, required major changes in current practice: control overtransport, some means of influencing the location of industry, and a newlocal government and planning structure. Chamberlain went so far as tosuggest that “if a Federal system were introduced into this country underwhich a Government were set up for London and its suburbs, that wouldbe precisely the body I have in mind”.[25]

At this stage, the decentralist approach was everywhere dominant inplanning and fully reflected in such books as Aston Webb’s The London ofthe future (1921).[26] Moreover, it commanded a wide range of supportcutting across party lines. The most notable exemplar of this in thereconstruction period was Herbert Morrison, the new leader of theLondon Labour Party. Morrison entered the fray at an early stage, when hepresented the Labour view on reconstruction to the LCC in May 1918. Theexisting slum must go, “but what is of even greater importance is that newslums and social sores shall not be created in London’s outer ring”.Instead, the object should be “to break up London as we know it, toencourage the exodus outwards…and to plan a wide outer ring on gardencity principles”. “We would build no more tenements…we would buildnew towns where possible, or garden suburbs where that was the best wecould do”. If such a policy were carried out it would “reduce materiallythe human and industrial congestion of inner London, and bring downthe price of land and the cost of public improvements”. [27]

Planned decentralization meant an approach to the existing city whichenvisaged its long-term restructuring into a more orderly and lesscongested shape. There was to be no substantial redevelopment for anindefinite period, and slum clearance was opposed as it meant denserebuilding in tenement form on sites which were often inappropriate insize or situation. However, it was necessary to begin immediately to shapethe city towards its ultimate end. The Chamberlain Committee proposedto deal with slums through “improvement areas”, which would allowsubstantial blocks of property to be publicly acquired for later


33

reconstruction, and in which the inhabitants could be trained up to matchthe standards of this future environment. Another important concept wasthe zoning of land uses. There was concern over congestion of populationcaused by the extension of industry into residential areas, which alsopushed up site values. These effects could be prevented by the gradualseparation of land uses into their own protected zones, determined by anoverall town plan. Like the new-town proposals, these solutions had wideappeal, but they were difficult to bring into practice. Zoning raised the“compensation and betterment problem”, and the question of non-conforming industry. Worse still, for the immediate future, many of theslums which the LCC was tackling with clearance and rebuildingprogrammes lay in areas which planners thought should not be zoned forresidential use.

The predominant Labour view of existing cities also entailed a holdingoperation until decentralization had done its work and emphasized, as theProgressives had done, action to force landlords to keep their property inproper repair. One important exception to this, however, was AlfredSalter’s project in Bermondsey. According to Fenner Brockway

The Salter plan for Bermondsey was breathtaking. It was nothingless than to demolish two-thirds of the Borough, and rebuild it as agarden city…. The only healthy and civilised policy in his view wasto take half the people to the outskirts, linking them with their placesof work by speedy and cheap transport, and to reconstruct for thosewho remained on the basis of cottages and gardens.[28]

What distinguished Salter from other enthusiasts was his readiness to geton with the job and start bringing the garden suburb to Bermondseyimmediately. He set up a Beautification Committee to carry out tree andflower planting, and was prepared to begin a programme of slum clearance,rebuilding with cottages at 12 to the acre.

A position common to all decentralists was that the construction oftenements did nothing to remove congestion, and it created a highlyundesirable building form. The Chamberlain Committee emphasized thesocial disadvantages of the flat. Even in the immediate post-war period,however, some support for tall flats could be found within the Britishutopian tradition. Thomas Collcutt planned a London of the future as a “cityof pleasant places and no evil slums”. The author was an architect andformer president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and hisscheme has two interesting aspects. It was a project for rehousing slumdwellers, beginning with a site on the South Bank from County Hall toWaterloo Bridge, presently covered with wharves and warehouses. It


34

would at the same time rectify a situation in which “the Thames in centralLondon on one side takes rank with the most beautiful of city rivers, whileon the other side it looks as ugly as a mean river in some dirtymanufacturing town”. An embankment lined by public gardens wouldthen be fronted by tall flats—ten storeys high at this point, which wouldrehouse the slum dwellers and contain all the usual accompaniments ofideal flat living—lifts, central heating and hot water, electricity and gassupply, and “the roofs would form splendid playgrounds for children”.The new flats would stand in marked contrast to Peabody Buildingswhich reflected “the narrow and un-Christian idea of humanity whichseems to govern public bodies when they take in hand the housing of theworking people”. [29]

Collcutt’s scheme embraced the concept of the tall flat both as abeautiful building in a garden setting and as a locus for a merging of classdistinctions. It resembled the case for planned decentralization in that theproposals depended on protecting residential areas from the pressures ofurban economics. Most advocates of tall flats, however, saw them as ameans of adapting to such pressures, and even turning them to advantage.This was an aspect of the most famous of these projects, by Le Corbusier,work which however did not become known in Britain until a translationof Vers une architecture was published in 1927.[30] In Britain, Sir MartinConway was the most prominent supporter of tall buildings and bête noireof the Chamberlain Committee. He drew inspiration from the UnitedStates and was mostly interested in skyscrapers as office blocks, but alsocommented on tall building as a solution to overcrowding. It wasprimarily an economic question but “far better to live under regular townconditions in a compact city, and to have real country within easy reach,than to live in the half-town half-country state of suburban dwellers”. Amassive extension of cities could “only be prevented by discouraginghorizontal and encouraging vertical expansion”. Moreover, “if on an acreof slum land the miserable property was replaced by a high building, thepeople displaced could be accommodated and more open spaceprovided.”[31]

The most interesting response to the decentralist case was made by J.P.Orr, the LCC Housing Director, who presented a series of reports onreconstruction in 1921.[32] In these he made a case for plannedredevelopment which would preserve existing urban densities andvalues. For him, the location of business was the key to the use and valueof central-area land and the economics of its reorganization. He agreedthat industrial penetration had contributed to slum formation by reducinghousing accommodation and lowering residential quality, but added that“the resultant commercial sites are too often ill-shaped and difficult of


35

access, and at the same time ill-placed in relation to surroundingdwellings”. He therefore favoured “the establishment of user zones suchas have been laid down in New York”, but envisaged zoning as aframework within which more active redevelopment could take place,providing better industrial areas “in large blocks laid out in regular plotsand provided with adequate means of access”. The key to this was larger-scale redevelopment:

wherever opportunity permits slum clearance schemes should belarge schemes, their limits being determined with a view not merelyto the removal of slums, the improvement of communications, andthe provision of small public open space, but also to the provision oflarge regular plots for industrial users.

Orr then attempted to show that planned redevelopment could reconcilehealthy living with economic pressures, while also providing the cheapestway of dealing effectively with the mixture of industrial and residentialuses. This involved public intervention: “the opportunity for increasingthe value of the land by a combination of small plots, each incapable ofeconomic development in itself, may never occur under privateredevelopment. Here it will be in the public interest for the LCC to undertakeclearance schemes and secure the benefit of enhancement of land valuesfor the public purse”. The inadequate provision of open space could berectified by the “substitution within the residential area of high for lowbuildings”. Within three miles of the centre these would be at least sixstoreys high and provided with lifts. Residential redevelopment hadnecessarily to be carried out at public expense, so

to reduce the loss to a minimum we should house as many people aspossible on the land and charge the highest rents we can get. Therewill then be the major gain in the shape of well-placed labour to setagainst the minimum loss due to the adoption of a user which isfinancially not the most favourable.

The general conclusion of the public debate at this time was that, whilethere were no overriding aesthetic objections to high buildings, there wasa strong town-planning case against them. Unwin and Mumford joinedthe fray, the former arguing that if high buildings were

spaced so far apart as to allow light and air, and if the streets wouldbe laid out of such widths as to carry their concentrated trafficwithout congestion, the total area covered would then be little if any


36

less than that required to provide for the same community withbuildings of normal height.

A leader in the Architects Journal in 1924 concluded that “the verticalexpansion theory has…been knocked on the head for ever. Lateralexpansion, properly planned…is the only solution…. A large number ofcomparatively narrow streets rather than a few very wide ones is now theideal aimed at by modern town planning”.[33] In practical terms, however,the arbiter of this early debate was not public or professional opinion butcost inflation, slump and the abandonment of the reconstructionprogramme. Although there were several important projects for tall flats(to be reviewed in Chapter 6), neither planned decentralization nor plannedredevelopment were to re-emerge as important players until the mid1930s.The LCC decided it no longer needed a housing director, and Orr lost hispost.

Notes

1 Orbach, L.F. 1977. Homes for heroes: a study of the evolution of British publichousing 1915–1921. London: Seely Service; Swenarton, M. 1981. Homes fit forheroes: the politics and architecture of early state housing in Britain. London:Heinemann.

2 Addison, C. 1922. The betrayal of the slums. London: Hubert Jenkins.3 MM 16 Feb. 1915.4 HC 16 Jan. (19) 1918.5 MM 15 Oct. 1918.6 HC 16 Jan. (19) 1918, 16 May (19) 1918.7 ibid., 10 July (8) 1918.8 MM 23 July (26) 1919, HC 23 Oct. (12) 1919.9 HC 19 Feb. (18) 1919.10 MM 18 Feb. (29) 1919, HC 5 Feb. (9) 1919.11 HC 19 Feb. (11) 1919, MM 19 Feb. (33) 1919.12 PRO HLG 47/699 Unfit houses and Unhealthy Areas.13 Ministry of Health, Unhealthy Areas Commitee, reports, March 1920, April

1921; Cherry, G. 1980. The place of Neville Chamberlain in British townplanning. In Shaping an urban world, G. Cherry (ed.), 166–170. London:Mansell.

14 Unhealthy Areas Committee, Final Report, 10.15 Englander, D. 1983. Landlord and tenant in urban Britain, 1838–1918. Oxford:

Oxford University Press.16 Offer, A. 1981. Property and politics, 1870–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.17 Daunton, M.J. 1984. Introduction. In Councillors and tenants: local authority

37

housing in English cities, 1919–39, M.J.Daunton (ed.), 1–35. Leicester: LeicesterUniversity Press.

18 Hansard, 155 cols 1483–92, 7 July 1921, 155, cols 293–9, 13 June 1922,.19 Addison op. cit, 42.20 Cole, G.D. H. & M. Cole 1923. Rents, rings and houses, 11, 14. London: Labour

Publishing.21 Estates Gazette 101, 1923, 17, 155, 555.22 Hansard 163, cols 303–8, 24 April 1923.23 ibid., col. 334.24 Unhealthy Areas Committee, Interim Report, 2–3.25 PRO HLG/101/258B Doc. 35.26 Webb, Sir A (ed.) 1921. The London of the future. London: T. Fisher Unwin.27 HC 15 May 1918 (20).28 Brockway, F. 1949. Bermondsey story: the life of Alfred Salter, 92. London: Allen &

Unwin.29 Collcutt, T.E. 1921. London of the future, 24, 27, 36. London: Leonard Parsons.30 Le Corbusier 1923. Towards a new architecture., trans. 1927, reprinted 1989.

London: Butterworth.31 Conway, Sir M. 1923. My view of high buildings. Architects Journal 57, 537; 58,

936.32 HC 19 April (5) 1921, 30 June (8) 1920.33 Unwin, R. 1924. High buildings in relation to town planning. Architects Journal

60, 487; 59, 4.

Notes

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C H A P T E R 4Decentralization, reconditioning

and slum clearance, 1923–33

The 1920s have often been presented as a period in which slums wereneglected, and there is some truth in this, particularly if action against theslum is equated with slum clearance. Nonetheless, in many ways this is aninteresting period of policy formation and practice, and one vital for anunderstanding of later developments. The chapter concentrates on threeaspects: the progress of slum clearance, the connected attempts byChamberlain to establish reconditioning as an alternative policy, and finallythe efforts by progressives to adapt their position to the changingcircumstances of the late 1920s, as pressures mounted to push the focus oflocal authority action towards poorer social groups. Greenwood’s HousingAct (1930) is seen as a compromise closely connected with this process ofadaptation.

The vicissitudes of slum clearance

Before the 1930 Act, 121 schemes of slum clearance were approved,involving demolition of 15,000 houses and displacement of 75,000 people.Of this number some 23,500 people were affected by the schemes of theLCC, and another 6,850 by those of the metropolitan boroughs. Theremaining schemes were very scattered. Liverpool had schemes confirmedfor 1,500 dwellings, but this was a low total in comparison with its pre-waractivity. Many cities and smaller towns had a scheme which was locallyimportant, but outside London there was no slum clearance programme,and some of the biggest cities such as Birmingham and Leeds had little orno action of this kind.[1] By mid-1929 the LCC programme was about halfcompleted.

This was the period that saw the greatest extent of suburban council


39

building for general supply. All the major cities built in considerablequantity: Liverpool had completed 19,000 dwellings by 1930, and largeestates such as Norris Green were coming into being. London was noexception: the LCC used the Wheatley Act to continue to develop estatessuch as Becontree, which it had purchased in 1919, and added others suchas Watling and St Helier. By 1930 it had completed 34,800 houses on thesecottage estates.[2] All this activity does not concern us directly, exceptinsofar as it contributed to the relief of housing pressures and was relatedto housing need rather than simply to ability to pay. This will be discussedlater. Obviously, slum clearance was completely dwarfed in scale, but thiswas partly due to the fact that it ran into difficulties of its own. There wasno sense of gathering momentum, on the contrary 70 of the 121 schemeshad already been approved by March 1925. Whereas even at the height offinancial constraint in 1921 the government was prepared to allocate£200,000 to meet annual clearance deficits, by 1930 the approvedprogramme was estimated to involve a liability of only £100,000–130,000 ayear.[3] This situation is explained by the problems that beset clearanceschemes, as clearly exemplified in the London programme.

Col. C. Levita was the most important housing chairman of the LCC inthe Municipal Reform period, and it was during his tenure of office from1922 to 1928 that most progress was made in the building of extensivesuburban municipal estates in response to the Wheatley Act. It was animpressive achievement in which he took pride:

The LCC…develops its estates well, whereas private enterprise in thepast, and some municipalities, have given endless repetition ofcommon place design…note the variety and charm of the layout, thepreservation of natural features and country environment.

For all that, Levita’s work took place in a context of relative theoreticalorthodoxy. It was essential that “nothing should be done to hamper theproduction of houses for sale by the private builder. A clear line ofdemarcation, and of economy, can be preserved by reasonable limitationof size”. A surplus of vacant accommodation needed to be recreated, but“ultimately the economic law of supply and demand must fix rents”. Oncerestored this free market should not be sullied by handouts to individuals.He deprecated the fact that “many well-meaning persons glide into theformula of fixing rents on capacity to pay…in accordance with a systemnot practised outside poor relief”. Like many others in his party, he reactedstrongly to “Poplarism”, fearing that generous grants for poor relief wouldbe used as a means of obtaining votes. Similarly, he feared that permanentlysubsidized housing would “become a monopoly of the local authorities—

Decentralization, reconditioning and slum clearance, 1923–33

40

a potential corruption of municipal politics”. The “solution would lie inthe compulsory vesting of completed municipal cottages in selectedTrustees”.[4]

Slum clearance was one municipal enterprise that Levita unequivocallysupported. He showed strong personal interest in the environment and inmatters of physical and moral health. A new classification of unhealthyareas was made in 1922 in which 6,283 properties were placed in the “mosturgent” category, these housing some 40,000 people.[5] Levita set outvigorously to restore a clearance and rebuilding programme, personallyselecting most of the sites. In addition to Brady Street three other schemeshad already been declared, and nine more were added by 1929 to completethe programme already described. This was a respectable rate of progressby pre-war standards, but it fell well short of current ambitions. It reflectedno lack of political will on the part of the LCC, but rather the ease withwhich large suburban programmes could be effected compared with thedifficulties that emerged in the process of clearance and rebuilding.

These difficulties were traditional ones: the rehousing of the tenantsand the compensation of the owners. The details will be described inChapters 5 and 6; here the concern is with the effects on the programme.Initially, rehousing was the principal problem. In 1922 officers advised onthe “extraordinary difficulty of finding any sort of accommodation towhich the tenants of old houses can be transferred, consequently the workof carrying out any scheme will in all probability be spread over a periodof at least ten years”.[6] Levita’s response was “a policy of distribution,and thus attacking small black spots in many different parts of the countyin preference to a few concentrated large schemes”.[7] A new, moreeconomical rebuilding standard was adopted in 1922 and, after 1925, some“simplified” tenements were built for those of lower rent-paying capacity.The LCC also possessed an older housing stock, and vacancy flowsimproved with new building, particularly after the purchase of a numberof rehousing estates in inner London. The availability of land formerlyoccupied by a hospital at East Hill, Wandsworth, purchased in 1923, wasthus important in facilitating clearance in Lambeth.

Generally, there was some easing of rehousing pressures in themid1920s, but just as this constraint seemed to be diminishing anotheremerged. The potential difficulties on compensation had become apparentin 1920, when at a public inquiry into the Bell Lane scheme, Stepney, thefeeling that small owners would suffer undue hardship was “displayed toa marked degree”.[8] However, it took some time for the workings of thenew Act to be realized in the settlement of claims. In November 1922 thefirst reports came of a large leasehold claim being disallowed at BradyStreet, the entire compensation money having been absorbed in the


41

payment to the freeholder. A series of other cases of this kind began toemerge, and in 1924 the question of compensation was taken up by theLondon Property Owners Protection Association. Opposition mountedconsiderably in 1925, and about that time another front was opened up ontrade disturbance and goodwill. It was not until 1927 that the position thatneither was payable on unfit property was confirmed by all the legalprocesses, and in the meantime the settlement of trade claims was slowedconsiderably.

Although much of the owners’ opposition was couched in terms of aninability of the procedures to distinguish properly between the true slumlandlord and the rest, it inevitably spilled over into opposition to clearanceitself. The view was expressed that “most of these defects seem capable ofcure without the necessity of entirely clearing away the areas in whichthey exist”.[9] This feeling that reconditioning rather than clearance mightprovide a way out for the owners was reinforced by Chamberlain’sattempts in government to find a way of legislating f or the kind ofproposals contained in the Unhealthy Areas Report. Indeed, in February1926 he promised “in introducing new housing legislation to try to findsome new basis of compensation”, partly justifying this on the groundsthat “local authorities were rather shy of carrying out a scheme ofcompensation which they themselves thought was not fair”.[10] The factthat the government was known to be contemplating a revision of itsclearance and compensation policies certainly did nothing to help thedevelopment of a sustained programme. Levita, however, was dismissiveof reconditioning, and his frustrations at this time were reflected in anincreasing attention to the clearance and rebuilding scheme at OssulstonStreet in St Pancras, for which the architect had produced a plan for nine-storey tenement blocks. Although this never came to fruition, itrepresented a serious attempt to break out from an apparently remorselesscycle of low rental capacity and rebuilding standards towards the kind ofmodernity that had been envisaged by Orr. At the same time anotherimportant project for tall flats was proposed by the Municipal ReformBorough of Stepney.

With the exception of Bermondsey, all the most notable projects in the1920s were by Municipal Reform councils. St Marylebone, for instance,commissioned a team of architects to prepare a phased redevelopment ofextensive parts of Lisson Grove, in which most of the borough’s slumswere concentrated.[11] This presented considerable problems for theLabour Party in London, which like the Progressives wished to presentitself as the party of municipal action. The dilemma was that LondonLabour Party policies required control of the LCC. The Labourstrongholds in the boroughs, with the exception of Woolwich, were


42

already largely builtover. Here the only programme that could be offeredwas one of forcing landlords into repairs, although boroughs such asPoplar did initiate small-scale slum clearance and find sites for somelimited extra building. “Bonnie Bermondsey” remained the Labourstandard bearer, and Salter achieved some success when Wheatleysanctioned a clearance scheme at Salisbury Street where 151 housesoccupied by 1,000 people were replaced by 52 cottages built by directlabour on the Wilson Grove Estate, opened in 1928. However, the wholeBermondsey project not only raised major intrinsic difficulties, but alsoencountered fierce political opposition which prevented its continuance.According to the LCC it would

create not only hardship to…such persons who would have to beaccommodated elsewhere, but an unnecessarily large burden on thecommunity for the sake of the favoured few who would be housedin the cottages.[12]

Ewart Culpin, architect of Wilson Grove, was a prominent new-townsupporter and Labour spokesman on the LCC. The party made frequentvisits to the Welwyn home of another leader Emil Davies, and in 1928 itwas stated that “the Labour Party has definitely adopted the plan for thebuilding of satellite towns and the preservation of a permanent belt of greencountry between the new towns and London”.[13] By this time, however,such projects had slipped well down the political agenda. There wasgrowing recognition that the Bermondsey plans could not be carriedthrough, and opposition to the tenement block and more conventionalclearance gradually lessened to provide a way back to a position whereLabour boroughs could take a more active rôle. There is little doubt thatMorrison felt uncomfortable in this period of frustrated activity, whichformed an essential stage on the road from his early “idealistic” stancetowards the “realist” approach of his later years.

By the late 1920s, difficulties over compensation had spread outsideLondon to affect schemes in all parts of the country. In Leeds, the WestStreet scheme was delayed pending possible higher compensation forlandlords, and in Liverpool the Queen Anne Street scheme was subject toa legal dispute on which judgment was not forthcoming until 1931.[14] In1929 owners achieved some success in the “Derby case” in which a schemewas held invalid on the grounds that it did not contain sufficientlydetailed proposals on the future use (and therefore the compensationstandard) of the land. The ministry was unable to confirm new schemes,and matters were further held up by other court proceedings. It was


43

evident that the long-delayed Chamberlain proposals would now have tobe forthcoming.

Chamberlain was, however, able to take action in other spheres. Thenumber of council houses rose rapidly to a peak in 1928, a year in whichthe total output of houses—239,000—was a record, and not to be exceededuntil 1934. The private total, although always larger, had however peakedin 1926, and Chamberlain responded to this by cutting subsidies inSeptember 1927. This he claimed would keep contract prices on adownward slope, and allow more houses to be supplied at economic rent.Further subsidy cuts were projected for September 1929, and councilswere urged to concentrate on providing for lower-paid workers. The LCCresponded to this in July 1928 by announcing a new type of housing: flatsbuilt in or near the central areas of London for relief of housing pressures,as opposed to rehousing after clearance. This new policy of central areaflats involved the Municipal Reformers in considerable political risk. Thesites available were mostly former middle-class properties where a largehousing gain could be achieved. Sites of this type were to play animportant part in future London housing. But the LCC’S own medicalofficer complained that “people living in good healthy houses are to becompulsorily displaced to make room for houses less in harmony with theneighbourhood”, while a councillor in Wandsworth thought it “an affrontto every property owner here…to build workmens’ dwellings in the finestresidential part of our suburb”. The advantage to the Municipal Reformerswas that it enabled them to take council housing down market, and toreduce the commitment to the suburbs. In July 1929, they followed this upby announcing a new slum clearance programme to deal with between 25and 30 areas in which 30,000 people lived.[15] The progressive approachwas coming under increasing fire.

Chamberlain and reconditioning

Throughout the latter part of the 1920s, it was understood that thegovernment was contemplating new legislation on slum housing. In 1923,Chamberlain had expressed the intention of taking a fresh view, and anoutline of new legislation was ready by the end of 1925. Four years later,the expected legislation had not yet materialized, and when anotheroutline was presented to the Cabinet before the 1929 election campaign,the proposals had not greatly advanced. Chamberlain’s project is thus ofinterest from several points of view. It presented a policy distinct fromthat of clearance and rebuilding. It caused a faltering of clearance activitiesin the late 1920s when they might have been expected to gather pace.


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And the factors that prevented its adoption, despite such powerfulpatronage, are important in understanding why practice was to takeanother course.

In January 1926, the Cabinet considered two different proposalsregarding slum prevention and rural housing, both of which incorporatedthe notion of reconditioning, but in quite different form. For rural housing,it was proposed to make loans and grants available to landlords forreconditioning in return for a period of control over rents. Chamberlainargued that the benefit would thus go to the tenant, but it offered “asplendid chance to the owners of poor cottage property to get rid of themenace that had been hanging over them, and the reproach that they layunder as bad landlords”.[16] As Wilding recognized, a rural contextoffered the strongest possible grounds for such proposals. Agriculturalwages and rents were low, both landlords and tenants had a relativelyfavourable image compared with their urban counterparts and,Chamberlain argued, “it would be something like an act of vandalism ifwe were to destroy these remainders of an older and more picturesqueworld”.[17] Yet these proposals ran into major opposition, both within theCabinet and from political opponents. One main question was put—whydo you propose to use public money to induce landlords to do what theyought to do themselves without public assistance? Churchill, asChancellor of the Exchequer, opposed a subsidy that would interfere withthe normal workings of the market. He emphasized the “great evils thathad followed the Rent Restrictions Acts which had placed housebuildingon an uneconomic basis. The present scheme would perpetuate some ofthe evils of that system.” In his view, it was better to put public money intonew housing because this would act on the housing shortage, and“multiplication of houses would depreciate the value of existing ones andwould increasingly tend to make owners put their own houses in properrepair”.[18]

Chamberlain eventually got his Bill through as the Housing (RuralWorkers) Act 1926, but faced with such difficulties how was it possible tocontemplate reconditioning in urban areas? The problem, evidently, didnot lie mainly in an assessment of the condition of dwellings: politiciansand the public were quite prepared to accept that there were houses thatmight be improved, as well as those that should be cleared. There was, ofcourse, a question of priorities, nonetheless the principal problemconcerned the question of who should pay, and how this would react onthe rest of the housing market. In fact, the “slum prevention” proposals forurban areas met with general acceptance from the Cabinet in 1926,because they could be presented as an intervention outside of andseparate from normal housing economics. These proposals remained,


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however, very much in outline form, and the difficulties they presentedwere kept largely hidden from view. Much the same might be said of themore elaborate 1929 memorandum, although this was to form the basis ofthe housing section of the Conservative manifesto.

The Chamberlain scheme was developed from the Unhealthy AreasCommittee proposals. Councils would compulsorily purchase blocks ofproperty for reconditioning, but now they were to cede control to a specialcommission which would be responsible for the management of thehouses. In the 1929 version, the “slum prevention” proposals were tooperate alongside slum clearance, and both were to be encouraged by ahigher level of subsidy. It was argued, however, that “slum clearancebeing necessarily slow, tedious and costly, and presenting even whencompleted no very striking and attractive picture, is in the nature of thingsnever likely to be very popular among local authorities”.[19] No doubtChamberlain concurred with the views expressed by F.E. Fremantle, aclose associate at this time:

we may be compelled to build yet more blocks of five and even anoccasional block of ten storeys in expiation of last century’s errors. …But within the next half century it seems not improbable that suchbuildings will be looked upon as atrocities, and denounced asvertical slums.[20]

Slum clearance would therefore have a limited rôle, whereas the slumprevention proposals were meant to deal with “extensive areas”. In these,a more systematic reconditioning could be carried out than was achievedthrough enforcement notices. Chamberlain emphasized, “it must beremembered that at the root of the slum problem lies the question ofmanagement.” This had often led in the past to “carelessness anddestructiveness on the part of slum tenants, followed by deterioration ofproperty, and the lowering of the general standards of theneighbourhood”.[21] In turn, faulty management was linked to “the factthat the ownership of such property in the dark places of our large townsis divided up to a bewildering extent”.[22] Instead, it was necessary that“over a really considerable area there should be a uniform system ofmanagement, at once firm and sympathetic, which may raise the wholetone and atmosphere of the neighbourhood and convert slum tenants intoself respecting and careful householders”. Local authorities were not to beentrusted with this task. That would mean “an enormous addition to thenumber of municipal tenants”, and it was essential for their “material andmoral welfare” that such tenants be removed from “politicalexploitation”.[23] According to the Estates Gazette, they were to be “relieved


46

from that electoral pressure which has had such unhappy consequences incertain poor law areas”.[24] Instead, a commission would manage theproperty through women house managers operating on Octavia Hill lines.There would be limited reconditioning but, more importantly, “an attemptto deal with the human problem by the education of the tenant to a higherstandard”.[25]

The Chamberlain scheme relied enormously on this managementfactor. Aimed at the poorest tenants, it necessarily involved some of theoldest and poorest houses. There was a danger that, without considerablymore improvement than was envisaged under the Octavia Hill system,commissions would be left holding property that was far fromcommendable. This was all the more likely in that there seemed to be noconcurrent proposals for the relief of overcrowding. It was still envisagedthat ultimately the areas would be redeveloped, if only because this was anecessary device to reduce the purchase price. Otherwise, the “slumprevention” proposals had now become much more detached from anyplanned decentralization. This, and the more hostile attitude to localauthorities, were the principal changes from the Unhealthy Areas Report.

Whatever the efficacy of “slum prevention”, it also raised seriousproblems with the owners. They were looking to Chamberlain for relief onthe subject of compensation, and it was from this angle that he drew muchsupport. The existing compensation code favoured clearance rather thanimprovement, being based on the principle that houses could becondemned as unfit for habitation. Moreover, this formed a clear basis forcompulsory acquisition. It was more difficult to draw up provisions wherebuildings continued in use, yet this seemed to be essential to theeconomics of the scheme. The 1929 plans were to be based on the schemeoutlined in the Unhealthy Areas Report, which had suggested marketvalue compensation, reduced to about one half by giving the buildings alife of ten years. Commenting on this, Gibbon remarked that “the manwho has been fobbed off with half market value and sees the localauthority still using the property for the same purpose…may notunreasonably cry out that he has been the victim of confiscation”.[26] Thecriteria for establishing improvement areas would certainly not have beeneasy to establish in practice, and equally it would have been difficult toseparate “improvement” and “clearance areas”. Any radical change incompensation might undermine the financial basis of rebuilding, andonce let go it would be unlikely that such terms could be re-established.These were weighty issues and explain why no proposals wereforthcoming before the 1929 elections, and why even then much fleshneeded to be put on the bones. In the event, it was the Labour Party thatformed the new government and adopted a different line, but all the


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difficulties just mentioned were to return to plague the Moyne Committeea few years later.

Decentralization and the Greenwood Act

By the late 1920s, the dominance of progressive policies was beingchallenged. On the one hand, there was a view that the edge was beingtaken off the housing shortage, and that subsidies should be lowered toallow private enterprise to push down market. On the other hand, therewas also a view that more direct action should be taken against the slums,so that the progressive push to the suburbs threatened to be squeezedbetween these positions. The London Labour Party, as inheritor of theProgressive tradition, contributed little in defence, although a smallLondon element was retained through Booth’s old lieutenant Llewellyn-Smith who continued to support a suburban solution in the New survey ofLondon life and labour. Outside London, the progressive case remainedmuch stronger, both within and without the Labour Party. Its strongestdefence, and attempt to adapt it to new circumstances, came from E.D.Simon, the Liberal spokesman and former chairman of the ManchesterHousing Committee.

Progressive doctrine had held that housing need was not confined tothe slums, especially if the latter were defined by the criteria of the slumclearance legislation. Overcrowding, in particular, was more widelyspread, and Llewellyn-Smith f ound some support for this in his survey ofnew LCC tenants 1918–29. He compared the inhabitants of the cottageestates with those of the “block” estates, the latter containing a largeproportion of slum clearance tenants. The median income of the chiefearner on the cottage estates, at 75s. per week, was much above that in theblock estates at 60s. 6d. He went on, however, to discuss “the curious factthat the families moving into the cottage estates were living previouslyunder conditions of greater crowding than the tenants of blockdwellings”. The cottage estate tenants had been living at an average of 1.92persons per room, and 65 per cent of them at more than two per room. Hedrew the conclusion that

since of all housing defects overcrowding is admittedly the mostserious, the cottage estates appear to be vindicated as an essentialelement in the solution of the housing problem. They have providedan outlet for numerous families who, while ready and able to affordbetter homes at a distance, had hitherto been condemned by theshortage to live under conditions of serious congestion.[27]


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Simon, in his prolific writings, stressed that “merely to meet the economicdemand of those who are prepared to pay economic rents for houses is nosolution of the housing problem”. He held to two basic tenets ofprogressivism: the stress on overcrowding, and hence on housing supply,and an insistence on high standards. He took pride in post-war working-class houses and thought that “if we can continue building houses of thisstandard until every family could live in a house of this sort, we shall havedealt finally and satisfactorily with the housing problem.” However, hewas equally clear that new methods were needed to advance this levelling-up process, since “we are well on the way to solving the housing problemso far as the clerk and artisan are concerned. But we have done nothing forthe poorer workers.” His solution was to embrace firmly subsidies, and touse them in a more directed manner so as to provide lower-paid workerswith suburban houses at below 10s. per week rental. One way of doingthis was to use a system of child allowances, and he also supported raterelief, within a framework of regulated rents.[28]

Simon did not approve of Chamberlain’s slum policies, but looked backfavourably on Manchester’s pre-war attempts to enforce improvementson landlords at their own expense. Houses had deteriorated since the warbecause such policies had fallen into abeyance in the housing shortage.The ultimate solution was rebuilding, but for the moment this should beconfined to the worst cases. Indeed, “one of the real difficulties in dealingeffectively with the slum problem was the popularity of the phrase ‘slumclearance’”. The slum was “not…principally a problem of destroying badhouses but rather a problem of building good ones”. “The only way to dealwith the slum problem is to build new houses of good standard, and undersuch conditions that the slum dweller can afford to live in them. When thathas been done, there will be little difficulty in pulling down the slum”.[29]

There was, however, now an important locational problem for theprogressives to f ace. At the turn of the century they had accepted that thepoor could not be moved out of the inner city, but argued that there wereplenty of others who could. Working with the grain of the market theycould achieve more than working against it. The effects ofsuburbanization on the inner city were presented as benign, becausecompetition would force qualitative improvements on the landlords aswell as better space standards. By the late 1920s such a wholly beneficialscenario seemed much less plausible. Arguably, inner city landlords werestill protected from competition, but certainly any improvement inhousing quality seemed further off than ever. It seemed likely that goingwith the market and digging down yet deeper into the class strata wouldleave a poorer population that would make such improvement even moredifficult.


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Equally, moving the poorer sections of the population to the suburbsremained problematic. Greenwood, in 1925, had spelt out some of thedifficulties. A product of “a century of decay and neglect”, “the slum is nota mere excrescence which can be cut away by a simple surgical operation.It is an institution which has become firmly rooted and worked its wayinto the life of every town.” It affected not only house owners andemployers but, for example, “the religious community which would loseits membership if the slum population were dispersed.” Above all, for theinhabitants themselves, “all their interests, their friends and relatives arecentred in it or in the contiguous districts, while the wage earners are oftenemployed near at hand.”[30] There were difficult problems of economicand social adjustment, particularly if resources allowed poor commandover transport. Simon acknowledged these points, but argued that themain factor was financial, and this could be solved more easily in thesuburbs than in situ. Cases of difficulties in the outmovement of slumclearance tenants at Hulme (1925) and Stockton (1927) (to be discussed inChapter 6) did not solve the debate, since both brought big jumps in rent.Moreover, that kind of displacement involved a large element ofcompulsion. One great advantage of slum clearance, however, was that itcould provide rebuilding sites in the inner city, allowing many inhabitantsto be rehoused in their old districts, and if tenements were admitted thisproportion could be large.

In 1929 the return of a Labour Government with Liberal support gavethe left a renewed opportunity to institute their own housing policies.Greenwood, the new housing minister, adopted a three-pronged attack.One part was slum clearance. The second was a renewal of the councilhousing eff ort in the suburbs, promoted by the continuance of theWheatley subsidy at existing levels despite lower building costs, and byrequiring councils to draw up a quinquennial plan to meet their housingneeds. The third prong was to be town planning. Originally, Greenwoodintended to prepare a Housing and Town Planning Bill, but he took adviceto separate the two. In later introducing the Town Planning Bill he tookpains to reconnect the themes: “the planning of built areas is a necessarycorollary of any legislation designed to make a definite attack upon theslums… areas which are cleared of slum property should be developed onsound, sane and economical lines, and in the rehousing…the localauthorities should act upon a definite plan”.[31] Generally, his townplanning poli cies were decentralist in tone and akin to the Chamberlainview. In all, two of Greenwood’s prongs were firmly in the progressivetradition. The third, slum clearance, was not, but even there Greenwoodwas to include a number of progressive themes.


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Ministry civil servants were still firmly wedded to the Chamberlainapproach to the slum. Greenwood was advised that the cost of slumclearance on any extensive scale was “really prohibitive and certainly outof all proportion to the benefits obtained in the number of slum dwellersrehoused and the amount of overcrowding abated”. He thus had littledifficulty in seeking to minimize public expenditure by emphasizing theresponsibility of the landlord for dealing with slum conditions. Twopossibilities were put forward. The first, a pooling arrangement underwhich owners would be made jointly responsible for financing rebuilding,was thought impracticable. The second was to try a “clearance anddemolition procedure only”. This was “a very attractive proposal” whichmight be made to work, although local authorities thought it “so drastic asto be likely to defeat the object of getting on with slum clearance”.[32]Greenwood defended such provisions as “frankly designed to enable localauthorities…to secure the removal of a bad slum without being obliged toincur enormous capital expenditure”.[33]

This procedure was an important part of the Bill, but it only made sensein terms of an overall strategy of decentralization. Local authorities wouldhave to rehouse the displaced, and the future use of the cleared sites wasproblematic. Civil servants considered that “a considerable amount ofderelict property, worthless except for site value would be left in the handsof private owners. There is little doubt, however, that the private marketwould quickly take advantage of the situation and find the proper use forthe sites”, subject to any planning that the local authorities might beempowered to enforce.[34] In reality, however, owners would be placed invery varying situations. In some cases, especially on small sites, theremight be no practicable use for the land, the owners would receive nocompensation, and the site remain unused. In other cases, land might beredeveloped for commercial uses at substantial advantage to the owner,with all the restrictions of the Rent Acts removed. It was noted that theexisting type of clearance scheme would “still be necessary in some cases,and probably generally in London, where rehousing on the cleared slumareas is considered necessary”.[35]

The constraints of capital expenditure on slum clearance were also themajor factor in considerations of compensation. Here, Greenwood’sapproach can be seen mainly as a defence of the settlement of 1919. Thecentral principle of site-value compensation for unfit housing was retained. More surprisingly, there was to be no reapportionment betweenthe various interests, and although provisions were made for tradedisturbance, they were left to the discretion of the local authority. Thereduction factor was retained. At one level Greenwood simply rejected theowners’ demands: “there may be here and there a hard case, there are


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hundreds of thousands of hard cases of slum tenants with whom I ammore concerned”.[36] However, some concessions were made onprocedure which might exclude more houses from the unfit category:clearance areas were to be more tightly drawn, with greater flexibility asto the number of houses each contained, and more formally separatedfrom the “added lands” or fit property taken to make a scheme efficient.These matters will be discussed further in Chapter 5. The net result,however, was again to increase the likelihood of producing small andscattered clearance schemes rather than very extensive areas of land forrebuilding.

Greenwood saw the slum problem as primarily one of rehousing, andthe centrepiece of his Bill was therefore the provision of rehousingsubsidies. Chamberlain had already envisaged increasing the governmentproportion of costs from half to two thirds, a measure thought necessary tostimulate local authority action. Civil servants, however, put upconsiderable resistance to the Greenwood proposals on two grounds. Thefirst was that the higher level of subsidies was explicitly linked to a desireto reduce rents. It was argued that “artificial reductions in rent in theinterests of low-paid wage earners would tend to reduce the standards ofrents generally, thus casting an unnecessary burden on the community.”The proposed rent allowance would be “almost undisguisedly a subsidyin aid of wages”, and “to subsidize the wages of a portion of the poorseems indefensible, especially if the only criteria…is to be residence in aslum followed by residence in a local authority house”. However, it wasaccepted that the type of rebuilding could be “very little different from theordinary non-parlour houses built by local authorities”, thereforesubsidies had to be accepted as a necessary part of the Bill. Probably halfthe displaced slum tenants would require an extra subsidy, the statemeeting two-thirds of the estimated deficit on each person displaced andrehoused. This gave rise to a second, linked problem in the Civil Serviceview—“that local authorities should differentiate between tenants of whatmust in the main be very much the same class of house according to theability of the tenant to pay.” It was a difficulty that might be overcome byflexibility, leaving “as much freedom as possible to the local authorities”.Differential rents were not to be imposed. Moreover, “it is not intendedthat the grant be dependent on the actual individuals displaced beinggiven accommodation in the new house”.[37]

The Bill was explicitly formulated in terms of a norm of suburbanhousing and, perhaps for the first time in such legislation, London wastreated as a special case apart from the main problem. Greenwood was nota London MP, the LCC were in the hands of the opposition and althoughhe consulted them, a larger part was played by the Association of


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Municipal Corporations, led by Miles Mitchell of Manchester. The mainreason for this approach, however, was simply that London was the mostintractable area to a decentralist approach and was therefore set apart as aspecial case. At a conference attended by LCC leaders in March 1930,Greenwood dealt with

the case of which London was the most outstanding example, butwhich also occurred in Liverpool and might arise elsewhere. Hedistinctly did not encourage rehousing on the cleared site, the landwas very expensive and each case must be sanctioned by theMinistry. Housing would have to be in tenement or block dwellingsof four or five storeys high. In cases where the Minister was satisfiedthat rehousing was necessary on site, he was prepared to offer anadditional sum per head.[38]

This amounted to 25s in addition to the basic subsidy of £2 5s, and it wasthe first time in which such an explicit subsidy for expensive land enteredinto legislation.

The final part of the Bill made provisions for Improvement Areas.These, on the one hand, provided a counter-model to Chamberlain’sapproach to the same question. They were “the only scientific form ofreconditioning”. The local authorities would declare such areas, deal withovercrowding and environmental improvement and then “say to thelandlord…you must put this house into repair…and you must notovercrowd it any more”.[39] On the other hand, Improvement Areas werealso connected with another of Greenwood’s concerns:

I suppose it is clear that local authorities who provide additionalhouses to cream off the surplus population in the semi-slum will beeligible for the slum grant…we discussed the case of middle-classhouses now sheltering three or perhaps more families…which mightbe alright for two families…this sort of case should be covered.[40]

The problem here was how to define overcrowding, and how to attachthe extra subsidies to a specific group of the population. Dealing withImprovement Areas was a convenient way of doing this, just as slumclearance areas allowed extra subsidies to be attached to a particulargroup.

Greenwood’s Act was therefore a compromise, but a compromisewhich attempted to deal more directly with the slum, while preserving asmuch as possible of the decentralist case, and continuing to place much ofthe onus of responsibility on the landlord. It did not satisfy purists such as


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Wheatley, for whom it was another example of “short rations of mysocialism from the present Government”. The slum was “a recurringfactor and it will go on as long as we set aside for a particular section of thecommunity an inferior quality of housing accommodation”. This wouldinevitably be the result of the new proposals. On the other hand, anemphasis on the gradual levelling up to a classless standard for everyonemeant taking an apparently hard-nosed attitude to the poor thatcuriously resembled the arguments of civil servants. Wheatley thought it“not…a wise thing to reward people for living in lowly conditions….There is another section of the working class who would like to have avoice in the matter… it seems to me that the slum dwellers are to get all thehouses and other people will not get them unless they pass through theslum.”[41]

The potential effects of Greenwood’s legislation were shown in thequinquennial plans drawn up by the local authorities. As in all suchexercises a great deal of optimism was displayed, as well as muchvariation in approach, but the figures do provide some very generalindications. Slum clearance was projected to displace about 472,000people in the urban areas. The “big five” outside London—Birmingham,Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield—planned to displace 86,130between them. They were to build 49,950 houses under the Wheatley Actand 20,300 under the Greenwood.[42] The LCC promised to complete itsexisting clearance schemes, and to take on a further 27 areas containing30,000 people. This was essentially the November 1929 list nowprogrammed more tightly. Improvement Area procedures were to betested, and building continued on central block estates. However, thecouncil refused to consider the type of sites used in the central flatprogramme for slum dwellers as they “mainly consisted of housesstanding in large gardens situated in districts of good residentialcharacter”.[43] It was thus forced to conclude that there were insufficientsites within the county to enable the council to accelerate its clearanceprogramme. One third of the clearance rehousing was likely to beprovided off-site, of which 70 per cent might have to be found out-county.Indeed, the greatest capital expenditure was to go on the expansion of thesuburban estates, with 14,000 new houses at Becontree and St Helier, and11,700 on new sites. This was the easiest and most cost-effective way ofproviding a much increased hous ing programme.

With the onset of the financial crisis, it was a programme never to becompleted. The year 1931 saw a disastrous performance by Labour in thepolls following the formation of the National Government. In Londonthey lost further ground on the LCC, and in the later borough electionswere reduced to the three core riverside boroughs of Bermondsey,


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Deptford and Poplar. It was at these borough elections that Labour firstput forward the idea that

in time London will have to be redeveloped and replanned, andalready this problem presses in the older and more congestedLondon boroughs…. By big slum clearance schemes andredevelopment over wide areas of London we can gradually make anew and finer London from the old.[44]

For the moment, however, their opponents were in charge. The new LCCHousing Chairman, H.R. Selley, was a leading member of the PropertyOwners Protection Association and his views on the municipal rôle werein marked contrast to those of the Labour Party:

municipalities should erect homes for those of low earning capacityand many whose families had to be assisted by the poor law. Thiswas the class which the municipality should house, educate them tobecome clean, self-reliant and less troublesome tenants.[45]

Although Selley’s views were in abstract similar to those of Levita, theylacked the latter’s patrician colouring, more closely representing localConservative politics and the views of local residents or ratepayersassociations. Among these bodies, longstanding opposition to municipalschemes or interference with property owners was strengthened by theprospect of increased activity under the Labour Government, thenlegitimized by the economies that were thought necessary thereafter.

In October 1932, the Report of the Committee on Local GovernmentExpenditure (Ray Committee) seemed to endorse such an approach,arguing that the better-off tenants in council properties should either payhigher rents, buy their houses, or vacate the property. This report was ofspecial significance for London as its chairman was the leader of the LCC.Pointing to recent reductions in housing costs, it called for the repeal of theWheatley Acts and a return to the pre-war position in which “the normalprovision of working-class houses (by whomsoever undertaken) shouldcease to be a charge on either the taxpayer or the ratepayer”. The 1930 Actsubsidies should also be reduced in line with lower costs and, in order tocreate a freer housing market, the Rent Restrictions Acts should berepealed. The Ray Committee also made important recommendations onpoor relief, calling for the “almost complete removal of the whole problemfrom the sphere of both local and national politics”, which would lead to“substantial reductions in expenditure”. There was “a grave danger of apermanent pauper class growing up, marrying and rearing families at the


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expense of the ratepayers”.[46] The Ray Report was, therefore, a frontalassault on the principles of Labour local government. It was from thispoint that new foundations for housing were to be built, starting with theHousing (Financial Provisions) Act of 1933.

Notes

1 Ministry of Health. Annual reports esp. 12th Report, 1931, Cmnd 3937.2 The general council housing programme is treated in Bowley, M. 1945.

Housing and the state, 1914–1944. London: Allen & Unwin; Burnett, J. 1978. Asocial history of housing, 1815–1985, 2nd edn. London: Methuen; and Jennings,J.H. 1971. Geographical implications of the municipal housing programme inEngland and Wales 1919–1937, Urban Studies 8, 121–38.

3 Ministry of Health. 12th Report op. cit.4 Levita, C. 1928. Housing. Municipal Reform election pamphlet. Guildhall

Library LMS 78, 20, 25–6, 35–6.5 HC 6 Dec (7) 1922.6 ibid., 5 April (20) 1922.7 ibid., 6 June (3 xxiii) 1923.8 ibid., 15 Dec. (6) 1920.9 Estates Gazette 105, 1925, 190, 199. Report of Property Owners’ Protection

Association meeting.10 Estates Gazette 107, 1926, 331.11 St Marylebone Borough Council, minutes, 15 July 1926.12 MM 12 April (31) 1927.13 GLRO London Labour Party ECD 3237.14 Finnigan, R. 1984. Council housing in Leeds 1919–39. In Councillors and

tenants: local authority housing in English cities 1919–39, M.J.Daunton (ed.), 113.Leicester: Leicester University Press.

15 HC 24 Oct. (55) 1928; London News Feb. 1930; MM 23 July (8) 1929.16 PRO CAB 27309 CP 30 (26); Wilding, P.R. 1970. Government and housing: a

study of the development of social policy 1906–1939. D.Phil. thesis Universityof Manchester.

17 Hansard 198, cols. 2841–2, 3 August 1926.18 PRO CAB 27309 op. cit.19 PRO CAB 24/202 CP 100 (29).20 Fremantle, F.E. 1927. The housing of the nation, 88. London: Philip Allen.21 PRO CAB 24/202 op. cit.22 Chamberlain, N. 1927. Introduction. In Fremantle op. cit, x–xi.23 PRO CAB 24/202 op. cit.24 Estates Gazette 107, Jan. 1926, 159.25 PRO CAB 24/202 op. cit.26 PRO HLG/47/700 memo by Gibbon 13 May 1921.


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27 Llewellyn-Smith, Sir H.L. 1931 New survey of london life and labour, London: P.S.King, Vol. 6, 213, 215.

28 Simon, E.D. 1929a. How to abolish the slums. London: Longmans, 1–2; Simon,E.D. 1929b. Housing and the general election. Contemporary Review 135, 564.

29 Simon, E.D., 1930. Slum clearance. Nineteenth century and After 107, 331; How toabolish the slums, 3; Simon E.D. op. cit., 1928. The need for a Royal Commissionon housing. Contemporary Review 133, 20.

30 Greenwood, A. 1925. The problem of the slums. Contemporary Review 127, 441.31 Hansard 251 col. 198, 15 April 1931; for a detailed account of the development

of planning legislation 1931–2 see Garside, P. 1980. Town planning in London,1930–1961, PhD thesis, University of London. 117–52.

32 PRO HLG 29/170 Housing Bill 1930 memo by Gibbon 19 July 1929; by Forber30 July 1929.

33 Hansard 237 col. 1811, 7 April 1930.34 PRO HLG/170 note 19 July 1929.35 ibid.36 Hansard 237 col. 1817, 7 April 1930.37 PRO HLG/170 memo 9 July 1929; memo 25 Oct. 1929; parliamentary counsel

26.9.29 6b.38 HC 26 March (12–15) 1930.39 Hansard 237 col. 1814, 7 April 1930.40 PRO HLG 29/170 Minister’s minute.41 Hansard 237 cols 2035, 2013–14, 2020, 7 April 1930.42 Ministry of Health 1931. 12th Annual Report, Cmnd 3937, appendix 5.43 HC 16 Oct. (11)1930.44 GLRO, London Labour Party, ECD 4686.45 Estates Gazette 109, 1927, 331.46 Report of the Committee on Local Expenditure 1932. Cmnd 4200.

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C H A P T E R 5Money matters:

property values, compensationand housing costs

Property and finance are at the heart of the question of slum housing andits politics, but they pose complex questions, not easy to discuss. A seriesof boxes needs to be opened out, increasing in their implications andgenerally in the uncertainty of the conclusions that can be reached abouttheir contents. The first box concerns the slum clearance compensation code,its effect on various property interests and on the cost of housing sites. Thesecond concerns the wider array of measures designed to keep houses inproper repair and to enforce standards. The third concerns the propertymarket generally, and particularly its relations with the factors in the twoother boxes. The narrower effects on property of slum clearance, forinstance, might be judged by relating compensation payments to marketvalues, but was the whole market affected by the compensation code or bywider sanitary provisions? How was the property market at its lower levelsaffected by such matters as the Rent Acts and suburbanization? Theapproach adopted is to deal in this chapter with the compensation codeand its politics, and to raise some of the general issues relating the themesof the book to the property market. The first section concentrates on a factualpresentation, and this is f ollowed by a wider discussion. Some treatmentof the question of repairs and improvement and an updating on the 1930sis left to Chapter 9, which is closely linked to the present chapter.

Prices, compensation and housing costs

The sums awarded to property owners, their relation to market values andthe effects on the cost of housing sites for rebuilding are the three linkedfactors which dominate the compensation question. The provisions of the1919 Act worked on the principle that housing judged unfit for human

Money matters: property values, compensation and housing costs

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habitation had no value other than that of the site and of the materials ofthe building. This sounds drastic, but the theory of valuation held (andstill holds) that as a property deteriorates with age its value gradually revertsto that of its site. However, theory might not correspond with practice,depending on the condition of the market, the nature of the site and thenature of the houses included in a scheme. Moreover, the Act also madeanother important change by including a reduction factor to eliminate anycommercial values higher than the value of the site for housing purposes.Finally, the various interests in property were affected very differently, withmajor consequences for leaseholders and traders.

The reduction factor only applied where the land was reused forhousing purposes, and a council could therefore avoid its use altogether ifit chose to do so. The reduction particularly affected property well situatedfor commercial purposes, and generally that near the centre of cities. Itwas in London that the reduction factor had its greatest impact, sincecommercial values were greatest there, and clearance sites had to besubstantially used for rehousing. The possible impact is shown byministry calculations that in the 1890s Boundary Street scheme a 53 percent reduction would have been necessary to lower the commercial valueof the site to the value for housing alone.[1] However, the reduction factorwas difficult to calculate, and easy to manipulate for administrativeconvenience, so that from the beginning its use was softened in responseto pressure from the owners. The LCC agreed with the ministry not topress the reduction factor too hard. At Basing Place, Camberwell, it wasclaimed that the proper reduction factor was 36 per cent, but the LCC hadused only 10 per cent.[2] A figure of about 20 per cent was more usual inLCC schemes, ranging up to 30 or even 40 per cent for the most centralsites.

There is no reason why the market value of a property considered as asite should be related precisely to its market value when sold at auction. Inthe compensation for unfit houses, properties were valued by the squarefoot, taking into account area and the nature of the frontages. At auction,the level of existing rents was a primary factor. Calculations based onrentals do, however, provide some standard of comparison. Figures takenfrom LCC papers relating to three early schemes suggest that the yearspurchase of the gross rental of condemned freehold property varied from0.94 to 3.69 years, averaging about 2.0. Half the cases were settled at 1.7 to2.3 years purchase.[3] Compared with a mean of 8.96 years purchase forthe gross rental of condemned residential property at Boundary Street thisshows a substantial reduction. However, a great deal had been happeningto general property values since the mid-1890s, and a comparison alsoneeds to be made with current market valuations. Table 5.1 shows the

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gross rentals, purchase prices and years purchase of freehold properties inweekly tenancy from two groups of locations. The first, in Bermondsey,Bethnal Green and Stepney, represents the core areas for slum propertyand clearance action. The second, in Battersea, Fulham and Peckham,represents areas more recently built and little affected by clearance in theinter-war period, while still containing much working-class property.[4]

In 1923–5 the mean years purchase of the gross rental in the first or “core”locations was 4.24 and in the second 5.48. In the core locations thereforethe compensation value of unfit property in terms of years purchase was alittle under half the market rate for working-class property as a whole. AtBoundary Street condemned houses had been purchased at some 70 percent of the years purchase of freehold weekly property in Bethnal Green,then about 12.70. Special slum clearance compensation, therefore, had itseffect, but the key movement in property values was widely spreadaffecting weekly tenancies generally rather than slum properties inparticular. The larger part of the decrease occurred between the middle1890s and 1911–13, years purchase in the “core” areas being then reducedby half. This is fully in line with Offer’s findings, as one would expect sincethe calculations are made from much the same data.[5] Afterwards, therewas a further reduction in years purchase values of one third by 1923–5.This kept property prices down to low levels despite the 40 per centincrease in rents allowed by the government from 1920.

The general decline in property values was an important factor in the

Note: Locality group A includes Bermondsey, Bethnal Green and Stepney/Limehouse. Locality group B includes Battersea, Fulham and Peckham.

(see references note 4)Source: Land and house property yearbook.

Table 5.1 Freehold rents and auction prices in London, 1892–1925


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politics of compensation. Owners often compared their compensationmoney with their purchase price. When offered, say, £70 for a propertythat had cost £300, the greater part of the difference was due to the generalshift in the market, but the case could be presented as a spectacularexample of “confiscation” under the site-value provisions. Slum clearanceintervened to make the decline in capital value real, and to exclude anypossible rebound if the Rent Acts were further relaxed. Site-valuecompensation thus compounded changes in the market, and where thereduction factor was important, owners could lose a good deal if theirpurchase price had taken account of the potential commercial value. Inseven freehold claims reported at Carlisle Street (St Marylebone),mortgages of some £2,240 were outstanding while the compensationoffered totalled £940. This was despite the fact that the reduction factorwas applied at 20 per cent instead of a real 59 per cent.[6] Moreover,mortgage liabilities were not cancelled by the compulsory purchase,although the mortgagor lost the building which secured the loan.

An important feature of the compensation code was that, unlike theoriginal LCC proposals, it did not terminate existing contracts andapportion the values. Instead, where property was leased, the ground renthad first claim on the value of the site, the leaseholder receiving only thatwhich was left over, if anything. The ground landlord was therefore theprincipal beneficiary of the way in which the Acts were applied, althoughthe extent to which the market value of ground rents was recovered wouldvary according to the length of lease and the operation of the reductionfactor. The leaseholders were among the principal losers, and their casesmake up a large proportion of those to whom the owners’ representativesgave prominence. Two important judgments which established thelegality of the procedures were those of Gardbaum and Lithman. MrsGardbaum had 11 houses at Brady Street in Bethnal Green, and claimed£3,000 for a lease with 32 years unexpired. There was a claim of £989 forthe superior interests, which were awarded £770 and Mrs Gardbaum £44.Two years later she died insolvent in Germany.[7] Lithman had a 60 yearlease on 41 houses at Ellen Street (Stepney). He claimed to have bought hislease for £5,500 and to have a net income of £500 a year, which if correctwas almost twice the annual income accruing to the ground landlord fromthe £276 ground rent. Compensation of £3,000 was paid for the property.However, all this went to the freeholder, and Lithman’s lease was held tohave no value. He had an outstanding mortgageof £1,000.[8]

In most slum clearance areas such leases as still existed usually had onlya relatively short time to run and low capital value. Trading and businessinterests, however, had a much greater financial stake, and their treatmenthad an important effect on the overall cost of schemes, since shops and

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businesses of various kinds often lay adjacent to, or mixed with, slumhousing. If property was condemned, then considerable losses werepossible under the site-value and reduction factor provisions. Businessesthat held a lease might suffer in the same way as other leaseholders. In allcases, business usages might be affected by the loss of compensationusually paid for “goodwill” and disturbance. This was established in lawby the Northwood case, which involved a public house. The arbitratorawarded £200 for a leasehold interest, but nothing for trade disturbance orgoodwill. The LCC calculated that this decision saved them £15,000 on theBrady Street site alone.[9]

The extent of the loss to individual usages can be seen from thetreatment of the “blue” premises, which escaped condemnation but wereincluded in a scheme as “added lands”. Business users here were granted1.5 to 2 years profits f or goodwill and disturbance, which amounted in thecase of small shopkeepers to some £300-£600. Traders had often paid sucha sum in the purchase of their business, and would need to do so again tore-establish themselves. Even when the LCC erected shops in theredevelopment, often the rents of these new premises were beyond thecapacity to pay of the old traders. Two examples illustrate these points.Miss E. Eyre had a newsagent, tobacconist and confectioners shop at WareStreet (Shoreditch), and had paid £600 to take up the business eight yearspreviously. After clearance she moved to premises at an extra rent of 8s. aweek and the purchase money on the new business was £300. She wasgranted £100 ex gratia payment.[10] Joseph Katz, a shopkeeper to bedisplaced at Ossulston Street (St Pancras), wrote to the council:

the new shop you offer me will cost three times the rent of the oldone, with no cellar accommodation…a position outside the market,and the practical certainty of failure which will mean all the years Ihave spent building up my goodwill and living are absolutelywasted.[11]

As it was particularly important for traders to have their premises placedin the blue category, a more flexible approach to this categorization wasone of the main ways in which the compensation question could be easedby administrative procedures. On the residential side, too, the exclusion ofmore properties from condemnation was the principal demand of theowners. Their organizations wanted explicit recognition of a type of housethat was “fit in itself”, but included in the condemned area by reason of“closeness, narrowness and bad arrangement”. As will be discussed later,this was something the authorities were reluctant to concede in principle,but again it was a point on which some administrative flexibility might be


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allowed. A few properties, however, could push up costs quite considerably.Thus six blue houses at Hickman’s Folly (Bermondsey) were bought for£1,200, or six years purchase of the gross rental. A blue bootmakers premisesin the same area cost £2,200; a cabinet factory at Ware Street £4,000, andtwo shops let on lease at Bell Lane £3,570.[12]

The ultimate effect of these factors on the cost of the first seven post-warclearance schemes in London is set out in Table 5.2. Comparable figuresfor Boundary Street and Tabard Street are also given. These costs includenot only property compensation but also transaction and other site costs.Very varying estimates for schemes were produced in this period as part ofa process of negotiation with the Ministry.[13] I shall use the highestfigures set out in the LCC publication Housing (1928) as probably beingmost comparable to the estimates produced by the council for previousand later schemes. It should be recognized that apart from any inaccuracyin the figures, the costs of clearance sites are difficult to compare. Eachoccupies a different position on the general land rent gradient, and localfactors could have considerable effect. One way of partially correcting forthese factors is to look at the costs per room demolished, which makessome allowance for different densities. The general position, however, isreasonably clear. There was a major fall in the cost of post-war schemescompared with Boundary Street. Even the very well situated Bell Lane sitewas reckoned at only half the value per acre that had been spent atBoundary Street. Costs per room in all schemes were also more thanhalved.

Table 5.2 Land costs in London clearance schemes 1922–5

Sources: LCC 1900. The housing question in London, 308–12; LCC 1928. Housing,31–2; LCC minutes. (see reference n. 13)

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It is known that the comparatively low numbers of blue propertiesaccounted for 36 per cent of the property compensation costs in theseschemes.[14] Originally, the ministry had begun bargaining at much lowerlevels, and the estimated costs probably already made some allowance forincreased administrative flexibility. The effects of the owners’ pressure are,however, seen more clearly in the figures that the ministry were preparedto allow for subsequent schemes which are illustrated in Table 5.3

The much higher costs for these schemes may owe something to favourablelocation in the case of Ossulston and Carlisle Streets, but the effects of thisshould have been lowered by the reduction factor. Political concessionsover compensation are certainly involved. Officials were already moreflexible in practice, and this was extended by ministerial judgments. Thusfar more changes from red to blue were made at Ossulston Street than theLCC had anticipated, reflecting the impact that owners made at the localinquiry.[15] It seems likely that the effect of changes made in the GreenwoodAct (1930) was often to formalize concessions that had effectively beenmade in administrative procedure beforehand.

Politics and finance

One of the major imponderables in the analysis of property trends in thisperiod concerns the interaction of political and economic factors. The onepolitical f actor that is clear, at least in its direct effects, is the introductionof rent control. This pegged down the prices of existing property, andopened up a large gap between new and old property prices, such as wasto emerge again after the Second World War. Government strategy wasgenerally to reduce this gap by increasing supply and lowering the cost ofnew housing. However, the main explanation usually offered for the lowcost of new property in the early 1930s is that developments in transportproduced a marked increase in the supply of land for building. Otherwise,

Table 5.3 Land costs in London clearance schemes 1926–8

Sources: LCC HC 10 Feb. (19) 1925; MM 15 May (9) 1928; HC 26 Dec. (16) 1927


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politics is usually mentioned in the negative sense: there were no planningcontrols to restrict greatly this additional supply of land. Given the majordevelopments of the period, a case can be made that transport, byestablishing low costs for new housing on the outskirts of cities, kept theprice of existing property down, and eventually allowed the gap betweenold and new property prices to be substantially closed, while keeping thelatter well below their levels at the end of the Victorian period.

If this is correct then the owner of old property could not blame hisconsiderable loss of asset value between 1900 and 1930 on politicalintervention. At most this would have brought down prices well belowtrend level from 1915 before they began to recover from 1920. However,the property owners’ organizations strongly linked their reversal offortunes to pressures arising within the political system that were directlyconsequent upon the introduction of universal suffrage:

where an electoral system allows representation without taxation,there will be an ever increasing predominance of political influencein the hands of persons who are not owners of property.[16]

Owners had felt themselves under the pressure of this political influencewell before 1915, and at a time when Rent Acts were hardly contemplated.A key point had been reached earlier when the Progressives had harnessedmunicipal trading in transport and housing to produce the first clearalternative to the supply of working-class housing by the private landlord.They too argued that improved transport was a key to lower housingcosts, but only if directed in such a way as to break down the landlords’monopoly. Looking back from 1930, a Progressive might maintain thatthis strategy had had a decisive influence since the turn of the century.Arguably, even where municipal developments were not themselvesdirectly responsible for increased supply of low-price houses, thechallenge they represented was important in bringing about changes inthe private sector in response.

Neither the “transport” nor the “political” factor can directly explainthe slump in property values before the First World War, because after1903 supply was generally decreasing. Either one has to argue that themarket anticipated a structural change, or else that what appearsempirically as a long-term downgrading of asset values came about by aninteraction of disparate factors. The latter seems the most likelyexplanation. Property values at the end of the Victorian period do not haveto be regarded as an unimpeachable yardstick. The years purchase thenoffered on the gross rental of old property represented an extremely lowrate of return, justifiable only in anticipation of future rent rises. There was

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therefore some speculative element, and equally a cyclical effect asDaunton has maintained.[17] Offer took the view that economic factorswere important in explaining the slump, and certainly economicperformance and a government strategy of deflation were relevant factorsin the 1920s. Offer’s main contribution, however, was to reintroducepolitics into the discussion of property values. Increased rates, themselvespartly due to social expenditure by councils might explain some of thedecrease, but they were only part of a much more widely ranging series ofeffects, which however are difficult or even impossible to quantify.Similarly, after the war political effects were not confined to rentrestriction; they operated on the whole universe of property values andhousing costs, but again in ways that are not easily isolated from otherfactors.

The Progressives in promoting their suburban strategy had explicitlyseen it as a way of avoiding the use of subsidies. They were to act asmunicipal traders in the market situation. Even when subsidies wereintroduced, a great advantage of their strategy was that by working withthe grain of the market large numbers of houses could be produced forrelatively little money. This was not, of course, true of the Addisonprogramme, but it was true of the Chamberlain and Wheatleyprogrammes, as Bowley noticed.[18] Moreover, applying subsidies to newhouses limited the extent of government commitment, which might evenbe eliminated depending on the results that private enterprise was able toachieve. However, whether by private or public production, governmentswere now committed to ensuring a high level of new house production,and this adversely affected the relative position of older housing,particularly as it was a wealthier clientele that was being drawn away.

If a government rôle in ensuring increased supply of houses was new,nineteenth-century practice had admitted public responsibility formaintaining qualitative standards of housing much more readily. This,however, consisted entirely of enforcing sanitary standards. It remainedthe standard doctrine in the 1920s: landlords were responsible for therepair of their properties. Built into this practice was an ultimate deterrent:the intervention of the state to close or remove insanitary houses. All theseprovisions were made with scrupulous attention to the nineteenth-century view of the way that markets should operate. As a result, publicinvestment only came into the system once rebuilding on slum sites wasadmitted, and then only at first in such a way as to be largely hidden fromview. Faced with pressures to relieve qualitative defects in housing,governments responded by attempting to force the market to take theminto account, and to value property accordingly. The ultimate position that


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a property might have no value other than its site fitted quite happily intothis strategy.

Daunton provides a three-fold typification of the private landlord inthis period: lower middle class, isolated from political influenceparticularly at national level, and wedded to a laissez-faire ideology.[19]The typification can, I think, be supported, although with certainqualifications. Property distributions are always highly asymmetrical, sothat whereas the largest number of owners are small men or women, alarge proportion of the property by value is held in comparatively largeestates. This was true even of slum property. Also, the landlords’ politicalinfluence was far from negligible. Their interests were represented at locallevel by such organizations as the London Property Owners ProtectionAssociation, and at national level by the National Federation of PropertyOwners. The activities of such figures as Edwin Evans and H.R. Selleyhave already been remarked, and the owners organizations hadrecognized spokesmen in both the Commons and the Lords. They hadclose links to the building societies, with many personalities performing arôle in both types of organization, and also broad support from theproperty professions. Despite this, they certainly thought of themselves asisolated and victimized: “today property owners have every reason toknow full well that if any capitalist interest is to be sacrificed theirs will bethe first to go.”[20]

An important factor in the failure of the private landlord to achievemore, despite relatively good political influence, was the inability to finda strategy that wider political interests could support. The ownersorganizations projected a total opposition to all forms of politicalintervention, and had an especial hatred of the municipalities. Even inrespect of town planning, which a politician such as Chamberlain saw asa means of promoting private enterprise, the federation’s Gazette in 1925saw the possible extension to built-up areas in the blackest possibleterms: “the object of course in applying town planning to built-up areasis to depreciate all property and all businesses so that they may beacquired by the Corporations for a mere fraction of their actualvalue.”[21] Not surprisingly, the only remedy such organizations offeredfor housing deficiencies was a return to pre-war conditions. Their onlyexplanation of the slum was to blame it on the tenants. In one sense theirappreciation of the situation was correct: their difficulties did stem fromthe increased political power of the tenants. But given this, they took ahigh risk strategy, for although the promised land of a return to pre-warconditions appeared several times on the horizon, it constantly retreatedfrom view.

However, the owners’ position is more understandable given the diffi

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culties of the alternatives. The concept of housing need which came tothe fore in the 1920s was not easy for them to handle. Subsidies appliedto redress this need, or even rate relief, had to be seen to benefit thetenant, and the private landlord could only become an agency throughwhich subsidies were directed if some form of rent regulation wereadopted. Subsidies, however, were not the only problem, for otherprojected ways of removing housing deficiencies might be equallypainful. There was already interest in the creation of large private orsemi-private organizations to build and manage houses, which couldrival councils in economic efficiency and management of tenants. Theordinary private landlord was, however, excluded from this thinking.Nor was there much salvation, as we have seen, in the more traditionalnineteenth-century responses to the question. The landlord’s bestultimate defence was that housing deficiencies simply reflected the wayin which income distributions operated in the housing market: that thelandlord was neither more nor less to blame for the slum than histenants. In this sense, the government having willed the end of removingthese deficiencies should also will the means. Money might then havebecome available for the improvement of existing houses, instead ofbeing applied only to increasing competition through new supply, or torebuilding after demolition. This is an argument to be taken up inChapter 9.

In the debate on compensation, the “penal” basis of the provisionsplayed a large part on the surface of the argument. This language occurredin the LCC’S original proposition to the government in 1919, and itundoubtedly had political appeal. Arguably, political factors also played apart in the treatment of the leaseholder, a frequent target for those whosought to assign blame for slum conditions to individual agents. Was itsimply fortuitous that so many of the principal test cases of the 1920sinvolved leaseholders with noticeably foreign names, presumably ofJewish origin? Behind the political play with responsibilities, however, laythe question of the cost of sites and the possibilities of effecting clearanceand rehousing. Cost was the LCC’S main motive in supporting the newcode, and it remained their main argument when in the late 1920s theyopposed any fundamental change. However, they were quite happy to tryand defuse political opposition by supporting a reapportionment of thereduced values among the various interests:

under the present basis of compensation freeholds are treated toogenerously, bearing in mind the evident intention of parliament thatthe owners of insanitary property…shall be penalised. [But]…we feelthat undue hardship is in many cases inflicted upon lessees.[22]


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The LCC recommended a compromise between site-value compensationand market values. The former, with its concomitant rigid divisionbetween fit and unfit, would be kept in place in order to keep overallcosts down. However, once the overall level of cost had been determined,it would be distributed to the various interests in proportion to the currentmarket value of their properties. This would bring advantages offlexibility: “properties of differing degrees of badness can bedistinguished… while…every interest in the property will receive somecompensation strictly in relation to the market value.” In the Lithmancase the leaseholder would have received a substantial amount—perhapsas much as £2,000—while the freeholder’s compensation would have beenconsiderably reduced.[23] The owners’ organizations, however, wereopposed to reapportionment. They were happy to use cases involvingleaseholders and traders as their main ammunition, but they did not wantany partial settlement that would make the achievement of root andbranch reform more difficult.

Another factor came into play in respect to reapportionment and thetreatment of traders, and was probably a reason why neither achievedmuch direct redress in law, despite support from the LCC and theAssociation of Municipal Corporations (AMC). This was the manner inwhich the legislation was mapped into the ordinary practice of Englishlaw. Here the position of the freeholder was paramount, and theprecarious position of leaseholders was only masked by the fact that inpractice the strict tenets of the law were not often put into effect. However,cases were reported in the 1920s whereby leaseholders were being forcedby their freeholders into expensive repairs for dilapidations, withoutwhich the freeholder could institute proceedings to obtain reversion of theproperty. The 1919 procedures had introduced the provision thatdwellings found to be unfit for human habitation had no value. Theeasiest way of concording the new compensation provisions to theexisting law was therefore to assume that the liability for the buildingsrested with the leaseholder, and that if the value of the buildings was lost,his share of the total compensation should be anything that remained inthe annual value of the land after the ground rent had been paid. The chiefvaluer was opposed to any alteration in this position. He advisedGreenwood: “I do not think there is much force in the complaints aboutthe lessees position. If the property is leased at a rent not less than theannual equivalent of the site value, he has no beneficial interest for whichhe is entitled to compensation.” Moreover, “there is no real difference inprinciple between ignoring the value of the structure and ignoring thebusiness carried out in it”.[24]

The legal basis of property ownership was also the basis of the financial

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security of property. The security of freehold ground rents contrasted withthe more insecure position of the leasehold, which in the case of poorerproperty was a risky venture from which high profits could be demanded.The holder of ground rents could be seen as someone who had investedmoney in a low-risk security, and should be protected, the leaseholder assomeone who had gambled and failed. This was, for example, the LCCvaluer’s reaction to the claims of a Brady Street lessee. He “took up in 1908a new lease for a term of 99 years on old and outworn property, whichobviously would not last out this further period, and presumably realisedhe was making a highly speculative venture”.[25] If leasehold was aspeculative tenure in the case of poor property, special slum clearanceprovisions could be seen as merely adding a new element of risk to thosepresented by the demands of the freeholder or sanitary inspector. It wasup to the market to adjust to take account of these provisions, as it did forother risks, although there would be transitional difficulties. The traderalso took a risk in locating his business in unfit premises. Administrativemeasures might be taken to see that business premises were more oftencounted as added lands, although many were still at risk, particularlywhere the premises were partly converted dwelling houses. Whereproperty was ruled unfit, there was to be no sullying of the site-valueprinciple through statutory right to trade compensation, but the localauthority might be officially empowered to make ex gratia payments inthis respect.

When an owners’ deputation met Greenwood in 1930 he told them that“it was essential that the necessary work of slum clearance should becarried out at minimum cost to the taxpayers and ratepayers”.[26] Theowners’ organizations recognized that they had been baulked by the localauthorities who “reiterated the plea to the Government that any alterationin the existing value of compensation would increase the cost of slumclearance to the local authorities and thus make the Bill unworkable”.[27]Indeed, the very strength of support for the owners within the propertyprofessions seemed to work against less draconian provisions. Civilservants advised Greenwood that it was essential not to leave matters tothe arbitrator:

the whole course of events prior to 1919…showed that the intentionsof Parliament had been completely defeated by…the failure to applya power to make deductions from full market value, and it was therealisation of the faults of this system which produced the rigiddistinction of the Act of 1919.[28]


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More flexible ways of procedure were rejected on the grounds that theywould simply produce a drift back to market values of a kind that failed totake sufficient account of the state of the property. It was thought that onlythe strongest of dividing lines would do the job, and the inevitabledifficulties, discrepancies and injustices of applying such a line in practicewould have to be overlooked.

The same grounds encouraged resistance to the idea that houses “fit inthemselves” should be excluded from site-value compensation. This wasone of the strongest arguments put by the owners, who condemned the“doctrine of environment”. Owners, they argued, should only be judgedaccording to whether they had kept their houses in repair, not according tothe situation of the house which was a matter beyond their control.However, the LCC was firmly opposed to any suggestion that houses bejudged “apart from their surroundings”. “It has in the past beenconsistently held that all houses in an unhealthy area contribute in greateror lesser degree to the insanitary conditions in the area.” “Any reversal ofthis principle…[would]…destroy the whole foundation upon whichschemes for the improvement of unhealthy areas have been based.”[29]Nonetheless, this was an issue on which governments felt sensitive. Whilerejecting the idea that narrowness, closeness and bad arrangement shouldnot be taken into account, the 1930 Act insisted that a clearance area mustconsist only of condemned property. The formal separation of clearanceareas and added lands did something to counter the landlords’ case. Theimpact of this in practice was minimized by the fact that clearance areascould vary in size (down to only two houses if necessary), and that severalclearance areas could be included in the same compulsory purchase order.

Abolition of the reduction factor was a popular target for reform amongcivil servants because it could be detached from the site-value principle,and had no equivalent in ordinary law. It was held to be “unfair” that theamount of compensation should depend on the future use of the land. Yetin some ways the reduction factor was one of the most defensible parts ofthe new procedures. After all, the necessity to use sites for rehousing wasthe fundamental factor behind the whole concept of clearance areas. Tovalue the sites as if they all had an effective commercial demand wasdoubtful practice in the context of “floating values”, and was becomingeven more doubtful in the economic context of the inter-war period. Therewas certainly an arbitrary factor involved, in that sites not required forfuture housing use might receive a higher valuation, but again thisarbitrariness was also present in the normal workings of the market—notall land could capture a floating value. Moreover, this same issue waspresent in the debate on town planning. If planning was to be madeeffective, then it would necessarily impose losses and gains on individual

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landowners according to the future use ascribed to the land. For thesereasons Greenwood resisted abolition, but it was later to be Hilton-Young’s method of conceding something to the landlords in 1935.

In the end, then, one has to see the politics of compensation as acomplex, linking both to general public attitudes on the one hand andtechnical factors on the other. At its heart, however, was a perceivednecessity to reduce site values. Compensation practice was not the directresult of the low political standing of landlords, or anti-landlord feeling,but these were factors in making it possible. If owners were also occupiersan entirely different perspective applied as is brought out in a note fromMiss Lawrence to Greenwood about her West Ham constituency:

I have come across cases where landlords have induced excessivelypoor persons to purchase by instalments houses which in myopinion are unfit for human use…the existence of this class will be aserious hindrance to clearing a slum. Could we have someexemption for the owner occupier of a slum house? [30]

The compensation provisions certainly involved hardship to many of thoseaffected, and often injustice. It cannot be said that a great deal of effort wasput in to finding ways of mitigating these features. This, however, was theproduct of an interplay of political priorities and technical factors.Arguments that “hard cases make bad law”, and that the state could notprotect individuals from all the hazards of life, were applied, just as theywere in many other areas.

Notes

1 PRO HLG 29/170 memo 9 July 1929.2 Estates Gazette 116, 1930, 140.3 HC passim. Twenty nine cases were found for the Brady Street, Bell Lane and

Hickman’s Folly schemes.4 The localities are as defined in the Land and house property yearbooks, and do not

correspond with local authority areas. For any one year a maximum of tencases for one area (e.g. Bermondsey) was taken in alphabetical order.

5 Offer, A. 1981. Property and politics 1870–1914, 254–81. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

6 HC14 Sep. (5–47) 1931; Estates Gazette 119, 1932, 84, 123.7 HC 1 Nov. (3ii) 1923; 7 Feb. (10) 1923; 6 Jun. (39) 1923; 14 Jan. (15) 1925.8 ibid., 30 Nov. (17) 1927; 31 Oct. (57) 1928; 23 Jan. (57) 1929.9 ibid., 6 Oct. (6–69); 19 Oct. (42) 1927.10 ibid., 9 April (6) 1930.


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11 ibid., 20 Feb. (8) 1930.12 ibid., 4 Feb. (27) 1925; 3 Mar. (30) 1925; 17 Jun. (21) 1925; 6 Apr. (5) 1927.13 The seven schemes are Brady St, Ware St, Hickman’s Folly, Bell Lane, Prusom

St, Baker’s Alley and George St. June 1925 figures are from HC 17 June (4–22)plus the George St valuation in HC 17 Feb. (8) 1925. The October 1925 figuresare from HC 21 Oct. (10), April 1927 from MM 12 Apr. (31–2). The latercalculations are from global figures from which £80,000 has been deducted asthe sum agreed for Watergate St and £53,500 added for Brady St.

14 PRO HLG 49/15.15 HC 1 Dec. (6) 1926.16 National Federation of Property Owners (NFPO), Gazette, 15 June 1929, 14.17 Daunton, M.J. 1984. Introduction. In Councillors and tenants: local authority

housing in English cities 1919–39, M.J. Daunton (ed.), 7. Leicester: LeicesterUniversity Press.

18 Bowley, M. 1945. Housing and the state, 47. London: Allen & Unwin.19 Daunton op. cit., 6.20 NFPO Gazette, 13 April 1929,1.21 ibid., 15 June 1929, 2.22 HC 3 Dec. (3) 1928.23 ibid.24 PRO HLG 29/173, Vol. 4, no. 9,10 Sept. 1929.25 HC 5 Dec. (3) 1923.26 NFPO Gazette, 24 March 1930.27 ibid., 30 Sept. 1930, 3.28 PRO HLG 29/170 undated memo, draft clauses of new Act, clause 37.29 HC 3 Dec. (3) 1928.30 PRO HLG 29/170 memo 18 Dec. 1929.

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CHAPTER 6Rebuilding and rehousing

1918–33

This chapter concentrates on three aspects of rebuilding and rehousing inthe first 15 years after the war. First, it looks at the extent to which rehousingof the displaced was accomplished, either in the suburbs or by rebuildingon clearance sites. Flats on clearance sites were mainly a feature of London,and this poses the question of how it was possible after the war toaccommodate displaced tenants in the new buildings when it had beenimpossible before. The second section considers more directly the tensionsbetween building standards and the rental capacity of tenants, and alsoshows the continuing importance of policies aimed at ensuring that lowerrents should be reflected in lower quality accommodation. Finally, attentionis given to a number of projects for tall flats, which figured quiteprominently in the period, although none of them was actually completed.

Setting the standard

One of the features of the post-war period was the new standard of working-class housing laid down in council provision. It followed prewar precedentsin the cottage style and low densities adopted, and equally relied on theavailability of relatively cheap land on the outskirts of towns. In this waymany working-class families were able to move out to improved housingconditions. But in the late 1920s, this was also the type of housing that wasexpected to absorb the bulk of slum displacees from clearances in provincialcities. Although much remains to be discovered in detail, studies haveshown how, while the post-war style was still broadly retained, the highstandards of the Addison period were gradually whittled down. At thesame time, there was a considerable reduction in the cost of building—in

Rebuilding and rehousing 1918–33

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Liverpool, for instance, non-parlour houses of the smaller type cost £345 tobuild in late 1928. However, much of this gain was offset by lower subsidiesand, despite the changes, rehousing from slum clearance remained veryproblematic.

A ministry review in 1930 of 5,742 families displaced by clearance inprovincial cities during the 1920s, found that some 55 per cent of thetenants were rehoused in houses under the scheme, 14 per cent in othercouncil property, and 31 per cent found non-council properties. Theproportion rehoused by councils varied considerably from place to place.A group of councils achieved high rehousing rates, with only 7 per centnot rehoused by the council, and 76 per cent rehoused under the scheme.These included Liverpool, Doncaster, Brighton and Norwich. Anothergroup, including Middlesborough, Stockton-on-Tees, Hull andWolverhampton achieved low rehousing rates with 60 per cent not takeninto council housing and only 33 per cent into houses formally allocatedunder thescheme.[1]

Two clearance schemes of the late 1920s illustrate the difficulties thatarose, and allow matters to be taken further. At Hulme (Manchester), 200houses occupied by as many families were demolished in 1925 andrehousing allocated on the Fallowfield Estate two miles away. Eventually,140 families transferred to the estate. However, by mid-1928 another 65families had left voluntarily and 13 more had been evicted, so that only 31per cent of the displaced families were then rehoused in theaccommodation to which they had been formally allocated. The principalcause of this was undoubtedly rent. The old four-room houses had grossrents of 6s.6d. to 8s.6d., while the new A3 type house rented at 15s.10d.[2]Even granted the effect of rent control on the older houses, this was anenormous difference. At Stockton-on-Tees, the Housewife Lane area wascleared in 1927 and housing allocated on a special estate called MountPleasant. The proportion rehoused is not clear, but in Stockton as a wholeit was 32 per cent by 1930. Those that went to Mount Pleasant, however,met steep rent rises—up from 4s.8d. to 9s. This was the case studied byMcGonigle, who showed that over the period 1928–32 the death rate atMount Pleasant was 33.6 per thousand, and much higher than in theHousewife Lane area before clearance. The difference was almost certainlydue to increased malnutrition.[3]

Such cases obviously raised important questions about standards,subsidies and the viability and effectiveness of slum clearance. In mostcases, councils do not appear to have specially subsidized suburbanhousing for clearance tenants, and most councils—with the majorexception of Liverpool—possessed little or no older housing stock.Nonetheless, these schemes had taken place on low-cost land. In London,

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the problems posed would seem to be even greater, since before the war itshigher costs had meant that rehousing from clearance was minimal. Thebuildings that had been put up at that time, and were then occupied byartisans, were now, however, available for use by transfers, and specialsubsidies were available. It is not until 1928 that any general statisticsbecome available to cover the large London programme. But in the twoyears to the end of September 1929, about 31 per cent of those displacedwere rehoused in new council blocks, and another 8 per cent on suburbanestates. About 18 per cent were rehoused in older council blocks, 28 percent were housed by the council temporarily in old houses and 15 per centmoved to noncouncil property.[4] Judging by a report in 1930, those notrehoused by the council included three particular groups: old, small andpoor households; single persons; and poor families with a large number ofchildren.[5]

The rehousing of tenants in relation to incomes and family size will beconsidered in Chapter 10 in the changed circumstances of the 1930s. Here,the main concern is the rebuilding standard, and its cost implications inrelation to rehousing. In London this involved quite separateconsiderations from those that governed suburban housing. The standardthat was to become the norm in the 1920s was established after the demiseof homes for heroes, but before this there was an interesting period inwhich the ministry attempted to improve blocks of flats and make themmore comparable to houses in their standard of amenities. The Manual onunfit houses and unhealthy areas advised that blocks should be no more thanthree storeys, that each flat should be self-contained and have a bath andkitchen-scullery, and that 70 per cent should have four rooms, implying apersons per room ratio similar to that on cottage estates. It also deprecatedthe use of balcony access.[6]

This context was reflected in the first post-war LCC blocks, Becket andGeoffrey Houses, on the still uncompleted Tabard Street estate. Theseretained balcony access and five-storey height, but the latter had a livingroom of 160 sq. ft compared to 149 sq. ft in a block begun in 1915, abathroom, improved internal access, bay windows and a smallexperimental lift[7] By 1920 the council was basing its plans on four-storeymaisonettes for the intermediate zone, between the cottage estates and thecentre, and in the centre “where higher tenements are necessary we see noobjections to six floor blocks, provided the three upper floors are served bylifts. Even eight floor blocks…would probably be well patronised if liftswere provided”.[8] However, these developments were soon brought toan end by considerations of cost. The building cost at Becket House hadbeen £258 per room, and although rents were set as high as possible at 13s.6d. for three rooms there was a very large deficit. Even worse, tenders then


76

being submitted suggested a cost of £377 per room. The implications forrehousing displaced tenants were also poor, for the rents at Becket Housecompared with those current in the old slum houses at Tabard Street of 2s.6d. to 3s. per room (or 3s. to 3s. 6d. if raised in line with the Rent Acts). Thenew tenants at Becket House were therefore drawn from the rankscharacteristic of new blocks pre-war: craftsmen, tradesmen and suchoccupations as policeman and fireman. Even so, many of them had to takea room less than in their previous accommodation.[9]

Clearance was unsustainable under such inflationary conditions, butafter the general collapse of wages and building costs between 1921 and1923, a new type of standardized accommodation emerged, representedby flats at Pellew House on the Collingwood Estate, Brady Street. This wasto become the “normal” type in 1920s rebuilding. Average room sizes wereretained at 160 sq. ft for the living room, 120 sq. ft for the first bedroom and100 sq. ft for the others. But internal passages were abolished, leaving asmall entrance lobby with some bedrooms entered from the living room.Baths were to be placed in the kitchen instead of in a separate bathroom,and a syphon system was provided for conveying hot water from a copperto the bath. Most of the fittings were in the kitchen, except for a largecupboard in the main bedroom. The plans show two lettings per balconyor four per staircase, with the kitchens and a few bedrooms occupying thebalcony side. The flats were incorporated in blocks which were to varysomewhat in style during the 1920s, but were of five storeys and neo-Georgian. The two upper storeys were arranged as a maisonette withmansarded bedrooms which, together with the striking chimneys, gavea picturesque element to the roof. Llewellyn-Smith thought that “withtheir walls of golden brick, red quoins and arches and red-tiled roof, theblocks have a simple and dignified exterior which is a welcome additionto the street architecture of London”.[10] They were, however, lessattractive on the balcony side, with tarmac areas between the blocks(Plates 3 & 4).

The “normal” standard having been arrived at, it is useful to make acomparison with the pre-war high point in building standards atBoundary Street. The room sizes at the older estate varied greatly fromblock to block, but they averaged 160 sq. ft for the living room and 106 sq.ft for the bedrooms. The Boundary Street dwellings had staircase access,but only a small scullery, whereas post-war flats saw a definiteimprovement in kitchen space and fittings, including of course the bath.Post-war estates also often had rather lower densities. Nonetheless, it isreasonable to conclude that in cost implications the normal type was fairlycomparable to blocks at Boundary Street. Costs per room are sometimesquoted for superstructure only, but those used here are for the whole

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building works. Costs also vary according to the size of tenement and thescale and location of the building project. Any figures given are thereforegeneral approximations, but the larger movements in costs can easily bediscerned. At Boundary Street there was much variation from block toblock, but a fair average is the £87 per room quoted for the “latest type ofselfcontained tenement” in 1893. A cost of £180 per room would seem to bea fair average for 1924–5. [11] This was a major reduction on early post-war costs, but it is still more than twice that at Boundary Street. Bycomparison, Booth had thought 21s. a week to be the income required tokeep a family above the poverty line, and the New survey of London life andlabour calculated that in 1929 this was equivalent to 40s. a week. Wages(and the cost of building) were slightly higher in 1924, but it is evident thatsince the 1890s building costs had risen in much the same proportion aswages, as one might expect.

However, the economics of Boundary Street had not enabled therehousing of the displaced tenants, and its costs to the ratepayer had beenso high as to bring the whole future of slum clearance into question. Howcould the equation of costs and rents be squared without unacceptablecosts to the rate—or taxpayer? The answer lay in the reduced cost of land,which had a major impact since redevelopment normally implied theturning of rents into ground rents. The costs of acquisition and clearancehave been discussed in Chapter 5. In order to allow comparisons to betaken through eventually to later periods, I shall assume that the samenumber of rooms were put back on the land as existed before. On thisbasis, the net land cost per room at Boundary Street may be estimated at£138 and that of the 1924–5 clearances at £53 per room. Allowing for threerooms, the comparative costs of a tenement are set out in Table 6.1.

The total costs for normal blocks in 1925 were therefore only a little higherthan at Boundary Street, but land now accounted for 22 per cent of thetotal compared with 61 per cent before. The rents charged for such atenement in 1924–5 were also somewhat higher, with a fair average of10s. 6d. or 11s. compared with a fair average of 8s. 6d. at Boundary Street.Costs and rents had therefore been reduced substantially in relation towages without substantially increasing the charge to public funds, indeed

Table 6.1 Costs of a three-room tenement in London, 1895 and 1924–5


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the burden on the ratepayer had been much reduced since nationaltaxation now paid half the deficit. It is here that the significance of thediscussion carried out in the last chapter becomes apparent. Withoutlowered rents and property values and reduced compensation, slumclearance and redevelopment would not have been politically feasible inthe 1920s.

Adjusting to rents

The existence of a clearance scheme meant that the ability of tenants toafford different types of accommodation was placed under scrutiny. It wassoon found that the population was by no means homogeneous in thisrespect, and LCC officials talked of “the kind of stratification to which theybecome subject when displaced”: some going into new houses, even in thesuburbs, others to older council houses, many back into old houses in theprivate sector, some into poor law institutions.[12] This stratification wasnot simply the product of long-term differences in income or status. It alsoreflected life-cycle stage, family composition and factors such as sicknessand unemployment. In the poorest parts, as at Ware Street in Shoreditch, itwas found that

Many of the tenants are living in distressing circumstances. In onecase eight persons were found to be living in one room. In anothercase neither the tenant or his wife had been outside their home forten years due to infirmity. Very great difficulty was experienced ininducing these people to move from the immediate neighbourhood.This was particularly emphasized in the case of men out of work inreceipt of parish relief.[13]

The LCC, like many other councils, operated a rent policy in which qualityand location were roughly adjusted to rent by shadowing the private sector.The policy was directly descended from that adopted in 1893, and rentswere to be “fair having regard to the rents paid in the neighbourhood”.Rents were therefore not related either to the existing payments of thedisplaced or their rental capacity. Instead, where tenants were obviouslyunable to meet the rents the aim of housing management was to find themsome other accommodation of lower standard. More surprisingly, neitherconstruction costs nor deficits falling on the rates were directly significant.Instead, what was important was that in a given area, tenants paying lowerrent should be seen to be receiving a lower quality of accommodation. As

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Adjusting to rents

the LCC clearance programme began to get underway, this principleevidently raised important questions. Should the council accommodatemore tenants by building outside the normal range?

By 1924 the valuer and the medical officer were pressing for“simplified” dwellings, which would be clearly demarcated from the restof the stock. The medical officer put the matter in the following way. In hisview common lodging houses provided accommodation “in allfundamental respects more sanitary than is generally to be found in thepoorest class of tenement”. Two other possible types to fill the gapbetween this and the self-contained tenement were either, (a) self-contained sleeping accommodation with the rest in common, or (b)separate sleeping and living rooms with the rest in common. Both typeswould require increased supervision and control. The architect, however,put up a strong defence of existing arrangements, arguing that the newnormal type was “by far the cheapest tenement accommodation producedin central areas under any post-war municipal housing scheme”.Economies would be lost unless tenants went out onto an open balcony toreach their shared facilities, and such a system would require more securefittings and greater supervision. Above all, there was “the danger of such aclass of property being regarded long before its structural life is terminatedas incompatible with the standard of living which may later be regardedas the minimum acceptable”.[14]

The architect, with some support from Levita, managed to fend off themore drastic types of shared accommodation, and to limit its quantitativeimportance. Nonetheless, a simplified type was approved in 1925. Flatswere arranged in groups of two or three:

Each flat has a living room which is equipped with an open fire…asmall gas cooker with a ventilated hood over it, and a smallventilated larder. The bedroom(s) open out of the living room Eachflat has its own small scullery and its own water closet. These twoare approached from the common lobby on which is also a wash-house with a bath and copper for use by the two or three flats inrotation.[15]

The first blocks of simplified type were opened on the Kennings Estate(Lambeth) in 1927, and by 1930 17 blocks containing 500 dwellings of thistype had been erected. At Kennings the simplified type cost about £8 perroom less to construct, but was let at 1s. 6d. to 2s. per week below the rentof a normal flat of the same size, the deficit being correspondinglyhigher.[16]

The principles of the council’s rent policy were particularly well


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illustrated in a type to appear in 1928: the normal type with reduced finish.This allowed blocks to be planned as usual, but to be given a cheaperappearance. The principal differences were to be found in the finish ofwalls, doors and woodwork, and the provision of skirting boards, mantelshelf and cupboards. The valuer wanted “a greatly reduced standard offinish in order to produce the effect of a different standard ofaccommodation. If this difference can be made sufficiently great I see noreason why the full amount of 3s. a week difference in rent should not bemade. It is quite true that externally there would be little to distinguishsuch a block from the normal. If it were possible to indicate the differenceexternally it would be all to the good”.[17] The reduced finish made aminimal difference in the costs of construction so that reduced rents meanthigher deficits. On the Comber Estate in 1928 there was a deficit of £248per annum on blocks with reduced finish compared with £132 per annumin the normal type. This deficit was, however, hidden from public view.What the public and the tenant were meant to see was a lower standard ofaccommodation in return for lower rent.

So far, “simplified” blocks of various types had involved only a smallportion of the rebuilding programme. The 1930 Act brought a new andmuch larger challenge which was to test Wheatley’s contention that adirect connection between housing and slum clearance would inevitablymean a lowering of housing standards. This was not inevitable, itdepended on how the Act’s provisions were interpreted in practice. Thesubsidy scheme was based on the notion that 50 per cent of the personsdealt with would be unable to pay “Wheatley” rents, and the extra subsidyprovided was intended to cover this. The LCC did not dispute this 50 percent figure, which indeed reflected statistics which had been submitted tothe government by its officers. However, there was an implication,strongly resisted by the valuer and the Housing Committee, thatrehousing would simply be a matter of using the subsidy to make currenttypes of accommodation available to poorer tenants paying a lower rent.Instead, they favoured the maintenance of the present system wherein “byreducing amenities the rent payment can be reduced in even greaterproportion”. There was a great deal of activity, which continued into 1931,concerning costs and standards of council housing, preparing the way fora further round of “simplification”. The lcc valuer also investigatedschemes involving rent rebates, although without any enthusiasm. Heconcluded that a scheme based on the number of children was practicable,even on a very large scale, but it would lower some rents and raise othersunjustifiably in relation to income. A scheme which also took account ofincome would be more equitable, but “must raise serious difficulties inadministration on any large scale, both in ascertaining the income in the

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Adjusting to rents

first instance, and in revising it from time to time”. The most likely meansof checking tenants’ earnings would be a certificate from the employer,and this would raise the possibility that the rent allowance would becomea subsidy to wages. Moreover, “the demand for accommodation by thosewhose circumstances would entitle them to rent allowances would tend tofall on the Council”, and personal appeals to members of the councilwould be increased.[18]

In October 1930, the Housing Chairman E.M. Dence was able to suggesta compromise solution to the rent problem. There would be no directrelation between rent and income, but a periodic review of lower-rentedaccommodation would be carried out to move on any higher-incometenants. The rents of rehousing tenants could be banded into three typesroughly related to ability to pay. The lowest rental category would berehoused on the clearance sites. Those able to pay standard rents would behoused on other separate clearance sites or on new or existing cottageestates. A final class involving some 10 per cent of tenants could paymedian rents, reflecting the fact that they “might have been able to affordstandard rents in London, but would not be able to do so with theadditional travelling expenses involved in living outside the Countyboundary”. However, he emphasized that

it must be clearly understood that on no one estate should there beany differentiation in rents for the same type of accommodation. If itis found desirable to have a different scale on an estate, then theremust be different types of dwellings, such as normal and simplifiedtypes, for which a different scale of rent is paid, so that it is quiteevident that a lesser rent is being paid by reason of certain reducedamenities.[19]

As far as the council was concerned, the events of 1931 removed many ofthese difficulties, and rehousing returned to a more traditional routine.When the clearance programme was relaunched in June 1932 with thepurchase of a large rehousing site at Honor Oak Park (Deptford), a furtherround of “simplification” to produce low rent dwellings was revealed. TypeA dwellings were to be four storeys high with six tenements on each floor,approached by one staircase. All the floors were to be similar in plan, andthe mansarded roofs, upper floor maisonettes and drying rooms of thenormal type were abandoned. Room sizes were reduced to 149 sq. ft forliving rooms, 109 sq. ft for the first bedroom and 104 sq. ft for the second.Rooms were now 8 ft high, there was no separate passage to the livingroom, and a reduced standard of finish, including stained wood work inlieu of painting and omission of plaster in lobbies and kitchen. Type B


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dwellings were to be similar but without a kitchen. A gas cooker and shallowsink were sited in a recess off the living room. Three of these flats shared acommon washhouse with bath and sink. For three rooms the 611 sq. ft ofthe normal type was reduced to 488 sq. ft for type A and 469 sq. ft for typeB.[20] It was estimated that building costs were reduced, compared to thenormal type, by £34 a room for type A and £36 a room for type B. In turn,gross rents of a three-room flat on the Honor Oak site were 20–27 per centlower than for the “normal” type.

At this point in 1932 the gradual reduction in building standards whichhad occurred since the Addison period thus became more threatening. Atthe same time lower standards were introduced into LCC suburbanestates although, as in the block dwellings, alongside continuing types.Passages were omitted, the bath placed in the scullery and the toiletslocated downstairs. Further economies were contemplated. In October1932 the valuer argued that if the lowest comparable rents were required“it would be necessary to adhere to the original plan of the external w.c.even if there be, as stated by the architect, no appreciable effect oncosts.”[21] This would indeed have symbolized a return to pre-wartraditions.

Tall flats

Alison Ravetz has traced the “practical and ideological” arguments thatproduced a transition from working-class tenement to modern flats betweenthe wars.[22] This, as the last section will have shown, was only one aspectof the approach to flats. Nonetheless, it was real enough, and a largeproportion of the attempts to break through into a modern pattern of flatbuilding involved tall flats, although the two do not entirely overlap. Asthe homes for heroes period demonstrated, the traditional five-storey blockswere subject to two kinds of pressures when the question of raisingstandards was posed. One direction was to reduce heights and to try andmake flats as much like houses as possible, for instance through the use ofmaisonettes. The other possibility was to try and build on potentials inherentonly in the flat. This had the advantage over the first approach in that itseemed always to hold out the prospect of economic advantage, ratherthan simply to offer better living conditions at greater cost. Paradoxically,although tall flats almost always turned out to be more expensive thantraditional designs, they at the same time offered the possibility of atechnical advance, which alone appeared likely to break the cycle of lowrental capacity and low building standards.

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Tall flats

About 1925 a number of schemes for nine or ten-storey blocksappeared. L.H. Keay seriously considered their use in Liverpool, and wasfinally deterred by costs.[23] In London, tall flats seem to continue thehomes for heroes discussions, and the Ossulston Street scheme inparticular is linked to the thinking within the LCC in Orr’s period of office.As described in detail by Pepper, Ossulston Street involved two successivedesigns, the first and more ambitious being a large wholly nine-storeystructure.[24] The project was explicitly based on experience in the UnitedStates, which Topham Forrest, the architect, had recently visited. Inparticular, the economics of the scheme had American references, the costof the nine-storey buildings and lifts being offset by the use of light-steelframing and the incorporation of a proportion of higher-value users,including shops, offices and “superior” flats. This mixing of uses wasintended to produce economic rather than social benefits. Theworkingclass dwellings were to be on the upper floors, but “each class ofproperty should have its own entrance, and the entrances should be asremote from one another as possible”.[25] The flats themselves were notspacious, but were to be all-electric and have central heating and hotwater, with internal staircases supplementing the lifts.

At Ossulston Street the architect had the strong support of Levita,without whom the project would quickly have been swept away. The sitewas a high-cost one relatively near the West End, which made thepossibility of accommodating higher-value users while still rehousing 30per cent more working-class residents than in five-storey blocks highlyattractive on paper. The first scheme was, however, withdrawn withoutsubmitting any detailed costings. In 1927 a second and less ambitioushybrid scheme was put forward in which nine-storey parts were presentonly as towers (for the superior flats) above more conventional six-storeyblocks. Even then, there were no costings on the nine-storey parts, andthese did not become available until February 1929. Once available, theywere to show that even in the new design such flats were not an economicproposition. The building cost, at £189 per room, was distinctly higherthan that of normal flats by this date. Above all, the central heating and hotwater required an additional 2s. 7d. per week, and the gross rent of the flatswould have to be 20s. per week, well beyond the reach of the displacedfamilies. The economics of the middle-class flats were even worse, whollyremoving the possibility that any profit could be made from them.Without subsidies these would have to be let at £4 a week for a three-roomflat if a small profit were to be obtained, and such rents were unobtainableon a site overlooking the goods depot of the LMS railway.[26]

The Limehouse Fields (Stepney) project for ten-storey dwellings is ofequal interest to Ossulston Street, although less well known. This was a


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more typical clearance area, and the tall flats were to rise above atraditional East End landscape alongside the Regents Canal. High landvalues played a lesser part in underpinning the scheme, and the projectwas located in a low-rent area for rehousing tenants alone. The economicsof this were never really properly explored, but it is an interesting exampleof an idealistic scheme promoted by a Municipal Reform council. It wasjustified by the mayor, J.D.Somper, as an attempt “to house within themunicipal confines of Stepney…the totality…of the existing inhabitantswho are in overcrowded unfit conditions”. Like Ossulston Street, thescheme was to depend on modern building methods: “steel framing andconcrete filling”, and mass production. The mayor was proud to claim thatthe ten-storey buildings, grouped around three courts, would be“probably the largest combination of dwellings in contemplation in this orany other country”. However, whereas Ossulston Street had looked to theUnited States and also to Vienna for its design inspirations, the LimehouseFields project sought to take on the garden suburb not only through rivalamenities, with particular emphasis on gardens and playgrounds, but alsothrough incorporating traditional elements into the design. Theaccommodation was to consist of self-contained maisonettes with sunbalconies. The elevations were to reproduce “within the limits ofeconomy…the best features of the domestic work of the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries”. The windows, for example, had a vertical emphasisand were made up of small panels. Special attention was paid to the colourscheme, the general idea being to treat the lower storeys in darker tones,with white above and an Italian-style tiled roof. The windows and ironwork were to be in a shade of green. [27]

Another interesting feature of the Stepney scheme was that, althoughput forward by Municipal Reformers, its authors were W.R. Davidge andHarry Barnes, both mainstream housing and planning experts, the latterof Liberal and afterwards Labour sympathies. Both the Ossulston Streetand Limehouse Fields schemes played an important part inelectioneering, appearing on the eve of the 1925 elections. LimehouseFields was fiercely opposed by the local Labour Party in Stepney, whoregained control of the borough. The London Labour Party was, however,less certain in its approach to these new developments. It was recognizedthat the Ossulston Street scheme was a “quite a different proposition fromthe old block dwellings and has very attractive architectural features”. Theproposed mixed development would “establish the principle that themunicipality is no longer confined in its housing operations toaccommodation which is financially unremunerative”. It was also “verypleasing to know that the architecture is modelled to no small extent uponthat of the Socialist municipality at Vienna”. There was a considerable

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Tall flats

interest in these Viennese flats, and Monison led a Labour tour there in1928.[28] However, for the moment the garden suburb was to remain thepredominant model.

A resumption of Municipal Reform control of Stepney, in 1931, was tobring forward another scheme for tall flats at Branch Street, this timedesigned by Adshead and Ramsey. Again, these appeared on the eve of the1934 elections, and this year also saw another LCC project at DrysdaleStreet (Shoreditch). The Drysdale Street project was, however, verydifferent in emphasis from the vision of tall flats reaching up into thesunlight above the gloom of the East End. Economics was paramount—the project was started because Selley, as housing chairman, believed newtechniques would “enable the erection of lofty buildings without the useof so much heavyweight iron and steel”. The flats were to be merely of thebalcony access A type, and although the usual temptation was offered ofplaying space on the roof, the two lifts were to go directly to the fifth floorand then stop. The scheme was therefore rather like two four-storey blocksof walkup flats superimposed, with additional storeys formed bymaisonettes and drying rooms on top. By these means the architectestimated that building costs could be kept to £138 per room. This was,however, 30 per cent above the current cost in five-storey blocks, whileonly 30 per cent more accommodation could be provided despite veryhigh densities—326 rooms per acre. Given the extra cost of the lifts,deficits would be much higher, and according to the valuer the tall flatscould only be preferred where land costs exceeded £40,000 per acre. Withthe advent of the Labour Party to power in 1934, the project wasdropped.[29]

Notes

1 PRO HLG 101/587.2 Simon, E.D. 1929. How to abolish the slums, 45–8, 125. London: Longmans.3 HLG 101/587; McGonigle G. & J.Kirby 1937. Poverty and public health 108–29.

London: Gollancz.4 Figures taken from MM and HC passim.5 HC 10 July (12) 1930.6 Ministry of Health. 1919. Manual on unfit houses and unhealthy areas, 21–2.7 HC 14 Apr. (25) 1919; 17 Dec. (5) 1919; 7 Jul. (5) 1920.8 HC 26 Jul. (8) 1920, 13 Oct. (2) 1920.9 HC 1 Dec. (11) 1920, MM 7 Dec. (25) 1920.10 Llewellyn-Smith, Sir H.L. 1931–5 The new survey of london life and labour, Vol. 6,

179. London: P.S. King. The normal type is described in LCC 1928. Housing,56–63.


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11 Yelling, J.A. 1986. Slums and slum clearance in Victorian London 137. London:Allen & Unwin; HC 22 Oct. (12, 20) 1924, 14 Oct. (13, 14) 1925 and 18 Nov. (28)1925.

12 ibid., 19 Mar. (34) 1924.13 ibid., 15 Oct. (10) 1924, 19 Mar. (34) 1924.14 ibid.15 LCC op. cit, 63.16 HC2 Jul. (45) 1928.17 ibid., 9 May (46) 1928.18 ibid., 10 Apr. (8) 1930.19 ibid., 16 Oct. (11)1930.20 MM 12 July (17) 1932.21 HC 12 Oct. (16) 1932.22 Ravetz, A. 1974. From working-class tenement to modern flat: local authorities

and multi-storey housing between the wars. In Multi-storey living: the Britishworking class experience, A. Sutcliffe (ed.), 122–150. London: Croom Helm.

23 Pooley C.G. & S. Irish 1984. The development of corporation housing in Liverpool1869–1945, 42. Centre for North West Regional Studies, University ofLancaster.

24 Pepper, S. 1981. Early LCC experiments in high-rise housing 1925–1929.London Journal 7, 45–64.

25 HC 28 Jan. (14) 1925.26 Pepper op. cit.; HC 12 Feb. (4) 1929, 24 Apr. (49) 1929.27 Architects Journal 62, 1925, 507–13.28 London News October 1927; London Labour Party GLRO ECD 3302.29 Estates Gazette 122, 1933, 167; HC 18 Apr. (32) 1934.

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C H A P T E R 7A new deal 1933–5

The period 1933–5 is a crucial one in the development of British housingand town planning policies. The divergent trends and tensions of the late1920s and early 1930s were brought to a climax, and a new basis for actionestablished. As with most such key transitions, the new deal was not theresult of any single dimension of policy, nor indeed can it be understood asthe single product of any political party. In this case, the essential startingpoint was the government programme, set out in the Housing (FinancialProvisions) Act 1933, which sought to direct the public effort to a limitedprogramme of clearance, while freeing the rest of housing for privateenterprise. This programme was, however, caught up in a political contextin which something more seemed to be demanded. What that somethingmore should be, other than a bigger slum clearance programme, was forsome time uncertain. The Moyne Committee recommended in favour ofreconditioning through public utility societies. In the end, however, thiswas to be rejected in favour of a local authority attack on overcrowding,coupled with larger-scale redevelopment of the central parts of cities. Afterthe establishment of such a programme in the 1935 Housing Act, slumclearance and redevelopment became mutually supporting policies whichdominated the late 1930s. The former was much more importantimmediately, but the latter was to be an essential ingredient in the emergenceof contemporary town planning policies.

The 1933 Act and the slum campaign

It was in the autumn of 1932 that beginnings were made on a new housingpolicy. Two developments came together which seemed to offer anirresistible opportunity. The Ray Report, already discussed in Chapter 4,called for drastic reductions in public expenditure and withdrawal of

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housing subsidies. A way was found, however, to present this as part of ahousing policy rather than simply as a financial measure. The buildingsocieties had met the new Minister of Health, Hilton-Young, in July 1932,and suggested a scheme to allow “blocks of small houses to be built with aview to letting at rentals within reach of the working classes”. The schemewould involve a state guarantee of 20 per cent mortgage loans to owners,so enabling the level of mortgage to be increased to 90 per cent of thevaluation. At the same time, it was proposed that local authority subsidiesfor general building should be removed, that permitted densities beincreased to 20 houses per acre and that there be a relaxation in local roadbuilding requirements.[1] The government’s successful conversion ofWarloan from 5 per cent to 3.5 per cent in the summer of 1932, provided amore stable platform to go forward on other fronts, and in November,Hilton-Young obtained Cabinet consent to bring in new legislation.

From the building societies’ point of view the Depression and itsfinancial consequences had brought an unexpected embarrassment. Theleader of the National Building Society observed that because of the lack ofhighyielding securities the societies were “in some danger of beingswamped and overwhelmed by a huge increase of capital which it wasquite impossible to utilize”. The societies wanted the government toenable them to extend their activities to working-class housing. However,although the government supported extended borrowing, density andother standards were maintained. A boom in owner-occupation wasstimulated, but results in terms of houses to let to the working class werevery uncertain, and this was to become a difficulty for the government.Investors were aware that unless political pressure on housing went away,there could never be much money in houses to let for the working classes.Indeed, the Estates Gazette was already worrying that “an extensiveprogramme of new building carries with it the danger of ending in over-supply and consequent loss to those who found the money”.[2]

The new direction in policy meant a return to a situation in which slumswere separated from the rest of housing. The removal of the Wheatleysubsidy meant, claimed Hilton-Young, a return to forms of provisionwhich were “normal and natural to the economic life of the country”,whereas subsidies were “abnormal and artificial machinery”. Theproblem of the slum was, however,

a public health problem. It is not in the first line a problem ofhousing; it is a problem of ridding our social organism of radiatingcentres of depravity and disease…subsidies are appropriate in thisregion as a measure for the protection and preservation of the publichealth.[3]

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Housing was something that should be removed from the political arena,whereas a concentration of public effort on the slum was sanctioned by thesocial and moral leaders of the nation: “this question stands high aboveparty. A most significant lead was given in the first place by the membersof the Royal House, and by the Prince of Wales in particular, and secondlyby the leaders of all the great churches of the country.”[4] Moreover, inlanguage strikingly reminiscent of that used by Cross in 1875, he claimedthat the slum was “in the main a relic of the time when general law andbyelaws did not prevent the establishment of housing conditions whichare intolerable according to present standards. It is a strictly limited problem,and it is measurable both as to the cost and the time required for itssolution”.[5]

Nonetheless, despite this careful presentation, there was a great dealof opposition. Greenwood concentrated on the Bill as an economymeasure, a limitation rather than a concentration of effort. In this he wasjoined by E.D. Simon and by J.M. Keynes, who thought the Ministry ofHealth, along with the Foreign Office, “the outstanding failure of theNational Government”.[6] Arguments also developed within thegovernment’s own ranks. Lord Eustace Percy described Hilton-Young’sprogramme as “only nibbling at the problem”. Austen Chamberlainargued that “the slum problem…covers a great number of entirelydifferent cases for entirely different remedies are required.” In the WestDivision of Birmingham, which he represented, “the bulk of theconstituency was built in old times according to standards which are notour standard today, which I frankly confess cannot be brought up to ourstandards.” But reconditioning could make such houses “habitable atdecent rents barely exceeding those charged before…we could do that atsmall expense in preference to spending vast sums of money in pullingdown everything in the hope that someday, somewhere…we shall havethe ideal house in ideal surroundings”. Sir Percy Harris, Liberal memberfor Bethnal Green, spoke of the existence in London of “miles of similarconditions” to those described by Sir Austen. However, he emphasizedthe problem of overcrowding: “I am all in favour of slum clearance, butfar more important than pulling houses down is the building of morehouses”.[7]

Behind this opposition lay many varied political positions. Somecontinued to see the expansion of housing supply as the main ingredientof any attack on urban problems. Another line of opposition continued topress the Hydra-headed and overlapping issues with which NevilleChamberlain had grappled. The issue of reconditioning versus clearanceand rebuilding continued arguments over the flat as a form of living, theimportance of “Octavia Hill methods” and the suitability of suburban

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rehousing. More important politically was the relationship betweenpublic and private enterprise. Austen Chamberlain thus viewed withanxiety “the trend of recent events, which tend to turn our local authoritiesinto owners and still more managers of small house properties”.[8] Manywere anxious to promote public utility societies as an alternative form oforganization, although not always in the context of reconditioning. Theother important matter to which reconditioning had become linked wasthat of property values and compensation. This rumbled on, and indeedwas to become more important, with particular centres of oppositiondeveloping in Leeds (where the Labour Party was proposing a sweepingclearance programme) and in Chamberlain’s home domain ofBirmingham. Here owners, with support from the council, stronglyfavoured reconditioning. It was reported that “Birmingham claims that inthe ordinary acceptance of the word it has no slums, and thatconsequently the city council has found it difficult to formulateschemes.”[9]

For the moment the government was in a strong political position,and it retained confidence in a strategy that would assign the localauthorities a definite but limited rôle, while opening the way for as muchprivate enterprise as possible. Supporters warned that “anything thatwould interfere with the clear-cut line of the government’s change ofhousing policy would invalidate the incentive to private enterprise.”[10]However, the government was clearly taken aback by the strength andrange of the opposition, which at the very least had defeated the attemptto present the Bill as a policy around which all reasonable people shouldunite. One response was to set up the Moyne Committee to investigatesome of the larger issues, notably reconditioning and the rôle of publicutility societies. The other was to yield ground immediately on thequantitative side. During the passage of the Bill Hilton-Young wasalready back-peddling strongly on his original definition of the slum as adistinctly limited problem, and the maximum programme of clearing12,000 houses a year, which he had announced, was relaxed. However,there is no reason to think that Hilton-Young had yet committed thegovernment against reconditioning, or to the scale of the clearanceprogramme that was eventually to emerge in the late 1930s. This wassomething that also owed much to consideration of the Moynedeliberations, and to the changing political situation in 1933 and 1934. Incertain centres, such as Birmingham, there continued to be someresistance to increased clearance until after 1935. The new Housing Actof that year was to give a significant impetus to clearance by highlightingthe wider possibilities of inner-city redevelop ment. Already in 1933,

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however, there were strong political pressures for a significant wideningof the clearance campaign.

One of the crucial factors was the re-emergence of the Labour Party atthe local electoral level, making a strong advance in 1933. There wasevery sign that, after the unusual events of 1931, politics was returning toa more normal pattern. There was, moreover, the problem for theConservatives that whereas the Depression had originally favouredthem politically, its longer-term results and implications might underpina rise of socialism. As in 1919, housing began to take on a mediating rôle,a way of accommodating these new pressures. The Labour Party,however, was recovering from a very low position, in a political contextin which the most cherished gains since the war were seen to be at risk.Generally, there was a consolidation behind the municipal rôle, and theslum seemed to offer its most appropriate focus. The Greenwood Acthad further eroded principled opposition to clearance on the left,although decentralization and the house versus the flat still remainedcontentious issues. The long period since the late 1920s in which manyConservatives were seen to favour reconditioning (now prolonged tosome extent by the Moyne Committee) increased Labour support for thealternative of clearance. By supporting slum clearance the left could finditself again in the rôle in which it was most happy: as the champion ofmunicipal action. However, in so doing it relinquished much of theformer emphasis on a municipal trading element. Thus, the recovery ofthe Labour Party much increased the pressure on local councils and thenational government to do more, while the more demanded wassomething to which Conservative councils and governments couldrespond.

The two events that most clearly demonstrate these generalizationswere the victory of the Labour Party in Leeds in November 1933, and theadvent of Labour to power in the LCC elections of spring 1934. In bothcases housing and slum clearance were major ingredients in this success,although the policies differed in detail. The Leeds story has been told byFinnigan, Hammerton and others, but it needs to be recalled here as anessential part of the argument.[11] Leeds had a long-establishedtradition of cheap housing, which was particularly associated with theback-to-back form. House owners were well organized and importantwithin the local Conservative Party. This had been reflected in the 1920sby sensitivity to the compensation question, and a reluctance to engagein slum clearance, despite its strong advocacy by the Medical Officer ofHealth. It was, however, the advent of Charles Jenkinson, vicar ofHolbeck, on to the political scene that was to transform this issue. Arelative newcomer to Leeds, he had been elected to the council in 1930,

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and proceeded to mastermind Labour’s housing campaign, whichconcentrated initially on the inadequacy of the existing council’sresponse to Greenwood’s housing initiatives. The Labour approach onhousing was widely based and, like that of Jenkinson himself, by nomeans confined to slum clearance. It was the combination of localhousing circumstances and national events that focused attention on thisissue and produced a clearance crusade.

These events were to bring the local Conservatives into a conflict whichraged on two fronts—one against Jenkinson and his supporters, the otheragainst their own side in the national government. In the approach to the1932 elections, they attempted to defuse the issue by setting up a specialcommittee on the housing question. However, by the time that theJenkinson group issued their minority report in March 1933, the nationalsituation had moved in their favour, so that the report could become apowerful manifesto. The local Conservatives’ attempts to restore theirposition by accelerating the clearance programme only resulted inJenkinson raising the stakes even higher. The result was that Labour wonin November 1933, and proceeded to submit a programme for thedemolition of 30,000 houses inhabited by 111,000 people. This was by farthe largest programme to be submitted by a provincial authority, and itwas to lead to a full-scale political battle with local owners, symbolizedby the “red ruin” map on which the potential clearance areas weredepicted.

Jenkinson’s approach retained the progressive emphasis on housingsupply and high standards. He was strongly committed to a suburbansolution, and to the garden suburb tradition, seeking to bring these withinthe range of rehousing tenants by means of differential rents.Characteristically, however, when faced with the need to engage withinner-city rehousing, he opted for the adventurous solution of the modernQuarry Hill flats. In Chapter 10, these practices will be counterpointedagainst those which developed in London. The situation there was lessdramatic, but in some ways equally surprising. Unlike its counterpart inLeeds, the Municipal Reform LCC had strongly pressed slum clearance inthe 1920s. Yet once national policy made this easier, it proceeded to losepower, and the mantle was inherited by a Labour Party that hadpreviously opposed this kind of action. Moreover, unlike Leeds, clearancein London essentially meant rebuilding on inner-city land and a frankacceptance of the tenement flat. It involved, therefore, a more completemovement from the old progressive tradition, although suburban councilhousing for general needs was still promoted. Once Morrison had madethe transition from one paradigm to another he was characteristicallythorough in the manner of its presentation. He had enormous assistance,

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however, from the way in which his opponents themselves responded toevents in the early 1930s.

In some ways this response was understandable. The legal problemscreated by the Liverpool and Derby cases had brought clearancerepresentations to an end, and it was not until the Greenwood Act was onthe statute book that they could be revived. Almost immediately, thefinancial crisis brought a necessary reduction in expenditure. However,this was accompanied by rhetoric and action which took the MunicipalReformers away from the ground that Levita had occupied, and closer tothat on which the Conservatives in Leeds stood. The close association ofthe party with the Ray Report was one aspect of this. Labour was able tomake much of the difficulties of their opponents in pushing forwardclearance, and in establishing new estates in such areas as “selectStreatham”. Both of these they could represent as a surrender to vestedinterests. In statistical terms, housing supply by the council, capitalexpenditure, and support from the rates, all fell to new post-war levels in1931–3. The result was that, as in Leeds, Labour could increasinglycampaign on the theme of action versus inaction. As in Leeds, theMunicipal Reformers responded by accelerating their own clearanceprogrammes, but this came too late. Labour, having found its slogan of“up with the houses, down with the slums”, carried the LCC elections of1934, and later that year broke through in the metropolitan boroughs,establishing a strong hold over the whole of working-class London thatwas to last for over thirty years.

The Moyne Report and reconditioning

Hilton-Young agreed to set up the Moyne Committee at the committeestage of the 1933 Bill. It was to have two references: first, the “facilitation ofthe efforts of public utility societies”, and, secondly, reconditioning,particularly that involving the compulsory purchase of houses by localauthorities. The two could be linked, however, because the committee wasto investigate whether “local authorities themselves are always theappropriate persons to hold houses, so that when the houses have beenbought and reconditioned there should be a provision for some authorityto hold them”.[12] An important constraint was that reconditioning had tobe seen as an extension of (rather than a replacement for) the clearancepolicies already announced. Equally, there was to be no further generalsubsidy. From the beginning, therefore, the committee was on difficultground. It had to wrestle not only with the various problems ofreconditioning but, more importantly, with the larger matter of the

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respective roles of private enterprise, local authorities and the proposedthird force.

Lord Eustace Percy was one of the Conservative members who haddone most to put public utility societies on the agenda. He took the viewthat

the great vice of our slum legislation has been to frighten the ownerbefore we have been ready to replace him. As a general rule, themore risky is the business, the lower will be the type of man who isprepared to engage in it. For many years good landlords have beenincreasingly reluctant to bear the odium of owning old houseproperty. The result has been to accelerate the tendency to create aworse and worse class of slum landlord.[13]

We seem here to be back on very Victorian ground: the equation of economicstatus with moral worth. The small man in the slum is implicitly contrastedwith the great estate, ignoring any objection that the latter had tended tocorner the more profitable sections of the market, leaving the small manwith the business that could only be made profitable by overcrowding orundermaintenance. Percy’s complaint that private enterprise was too oftentaken to mean “the small man building and occupying a few houses, thesmall landlord and the small builder” might be taken as a class-basedpatrician approach to the problem. However, it also reflected a theme thatwas very much that of the moment: an emphasis on the importance ofeconomic viability and particularly on the creation of large efficienteconomic organizations:

the real charge against the small owner of old working-classproperty in the centre of great towns is that he is a small owner, andthat he has neither the capital nor the control over large blocks ofproperty which would enable him to develop his property to the bestadvantage of both himself and the community as a whole. This evilcan only be remedied by concentrating the management anddevelopment of large blocks of property in the hands of one agency.

In the case of the slum or near-slum the remedy he proposed was to givelocal authorities compulsory powers to take over large blocks of propertieswhich would be handed over to public trusts. This might seem drastic, buthe waived aside objection with specific reference to Joseph Chamberlain:“the question is what loss it is worth while for property owners to incur asan insurance against a general revolt against urban property owningaltogether.” Once formed, a trust should operate on economic lines. It would

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have much more freedom than local authorities to acquire a general rangeof properties or to use sites for profitable non housing purposes. Likewise,the trust would not be limited to reconditioning, to which he gave littlesupport. Instead, he pointed out that “if you take any of the overcrowdedareas of London this can be nothing more than the merest palliative…youare not going to relieve overcrowding by these means. You have got toredevelop the area.” The most effective trust would be one which “owneda large mixed improvement and clearance area, and which enjoyed asubstantial income from state subsidies in respect of rehousing.”

Percy, however, did not confine himself to older housing, but wentfurther in setting out a rôle for public utility societies in new housingdevelopment. A National Corporation or Housing Board would co-ordinate the activities of local or regional societies, and as a large buyer itwould be “able to bring pressure to bear on the building industry to buildat the lowest possible cost”, and later it might undertake large-scaledevelopment of housing estates directly. A typical local society wouldmanage an estate of up to 2,000 houses which should be “a ‘mixed bag’with rentals ranging all the way from 8s a week to 15s a week or evenhigher”. This was because it would “need to own a substantial proportionof the larger type of house if it is to make both ends meet”. Moreover, “onsocial grounds I think mixed-bag development is the only kind ofdevelopment which any agency ought ever to go in for. I think a drearyenormous block of one type of house in which the poorest are to live, theprinciple of the ghetto, is horrible.”

Percy’s schemes, therefore, revolved around the creation of a largescaleorganization which would substitute for the local authority, but beeconomically efficient. His concerns overlapped to some extent with thoseof the Moyne Committee, but ultimately they developed in a way whichthe committee found embarrassing. This was even more true of the effortsof Raymond Unwin, who as president of the Royal Institute of BritishArchitects acted as co-ordinator for an important pressure group, whichincluded Lord Balfour of Burleigh, Harry Barnes and Sir Edgar BonhamCarter. Unwin attracted a great deal of national attention by proposing thecreation of housing societies which would be organized under a NationalHousing Board or Corporation. This would take in hand “the sphere ofhousing work lying between slum clearance…and the lowest renteddwellings which private enterprise working on a profitable basis can beexpected to supply”.[14] As in Percy’s scheme, their efforts would not beconfined to reconditioning. On the contrary, what was most needed inUnwin’s view was the continued supply of new suburban houses ataffordable rents. He told the committee that

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You cannot recondition without abating overcrowding, you cannotabate overcrowding unless you have an additional supply oflowrented houses available.

The efforts of the Unwin group were meant to rescue something of thedecentralist and planning orientations that had been attached to thereconditioning proposals in Chamberlain’s original formulation of theproblem. They were very worried that a stress on the provision of low-rented housing by competitive private enterprise would lead to an erosionof post-war standards of housing and planning. Once again, therefore, analternative to local authority organization was proposed, but the maingrounds for this suggested by Unwin was that “it is not wholesome thattown councillors should be dependent for election on large numbers ofvoters living or wishing to live in Council-owned houses.” Advising hisHousing Committee, the LCC valuer commented acidly: “whether this is aserious problem worthy of the Committee’s attention is a matter entirelyfor them. But much of the argument in favour of a National Housing Boardis founded on considerations such as this.”[15]

While the local authorities resisted this attack on their position, a muchgreater problem for the committee, in the existing political climate, wasthe reaction of the property interests. Initially, they were well disposed tothe concept of reconditioning, and welcomed the stress on the unfitness ofcouncils to hold and manage property. A very different tone, however,emerged when the larger implications of the proposals were realized. TheEstates Gazette referred to the “megalomania” of those who sponsored theNational Housing Corporation, and even thought there was a danger that“it might become a dictator of rents all round, and even perhaps what isabsurdly called a ‘fair rents court’.”[16] One of the most striking features ofthe evidence presented to the committee is the hostility expressed bybodies representing private enterprise to any large rôlefor a “third force”.The National Federation of Housebuilders believed that “if public utilitysocieties are encouraged to build a large number of houses even of thesmaller type it will discourage investors”. Families in the slums should bedivided into those that could pay economic rents and those that could not.Support for the latter should be “kept quite distinct through the PublicAssistance Committee”. Nobody should get a municipal house unlessthey could establish that they were in real need by means of a properlysupervised means test. The National Federation of Property Owners andRatepayers submitted similar views: “it should be the duty of the localauthority to provide houses for those who cannot pay an economic rent,and this duty should not be entrusted to any other body.” Again, thisshould be looked upon as a form of poor relief: “the family should be

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relieved rather than the home should be subsidized.”[17] Such bodieswere not going to support Percy or Unwin’s proposals at a time when thegovernment was intent on delivering the profitable sectors of housing intotheir hands, while leaving the public authorities with the rest. Theypreferred a clear dividing line.

The Moyne Committee sought to distance itself from these problems byclearly rejecting any rôle for public utility societies in new building. Therewas still damage in several respects, however. Lack of any new buildinginhibited relief of overcrowding, which was generally recognized as anecessary conjoint procedure to reconditioning. Also, events had cast acloud of suspicion over the committee’s activities which did nothing tohelp it resolve another major problem: how to find a clear space forreconditioning in relation to slum clearance. Austen Chamberlain andothers had attacked the 1933 Bill by pointing to large areas of deficienthousing that would not be affected by a limited programme of slumclearance. It would seem almost self-evident that above the lowest tier ofhousing suitable for clearance, there must lie another tier suitable forimprovement, which would allow both policies to go forward together. Infact this whole area bristled with difficulties.

A useful starting point is the actions that were already being carried outunder the 1930 Improvement Area provisions. Little or nothing has beenwritten about their application in provincial cities, although plans werecertainly made in Birmingham, Liverpool and in the north-east countyboroughs. Certainly, their use in London followed a definite line. In 1930the medical officer presented the LCC with a survey of possible areas inwhich “a most anomalous result has emerged…unsatisfactory insanitaryareas, not yet bad enough to justify inclusion under schemes for clearance…would at first sight appear the most fruitful field in which to seek forimprovement areas. But upon inspection...such houses…are structurallyincapable of withstanding the reconditioning necessary to remove theevils from which they suffer. The greater part of the older working-classhouses in London are of this character.”[18] Returning to this theme in1933 he says

improvement area property should be not less than three-storeyshigh, well-built and of sound fabric, well-arranged on site, and whileoriginally designed f or one family is now unsuitably occupied byseveral, overcrowded and roughly used, the disrepair or sanitarydefects being of such a nature that they can be effectively remediedat reasonable cost and thereafter properly maintained.[19]

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It is noticeable that whereas the first formulation was exclusively structural, in the second there is a stronger economic element. Nonetheless, thisdoes not go so far as to recognize a primacy of economic factors: giveneconomic constraints are accepted in deciding which structures can beimproved, and what lies beyond this is written off as structurally beyondimprovement. In the case of improvement areas the conditionscomplained of had to be “effectively remedied.” This, however, had to bedone without much increase in rents, and without subsidy. The localauthority took on the responsibility and expense of rehousing surplustenants, but again the landlord had to meet any resulting effects on therental. This was the basis of Percy’s argument that such schemes wouldreduce economic viability and deter responsible landlords. It alsonecessarily limited the kind of improvement that could occur. There was,therefore, no weighing of relative costs and benefits of redevelopment orimprovement. A set of properties was distinguished that could structurallybe considered as improvable, in the sense that there was not too large aburden of expensive repairs. As far as the LCC medical officer wasconcerned such property was “practically limited to certain parts of theCounty, chiefly in the north and west; Kensington, Islington, andPaddington being particularly suitable”. It was thus quite different fromclearance property in location as well as in type.

The medical officer emphasized, however, that it would be a mistake tosuppose the new powers were “applicable only to areas which are lessurgently in need of attention in the wider sanitary sense. The overcrowded‘slum’ presents worse conditions than those which arise merely fromstructural defects and deficiencies in houses otherwise cared for.” Suchimprovement areas were to be declared at Clarendon Street (Paddington)and Southam Street and Treverton Street in Kensington. Clarendon Streetwas representative of the type. Improvement there consisted of closing thebasements, where extra toilets were installed together with sinks in therooms, and in carrying out repairs and redecoration under special bylaws.More dramatically, 47 per cent of the original population were removed,and the average household size reduced from 4.1 to 2.8. This was theclassic remedy for dealing with large buildings in which poor familieswith children shared staircases and other amenities.[20]

One possible direction for future policy was to found reconditioning onstructurally sound properties, and to go for a higher standard ofconversion and amenities that might justifiably be ranked as“improvement” rather than “repair”, so attracting a public subsidy. Thiswas the route taken by the parallel Whiston Report on Scotland.[21] TheScottish Committee’s recommendations were explicitly based ondeveloping the Rural Workers legislation, and they had in mind a

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standard of reconditioning which included the provision of a separatewater closet inside the building, and preferably inside the dwelling, hotand cold water and, where practicable, a bath in a bathroom.Reconditioning also meant amalgamation of rooms into larger flatswhere this did not involve extensive reconstruction. Grants would beavailable to cover 50 per cent of improvements, but not repairs, up to alimit of £75 per dwelling. In return for the grant there would be some—imprecise—control over rent, and the committee recognized that therewould be little in it for the landlord. Many landlords would be unwillingto co-operate, but it was essential, they thought, not to leave a sporadicdistribution in which some properties in a street were improved andothers not. This would “diminish the advantage to be derived from thereconditioning, and would cause great difficulty in future when theunreconditioned property became ripe for demolition.” A ScottishHousing Corporation—a public body removed from direct electoralcontrol—would take over such property where necessary, buying atmarket value. It would receive improvement grants in the same way asprivate landlords.

The route chosen by the Scottish committee was therefore not withoutits difficulties. But it did succeed in identifying a field for improvementwhich was distinct from that of clearance, and in quantitative terms muchmore important—they estimated that some 200,000 dwellings might beimproved in this way, compared with 40,000 needing demolition. Theapproach recognized the special nature of the Scottish housing problem.There was an inheritance of “a substantial type of house built of stone orgranite with walls of exceptional thickness”. Problems lay mainly in thesmall size of dwelling within the house, overcrowding and lack ofamenities. In London there were large tracts of houses formerly in middle-class occupation, but in most cases in England house property was of a lesssubstantial character. Nonetheless, policies of reconditioning had in thepast sometimes involved substantial alterations, such as the conversionof back-to-backs into through houses. There was a possibility ofextending the Rural Workers approach to the cities, but the MoyneReport did not even consider this. Instead, it opted for the opposite routewhich involved a minimum of reconditioning in houses that were close tothe slum clearance limit, and this brought inevitable problems ofdemarcation.

The Moyne Committee approach was not based on any characteristicsof the dwellings, but rather on their management. It relied a good deal onthe practice of a small number of London societies, such as the KensingtonHousing Trust and the Improved Tenants Association, whose methodswere founded on Octavia Hill principles. It was argued that “you cannot

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take people wholesale out of the slums and put people in new property.”Reconditioning was practised only in a limited way. The trust explainedthat “reconditioning in that sense only means repair. The essence is tohave sufficient reconditioned property to educate people up to ultimatelygoing into the new.”[22] The Moyne Report itself found that there was no“marked difference between the standard of repairs which can be requiredunder the Housing Acts and that which is secured by Housing Societies aslandlords; the important difference lies in the improved management ofthe houses…and their subsequent maintenance in good repair.”[23].Other societies had different practices—for example Evelyn Perry andIrene Barclay giving evidence on behalf of the St Pancras HouseImprovement Society recommended demolition and rebuilding “in thecase of all houses of the pre-London Building Act period”.[24] The MoyneReport considered, however, that public utility societies provided

striking examples of the practical advantages which can be obtainedfrom the transfer of working-class property from a number of smallprivate landlords to responsible public or quasi-public ownershipand management on…the Octavia Hill system.[25]

Although the approved method seemed especially applicable to the poorest,the Moyne Report had necessarily to direct attention to a class of propertyabove that taken in slum clearance. The report specifically argued for thepurchase of “working-class houses which are not in all respects fit forhabitation, but can be made fit and to which a possible life of up to twentyyears can be given”. The phrase “not in all respects fit for human habitation”was one that constantly recurs as a way of demarcating property whichwas not “unfit” in the sense of clearance legislation, yet needed specialmeasures. In support of this view, and in order to justify the compulsorytransfer of property, the language used by the report regarding landlordswas strikingly similar to that contained in slum clearance and sanitarylegislation. The report claimed to

aim at the elimination of all owners who have proved themselvesunwilling or unable to discharge the obligations of ownership andwho have continually evaded both the spirit and the letter of the law.

The owners who had failed in their duty to maintain their houses

should be made liable at law to expropriation…[this] will itself havea salutory effect in inducing those owners who can afford it to puttheir property generally into a good state of repairs.[26]

Crossett Place, Southwark, 1923 (part of the China Walk scheme).

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Pellew House, Collingwood Estate, Bethnal Green, 1925; twophotographs showing front and back.

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Balcony styles: (top) China Walk Estate, Lambeth, 1934;(foot) Downs Estate, Hackney, 1938.

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A little house in Chelsea (from Randall Phillips The house improved 1931).

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This stance, however, left the committee in a the grip of contradictorypressures when it came to the crucial problem of compensation. Havinglaid such emphasis on the failure of landlords to do their duty, it had tobe careful not to be seen to be taking the property off their hands at afavourable rate. The committee explicitly rejected the view that problemsof housing quality were the result of post-war policy, and they wereadvised by the chief valuer that such houses were overvalued on themarket, allowing insufficient monies for repairs and maintenance. This wasbecause of “the general reluctance of local authorities to exercise theirpowers for compelling owners to keep their premises in habitablecondition”.[27] The report itself blamed the housing shortage for the factthat landlords could “curtail their expenditure on repairs withoutendangering their income from rents”. Against this, owners had looked toimprovement as a means of shifting the compensation question in theirfavour, and the government would not be anxious to exacerbate the kindsof problem with the owners that slum clearance was continuing to raise,particularly if it threatened the basis of slum clearance compensation itself.The report rejected a scheme in which compensation would be market valueless the cost of putting the property in good repair, as “hardship would beinflicted on a number of poor people”. In the end it advocated refundingthe purchase money of a property, a weak scheme to which all kinds ofobjections could be made, and which would have been almost impossibleto carry into legislation. [28]

The Moyne Report’s recommendations continued a line of policy devel-opment that had begun with the Unhealthy Areas Report. Like theChamberlain proposals of the late 1920s, they reflected a changed politicalcontext: one in which planned decentralization found less support and“slum prevention” more. This left “improvement” largely encapsulated ina set of meanings inherited from the Victorian period. It was, in this form,an alternative to slum clearance rather than complementary to it, focusingattention on the slum tenant and the landlord as much (or more) than onthe slum building. Although slum clearance also clearly bore the marks ofits Victorian origins, its meanings seemed capable of greater extension, toinclude public investment in new urban forms, and this made it moreacceptable across the political spectrum. The most likely context for ac-ceptance of “slum prevention” rather than clearance and rebuilding wasone in which political support for local authority intervention in housingwas at a very low ebb, and there was thus no need to provide it with astrong focus. This might have been a possibility in 1931–2, but by 1933–4the moment had passed.

An interesting feature of the Moyne Report was that its recommenda

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tions involved a form of “clean sweep”, which paralleled that of slumclearance, but involved management rather than buildings. However,Hilton-Young was instead to reinforce the clean sweep of clearance withthe wider concept of redevelopment. Alison Ravetz sees a “clean sweepapproach” to towns in terms of the utopianism of certain politicians,architects and planners, emerging from a hatred and rejection of theVictorian city, and hence an easy willingness to discard its existingform.[29] This seems to me to be exaggerated, but above all it presentsonly one side of the equation. What was equally important were thefactors that prevented any effective intervention to improve existingforms, and led to action being concentrated on competitive newdevelopment or on redevelopment. Some of these factors are intrinsic orempirical in nature. But they were also greatly reinforced by anideological approach which was already deeply embedded in Victoriansociety, and involved political and economic interests much morepowerful than planners, architects, or utopian politicians. This was adesire to establish a “clear dividing line” between a sphere of “freeenterprise” and a sphere of public intervention: the hope that by radicalintervention at the bottom it would be possible to preserve the rest fromany intervention at all. Slum clearance had always represented such anapproach, only now events were to conspire to extend it toredevelopment.


By the summer of 1933 the political scene had changed considerably, andthe success of the National Government in the next general election couldno longer be guaranteed. Civil servants preparing the new Housing Billfelt that the 1933 Act had been a technical success, in the sense that it hadstimulated slum clearance and private-sector housing starts had increased.It had, however, been a political failure, and this unpopularity mightincrease as local authority starts were still benefiting from transitionalarrangements. The essential context of the Bill, therefore, was that a newmove was required to recapture the initiative in the housing field, whilepreserving as much as possible of the clear dividing line between publicand private housing that had been established in 1933. A possible Bill calledHousing (Moyne Report) was pencilled into the agenda in October 1933,and in December policy aims were summarized as follows: “to remedy theevil of slums action is needed on two parallel lines (1) clearance…(2)reconditioning of house…capable of being made fit for a number of yearsat reasonable cost.” Later that month Hilton-Young put this proposition to

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the Cabinet, but also mentioned some provision for the relief ofovercrowding. Any idea of public utility societies being given a centralrôlehad already been ruled out, and overcrowding increasingly came toreplace reconditioning as the focus for a second prong of the attack on theslum. Officials highlighted the references to this in the Moyne Report, andindeed decided that “overcrowding is a more serious menace to healththan deficiencies which can be met by reconditioning”.[30] In the event,the 1935 Act was to repeal the 1930 Improvement Area procedure, andalthough reconditioning could occur in other ways, in practice it was ofreduced importance.

The main difficulty in dealing with overcrowding was that its relief hadalways formed part of the case for local authority building, and it wasmore difficult to detach from the general housing market than slumclearance or slum prevention. Indeed, the opposition were to charge thegovernment with a volte-face: “the most obvious course in 1932 to providehousing accommodation for overcrowded working-class families was thetotal withdrawal of the subsidy. The most obvious course in 1935 is torenew the subsidy.”[31] Hilton-Young was able to counter this argument,and to obtain Cabinet support for his proposals, by presenting a case for“direct” as opposed to “indirect” action on overcrowding. This meantmore than simply targeting the overcrowded or setting an overcrowdingstandard. Overcrowding could only be tackled by “rehousing on theovercrowded and slum sites”. This was a very necessary argument. ACabinet committee set up to consider the matter reported that suburbanbuilding for relief of overcrowding would smudge the 1933 settlement,and might lead to a demand for renewal of the discarded general subsidy.Instead subsidies should be

strictly limited to areas where rehousing is effected on or near thecentral sites by means of blocks of flats.[32]

Hilton-Young then put the proposals to the local authorities and to theNational Federation of Housebuilders. The latter was firmly opposed toany further suburban building by councils, even for slum clearancerehousing. There were many council tenants who could afford economicrents, and “if the local authorities evicted these persons the slum tenantscould take their place and the evicted persons could be catered for by theprivate builder.” The local authorities, however, while welcoming thepossibility of an overcrowding subsidy, were strongly opposed to confiningits use to flats on expensive sites. They emphasized that if this were done,little or no action would result. Hilton-Young was able to use this to obtainCabinet permission for suburban housing in special cases sanctioned by

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the Treasury.[33] He was then able to present the matter to Parliament inthe following terms. Overcrowding was characteristically present in

the inner and older areas of our towns, with mean streets badlydeveloped, a wasteful layout of land, which according to modernideas are neither proper from the point of view of amenities noreconomic from the point of view of housing the maximum numberunder proper conditions.

Local authorities should therefore

boldly take over into their own hands the central overcrowded badlydeveloped areas and…redevelop them as regards the layout so as tomake the most economic use of the sites, and then reconstruct orrebuild so as to house the greatest possible number of wage earnerson those sites under proper conditions.[34]

The Bill therefore involved two major new features. One of these was theredevelopment area which could be declared where one-third of thedwellings were unfit or overcrowded. The other was a legally-enforcedovercrowding standard. This standard was complicated in detail, but basedgenerally on a maximum of two persons per room and separation of thesexes over 10 years of age for sleeping purposes. The precise effects of thisstandard in terms of rehousing needs were to be established by means ofan official overcrowding survey. The standard was seen both as a means oftargeting the worst cases and of concentrating attention on the largest cities.

Owners organizations were not opposed to a legally-enforcedovercrowding standard, which had indeed been suggested to the MoyneCommittee by the Property Owners Protection Association.[35] They had,however, been looking to the Moyne Report as a means of renewing thecompensation question, and Hilton-Young faced intense opposition at theConservative Party Conference. Some new provisions became essential,but with the support of the Cabinet he was able to limit the extent of theconcessions, which principally involved abolition of the reduction factor.Other measures gave a good impression without being very costly.“Wellmaintained” payments were introduced, but at a relatively low level,while the provision that a house should not be condemned merely on thegrounds of “bad neighbours” would merely “legalise what was alreadythe practice”.[36]

The 1935 Housing Act was recognized both by contemporaries and

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later writers as an important measure, and there are three linked ways inwhich this should be examined. First, in the political sense the Act wasmuch more successful than that of 1933, and re-established the kind ofmodus vivendi that had been present in the mid-1920s. By confirming theposition of the local authorities, and providing them with a rôle that wasclearly both important and no longer confined to a limited time horizon,ground had been conceded to the left. The latter, however, was compelledto accept in practice that the rôle of councils should be complementary toprivate enterprise rather than competitive, and that they should deal withthe most difficult, least prestigious and least profitable part of the market.It is certainly wrong to interpret this as consensus, if by this term onemeans a meeting of minds.

The recognition of a local authority rôle in combating overcrowdingwas of major significance because it breached the strict lines of a sanitarypolicy which distinguished between quality and quantity. Councils weregiven a rôle in housing supply, and although this was strictly demarcatedand limited, it had evident possibilities of future extension. Wilding sawthe Act as “a further step towards the establishment…of a nationalminimum standard of housing.” Going further, he suggested that it was “atentative shuffle towards the idea of housing as a social service.”[37]Whether one accepts this latter point, or whether the Act should be seenrather as an extension of sanitary policy needs to be considered in relationto its practical workings.

Also relevant here is the attempt to confine local authority action torehousing in flats on expensive land. This, however, had equally largesignificance in other directions. The introduction of redevelopment areasbrought the concept of “obsolescence” on to the practical agendaalongside “unfit housing”, with major effects on the way in which citieswere viewed. The scope for redevelopment of the inner parts of cities wasdramatically widened, and undoubtedly this also encouraged widerconceptions of slum clearance. Through redevelopment, housing andtown planning were once more linked, and indeed Hilton-Young referredto his measure as “town planning in practice and not on paper”.[38] Townplanning in Britain, hitherto almost exclusively decentralist in tone, founditself with a major challenge, and the decentralists main weapon—theneed to relieve overcrowding—was turned back against them. The Actgreatly reinforced those who favoured the flat as a solution to urbanhousing, and it is worth noting that Greenwood complained of this andclaimed that in 1930 he had envisaged flats only for three or four areassuch as London and Liverpool.[39] Finally, the Act brought land valuesback onto the political and planning agenda. Lord Balfour of Burleigh, animportant Conservative supporter of planning, thus immediately

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condemned “the adoption of a form of subsidy which can hardly fail to actpowerfully in raising land values in central areas”. Addison thought thatdwellings could not be made cheap enough, “if land is to cost theastronomical figures which are talked about in this Bill,…unless there is aprodigious and quite unhealthy number of flats put on the land peracre”.[40]

Notes

1 GLRO CL/HSG/1 /5 Housing policy: economic situation 1931–2; PRO CAB23/ 73 64(32)7 CP 409 (32); CAB 70(33)21 Appendix II.

2 Estates Gazette 121, 1933, 129.3 Hansard 273, col. 559, 15 Dec. 1932.4 Hansard 280, cols 651, 7 July 1933.5 HC 26 Apr. (9) 1933 confidential memo.6 Moggridge, D. (ed.) 1971–80. J.M.Keynes: collected writings. Vol. 21 Activities

1931–9, 155. London: Macmillan.7 Hansard 273, cols 573–6, 578, 588, 15 Dec. 1932.8 Estates Gazette 121, 1933, 203.9 ibid., 123, 1934, 469.10 F. Fremantle, Hansard 274, col. 83, 7 Feb. 1933.11 Finnigan, R. 1984. Council housing in Leeds 1919–39. In Councillors and

tenants: local authority housing in English cities 1919–39, M.J. Daunton (ed.), 102–53. Leicester: Leicester University Press; Finnigan R. 1981. Housing policy inLeeds 1919–39. M.Phil thesis, University of Bradford; Hammerton H.J. 1952.This turbulent priest: the story of Charles Jenkinson. London: Lutterworth Press.

12 Hansard 274, cols 55–6, 7 Feb. 1933.13 Memo by Lord Eustace Percy PRO HLG 49/7; HC 26 Apr. (8) 1933; other

references to Percy are drawn from Hansard 274, col. 71, 7 Feb. 1933, and PROHLG 52/792.

14 HLG 49/7; Other references to Unwin are drawn from Estates Gazette 121,1933, 19; and PRO HLG 52/792.

15 HC 3 May (6–2) 1933.16 Estates Gazette 121, 1933, 685.17 PRO HLG 52/793.18 HC 3 Oct. (7) 1930.19 HC 28 Jun. (7) 1933.20 HC 3 Oct. (7) 1930; HC19 Jun. (44) 1935.21 Departmental Committee on Housing (Scotland), Report, Cmnd. 4469 Dec.

1933.22 PRO HLG 49/7; PRO HLG 52/792; Departmental Committee on Housing

(Moyne Committee), Report, Cmnd 4397, 1933.23 Moyne Report op. cit, 12.

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24 PRO HLG 49/7; HLG 52/792.25 Moyne Report op. cit, 12.26 ibid., 17–18, 56.27 PRO HLG 52/791.28 Moyne Report op. cit., 17–18, 53.29 Ravetz A. 1980. Remaking cities, 19–24. London: Croom Helm.30 PRO HLG 29/213; CAB 70(33)21 Appendix II.31 Earl of Listowel, Hansard (Lords) 97, col. 324, 5 Jun 1935.32 PRO CAB 24/247 CP 12(34), CP 46(34).33 PRO HLG 68/30; CAB 24/250 CP 208(34).34 Hansard 297, cols. 362, 367, 30 Jan. 1935.35 PRO HLG 49/7.36 ibid., conference with officials 10 July 1933.37 Wilding, P.R. 1970. Government and housing: a study in the development of

social policy 1909–39, 377, 380. Ph.D. thesis, University of Manchester.38 PRO HLG 52/128:1934 Bill 12 Feb. 1934.39 Hansard 297, col. 389, 30 Jan. 1935.40 Lord Balfour of Burleigh 1935. Overcrowding: a bad Bill. Contemporary Review

147, 388; Hansard 297, col. 546, 31 Jan. 1935.

Notes

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C H A P T E R 8Action against the slum:

programmes and distributions

The aim of this chapter is to examine the various programmes designed toremedy slum conditions in the 1930s, and to show the extent of theirachievement. The clearance programme in England and Wales is firstdiscussed, and statistics presented relating to the main cities and regionalgroupings of the county boroughs. Attention is given to the varying types ofprocess that clearance involved, only a portion of the effort requiring thecompulsory purchase of sites on which rehousing could take place. By contrast,this was the main process in London, and the clearance programme there isconsidered in more detail in the second part. Finally, overcrowding and multi-occupation are examined; there is a discussion of their incidence in relationto that of unfit housing, and of the choice of priorities for housing action.

Unfit housing and slum clearance

Bowley, in pioneering work on housing between the wars, established thatin England and Wales over 250,000 houses were demolished or closed inclearance programmes during the 1930s, and over a million personsdisplaced. Table 8.1 gives the official figures to end September 1934 andend March 1939. Bowley then went on to compare such figures with theprogrammes that had been submitted under Circular 1331 by October 1933.These amounted to the demolition of 266,851 houses, the displacement of1,240,182 people, and the building of 285,189 replacement houses. The 1933figures did not include a few programmes yet to be approved, nor clearanceareas already declared under the 1930 Act. Nonetheless, it was clear fromthe comparison that in global terms the programme had been a success,and that it dwarfed all previous attacks on unfit housing. Despite this, theend of the slum was not in sight because local authorities had raised their

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programmes by March 1939 to include demolition or closure of 472,000houses.[1]

It was also clear that the overall totals concealed very substantial variationsin the performance of different authorities. Some had considerably exceededtheir programmes, and others had fallen substantially behind. However, itis very difficult to compare one with another in terms of “success rates”.The programmes submitted were drawn up by the authorities themselves,and were initially more or less ambitious. While the 1933 programmesgenerally exceeded those of 1930, some authorities such as Birminghamhad scaled their programmes down. In certain large cities, notably Leedsand Liverpool, the 1933 programmes were always intended to run over alonger period. Again, the nature of the programme that authorities had tocarry out presented very varying degrees of difficulty. One should nottherefore accept that the extent to which targets were completed is the mainyardstick by which local authority performance should be judged.Moreover, both the ministry at the time, and Bowley later, rely too muchon measuring performance through quantitative statistics rather than interms of the quality of achievement as related to circumstances before andafter. Throughout Bowley’s work there is an absolute certainty in therightness of a programme the ef f ects of which are never really examined.

Bearing this in mind, the programmes submitted in 1930 and 1933 arenonetheless useful guides to set against the extent of achievement. Tables8.2 and 8.3 set out the programmes of leading cities and of all the countyboroughs grouped into conurbations and regions. Together, the countyborough and London County programmes accounted for about two thirdsof the 1933 totals. Unfortunately, the achievement of programmes is lesseasily measured by disaggregated data, for which the most complete setrelates to the number of houses built for rehousing.[2] Once more, theoverall number of such houses—273,389—matches those demolished, butin some districts, notably London and north-east England, a larger surplus

Table 8.1 Slum clearance in England and Wales: Acts of 1930 and 1935–6

Note: Figures include houses closed as well as demolished.Source: Ministry of Health. Housing: house production, slum clearance etc. England andWales, 1934, 1939.

Action against the slum: programmes and distributions

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of new houses was needed over those demolished. Probably the bestcomparison to make is that between the proportion of new houses built ineach district, and the proportion of the population that was programmedto be displaced in 1933. Thus Greater London had 23 per cent of the 1933programme (by persons) but built only 10 per cent of the replacementhouses. The seven leading cities (Table 8.2) accounted for 48 per cent of theprogramme, but completed only 29 per cent of the houses. These figuresclearly bear out the proposition, originally established by Bowley, thatslum clearance made least progress, in relation to the programmessubmitted, in the large cities and conurbations where the problem wasmost severe. More progress was made in other county boroughs, and yetmore in the aggregate of industrial districts, suburbs, country towns andvillages that made up the remaining local authority areas.

The figures given in Table 8.2 reflect the fact that slum clearance was easiestto accomplish in smalzl towns and less organized settlements whererebuilding land lay close at hand. Indeed, there were in fact two separatetypes of programme being carried out. In one of these the local authorityordered the demolition or closure of houses and built rehousingaccommodation on undeveloped land. In the other, the authority purchasedthe properties, usually by a compulsory order, and used the sites forrehousing, although parts and sometimes the whole of such areas couldalso be allocated to other land uses. These programmes therefore had verydiffer ent implications and degrees of difficulty of implementation. In some

Table 8.2 Slum clearance in the 1930s: leading cities

*Total to 30 Jun. 1939.

Sources: Ministry of Health, 12th Annual Report 1930–1, Parliamentary Papers 14, 280–6;Ministry of Health, Housing Act 1930, particulars of slum clearance programmes 1933,Parliamentary Papers, 21, 4; Marshall, J.L. The pattern of housebuilding in the inter-warperiod in England and Wales. Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 17, 201–2.

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cases all that was needed was to proceed with normal cottage buildingactivities, and to issue orders for closure or demolition, with only a generalrequirement to keep the two parts in balance. In other cases there neededto be a complicated scheduling of purchase, demolition, rebuilding andrehousing, which had to be planned over several years and might involveco-ordination of activities on many different sites.

Exactly how much of the 1930s programme fell into each of the twocategories is impossible to determine. It is clear, however, that thedemolition or closure of individual houses did not usually involve thepurchase of the land. Such houses comprised 31 per cent of the demolitionscompleted by April 1939, and as much as 48 per cent of those achieved by

Table 8.3 Slum clearance in the 1930s: county boroughs, by conurbation and region

Sources: see Table 8.2, p.111.

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October 1934. Figures available at Kew allow some insight into the extentthat clearance of individual houses formed part of the programmessubmitted in 1933, although they do not cover all parts of the country. Insome county boroughs demolition or closure of individual housesaccounted for a substantial part—as much as 56 per cent in Bolton, andover 30 per cent in Portsmouth, Wolverhampton and Dudley. More typicalwere cities such as Bristol, Oldham, and Southampton (11 per cent -16 percent). It is known that 16 per cent of the houses actually demolished inSheffield were dealt with individually. Individual houses, however, madeup a very small part (2–5 per cent) of the programmes in Newcastle,Gateshead and Sunderland, and negligible proportions in Liverpool (0.7

Figure 8.1 Slum clearance in England and Wales: county borough programmes 1933 (bypopulation). Source: Ministry of Health, Cmnd 4535.

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per cent) and London.[3] Given the relative weight of the different areas, itseems unlikely that individual houses made up more than about about 10per cent of clearance properties in London and the county boroughs, andhence it follows that the bulk of clearance activity outside those districtsprobably took that form.

The clearance or closure of houses on an individual basis meant thatthey were considered independently in legal procedure, it did notnecessarily mean that these were free-standing buildings. This procedurepasses naturally into that of the clearance order, which was the method ofdealing with clearance areas which the local authority did not wish topurchase. Such areas might comprise as few as two houses, but equallymight range up to several acres if, for example, the area was zoned forindustrial usage. One kind of situation to which individual action orclearance orders were particularly applicable was the presence of infillwhich had occurred at the rear of houses during the late eighteenth andearly nineteenth centuries, and has been described by Conzen andBeresford.[4] At Middlesborough, where at first individual back-to-backhouses were taken down to improve light and air for the rest, later “all thehouses fronting onto little courts have been pulled down, and nearlyeverywhere the sites have remained vacant.”[5] These were processes thatwould have been repeated in many parts of the country, and account for aconsiderable proportion of the clearance programme, although the resultswould often not be visible from the main streets.

Even in the most detailed accounts of provincial cities, no mention ismade of the extent to which clearance orders were used, or of the extent ofcompulsory purchase orders and the resulting land uses. This is one of thegaps in research that needs to be filled. However, from 12,591 housessubmitted as part of clearance areas by Liverpool between 1933 and 1939,some 4,068 were included in clearance orders.[6] It would thus appear thatnearly one-third of the houses in the programme were dealt with in thisway. If this was the case in one of the major cities, and one in which centralarea rehousing was given the greatest priority, it suggests that this musthave been a major procedure in provincial cities generally. Certainly, takentogether with the fact that one-third of the clearance programme in thecountry dealt with individual houses, it is clear that the bulk of the inter-war programme did not involve compulsory purchase of land. This is themain consideration to bear in mind in comparing the extent of clearancefrom one district to another, or in comparing inter-war pro grammes withthose of 1955–75.

Several other implications also follow. The bulk of owners affected byclearance between the wars would not have received any compensation.They would simply have been left with the sites or, where only closure


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was effected, with the buildings for which other uses would have to befound. Where the owner was left with the site, this was often of littlevalue, although clearance might benefit other buildings nearby. In othercases, however, sites now free of sitting tenants could be turned to morevaluable uses. Also, the bulk of the inter-war programme did not involverebuilding on clearance sites. This has many implications, but one mightraise here E.D. Simon’s contention that “a serious mistake was made in1930 when the Greenwood subsidy was made available for new housesonly on condition that when a family from a slum clearance area hadbeen put into a new house, the slum house was pulled down”.[7] Hisview was that continued use of many of such houses would have furtherrelieved overcrowding, kept property prices down and preventedcompulsory removal of some tenants who wanted to remain. Againstthat, most of the houses involved were of the worst type surviving fromthe pre-1860 era. They not only had the cramped, ill-ventilated sitestargeted by the legislation, but had also often been the least well builtproperty, now suffering from dampness and other defects. The mainfactor, however, was that it was the clearance that legitimized the slumrehousing subsidy.

Everywhere, the nature of the clearance programme depended on theinterlinking of a number of crucial factors. The nature of development inthe pre-1860 period, the closeness of suburban land and the politicalresponse all varied from place to place. Perhaps surprisingly in thisperiod, unemployment does not appear as a factor which clearly affectsthe pace of the movement at the regional level. It is true that South Walessaw very little clearance, both in the county boroughs and in the coalfield,but this may well be explained by the late development of the area and thenature of its housing stock. There was a considerable programme in thenorth-east which kept well to schedule.[8] Generally, the south andmidlands bulk fairly large in the totals itemized in Table 8.3, in relation tothe nature of their housing, but this reflects the fact that clearance was notcarried out according to a national standard, and nearly all authorities hadsome property which came within the scope of the Acts. Because of this,even slum clearance may not have done a great deal to counteract thetendency found by Stephen Ward for urban development spending to beconcentrated on “‘middle’ Britain i.e. the most favoured parts of outerBritain and the most peripheral parts of inner Britain”.[9]

Among individual cities, Leeds has received the most detailedattention, although this partly reflects the rather unusual circumstances inwhich its programme took place, Jenkinson’s fervour being balanced bythe strength of the owners’ political power base. One attitude to propertyclashed with another which had been developed over a long period. Leeds

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demonstrates, too, how the early nineteenth-century inheritance shapedthe early twentieth-century response. The strength of the case forclearance was based on the Medical Officer of Health’s condemnation ofthe 30,000 back-to-backs that had been built before the introduction ofbylaws in the Leeds Improvement Act of 1866.[10] Leeds was a primeexample of a city in which most of the housing could be categorized into anumber of broad types of roughly similar style. In Liverpool, less than2,000 houses of the pre by-law court type still remained in 1930 andclearance was beginning to bite into the next category.[11] The Leed’sprogramme, with its clear categorization and all-embracing nature, mayhave favoured the creation of relatively large clearance areas, lying in agirdle round the city centre, as depicted in the “red ruin” map.Everywhere, however, much depended on the desire to create centralrehousing sites, and on the disposition of non-residential property thatmight have to be taken as “added land”. Birmingham is a good example ofthis. It possessed a clear inner ring of back-to-back houses, but many slumclearance sites were initially zoned for industry, and in the early yearsoften stood vacant or were adapted to temporary usage. Large-scaleclearance was only implemented when the programme was accelerated inassociation with Manzoni’s plans for redevelopment areas (see Chapter11).[12]

Ninety per cent of rehousing in Leeds took place on undeveloped land,much of it on only five suburban estates.[13] It was the political controversy, and change of council in 1935, which were largely responsible forthe fact that whereas Leeds submitted the largest programme of anyprovincial city in 1933–33,000 houses—it only demolished 11,132 houses.Further south in Sheffield, only 9,000 houses were submitted in 1933, butby end-1939 houses scheduled numbered 22,808 and 11,248 were actuallydemolished or closed.[14] This was one of the most smoothly developingprogrammes of any major city and it owed much to the circumstance,noted by Abercrombie in 1924, that “there can be few towns where landfrom which unsatisfactory houses are to be cleared is so consistentlywanted for factory purposes, and again where open land is to be found sonear to work areas.”[15] The importance of suburban land is againemphasized in the Liverpool programme. The original plan put forwardby L.H. Keay in 1933 envisaged rehousing of one-third on the outskirtsand twothirds on the central sites. In the event, however, houses and flatswere built in more equal proportions, which suggests a greaterconcentration on the suburbs. Among other factors, there was always aneed to obtain a large amount of initial rehousing before embarking on amajor clearance and rebuilding programme.[16]


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Clearance in London

It was where suburban development was least appropriate, either becauseof the disposition of the land, or the nature of local employment, that centralarea rehousing was also most costly. The two factors were necessarily linked,and London was the outstanding example of the condition. Land foroverspill, and to obtain an initial surplus to get clearance going, was themost controversial aspect of the capital’s programme. In May 1934 thecouncil already possessed sites covering nearly 100 acres for increasinghousing supply in advance of clearance. It acquired some further sites forcottage estates, such as the 138 acres at Kidbrook, Greenwich, bought for£200,000 in 1936. More important were a series of more expensive purchaseswithin the built up area. These included the White City site at Hammersmith(50 acres), Pembury Road Hackney (17 acres), Tulse Hill, Lambeth (32 acres),Woodbury Down, Stoke Newington (64 acres) and Wandsworth Road,Clapham (20 acres). Occasionally, a substantial block of non-housing landcould be bought—such as the Exhibition site at White City. More usually,however, the purchases followed the pattern set by the Central BlockDwellings programme of 1928—except that they could now be used forslum clearance as well as other tenants. Tulse Hill is a typical case. Itconsisted of “60 houses, private residences, partly let in flats and in a fewcases used for institutional purposes.… The majority are large oldfashionedresidences many of which stand in exceptionally large gardens.” Theestimated population was 400–500, of which only 10 per cent were workingclass. Block dwellings on the site were expected to house 7,000 people.[17]Substantial housing gains could therefore be achieved on this type of site,but the cost of the land was relatively high—typically £10,000 –£15,000 peracre.

Although these sites generally eased the rehousing situation, many ofthem were still remote from the principal clearance areas. Within the areaof inner east London, few comparable purchases were possible. On a fewsmall sites housing gain could be made where the land was no longerneeded for industrial purposes—such as the 3-acre Red Lion Brewery sitein Stepney purchased for £70,000 in 1935.[18] Attention was thereforeturned elsewhere, particularly north of the river into Hackney. The valuerreported in May 1934 that suggestions had been made to utilize part ofVictoria Park. This would be

without precedent. It may be, however, that the pressure to deal withEast End slum clearance will necessitate this step being taken,replacing a part of the park…by an equal amount of park or openspace in another part of London. [19]

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Clearance in London

The other suggestions he made were hardly more appealing. These werethree small sites “on the extreme county boundary in an area which hasalways been recognized as more suitable for industry than for housing”.The land was almost entirely “made up ground” and adjacent to chemicalworks and other industrial activities. In July, officers reported on theacquisition of a part of Hackney Marshes for housing purposes, suggestingthat alternative open space might be offered in Hainault Forest, althoughstrenuous opposition could be expected. Indeed, this soon developed intoa major political row, symbolic for some of Labour’s determination to grabland regardless of the public interest, for others a test of the new council’spowers to break through established opposition and effect radical change.Ultimately, a compromise was reached involving an exchange of lands fora site offered by a private landowner immediately south of the marsh, andon this land the Kingsmead Estate was built.

The Municipal Reformers opposed most of these developments, whichthey saw as an encroachment by the Labour Party on to their territory.Instead, their leader Sir Harold Webbe emphasized that the council shouldconcentrate on the East End and similar districts. Rehousing should be onclearance sites and in redevelopment areas and include, where necessary,the use of ten-storey blocks of flats.[20] However, in other respects thepolitical situation in London differed radically from that in Leeds. TheMunicipal Reform appeal to the electors in 1937 simply promised to domore than Labour in clearance and redevelopment. In thesecircumstances, the implementation of the programme became an absolutepolitical priority. For the Labour Party the clear objective was to show thatit could govern London efficiently, and ultimately be entrusted with thegovernment of the country. Establishing Labour in power meant above allerasing the image of financial irresponsibility attached to the party as aresult of the debacle of 1931 and earlier struggles over “Poplarism”. Theparty thus claimed to have maintained “the highest tradition of localgovernment for efficiency and uprightness in the Council’sadministration”. “Labour at power in County Hall is clean, competent,constructive and public spirited.” “It can be safely left in control of theworld’s greatest municipality.” “The Tory policy of stops and starts andwobbling has ended. The Labour policy of persistent drive holds thefield.”[21] All this clearly bears the mark of Herbert Morrison himself,although he was closely supported by others such as Charles Latham andLewis Silkin, the new chairman of the Housing Committee. It meant thatalthough slum clearance obviously had its idealistic aspect, in London itappeared more as an efficient programme than as a crusade of theJenkinson type.


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Externally, the most important feature of the clearance initiative wasthe relationships with the boroughs. Here what the Labour LCC wantedwas a traditional relationship in which the county council dealt with thelarger areas, most suitable for rebuilding, and the borough council withthe smaller areas, for which, however, the LCC would accept therehousing rôle. Not all boroughs were, however, prepared to accept this.Labour controlled Bermondsey wanted to retain and build up the largehousing workforce it had developed, and to clear and rebuild themselves.This had to be conceded. At nearby Camberwell, the borough originallystated that it was not their policy to build houses, but later when Labourtook control they wanted some of the larger clearance areas as well as thesmall. A third south London borough, Lambeth, which remained inmunicipal reformcontrol, left the LCC to do most of the clearance, largeand small. Boroughs with housing land tended to have housingdepartments regardless of party, so that Wandsworth and Woolwich bothwanted to undertake most of their own clearance. The LCC also interferedlittle with the municipal reform heartland in the West End, where manyBoroughs in any case had few large clearance areas, but it did more inPaddington and St Marylebone. Elsewhere in London the pattern of theLCC undertaking the large schemes, and the boroughs the small, wasgenerally followed.

As in other major cities, clearance areas in London were formedaround lists of unfit houses drawn up by the medical officer. The originallist of 1911 has already been mentioned in Chapter 2.[22] In the latestrevision of 1933, 31,402 houses were enumerated in the first twocategories of the list, divided amongst 1,688 separate areas, which thusaveraged 19 houses each. Larger clearances could be made by combiningthese nuclei, together with added lands. Despite this, clearance areasremained relatively small in size. Between 1934 and 1939, 214 areas weredeclared averaging 2.27 acres and 466 persons displaced. In London,contrary to the practice elsewhere, it was the smaller areas that tended tobe left, while preference was given to sites on which rebuilding couldtake place. But the medical officer had pointed out in 1922 that suchsmaller areas “constitute by far the larger part of the most insanitarydwellings, and representing as they do the worst conditions, theirclearance is the more imperative”.[23] Despite the acknowledged aim ofdealing with the larger areas first, some of the largest clearances were infact declared in 1937–8, such as the Ocean Street scheme in Stepneycovering 17.3 acres of which 5.4 acres were added lands. They reflectedthe impact of larger-scale thinking associated with the concept ofredevelopment areas. Another way in which clearance schedulingdeparted from the priorities dictated by the clearance lists was that areas

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Clearance in London

in which rehousing was easiest were favoured, especially where housinggain might be made on the sites. Clearance in south London thus mademore rapid progress than that in the heartland of the East End.

London had virtually no back-to-back property by this period and inthe larger clearance areas property, although in poor condition, wasprobably, better, in terms of plan and structure, than that taken byclearance in most other parts of the country; it was also more varied.Barclay and Perry, in their surveys of various boroughs, distinguishbetween tenement houses of six to ten rooms and “cottages”, varying fromtwo to four and sometimes five rooms. Defined in this way, the cottagewas not such a dominant element of London housing as might beimagined, when one excludes the more “modern” versions. In the olderdevelopment of London it was the “tenement house” rather than the“cottage” which predominated, and even in the East End the larger part ofthe accommodation was in subdivided tenement houses, even thoughthese structures were smaller than those found further west. It was uponthe cottage that the clearance programme fell most heavily, andundoubtedly this was often the worst property from the structural point ofview, although it had other advantages (Plates 1–2).[24]

These variations among residential properties were one of the causes ofthe small size of clearance areas. Larger structures often lined the mainstreets, with the smaller tucked in behind. A much more serious matter,however, was the presence of non-residential premises. In the UmberstonStreet area of Stepney there was “unusually intensive congestion”. “Manyof the smaller (cottage type) houses are in cul-de-sacs or very narrowalleys…spaces in the rear are small and shut in by obstructive structures ofevery sort.” These included factories, warehouses, a church, synagoguesand a modern block of flats. In Lambeth, Bloomfield Place was half an acre“limited on the other sides by well-kept house in Farnham Royal, thenugget. polish factory and large gasworks”.[25] The close associationoften found between industry and slum was thought of as a causalrelationship. Industry caused overshadowing, and sometimes noise,smell, vermin, or other disturbance. Nearby housing was often of lowsocial status. However, the presence of industry, particularly where it wasof a substantial nature, also served to protect slum property by dividing itinto small portions, difficult to combine into large clearance areas except atgreat expense.

The first clearance programme of the new LCC was launched in July1934. Over the three-year life of the council it envisaged the declaration of132 clearance areas, including some 13,867 houses and 83,250 people.[26]Another 13,000 people were expected to be displaced from additional landtaken as part of the programme. It was envisaged that most of the


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currently scheduled unhealthy areas in London could be cleared withinfour to five years, with the exception of those in the boroughs of BethnalGreen, Stepney and Shoreditch. Also there was a large populationremaining in small areas and individually unfit houses which might beestimated at between 100,000 and 250,000 people. By the time the councillaunched its second clearance drive in June 1937, 141 areas and 10,973houses had in fact been declared since June 1934. A somewhat largerprogramme was thus announced for the next three years amounting to16,973 houses, of which about half were in fact to be declared beforeclearance was slowed and eventually ended by the onset of war. It wasagain thought that this programme would “go far towards solving theslum clearance problem in London”, the exception being the East Endboroughs. A more definite note of caution was, however, now added: “theLondon housing problem is not static…it is impossible to formulate adefinite programme which on completion could be said to eliminate everyslum or unfit house in the County.”[27]

Table 8.4 sets out the populations involved in clearance declarations inLondon for different authorities, periods and regions. Between the wars,205,646 people were affected, including 175,305 people in the 1930s.Throughout the period, the bulk of the declarations lay in the inner east,where Bermondsey had the highest proportion of its population affected(18 per cent), followed by Bethnal Green, Shoreditch and Stepney (Figs 8.2& 8.3). The prominence of Bermondsey was due to the efforts of the localcouncil, which was responsible for nearly half the metropolitan boroughprogramme. Overall, 71 per cent of London clearance (by population) wascarried out by the LCC. The share of the total taken by the inner east roseconsistently. Similarly, boroughs in the south-east, particularlyCamberwell, Deptford and Greenwich, took a large and rising share,while the western parts of London, notably the West End and St Pancras,took a smaller share of activity as the programme mounted.

Figures relating to LCC clearances only show that the number of peopledisplaced and rehoused through clearance increased from 7,549 in 1934–5to 10,432 in 1935–6 and 16,055 in 1936–7, before falling back to 14,541 in1937–8. During the first Labour council, clearance involved 34,036 people,compared to 6,823 in the previous three-year council period 1931–4, and12,055 in the peak period 1928–31. Nonetheless, displacements obviouslylagged well behind clearance declarations. The most important column inTable 8.4 is therefore the last, showing the population actually displacedby 1939–92,272 people. The completion rate had been particularly low inthe inner east—some 55 per cent—reflecting the fact that many areas there

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Figure 8.2 Index map of boroughs and districts in the County of London

Figure 8.3 London: population in slum clearance areas declared 1920–30, byborough.


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had only recently been declared. Clearance had proceeded much morerapidly south of the river, and some 36 per cent of the population actuallydisplaced by clearance before the war lived there, even excludingBermondsey and Southwark. All this had two important implications. First,a very large programme of clearance remained in various stages ofcompletion when war broke out. Secondly, the East End saw much lessdemolition than clearance declarations would suggest, and this, takentogether with the acknowledged failure to include all scheduled areas there,shows that a great deal of property condemned by pre-war standards stillremained intact.

Overcrowding and multi-occupation

One of the advantages of “unfit housing” from an official point of viewwas that it provided a criterion of the slum which both limited its extentand gave it a strong territorial definition. Overcrowding as a criterion wasalways more difficult to limit in this way, and it was inherently easier tocapture various degrees of qualitative deficiency in statistical terms. Inaddition to the usual measure of 2 persons per room, the 1931 Censusincluded statistics for families at over 1.5 persons per room. Some 1.17million families containing 7 million persons were thus enumerated. Bythe “Manchester Standard”, which measured bedroom accommodation inrelation to needs, 70 per cent of children under 14 in Holborn, Southwarkand Stepney lived in d wellings with a deficiency of bedrooms, and over60 per cent in Bermondsey, Bethnal Green, Fulham, Kensington, StMarylebone, St Pancras and Shoreditch.[28]

Table 8.4 Slum clearance in London: population in clearance areas 1920–39

Note: 6,293 additional persons were affected by borough declarations under Part of the 1930and 1935–6 Acts.Sources: LCC, London housing statistics, 25; LCC MM, 16 May 1939.

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It is evident that if the standard of overcrowding had been set at 1.5persons per room, not only would the numbers of person affected havebeen greatly increased, but there could have been no question of tacklingsuch overcrowding through a legal limit, and reduction would have hadto take a voluntary form, encouraged by extra subsidies. The 1935 Act, bylinking overcrowding to a legal limit, had to set that limit at a level whichcould reasonably be expected to be enforced within a certain time.[29]Unlike the standard of unfitness, the same legal limit was set throughoutthe country, tempered only by variation in the date of the “appointeddays” beyond which new overcrowding was to be an offence. Thisnecessarily concentrated action on the worst cases, but at the same time,the focusing was an act of policy, which the setting of the legal limit wasintended to entrench. Two questions obviously then arise. One is whetherit was good policy to effect a concentration of effort that necessarilyexcluded a very large number of deserving cases. The other is whether apolicy of compulsion resulted in a satisfactory outcome for the familiesaffected. The advantage was that it reached down to families that mightotherwise have been left aside by a voluntary policy. Against this it isdifficult to support a compulsory policy unless it results in real benefit forthose affected. Some evidence on this will be presented in Chapter 10, butit should be said that, as for slum clearance, there was little attempt atofficial level to establish the position.

The strategy of the 1935 Act also had strong territorial implications,aimed at producing a definition of overcrowding suited to rehousing inthe overcrowded areas through redevelopment The introduction of thestandard was accompanied by much insistence on the fact that theproblem was concentrated in the centre of large cities. The 1936Overcrowding Survey certainly depicted a large concentration in London,although the county’s proportion of the total was no greater than that forslum clearance (Tables 8.5 & 8.6).

Within the county, moreover, such overcrowding was highest in theinner east, where the percentage overcrowded in Shoreditch, Stepneyand Finsbury was exceeded only by Sunderland among the countyboroughs. Even so, the inner east contained a lesser proportion of thepopulation overcrowded (41 per cent) than it did of that affected byclearance declarations (54 per cent). Outside London, overcrowding wasless concentrated in large cities than unfit housing, although it may betrue that it was frequently concentrated in their central parts. Althoughovercrowding was a problem in Liverpool, the six main cities outsideLondon had only 10 per cent of the country’s overcrowded families, andthe five provincial conurbations only 20 per cent. Overcrowding was


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* Working class habitations only.For notes on regions see Table 8.3, for sources see Table 8.5.

Table 8.6 Overcrowding and multi-occupation 1931–6: county boroughs by conurbationand region

Table 8.5 Overcrowding and multi-occupation 1931–6: leading cities

* Covers working class habitations only.Sources: Ministry of Health, Report of the overcrowding survey of England and Wales for1936, Table ix; Registrar General, Census of England and Wales 1931, Housing, Table 5.

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also found in smaller centres, and most strikingly in north-east England,both within the county boroughs and without. This was an aspect thathad received little mention in the presentation of the 1935 Act, and itmade rather a nonsense of the initial insistence on flats as a form ofrehousing.

The overcrowding statistic produced by the 1936 survey was smallerthan the LCC had expected from consideration of the 1931 Census. Thiswas thought to reflect some improvement in between the surveys, but itmainly resulted from differences in the criteria used, the 1936 surveyrecording in a considerable decrease in the overcrowded population inone and two room dwellings. Nonetheless, there were still 70,676 familiesor 357,989 “equivalent persons” officially overcrowded in London. Howexactly this might be translated into a figure for new dwellings wasdifficult to calculate. Adjustments would have to be made house by house,and the action the public authorities were to take in meeting the resultingoverspill was not clearly spelt out. There would not necessarily be astraightforward transfer of excess families into local authority housing.On the contrary, it was thought that much could be done by readjustmentwithin the private sector, although there was no provision for rent supportif families were obliged to take extra rooms. Thus while commentatorshave generally welcomed the 1935 Act as official recognition anovercrowding standard, it also bore some of the marks of Victoriansanitary legislation. Moreover, the Act involved a major administrativeeffort as the largest number of overcrowded households lay close to thelimit. Families could easily pass from one side of the divide to the other bybirth, death, or children leaving home. Some of these difficulties wereavoided initially by the fact that appointed days only covered “new”overcrowding, from which changes due to increased number of children,or children passing from 0.5 to 1 unit, were excluded.

By March 1939 only 23,651 houses had been built by councils andallocated to relief of overcrowding. Such stock did not necessarilycorrespond to that occupied by overcrowding cases, but the low numbersdo show the limited achievement of the campaign so far. This was partlyministry policy, since slum clearance was to take preference, but alsoreflected the initial insistence on the provision of flats, and the lowersubsidies that were available until 1938. By that time, it was believed bythe ministry that fewer council houses would be needed to relieveovercrowding than originally estimated. Even in London, where therequirements of the Act were put at 23,780 dwellings in July 1936, theabatement of overcrowding weighed much lower in the scale than slumclearance.[30] However, there was, of course a major difference, for slumclearance also provided the land on which the greater proportion of the


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displaced population could be reinstated. By contrast, all the newdwellings for abatement of overcrowding required new sites. Some 550acres were originally thought to be required for flatted estates, a figuresmall by suburban standards, but which may be compared with the 664acres of land declared in LCC slum clearance schemes between the wars,or the 760 acres occupied by the whole borough of Bethnal Green. Hencethe importance of Redevelopment Areas.

Multi-occupation, unlike unfit housing and overcrowding, was notconnected to any official programme of action. It should not for thatreason be neglected, since it has a bearing on the question of priorities.Many observers, including E.D. Simon, considered that the worstconditions were to be found in multi-occupied dwellings. This can begiven some support from cases such as the improvement area atClarendon Street, which had been recognized as a “notorious slum”, butcould not be brought within the unfit category; Jerry White’s “Worst Streetin North London” similarly survived until the 1950s. [31] Large buildingsoccupied by several families meant sharing of limited amenities, increasedlabour, and often gave rise to friction and difficulties in maintenance. Bycontrast, the smaller buildings on which clearance was particularlyconcentrated usually had the advantage that they could be occupied byone family. Similarly, although basements contained some of the worstcases of “unfitness”, compared to the upper rooms they could more easilybe made self-contained, with separate access to the backyard. Again, oldtenement blocks, such as Wolsely Buildings (Bermondsey), gave rise tomajor problems due to dense occupation of small flats by large families,sharing of lavatories and water taps, and the dumping of householdrubbish. However, it was not until the eve of the Second World War thatsuch buildings were admitted into the clearance programme.

Multi-occupation was the norm rather than the exception for familieswithin the county of London before the Second World War: 63 per cent ofhouseholds there shared a dwelling in 1931. Indeed, it is perhaps thisstatistic rather than any other which reflects the severity of the capital’shousing problem. Of course, behind it lies a great variety ofcircumstances—in most cases sharing meant the presence of only oneother household, often a small one. Nonetheless, multi-occupancy in itsworst forms clearly showed an extension of various degrees of “slum”beyond the more limited case of “unfit housing”. Such localities cannot beplotted, but the geographical concentration of multi-occupation differedsignificantly from that of unfit housing. In London, the percentage of thepopulation sharing a dwelling in 1931 was highest in Islington and StPancras, and also high in such places as Hackney, Battersea, Lambeth,Camberwell, Fulham and Hammersmith as well as in the East End

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boroughs. Moreover, whereas overcrowding was declining in London,multi-occupation was slightly increasing, fuelled by the formation of newhouseholds.

The distribution of multi-occupation in English cities also differedconsiderably from that of “unfitness”. This can be illustrated by thenumber of families “surplus” to the number of dwellings in the countyboroughs. Such a statistic is not equivalent to multi-occupation, since therewere other families with whom the surplus shared, but it does give auseful simple index. Multi-occupation was above all a characteristic ofLondon and the south of the country. London County itself contained 41per cent of the “surplus families”, and 57 per cent lay within GreaterLondon as defined by the census. Even outside London, however, countyboroughs in the south of the country contained a greater number ofsurplus families than any other region. Merseyside was another area ofconcentration, but West Yorkshire had a very low level. The fiveconurbations outside London had only 9 per cent of the surplus families ofthe country compared to 31 per cent of the unfit housing. Outside London,Plymouth and Bristol ranked next to Liverpool, and other places such asCardiff, Portsmouth, Brighton and Southampton, which figured low inthe scale of unfit housing, had large numbers of surplus families.

Ideally, it would be possible to construct some index of “livability”which would provide an overall measure of housing difficulty. This,however, cannot be done—problems of quality alone could only bemeasured in terms of degrees and combinations, and it is now impossibleto judge the relative significance of overcrowding, sharing and otherforms of disadvantage. However, the record of contemporary action isequally an insufficient guide to the extent and incidence of empiricalproblems. Almost certainly, official action concentrated on the demolitionof houses to a greater extent than would be supported by consideration of“livability”. The political reasons for this have been discussed in Chapter7. The particular type of housing and urban development in Britain duringthe Industrial Revolution certainly provided a strong empirical basis forslum clearance, but it did not in itself justify such a concentration on thisparticular form of action.

Notes

1 Bowley, M. 1945. Housing and the state 1919–1945, 147–60. London: Allen &Unwin.

2 Data were published in Marshall, J.L. 1968. The pattern of housebuilding in


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the inter-war period in England and Wales. Scottish Journal of Political Economy17, 184–205.

3 PRO HLG 96/3–5; City of Sheffield 1939. Annual report on the health of the city,47–8.

4 Conzen, M. 1960. Alnwick, Northumberland: a study in town plan analysis.London: Institute of British Geographers, Publication no. 27; Beresford, M.W.1971. The back-to-back house in Leeds. In The history of working-class housing.,S.D. Chapman (ed.) Newton Abbott: David & Charles.

5 Loch, M. 1947. County Borough of Middlesborough survey and plan, 186.Middlesborough Corporation.

6 PRO HLG 96/3.7 Simon, E.D. 1945. Rebuilding Britain: a twenty year plan, 93. London: Gollancz.8 Ryder, R. 1984. Council house building in Durham 1900–30. In Councillors and

tenants: local authority housing in English cities 1919–39, M.Daunton (ed.), 44–50.Leicester: Leicester University Press.

9 Ward, S. 1988. The geography of inter-war Britain: the state and unevendevelopment, 171. London: Routledge.

10 Finnigan, R. 1984. Council housing in Leeds 1919–1939. In Daunton op.cit.,103; Gibson, M. & M. Longstaff 1982. An introduction to urban renewal, 249.London: Hutchinson.

11 Jones, D.C. (ed.) 1934. The social survey of Merseyside. Vol. 1, 265. London:Hodder & Stoughton.

12 Manzoni, Sir H. 1955. Redevelopment of blighted areas in Birmingham.Journal of the Town Planning Institute 41,90–102.

13 Finnigan, R. 1981. Housing policy in Leeds. M.Phil. thesis, University ofBradford, 194.

14 City of Sheffield, op. cit., 47–8.15 Abercrombie, P. 1924. Sheffield: a civic survey, 85. London: Hodder &

Stoughton.16 City of Liverpool 1951. Housing progress 1864–1951.17 HC1 Apr. (86) 1936.18 ibid., 23 Jan. (60) 1935.19 ibid., 2 May (33) 1934.20 MM 9 Apr. (7) & 30 Jul. (59) 1935; Ratepayer, Sept. 1935.21 GLRO Labour Party ECD 6108; Morrison, H. & D.H. Daines 1935. London

under socialist rule. London: Labour Party.22 Yelling, J.A. 1990. The metropolitan slum: London 1918–1951. In Slums, M.

Gaskell (ed.), 193–205. Leicester: Leicester University Press.23 HC 6 Dec (7) 1922.24 Yelling, op. cit, 193–205, 214–16.25 HC 12 Jan. (7) 1937; 6 Jun. (6–47) 1933.26 MM 17 Jul. (29) 1934.27 ibid., 15 Jun. (13) 1937.28 Registrar General 1935. Census of England and Wales 1931. Housing, xxvi—

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xxxviii; Sir. H. Llewellyn-Smith, 1931–5. New survey of London life and labour,Vol. 3, 229–32, Vol. 6, 59–61. London: P.S. King.

29 Under the 1935 Act overcrowding was regulated by two sets of provisions: (a)2 persons being ten years old or more of the opposite sex must not sleep in thesame room unless husband and wife, and (b) the maximum number ofpersons was 2 for one room, 3 for two rooms, 5 for three rooms etc, childrenunder ten being counted as half. Rooms under 50 sq. ft not counted, and thefigure of 2 persons per room only permitted where room at least 110 sq. ft.

30 HC 15 July (68) 1936; in HC 26 Jun. (43) 1935 the estimate had been 31,000–38,000 houses.

31 White, J. 1986. The worst street in north London: Campbell Bunk, Islington, betweenthe wars. London: Chapman & Hall; Yelling op. cit, 214–22.

Notes

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C H A P T E R 9Landlords and property

(with Mona Paton)

This chapter needs to be read as a continuation of Chapter 5, in which thecompensation question was explored, prices and compensation costsestablished for the period 1923–5, and the political reactions of ownersexamined. It opens with data on the position of prices and the costs ofclearance in the main period of activity during the 1930s. It shows thatprices were largely determined by rents, rather than by any threat from thesanitary campaign, and that from the owners’ point of view clearance inthe 1930s took place under rather more favourable conditions than that inthe 1920s. Attention then turns to profits and management, particularly inrelation to the maintenance and improvement of houses, stressing theimportance of time and historical considerations. The final section, writtenby Mona Paton, then discusses the types of landlord and management inthe East End of London, the greatest single concentration of working-classpopulation in Britain.

Property and the slum campaign

Despite the intervention of the Depression, property had made somethingof a recovery in the mid-1930s when compared to the low values in themiddle 1920s. In Table 9.1 the auction price data presented for two groupsof London localities in Chapter 5 is updated to cover the periods 1933–5and 1936–8. At the earlier of these dates, the level of rents was little changed,compared to 1923–5, but the years purchase offered had improved, so thattaking both localities together the price of property traded at auction hadincreased by 31 per cent. This was a substantial gain at a time when wagesand prices (including the price of new houses) were generally falling, andno doubt the changes in years purchase were a response to this deflation.

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Nonetheless, one has to keep this in perspective: years purchase valueshad returned to the levels of 1910–13, a point once thought of as catastrophic,rather than the much higher figures of the 1890s (Fig. 9.1). Prices were nowmuch higher in money terms—in the combined sample they rose from£222 in 1911–13 to £248 in 1923–5 and £325 in 1933–5. In the 1890s, however,the comparable price had been £419, and since then wages and the cost ofliving had risen considerably. The whole position of housing was stillunderpinned by the massive devaluation that had occurred.

The nature of these statistics means that too much reliance should not beplaced on their accuracy, and of course they relate only to the position ofproperty in the county of London. They are, however, indicative of thelarger trends. The gap between market and rent-controlled values, andhence between new and old house prices, had reached its peak in the earlypost-war years. This gap was now very substantially closed. Precisely howfar is impossible to say, but it is notable that in 1935, at the low point in thecycle of building costs, these were 43 per cent above pre-war levels, takingthe country as a whole, a position comparable to that of old property pricesin London.[1] Moreover, it is noticeable that while wages and prices tendedgenerally to firm in the latter part of the 1930s, the value of older propertyunderwent little change (Table 9.1) and years purchase values if anythingseem to have drifted back a little. This may simply reflect a return ofinflation, but may also be in part a reaction to the large building programmeof the mid-1930s, and to the other factors making for a continued declineof population in inner London.

Table 9.1 Freehold rents and auction prices in London, 1933–8

Locality A Bermondsey, Bethnal Green and Stepney/Limehouse.LocalityB Battersea, Fulham and Peckham.Source: Land and House Property Yearbooks. See Chapter 5, note 4formethod of usage.

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The auction-price data can be supported by consideration of the costs ofclearance sites, measured per acre and per room demolished. As previouslyargued (Chapter 5), the latter figure makes some allowance for the varyinglocation and density of schemes, although of course this is not a whollyadequate correction. In all cases, costs include estimates of the purchaseprice of property and the costs of site preparation. The results( Table 9.2)suggest that clearances declared in 1934 involved an increased cost of some44 per cent over those of 1923–5, when valued per acre, and of 43 per centwhen valued per room. The 1938 clearances then involved further increasesof 13 and 33 per cent respectively, so that the cost per room was then 90 percent higher than in 1923–5. In 1938 the large scheme at Warwick Street,(Woolwich) was estimated to cost £7,300 per acre, while the equally largeTurin Street (Bethnal Green) scheme cost £19,000, and estimated costsincreased to £29,863 at Umberston Street (Stepney) and £31,428 per acre atRiley Street (Chelsea). This kind of variation makes it impossible to measurethe rise in land costs precisely, or to apportion it chronologically.Nonetheless, the major shift which had occurred since the comparativelywell-located schemes of 1923–5 is very evident. It carried forward into theeconomics of redevelopment, to be discussed in Chapter 10. However, italso reflected the improvement in the position of the owner, and indeedthe gap between compensation values and general property prices,themselves bettered, would seem to have narrowed substantially.

The improved nature of compensation payments, from the owners’point of view, reflected the administrative gains they had made during the1920s, the revisions of the 1930 Act, and those of 1935, particularly the

Figure 9.1 London auction prices 1895–1938. The bars show the mean years purchase ofdwellings in localities A (left) and B (right). The line shows the mean auction price for thecombined localities (see Table 9.1).

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abolition of the reduction factor. Although the importance of the latter hadalready been scaled down before abolition, its elimination had a majoreffect on well-located schemes. Most likely, the reduction factor changes,and indeed the general improvements to compensation, had their mainimpact in London, where site values were at their highest and where theproperty taken was more varied. In a city such as Leeds, where most of theproperty taken took the form of back-to-back houses, there was lesspossibility of shifting property to the “added lands” category. Moreover,the sites of these houses were very small and often incapable of supportingany profitable rebuilding when taken individually—matters that werecrucial to the calculation of site-value compensation. As a result, Finniganreports that the market for property in older back-to-backs in Leeds wasseverely affected by the slum clearance proposals, to the extent of seizingup altogether.[2]

By contrast, the property market in London appears to have beenremarkably resistant to the impact of slum clearance and the projects forredevelopment At least, there is no clear evidence from the auction dataeither of any increasing distinction between the prices in the two differentgroups of localities studied, or of any decline in the lower quartile ofproperty prices relative to the mean. To some extent, the improvedcompensation terms may have balanced the impact of larger-scale clearanceaction. However, it seems more likely that, as in the 1920s, the state ofdemand and security of the rental were major determinants of prices, andthat the Rent Acts, by increasing demand, continued to support propertyprices at the lower end of the market Where demand was high, propertymight often reach a higher price when sold individually than when sold inlarge blocks, but in terms of slum clearance compensation the positionbecame more favourable the larger the site. From this point of view thefamiliar asymmetry of property distributions needs to be borne in mind,

Table 9.2 Land costs in London clearance schemes, 1934 and 1938

Source: LCC Housing committee presented papers (HC) passim.

Landlords and property

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and this is well illustrated in the compensation payments made toindividual claimants in London in 1938 (Table 9.3). In 1936 the pattern wassimilar, but 34 per cent of property was held in units receiving compensationpayments of over £5,000. [3] In pleading their case, the owners naturallymade great appeal to the small owner, the “widows and orphans” whoheld property, but the bulk of compensation payments went to those whohad a more substantial stake.

In 1934 Ronald Sunnucks, a surveyor and estate agent, published a bookcalled Investment in housing, which although brief, contains some usefulexamples of practice, with prices and yields ruling in London. He beganby dividing property into three classes. First, freehold ground rents, fromwhich when let on long leases a yield of 4.5–5 per cent might be expected,and which were “devoid of speculation”. The second class, at reasonablerisk, represented terrace houses in good districts which were well tenanted.Here an 8.5 per cent return could be obtained on outright purchase forcash, and more by use of a mortgage. On the third class, or speculativeproperty, new mortgages were rarely obtainable. Much of this was a poorinvestment, and staid legal advisers would not touch it. But, says Sunnuck,exceptional success might be obtained in this market where returns of 10–25 per cent might be expected. He advised that

the best property to look for is that of the weekly rental and workingman type, mainly because they are easily lettable and the tenants donot demand expensive repairs and are satisfied with cheaprenovations. The main difficulty with this class of property is tosecure regular payment of the rents.[4]

Table 9.3 Compensation payments to London landlords, 1938

For further details see n. 3. Source: LCC Housing committee presented papers (HC),passim

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He warned that “great care should be exercised in searching for thepossibility of the property being in a condemned area”, and also to “anypossible ‘force measure’ that may be brought to bear on the owner by theSanitary Inspector or District Surveyor”. With leases, possible claims fordilapidations would have to be considered. Above all, this class ofproperty required the “close attention of the owner”, and absorbed a greatdeal of time. “In most cases risk will boil down to a question of successfulmanagement.” There were agents who specialized in this class of property,but it would be necessary to deduct 5–10 per cent for their services. Hegave as an example “five freehold houses in a good letting industrialdistrict and let to working tenants such as labourers, dockers etc.”. Eachhouse, subdivided, let at 18s. a week, producing gross rents for the five of£233 10s per annum. The whole could be bought for £1,000, or 4.2 yearspurchase of the gross rental. The net rent was £127 5s., giving a return of12.5 per cent. There were £71 fixed outgoings on rates and water, butremaining expenses (mainly on repairs) were more within the ownerscontrol.[5] It was the high proportion that the “headline” figure of thegross rent bore to the capital value that supported the market forsubstandard property, provided there was sufficient demand to provideconstant letting.

Although Sunnucks contrasts his own attitude with that of staidlawyers, his calculations represent a traditional attitude to valuation. Theobject is to obtain a steady rate of return, if possible in perpetuity. Theelement of historical change, of rise and fall in asset values, hardly entersin. Arguably, this might have been a reasonable position to take lookingforward from 1934, but the case is not discussed, and the major historicalchange in asset values since the Victorian period is not mentioned. Thecomplexities of the property market in terms of asset values or rates ofreturn are here very evident. The position of the owner depended verymuch on the timing of his investment, be it in 1903, 1913, 1923, or 1933, forexample. For new owners, if they had invested wisely, profits were boundto be satisfactory in relation to the purchase price. However, the mainproblem for property owners, and for the controlling authorities, lay notwith new purchases but with the old, with the slow manner in whichproperty changed hands and in which historical changes worked theirway through the system.

Sunnock’s “speculative” investor was assumed to spend some 15 percent of the gross rental on repairs. This was not a large amount for thiskind of property. The Rent Act (1920) allowed a 25 per cent increase forrepairs on the basis that their index cost was 250 (1914=100), and thatexpenditure on repairs was one sixth of the gross rental. By 1930 the indexhad fallen to 180–200, but the Marley Committee recommended


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unchanged rents on the grounds that in smaller houses the provision forrepairs needed to be one quarter of the rental.[6] Such a proportion, setaside each year with unspent balances taken into reserve, would havedone much to maintain the condition of property. Similarly, by use of asinking fund, money accumulated in the early stages of a property’s lifecould be used to offset the rise in maintenance expenditure that becamenecessary with age. This was rarely the practice, however, so that asproperties aged, either the landlord spent more on maintenance andaccepted a lower net return, or the cost fell on the tenant in higher rents orthe acceptance of under-maintenance. Traditionally, the latter position hadprevailed, and this was the way in which housing supply had beenadjusted to rentpaying capacity.

In theory, government now intervened to insist that houses should beproperly maintained, without placing any extra burden on the tenant. Thiswas, however, very difficult to enforce. Inspectors could not be expected toensure that maintenance money was regularly spent or put into reserve.Without this, there was likely to be an accumulating backlog of moreexpensive items eventually requiring a large investment that could not bemet from current rentals. This then made it difficult to enforce repairs onthe landlord, and failure to deal with the worst property (when it was stillneeded) compounded the difficulties of intervening higher up the chain ofdeterioration. In Unwin’s view the standard that could be obtained “tendsto be not that of a really good landlord but only that of an indifferent oreven the bad ones”.[7] Thus a cycle set in by which enforcement wasdifficult because of lack of previous enforcement. Indeed, historically,when enforcement procedures began in the Victorian period, there wasalready a large proportion of property with an inherited condition ofunder-maintenance. It was never possible to begin with a new start. Thiswas a great attraction of clearance and rebuilding.

Empirically, the extent to which the enforcement of the Housing andSanitary Acts made a difference to the qualitative condition of olderhouses between the wars is difficult to determine. Much of thecommentary relates to the earlier part of the period when houses were inparticularly short supply in relation to demand. The number ofinspections and repair notices added up to impressive totals: 126,000London houses were repaired or had nuisances abated in 1930. [8] Muchuseful work was done in this way, and not all of it was of a minor nature;quite extensive work took place as well. Despite this, and the voluntaryaction by landlords, Barclay and Perry write of Southwark in 1929:

The amount of property which is hopelessly defective and altogetherdeplorable is very large. Damp, dilapidation of every kind, obsolete

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design and construction…abound throughout the whole borough,and impart to much of it a character of unrelieved defectiveness.[9]

Llewellyn-Smith, having discussed the larger items, goes on to say

Dilapidated woodwork, plaster and wallpaper, if less serious thanstructural faults, are also much more general. Few except the mostmodern working-class dwellings are entirely free of these defects.They are responsible for much dirt and discomfort, and for thedepressing atmosphere of squalor associated with so manyworkingclass homes.[10]

There were conditions in which a new start was possible withoutredevelopment. When major investment was forthcoming, houses couldbe transformed, and Randall Phillips in The house improved (1931) providesseveral examples of workmens’ cottages remodelled inside and out in away strikingly similar to that which was to become more familiar 30 or 40years later.[11] The source of this new investment was the wealthyowneroccupier taking advantage of the presence of suitable old propertyin well-located situations such as Chelsea (Plate 6). The importance offinance needs to be insisted upon, if only because there tends to be animpression that house improvement was neglected at this time simplybecause architects and others imposed a new vision of urban form. Moreimportant are the economic and political conditions and priorities to whicharchitects responded. Although “gentrification” could occur between thewars, there was a restricted market for this type of activity. Within theconfines of the private-rented sector there was much less potential for majorimprovement. One source of improvement was, however, now limited dueto the Rent Acts. This came not so much through the control of rents asthrough the concomitant increase in security of tenure. It was less possible,even in favourable locations, to alter the market position of a property andeffect improvements through a change of user.

One possibility was that the state might intervene to finance a degree of“new start” without a change of user. As argued in relation to the MoyneReport (Chapter 7), the most likely point for such intervention would havebeen the “structurally sound” house, well removed from the conditionsthat rendered houses liable to clearance. Such an intervention would haverequired a relatively generous separation of “improvements” fromrepairs, that might have been applied to such matters as conversions,provision of amenities, and perhaps items such as damp courses whichwere not normally incorporated in these houses when they were built.There would have been difficulties: even by starting with the clearest


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possible division of property it would never be easy to combine providingmoney on the one hand with condemning properties on the other.Moreover, when the benefits had to be seen to go to the tenants, it wasdifficult to provide the landlord with a clear incentive to carry out thework. More could have been done through public utility societies or localauthorities, but this of course raised further political complications.

The technical difficulties and, above all, the political priorities,determined that policy would take another course. The state continued tointervene only in a negative manner, and the Treasury could not becommitted even partially to what was seen as a bottomless pit ofexpenditure on housing repairs and improvements. Public investmentcould come only through new supply or redevelopment, forms ofexpenditure that might, it was hoped be reduced once the sharp edge hadbeen taken off the housing situation. In response, the great force of thelandlord was his capacity to occupy the ground, and to shape the course ofevents through inertia. The very large number and variety of landlords,and the complexities of ownership and physical form, were all strengthsfrom this point of view. Landlords had immediate control overexpenditure, and were in a position to offer some resistance to theassumption that they should meet the costs of eliminating slumconditions.

In face of this resistance, neither increased competition from newhouses nor enforcement procedures were able to bring about radicalimprovement in housing quality. The result was a messy compromise, notvery satisfactory to any for the parties concerned. This had the advantage,from the owners’ point of view, that it left open the possibility of a returnto an older world in which they were given back full control over theirproperty, and no one bothered too much about slums. Equally, however,failure to achieve improvement within existing patterns of ownership andphysical form meant that, if the political stakes were raised, there was agreater risk of having to cede extensive amounts of property to a form of“clean sweep”.

Landlords in the East End

Much controversy in the late Victorian period had centred around therelationships between tenure, types of owner, fragmentation of ownership,and the condition of property. The debate tended to emphasize largecontrasts: between major aristocratic estates and small men, and betweenthe West End of London and the East. To some extent, modern researchhas prolonged this emphasis. However, no detailed studies of the East End

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have been undertaken, and the contrast with the West End has simplyserved to present a homogeneous picture of its owners, type of tenant andcondition of housing. The present study seeks to examine thispresupposition, with particular attention to the two boroughs of Stepneyand Bethnal Green. It makes use of the 1910 “Domesday” records, of inter-war valuation lists, estate records, property schedules in clearance schemes,and many other miscellaneous records.

The ownership structure of Stepney and Bethnal Green in 1910 does notaccord with the general presuppositions made about owners in the EastEnd.[12] In particular, there were to be found nearly 30 large to mediumground owners. These properties (henceforth referred to as the estates)ranged upwards from 10 acres in size, several were in the 20–40 acresrange, and the largest were 74 and 90 acres. A conservative estimate of theproportion of properties under their control would be in the region of 30per cent in Bethnal Green and 25 per cent in Stepney. There is evidence ofbetter building standards on several of these estates, and some of themwere used by local authorities, religious and welfare institutions, to provide clinics, clubs, places of worship and educational facilities, thushaving an important input into the development of these services.However, there were significant differences between these estates (to bediscussed later) and all of them were developed under the leaseholdsystem, so that it was the lessee who was responsible for management andmaintenance. This resulted in a “vertical” fragmentation of propertywhich compounded the “horizontal” fragmentation found outside theestates.

There were five groups who predominately used the leasehold system:ground owners on the estates, trusts and executors, professionals, women,and owners who did not live in London. These groups accounted for over70 per cent of all leased property. Leases could, of course, be taken forvarious amounts of property, and a large leaseholder might unite underone management the properties of several small owners of ground rents.Moreover, a large proportion of lessees were persons connected with theproperty business, ranging from small house agents to larger surveyingfirms, builders and associated trades.[13] In many cases it might be arguedthat they provided more professional management than could manyowners of ground rents. Despite this, the leasehold system was in steepdecline in these districts, and by the 1930s it had become a very minimalpart of the property market, only surviving to any extent on one or two ofthe later-developed estates, and in some mixed business/residentialproperty. In the slum clearance areas declared in the 1930s, only 17 percent of properties were subject in leases in Stepney, and only 13 per cent inBethnal Green.[14]


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It might be thought that such declines in leasehold ownership wereconnected with the new circumstances of the post-war period: rentrestrictions and the new slum clearance compensation provisions. The latterwere a major blow, but rent restrictions had some beneficial effects on theowners of old working-class property. By increasing the effective demand,the Rent Acts provided much greater protection for the rental. During theearly part of the 1900s and until the First World War there were many emptyproperties, and greater competition. The number of empty houses inStepney rose from 1,073 in 1904 to 2,944 in 1908, decreasing to 1,700 by 1914.Consequently, many lessees found themselves with reduced income at atime when they were faced with increased pressures to improvemaintenance and sanitary conditions. On many of the larger estates therewere endless disputes about the level of repairs that were required underthe covenant of the leases. The London Hospital, for example, felt that evenwhen repairs were done by lessees they were generally of a superficialnature, and in many cases they had to undertake the work themselves.[15]Thus they found themselves having to remove as many as nine or ten layersof wallpaper at the insistence of the sanitary inspectors to reduce bugs andother infestations. There were cases in which lessees surrendered theirleases early, and some even defaulted on paying the ground rent.

In general, however, the leasehold system could survive as long as theoriginal building leases and ground rents were still current. The owners ofnew 21 year repairing leases were usually faced with a large increase inground rents, and those who had taken out such leases in the 1880s and1890s were particularly likely to find themselves in difficulty later. The1910 Field Books indicate that ground rents on repairing leases granted byestates ranged from 40 to 50 per cent of the gross rent. In effect, the lesseesincome was reduced at a time when these old houses were requiring muchgreater maintenance expenditure. An alternative was a large injection ofcapital by the ground landlord to put the house in order for the new periodof the lease. The ground landlords, however, had not been in a position tobuild up any maintenance fund from the low ground rents. From theirposition it was apparent that if they were going to meet the expenditure ofheavy repairs they would need to be in possession of the rack rents ratherthan the lessees. In the older working-class districts, the falling in of 99year leases therefore constituted an important point in the decline of theleasehold system. For this and other reasons, even in 1910 leaseholds werenot as prevalent in Stepney and Bethnal Green as many commentatorsseemed to suggest. The 1930s clearance areas mentioned earlier hadrespectively 53 and 64 per cent of property subject to leases in 1910. Thus,while there had been a major fall-off in leasing by the 1930s, this is bestregarded as a continuation of an already established trend.

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The Mercers Estate in Stepney made a decision in 1908 to manage theirproperty directly, and by 1914 over half their estate was under directmanagement as leases gradually fell in.[16] This estate was the largest inthe area, mostly situated north of the Commercial Road and south ofStepney Green. At 90 acres and some 1,500 houses (as well as otherproperty) it had been developed at a low density and to relatively highstandards. From the inception of the estate there had been a court ofelectors who met frequently with their surveyor and land agent. Theytherefore had an organizational structure to make executive decisions andthus were quickly able to develop an efficient team to run their estates.This ranged from an estate manager to rent collectors and there was adirect labour organization to undertake repairs managed by the surveyor.This estate therefore provided an instance of exemplary directmanagement and illustrates both the advantages of large-scale ownershipand the limitations still imposed by external factors.

There is no doubt that by bringing their estates into direct management,the Mercers were able to increase maintenance expenditure. One of theirtenants, Godbolt, who took on a 21 year lease in 1901 was only spending£4 per house on maintenance in 1910. The Mercers, allowing for the rise inmaterial costs, were throughout the 1920s and 1930s spending on averagethree times as much per house per annum. Their expenditure onmaintenance averaged 26 per cent of the gross rent at this time. Moreover,an estate like the Mercers or the London Hospital could afford wherenecessary to concentrate large amounts of capital on the maintenance ofindividual houses—sums corresponding to several years’ value of thecurrent rental. Unlike small owners, they could do this while sustainingthe general level of their income. Not surprisingly, local authorities foundsuch estates relatively easy to deal with in carrying out their functionsunder the Housing and Public Health Acts.

From the beginning of their direct management policy, the Mercersestablished that maintenance of markets was positively interlinked withmaintenance of property. Maintenance expenditure contributed to tenantsatisfaction and brought a low level of arrears and a low turnover oftenants. This was not simply a function of the Rent Acts. The Mercers seemto have carefully controlled their markets by careful selection of theirtenants, and they had specific ideas about what constituted a good tenant.A sample of tenants’ occupations was obtained from the New surveyhousehold cards, and this reveals that they had policemen, office workers,skilled workers such as lightermen and tailors, with almost none of thepoorer occupations in sweated or dock-related trades represented.[17] Inthis way, by sustaining their maintenance and their market, the Mercerswere able to maintain their income.


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Two other estates, London Hospital and Pemberton-Barnes, were alsobrought under direct management and were in a situation to retainhigherpaid tenants. Earl Winterton was the only owner in Stepney to takeon direct management of an estate with poorer property and poorertenants in St George in the East. He had a high political profile in the area,and his wife was a Municipal Reform Stepney councillor. They introduceda large degree of social welfare into their management and held annualChristmas parties for their tenants which they attended, often togetherwith the mayor of Stepney. Winterton did not simply undertake repairs tohis property, but also built some small blocks of modern flats and workedin close co-operation with the local authority. However, his actions werenot based on economic grounds alone, but on a political and moralcommitment. The estate of Lady Glammis in Shadwell, abutting on theriver and the docks, contained similar property in a poor neighbourhood.Her surveyor advised in the 1890s that if she undertook anyimprovements it would have to be on moral rather than economicgrounds. These improvements were not carried out, and the estate was tobreak up gradually after the First World War, parts being sold off to thePeabody Trust.[18]

The history of the other estates in Bethnal Green and Stepney showsthat the presence of large ground owners was not necessarily beneficial toan area in terms of the standard of housing they provided. Much of thelarge ground owners’ development in Bethnal Green lay in the westernand central parts of the borough, where industrial and commercial activitywas to develop. A more superior type of residential development did takeplace in the eastern part of Bethnal Green. However, in contrast to Stepney,the owners of estates in Bethnal Green do not seem to have had anyparticular profile in the area. Several of the estates were not geographicunits, but were made up of several different blocks of property. None ofthem took their houses into direct management, and the decline in theleasehold market affected the options they took with regard to the futureof their estates. Their response in the 1920s was either to put their propertyinto the hands of large managing agents or to sell out directly to theirexisting lessees. Many of these estates were to fall within the BethnalGreen Redevelopment Area no. 2 (see Chapter 11).

In the 1920s a number of estates came onto the market in the East End,such as those of Lord Alington, the Middleton Estate, the Cotton Estateand the Mclntosh.[19] The Cotton Estate was sold in 1921 because thefamily were advised that they could get a 6 per cent return if they investedtheir capital elsewhere, without the associated problems of holding houseproperty. They sold their 1,200 properties in 835 lots, and 50 per cent of thebuyers were existing lessees. Similarly, the Mclntosh Estate covering 32

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acres with over 1,000 houses, shops, wharves and factories, andcomprising mainly freehold ground rents, was put up for auction in 1924in 347 lots. The break-up of these estates offers the most striking exampleof increasing “horizontal” fragmentation, which ran counter to thedecreasing “vertical” fragmentation brought about by the decline ofleasehold. Indeed, as on the Cotton Estate, the two processes oftenconnected. Whereas leasehold had once been a cheap way of entering theproperty market, the decline in capital values made freehold purchasepossible for the small man.

Outside the estates, property was already horizontally fragmented in1910. Over 80 per cent of owners owned ten or fewer properties.Nonetheless, as on the estates, the decline in vertical fragmentation overthe next 30 years was partly compensated by an increase in horizontalfragmentation. Before the First World War trustees and some other smallground owners were disposing of their property. In the early 1920s,auctioneers and estate agents were advertising blocks of propertybelonging to trustees and other estates for sale in small lots. The effect ofthese changes was to confirm and enhance the local nature of propertyownership, already apparent in 1910. It also strengthened links betweenhouse ownership and other aspects of the property business, and alsolinks with small business in general. A large proportion of lessees had beenengaged in various aspects of the property business, such as builders,surveyors and estate agents, and they were more likely to buy theirfreeholds than other lessees. In Stepney, there was a significant increase inthe percentage of property held by those in the property business between1910 and the mid 1930s. Business interests in Stepney were on a largerscale than those in Bethnal Green, for instance businesses connected withthe shipping industry. These owners often had a small-scale estateorganization. Other property owners reacted to the decline of leasehold byengaging agents, again reinforcing the local nature of management. InBethnal Green much property was in the hands of various small-scalelocal businesses and tradesmen, and agents were more uniformlyemployed than in Stepney—for instance in the mid1930s 57 per cent ofproperties in clearance areas, and 62 per cent of those in theRedevelopment Area no. 2, were managed by agents.

It will be recognized that the resulting patterns of ownership andmanagement were very complex. So were the relationships between patterns of ownership and the condition of property. By the 1930s theleasehold system was more likely to be found in areas of better property,but the main causal link here was that such property was still subject to theoriginal building leases. In slum clearance areas of the 1930s, the degree of“horizontal” fragmentation had only slightly increased since 1910.


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Outside, there was a great deal of variation, but no simple correlationbetween fragmentation and the condition of property. Nonetheless, it isclear that some large estates drew a selected clientele. Other owners had tocater for the rest of the market dependent on the traditional East Endtrades, ranging downwards to such Victorian survivals as rag sorting,cardboard box making and fish curing in smoke holes. Most of theproperty was old and required increasing expenditure on maintenance,some needed major capital investment even to bring it up to standardsrequired by the Housing and Public Health Acts. These conditions ofmarket and property would have posed major problems whatever thenature of the ownership.

It would be quite wrong, therefore, to concentrate solely onfragmentation as the cause of difficulties in the condition of property inthe East End without taking into account the wider aspects of theworkings of the property market. No doubt the question of fragmentationwas often highlighted because it was politically convenient to do so. Manyground landlords had not taken an active interest in the management oftheir property, and they were usually more remote than the new type ofowner. Moreover, some new owners, particularly those in the propertybusiness, were able to substitute their own time and labour for capital inmanaging and maintaining their houses. Nonetheless, it is evident thatsmall owners did possess additional disadvantages in maintaining olderproperty for reasons that are the reverse of the advantages accruing to alarge estate such as the Mercers. For most small owners the maintenanceof current income from the rental was the major preoccupation, and anylarge expenditure which ate into this tended to be resisted. Fragmentationdid therefore remain a problem, despite the decline of leasehold.

However, the absence of fragmentation still left owners with moregeneral problems within the changing housing market. This can be shownby returning to the example of the Mercers Estate. Since they came intodirect control through reversion, the Mercers did not have to meet anylarge initial capital outlay. They were able to provide a high maintenancestandard from the current rental, but they did not have the range ofamenities such as bathrooms which were to be found in new localauthority buildings, albeit in the form of flats. Although Munby states thatno redevelopment was undertaken by large owners in Stepney because ofthe absence of a renewal fund, the Mercers had in fact built up asubstantial renewal fund by the late 1930s.[20] The problem was ratherwhether a sufficiently high return could be obtained on this capital—areturn that in any case would require a large increase in rents. Even if theobstacle of the Rent Acts could be overcome, this would mean attracting anew type of tenant—a problematic factor even for the Mercers in the

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conditions of the 1930s. The Mercers indeed had considered selling theirStepney property at one stage in the 1930s, but it would not have raisedsufficient capital to sustain their income when reinvested elsewhere. Aswas the case on other properties of the period, the Mercers and theirtenants were locked together.

Notes

1 The figure of 43 per cent is derived from Reiss, H.L. 1945. Municipal and privateenterprise housing, 25. London: Dent.

2 Finnigan, R. 1981. Housing policy in Leeds 1919–1939, 179–88. M.Phil. thesisUniversity of Bradford.

3 Table 9.3 includes only freeholds, excluding those which include tradecompensation. The payments include those for “added lands” as well as forunfit property.

4 Sunnucks, R. 1934. Investment in housing, 27. London: Banbury.5 ibid., 28–9.6 Committee on the Rent Restrictions Act (Marley Committee) 1931. Report.

Parliamentary Papers 17, Cmnd 3911.7 PRO HLG 52/791. Moyne Committee: circulated papers no. 31.8 Llewellyn-Smith, Sir H.. 1931–5. The New survey of London life and labour. Vol. 6,

171. London: P.S.King.9 Barclay, I. & E. Perry. 1929. Report on a survey of housing conditions in the

Metropolitan Borough of Southwark, 3. London: Westminster Survey Group.10 Llewellyn-Smith, op. cit., 188.11 Phillips, R. 1931. The house improved. London: Country Life.12 PRO IR /58 1910 “Domesday” records: field books for Stepney and Bethnal

Green; Borough of Tower Hamlets, Local History Library: quinquennialvaluation lists, 1910–35.

13 ibid., Kelley’s Trade and Post Office Directories 1910–35; title deeds.14 LCC Housing confirmation orders, HC passim; Stepney borough housing

confirmation orders.15 Archives of the London Hospital: house committee minutes 1890–1955.16 Archives of the Mercers Company: minute of the court of assistants, 1907–55.17 London School of Economics: Records of the New survey of London life and

labour (1929–31), household cards.18 Church Commissioners archives. The commissioners were the ground owners of

this estate until about the 1880s when they sold the freehold to the then lesseeLady Glammis. At that time the estate covered about half of Shadwell andcontained 577 properties.

19 Estates Gazette, 1915–25; East London Observer, GLRO Cotton Estate records.20 Munby, D.L. 1951. Industry and planning in Stepney, 88. London: Oxford

University Press.

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C H A P T E R 1 0Tenants and estates

This chapter is essentially a continuation of Chapter 6, enablingdevelopments to be carried forward into the 1930s. However, it begins witha more detailed analysis of the characteristics of the tenants and the changesin their circumstances brought about by clearance and rehousing. Thesecond part contains a discussion of building standards and costs duringthe main period of the slum clearance campaign.

Tenants and rehousing

In a study of rehousing the ideal would be to proceed from a completesurvey of the population affected, and to follow progress through variousstages. In fact, most available data relate only to families received intocouncil dwellings and, moreover, have seldom been analyzed, so that Pooleyand Irish’s recent study of Liverpool was a pioneering account.[1] Theapproach adopted here is, therefore, to begin with an analysis of thecircumstances of various types of LCC tenant in the late 1930s and then toproceed to wider questions and comparisons, including the important issueof differential renting. LCC housing rules operated to give first priority toclearance rehousing, then to overcrowding under the 1935 Act, and tocertain special preferences (a group which before 1936 included manyovercrowding cases). However, even at this time, “ordinary” cases madeup much the largest single group of new tenants, this being mainly due tothe large number of re-lets on suburban estates.[2]

During the period covered by the statistics, some 70–75 per cent of thepopulation of LCC clearance areas were taken into council housing. As aresult, the mean income of clearance tenants was considerably lower thanthat of other groups. In 1937–8 it was 45s. 8d. compared with 64s. 8d. forthe ordinary tenants (Table 10.1). Clearance families, however, raisedconsiderable extra earnings, the chief earner contributing only 59 per cent

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of family income compared to 85 per cent among the ordinary cases. Thisreduced, but did not eliminate, the difference in income per head. Itreflected the fact that clearance families were larger and (on average) at alater stage in the life cycle. They included more older children and youngadults and fewer children under ten than the ordinary cases. The positionof the overcrowding families is also worthy of notice. The proportion ofthese taken into council housing is not known, but the relatively highincome of the chief earner suggests that there must have been considerableselection.

The previous occupancy rates of tenants coming into council accommodation were lower than those found by Llewellyn-Smith for the 1920s, butstill high by contemporary standards. The highest rents were naturallyfound among the overcrowding tenants and, early on, among the specialgroup which had previously contained such cases. Once again, it isnoticeable that clearance and ordinary tenants had very similar occupationlevels (in terms of persons per room) prior to becoming council tenants.After rehousing, occupancy rates remained very high, particularly amongthe overcrowding group, but also in the clearance category. By contrast,the ordinary tenant achieved a reduced occupancy rate, partly through

Table 10.1 LCC tenant groups: family composition and income

Notes:The total covers other groups including out-county tenants. Children are those under10, and in the income per unit column these are counted as 0.5 and others as 1. s=shillings(1 shilling=5 new pence).

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moving outwards to a suburban estate. Even so, the occupancy rate onthese estates remained much higher than in neighbouring private estates.It was, indeed, a feature of the 1936 Overcrowding Survey that a higherproportion of overcrowding was found in council dwellings than in theprivate sector. While this partly reflected differing household sizes, it alsoserves as a reminder that it is not simply differences in the size and form ofprivate or council houses and flats that matter, but also the manner in whichthey were inhabited.

Changes in occupancy level were closely associated with changes in rent.In the case of ordinary tenants the change was mitigated by the move tothe suburbs, rents increasing on average by 14 per cent in 1935, reducing to3 per cent in 1938. The overcrowding tenants, however, faced a 33 per centincrease in rent in 1935, reducing to 25 per cent in 1938. The proportion offamily income taken in rent in this group rose, on average, from 13 per centto 16–18 per cent, assuming no change as a result of the move. This broughtit into line with the proportion paid by other groups, but necessarilyrestricted other expenditure which might be expected for large families.For the clearance tenants, rehousing meant only a small change inoccupancy rates, and rent rises, on average, were confined within the rangeof 4–6 per cent. This was one of the major differences compared with the

Table 10.2 LCC tenant groups: rehousing changes

Note: Total includes other groups, such as out-county cases.

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experience of slum clearance in the late-Victorian period. The first slumsselected for clearance had been sites of intense overcrowding—at RosemaryLane 70 per cent of families had lived in one room, and 50 per cent did soat Boundary Street. The change in occupancy level required on enteringthe new buildings had been a major factor inhibiting rehousing. Generalfactors were responsible for the improvement that had since taken place—changes in family size and housing supply, for example. But clearance wasalso extended in the late 1930s to cover a wider range of population, andprobably there was also a declining correlation between the areas taken forclearance and the incidence of overcrowding in London. Table 10.3 showsthe improvement in the occupancy rates of families affected by clearancedeclarations after 1935.

Family size and occupancy rates are the only statistics available in Londonto cover the whole population of clearance areas. They can, however, beused to shed some light on the families that were not rehoused by thecouncil. A.R. Holmes, an employee of the LCC, collected details of 1,600families rehoused from clearance areas in Bethnal Green, Shoreditch andSouthwark declared in 1931–4.[3] These made up 73 per cent of the familiesin the clearance areas, and had on average 4.0 persons per family and 1.47per room. Deducting from the overall figures for these clearance areas, itwould appear that the 550 families not rehoused by the council had onaverage 4.21 family members and lived at 2.0 persons per room. It is knownthat the groups not rehoused by the council included a large proportion ofthe smallest and poorest families—single persons and aged couples, forexample. Given this, there must also have been a significant number oflarge and overcrowded families among the group not rehoused by the

Table 10.3 Occupation rates in LCC clearance areas, 1923–38

Note: The figures show the position before clearance about the dateof clearance area declaration. Source: LCC London Statistics, passim.

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council. Indeed, this would conform with the statistics already examined—not all large families living in clearance areas could have had the kind ofsupport from supplementary earners that is shown in Table 10.1

Holmes’s statistics are also useful in that they allow some penetrationinto the circumstances behind the averages that are otherwise the onlyavailable material in London. In the case of Shoreditch tenants, for whichhe provided more data, the population in the clearance area, prior torehousing, had a very similar range of occupancy rates to Shoreditch as awhole—11 per cent were at under 1 per room and 39 per cent at 2 or over.After clearance the range was considerably reduced and 85 per cent oftenants were rehoused at between 1 and 1.9 persons per room. The effectof the change on rent paid in the three boroughs is shown in Table 10.4. Adecrease was experienced by 32 per cent of tenants, and in 7 per cent ofcases this meant a substantial decrease of 4s. a week or more. However, thelarger proportion—67 per cent—d an increase in rent. In 42 per cent ofcases this was more than 2s. a week and in 21 per cent of cases more than4s. Poorer families were more likely to face an increase, but there was awide range of experience at all income levels. Family composition was animportant factor, and major changes in rents would usually beaccompanied by changes in occupation levels. Those that found their rentsdecreasing would also find themselves occupying less space, while thosewith high increases would have more space than before. Holmes rightlycontrasted these results with earlier cases such as that at Stockton (Chapter6). Even so, these figures mean that a majority of families affected byclearance in the cases he studied—some 68 per cent—were either nottaken into council housing or experienced an increase of at least 2s. a weekin rent. Nearly half were either not rehoused by the council or paid anincrease of 4s. or more in rent.

Table 10.4 Rent changes on slum clearance rehousing: Bethnal Green, Shoreditch andSouthwark in the 1930s (after A. R. Holmes)

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This kind of statistic is not, of course, a demonstration of the proportion oftenants who benefited or were adversely affected by slum clearance. It couldbe that many who paid a much-increased rent nonetheless found thatimproved conditions more than compensated, while those who paid lessrent on moving may have resented disturbance on other grounds. Thestatistic is, however, a factor to bear in mind in weighing up the advantagesand disadvantages of a sanitary approach which involved compulsorymovement, in particular an exclusively sanitary approach on a large scale.Although conditions were much improved compared to earlier clearances,it was still the case that such policies might rebound on the tenants. Againstthis, the late 1930s certainly constituted a favourable period for such action,and arguably a much greater number of poor families benefited fromimproved conditions than would have been accommodated by othermethods.

Sanitary policy meant that councils had to manage their property so asto make clearance and rehousing possible. New accommodation had to beavailable to enable tenants to be moved and programmes to be completed,indeed the need to adhered to schedule provided tenants with a lever thatthey could use in negotiating rehousing. The scale of clearance meant thattenants had to be rehoused largely on estates that were currently beingbuilt, as re-lets could not be relied upon to provide the necessaryaccommodation at the time and place required. The maintenance of theGreenwood subsidy at its original rate, despite lower costs, reflected thispriority. However, the rents that tenants faced were not necessarily aproduct of the cost of building less the subsidy. Councils were onlygenerally constrained by such factors and otherwise had considerablefreedom of action in their rent policies, a freedom increased by the 1935Act, which made specific provision for the pooling of housing accounts.

The LCC valuer had always favoured a rent policy which shadowedthe market and enabled relative values to be maintained betweendifferent types of accommodation and different localities. It took nodirect account either of tenants’ incomes or construction costs andsubsidies. He continued to press this policy after the advent of theLabour council, but in July 1934 a compromise was reached.[4] It wasagreed to introduce differential renting according to a new factor—thegeneral wage level of the slum dweller as compared to the ordinaryapplicant. Estates likely to be occupied by slum rehousing tenants sawreductions in rent, for example from 9d. through to 3s. 6d. a week for atwo room dwelling. Cottage estates were omitted, and on the whole themore suburban estates saw the lowest reductions. However, the “belownormal” types were given little or no rent reduction, presumably on thegrounds that they had already pro vided a device through which rents

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could be reduced to the required levels. The overall result was to allowthe valuer to retain his comparable rent structure while introducing alarger differential between inner block estates and suburban cottages.This helped rehousing in the cases studied by Holmes, and facilitated alarge-scale clearance movement less reliant on filtering either intocottages or older blocks. In the six months to March 1939, for example, 10per cent of LCC clearance tenants went into cottage estates, under 2 percent into pre-war blocks, and the rest into new flatted estates. BetweenMarch 1927 and March 1931 the comparative figures had been,respectively, 21,28 and 51 per cent.

LCC practice therefore provides an example of the application of theGreenwood subsidies differentially by estate. Pragmatically, this was aresponse to the preference of clearance tenants for rehousing in theirexisting localities, reflecting existing ties and travel costs for families withseveral earners. On the other hand, the tenant was faced with a choicewhich was loaded in favour of the retention of existing conditions,replacing the old slum house with the new tenement flat. From the Pooleyand Irish study it seems likely that a similar policy was followed inLiverpool. The lowest rents were charged for inner-city flats, slightlyhigher rents for more suburban flats, and higher still for non-parlourhouses. However, there seems also to have been a differential reductionfor non-parlour houses built under the 1930 Act, compared to other suchhouses.

Pooley and Irish’s statistics also allow some insight into the changingcircumstances of clearance tenants, although they are arranged by type ofestate and location rather than according to the class of tenant. Theyemphasize the distinction in income level between demolition and othertypes of tenant. Clearance families in Liverpool were rather larger in sizethan in London, but had lower incomes (particularly family incomes), andprevious to clearance were more crowded and paid considerably less rent.Correspondingly, there seems to have been a greater improvement inoccupancy rates on rehousing, and a greater increase in rents. Pooley andIrish sampled 2,336 households in 13 inner-city estates built after 1935,demolition tenants forming 74 per cent of the total. It can be calculatedthat there were, on average, 1.99 persons per room prior to rehousing and1.35 afterwards, a decrease of 32 per cent. Rents rose by an average of 18per cent. On four estates on which clearance tenants formed 85 per cent ofthe total, the average rent rise was 46 per cent. On the Sparrow Hill estateof non-parlour houses (demolition cases 79 per cent of the total) there wasa 56 per cent increase in rents and a 37 per cent reduction in occupancylevels.[5]

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No other comparable statistics appear to be yet available. One wouldexpect, however, that the general run of towns and cities in whichrehousing was mainly in suburban cottages, would have had an easiertransition. Tenants may have suffered in other ways from suburbanrehousing, but generally the greater availability and suitability ofsuburban land for rehousing in such locations meant that costs were lowerand that there were lower occupancy rates prior to clearance. Rents wouldthus not have to reflect a large jump in both qualitative and quantitativeconditions. Another factor at work outside London and Liverpool wasthat many councils applied rents differentially by tenant as well as byestate, The usual way of doing this was to take rents in the Wheatleyhouses as standard, and to apply the extra money available through theGreenwood subsidy differentially across the clearance tenants accordingto their incomes. In a few cases, and most notably in Leeds, rents werestandardized, and the subsidies available for all categories of houses wereallocated differentially to tenants according to their incomes.[6]

The Leeds differential renting scheme was yet another of Jenkinson’sradical innovations. It produced what was known as a differentialrentrebate scheme, in that rents were first standardized at “economic”levels, and rebates then granted to tenants, in this case according to abilityto pay as measured by a formula taking into account income andsubsistence scales. The scheme is described, and strongly supported, byFinnigan, who claims that it allowed 85 per cent of clearance tenants inLeeds to be rehoused by the council, and broke the link between lowincome and inadequate housing, particularly for larger families. It musthave prevented large rent rises which created financial difficulties forrehousing families. It also probably helped to reduce the social distinctionsbetween estates, and there were strong arguments in favour of rebates forpoorer tenants irrespective of their classification under the Acts. However,Jenkinson’s scheme ran into considerable opposition, and was partlyresponsible for his fall from power. The new Conservative administrationretained an element of differential rent rebates, but within a framework ofmore conventional differential renting, distinguishing between“voluntary” and “compulsory” tenants.[7]

Differential rent rebates were opposed by property owners and theConservative Party in Leeds on grounds similar to those advanced inLondon by the Municipal Reformers (Chapter 6). But other Conservativessaw an ad vantage in such a policy on grounds that equally alienatedmuch Labour support, including that of the LCC leaders. This was thehighlighting of “economic” rent, which became a kind of norm, so thattenants had to apply for rebates. De facto, many of the more prosperous

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tenants were largely stripped of subsidy. If subsidies, quality ofaccommodation and the social composition of council housing were heldconstant, then this might appear as a simple act of social justice,redistributing subsidies to those who needed them most. In othercircumstances, however, it could be used to force council housing into amore residual rôle, for if a large proportion of tenants did not need thesubsidies, so it could be argued neither did they need the houses. EleanorRathbone a Liverpool M P thus maintained that

a housing subsidy is in fact public assistance to the individual tenant…to disguise this fact by attaching the subsidy to the house ratherthan the tenant is merely to encourage sponging on public funds bypersons who do not need them.[8]

According to such an argument, subsidies should cease to be applied inthe Wheatley sense, as a means of bringing the general standard of working-class housing closer to that of the middle classes. Instead, subsidies shouldbe individualized and subject to a means test. Moreover, the old poor lawprinciple that subsidy meant giving up something in return was never farbelow the surface in this period. Although the opposition among tenantgroups obviously owed much to resistance to increased charges by thebetter-off, there was also fear of greater supervision and regulation.Arguably, the preservation of ability to pay as a major element in councilhousing also helped to preserve a degree of liberty more comparable withthat in private housing.

Because of opposition from diverse sources, differential rent rebatesmade little progress before the war. In many ways, it is their absence whichis of principal importance to the theme of this book. In this absence of anyprecise indicator of social class and income level, slum clearance areasacted as a rough substitute. Greenwood sought to extend suburbancouncil housing down the social scale by introducing a differentialsubsidy tied to the proposition that otherwise clearance could not takeplace. Later, Hilton-Young used this same link in an attempt to limit newcouncil housing to the lower income class. Without it, it is unlikely thatslum clearance would have come to occupy the same importance innational policy.

Building standards and costs

The foundation of all types of building in the mid-1930s was theexceptionally favourable context of low interest rates and building costs.

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In the case of suburban cottages built for slum clearance, there was also thecontinuance of the Greenwood subsidy at a relatively generous level until1938. As a result, although the type of dwelling remained very small, therewas not the further falling off of standards that many had feared. Pooleyand Irish argue that the search for cheap land often led to slum clearanceestates being located in remote and unsuitable districts, and the introductionof tenement blocks into nearer suburban localities might also be regardedas a reduction in standards. However, in Leeds, where A3 dwellings werebeing built for £302 in 1935, Finnigan suggests that the smaller size of houses(760 sq. ft) was offset by improvements to internal fittings and estate layout.Jennings took the view that there was a greater variety of standards amongGreenwood estates than among Wheatley estates, but that

though in many towns it may be possible to draw visual or economicdistinctions between Wheatley Act and Greenwood Act estates, thereare no nationally applicable generalizations about differences incharacter.[9]

Although there is clearly much to learn about these suburban dwellings,the inner-city tenement presented a more acute problem. It departed froma less assured and more contested base, and its future was more uncertain.For some, these flats were simply a device to escape from the generalstandards still being maintained, more or less, in the suburbs. For others,the flatted estate could be improved to form an equally desirable part ofthe city’s housing stock. This was a matter of increasing significance. Asthe major cities reached the latter parts of their slum clearanceprogrammes, so a much larger proportion of their new dwellings wouldtake the.form of inner-city flats. Moreover, the redevelopment areaproposals envisaged extensive reconstruction in this manner. To this end,the Housing Act 1938, while cutting the slum clearance subsidy to thelevel of that for overcrowding, nonetheless provided more generoussubsidies for construction on high cost land. The basic subsidy was cut to£5 10s. per dwelling, but rose to £11 on sites costing £1,500–£4,000, andthen gradually to £17 on sites of £10,000–£12,000, with a maximum of£26. One can agree with Bowley that the Act was an economy move, andone designed in the face of mounting inflation to leave more room to theprivate sector by cutting back on public activity.[10] But it was also ameasure with strong territorial implications, which brought subsidiesmore into line with the whole trend of public policy towards a greaterconcentration on flats on inner-city sites.

The experience of the incoming Labour LCC administration in respect

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of tenement block construction therefore warrants close attention. As anendeavour carried out on relatively traditional lines, it forms a usefulcomparison to the more spectacular and better-known projects such as theQuarry Hill Estate in Leeds. The first Labour council (1934–7) benefitedfrom favourable economic circumstances and managed to combine asustained clearance and reconstruction programme with improvement ofhousing standards. The first step, in 1934, was to abandon the B type ofdwelling with shared facilities, of which 13 blocks were in process ofcompletion. The importance of this decision was above all symbolic: itleant substance to the Labour claim that they were engaged in a newstart, and that the downward trend in housing standards under theirpredecessors had been reversed. There were distinct limits, however, toany improvement in standards, given that the party was above allcommitted to making slum clearance work and achieving a largeprogramme involving a steady flow of tenants into newaccommodation. The new set of block dwelling types announced in July1934 involved cautious change. The first of the main types (type 1) wasessentially the old type A subject to improvements in finish and extraamenities. The second (type 3) had larger rooms comparable to those inthe previous “Normal” type: the living room being 160 sq. ft, the firstbedroom 110 sq. ft and the second bedroom 100 sq. ft There wereadditional amenities in these flats, rooms were higher, and the bathroomand w.c. were separated. In both these types washing was done in thekitchen using a copper, and two drying rooms per block were providedat the expense of some accommodation. types 2 and 4 were variants onthe two basic types in which common wash houses were provided forevery three lettings, and the drying rooms and the copper in the kitchenwere omitted.[11]

Although the changes made in flat design were modest theynonetheless had important cost implications. On the eve of the changetype A had a building cost of £113 per room, and the Normal type cost £142per room, or £133 with a reduced standard of finish. Fifteen examples oftype 1 and 2 blocks in 1934 cost a mean of £137 per room, and 14 examplesof type 3 and 4 blocks £152. The Finance Committee thought that theaverage cost of building was now £140 per room compared with anaverage of £129 per room in the previous range of accommodation, andthat this would entail £1.5 million extra expenditure over the wholeprojected clearance programme.[12] Viewed over a longer period, thebuilding cost of the standard type in 1924 had been £180 per room, theequivalent type in 1934 was costing about £150. However, according toour calculation of the cost of slum clearance land (Chapter 9) the largerpart of this cost advantage was lost because of a £23 per room rise in the

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cost of land. Figure 10.1 depicts the long-term trends in building and landcosts, and shows that by 1938 land and building costs were rising together,producing a less favourable situation than at any time since 1920. [13]

From 21 cases of development of 1934 (1 and 2) types reported in 1938,the mean building cost per room was £172, whereas in 10 cases the1934(3) type cost £174. Since 1934 the differences between these typeshad been much reduced by the requirement of the 1935 Act that all newaccommodation should have a fixed bath in a bathroom, and by anincrease in the height of rooms in types 1 and 2. These and other changeslargely completed the process whereby the “below Normal” types of thepost 1924 period were phased out. By 1938, the building cost of thestandard block had returned to something near the 1924–5 levels.However, in the meantime, the cost of clearance land had doubled, andwas now £101 per room, assuming no density changes. Roughcalculations for a three-roomed flat would suggest a total cost of £699 in1924–5, £678 in 1934 and £825 in 1938. This was a much larger increasethan any current rise in incomes and shows the importance of theerosion of the special clearance compensation provisions, although costlevels in real terms were still well below those experienced at BoundaryStreet

The architect emphasized the importance of standardization in thedesign and construction of blocks, in order to achieve both economy andrapid progress. But this did not rule out some variation, aimed atexperimenting with improved features and avoiding monotony. InNovember 1934 a more modernistic design was approved for certainblocks including larger and more horizontal windows, metal casements,flat roofs, and sun balconies accessible to the living rooms.[14] WhenSilkin led a visit to the continent in 1935, the prospect of redevelopment ona hitherto unprecedented scale was the main spur:

Figure 10.1 Development costs and wages 1895–1938. Sources: see n. 13.

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it is clearly necessary that careful thought should be given not onlyto the types of dwellings which should be erected but also to thegeneral methods of development suitable for large areas comprisingpossibly hundreds of acres.

The object of the visit was not only to examine the details of continentalhousing experience, but also ways in which mass housing in the form ofblock dwellings might be reconciled with attractive architecture andtownscape. Standardization needed to be countered by deliberate planningand design and by allowing “scope to be afforded for progressivedevelopment and individual expression in the treatment of the dwellingsand their associated amenities”.[15] This was rather similar to Unwin’srecipe, although the visit produced a greater emphasis on rationalist layout.In July 1936 proposals for the large White City Estate incorporated some ofthese ideas. The layout would give

maximum north-south direction for the blocks, with such variationas is called upon to give interest and variety to the planning by acourtyard arrangement open on the southern side…the effect beingassisted by vistas through central arched openings in blocksoccupying the north side.

This development “built up by the repetition of blocks of similar size andarrangement, lends itself to rapid and economic construction and toexecution by a process of multiple contracts”. If it was to be consistentwith attractive appearance, however, much depended on the treatmentof the courtyards, which were to consist of grass lawn and play spacewith a limited planting of trees. The LCC valuer thought that althoughthis was undoubtedly attractive, “the retention of its attractiveness willinvolve the Council in heavy expense”.[16] It was recognized that such alayout would provide a more pleasant effect if development was not toodense. Indeed, the report on the Continental Visit stressed the importanceof density in the success or failure of housing development. It noted, inparticular, “in one large town where there had been a large amount ofbuilding of expensive and monumental type dating from less than sixtyyears ago there is already evidence of slum conditions on a considerablescale owing to the buildings having been sited in a congested manner.”[17]The Report went on to criticize the use of tall flats to achieve higherdensities, but was interested in the “mixture of a proportion of cottagetreatment in association with block dwellings”. This might be possibleon the “outskirts of London” where land was too expensive for cottagedevelopment alone.

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The Report on the Continental Visit found that there was usually ahigher density of persons per room on the continent, but this was oftenoffset by three advantages which pointed the way to future improvementsin London. In London, balcony access had been adopted “in the interestsof economy”. On the continent most flats had staircase access which“tends to make a flat more homely, better-lighted and more attractiveinternally”. In addition, by avoiding marked difference in treatment of thefront and back it allowed greater flexibility in the layout of estates, andSilkin thought that “the Council should during the next few yearsexperiment on a considerable scale with dwellings on the staircase accessprinciple”. A second feature was a superior standard of finish: “theimpression was found that the higher standard that the finishingtreatment gave to the interior of the flats gave a good return in economicmaintenance and greatly enhanced the appearance of the flats.” Theattention given to the entrances to the flats and to the staircases “givesthe tenants pride in the dwellings, which was encouraged in everypossible way as being an important factor in management”. Finally, therewere the common amenities of many continental flats that were oftennoted in England: central heating and hot water supply, commonlaundries, the Garchey system of waste disposal. These were all markeddown for future investigation, but it should perhaps be underlined thatthe general tone of the report stressed the “homely” aspects of continentalliving, and it falls generally within the school that sought to make flatsmore like houses, rather than that which sought to build on differentprinciples. [18]

In 1936 it was proposed to introduce a new type of flat that would beused in a “mixed development” together with the 1934 types on the WhiteCity Estate. The new type involved the introduction of staircase accessblocks. The continental emphasis on entrance lobbies was also reflected:these would be made more private and no longer exposed to the open air.The inner landings would each allow access to two of the larger flats orthree smaller ones. Private balconies were to be provided in the largerflats, and there were to be more refuse chutes. In flats of three rooms ormore there was a larger kitchen (75 sq. ft instead of 65 sq. ft), and slightincreases in the size of the smaller bedrooms, producing an overallincrease in size from 580 to 630 sq. ft in the case of three-room flats. All theflats had a superior internal finish, and it was estimated that the buildingcost per room would be £208. This was therefore a considerable increaseon the cost of the type 3 flat, and overall these developments constitutedthe first real improvement on the standards that had been adopted since1923. Although still relatively small in size, these flats were more comparable to the standards of contemporary houses.[19]

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It was normal to announce new schemes and improvements in the yearprior to elections. Immediately afterwards, the Finance Committee had agreater say. However, after 1936 this cycle was compounded by risingcosts and stable subsidies. One underlying problem was that whereas therateable value of the county had increased considerably in the 1920s from£48.4 million in 1921 to £59.4 million in 1931, the 1936 quinquennialreview produced an increase to only £60.4 million. It was increasinglydifficult to prevent rises in costs feeding through into electorallydamaging rate rises, and this posed a problem for a party which prideditself on sound finance. The rate contribution had almost doubled in thefive years since 1933–4, admittedly from a low level. In 1937 the FinanceCommittee charged that despite large increases in the cost of land per acre,the density of building schemes had been reduced from 66 flats to 54 flatsper acre. It pressed for a minimum density of 200 rooms per acre on landcosting £10,000 per acre, and more where the cost was considerably abovethis. Westwood, the new valuer, put up a strong case against theserecommendations based on the requirements of large-scale development.At White City the proposed layout might already be criticized for failing toprovide the requisite amenities for a population which would be that of asmall town such as Faversham (10,000), yet the Finance Committee’sproposals would raise its population to 15,000. On the more costly BethnalGreen land the result would be to “create large congested areascomparable as regards population with the present congested districts ofthe East End”. The mere thought of this suggested that “there is a seriousfallacy in the argument that density of development should be dependenton cost of land”. The maximum density of the larger schemes should be 40flats or 125 rooms per acre:

if land proposed in a housing site is so expensive that the financialresults of a development at these densities is prohibitive, then... theCouncil should not proceed at all with the proposal except f orurgent housing considerations.[20]

Nonetheless, the Housing Committee decided that in development ofexpensive sites (over £10,000 per acre) they should as near as possible secure60 dwellings or 200 rooms per acre. Although in practice schemes wereusually to fall short of this target, there was a distinct halt to decreasingdensities, and reversal of the previous trend. At White City, on less expensiveland, density was increased from 46 to 54 flats to the acre, or 174 rooms.This was done by raising the height of blocks from four to five storeys.[21]At the same time it was decided to reduce the proportion of the 1936 typeflats at White City from 50 per cent to 14 per cent of the total. This improved

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type did not appear at all in the proposed layout for the first Bethnal GreenRedevelopment Area, and only to a token extent in plans for the large andimportant site in Woodberry Down.

The Housing Committee retained some interest in varying theappearance of block dwellings, and in November 1938 the architect E.Wheeler was obliged to defend their treatment He argued that there wasalready considerable diversity, for example in the length and form of plans(straight, quadrangular, crescent-shaped, and so on) and particularly inthe distinction between Georgian and modernistic styles. The latter wereproposed for many of the larger new estates, including Kings Mead, WhiteCity and Tulse Hill. Greater variation might, however, be introduced in theheight of buildings. It was to be achieved not through differing blocks ofvarying height, but through “reduction in the height of part of thebuilding by the omission of one or more storeys. When this is combinedwith quadrangular planning and breaks in the line of blocks, the interestand variety of grouping are still further increased.” This was to be appliedin the Bethnal Green no. 1 Area, where although five storeys would be thepredominant height, there was to be much at four storeys, as well as a fewblocks of twoand three-storey buildings.[22]

As in previous periods, the more radical attempts to improve thecharacter and image of the flat tended to bifurcate from the standard five-storey design. One direction was to reduce the number of storeys andproduce a form more like that of the house. The other was to opt for liftsand to increase the number of storeys, a solution usually combined withan emphasis on collective amenities and open space. Leeds opted for thesecond type, so producing the famous estate at Quarry Hill, a uniqueventure already fully described by Ravetz.[23] A number of points are,however, worth underlining. The estate was a product of Jenkinson’s newstart, in collaboration with the architect R. Livett. It aimed to produce aform of inner-city living that would provide a real alternative to suburbandwelling (the form that Jenkinson preferred). The estate was mainly builtat eight-storey height, with staircase access and numerous small lifts, andwas of large size. Its symbolic character was emphasized not only by themodern style but, as Finnigan notes, by its location at the eastern end of anaxis which connected to the town hall and other symbols of civic pride ofthe Victorian era.[24]

Improvement necessarily raised the question of cost, and anyimprovement that made flats more like houses posed difficulties ineconomy of land. This was one of the concerns of the report Slum clearanceand rebuild ing produced by the Council for Research in HousingConstruction (1934). The council was chaired by the Earl of Dudley, andthe architectural co ordinating committee by Lord Melchett of ici, with

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important inputs from the LCC architect, Topham Forrest, and L.H. Keaythe Director of Housing at Liverpool. The report emphasized that thetenement block was the only solution to inner-city rehousing. There werevery few districts where the population could not be rehoused at existingdensities, and indeed “the only general remedy is to rebuild at densitiesgreater than those found to be existing at any rate until an adequate poolof cleared land has been built up.” They were “concerned that 5 storeybuildings…will frequently be found insufficient to prevent rehousingoperations in the central areas of large cities and especially London frombeing seriously restricted”, and therefore proposed and illustrated ascheme for 10-storey tenements with attendant-operated passengerlifts.[25]

Quarry Hill, in conformity to its idealistic origins, was not built at a veryhigh density. It did connect, however, with the other main prong of thecommittee’s recommendations, the idea that, whereas the process ofreducing costs in cottage building was now coming to an end, that in flatdevelopment was only just beginning. The whole basis of progress andcost reduction in motor manufacture had been “standardization, massproduction, large scale operation, organized assembly to strict timetables,a maximum working face, and a maximum speed of throughput”.[26]There were no valid reasons for the rejection of this approach in thebuilding industry. Quarry Hill pioneered the use of the Mopin system ofconstruction, imported from France. According to Ravetz this producedfinancial results that were favourable compared to traditionalconstruction of similar products: £430 per flat, plus £95 for roads, lifts andother amenities, and £100 allowed for land.[27] However, there had beenmajor problems during construction and the flats were still expensive byLeeds standards. They never had to carry the main burden of slumclearance rehousing, accounting for only 3 per cent of the Leeds total, andalthough there was a substantial clearance contingent, the majority of thetenants were from the “voluntary” group.

Despite the example of Quarry Hill, no clear way had emerged before1940 by which an improved quality of flatted estate could be reconciledwith the need for economy of construction. In terms of quality the newestates were only a limited ad vance over the peak of late-Victorianachievement at Boundary Street. The big difference was that theyrehoused the population displaced, whereas Boundary Street had not.There had been some reduction in building costs, in real terms, but themain contribution to this progress had come from subsidies and especiallyfrom the reduc tion in the cost of land. However, the latter had come aboutin one major period that now lay well in the past, and since 1920 theadvantage had been reduced.

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Notes

1 Pooley, G. & S. Irish 1984. The development of corporation housing in Liverpool1869–1945. Lancaster: Centre for North-West Regional Studies.

2 Data are taken from quarterly returns in the HC.3 Holmes, A.R. 1947. Investigation into effects of rehousing by the LCC. M.A.

thesis, University of London.4 HC 11 July (35) 1934.5 Pooley & Irish, op. cit., esp. Tables 4.9 and 4.10.6 General surveys are found in Wilson, G. 1939. Rent rebates, 3rd edn. London:

Fabian Research Series no. 28; Jarmain J.R. 1948. Housing subsidies and rents,129–37. London: Stevens.

7 Finnigan, R. 1981. Housing policy in Leeds 1919–39, 259–94. M.Phil. thesisUniversity of Bradford.

8 Quoted in Estates Gazette 120, 1932, 307.9 Jennings, J.H. 1971 Geographical imiplications of the municipal housing

programme in England and Wales 1919–39. Urban Studies 8, 133–4; Pooley andIrish. op. cit., 86, Finnigan op. cit, 243.

10 Bowley, M. 1945 Housing and the state, 166–68. London: Allen & Unwin.11 LCC 1937 London housing, 38–43.12 HC 31 Oct. (48) 1934; examples are taken from HC 1934 passim.13 The column on annual wages is compiled from the returns for LCC clearance

tenants reported in Table 10.1, which is extrapolated backwards using data forthe United Kingdom published in Mitchell, B.R. & P. Deane 1971. Abstract ofBritish historical statistics, 344–5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

14 HC 21 Nov. (29) 1934.15 LCC 1936. Housing: working class housing on the continent, 4, 27.16 HC 22 Jul. (53) 1936.17 LCC op. cit., 5.18 ibid., 15–16, 28.19 HC15 Jul. (63) 1936; LCC op. cit, 44–8.20 ibid., 23 Jun. (61) 1937.21 ibid., 28 Oct (37) 1937.22 ibid., 16 Nov. (38, 40) 1938.23 Ravetz, A. 1974. Model estate: planned housing at Quarry Hill, Leeds. London:

Croom Helm.24 Finnigan op. cit, 253.25 Council for Research in Housing Construction 1934. Slum clearance and

rebuilding, 129, 90. London.26 ibid., 77.27 Ravetz op. cit, 80.

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C H A P T E R 11Redevelopment

and town planning

This chapter gathers together some of the themes that connectredevelopment to wider issues of town planning. It begins with a study ofredevelopment areas and their use in Liverpool, Birmingham and London.In the second part, there is a discussion of certain underlying themes thatsupported the switch of attention to the inner parts of cities as a focus forredevelopment and rehousing, and to the development of town planningstrategies in response. This part is less concerned with the extent of publicaction and more with factors shaping the direction of such action. Finally,some social aspects of rehousing policy are discussed within a context ofcontemporary notions of “community”.

Redevelopment areas

As with other parts of the 1935 Act’s overcrowding provisions,redevelopment areas made a relatively slow start, and by the beginning ofthe war had not progressed far in practical terms. In the early years slumclearance took priority, and it was not until 1938 that a more favourablepattern of subsidies was brought into being (see Chapter 8). In early 1939 acommittee was set up to inquire into the slow progress of redevelopmentareas. [1] It made only a preliminary report, recommended a wider inquiry,and listed a number of legal and technical factors that slowed advance.Various authorities were noted as having planned redevelopment areas,including Croydon, Norwich, Lowestoft, Oxford and Fulham. However,the most important plans were in Liverpool, Birmingham and London,and it is through developments in these major authorities that theimplications of the procedure can be studied.

At the local level, redevelopment areas were a device for the extension

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of clearance beyond the limited scale and purpose for which “addedlands” could be acquired. The change in scale could be more or lessimportant, and wider aspects of land-use planning could come more orless to the fore. At the larger level, redevelopment areas, by catering forboth quantitative and qualitative needs, played an important rôle inshifting the focus of rehousing from suburban to inner-city areas. L.H.Keay, the Liverpool Director of Housing, strongly supported this shift, andin consequence attached great importance to the 1935 Act. LiverpoorsCentral Redevelopment Area, declared in October 1935, was the firstscheme in the country to be submitted to the Minister of Health. Itcovered 51 acres of land on which 6,640 people were to be rehoused.Other major redevelopment areas were declared before the war at PittStreet/Kent Square (1936)—40 acres, 3,661 population, Athol Street(1937), the largest area containing 97 acres and 17,364 people, andWarwick Street (1938, 50 acres). These were, therefore, major schemes,but the speed and scale of the Liverpool programme reflected a traditionof inner-city rebuilding which the new programme served to reinforce.The redevelopment areas were of comparatively small size, and suchschemes might be completed within a short span of years. Clearance areascomprised a large proportion of the whole, and work could beginrelatively quickly within the context of the existing clearance programme.Otherwise, the areas gave greater scope f or zoning, retention, orreallocation of industrial land use, a limited introduction of open spaceand provision of various buildings for civic services. The CentralRedevelopment Area included a major road scheme. [2]

In Birmingham, the introduction of redevelopment areas wasassociated with a more dramatic switch in policy. This owed much to theactivities of Herbert Manzoni, the new city engineer. As Gibson andLongstaff rightly note, he “altered the terms of the policy debate”.[3]Manzoni’s own account of this process says that the idea ofredevelopment in Birmingham was born in 1936. Unlike Keay, Manzoniadvocated redevelopment on a large scale, in areas stretching from thecore of the city out to the edge of more modern property. Such areasneeded to be redeveloped over a correspondingly lengthier period. Thisscale was partly associated with empirical conditions in Birmingham,which possessed a distinct “inner ring” of back-to-back housesconstructed before 1875. Moreover, this ring also contained numerousindustrial premises associated with the Birmingham trades. The landuses of the first redevelopment area, declared at Duddeston andNechells in 1937, were to be often quoted in subsequent literature, andfigured in the Uthwatt Report as an example of the conditions thatplanners had to deal with in inner-city areas. Duddeston and Nechells

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was some 300 acres in size, and contained 6,800 dwellings (80 per centclassifiable as slums) mixed with 15 major industrial premises, 105minor factories or workshops, 778 shops, 18 churches and chapels and 51licensed premises. The opportunities for rezoning were central to thestrategy, and it was also estimated that a saving of 20 acres of land couldbe made in the street layout. Manzoni remembered that “this singlefact…more than any other, was a vital factor of encouragement…in theearly days of the ide”.[4]

The Duddeston and Nechells Scheme was to link directly into war-timeplans for reconstruction, and into post-war planning practice. By contrast,the redevelopment plans in London were radically altered by the war, andredesigned to take account of areas cleared by bombing. Because of that,they have tended to be overlooked, but they merit much greaterrecognition as an important part of pre-war planning practice. The LCChad already been in contact with the ministry during the preparation ofthe redevelopment area proposals, and had submitted several examples ofsuitable areas. Active work continued, and by May 1935 the valuer wasable to make very far reaching proposals. He advised that redevelopmentarea procedures might be applicable to

a large area covering some 700 acres in the Boroughs of Stepney,Shoreditch and Bethnal Green, stretching between London Docks onthe south and the Regents Canal on the north, consisting in the mainof old residential property, and forming a corridor some 1 3/4 milesin length and 3/4 mile in width.[5]

Defining this more closely, he distinguished four parts. An area of 250 acreslying south of the Whitechapel Road was “particularly old and congested—practically the whole calls for redevelopment”. A second area of 175 acresbetween the Whitechapel Road and the LNER railway contained “aconsiderable amount of old residential property, large patches of industrialproperty new and old, and some modern developments”. Another 175 acresstretching north to the Old Bethnal Green Road was mainly residentialand requiring redevelopment, while the remaining 100 acres between thatroad and the Regents Canal contained old property together with “aconsiderable amount of residential and industrial property either modernor in fair condition”. However, while the condition of the property mightdirect attention first towards the southern area, sites for initial rehousingwere only obtainable in Hackney, and “it would be unreasonable to expecta large proportion of persons living in unsatisfactory conditions in Stepneyto move to new accommodation so far from their present homes and work.”The valuer therefore, recommended be ginning in the north and proceeding

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progressively southwards, and this indeed was to become the council’sstrategy. The end result, it was hoped, would be the creation of “a corridorof redevelopment on modern lines stretching from London Fields in thenorth to the docks on the south.”

Various other areas were to be considered for redevelopmentprocedures. The most important of these was the area traditionally knownas the “Hoxton 80 acres”, lying in Shoreditch west of the Kingsland Road.Another possible site lay in Bermondsey, near Hickman’s Folly (now theDickens Estate). Whatever their individual merits, however, these areasdid not offer a key for the opening up of redevelopment in the East End asa whole, and for the grand strategy offered above. From the start, then, anambitious programme was envisaged, which would take clearance andrebuilding well beyond the limits of traditional slum clearance, and offera new approach to the problems of the East End. However, the FinanceCommittee was rather alarmed by the potential size of the programme,immediately pointing out the extent of the council’s currentcommitments. There were also many potential administrativedifficulties in applying the new procedures. It was thus decided in April1936 to go ahead at first with a comparatively small scheme—theBethnal Green Redevelopment Area no. 1, consisting of about 45 acreswith a population of about 5,000. In redevelopment, some 5,200 personsmight be accommodated, and there would be 5.5 acres for industry in aseparate zone, which would cater not only for the area “but also in somemeasure for industry which will have to be dealt with in redevelopmentor clearance areas lying further to the south. The industrial land wouldbe sold or leased by the council.” Housing would be contained in twolarge zones, together with another 10.5 acres along main road frontages,where it would be combined with shop. Not all the property in the areaneeded to be acquired and redeveloped, and the scheme put to the councilin December costed the acquisition and site works at £1.25 and rehousingat £0.5 million.[6]

In April 1937 the prospects for redevelopment seemed bright. Aconference with Bethnal Green Council achieved their general support,and officers “anticipated that the scheme would be approachingcompletion in three years”.[7] In July another project, the Bethnal GreenRedevelopment Area no. 2, was brought before the committee. It was alarger scheme of 126 acres in the south of the borough which would“embrace the whole of the district requiring redevelopment between theCouncil’s Boundary Street estate on the west and Pott Street (HorwoodEstate) on the east”. Here too, a considerable amount of space would haveto be reserved for industrial and commercial premises, as well as for theinhabitants of the area.[8] This was probably the high point of pre-war


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redevelopment area planning in London. From then on setbacks occurredthat were to prevent the immediate implementation of plans for area no. 1,and the declaration of area no. 2. In particular, in November 1938 therewas an appeal to the High Court against a compulsory purchase order forclearance property in area no. 1, on the grounds that the order was notwithin the powers of the 1936 Act, a redevelopment area having beendeclared.

The two projected redevelopment areas necessarily covered a muchwider range of property than the normal clearance area. In area no. 1 were693 working-class houses, 11 other houses, 156 premises which combinedshops with working-class housing over, 12 licensed premises and 59business and industrial premises. Of the working-class houses 47 per centwere regarded as unfit. The second redevelopment area included 17,505working-class and 1,042 non-working class inhabitants, and contained1,429 unfit houses, or 44 per cent of the total. The presence of a majority of“fit” houses in these schemes was an obvious point for objectors to seizeon, but the extent of the opposition is difficult to establish. Bethnal GreenCouncil was presented with a petition from the Residents and RatepayersSociety with 717 signatures opposing the scheme for area no. 1. Assumingall these were residents, they would still represent a small minority of thetotal, but of course all those objecting may not have signed. Small tradersmade up a fairly large proportion of the signatories. At the local inquiry,William Catmur submitted that the authorities should “deal with the unfithouses very carefully and not to interfere more than necessary with the fithouses”. He asked the inquiry to give more consideration to the “choice ofthe people and the kind of housing they prefer” and to reject “thisparticular way of making a shop window” of town planning.[9] There wassome support from the local Liberal MP, Percy Harris, who warned that

We do not want our cities to become as on the continent cities of flatdwellers…the danger with local authoritie…[is that] they areinclined to sweep away quite decent streets, and pull down houseswith back gardens in order to substitute five storey block dwellings.[10]

Although such opposition managed to obtain some success in delayingredevelopment on technical grounds, there was little prospect of winningthe wider battle. Large-scale redevelopment of the East End was the majoritem on the British urban agenda, and its potential significance involvedmuch more than changes to the local built environment. Various questionsof territory loomed large, and their significance can be shown by a briefexamination of contemporary housing statistics. At the Greater London

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Redevelopment areas

level, there was a marked leap in private output between 1933 and 1934,and although this declined somewhat in 1937–8, it still remained abovepre-1934 levels. LCC ouput rose to form 10 per cent of the total in 1937,when all local authorities in the area accounted for 16 per cent of the total.The LCC managed to retain a high proportion of cottage building until1938, but it then fell off rapidly. The production of flats built up from a lowlevel in 1933–4 to peak in 1936–7, with relatively high levels in thesucceeding years (Table 11.1).

Table 11.2 shows associated changes in the location of LCC dwellings. In1934, 61 per cent of these were located out-county, and further suburbanestates within the county added to the totals. Even in the period 1934–9,the proportion of new dwellings located in the inner east was only 17 percent, although 35 per cent of new families were drawn from this district.There was still a high proportion of out-county building, while the surgein the north east and south of the river marked the increased constructionof flatted estates, only a minority of which were on slum clearance sites.Although LCC housing operations were no longer concentrated on theexport of families beyond the county boundary, they still involved a strongoutward flow of population from the inner areas both onto undevelopedland and onto sites which provided a large housing gain. Once again, thisunderlines the significance of the fact that housing programmes wereinterrupted by the war before the main thrust of the redirection towardsinner-city building could be carried into practice. The programmes thatwere accomplished still reflected the earlier orientation towards outwardmovement.

Table 11.1 House production in Greater London, 1930–9

Note: Private includes housing trusts. The sub-totals for LCC houses and flats are forfinancial years beginning in the year stated. Other figures are for calendar years.


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How one interprets these figures depends, of course, on attitudes to thebalance between public and private housing, between slum clearance andrelief of overcrowding, between suburban and inner-city building. Thefigures may be used to point up the advantages of the government’sstrategy of compartmentalization. Conservatives were certainly entitledto regard private house production in this period as a considerablesuccess, and it was to be one of the main planks around which their plansfor the post-Second World War period could be formulated. Arguably, thefigures demonstrate the lack of direct action on inner-city problems thatcommentators claimed could only be rectified by preventing localauthorities from turning their attention elsewhere. Some shift in thebalance toward inner-city rebuilding was certainly required, and in themeantime the large existing stock of suburban and cottage dwellings stillallowed outward movement through the system. However, ifdecentralization was still a major requirement then the figures alsosupport the case for continued local authority building in the suburbs. It ishighly unlikely that the families newly housed in private dwellingsaround London were drawn from the inner east in anything like the sameproportion as those on the LCC estates. Moreover, although public andprivate housing had necessarily to cater for different markets, strongcompartmentalization of the kind favoured in the late 1930s was bound tostrengthen corresponding social and geopolitical divisions of the typehighlighted by Young and Garside. [11]

Note: The table shows the existing dwelling stock in each district 1934, new dwellings added1934-9, and the number of families taken into council housing from each district 1934-9. Forcomposition of districts see Figure 8.1

Table 11.2 LCC building and rehousing, by district, 1934-9

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Obsolescence and redevelopment


So far, in this book, the introduction of redevelopment areas has beenpresented as a process largely propelled by the politics of housing inEngland. However, these more direct relationships need also to be seen ina context of wider concerns. The direction of official policy both promoteda switch of attention to inner-city conditions and at the same time fed off anumber of underlying themes prominent in public debate in the period.There was a mutual reinforcement. These underlying themes themselvescan be approached through the characteristic manner in which large citieswere seen and depicted. Attention was given, schematically, to an innerring of obsolescent housing and land uses, counterpointed with an outerring of development around or beyond the city. It might be said that therewas nothing much new here—such rings had been recognized since at leastthe time of Charles Booth and the decentralist paradigms of the turn of thecentury. In those models, however, the inner ring had been seen in terms ofovercrowding or congestion, which needed to be relieved bydecentralization. An insistence on obsolescence rather than congestion wasmuch more favourable to the centralist case.

Obsolescence as a theme is best approached through its development inthe United States, whence the term “blight” was imported into Britain.Mabel Walker’s study Urban blight and slums (1938) provides a keyreference.[12] Blight and obsolescence were largely synonymous terms,whereas a slum might be defined as an area with “an extreme condition ofblight”. Blighted areas were much more extensive and, as in Baltimore(1933), were typically depicted as “a ring of blighted residential tracts ofthe most serious importance and size. The centre of the city is almostcompletely girdled.” Concomitantly, there was another shift of focus, sinceblight was also given “more of an economic connotation”. It was “acondition where it is not possible to make or maintain improvements”.This condition was not just a product of the house itself, indeed it wasoften argued that the ordinary dwelling had a life expectancy muchgreater than that of its neighbourhood. Above all, blight was connected toa long-term process of deflation resulting from large-scale economic andsocial developments. Essentially, this meant the outward pull to thesuburbs of residence and (latterly) of industry, coupled with a “new andscarcely recognised pull inwards toward the skyscraper centre”. Therelative loss of value thus caused was disguised by the 1920s boom, but theonset of depression caused a reverse that was seen to be both cyclical andstructural. The inner ring was faced with a loss of demand, and as Hoytput it in his study of Chicago: “there is now a valley in the land-valuecurve between the Loop and the outer residential areas.” In response,


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Economists and real estate men have recently become convinced thatthese blighted areas are cancers that are sapping the strength of ourcities, and that they must be removed to preserve the property valuesof the other urban areas.[13]

In terms of the public interest it was, arguably, “desirable to keep theblighted areas of the city in full and appropriate use, and not to encourageindefinite expansion to such an extent as to lead to the abandonment ofvast portions of the core of the city”.[14] Public money might be re-focussedon the inner areas instead of on the promotion of outlying improvementsand subsidy of high-speed transportation. However, it was generally agreedthat renewal could not take place without more realistic pricing. For Hoyt,“the hope of success in rebuilding the blighted areas lies in the extent towhich outlying subdivisions are controlled, and the extent to which thecost of acquiring slum land is kept within reason.”[15] For Walker, however,the whole key to revival of these areas lay in removing the discrepancybetween the value put on the property by the owners and “its value forany uses to which it can be put, appropriate to the public welfare, underexisting circumstances”.[16] Blight resulted from unrealistic land andproperty values which had to be driven down further before these areascould be revived. She admired British legislation on slum clearancecompensation, and supported other measures which revived some of thearguments traditionally associated with the “land question”.

The British context presented certain points of difference which shouldbe underlined. Neither the cultural/political climate nor the empiricaltrend of events were the same. Social considerations remained much moreto the fore and, particularly before the Second World War, it was moreusual to extend the term “slum” to denote the kind of extensive areanormally demarcated in America as “blight”. Property values in Britainhad already been profoundly affected by political developments earlier inthe century, so that there was neither the large property boom of the 1920snor the subsequent crash at the onset of the Depression. Moreover,competitive trends in America had gone further, so that although the innerparts of British cities were physically much older, they possibly sufferedless from economic obsolescence. The effects of the Depression onindustrial land use in those parts was patchy, and certainly land andproperty values in London generally stood higher in the mid-1930s than inthe mid-1920s (Chapter 9). Despite this, parallels could be drawn with theAmerican experience. It was clear that industrial invasion of the inner areawould not be of the same importance as previously thought, and offeredno support for property values. The Town Planning Institute told theBarlow Committee in 1938 that the pace of suburban development had

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“caused substantial areas around the inmost core of towns to becomesemi-derelict, whole neighbourhoods tend to become slums, not onlyhousing but business and industrial slums”.[17]

The Depression in Britain certainly had important effects. It underlinedthe contrast between the fortunes of old and new industries, and of oldand new industrial areas. Political response to the regional problem,developing from the Special Areas Act (1934), led to increasing recognitionof its structural aspects. The position of industry in the inner ring of citiescould be seen in the same light. Equally, industry and housing in the olderareas could be seen as the common product of the early industrial period.Instead of concentrating on local variety—the factors that differentiated“slums” from the rest of the inner ring that surrounded them—factoriesand housing could be seen as part of the same problem. The regionalquestion and the condition of cities were famously brought together in theBarlow Committee set up by Neville Chamberlain in 1937. Thiscommittee, by recommending a certain degree of control over the locationof industry, was to resuscitate the decentralist cause. But its eventualsignificance should not be allowed to push aside the fact that in themeantime the current was running strongly in another direction.

Turn-of-the-century decentralists such as Howard and WilliamThompson had been able to embrace fully a competitive model withouthaving to do much in the way of thinking about developments at a laterstage. Competition was depicted as a wholly benevolent process whichwould draw off population, reduce rents and force landlords to improvetheir property. The qualitative benefits, however, had been slow toemerge, if only because this was something over which property ownerscould still exercise some control. What seemed to result in the 1930s was amessy condition in which some congestion remained, combined withobsolescence, and property values remained obstinately high. However, ifin Britain as in America the suburban solution could now increasingly bechallenged, an even more potent factor in Britain was the reaction againstsuburban “sprawl”. This question has already been extensively covered inthe literature, and it is only necessary here to underline its impact. Keay,supporting redevelopment areas, argued that “there need be no anxiety onthe part of those who associated another housing drive by the localauthorities with a further absorption of agricultural land. The countrycould still be saved by redevelopment of our towns so long as the privatespeculator was curbed.”[18] Boumphrey went further in this direction, butalso maintained that if “by slow degrees the mock-arcadians draw thetownsfolk away…then will come a slump in land values and rates in theold town—the first signs of which are even now perceptible—and publicmoney will have to be poured into them to prevent utter calamity.”[19]


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In America, plans for the redevelopment or improvement of inner-cityareas were usually drawn up in a framework of private ownership. Therewere numerous schemes, on paper at least, which were designed to allowowners in a local area to pool their interests or co-operate in order toachieve neighbourhood improvement. Concerted investment, andenvironmental changes, could protect investments and often allow amove up-market. In Britain I.G. Gibbon was a leading advocate of suchschemes as a way by which property could continue to develop withinprivate ownership. The real task was not just slum clearance but “toreplace what is antiquated and inefficient and to bring the whole area—including what the Americans call blighted districts—up to modernrequirements”. The great obstacle was the “multiplicity of separateownerships, rendering it difficult to plan for the best purpose withoutexcessive compensation”. Gibbon showed interest in Lex Adickes schemesin Germany, but these were followed by redistribution to the severalinterests. What he wanted was a compulsory pooling scheme wherebyauthorities would “map out areas in which ownership should be pooled,”a management Board being set up for each pool. In effect, this would be amodern version of the great estate, the virtues of which Gibbon seemed torecall in his view that planning should “lay down such provisions for theuse of land as would be made by a person of enlightenment and publicspirit if he owned all the land”.[20]

This kind of rationalization scheme involved thinking similar to thatpresented by Percy and others to the Moyne Committee. If the smallowner could be relieved of moral condemnation by a new economicemphasis in policy, he remained impaled on the other fork of economicefficiency. The reordering of ownership and control in the managementof housing was, moreover, part of a much wider movement for reformthat had developed in response to the Depression. Large-scale industrialschemes were formulated, usually on the basis that in return forprotection industries should re-organize themselves into more efficiententities using modern methods of production. Harold Macmillan inReconstruction (1933) talked about “haphazard and un-coordinatedcompetition” and of the way in which “a minority of ‘ruggedindividualists’ may arrest the progress which the great majority haverecognised to be essential”. Lord Melchett, on behalf of the IndustrialReorganization League, attempted to obtain legislative powers tosupplement by a degree of coercion the volun tary schemes in industriessuch as cotton. These were schemes for “orderly capitalism” asMacmillan put it—an alternative to socialism.[21]

These projects of the “middle way” are often interpreted as an

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attempt to find a compromise between laissez-faire and socialism. Theyalso, however, demonstrate a new-found confidence in the ability ofprivate enterprise to push back the frontiers of public activity, providingthat the opportunities presented by new methods of organization weregrasped. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the buildingindustry. Reorganization into large companies had proceeded muchfurther in Britain than in America, and there was close co-operationbetween the industry, building societies and the government. A series ofBritish representatives lectured in the United States on the benefits,stressing the extent to which such reorganized private enterprise couldmeet demands.[22] The Political and Economic Planning (PEP)Industries Group in Housing England (1934) advocated nationalorganization of working class housing via an “English BuildingCompany” and an “English Housing Company”, the latter formanagement. This report strongly supported the limitation of subsidy,so that the possibilities for cost reduction should be fully realized. At thesame time, measures to keep down land costs were welcomed, and thereport argued that there was “an unanswerable case for the provision ofa limited or licensed life for buildings”. At the end of the licensedperiod, an extension of the term would only be granted “providing thebuilding reached certain standards of repair, convenience andamenity”.[23] The compensation costs of official redevelopmentschemes would be reduced. Similarly, the Council for Research inHousing Construction (1934) looked forward to major economies inflat building on redevelopment sites (Chapter 10).

It is worth noticing that Keynes, who sharply attacked thegovernment’s original restriction of housing action in 1933, was muchmore favourable to the 1935 settlement, not only on the grounds ofsustaining employment, but also because of the greater emphasis on large-scale activity. Redevelopment proposals which he put forward in 1936were much wider in scope and purpose than those of the government, butthe 1935 Act found an echo in his argument that

we should demolish the majority of existing buildings on the southbank of the river from the County Hall to Greenwich, and lay outthese districts as the most magnificent…working-class quarter in theworld. The space is at present so ill-used that an equal or largerpopulation could be housed in modern comfort on half the area orless, leaving the rest of it to be devoted to parks squares and playgrounds, with lakes, pleasure gardens and boulevards.[24]


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In the late 1930s there were many proposals for large-scale redevelopmentin England, although with much variation in the character of the proposedrebuilding. The advocates of low density cottage development were stillinhibited by its apparent impracticability, but Trystran Edwards and theHundred New Towns Group were more confident in advocatinghighdensity cottage schemes, albeit still with a large degree of overspill.E.D. Simon favoured cottages at 20 to the acre, but thought that four-storeytenements were the most practical solution for the redevelopment ofManchester’s “slum belt”.[25] The flat received much increased attentionfrom architects, partly stimulated by the advent of refugees from thecontinent, notably Gropius and Lubetkin. In 1937, L.H. Bucknall in hispresidential address to the Architectural Association called for theredevelopment of a whole inner ring of London, stretching east fromRegents Park to Whitechapel, south to Bermondsey, west to Battersea,north to Kensal Green, and so east to Regents Park again.[26] At thebeginning of the war, Boumphrey proposed completely to reshape andcontract existing towns around modern ten-storey flats. Adshead, anotheradvocate of tall flats, presented a map showing areas covering 30 sq. milesof London, within which “the whole of the property…should be pulleddown, and made subject of a new layout of flats, tenement buildings,parks, gardens etc, the reconstruction covering a period of, say, fiftyyears”.[27]

In such a context, the task of the Barlow Committee in redirectingattention to planned decentralization was not an easy one, although it wasable to connect with the view that there was something seriously wrongwith the great British conurbations. Generally speaking, the report tookthe line that obsolescence was a consequence of congestion, so that relief ofthe latter was still the primary aim. It could support “continued andfurther redevelopment of congested urban areas” within a context ofdispersal, and offer the possibility of controlling urban sprawl throughplanning. The report’s great advantage was that, appearing in 1940, it fedthis directly into the considerations of post-war policy that were thenbeginning. Modern commentators have generally concurred withOsborn’s view, given at the TCPA Oxford Conference (March 1941), thatBarlow represented the new “orthodoxy of planning”. But they have alsoincreasingly recognized his qualification that it was only a “bareoutline”.[28] Indeed, the conference proceeded to blur such outlines aswere discernible. One of the strongest of the papers presented was givenby Manzoni. He extended the concept of redevelopment area to includefavoured elements of the town planning tradition:

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Redevelopment should be carried out in large areas and notattempted in small isolated packages. This type of redevelopment,which must be the mainspring of the check and eventual contractionof our overgrown conurbations must be conceived on the basis ofcomplete communities, i.e. as the rebuilding of towns within ourtowns. Such communities should contain nearly all the elements ofnecessity which we should give to a satellite town.[29]

Manzoni argued that “we must plan our homes to suit conditions imposedby industrial necessity”. Cities could not stand still: “they must progress ordecay. I am very doubtful whether the activities of a prosperous town canbe much reduced without serious damage to its enterprise.” But he heldout the prospect that industrial cities equipped with modern flats could becontained, or even contracted, “by a rigid application of space economy”.It was very clear that the Barlow Report had not settled arguments aboutthe direction of planning policy.

Estates and communities

Although the New survey of London life and labour (1931) was less interestedin topographical information than the Booth survey, it reproduced similarstreet maps and paid much attention to local concentrations of the poor.[30]It drew some comfort from a finding (probably incorrect) that suchconcentrations had been much reduced since Booth’s day, partly by slumclearance. It helped to remove the contaminating effects of bad influences.The middle classes on the other hand were becoming more concentrated.Although they formed a growing proportion of the country’s population,they were increasingly located in the suburbs or, in the case of London, inthe West End. The whole of the inner east was characterized by a very lowlevel of middle-class presence and influence, a fact that was generallydeplored.

This was one of the ways in which the question of social mix continuedto be examined in the inter-war period. But there were developments fromthe Victorian position not reflected in the conservative approach of theNew survey. Slum clearance was still associated with dispersal ofpopulation, but also with rehousing, often concentrated on similar sites.Those who most strongly saw the slum problem in terms of incorrigibleslum dwellers were now less attracted by the clearance process, althoughit might still be thought of as a measure that imposed a salutary shake-upof populations and change of environment. Increasingly, however,clearance and rehousing, like other housing operations, was seen to bring


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about its own patterns of social concentration, that in some waysreinforced the segregation within the housing market. This produced twocharacteristic approaches that crystallized in the late 1930s and continuedto develop during the war and afterwards. Both acknowledged theimproved housing of the inter-war period, but set against this the rise of amore individualistic or mechanistic society against which they sought todevelop concepts of “community”. These were, however, differentconcepts: an older tradition developed the theme of social mix, whereas anewer one stressed the advantages of social homogeneity and of theindependence of working-class districts.

Social mix was a dominant theme of L.E. White, who wrote an accountof Tenement town based on his experiences as a Christian pacifist on acommunity project during the war. This was a study of the LCC’S HonorOak Park Estate (Deptford), and later the National Council of SocialService published his book Community or chaos?, in which he reflectedmore widely on the inter-war experience. In White’s account lack of socialmix had increasingly deleterious effects as one moved down the socialscale. These effects were evident on inter-war municipal estates,particularly those with populations drawn from the slums. The newhousing estate “has no independent corporate existence of its own, yet it isnot an organic part of the parent city”. It was “the true habitat for a rootlessgeneration”.[31] However, inner-city flats were no solution, as theyincreased social isolation. Flats (some of low standard) were part of theproblem at Honor Oak, but this quasi-suburban estate was also cut offfrom the surrounding world by railway embankments and social hostility.The estate contained some 5,000 people, but “no provision had been madefor the social needs of the people…no community centre, no church, nocinema, no post office, there was not even a public house.” By contrast,“the old slums abounded in churches, missions, settlements, institutions,clubs and other welfare organisations.”[32]

The most important factor, however, was the absence of social mix.Greater mix would have enabled a wider range of services and activities,so adding to the richness of social life. But such richness came mainly fromparticipation in group activities. He thought that “the most seriouscriticism which may be made of every slum clearance estate is that it failsto provide natural leaders who will play their part in the development ofthe life of the community.” At Tenement Town, partly because of very highturnover, “far too many families were drawn from the lowest incomegroup.” The end result, in his view, was a sad story of juveniledelinquency, destruction of trees, apathy, and some nostalgia for oldhaunts. Above all, “in few places in England is it possible to find a

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community of 5,000 people so completely cut off from normal christianinfluences.” The remedies, he thought, were that “the one-class estatemust never be allowed again.” New housing areas should be developed asneighbourhood units, with full social facilities. Flats should not be used forfamilies with children, and rehousing should be accompanied by “socialeducation in the broadest sense. Women house managers and welfareadvisers…but schools, clubs, community centre and church all have theirparts to play.” Writing in 1946, he was rather optimistic that these pointswould be taken up.[33]

Contrary to what might be thought, the LCC drew the various types oftenant in the late 1930s in similar proportions from the different districts.This was because of an allocation policy adjusted to the needs ofindividual boroughs.[34] Thus the inner east contributed 43 per cent of theclearance tenants, 42 per cent of the overcrowding class, and 36 per cent ofthe ordinary tenants. There were, however, different consequences forrehousing, and the clearance group was most likely to be rehoused withinits own district, although there was still a small net outward flow (Table11.3). As a result, the Inner East had a much larger proportion of clearancetenants on its estates, although lower than suggested in the table, whichdoes not allow for turnover. Tenants were not usually rehoused on the sitefrom which they had been displaced, although some were. More usually,they moved to nearby estates where buildings were becoming available.Thus, the largest group of tenants from Dorset Road (Lambeth) moved toKennington Park, and most of the rest to six other estates, includingDorset Road itself. North of the river there was usually rather moredispersion than to the south. In the inner parts of London, the estatespredominantly occupied by clearance tenants were those of the inter-warrather than pre-war period. In the outer parts of the county, however,some post-war flatted estates had a predominance of clearance tenants,and others low proportions. These patterns were partly the product ofestate location and costs, and partly the result of management practiceincluding differential renting by estate.

Although White gives the impression that Honor Oak’s population wasdrawn from the slums, it did not have a high proportion of clearancetenants—only 845 people were first rehoused here. This did not mean, ofcourse, that the tenants were not drawn from poor families, but it isunlikely to have been exceptional in that respect In the year to March 1939the turnover at Honor Oak was very high, at 20 per cent compared with anLCC average of 11 per cent. Three other estates in Deptford with a highproportion of clearance tenants had lower than average turnover. Turnover was generally low in Stepney (6 per cent), while in Hackney it was 8


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per cent on estates with high proportions of clearance tenants, and 4 percent on those with a low proportion. The exceptionally high turnover atHonor Oak is probably indicative of problems on the estate, but moregenerally there was no simple correlation between turnover and tenantgroup, or between turnover and type and location of estate.

The second concept of “community” was less prevalent before the SecondWorld War, but important planks do appear in the work of a f ew left-wingauthors. Chesterton rejoiced that “once over the frontier of the City youfeel a surge of social independence that dominates East London right downto the docks.” She was happy to apply the term “slum” to large sections ofLondon. Thus, “North Southwark…residentially speaking is pure slum,with occasional tracts of better-class houses.” However, in contrast to theNew survey approach, she is not interested in the slum as a seat of socialproblems, or in separating out concentrations of the very poor. Instead,working-class life is presented in a positive light, even celebrated. Thus inthe streets of North Southwark she encountered

a vivid crowd, eager for simple fun and honest pleasure, there was asense of life about these men and women that blew like a strongwind …the consciousness of the contrast between them and the foulholes in which they lived kept on recurring.[35]

It is this contrast between the positive view of social life and the negativeview of the physical infrastructure which particularly marks this secondapproach. Complementary to this, there is no sense of physical changedestroying local communities. Chesterton thought LCC flats were rather

Table 11.3 LCC slum clearance rehousing, by district, 1920–39

Note: Additional numbers were displaced from Tabard Street. For composition of districts seeFigure 8.1.

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mean, but saw them as a distinct advance on the slums they replaced. Inthe new flats on Shoreditch Council’s Dunstan Estate

rarely if ever is the superintendent’s authority evoked. The people…manage their own community, and bring mass pressure to bear onany individual who disturbs the public peace. The community spirithas survived the slum, the attractive balconies and wide passageshave taken the place of the doorstep.[36]

Bentwick argued in 1941 that “although Bermondsey people have a strongaffection for small cottages with individual gardens, they prefer flats inBermondsey to cottages elsewhere.” This was because of social as well aseconomic ties, and “one reason for the happy atmosphere of the Boroughis the fact that 95 per cent of its population is working class. It is the mixedboroughs like Kensington and Wandsworth which lack this extreme civicpride and consciousness and sense of unity. And the homo geneousboroughs which make the best citizens.” Unlike White, she was happy that“Bermondsey is not riddled with social work in the same way that someBoroughs are, where the local authority itself does not do so much for itscitizens”.[37]

After the Second World War, Ruth Glass was one of the main proponents of this kind of view of community, but it was present in her earlierthought. In her pre-war study of the LCC suburban cottage estate atWatling, she lamented the lack of social provision, but still thought that“there is more neighbourliness, more corporate life on the estate than inadjacent suburbs or in the parent town. In London’s inner boroughs clubshave been established for the people; the community centre at Watlingwas planned and is run by the people themselves.”[38] Writing of BethnalGreen in 1946 she portrays an essentially homogeneous society:“everybody is poor and hence competition does not spoil personalrelationships.” The same contrast appears as in Chesterton’s writings:Bethnal Green had “solved one of the most urgent problems of modernplanning, how to create an urban community”. Yet it was “one ofLondon’s outstanding reconstruction areas”.[39]

One great advantage of this second approach to community is that ithelps to liberate us from some of the otherwise all-pervasive assumptionsof the first school. There is a breath of fresh air in its celebration of thewarmth of much working-class life, and its refusal to focus relentlessly onsocial problems. Particularly at present, from the vantage point of early1990’s, when this approach is again unfashionable, it has something toteach us. However, like the social mix approach it is clearly selective:tensions, divisions and social impoverishment within the working class


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are simply pushed aside, the degree of independence of the communitiesdescribed is exaggerated, and contrasts between the physical and socialare overdrawn. Much of this arises, indeed, from a deliberate distancingfrom previous interpretations, the desire to establish a clean break fromwhich a new view of the world can more readily appear. Part of this viewwas an emphasis on reconstruction in a form that would allow the wholecommunity to be rehoused within its local area. It was a feature thatbrought an important source of left-wing support to the redevelopmentstrategies of the period.

Notes

1 PRO HLG 37/61, Central Housing Advisory Committee, Sub-Committee onRedevelopment Areas, 1938–41.

2 ibid; Keay, L.H. 1935, speech on redevelopment reported in The Builder, 149,912–13; Keay, L.H. 1939. Redevelopment of central areas in Liverpool. Journalof the Royal Society of British Architects 46, 293–8.

3 Gibson, M. & M. Longstaff 1982. An introduction to urban renewal, 204. London:Hutchinson.

4 Manzoni, Sir H. 1955. Redevelopment of blighted areas in Birmingham.Journal of the Town Planning Institute, 41,91; Towndrow, F.E. (ed.) 1941.Replanning Britain, 97–9. London: Faber & Faber; Expert Committee onCompensation and Betterment (Uthwatt Committee), Report, 7, ParliamentaryPapers 4, 1941–2, Cmnd 6386.

5 HC 29 May (43) 1935.6 ibid., 1 Apr. (65) 1936; LCC. 1937. London Housing, 26–9.7 ibid., 14 Apr. (6–92) 1937.8 ibid., 21 Jul. (76), 11 Nov. (6) 1937.9 ibid., 31 June 1938, day 2, 32, 62–4.10 Hansard 331, col. 1758, 15 Feb. 1938.11 Young, K. & P.L.Garside 1982. Metropolitan London: politics and urban change,

173–218. London: Edward Arnold.12 Walker, M. 1938. Urban blight and slums: economic and legal factors in their origin,

reclamation and prevention, 6–8, 21. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UniversityPress.

13 Hoyt, H. 1933. 100 years of land values in Chicago, 357–8. Chicago: University ofChicago Press; Hoyt, H. 1942. The valuation of land in urban blighted areas. InAccording to Hoyt 1916–1969, 454. Washington: H. Hoyt.

14 Wright, H. 1938. Rehabilitation of blighted urban areas. In Walker, op. cit, 94.15 Hoyt (1942) op. cit, 459.16 Walker op. cit, 6.17 Royal Commission on the Distribution of the Industrial Population (Barlow

Committee) 1938. Minutes of evidence, day 19.

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18 Keay, L.H. (1935) op. cit., 912–13.19 Boumphrey, G. 1940. Town and country tomorrow, 132. London: Nelson.20 Gibbon, I.G. 1937. Problems of town and country planning, 121, 14, 32, 13.

London: Allen & Unwin.21 Macmillan, H. 1933. Reconstruction, 25, 37, 22. London: Macmillan.22 Perry, C.A. 1939. Housing for the machine age, 40–5. New York: Russell Sage.23 Political and Economic Planning (PEP) Industries Group 1934. Housing

England, 6–7, 123–4.24 Keynes, J.M. 1936. Art & the state. Listener 16, 371–4, reprinted in J.M. Keynes

collected writings, M. Moggridge (ed.) 1971–80, Vol. 27, 359–362. London:Macmillan; Keynes, J.M. 1933. A programme for unemployment. InMoggridge op. cit., Vol. 21, 154–161.

25 Simon E.D. & J. Inman 1935. The rebuilding of Manchester, 112. London:Longman Green.

26 Reported in Architects Journal 85, 1937, 120.27 Boumphrey op. cit; Adshead, S.D. 1941 A new England, 116. London: F. Muller.28 Towndrow, F.E. op. cit., 39.29 ibid., 97.30 Llewellyn-Smith, Sir Hubert, 1931–5. New survey of London life and labour.

London: P.S. King. For another discussion of social issues and the slum seeYelling J.A. 1990. The metropolitan slum: London 1918–1951. In Slums, M.Gaskell (ed.) 186–233. Leicester: Leicester University Press.

31 White, L.E. 1950. Community or chaos?: housing estates and their social problems,13. London: National Council of Social Service.

32 White, L.E. 1946. Tenement Town, 13, 66. London: Jason Press.33 ibid., 16, 66, 74–7.34 LCC statistics in this section are taken from LCC London Housing Statistics

1938–9, and from HC quaterly returns.35 Chesterton, C.E. (Ada Jones) 1937. I lived in a slum, 152, 68, 109. London:

Queensway Press.36 ibid., 268.37 GLRO AR/TP/1/56. report on Bermondsey, 3 May 1941.38 Durant (Glass), R. 1939. Watling: a survey of social life on a new housing estate, 117.

London: P.S.King.39 Glass, R. & M. Frenkel 1946. A profile of Bethnal Green, 39, 10, 3, 7. London:

Association for Planning and Regional Reconstruction, report no. 39.

Notes

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C H A P T E R 1 2War-time plans

In previous chapters it has been shown that the Second World Warintervened at a critical stage in the slum clearance and redevelopmentprogramme. Clearance and rebuilding had proceeded most rapidly outsidethe major cities, and where combined with decentralization. The later stagesof the programme, with more inner-city rebuilding, were never reachedand almost the whole of the redevelopment area programme planned formajor cities had yet to be started. Before such extensive physical and socialchange could occur, redevelopment plans were modified during the war,and the first part of the chapter examines the most relevant single documentof that period, the County of London plan. The second part then goes on tolook at war-time planning in the wider national context, and at relationshipsbetween housing and planning. Whereas by 1942 it was almost universallyconceded that planning had been too weak between the wars, the housingpolicies and programmes of the immediate pre-war period could bepresented in a more favourable light. Tensions between housing andplanning were to have a major impact on post-war outcomes.

The County of London plan

Patricia Garside has shown that the idea of a London “master plan” beganto be shaped in the latter part of 1940.[1] It originated from within the LCCand reflected projects of both the leadership and certain key officers. Theseembraced a much wider extension of the public ownership of urban land,and a more positive rôle for the council in planning. Up to this point thedraft town plans had been concerned only with private development, andthey had omitted the council’s own constructive proposals (including itsredevelopment areas) which were promoted quite separately from theseplans. In December 1940 new opportunities were set out in a draft paperby the architect F.R. Hiorns, who since 1937 had been in overall control of

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town planning. This anticipated large-scale reconstruction in the east andsouth, and noted that in making proposals “due regard would need to bepaid to the appropriate and authoritative artistic and professional opinion”.The plan, he believed, should be broad in outline and flexible in nature,setting out ideas

not governed by questions of ownership and considerations ofproperty value but by what is shown to be desirable in the bestinterests of the future of London and those who live and work init.[2]

Hiorns recommended the appointment of Abercrombie as consultant. Hemay have been informally approached early in 1941 but his appointmentwas not confirmed by the council until April, and the aim was to finish theplan by the end of September.[3] Abercrombie’s position was enhancedwhen Hiorns was replaced by his deputy Forshaw. An outline plan wasindeed completed in late 1941, and this already contained essential featuresof the plan that was to be published in May 1943.

There are three general aspects of the plan that call for comment. First, itwas an attempt to change the balance between development led by theprivate sector and that led by the public sector. In particular, the object wasto move away from control of development by individual landowners,from a system which emphasized the most valuable use of individualplots to one that considered the larger scale, and brought in widerobjectives, social and environmental as well as economic. Suchconsiderations were basic to planning and common ground between thecouncil and Abercrombie, who took the view that “planners simplywished to put land to its best use without considering financialconsequences based on the fortuities of ownership.” Going beyond that,he was clearly sceptical of much current financial thinking. He thought “itwould be well if we could get rid of the dead hand of the Treasury whichwas the greatest enemy of planning” and worried about Keynes becominginstitutionalized.[4] Keynes’ advice at this time was clearly influential. Hiswhole approach was based on cleaning up a confusion between “theproblem of finance for an individual and the problem for the communityas a whole”. He thus condemned “the vile doctrine of the nineteenthcentury that every enterprise must justify itself in terms of poundsshillings and pence of cash income with no other denominator of valuesbut this”. Keynes developed no original town planning ideas, but hesupported belief s that a new and better London could be created, and thatplanning for lower densities and open space was not uneconomic He did,

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however, place emphasis on the long-term: “do not be afraid of large andbold schemes. Let our plans be big, significant, but not hasty.”[5]

Unlike statutory town plans, the London plan was always intended tobe advisory in nature, and to be concerned with the more general lines ofdevelopment. Implementation was to be clearly separated from the plan,which would illustrate the “theory of development” over a 50 year period,with a view to implementation in ten year stages. It was agreed that

the scope of the plan is not to be governed by questions of propertyownership or the powers of the 1932 Act but essentially is to bebased upon what is required to effect the “positive” improvement ofLondon …on bold and comprehensive lines.[6]

The LCC leaders wanted to ensure that the council would continue to beseen as a leader in the planning field, to widen the scope of its action andto lessen some of the existing constraints. It was surely for more thantechnical reasons that the council’s financial officers, including the valuer,were distanced from the plan, and their subsequent criticisms were to givean early indication of the difficulties that post-war planning would face.However, the existence of the plan provided the Labour leaders of thecouncil with a counterweight which had previously not existed, andhenceforth they would be in the more favourable rôle of arbitrating betweentwo positions.

The second general aspect of the plan leads on from the first. The objectin seeking Abercrombie’s assistance was to give the plan a professionalstatus, elevating it above the level of a document reflecting the narrowerconcerns of the LCC or the Labour Party. The presentation of a plan thatwould be in some ways “above politics” carried with it certain dangers,which were stressed by subsequent commentators, notably those ofAmerican origin. Catherine Bauer thus asked

Are the citizens of the East End so degraded that they cannot findleaders of their own to help decide whether a quarter or a half ofthem should move away…what happened to the lively tenants’organizations of pre-war days?… What neighbourhoodorganizations exist that could galvanize the boroughs and districts topositive action within the larger scheme of things?[7]

These were strong arguments and, like the relations between public andprivate sectors, relations between plan making and political involvementwere subsequently to be crucial. Without active involvement could asufficiently strong political constituency be developed to sustain a plan?

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Against this, the plan reflected the long-term tradition of British planningrelying on the impact of “model” developments, which then served to guidepublic demands. As Bauer implies, it might be possible to bring the twoapproaches together, but there were inherent difficulties in such a project.The plan was devised as a document that transcended individual and groupinterests in favour of general long-term goals beneficial to the wholecommunity.

As an example of a “model development” on a large scale, the plannecessarily required some agreement on the general nature of the endproduct. This was an area in which differences between the council andAbercrombie were more apparent, but they should not beoveremphasized. It was common ground that compared with the pre-warposition a greater element of decentalization should be planned for, andthat redevelopment should be widened in scope and take place on moregenerous lines. Abercrombie was disposed to reconciliation, and was onrecord as advocating a compromise position on the issue of flats versushouses. The council was not prepared to accept the kind of radicaldecentralization envisaged by Osborn. However, it wanted to developestates at lower density and recognized the need, in the wake of theBarlow Report, to take “decongestion” further. Moreover, Barlow had alsoplaced the issue of regional planning on the national agenda, withpotential consequences for local government. In 1940, when CharlesLatham succeeded Monison as leader of the Labour LCC, he emphasizedthe rôle of planning, and asserted that “no effective replanning of theCounty can be contemplated without taking into account the wider aspectof Greater London”. He wanted a “city beautiful” which “embraces notonly the select parts but the whole city”. This required decentralizationand that the local authority “should embrace the area into which factoriesand people are to be relocated”, preferably in a two-tier system with aregional authority as the highest tier.[8] In the event, the nationalgovernment resisted the idea of regional authorities, and their expecteddevelopment did not take place. In 1943, Latham was forced to abandonsuch policies in the face of entrenched opposition from within the LondonLabour Party, but at the time the plan was drawn up his views were in theascendancy.

Keynes’s emphasis on the long-term was clearly incorporated into theplan, and complemented by a large-scale geographical organization intoland use zones and sectors, to which further zones, including a green belt,were to be added later in the Greater London Plan (1944). This zoning wasrelated to the schematic nature of the plan and to its rôle as a politicaldocument, which required it to be big and bold, devised with firm lines andsetting out a clearly intelligible framework. At the same time, the plan

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reflected pre-war tradition by separating zones in which the council’s ownaction was to be predominant from those in which planning wouldcontinue to take a rather more traditional line. The four main land use zoneswithin the county were described as (a) the central area of the City and WestEnd; (b) the port and heavy industrial areas; (c) the central residential areasand (d) the suburbs outside those areas. It was the central residential areasthat were the locus of the plan’s main recommendations. The east centralarea comprised “the working class districts extending north of the riverfrom Poplar to Kentish Town, and bounded approximately by the RegentsCanal, and south of the river from Maze Hill Greenwich to Battersea, andbounded by rising ground to the south”.[9] It largely corresponded withcongested housing areas later shown on a map reproduced by Carter &Goldfinger (Fig. 12.1). They formed

the main areas for reconstruction…. They have a high proportion oftotal bomb damage…they contain the main areas of slum,obsolescent property and overcrowding as well as the worstexamples of large-scale “peppering” of industries within residentialareas. It is here that the main deficiencies in public open space lie.The area roughly corresponds to the proposed area ofdecentralization of population and industries.[10]

The “decentralization area” comprised the boroughs of the inner east:Bermondsey, Bethnal Green, Finsbury, Poplar, Shoreditch, Southwark andStepney, together with parts of the neighbouring boroughs of Battersea,Camberwell, Deptford, Greenwich, Islington, Lambeth and St Pancras. Its1938 population totalled 1,584,946 and it covered 17,936 acres. Somesignificant overcrowded areas were thus excluded, and placed in the westcentral zone, extending “from Regents Park round the west side of HydePark to Pimlico”. Here the existing infrastructure was held to befundamentally sound, so that any reconstruction could take place withinits framework, and this also justified higher densities. By contrast, thedecentralization area contained those parts considered to be “ready forcomprehensive development. Even though there may be in these areas anumber of dwellings which are not yet sufficiently decayed as to warrantdemolition, we consider it would be wrong from social, practical andeconomic points of view to redevelop obsolete areas in any way other thancomprehensively.”[11] The plan clearly envisaged that reconstruction wouldtake place within large redevelopment areas, and it pointed to studies ofan area of 1,500 acres in Stepney-Poplar, and other areas in Bermondsey,Shoreditch and Bethnal Green. It could be said that in delimiting the eastcentral zone the plan simply took the pre-war redevelopment strategy to

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its logical conclusion, including within it those parts for which over alengthy period this treatment seemed suitable.

It was clearly within the spirit of pre-war proposals that a large zoneshould be set aside for inner-area redevelopment, balancing the newdevelopment outside the city. Both parts of this twin focus, however, wereto be modified in practice to take account of contemporary planningconcerns. An important feature of the plan was thus to be its emphasis oncommunity structure. An analysis of London, it was claimed, “discovers aliving and organic structure still persisting in spite of overgrowth anddecay”.[12] Abercombie is said to have considered the communitystructure as his main contribution, and certainly he intended it to beimportant. Redevelopment was no longer to be merely a matter ofcreating housing estates but to involve the creation of wholecommunities. Buildings and indeed whole areas might be conserved andincorporated in these communities, but this should be done in relation tothe overall plan, not simply by leaving large areas out of account andsimply rebuilding the parts in between. As the rebuilding would ignoreexisting frameworks as far as possible, the community structure was allthe more important in provid ing a focus and meaning for the emergingurban form. In turn that form would reinforce the identity of thecommunities, and as in the new towns provide the most suitable physicalplanning framework for their social development. The reconstruction

Figure 12.1 Congested areas in the County of London, 1943. (After E.J. Carter & E. Goldfinger1945, The County of London plan, 29. Harmondsworth: Penguin.)

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areas would therefore consist of communities of a size similar to that innew towns (60,000–100,000 people) divided in turn into smallerneighbourhood units of 6,000–10,000 people. The community would begiven physical expression:

The open spaces, apart from…playgrounds, are designed as far aspossible to surround the whole community, forming a natural cut-offbetween it and its neighbours. New opportunities are now presentedfor…groups of public and other buildings to form nodal pointsaround which the general interest and life of the community wouldcentre.[13]

A further important aspect of the plan was its use of population densityzoning. This had the advantage that given levels of population could berelated to appropriate amounts of open space and other amenities, and italso allowed the authors to distance themselves to some extent from thecontroversy over flats versus houses. The zones set out “a maximumnumber of persons who theoretically can be housed as the authority orbuilder wishes”.[14] For the decentralization area a calculus was set upbased on the premise that population and housing had to be moved outtogether in order to limit commuting. The possibilities of industrialdecentralization thus limited residential decentralization, although theplanned reduction was still substantial in relation to the 1938 total,amounting to 611,000 people or 39 per cent. A residential density figure of136 per acre was then derived from land use requirements which providedfor an unchanged industrial area and open space at 4 acres per 1,000population. In its density proposals the plan made no direct reference toland values or other financial considerations. However, in practice it seemsclear that a number of pragmatic decisions were made in 1941, so that thefinal population of the decentralization area corresponded to the currentpopulation, assuming that no evacuees would return.[15] The planproposed to “anticipate the present loss of population, but arrest any furthermovement by increasing the amenities and attractiveness of London forthose who remain”.[16] It was certainly envisaged that the necessarydecentralization would largely take place before redevelopment, and thatit would be achieved at a relatively early stage of the plan.

The density of 136 per acre was crucial in that it provided a compromisebetween zoning at 100 per acre (mainly houses) and at 200 per acre (allflats). The latter was recommended for the west central zone. In the eastmixed development was advocated whereby “a great variety of interestand a wide range of choice of dwellings could be achieved”. Lifts shouldbe provided in flats of more than four storeys and “a certain number of

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high blocks up to 10 storeys might prove popular, in particular for singlepeople and childless couples”.[17] A picture was given of

a proportion of lofty blocks of flats, spaced well enough apart forgroups of trees, with terraced houses dispersed in regular but notmonotonous f orm, the whole interspersed with open space andorganically related to the smaller neighbourhood centre and finallythe centre of the whole community.[18]

In February 1945 the architect stated that “as an example of the type ofmixed development envisaged in the Plan it was proposed that in BethnalGreen 7.3 per cent of the population should live in high blocks, 59.3 percent in 3, 4 and 5 storey blocks and 33.4 per cent in houses.”[19] The plancertainly aimed to accommodate one third of the population of thereconstruction area in houses, but its treatment of flats was ratherambiguous, and the detailed projects by the architect all involved a muchhigher proportion of tall flats. In a worked example of a site of 93 acreswith a population the size of a neighbourhood unit, 62 per cent of thepopulation would be housed in eight-ten storey flats.[20] Mixeddevelopment here bifurcated into cottages and tall flats.

The rebuilding form was one of the most contentious issues of the plan,re-opening battles that had been effectively closed during the main prewarclearance campaign. The plan might be interpreted as an endorsement ofmixed development in its whole range—in terms of architecture, land use,social class, age and family type—as a plan which aimed to keep arelatively high population and avoid divisions caused by the selectiveoutmigration of the pre-war era. However, after 1943 pressure fromdecentralists such as Osborn and the Stepney Reconstruction Group basedat Toynbee Hall began to have an impact. Although many Londonboroughs supported the flat, nearly all those in the East End wanted ahigher proportion of houses, and only Chelsea supported the tall flat. Theministry in its comment on the plan in 1943 noted that a reduction to 120persons per acre could be achieved by adding only 90,000 people to thedecentralization total. This was said by the plan’s authors to be closer tothe figure they would have liked to recommend, and Abercrombieadvised the council to adopt it, providing the ministry took responsibilityfor the alteration.[21] Indeed, in the Greater London plan, written post-Uthwatt and free from the LCC context, his decentralization proposalswere more radical, and he even suggested that the density of the countyplan decentralization zone might be reduced to 100 per acre “if a highdegree of direction is taken in the location of industry”.[22]

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The valuer objected to the way in which the plan brought back the twomost expensive forms of development—the house and the tall flat. Even at25 per acre, land costs in inner London would amount to £400 a cottage,and this was not a practical proposition in the years immediatelyahead.[23] Indeed, as the end of the war approached, attention wasincreasingly focused on the pressing problem of the immediate housingshortage, and it became clear that the need for an early start would dictatethat most early estates would be built on pre-war lines. The valuer’s mainbattle was with the architect’s attempts to introduce eight-storey flats withlifts in mixed development. Despite his opposition this was allowed to goahead on an experimental basis at Woodberry Down, Stoke Newington,and Ocean Street in Stepney. The view adopted in “Housing after the war”was that 100,000 replacement dwellings would be needed in the Londonarea, of which 50,000 in the county. It would require a maximum output bythe LCC, which at its peak had produced some 10,000 dwellings a year.Because of its pre-war activities the council possessed 60 sites for blockdwellings totalling 180 acres. In addition there were 71 acres of“substantial” bomb damage and larger areas of surrounding lighterdamage, but because of existing inhabitants such sites could not providefor more than 5,000 units in the first five years.[24] It became clear thatcottage estates would have to provide at least half the newaccommodation, and sites were identified at an early stage at Aveley andChigwell (1942) and at Oxhey (1943). The comptroller regarded these as“the most promising and …least expensive field for the early and rapidprovision of housing accommodation”.[25] The Greater London plan (1944)thus allowed for 125,000 people to be accommodated in these “quasi-satellites.”

The attack mounted by the financial officers on the plan involved muchmore than its compatibility with the immediate housing crisis, importantthough that was. They took the view that costs were beyond presentresources, and that implementation would reduce these resources byremoving population and industry. Capital expenditure on the proposedopen spaces was particularly opposed, as was “locking up of largeamounts of financial resources by purchasing in advance, possibly onfavourable terms, large areas of war damaged property which there willbe no possibility of dealing with for years to come”.[26] The valuer wasvery hostile to the community structure, which he saw as unnecessary:“the theory of community in excelsis is the keystone of the plan, but we areasked to accept it without adequate proof except the word of thecognoscenti.”[27] Both officers supported pre-war patterns ofdevelopment, led by the private sector, rather than planned for within thepublic sector. The comptroller was thus worried that the plan might mean

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“property stagnation and depression” for the private sector, and “theadoption of a standard so much in advance of current ones would have theeffect of rendering all existing housing out of date. Thisimprovement…would press very heavily on landlords of existing smallhouse property.” Correspondingly, the new standards would deter newprivate building and local authorities would have to do the bulk of thework, with large subsidies from public funds. The proposals for the eastcentral zone “would produce a gross density of development little morethan half that usually adopted by the Council hitherto” and use tall flats insuch a way as to “nullify any potential site economy”.[28] In evidence tothe Dudley Committee (before the plan), the council had mentioneddesirable limits of 50 flats or 160 rooms per acre in small developments,and 40 flats or 125 rooms per acre in large ones.[29] How this was tocompare with the new density standards depended on how populationper area was translated into physical building terms through anoccupancy rate per dwelling. The comptroller’s view was that “a higherdensity than the average should be aimed at in the case of low rentedhouses…subsidized out of public fund”.[30]

In July 1945 the council was finally able officially to approve certainbroad principles of the plan, including a 136 acre density for thedecentralization area.[31] General support was given to the communityidea and the open space proposals. Mixed development was supported inboth the architectural and social sense, and key projects were outlined,including the Stepney-Poplar redevelopment area. New post-waroutcomes were thus clearly indicated, and undoubtedly some of theoriginal objec tives in producing the plan had been achieved. Thedifficulties encountered in respect to the post-war housing crisis might beconsidered as exceptional, a prologue before the plan really began. On theother hand reactions to the plan since its publication had already shownthat there were major long-term difficulties to be overcome, not only inrelating to financial constraints and controls, but also to generalrobustness of the plan when faced with large contrary pressures.

Housing and planning 1942–5

At national level the most important planning document of the war periodwas the Uthwatt Committee report on compensation and betterment. TheReport bears several resemblances to the County of London plan. It wasremarkable for the absence of financial or Treasury input into proposalswhich had major implications for taxation and the distribution of wealth.Instead, the committee saw its function as one of achieving a workable

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framework within which the major aims of planning could be realized. Itwas to ensure that “the best use is made of land with a view to securingeconomic efficiency for the community and well-being for the individual,and that it will be recognized that this involves the subordination to thepublic good of the personal wishes and interests of the landlord”.[32] Thecommittee in effect simply examined various planning objectives that wereput to them by the ministries concerned and made recommendations oncompensation and betterment designed to facilitate such objectives. ThePlanning Department of the Ministry of Works thus gave them a memosetting out a history in which property had gradually been compelled toaccept wider limitations on the form of development without attractingcompensation. It went on to stress that “the question of excludingcompensation in respect of a restriction to agricultural use is of particularimportance”.[33] The committee was further prompted by the Ministry ofHealth on the merits of the Robinson scheme for the nationalization ofdevelopment rights. As Sir Arthur Robinson was himself PermanentSecretary in the Ministry of Health, his scheme, put originally to the BarlowCommittee, had practically an in-house status. The committee was able tobuild on it to propose a single method for control of undeveloped landthat provided a basis not only for green belts but also for new towns.

In November 1941 the committee secretary set out the issues as theyconcerned developed land.[34] The central problem was high land valuesand “finding a means by which…public authority can overcome or breakdown these inflated urban values. Otherwise the control which exists intheory will remain largely fictitious.” The paper went on to list the kinds ofaction that a public authority might wish to take, including “rebuilddevastated or slum areas at lower density”, “provide land for openspaces”, “widen streets and cut new streets”, “provide suitable housesclose to places of work”, “build social centres and other amenities”, and“provide opportunity f or the redevelopment either through public orprivate enterprise of the acres of obsolete houses which form the innerring of every city”. The committee’s report would be “the cornerstone ofthe whole physical reconstruction in the post-war period both of damagedand undamaged areas”, but for this it would need to overcome factorswhich had hindered public control in the past, and “prevent the futureabsorption in the form of increased land values of a large proportion of thewealth created by the community”. The paper suggested that theRobinson scheme might also be applied to developed land, but this wouldcreate a formidable workload and might lead to its breakdown. In any casecontrol of redevelopment rights was not of the same urgency. Thecommittee agreed, and went on to deal with developed land along thefollowing lines: (a) extension of public ownership through

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redevelopment; (b) a periodic levy on increases in annual site value; and(c) the imposition of a “life” on buildings and users. From the beginningthere was a bundle of separate proposals which could easily be detachedfrom each other.

In its proposals for the public ownership of land, the committee workedfrom two directions. One of these was that shifting values at the root of thecompensation-betterment problem could best be solved within large areasof uniform ownership. Organizations related to property were willing tosupport “pooling schemes”, but the committee thought this insufficient.The other starting point—the need for redevelopment—was thought toprovide a more satisfactory answer. The Town Planning Institute pointedout that if a redevelopment scheme was “well considered and a significantarea had been purchased considerable betterment should ultimatelyaccrue to the planning authority”.[35] The Committee paid muchattention to the evidence of the LCC, which referred to an area “of some3,000 acres forming the whole or a considerable part of the boroughs ofShoreditch, Bethnal Green, Stepney, Poplar, Finsbury and Hackney, whichhas for many years called for comprehensive redevelopment”. In suchareas, a much wider treatment was necessary than was possible under theHousing Acts “to provide mixed development including middle-classdwellings and general urban amenities”.[36] The Committee did supporta relatively wide definition of redevelopment and envisaged an extensionof public ownership through this process. It recommended that when landcame into such ownership it should not be alienated except in the form ofa lease.

Questions surrounding the “life” of buildings were one of the mostinteresting aspects of the Uthwatt treatment of developed land,reflecting as they did both views of the existing state of urban propertyand of the necessary remedies. The Planning Department briefingsuggested that the right to maintain non-conforming buildings inperpetuity would “make drastic replanning on any large scaleimpracticable for financial reasons”. The LCC in its evidence (Nov. 1941)suggested that planning authorities should have the power to place a lifeon non-conforming buildings not exceeding 20 years, taking intoconsideration (a) the age and probable effective life of the building and(b) the degree and nature of the nonconformity. Compensation payableshould be assessed by reference to the remainder of the life outstanding.These proposals were largely adopted by the committee. A largerquestion was the placing of a life on other types of building, for instance,at the time when planning consent was given. This was rejected, largelybecause “the standard of architecture and of construction mightdeteriorate deplorably”. However, the committee went on to examine

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the point that there was “no halfway house as between the site value forhouses unfit for human habitation and full market value”.F. R. Evershedsuggested that a life might be placed on buildings which were“obsolescent by modern standards, not necessarily injurious to health”,although Gerald Eve considered “something around half the houses inthe country would fall into Evershed’s definition”. In the end it wasagreed that properties purchased as “added lands” or in redevelopmentareas “which although not unfit for human habitation are by reason oftheir age, design, construction, arrangement or density not inaccordance with the standards arrived at in new buildings for similarpurposes” should be assessed for compensation as though not capable ofuse beyond 10 years of the date of compulsory purchase.[37]

While the work of the Uthwatt Committee reflected the aims of townplanners, it can also be seen within the wider context of planningpromoted before the war by such organizations as Political andEconomic Planning. A major objective was economic efficiency achievedthrough large-scale organization, coupled with a need to achieveimproved standards not by subsidy but by cutting costs and removingobstacles to lower land values. In 1943 the Ministry of Health wasassuming a target of 3–4 million houses to be built in the first 10 yearsafter the war. Since a stable population was predicted, most of thiswould involve competition with, or replacement of existing houses.Osborn used this to invoke “a painful process of city slump, the creationof blighted areas...and here and there a municipal bankruptcy”. Therecould, however, be a planned alternative, involving decentralizationtogether with reconstruction. For this to work, special measures had tobe taken over obsolete property protected by its situation. He suggestedthat all pre-1914 buildings be given a “life” for compensation purposeswhich reflected not only their age and state of repair, but also “theircomparative value as against new buildings if their situation weredisregarded”.[38] Labour Party document Housing and planning after thewar (1943) also reflected these concerns. The ideal was to build working-class houses without subsidies, requiring low interest rates and low landvalues. Some 4 million houses would be built in 10 years, with majorcompetitive effects on the value of existing housing. Owners would berequired to carry out necessary works of reconditioning, otherwiseproperty would be demolished and rebuilt. “This task, which might wellinvolve dealing with the majority of houses built prior to 1914, should becompleted within the second ten year period.”[39]

Property owners groups naturally saw this as a serious threat. TheNational Federation attacked the Uthwatt principles on the ground that“betterment is more often created by the enterprise of owner…and more

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often accrues to the state in the form of higher rateable value”. Theproposals would “seriously reduce the value of land and createuncertainty and fear so prejudicial to private enterprise and buildingoperations”. Moreover, they would tend to create a “leaseholdcommunity” at the mercy of local officials instead of a nation of owneroccupiers. There was certainly strong grassroots opposition. DavidSmith, general manager of the Halifax Building Society and immediatepast president of the Building Societies Association, giving hispresidential address to the Halifax Property Owners Association, endedwith the words “The Englishman’s home is his castle, and here and nowwe must act together to man the ramparts of the castle.”[40] Suchreactions set up strong reverberations going to the heart of ConservativeParty philosophy. It was not surprising that the government shouldeventually choose not to implement the Uthwatt recommendations butto issue a White Paper on The control of land use as a statement of intent.There were clearly limits to consensus, but even so the White Paper wasa remarkable document by pre-war standards. It rejected the owners’sweeping condemnations and maintained that the Uthwatt Report“provides the basis for a practical system whereby individual rights ofland tenure may be reconciled with the best use of land in the nationalinterest.”[41] Nonetheless, the periodic levy was specifically rejected,and instead it was proposed that owners of all land should be subject toan 80 per cent betterment charge on increased land values arising ondevelopment or redevelopment. All this reduced the impact of theUthwatt proposals for developed land considerably, left inevitableuncertainty about implementation and postponed important matters ofdetail until some time after the end of the war.

The limits of consensus were more apparent in the Town and CountryPlanning Act (1944) that followed. Culling worth has dealt in detail withits history, and particularly with the 1939 price standard laid down foracquisition purposes.[42] In a significant move, owner occupiers weregiven a 30 per cent increase on 1939 values. The London MunicipalReformers had opposed the Uthwatt proposals, and their leader SirHarold Webbe was one of 42 Conservatives who voted against the Bill.However, while the Bill facilitated local authority purchase ofredevelopment areas, it involved separate provisions for the purchase ofbombed and blighted land, gave greater financial support for the former,and set both within a complicated timetable. It showed little enthusiasmfor a major extension of public ownership or enterprise, with limitedprovisions for open space and no conception of reconstruction in theManzoni sense “on the basis of complete communities”. Instead, the Billshowed concern to direct local authorities towards certain urgent but

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narrower tasks, and probably reflects a resumption of Treasury controlover events. Reconstruction was divorced from any proposals forplanned decentralization, leading Lord Balfour of Burleigh to describe itas “a Bill for the intensification of suburban sprawl”. Lathamemphasized that once again local authorities would be “left with theunremunerative development”, which would “enable it to replace moreor less to the same pattern which has been destroyed”, rather than toimplement the new proposals of the London plan.[43]

During the closing years of the war, therefore, local authorities wereable to plan for reconstruction, but only on a limited basis. Thecompensation and betterment problem remained unresolved, and therewere no mechanisms yet in place by which wider conceptions of planningcould be financed. Moreover, no central planning authority had beencreated along the lines suggested by Barlow and Uthwatt, nor any regionalbody or other change in local authority organization. Despite this, therehad undoubtedly been a major shift in favour of planning during the war.This was reflected in the Conservative Party document Looking ahead:foundations for housing (1944) drawn up by a group which included LordBalfour of Burleigh, the Earl of Dudley, Louis de Soissons and H.R. Selley.The two main post-war problems were seen as restoration of the industrialeconomy and “the impending decline of our population which…may in afew generations reduce this country to the level of a third class power”.The document supported most of the aims of planning as set out byBarlow, Scott and Uthwatt and condemned “the persistence of a pervertedconception of private ownership as implying an unhchallengeable right todo as one pleased with ones’ own without regard to ones’ neighboursinterests”.[44]

Town planning thus found itself in a sufficiently encouraging context tocontinue to develop the impetus provided by Barlow and the outbreak ofwar. The Greater London plan (1944) was more radically decentralist intone than the county plan. Other cities began to draw up documentswhich reflected the approaches adopted in the London plans. The City ofManchester Plan (1945) thus stated that “in twenty five years from nowabout one half of the houses in the city may have been swept away andreplaced; so also may a considerable proportion of the commercial andindustrial buildings”.[45] The medical officer found that 68,000 houses or38 per cent of the city’s housing stock were unfit for human habitation.[46]The city was divided into major land use zones, of which the B zone nextto the city centre contained the areas most urgently in need ofredevelopment. Proposals for redevelopment were decentralist, andaimed to produce a minimum of flats even in the inner areas. In Liverpool,however, Keay proposed to base redevelopment on density levels of 200

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and 136 persons per acre, figures taken from the London plan whichwould require mainly rebuilding in flats.[47]

Developments in Birmingham were among the most important of thewar period, reflecting the continued impetus given by Manzoni. Proposalsfor the Duddeston area were recast around a lower density of 41.7dwellings per acre, and this now required a net outflow of 2,293 families.Mixed development was also now advocated, ranging from three to eightstoreys, with some 15-storey towers or “hostels” along the main roads. Asmall proportion of houses was included, but large-scale development inthis form was rejected as repeating the errors of the past:” congested inappearance, and the whole district assuming an enclosed and somewhatdrab aspect with a high density.” The Duddeston proposals formed thebasis for the extension of redevelopment plans to four other areas, whichwould involve replacing the whole inner ring of back-to-back houses. Itwas on the basis of these plans that Birmingham Council proceeded in1946–7 to purchase under the 1944 Act a thousand acres containing 32,000houses and over 100,000 people as well as numerous industrial andcommercial premises.[48]

There was general agreement in political circles that a largehousebuilding programme would be required after the war in order tostabilize the economy, stave off unemployment and hold the countrytogether. However, the parties still diverged widely in their approach tothe respective rôles of private and public building. In the immediatepostwar period local authority building would predominate, and beaimed at higher social groups than those affected by the pre-war slumclearance and overcrowding programmes. Higher building standardswere once more appropriate, and in the case of flats the DudleyCommittee embraced mixed development, and recommended morestaircase access, lifts in blocks above three storeys and wider use of themaisonette form. The Pole Committee on Private Enterprise Housingwanted in addition some subsidized private housing immediately inorder to pave the way for a greater rôle once the immediate shortage wasover.[49] However, it was in plans for this second period, beyond theemergency, that differences in approach became more evident. It wasanticipated that new housing would then involve upgrading standards ofquality and quantity, but how would this be arranged? Jenkinson gave acommon opinion on the left:

since there is no money in slum clearance…activities in that andallied fields will gladly be left to municipalities…. But it is extremelyundesirable that there should be any confinement of localauthorities. … For important sociological reasons they should be

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allowed…to extend their housing activities over the widest possiblerange. Pre-war experience testifies to this need.[50]

Conservatives, however, saw things differently. For Sir Harold Bellman“once the transition phase is over a building boom of the pre-war typecould be a very useful aid in combating unemployment. It is therefore worthconsidering whether the demand for middle class housing could bestimulated by a change in financial methods.”[51] The Conservative Partydocument Looking ahead: policy for housing (Jan. 1945) suggested that“national interests are best served by as many as possible of our countrymenowning their own homes.” It looked forward to the time when “lowerbuilding cost and higher earnings generally will make it possible for everytenant to pay an economic rent. It must be our constant aim to achieveconditions…once more governed by the laws of supply and demand.”[52]It was not easy to see how these conditions could be reconciled with astable population and the view that after the emergency “the next step”was to concentrate on slum clearance and relief of overcrowding, exceptby a strict compartmentalization of public and private effort along prewarlines. Could such policies be grafted on to a post-war planning frameworkand still yield the results planners aimed to produce? Two things were,however, more certain at the end of the war. One was that large-scale slumclearance and redevelopment would come back to prominence once theimmediate shortage was over. The second was that political decisions overthe rôle of public and private housing would continue to have a dominantimpact on the nature and extent of redevelopment programmes.

Notes

1 Garside, P. 1979. Town planning in London 1930–1961: a study of pressures,interests and influences affecting the formation of policy. Ph.D. thesis,University of London.

2 GLRO AR/TP/1/54; CL/TP/1 /33.3 GLRO AR/TP/1/56 letter from Osborn 17 Feb. 1941. Abercrombie’s

appointment was approved by the Town Planning Committee only on thecasting vote of the chairman of the whole council.

4 Towndrow, F.E. (ed.) 1941. Replanning Britain: report of the Oxford Conference ofthe Town and Country Planning Association, 30. London: Faber & Faber;GLROAR/TP/1/61.

5 D.Moggridge (ed.) 1971–9. J.M.Keynes collected writings, Vol. 27, Activities1940–1946, 264, 268. London: Macmillan.

6 GLRO CL/TP/1 /33 London replanning—notes on a meeting 21 April 1941,

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meeting with Abercrombie 26 Mar. 1941; AR/TP/1 /54 conference, 22 Aug.1941.

7 Bauer, C. 1944. The County of London plan, Architectural Review 96, 81–2.8 London News, Oct.-Nov. 1940, 192.9 Forshaw, J.H. & P. Abercrombie 1943. The County of London plan, 22. London:

Macmillan.10 ibid., 28.11 ibid., 83.12 ibid., 3.13 ibid., 9.14 ibid.15 GLRO CL/TP/1/33. A summary of the plan.16 Forshaw & Abercrombie op. cit, 79.17 ibid., 78.18 ibid., 9.19 LCC minutes of the Town Planning Committee, 6 Feb. (10) 194520 Forshaw & Abercrombie op. cit, 81.21 LCC Minutes of the Town Planning Committee 12 June (10) 1943, Nov.-Dec

(17) 1944, 6 Feb. (10) 1945.22 Abercrombie, P. 1945. The Greater London plan (1944), 5. London: HMSO.23 HC 9 Feb. (8) 1944.24 ibid., 2 Dec. (13) 1942, 2 Jun. (9) 1943.25 ibid., 8 Mar. (4) 1944.26 ibid., 2 Jun. (10) 1943; minutes of the Town Planning Committee, 24 June 1943.27 GLRO Modern Records Section GLC/HG/HHM/9 Box 3 H 16, County of

London Plan, memo on community groups, March 1944.28 HC 2 Jun. (10) 1943.29 ibid., 12 Jul. (12) 1942.30 ibid., 7 Feb. (10) 1945.31 MM 17 Jul. (13) 1945.32 Expert Committee on Compensation and Betterment (Uthwatt Committee),

report, 11. Parliamentary Papers 4, 1941–2, Cmnd. 6386.33 PRO HLG 81/2 Uthwatt Committee papers 1941–2, CBC 146.34 ibid., 81/5 CBC 137.35 ibid., 81/4 CBC 64.36 ibid., 81/20 LCC evidence July 1941.37 ibid., 81/2 CBC 146, HLG 81/5 CBC 142, HLG 81/6 46th meeting, 3 Apr. 1942,

47th meeting, 10 Apr. 1942; Uthwatt Report op. cit, 92.38 Tyerman, D.(ed.) 1943. Ways and means of rebuilding: a report of the London

Conference of the Town and Country Planning Association, 38. London: Faber &Faber.

39 Labour Party 1943. Housing and planning after the war, 4. London: Labour Party.40 National Federation of Property Owners, Gazette, October 1943, 109.41 The Control of Land Use 1944. Parliamentary Papers. 8, Cmnd. 6537.

Notes

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42 Culling worth, J.B. 1975. Environmental planning 1939–1969, Vol. 1.,Reconstruction and land use planning 1939–1947, 87–144. London: HMSO.

43 Hansard (Lords) 133, cols 796, 740–9, 31 Oct. 1944.44 Central Committee on Post-War Reconstruction 1944. Looking ahead:

foundations for housing. Interim report of the Conservative sub-committee onhousing, 12. London: Conservative Party.

45 Nicholas, R. 1945. City of Manchester plan, 14. Norwich: Jarrold.46 Simon, E.D. 1945. Rebuilding Britain: a twenty-year plan, 116. London: Gollancz.47 ibid., 252–3.48 City of Birmingham, Public Works Committee 1943. The Duddeston and

Nechells Redevelopment Area; Gibson, M. & M.Longstaff 1982. An introduction tourban renewal, 211–12. London: Hutchinson.

49 Ministry of Health 1944. CHAC sub-committee on the design of dwellings(Dudley Committee), report. London: HMSO; Ministry of Health 1944. CHACsub-committee on private enterprise housing (Pole Committee), report.London: HMSO.

50 Jenkinson, C. 1943. Our housing objective, 3. London: Dent.51 Tyerman, op. cit., 69.52 Central Committee on Post-War Reconstruction 1945. Looking ahead: policy for

housing in England and Wales, 7, 10–11. London: Conservative Party.

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Review

The main purpose of this book has been to provide many detailed resultsrather than to drive forward to a single set of conclusions. Nonetheless,four general observations are appropriate.

1 A study of ways of seeing and defining slums, and of the associateddevelopment of remedies and forms of action, is not a specialistendeavour tied to slum clearance and rather narrow and technical inscope. Rather, it off ers an essential key to unravelling housing policies andurban development, and to understanding the polarities that marked theperiod: inner cities and suburbs, decentralization and redevelopment,council and private, house and flat.

2 Although the nature of the built environment inherited from the past is afundamental factor in promoting slum clearance and redevelopmentpolicies, these have also to be understood in terms of contemporarydevelopments and political priorities. One part of this is the high politicalprofile of housing in the period, and the support for public housing withinthe Labour and Liberal parties. But emphasis also needs to be given tocompartmentalization—the separation of public and private spheres- andto the predominant financial objectives in the period. Such considerationsfavoured the direction of public intervention toward clearance andrebuilding. This not only affected the balance between such action andmethods aimed at increasing housing supply, but also had a fundamentalimpact on the whole treatment of older housing. Compensation rules,improvement policies and other aspects of the official approach to olderhousing all need to be examined in this context.

3 The built environment inherited from the past was also being constantlyre-evaluated according to its changing position in contemporary urbangeography. Competition from new suburban development was thedominant theme, and the main action against the slum continued to take adecentralist form. New supply through suburban building in the 1920swas prolonged by the “progressive” aspects of the Greenwood

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programme which, outside London, largely used clearance to extendsuburban housing to a poorer client group. From a narrow version of slumclearance in 1933, a new paradigm began to emerge in 1935 which offereda stronger challenge to the decentralists. Very generally, it stemmed fromthe material and intellectual repercussions of the Depression, and arecognition that competitive suburban development was not whollybeneficial. More specifically, it involved offering inner-city redevelopmentas a means of overcoming overcrowding as well as a wider range ofqualitative defects, linking housing with town planning. This orientationwas strengthened in 1938, but the war intervened before the practicaleffects of the new turn in policy were widely seen.

4 Direct action against the slum was most successful during thefavourable period from 1933 to 1938 when decreased building costscombined with Greenwood subsidies that had increased in real terms. Alarger number of new tenants from poorer groups obtained improvedhousing in this period than ever before. Despite this, the results weremixed, and there was still an element of Victorian sanitary policies: theenforcement of change despite deleterious effects on the tenantsthemselves. Those rehoused from clearance schemes felt the disadvantages of the contemporary mode of suburban development morethan most, while inner-city rebuilding continued to be expensive and athigh density, and in some cases to include large rent increases. Theswitch of emphasis to inner-city rebuild-ing at the end of the period wasaccompanied by adverse movements in the cost of both land andbuildings. This highlighted the fact that extensive rehousing of the poorin satisfactory new buildings on such land had been largely madepossible by a downward revision of land and property values thathad come to an end by 1924. The control of land values, and other meansof cost reduction through large-scale organization and activity, weretaken into the planning agenda of the war-time period, alongside theblueprints for a better future.

Review

205

Abercrombie, P. 6, 115, 128, 184–191Addison, C 22, 24–5, 36, 106Adshead, S.D. 85, 176, 183Alington, Lord 142Architects Journal 36Artisans’ and Labourers’ DwellingsImprovement Act (1875) see Cross’s

ActAssociation of municipal Corporations

52, 68auction prices 19, 28, 58–9, 130–32, 135back to back houses 91, 115, 119, 133,

165, 199Balfour of Burleigh, Lord 95, 106, 198Baltimore 171Barclay I. 100, 136, 145Barlow Committee 6, 173, 176–77, 187,

194, 198Barnes, H. 84, 95Basing Place 58Battersea 59, 127, 130–32, 176, 188Bauer, C 186, 201Bell Lane (Holland Estate) 40, 60, 62Bellman, Sir H. 200Bentwick, Mrs 181Beresford, M. 113, 128Bermondsey 9, 14, 33, 41–12, 54, 59, 62,

118, 120–22, 126, 130–32, 167, 176,181, 188–89

Bethnal Green 9, 14, 24, 59, 60–62, 89,120–22, 130–32, 138–45, 149–50,160–61, 166–68, 181, 188–89, 195

Bethnal Green redevelopment areas167–68

Birmingham 4, 19–20, 27, 38, 89–90, 97,109, 115, 164–66

blight 171–72, 174, 196Bolton 112bomb damage 192Bonham-Carter, Sir E. 95Booth, C 17, 19, 47, 171, 177Boscawen, A.Griffith 20, 29–30Boumphrey, G. 173, 183Boundary Street 14, 17, 59, 62, 76–78,

149, 157, 162, 167Bournville 19Bowley, M. 3, 8, 55, 65, 72, 108–9, 155Brady Street (Collingwood Estate) 24,

40, 60, 69Brighton 74, 127Bristol 112, 127Bucknall, L.H. 176building societies 66, 88, 197Burnett J. 55business interests 61–62, 143, 168Camberwell 24, 58, 118, 120, 127, 188Cardiff 27, 127Carlisle Street 60, 63Carter, E.J. 138–9Chadwick, E. 10Chamberlain, A. 89–90, 97Chamberlain, J. 94Chamberlain, N. 5, 27, 30–31, 32–34, 41,

43–46, 48, 66, 89, 96, 101, 173Charity Organization Society 13, 17, 21Chelsea 137, 191Cherry,G. 36Chesterton, Mrs C. 180, 183Chicago 171Churchill, W. 44City of London 14Clarendon Street 98Cole, G. & M. 30, 37Collcutt, T. 34, 37Collingwood Estate (Brady Street) 76Comber Estate 80Committeeon Local Government Expenditure, see

Ray Committeeon Private Enterprise Housing, see

Pole Committeeon the Rent Restrictions Act, see

Marley Committeecommunity 177–82, 189–90, 192–3compartmentalization 4, 11, 20, 24–25,29–30, 54–55, 88–89. 103–4, 127, 169–

70, 200, 203compensation and betterment 33,

I N D E X

Index

206

194– 5, 197–98,see also slum clearance compensationcongestion 1, 15, 18, 32–33, 171, 176,

187Conservative Party 4, 20, 29–31, 45,

91– 93, 153, 170, 197–98, 200see also Municipal Reform PartyConway, Sir M. 34, 37Conzen, M. 113, 128Cotton Estate 142Council for Research in Housing

Construction 162, 175council housing, rôle of 2, 14, 18, 20,

64–65, 92, 101–6, 169–70, 184–85,County of London Plan 184–193Cross’s Act 3, 12–14Cross, Sir R. 12–13, 17, 21, 89Croydon 164Cullingworth, J.B. 197, 202Culpin E. 42Daunton, M.J. 37, 55, 65–66, 72, 106Davidge W.R. 84Davies, E. 42decentralization 1–2, 5, 16–20, 22, 27,

31–33, 38–40, 47–54, 57, 64–65, 74, 81,96, 104–5, 114–16, 152–53, 169–70, 171,173–75, 188, 190–92, 196, 198, 204

Departmental Committee on Housing,see Moyne Committee

Departmental Committee on Housing(Scotland), see Whiston Commitee

Deptford 54, 81, 120, 178–79, 188Derby 42, 93Dewsnup, E. 10, 21Doncaster 74Down Estate 116, 192Drysdale Street 85Duchy of Cornwall 11Duddeston and Nechells redevelop-

ment area 165–66Dudley 112Dudley Committee 199, 202Dudley, Earl of 162, 198Durant, R. 183East Hill Estate 40Ecclesiastical Commissioners 11economic conditions 19, 22, 36, 39, 64,

91, 171–73economic policy 11, 28, 63, 65, 88, 138,

185

Edwards, T. 176electoral influences 19, 25–26, 28, 30,

54–55, 96, 99Englander, D. 28, 37Estates Gazette 30, 88, 96Evans, E. 25, 66Eve, G. 196Evershed, F.R. 196Fenner-Brockway, A. 33, 37Finnigan, R. 55, 91, 106, 133, 155, 161Finsbury 9, 14, 123, 188, 195flatsamenities 76, 79–83, 156, 159building costs 75–83, 154–63density of development 33–36, 76, 106,

160–62, 193density of occupation 47, 75, 146–52,

159methods of construction 83–84, 162room sizes 76, 81, 156, 159styles of 76, 81,161–62tall 33–36, 75, 82–85, 117, 158, 162, 191,

193types of 75–82, 156, 159–61versus houses 13, 32–33, 42, 52, 92, 103,

105–6, 115, 151–52, 155, 169-70, 178,187, 190–91

Forshaw, J.H. 6, 185, 191, 201Fraser, D. 21Fremantle, F.E. 45, 55, 106Fulham 59, 122, 127, 130–32, 164garden cities and suburbs 6, 32–33, 85,

92Garside, P. 56, 184, 200Gaskell, M. 19, 21, 183gentrification 137Gibbon, I.G. 27, 46, 174Gibson, M. 3, 8, 165, 182Glammis, Lady 142Glass, R. 181, 183Goldfinger, E. 188–89Greater London Plan 187, 151–52, 198Greenwich 116, 120, 175, 188Greenwood, A. 5, 47–53, 68–9, 71, 92,

106, 154ground landlords 11, 60, 139, 141–45Grytzell, K.G. 15–16, 21Hackney 24, 116, 127, 166, 195Hackney marshes 117Hammersmith 116, 127

207

Index

Hammerton, H.J. 106Hardie, K 20Harris, P. 89Hayes-Fisher, W. 24health and disease 10, 17, 88–89, 140Hickmans Folly 62, 167Hill, O. 13–4, 27, 46, 90,99–100Hilton-Young, E. 5, 71, 88–90, 93,

103– 4, 154Hiorns, F.R. 185Holborn 15, 122Holmes, A.R. 149–50, 163homes for heroes 2, 22–26, 75Honor Oak Estate 81, 178–79houses versus flats 13, 32–33, 42, 52, 92,

103, 105–6, 115, 151–52, 155, 169– 70,178, 187, 190–91

housingcosts 31, 44, 75–83, 154–63, 167, 192-93densities 33–36, 42, 76, 88, 158, 160-62,

185–86, 190–93estates 38–39, 42–43, 53–54, 74, 81–82,

115, 152, 155, 158–62, 178–81, 190-92,194, 199

maintenance 11–12, 27–28, 45–46, 52,65, 67, 94, 98, 100–1, 134–37, 140– 41,144–45, 171–72

management 12–13, 27–8, 39–40, 45-46,65, 74, 78–81, 93–97, 100–1, 134-35,138–46, 151–54, 175, 179, 181

output 39, 43, 102, 108–11, 115–18, 125,169–70

policy 1–6, 16–36, 39–55, 65, 87–106,115–7, 136–8, 155, 157–162, 164-177,182, 184, 188–92, 196–200

programmes 22–26, 29–31, 38–43, 53,92–93, 199–200

sites 12, 17, 25, 35, 383–89, 53–54, 74,110, 115, 116–17, 192

standards 13, 17–19, 23, 40, 48, 73–76,78–82, 92, 144, 154–63, 199

subsidies 18, 20, 22, 28–30, 40, 44,54– 55, 65, 67, 74, 88, 93, 98–99, 103,123, 152–55, 164, 175, 193, 196, 200

Housing Act 1890 14, 191923 30–311924 31, 39, 54, 88, 153, 1551930 5, 38, 49–53, 63, 80–82, 91, 93,

97–98, 132, 152, 1551933 5, 55, 87–90, 175

1935 5–6, 71, 90, 102–6, 123–25, 132, 1751938 155Housing (Rural Workers) Act 1926 44,

98–99Housing and Town Planning Act 1919 26Howard, E. 6, 18, 173Hoyt, H, 171–72, 182Hull 12, 74Hulme 49, 74improvement areas 33, 52–53, 97–99,see also reconditioningindustry 32–33, 35, 116, 119, 143,

165– 68, 172–3, 187–88, 190, 199Irish, S. 86, 152, 155, 163Islington 15, 98, 126, 188Jenkinson, Rev. C. 91–92, 114, 153, 200,

202Jennings, J.H. 55, 155, 163Keay, L.H. 83, 115, 162, 165, 173, 182,

199Kennings Estate 79Kensington 24, 98, 122, 181Kensington Housing Trust 99Keynes, J.M. 89, 106, 175–76, 183,

185– 86, 201Kingsmead Estate 117Kirby,D. 3, 8Labour Party 2, 4, 23, 31, 33, 47, 49,

54–55, 84–85, 91–93, 117, 151, 153,156, 186–87, 196

Lambeth 40, 79, 116, 118–19, 179, 186Land and House Property Yearbook

59, 131–32land costs and values 12, 17–18, 50–51,

62–3, 67–71, 77, 106, 116, 156–57, 160,163, 167, 185, 190–92, 194–97

land question 18, 29, 172land uses 33–36, 116–17, 119, 165–68,

187–88, 190, 194–95, 199landlords 11–12, 18, 25–28, 31, 44, 49,

64–71, 100–1, 132–45, 138–45, 193,196–97

Latham, C. 117, 187, 198Lawrence S. 71LCC, see London County CouncilLeCorbusier 34, 37leaseholders 60–61, 68–69, 139–41, 143Leeds 27, 38, 42, 90–93, 109, 114–15,

133, 153–54, 155, 161–62Letchworth 19

Index

208

Levita, C 39–41, 54–55, 79, 83, 93life of buildings 175, 195–96Limehouse Fields 84,Liverpool 4, 7, 20, 27, 38, 42, 52, 73–74,

83, 93, 97, 106, 109, 113, 115, 123, 127,152–54, 164–65, 199

Llewellyn-Smith, Sir H. 47–48, 56, 76,137, 145

Lloyd-George, D. 22Local Government Board 24–26LondonCounty Council,clearance areas 26, 40–41, 62–63,120–22, 133, 157housingestates 17, 38–39, 43, 53–54, 75–76,

81–82, 152, 158–61, 178–80, 190–92output 39, 93, 169–70policy 3–4, 6, 17, 24–26, 34–35, 39–41,

53–54, 78–83, 92–93, 97–98, 116–18,151–52, 157–60, 166–69, 179–80,188–193

programmes 24–26, 39–40, 53, 93,116–22, 125–26, 169–70, 192

sites 25, 39–41, 43, 53–54, 81, 116–17, 192town planning 34–35, 84–93, 166–68,195, 198Hospital Estate 140–42East End 84–85, 116–20, 138–45,

166– 70, 177, 180, 186, 188–91South Bank 34, 175West End 83, 118, 120, 138–39, 177, 188government 32, 118, 187Longstaff, M. 3, 8, 165, 182Lowestoft 164MacDonagh,O. 10, 20Macmillan, H. 174–75Madigan, R. 8Manchester 12, 47, 176, 198–99Manzoni, H. 115, 128, 165–66, 176–77Marley Committee (Rent Act) 135Marshall, A. 17MeGonigle, G. 74, 85Mclntosh Estate 142Medical officer of health 9–10, 91,

97– 98,118Melchett, Lord 162, 174Mercer’s Estate 141–42, 144–45Metropolitan Board of Works 14Middlesborough 74, 113

Mitcham 30Mitchell M. 52mixed development 159, 191–93, 195model dwellings companies 12, 16–17Moggridge, D. 106, 183Mond, A. 29Morrison, H. 31–32, 42, 85, 92, 117, 187mortgages 60, 88, 134Moyne Committee 47, 90–91, 93–102,

137, 174multi-occupation 98, 126–7Mumford, L. 36Munby, D.L. 144–45Municipal Reform Party 19–20,22–26,

39–41, 84–85, 92, 116–18, 142, 153, 197National Council of Social service 178National Federation of Housebuilders

96, 103National Federation of Property

Owners 66, 96–97, 197National Government 23, 54, 102National Housing Corporation 95–96Nettlefold, J. 4, 19New Survey of London Life and

Labour 47–48, 56, 177New York 35new towns 31–32Nicholas, R. 202Norman, P. 8Norwich 74, 164obsolescence 171–76, 188, 194–96Ocean Street 118, 192Offer, A. 19, 17, 28, 37, 59, 65, 71Oldham 112open space 33–34, 190, 192, 194Orbach, L.F. 22, 36Orr, J.P. 34–6, 41, 83Osborn, F.J. 176, 187, 191, 196Ossulston Street 41, 61, 63, 83–84overcrowdingproblem 14–17, 23–24, 47–48, 52,

95-106, 122–27, 147–50, 200, 203relief programme 103–5, 125–26, 200standard 5, 103–4, 123–25subsidies 103, 125Overcrowding Survey 1936 104,

123– 25, 148owner-occupation 30, 71, 88, 200Oxford 164Paddington 98, 118

209

Index

paradigm 3–6, 18, 92, 171Peabody Trust 16, 34, 142Peckham 59, 130–32Pemberton-Barnes Estate 142Pepper,S. 83, 86Percy, Lord E. 89, 94–96, 174Perry,C.A. 183Perry,E. 100, 136, 145Phillips R. 137, 145Plymouth 127Pole Committee 199Political and Economic Planning 175,

196Pooley,C 78, 86, 152, 155, 163Poplar 15, 54, 188, 195Poplarism 39, 117Portsmouth 112, 127private enterprise 11, 20, 22, 29–31, 39,65, 88, 93–97, 102, 174–5, 184–85, 193,

199–200, 203Progressive Party 3–4, 11, 14, 17–20,

25–26, 41, 47, 64–65progressive model 4–5, 17–20, 28–29,

31, 38, 41–43, 47–52, 92, 173, 204propertyfragmentation of 27–28, 45, 94, 134,

138–45, 174, 195interests 25, 41, 54, 60–62, 66–69, 96-97,

138–45, 197–98ownership 2, 11–4, 25, 27–8, 64–71,

93–96, 99–102, 134–145, 185–86,195–98

values 18, 28, 40–41, 46, 58–65, 69–70,100–1, 130–375, 171–3, 185, 193–97

Property Owners Protection Society25, 41, 54, 66

public utility societies 46, 90, 93–96Quarry Hill Estate 156, 162rates 19, 26, 55, 160Rathbone, E. 154Ravetz, A. 82, 86, 102, 161–3Ray Committee 54–55, 87, 93reconditioning 4, 19–20, 27–28, 33, 41,

43–47, 52–53, 67, 89–90, 93–102,137-38

redevelopment 5, 35–36, 54, 87, 95,103–6, 138, 157–58, 164–77, 182, 185,188–93, 194–97,

see also slum clearanceredevelopment areas 5, 35, 103–4, 115,

117–18, 126, 142, 161, 164–68, 176–77,184, 189, 193

reduction factor 51, 58, 60, 63, 70–71, 133Regent’s Park 176, 188regional government 32, 187, 198Reiss, H.L. 145rents 18, 28–30, 39, 47, 51, 59, 74, 78-82,

95–6, 98, 101, 130, 146–54rent control 22, 28, 30, 44, 55, 57, 60,

135, 137, 140rents, differential 39, 51, 74, 80–82,

151–54Robinson, Sir A. 194–5Roehampton 25Royal Commission on Working Class

Housing 17rural housing 20, 44Salter, A. 33, 42sanitary policy 7, 10–11, 13, 65–66,

97–98, 100–1, 105, 123–25, 136–38,141, 151, 204

Scotland 98–99Selley, H.R. 54, 66, 85, 198Sheffield 112, 115shopkeepers 61, 168Shoreditch 9, 15, 61, 78, 85, 120–23,

149–50, 167, 180, 188Silkin, L. 117, 154Simon, E.D. 47–49, 56, 89, 114, 126, 128,

176Simon, Sir J. 10–11, 13, 21slum clearance, added lands 51, 61– 63,

70, 115, 164–65, 196slum clearanceclosure orders 50, 113compensation 7, 11–13, 25–26, 28– 30,

40–42, 46, 50–51, 57–62, 67–71, 90–92,101, 114, 132–34, 196

cost of sites 12–14, 50–51, 62–63, 67– 71,77, 132–33, 157, 195–96

demarcation of sites 51, 70, 113, 118,164–65

location of 12, 38, 40, 109–12, 118–22rehousing 11, 13, 40, 47–49, 74–76,

78–79, 116–18, 146–54, 170, 177–78rehousing sites 12, 17, 35, 74, 103, 110,

115, 168–70subsidies 13, 20, 25, 29, 51–53, 80–82,

114, 152–55, 164policy 1, 4–6, 9–14, 17–20, 24–26,

Index

210

27– 31, 35, 39–55, 65–67, 74, 87–95,102, 155, 165–67, 175–77, 188–89, 198,200, 203

programmes 9, 24, 26, 29, 38–42, 53,90–93, 99, 108–22

slumsconditions in 9–10, 14–15, 49, 78,

97– 98, 118–19, 122, 126–27, 147–50,152–53, 166, 178, 188

definition of 1–2, 9–10, 12–13, 15–16,18, 48–49, 52–53, 88–89, 102–5, 122,164–66, 171–78, 181–82, 188

Smith, David 197Soissons, L. de 198Somper,J. D. 84South Wales 114Southampton 112, 122, 127, 136Southwark 15, 149–50, 188St. Helier Estate 39St. Marylebone 15, 41, 60, 63, 118, 123St Pancras 15, 41, 61, 63, 120, 123, 126,

188Stepney 9, 15, 40–41, 59, 62, 84–85, 116,

118, 120–23, 130–32, 138–45, 166, 180,195

Stepney Reconstruction Group 191Stepney-Poplar redevelopment area

189, 193Stockton on Tees 49, 74, 150Stoke Newington 116Streatham 93suburban housing 19, 28–29, 38–39,

47–49, 65, 73–75, 81–82, 114–16,146– 48, 151–55, 169–70, 173–74, 192,198,

see also decentralizationSunderland 123Sunnucks, R. 134–5, 145, 198Sutcliffe, A. 86Swenarton, M. 22, 36Tabard Street 20, 62, 75–76Taylor G. 20tenants 10, 13, 20, 40, 45, 66, 74–76,

98– 100, 103, 108–12, 134, 142, 144,146– 53, 159, 170, 179–80

see also slum clearance rehousingterritorialization 1, 43, 116–18, 122–23,

155, 169–70

Thompson, W. 18–19, 21, 173Topham-Forrest, G. 83, 162Torrens’s Act 3, 11, 13Town and Country Planning Act 1944

197town planning 1, 5, 31–37, 49–50, 64,

66, 70–71, 96, 105, 173–77, 184–203transport 16–8, 32, 64–5Tulse Hill Estate 116Tyerman, D. 201Umberston Street 119, 132unemployment 78, 114unfit dwellings 9–11, 15, 25–26, 100,

108–22, 126–27, 198Unhealthy Areas Committee 15,

27– 28, 32–34, 41, 45–46, 101United States of America 34–35, 83,

171–72, 175Unwin, Sir R. 36–37, 95–96, 136urban structure 12, 15–16, 169–74,

176–77Uthwatt Committee 165, 191, 194–98Victoria Park 116Vienna 84–85wages 47, 77, 81, 146–48, 182Walker H.de R. 24–25Walker, M. 171–72, 182Wandsworth 40, 43, 118, 181Ward, S. 114, 128Ware Street 62, 78Watling Estate 39, 181Webb, Sir A. 32, 37Webbe, Sir H. 117, 197West Ham 71Wheatley, J. 31, 53, 80Whiston Committee 98–99White City Estate 116, 160–61White, J. 126, 128White,L.E. 178–79, 181Wilding, P.R. 3, 8, 44, 55, 105, 107Wilson Grove Estate 42Winterton, Earl of 142Wolverhampton 74, 112Woolwich 42, 118Wright, H. 182zoning of land-uses 33–35, 165–68, 187,

190, 199

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