Slums And Redevelopment: Policy And Practice In England, 1918-45, With Particular Reference To London

SLUMS and REDEVELOPMENT

SLUMS and REDEVELOPMENT Policy and practice in England, 1918–45, with particular reference to London.

J.A.Yelling Birkbeck College, University of London

© J.A.Yelling This 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 Limited University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT The name of University College London (UCL) is a registered trade 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 book is available from the British Library.

CONTENTS

List of plates List of figures List of tables Acknowledgements

vii viii ix x

1

Introduction Documentary sources

1

2

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

9

3

Reconstruction: the pattern of the future Slums and homes for heroes Re-establishing housing programmes Town planning and redevelopment

22

4

Decentralization, reconditioning and slum clearance 1923-33 The vicissitudes of slum clearance Chamberlain and reconditioning Decentralisation and the Greenwood Act

5

Money matters: property values, compensation and housing costs Prices, compensation and housing costs Politics and finance

38

57

6

Rebuilding and rehousing 1918-1933 Setting the standard Adjusting to rents Tall flats

73

7

A new deal 1933-5 The 1933 Act and the slum campaign The Moyne Report and reconditioning The 1935 Act: overcrowding and redevelopment

87

v

8

Action against the slum: programmes and distributions Unfit housing and slum clearance Clearance in London Overcrowding and multi-occupation 9

108

Landlords and property (with Mona Paton) Property and the slum campaign Landlords in the East End

130

10

Tenants and estates Tenants and rehousing Building standards and costs

146

11

Redevelopment and town planning Redevelopment areas Obsolescence and redevelopment Estates and communities

164

12

War-time plans The County of London plan Housing and planning

184

Review

203

Index

205

vi

L I S T O F P L AT E S between 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

vii

LIST OF FIGURES

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

16

8.1 Slum clearance in England and Wales: County Borough programmes 1933 (by population)

112

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

121

8.3 London: population in slum-clearance areas declared 1920–30, 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

viii

L I S T O F TA B L E S

5.1 5.2 5.3 6.1 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 9.1 9.2 9.3 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 11.1 11.2 11.3

Freehold rents and auction prices in London, 1892–1925 Land costs in London clearance schemes, 1922–5 Land costs in London clearance schemes, 1926–8 Cost of a three-room tenement in London, 1895 and 1924–5 Slum clearance in England and Wales: Acts of 1930 and 1935–6 Slum clearance in the 1930s: leading cities Slum clearance in the 1930s: county boroughs by conurbation and region Slum clearance in London: population in clearance areas 1920–39 Overcrowding and multi-occupation 1931–6: leading cities Overcrowding and multi-occupation 1931–6: county boroughs by conurbation and region Freehold rents and auction prices in London, 1933–8 Land costs in London clearance schemes, 1934 and 1938 Compensation payments to London landlords, 1938 LCC tenant groups: family composition and income LCC tenant groups: rehousing changes Occupation rates in LCC clearance areas, 1923–38 Rent changes on slum clearance ehousing: Bethnal Green, Shoreditch and Southwark in the 1930s House production in Greater London, 1930–9 LCC building and rehousing, by district, 1934–9 LCC slum clearance rehousing, by district, 1920–1939

ix

59 62 63 77 109 110 111 122 124 124 131 133 134 147 148 149 150 169 170 180

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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

x

CHAPTER 1 Introduction

This book forms part of a long-term study of slums and of the policies designed to counter them. It leads on directly from my previous account of Slums and slum clearance in Victorian London (1986), and will be followed by a further volume covering the period since 1945. The title Slums and redevelopment is meant to evoke several themes which together define the content of the book. In the narrowest sense reference is made to the process of slum clearance and the building of replacement dwellings. The 1930s are 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. This therefore provides a core theme. However, slum clearance itself took a number of different forms. Most importantly, reconstruction sometimes took place on site, and at other times occurred through suburban building. In the latter case, slum clearance was connected to decentralization, and indeed at the beginning of the period the “decongestion” of cities was often thought of as more important in countering slums than the removal of unfit d wellings. In turn, the reconstruction of d wellings on site links with a wider theme of “redevelopment”, a term applied to larger-scale rebuilding of inner-city districts. Such redevelopment was still of a kind essentially directed to the improvement of housing conditions, but it involved larger considerations than the removal of unfit dwellings, considerations falling within the province of town planning equally with that of housing. If slum clearance clearly had its intellectual and practical origins in the nineteenth century, then inner-city redevelopment of this kind may be said to have originated in the 1930s. The title Slums and redevelopment also indicates limits to the range of the book. It is essentially concerned with the fields of housing and town planning. Many other aspects of “slums”—their place in the division of labour, social networks and behaviour, education, welfare, and so on, are not objects of investigation. To some extent this follows contemporary practice in which the term “slum” itself tended to privilege the aspects of 1

Introduction

habitation and territory, and to seek remedies in those spheres for matters of social inclusion and exclusion that might now be approached more widely. These strong connections between housing and the slum were established in the Victorian period through the sanitary movement, and later widened through attempts to relieve congestion by decentralization. At this stage intervention was linked to municipal enterprise, and became an important factor in local politics. Council housing, rent controls, and later the “homes for heroes” campaign and the rise of the Labour Party, ensured that housing was to become equally important in national politics between the wars. Indeed, a feeling that intervention was rather narrowly concentrated in this direction contributed to the interest in town planning which, in a limited way, allowed certain other aspects such as social provision and “community” to be brought into consideration. The concentration on housing and town planning is thus not meant to suggest that slums could be remedied within these spheres alone. The restriction is one of practicality, recognizing that the treatment of slums within these fields is important, complex and wide-ranging, and something that needs to be subject to closer scrutiny. The high profile of housing in politics was certainly partly due to empirical considerations which weighed with the voters, and which reflected the scale and industrial character of British cities, and the long history which now often lay behind them. However, housing was also important in politics as a field over which larger battles could take place. It involved the widest form of property ownership, a matter not only of major financial interest, but also deeply imbued with social significance. Housing was a sphere in which a rôle for government and municipal initiative vis à vis private enterprise was accepted, but at the same time strongly contested. It was in this situation that the term “slum” occupied an important place in political discourse, and it is used in this book (as in its predecessor) as a political rather than a technical term. “Slum” is taken simply to mean conditions conceived of as “unacceptable”. These conditions are emphasized with the implication that something should be done about them. In this sense, it is important not to define slums simply in terms of “unfit housing”, because this immediately privileges one aspect and line of emphasis. Instead, the term will be taken to include both quantitative and qualitative deficiencies, and to vary in use in scale as well as scope, slums being seen in some cases as small and scattered territories, and in others as major parts of cities. Throughout, problem and remedy were closely connected, and various strategies were put forward, each with a supporting rationale and set of empirical referents. In Slums and slum clearance in Victorian London, I examined national policy in terms of the requirements of the capital. Indeed, it would be fair 2

Introduction

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 of action (often earlier) under their own specific local Acts. By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, there was already a greater strength to national politics, and between the wars housing policy was largely determined at that level. An examination of national policies and politics is therefore the first task of the book. Following Marian Bowley’s founding text, there has been in recent years a whole series of books which have set out the main framework of national legislation and policy. These have included three specifically addressed to the slum, by English et al., D. Kirby, and by Gibson & Longstaff.[1] All three, however, are summary texts largely devoted to the period after 1945. I have, therefore, sought a new 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 much rewarding material to yield.[2] In my previous book I made use of the term “paradigm” in examining a change of policy in London from slum clearance and rebuilding based on Cross’s Act to the increased housing supply and decentralization advocated by the Progressive Party at the end of the Victorian period. An advantage of “paradigm” as a concept is that it connects methods of action to ways of seeing and describing, so that characteristic patterns of conceptualization, remedy and empirical description can be recognized, which revolve around an emphasis on certain key themes. Ideological principles are not separated from empirical problems, but brought together with them. There is also the useful notion that, once established, a paradigm creates a largely “taken for granted” context within which routine thought and action take place. Finally, the concept of “paradigm shift” is useful in many ways. Although new paradigms have a long gestation, often based on difficulties experienced in implementing a previous paradigm, a shift usually takes place quite rapidly over a limited period. The reason for this seems to lie in the fact that a paradigm shift involves not merely new empirical or ideological developments, but above all a reordering of old priorities. Change of emphasis is very important, and old arguments that have been pushed aside become newly revitalized. One might say that it is the importance of emphasis, and hence both of developing contexts and plurality of aims and values, that distinguishes this approach from normal theoretical methods. The disadvantages in the use of the concept of paradigm revolve largely around possible interpretations along monolithic lines. It should be evident that the kinds of paradigm under discussion here—relating to housing policy-are not meant to be seen as isolated developments. Neither 3

Introduction

should they be thought of as occupying frozen blocks of space and time, a kind of fixed programme determining everything that happened. Allowance must be made for variation and gradual development, but still within a similar framework. However, it is clear that, even within the same field of time and space, developments cannot always be parcelled up so that one evident paradigm neatly succeeds another. Questions arise as to competing paradigms, or as to the existence of periods in which there is no very dominant model for action. My approach to these matters has been pragmatic—I am not concerned with the methodology as such, but only insofar as it is useful in promoting understanding of the topic. In Victorian London there was a clear case of paradigm shift at the end of the nineteenth century, and I presented it in that way. In national terms, however,the position in the early years of this century was less clear. There were three main positions: that of the Progressives, the “Liverpool” model based on slum clearance and onsite rebuilding, and a “Birmingham” model based particularly on rehabilitation or reconditioning and the general approach of John Nettlefold. However, these policies were not simply adaptations to the circumstances of each locality, they were becoming incorporated into more definite national policies, with a clearer separation between the political parties. My approach to this was to see the Progressive model as the dominant paradigm, even at national level, with the others shaped around it. This is probably too strong, but it reflects not only the general enthusiasm for suburban solutions in the period, but also the crucial significance of the rôle of council housing in shaping housing policies more generally. From this time different approaches to the rôle of council building became a dominant strand in general policy formation, and indeed one of the main reasons for its increasingly national character. In Chapter 2 of the present book I have presented an overview of the inheritance of problems and remedies from the Victorian and Edwardian periods, for what follows needs to be understood in terms of its relationship to these antecedents. In considering policy after the First World War I have found it useful to think in terms of the development of the three models mentioned in the previous paragraph. The progressive model is still largely dominant on the left, and most Labour Party thinking occurs within its general orientations. By contrast, slum clearance is at first largely associated with the Conservatives, and for reasons close to the rationale of the “Liverpool” model. A third strand of policy formation, largely associated with the activities of Neville 55 Chamberlain, can be linked to the “Birmingham” model. From the late 1920s these two alternatives offer a much stronger challenge to the progressive model, and lines of division that had been 4

Introduction

evident since the beginning of the century become more blurred. The Chamberlain approach was followed in the recommendations of the Moyne Committee (1933) and then largely set aside. But what is to be made of the successive reformulations of policy in Greenwood’s Act of 1930, in Hilton-Young’s Acts of 1933 and 1935, and finally in the major planning documents of the Second World War? Should one think in terms of a return to slum clearance, of attempts to find a compromise between clearance and elements of previous policy, or in terms of the emergence of something new? Whereas in the 1920s most attention was given to increasing housing supply and decentralization, by the end of that decade there were growing pressures to shift the emphasis of public housing to give more direct attention 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 on the clearance actually carried out in the 1930s. The 1933 Act was designed to limit public action, as well as to channel it towards clearance, and its main significance was to break further the progressive tradition. I shall argue, however, that something new appeared in the 1935 Act, which introduced an overcrowding standard and redevelopment areas. Through the concept of redevelopment areas, inner-city rebuilding became established as a means of overcoming quantitative deficiencies in housing as well as qualitative ones. Moreover, an important original division between the progressive position and that of the advocates of slum clearance now became blurred. The progressives had not only pointed to increased housing supply rather than replacement as the correct course to adopt, but also saw the slum (as the locale of housing deficiencies) in much wider terms—not as something limited to relatively small clearance areas. The progressive stance involved a switch of attention from the narrower population targeted by slum clearance to the wider workingclass population subject to housing deficiencies, and the loss of impetus in the late 1920s was closely connected with a failure to maintain this emphasis. By the late 1930s, however, redevelopment of inner cities could be offered as a programme of action which was more widely based, much more an alternative to decentralization and less simply a narrowing of the focus of action. Extensive redevelopment proposals became a normal part of planning discourse to a much greater extent than is generally realized, and in a relatively rapid manner which bears many of the hallmarks of a paradigm shift. The 1935 Act was an important spur to this development, but it was also a tentative measure which drew on various ideological and empirical themes of the period supporting redevelopment. By contrast, 5

Introduction

the war-time plans for London drawn up by Abercrombie and Forshaw attempted to construct a more coherent pattern of interlocking problems and remedies. These plans might themselves be regarded as establishing a new paradigm, which by offering something to most parties became an essential basis for post-war consensus. Alternatively, they can be seen as a compromise between two separate paradigms: one of which (closely allied to the progressive tradition) runs back from the Barlow Report to Howard’s garden cities, and the other emerging from the new approach to inner-city redevelopment in the 1930s. Although national policies occupy centre-stage between the wars, there is still much that needs to be studied within the context of local government. Local studies serve to sharpen both the empirical references and the political dimensions of policy formation. It is here that the book’s London orientation begins to come into play because, even for the major cities, the circumstances of housing and the complexities of local politics cannot be established without much labour. My approach has been to rely on secondary texts and material accessible through the British Library for an account of developments in the major provincial cities, particularly Birmingham, Leeds and Liverpool. By contrast, I have aimed to establish the position in London in much more detail, using primary records. I have made use of the records of the London Labour Party and the London Municipal Society, and particularly of the papers presented to the London County Council (LCC) Housing Committee. These form a series running into some 170 volumes for the period. As in my previous book, I see the LCC as a particularly rewarding organization to study. For one thing, as the most important single unit of English local government, it was always consulted in national policy formation and in several instances had an important effect on the policies that emerged. Right at the start of the period, for instance, new compensation terms for slum clearance were implemented at the request of the LCC, and at its end Forshaw and Abercrombie’s County of London plan was one of the principal planning documents of the Second World War. The LCC was, however, also a body responsible for the implementation of policy, for instance between the wars it carried out some 70 per cent of slum clearance within the county, and its programme was much more continuous through the period than that of any other English authority. Its record,therefore, provides indispensable material on the effects of implementation, and this can be compared and sometimes contrasted with what is known of the effects in other major cities of the country. Implementation is of particular interest because there was a strong tendency to present the slum as something rather isolated from the rest of society, which could be removed in a rather self-contained manner, and 6

Introduction

often without emphasizing the strong links which necessarily connected the old and the new. In practice, any policy, whether of decentralization or clearance and rebuilding on-site, was bound to have major implications for landlords and tenants, and not only for those directly affected. The new terms for compensation established in 1919 obviously had direct effects on landlords and traders, and reactions from these groups had an important input into the politics of slum clearance. The compensation terms, however, also had wider implications for the valuation of older property and the future of leasehold. Similarly, decentralization, by drawing off particular groups of tenants, had wider effects on the market for inner-city property. Narrower issues, such as slum clearance compensation, have thus to be fitted into larger frameworks: the more general effects of sanitary legislation, of rent controls and of new housing supply in the suburbs. The financial and management implications of older housing, and possible differences between types of owner, are also matters which require investigation. Rebuilding and rehousing present major issues which at the beginning of the period seemed a very long way from satisfactory solution. Large compensation costs impacted on rebuilding, and even though most of these costs were absorbed by the local authority, the gap in rents between old 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, although Pooley has shown that such claims were exaggerated.[3] In London, however, there was little doubt that clearance and rebuilding took place at the expense of the displaced tenants. The question therefore arises as to the extent to which new patterns were brought about in the inter-war period. Was there, indeed, some kind of satisfactory transition in which action against the slum may be seen in terms of a “welfare state” rather than a “sanitary” perspective? Or were there still large problems of reconciling rebuilding standards, rents and other aspects of change, so that old deficiencies tended to prolong themselves in new developments? How was progress achieved in practical terms, and what part did land costs, building costs and new subsidies play in the process? All these are matters clearly central to an assessment of the different policies and programmes, but they play a surprisingly small part in the contemporary literature and documentation of policy making. One purpose of the book is therefore to include separate investigation of these issues, while attempting also to link them back to the policy debate. All these various aims can be brought together in a brief presentation of the chapter structure of the book. Certain chapters concentrate mainly on policy formation, or provide a narrative of the manner in which policies 7

Introduction

and programmes developed. Chapters 3 and 4 thus examine the period from 1918 to 1933, Chapter 7 is concerned with policy in the crucial period 1933–5, and Chapters 11 and 12 deal with the wider issues of redevelopment and town planning that emerged during the later 1930s and the Second World War. Chapter 8 stands on its own as an account of the nature, extent and distribution of clearance activities during the 1930s, both in London and the country as a whole, and it looks similarly at overcrowding and multioccupation. Two chapters then deal with the acquisition of slum property, compensation costs and property owners. Chapter 5 looks at these matters in the period following the introduction of site-value compensation for unfit housing in 1919, and examines the politics of property. Chapter 9 carries the questions of compensation, maintenance and improvement into the 1930s, and also contains a study by Mona Paton of landlords and management in London’s East End. Finally, Chapter 6 examines rebuilding in the 1920s, and Chapter 10 contains studies of slum clearance tenants and of rehousing and rebuilding 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 London County Council (LCC) are indicated in the notes by MM, and the Presented Papers of the Housing Committee by HC. Both are located in the GLRO.

Notes 1

2 3

Bowley, M. 1945. Housing and the state: 1919–1944. London: Allen & Unwin; English, J., R. Madigan & P. Norman 1976. Slum clearance: the social and administrative 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. Wilding, P. R. 1970. Government and housing: a study of the development of social policy, 1906–1939. D. Phil. thesis. University of Manchester. Pooley, C. 1985. Housing for the poorest poor: slum clearance and rehousing in Liverpool 1890–1918. Journal of Historical Geography 11, 70–88.

8

CHAPTER 2 The inheritance: problems and remedies

In the early 1970s, with the triumph of rehabilitation as a method of procedure, it became customary to talk of a century of slum clearance. The years 1875–1975 do indeed neatly enclose the main period of clearance and associated redevelopment, although in other respects the story of the slum 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 well advanced in the history of the movement. This is important because the story of slums and redevelopment is one in which the historical element, the shaping of new policies in relation to an inherited set of preoccupations and constraints, is essential to any understanding. It is for this reason that a chapter has been included on developments preceding 1918. It is not intended to be a review of previous work, but simply to recall some of the main themes that are important in the inheritance of problems and remedies from the Victorian and Edwardian periods.

Clearance and unfit housing In December 1911 the medical officer presented the Housing Committee of the London County Council (LCC) with three large volumes in which were enumerated the “insanitary and congested areas” of the county. Over a thousand areas containing 19,678 houses were thought to be in need of immediate action, and taken together with those thought to require action in the near future, the total was raised to 25,734.[1] This, of course, was a small proportion of the houses in the county, but it was geographically concentrated: the boroughs of Bermondsey, Bethnal Green, Finsbury, Shoreditch and Stepney had more than 10 per cent of their housing stock enumerated. Moreover, for a programme of action it represented an 9

The inheritance: problems and remedies

impressive figure, 25,734 houses roughly corresponding to the total of unfit houses scheduled for clearance in London during the large slum clearance drive of the 1930s. In this survey we see the slum in one of its characteristic guises: as a series of unhealthy areas or unfit dwellings tracked down and located by medical officers. There was, however, a second characteristic guise that may be illustrated from a work The housing problem in England published in 1907 by E. Dewsnup. In this he says of the “residuum”: They cannot be allowed to continue permanently in their insanitary and overcrowded conditions of living, frequently conducive of immo rality, if for no other reason that they form a plague spot in the midst of the community…there is a heavy percentage of criminals amongst this class, and the condition of many others is the result of drunkenness, laziness and wasteful expenditure…it is to the public benefit that they should be driven out of their warrens into the light of day. [2] These were never the only ways in which slums, or parts of slums, were depicted or remedies were sought. Nonetheless, they of ten recur, and link back to ways in which the slum was targeted as a specific problem around the beginning of the Victorian period in the wake of the new Reform Act of 1832. The Poor Law Amendment Act (1834) was the key piece of legislation of that period, and an important influence throughout the nineteenth century and beyond. Not surprisingly there are many links between attitudes to the poor and attitudes to slums. Indeed, Dewsnup’s approach to the residuum seems similar to some of the motives MacDonagh attributes to Chadwick: to depauperize the able bodied, to force them out of their fatal protective cover, to drive them into the open labour market and to compel 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 the sanitary movement. John Simon, Medical Officer of Health in the City of London, was one of the first to think systematically about these connections, and to identify “houses and localities…which are irredeemably bad: places which the uninterrupted presence of epidemic disease has stamped as absolutely unfit for human habitation”.[4] Simon believed that such conditions required intervention, but at the same time had great respect for economic laws so that it was “among the first conditions of good 10

Clearance and unfit housing

government that the community shall sharply distinguish between those of its body who are self-supporting…and those who more or less depend for support on pubic alms”.[5] His solution was to erect sanitary law alongside economic law, not so much by tempering one set of principles by appealing to another, but rather through delimiting spheres within which each principle would be paramount. For Simon, sanitary law would protect the poor from the temptation of living in unfit dwellings, just as they were already protected against diseased or rotten food. However, in the supply of dwellings, as in the supply of food, for the selfsupporting labourer, when once the conditions of qualitative fitness are duly secured by law and administration, facts of quantitative sufficiency are for ordinary commercial enterprise to meet.[6] This was a very tempting line of division, and one that often appealed to later thinkers. Even in Simon’s time, however, it was one that reformers such as Lord Shaftesbury found impossible to draw, and model dwellings companies found difficult to hold. In the wider sphere of sanitary action conflicts with economic interests and principles were rather the norm. In Fraser’s classic formulation of municipal reform the strong pressures on both sides are reconciled by being displaced in time. There was thus a cyclical fluctuation: economies in one period, later expenditure pushed forward by sanitary pressures.[7] Another well-known feature of Victorian social reform was the importance attached to agents rather than systems, to administration rather than law. Sanitary principles could be fitted into this reasoning. It was the responsibility of government to enforce sanitary standards, but such responsibilities attached to all those who lay in the chain of authority that stretched down to the slum, and by which responsible citizens enforced standards on the irresponsible. Local government formed part of this chain, but so did the property owner. He occupied a key position of authority over the tenants and hence of duties and responsibilities. It was this which lent weight to the later debate over the relative responsibilities of ground landlord and leaseholder, and to the relish with which Progressives later greeted the discovery of slums on the estates of the Duchy of Cornwall, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and other notables. The difficulty of the landlord’s position was shown very definitely in Torrens’s Act (1866). This firmly laid responsibility on the landlord for the state of his dwelling. If it was judged unfit, he should be given an opportunity to remedy matters through effecting repairs. Failing this the local authority could condemn and demolish the property without 11

The inheritance: problems and remedies

compensa tion, leaving the owner with the land. The Act was an attempt to apply to London certain forms of action already adopted in some provincial cities through local legislation. It was not much used in the capital, but it was very important in political debate, and measures of enforced reconditioning and selective demolition were practised in some provincial towns in the late nineteenth century, for instance Manchester and Hull.[8] The form of direct action of most importance in London was that which stemmed from Cross’s Act (1875). This Act sought to achieve rehousing on the cleared sites, and for this purpose local authorities were to declare clearance areas, demolish the buildings, compensate the owners and then sell the sites to model dwellings companies, whose ambitions played a major part in the origins of the legislation. Cross made much of the past failure of legislation to set appropriate standards in regulating the original building plan. In this way he made a connection with the new by-law standards that were being concurrently pressed, and emphasized the “narrowness, closeness and bad arrangement of dwellings” which bylaws should have prevented, and which could now only be eliminated by a general scheme of redevelopment. This, of course, was an important factor in providing sites for rehousing, but there were also other implications. In shifting attention from the individual house, the Act also shifted attention from the individual landlord, who could thus be compensated at market values, with certain deductions. The state took the burden of responsibility on itself, and Cross could say that when these slums, the accumulation of centuries, have been cleared away, unless there be great neglect in the administration of the ordinary 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 the past, divorced now not only from economics but also from the management of dwellings and the responsibilities of ownership. Cross’s Act sought to address aspects of the slum that were of real importance: there was a built structure inherited from the past that was not always appropriate to modern conditions. This was one of the foundations of all slum clearance. However, the implementation of the Act was to reveal that slums were equally bound into contemporary economic and social systems. Contemporary economics pushed its way back in through the high cost of compensation. This came from the location of many of the chosen sites close to the central business district, and hence the presence of industry and business usages and high-rented multi12

Clearance and unfit housing

occupied houses. Economics also necessarily came back in through the rebuilding programme. In introducing his Bill, Cross had seemed to adopt Simon’s view of sanitary policy: it was “not the duty of the Government to provide any class of citizen with any of the necessities of life…but] no one will doubt …the right of the state to interfere in matters relating to sanitary laws”.[10] In fact, Cross did incorporate rebuilding and the needs of the model dwellings companies were important in obtaining the Act, as will be discussed in the next section. Nonetheless the state’s duty to remove slums was separated as much as possible from the supply of new dwellings: there was to be a new start in which the dwellings were managed on sound economic principles. This meant, however, that the local authorities suffered large losses on the land, while there was virtually no rehousing of the persons displaced. These large losses resulted in a battle with national government over the reform of the Act and the extent to which it should be applied. One tendency was to seek to reintroduce into Cross’s legislation some of the principles of landlord responsibility (and hence of reduced compensation) which had been incorporated in Torrens’s legislation. In the meantime the flow of new schemes dried up. It now seemed impossible to reconcile the desire for clearance with its costs, the desired standard of new building with rents at which rehousing would be possible for at least some of the poorer groups which, by definition, the slum contained. This resulted in one of the characteristic bouts of oscillation between periods of action and inaction, between periods of higher building standards and building down so as to rehouse some of the poorer groups. The work of Octavia Hill was one of the most important features of this period. She had been involved in the origins of Cross’s Act through the Charity Organization Dwellings Committee (1873), and later in attempts to build cheap tenement blocks for the poor. However, the failure of these attempts brought her back to a set of principles that were often referred to in the post-1918 period. The condition of the poor was best treated in ordinary houses, it could only be improved by gradual steps, and in accordance with increased capacity to pay. An emphasis on the reciprocal rights and duties of landlord and tenant was basic to the system, and women house managers stood between landlord and tenant, ensuring fair play, and improving the tenant (and if necessary the landlord) as well as the building. It was a method with a number of attractive points: it is about people as well as buildings, management is brought back to the centre of attention, and it seems to offer a practical and realistic programme. It was also, however, strongly set within very Victorian constraints. Attention to the tenant occurs within a framework of hierar chical authority based on property—it derives from the well-known paternalist concept that 13

The inheritance: problems and remedies

“property has its duties as well as its rights”. Above all, there can be no transfer of resources to the poor, directly or indirectly: the system is fixed and unyielding, and salvation can only come through individual improvement. It was the reform of London government, itself provoked in part by the apparent failure of the Board of Works, that produced the last important burst of slum clearance in the nineteenth century: the famous Boundary Street scheme in Bethnal Green. Cross’s Act had itself reflected a desire of the Disraeli Government to respond to the growing urban electorate following the franchise reform of 1866. The Progressive Party, which won control of the first LCC in 1889 and kept it until 1907, strongly reflected these new urban electoral influences. Very important was the presence within the party of a strong band of land reformers, favouring land taxation and anxious to break down the landlords’ monopoly through various forms of municipal enterprise. This section of the party was more naturally oriented to Torrens’ than to Cross’s legislation, but the Boundary Street scheme was adopted because it was to incorporate municipal building as well as municipal clearance, and provide a clear symbol distinguishing an active LCC from an inactive Board of Works. In this it was partly successful. The Boundary Street scheme showed that municipalities were indeed capable of rebuilding as effectively as the dwellings companies, and in an architecturally superior and more humane manner. But it also revealed that neither municipal enterprise nor the amended provisions of the 1890 Housing Act could overcome the major difficulties in clearance and rebuilding schemes. The setting of the rent levels at Boundary Street in March 1893 punctured the larger hopes and brought back harsh reality. There was a return to impasse, with periods of clearance action alternating with periods of recoil. From 1893, however, stronger efforts were made to try and produce an alternative policy, and to understand this movement it is necessary to go back and follow another line of development focused on the issue of overcrowding.

Overcrowding and housing supply In the Census of 1911, in the county of London 758,786 people were found to be living in tenements with more than two occupants per room. They made up 17.8 per cent of the whole population. In the inner ring of highdensity boroughs surrounding the City, the proportion was much higher. It reached 39.8 per cent in Finsbury, was over 30 per cent in Bethnal Green, Shoreditch and Stepney, and 20 per cent or more in Bermondsey, 14

Overcrowding & housing supply

Holborn, Islington, Poplar, St Marylebone, St Pancras and Southwark. Overcrowding had eased somewhat since 1871, as family size reduced and living standards improved, but overcrowding figures remained among the indicators which most obviously pointed up the large-scale nature of housing deficiencies. This was also a striking feature of the statistics on London compiled for the Unhealthy Areas Committee (1920– 1). In this work, pressure on space was measured by congestion, absence of space not only within the dwelling but without. “Black” wards with over 350 people and an average of 53 houses per acre contained 295,860 people, and 92 wards with over 200 people per acre housed a population of 1,165,319.[11] Unfit dwellings and overcrowding were the two main aspects of slum housing to be emphasized in the Victorian period and later: the one representing unacceptable quality, the other unacceptable limitations of space. Often the two went together, the one compounding the other, but there was also a sense in which acceptance of low quality allowed higher space standards and vice versa. Certainly, it was important in policy formation that the remedies for unfit housing and overcrowding often seemed to point in different directions, and that they could be linked to different factors in the process of slum formation. Whereas the mapping out of unfit housing in London in 1911 seemed to lead downwards to small and scattered areas, the Unhealthy Areas Committee’s depiction of London’s unhealthy areas is concerned with a much larger scale. There is no necessary reason why quantitative and qualitative deficiencies should be distinguished in this way—it would be possible to pick out patches of intense overcrowding or alternatively to recognize whole zones marked by some degree of qualitative inadequacy. In part the difference comes because the two descriptions are embodied in different strategies of reform. Similarly, although both quantitative and qualitative aspects of slum housing can be seen as a product of historical circumstances, and contrasted with modern conditions, in another way the notion of unfit housing is more definitely linked to the inheritance of built structures from the past, whereas overcrowding was linked to processes continuing in the present. From this point of view, it is useful to recall the fundamental changes that were taking place in the economic and social geography of Victorian London, and which on a lesser scale were also evident in other major cities. These changes are well illustrated in the maps of London population densities that were prepared by K.G. Grytzell, Figure 2.1 being redrawn from his map of 1901.[12] This shows very clearly a tendency to large-scale zonation of densities, reflecting a similar zonation of land uses. A low-density core marks the development of the central business district 15

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

based on the City, and around it occurs a distinct zone of high density, itself giving way to low-density residential suburbs beyond. Something of this could be seen in the map of 1851, but to a much lesser extent, so that this kind of structure is very much the product of the intervening half century. Overcrowding, like unfit housing, was highlighted in the early Victorian period by sanitary and moral considerations. Like poor housing conditions generally, it could be regarded as the product of low moral scruples on the part of the poor themselves. However, the significance of Lord Shaftesbury’s campaigning was that it also became tied in to contemporary events—notably the displacement of population by street improvements or later by railway activities. These represented the early negative aspects of the integrated development of central business expansion, extension of public transport and suburban residential growth. It became accepted by reformers that if the loss of accommodation in the centre was not countered by some replacement housing then overcrowding was bound to persist, and possibly get worse. It was no coincidence that the peak of railway demolitions in 1859–62 saw renewed impetus in the model dwellings movement through the formation of the 16

Overcrowding and housing supply

Peabody Trust and the Improved Industrial Dwellings Company. The companies attempted to show that replacement housing could be built in central London on a semi-commercial basis, but the link to the displacement was still an indirect one. A problem was, however, how to build without adding to the displacements which were occurring. There were a number of “windfall” sites which could be obtained in central London thanks to the generosity of the movement’s supporters, and which 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 to the fatal decision to seek the link with slum clearance. Cross was promised by 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 be lodged in a comfortable and wholesome manner where the present occupants are huddled together in dirt, discomfort and disease.[13] The dwellings companies had never envisaged a direct link between displacement of population and rehousing. Nonetheless, the process of clearance inevitably forced attention to such links, and when comfortable hopes and notions regarding the Act were brought down in its implementation, the problem of the slum was more sharply emphasized than before. There was, however, no very clear alternative remedy. Attempts to cut costs and building standards themselves soon failed, but political and ideological constraints still ruled out building subsidies. Alfred Marshall and Charles Booth advanced rather desperate schemes to remove some of the poor from London in order to shore up the position of the rest of the working class. The Royal Commission on Working Class Housing 1884–5 sought to bring the issue of overcrowding back to the fore, but it could only recommend a renewal of administrative will. It was when Boundary Street showed that this remained insufficient that an alternative strategy began to be more forcefully pressed. Even then, it took some time for the old paradigm to be replaced, and in 1898, when the Progressives pledged to increase housing supply, one half of this policy still consisted of rebuilding on slum sites. The alternative strategy that was to appear was quite clearly a lateral move, conceptually as well as literally, and one’s attitude to the subsequent development of housing policy depends a good deal on how this move is judged. It did not involve confronting or breaking down some of the main obstacles that had inhibited previous reform. This was partly because key participants in the strategy did not want to do so—for 17

The inheritance: problems and remedies

instance, they remained opposed to the use of subsidies. There was also the question, however, whether these obstacles were not in reality so great that any attempt to confront them directly was bound to end in compromise and shoddy failure. This involves first of all the question whether it was possible to achieve direct action on housing in the centre of cities without first drawing off overcrowded populations and reducing land values. It involves secondly the question whether “Victorian” economic, sanitary and moral attitudes, as revealed in attitudes towards the slum, were so deeply entrenched that they could best be weakened by first shifting attention elsewhere. The works of William Thompson present a view of the world leading up to the conclusion that “the organized dispersion of the population by municipal action is the only practical and satisfactory remedy for present evils”.[14] Attempts to remove slums or force up the sanitary standard of existing dwellings during a house famine could only increase rents and rebound to the advantage of the landlord, so that “the tenants in many cases are the strongest opponents to sanitary inspection and improvement of their houses”.[15] Developments in transport, made it possible to escape from this impasse. Transport alone, however, was not enough, for it could simply carry speculation outwards, raising land values and so leading, as far as the working class was concerned, to colonies of cheap houses which would soon turn into slums themselves. Instead, transport under municipal control should be directed to opening up new areas where municipalities could buy land cheaply on which they could build houses. This would enable the working class to escape from the control of the landlord, and establish a new standard of housing which itself would become a focus for further advance. Also, in this way, the Progressives could develop a strategy which enabled them to connect the “land question” with “municipal trading”, and to resume their rôle as the party of municipal action. Thompson’s strategy therefore parallels the more famous vision of Ebenezer Howard—only from the basis of a new start would it be possible to reform the existing city. Neither man worked out in detail how this would happen. They simply did enough to sketch in lines of development which would support the new paradigm without raising the difficulties which might reduce enthusiasm. In the case of Thompson this meant that if “half the workers could be induced to leave the congested districts of London exorbitant rents would fall, overcrowding would be diminished, and the health of the people enormously improved with little or no loss to the rates”.[16] As it was, there was to be an almost immediate reminder that escape from the existing world would not be so easy. Both Letchworth 18

Overcrowding and housing supply

and the new LCC suburban estates were adversely affected when the turn of the century boom, which had carried suburban development and policies to a peak, subsequently fell away and collapsed in slump. With it came the rapid fall in property prices, eventually lasting down to First World War, which has been analyzed by Avner Offer.[17] This will be discussed again in Chapter 5, but it would seem that what began as an economic downturn was later compounded and prolonged by political factors. In terms of material effects, the relationship of the slump to Thompson and Howard’s projects seems highly paradoxical. These were designed as long-term cost-cutting measures taking society away from the impasse created on the one hand by land and property speculation and on the other by rising rates. Both, however, required a front-loading of capital expenditure which rendered them vulnerable, and both ran the risk of premature closure by the very forces of speculative boom and slump they were designed to combat. Martin Gaskell is surely right to emphasize that the various projects for new types of suburb and town at the turn of the century represented an attempt to meet the latent desire of the lower middle classes and parts of the working classes for a manner of living already established among wealthier groups.[18] From this point of view, the new Progressive strategy laid down an important political challenge to property. The rôle of municipal enterprise was brought centre stage, and although the cycle of action and inaction could produce the kind of ratepayers revolt that ousted the Progressives from power on the LCC in 1907, a longer-term strategy was also required. One possibility was to accept the view that municipal enterprise had a rôle in suburban development, while denying a rôle for municipal housing. This was the line taken by Charles Booth who supported the development of a complete system of transport owned by the LCC, and now favoured moving out the artisan rather than the poor. Other ways in which municipal initiatives could support decentralization without municipal building were put forward in Birmingham. They included using the potential of town planning as a means of promoting the kind of developments fostered by Cadbury at Bournville, and making them more general. John Nettlefold was particularly active in developing such policies and he also created an important link between this promo tion of decentralization and compulsory reconditioning of some of the older inner properties using Part II of the 1890 Act (the old Torrens legislation). Before the war the Municipal Reform LCC had shown an interest in these policies, but Part II powers in London lay mainly with the boroughs, and there was the further difficulty that they seemed to require a more active municipal involvement in suburban promotion than most of the party wanted to see. 19

The inheritance: problems and remedies

A much more attractive policy line to most London Municipal Reformers was that opened up in Liverpool. In 1896 the council there decided 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 new dwellings “should be for the poorer classes, for whom they could not and did not want to provide”.[19] On the other hand it satisfied the tenants who wanted to be rehoused in the old neighbourhoods. By the time of the Commons debate on housing in 1903 there were signs that this was being promoted as a national Conservative policy, resulting in a much clearer division in party political attitudes. Taylor, the Liverpool housing leader, emphasized that the slum problem was “the real problem for the municipalities to deal with”. He was followed by Keir Hardie for Labour who took the Progressive line and urged local authorities to “cater for the better class of artisans”, “instead of playing the part of scavenger to the private housebuilder and taking charge of the refuse out of which they could not make a profit”.[20] In 1910 Griffith Boscawen as Housing Chairman of the LCC forged definite links with Taylor, and it was this alliance that was largely responsible for the Housing Bill presented to the Commons by Boscawen on behalf of the Unionist Party (Conservatives). For the first time national government subsidies for housing were envisaged, but these were to go on the one hand to rural cottage building and on the other to urban clearance schemes. It was in this context that the survey 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 major event in housing history, the significance of which is still only partially appreciated. In some ways it constituted the moment when housing policy in the modern sense was born. Afterwards, the rôle of council housing itself became one of the major pivots around which other aspects of policy were arranged, and this was also a key factor in pushing housing on to the national agenda, as opposed to leaving it to local councils to determine. In the immediate term, a tension between a wider rôle for council housing as part of some kind of liberation from the existing city, and a narrower rôle concentrated on slum clearance and rehousing was to be a dominant feature. A secondary tension, essentially within the Conservative Party, lay between clearance and reconditioning policies, the latter often being linked to public promotion of decentralization. These positions were to be modified, particularly as a result of the war, but they were not to be essentially changed until the 1930s.

20

Overcrowding and housing supply

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

HC Dec. 1911 (3 vols). Dewsnup, E. 1907. The housing problem in England, 223. Manchester: Manchester University Press. MacDonagh, O. 1977. Early Victorian government 1830–1870, 100. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Simon, Sir J. 1887. Public health reports. Vol. 1, 1st annual report, Nov. 6th 1849, 56. London: Sanitary Institute of Great Britain. Simon, Sir J. 1897. English sanitary institutions., 2nd ed., 449–50. London: John Murray. ibid., 445. Fraser, D. 1979. Power and authority in the Victorian city, 69–70. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Simon, E.D. & J. Inman 1935. The rebuilding of Manchester, 16–17. London: Longman Green. Cross, R. 1884. Homes of the poor. Nineteenth Century 15, 157. Hansard, 222 col. 99. 8th Feb. 1875. Registrar General. Census of England and Wales 1911. Vol. 8, 534–64; Unhealthy Areas Committee. Final Report (Apr. 1921), 21–4. Grytzell, K.G. 1969. County of London population changes 1801–1901, Lund Studies in Geography, Series B, Vol. 33, 103. Charity Organization Society 1873. Report of the Dwellings Committee, 12. Thompson, W. 1900. Powers of local authorities. In The house famine and how to relieve it, Fabian Tracts 101, 25. London: Fabian Society. ibid., 19. ibid., 25. Offer, A. Property and politics 1870–1914: landownership, law, ideology and urban developent in England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 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. City of Liverpool Housing Committee 1913. Artisans’ and labourers’ dwellings and insanitary property, 7. Hansard, 120, cols 941–5, 2 Apr. 1903.

21

CHAPTER 3 Reconstruction: the pattern of the future

In 1915 the government imposed controls on the rents of working class houses in Britain and on the mortgages of their owners. It thus prevented the inflation of the war period feeding through into rents and property prices. This had important financial repercussions, for money wages after the war were more than double those of five years before. A second shock came in 1919 when Lloyd George’s coalition government committed itself to building 300,000 subsidized suburban cottages, and local councils rather than private enterprise became the main provider of homes. Caught up in post-war inflation, the programme was terminated only two years later when Addison, the Minister of Health was forced to resign, shortly followed by the whole Lloyd George Government. These dramatic events have already been thoroughly studied by Orbach and Swenarton, and need not be treated here.[1] Some aspects are, however, of considerable importance to our theme. Links between “homes for heroes” and pre-war Progressive policies need to be examined and carried through into the partial resurrection of the government commitment to housing in 1924. There is a renewed emphasis on slum clearance as an alternative focus of action, this being particularly associated in the early days with the Municipal Reform (Conservative) dominated LCC. Rent controls, subsidies and a new compensation code had major long-term financial implications which need to be briefly reviewed, although the bulk of this discussion is left to later chapters. Another important theme is the new interest in town planning. Here too, although the decentralists clearly held the field, they were already being challenged by advocates of redevelopment and tall flats. In many ways, events in these fertile years foreshadow the agenda for the rest of the period.

22

Slums and homes for heroes

Slums and homes for heroes For both Orbach and Swenarton, homes for heroes represented “an insurance against revolution”. It was clearly much more than a housing programme, for unemployment and the potential difficulties of demobilization were significant considerations. Nonetheless, it was important that, in a moment of crisis, it should be a major housing campaign that was the focal point around which the nation was expected to unite. Moreover, the centre of attention was the divide between working-class and middleclass housing, and a narrowing of the differences between the two. The emergence of the Labour Party as a political force at the end of the war increased the chances that these concerns would be carried into periods of more normal electoral activity. The arrival of universal adult suffrage 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 the working-class and female vote, but the actual course of events was determined by success at the polls, depending of course on many issues other than housing alone. Despite this, the politics of housing was a significant factor in the alternation of governments in the 1920s, ensuring a continuing commitment in this field. It was briefly threatened by the Labour Party’s debacle in 1931, but shortly afterwards the National Government again sought to unite the nation and prolong its own existence through a major housing campaign, this time focused at a lower social level. The Second World War then brought a renewed period of heightened expectations, re-focusing on the middle-class/working-class divide. These political developments form the major milestones around which the housing policies and practices of the period were structured. Homes for heroes, with the twin concerns of housing shortage and housing standards, was perfectly compatible with the pre-war Progressive approach to the slum. In the immediate post-war period, and during a coalition government, there was no need to emphasize this—the policy could easily be justified in more general terms. At the heart of reconstruction, however, lay a tension between two polarities: one which emphasized the relief of the housing shortage due to the war, and looked to a restoration of pre-war conditions, and another which sought a new start through which the qualitative and quantitative deficiencies of prewar housing might be tackled. For those who adopted the latter position, whatever their political party, relief of overcrowding was the key to the solution of all other housing problems, and any attempt to solve the qualitative defects of the older housing in the centre of cities was viewed as counter productive until housing pressures had first been relieved. This 23

Reconstruction: the pattern of the future

was certainly Addison’s position, and it provided some justification for the title of his account of the defeat of his programme: The betrayal of the slums. [2] The docile manner in which the homes for heroes programme was originally received by Parliament has often been underlined, and equally there seems to have been little opposition from the main provincial councils. However, this was not the case in London, probably because of the heightened awareness produced by pre-war battles over the housing issue. The LCC refused to acknowledge a quantitative deficiency in prewar housing, unless it be attributable to Lloyd George’s attempt to introduce a land tax. It insisted that “the accommodation provided during the whole period 1902–13 was more than sufficient for the increase in the workingclass population”.[3] Indeed, at the start of the war it was seeking to reduce a commitment to slum clearance, and battling with the Local Government Board (LGB) over a projected scheme at Brady Street (Bethnal Green). In 1918 many of the borough reports to the council in response to the LGB’S promptings on post-war action were similarly noninterventionist in tone. Camberwell decided that “overcrowding does not exist to any large extent”. There was also “very little overcrowding” in Kensington, and Hackney “consider that private enterprise will provide all that will be needed”.[4] In an extensive survey of existing conditions in October 1918, the LCC refused to make any estimate of the number of dwellings required to relieve overcrowding, although its own tables showed that 758,000 people in the county were living at over two to a room in 1911. [5] In May 1918 Hayes Fisher, then president of the LGB, attempted to win the council’s support for the government’s policies by arguing that immediate post-war economics ruled out the private builder, and that “when the time came for the gradual demobilization of millions of armed men... it would be better to provide them with employment than to maintain them in camps or huts doing nothing”. This had some effect on the Housing Committee Chairman H. de R. Walker, who advised that “the quantity problem must first be tackled, although the London problem is in normal circumstances one of quality”.[6] However, the council refused to accept this, and when a deputation met Hayes Fisher in July 1918 they put to him that, provided the government’s financial support was extended to clearance and rebuilding, the Council might be disposed to adopt for the seven years following the declaration of peace a policy of spending £3.5 million in clearing...insanitary areas and erecting dwellings in place.

24

Slums and homes for heroes

A sharp division then emerged, for “the official attitude in regard to the extension of the government grant was distinctly hostile”. “The President desired that the Council should take a wide view of its position in the matter, extending practically to assuming some responsibility for the housing of all people of the working classes working in London”. His attitude was “distinctly more favourable to a scheme for the supply of additional houses than to any scheme for the clearance of insanitary areas”.[7] Nonetheless, Walker stuck to the council’s view that action should be directed against unfit housing, as “it is a kind of work to benefit most those who are poorest and most unsuitably housed; it belongs peculiarly to local government authorities”. Any increase in housing supply was to take place “on sites convenient of access from the boroughs concerned with a view to facilitating energetic action for the closing and demolition of insanitary houses”.[8] As late as February 1919, the Finance Committee queried whether the purchase and development of 143 acres at Roehampton “will not absorb a disproportionate amount of the total sum which the Council has agreed to expend upon housing for the whole county within the period of seven years”. 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 should only be embarked upon as a purely temporary measure.” For, Votes at elections are obtained by Socialist agitators promising all sorts of relief to the working classes…the more distributed the ownership of small houses, the better for the country and the surer of domestic peace we shall be.[9] When Addison met council representatives at the end of January 1919, he was prepared to compromise to some extent. The council was promised that financial aid would be extended to cover clearance and rebuilding and that legislation would be introduced to cheapen acquisition of unfit property. Walker promised to bring forward definite proposals in this area, and indeed officials had already been at work, starting from the basis of the Progressive’s “Freeholder Scheme” of 1900. In February they reported that “under the present basis of compensation…slum landlords are not deterred by the prospect of their property being taken, and the price which the local authority is called upon to pay is unreasonably high”. The principal recommendation was that unfit property should be acquired at the value of the site for working-class housing. Although the sites often had high market value for commercial purposes, this was largely hypothetical, and local authority intervention provided

25

Reconstruction: the pattern of the future

that purchasor for whom the owner might otherwise have had to wait many years…this factor, combined with the blame attached to the owner by reason of his neglect, is of such prime importance that it should to a very considerable extent discount the alleged market value.[10] It was proposed that the compensation be apportioned amongst the various interests, and that there should be a period of grace before the new law became effective, to enable proprietors to put their houses in order. It was at this point that the council received the LGB circular of 5 February 1919 setting out new terms of government financial assistance. The replacement of 75 per cent deficit financing with the central funding of expenditure above 1d. rate was welcomed by provincial authorities, but was very bad news for the LCC. The Comptroller reported that it was “altogether inconsistent with the programme approved by the council in July last”. The product of a penny rate in London would fund an annual capital expenditure of over £5 million.[11] With the arrival of a state subsidy, the council had lost its freedom of action in the housing field. Immediate developments now awaited the results of the Council elections, notable for the advance of Labour at the expense of the Progressives, and the government’s Housing Bill introduced in March. Afterwards, every effort was devoted to the construction of a large clearance programme. In addition to Tabard Street (still incomplete) and Brady Street, attention was directed to 22 other clearance areas containing 40,000 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 would entail provision of rehousing accommodation for 50,000 persons. It was quite clear, however, that no clearance programme could meet the capital expenditure required by the council, for quite apart from political considerations, the complicated procedures for acquisition, displacement and rehousing could not be pushed through at the necessary speed. On 3rd June the Housing Committee reported that “circumstances of the time have made it necessary for us to bring before the Council a proposal of very great magnitude”. This comprised a five-year scheme involving capital expenditure of some £30 million. The suburban cottage programme would account for by far the larger part, with £5.37 million for slum clearance. Despite opposition from Addison, who wanted the balance of the scheme altered to provide more new houses, it was eventually agreed by the ministry in January 1920.

26

Re-establishing housing programmes

Re-establishing housing programmes After the demise of the homes for heroes programme in 1921, there was an important period, lasting until 1925, in which the broad outline of a new housing policy was determined. The two main contenders were on the one hand, increasing supply through suburban council housing and, on the other, reviving private enterprise and redirecting the municipal programme to slum clearance. There was, however, a third policy strand which was favoured within the Ministry of Health, and particularly by I.G. Gibbon. Gibbon was to be a key figure in the promotion of town planning within the ministry between the wars, and he attempted to shift policies towards a longer-term approach in which planned decentralization would be combined with efforts to prevent deterioration of existing conditions and effect some gradual improvement.[12] In August 1918, he procured the appointment of the Unhealthy Areas Committee under Neville Chamberlain, which proceeded to make recommendations along these lines.[13] Chamberlain’s presence was important in underlining continued support within the Conservative Party f or decentralization, a support which did not much favour municipal building, but did embrace municipal initiatives in other directions. Thus although the committee’s reports were not to be of immediate significance, they provide a link with pre-war policies in Birmingham, and foreshadow a line of thinking that was to be of considerable importance in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The Unhealthy Areas Committee was a means by which the Ministry of Health could renew its struggle with the LCC over slum clearance. The committee also visited Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool and Cardiff, but it gave them cursory attention. London was the main centre of congestion in England, and hence the principal target of town planning, but it was also the only centre in which slum clearance was then an active policy issue. The committee took a strongly decentralist line, emphasizing the extent of overcrowding in London (as discussed in the previous chapter). It stressed the limitations of slum clearance, which should be delayed until housing pressures had been substantially relieved. It was also the first official body to raise doubts about the new compensation provisions, which it regarded as unjust. Instead of immediate clearance, existing houses should be subject to a programme of limited reconditioning in improvement areas. This was welcome news to property owners’ organizations, but there was a sting in the tail in the committee’s enthusiasm for the “Octavia Hill system of management”. It went together with a distinctly unfavourable view of the ordinary private landlord, and a willingness to bring reconditioning within a framework of local authority ownership:

27

Reconstruction: the pattern of the future

it is not to be expected that areas will be satisfactorily improved under private ownership, which is almost always subdivided Even when large blocks of property are held…improvements are generally combined with a change of user, which prevents any contribution being made to the solution of the problem.[14] I have stressed the links between the politics of reconstruction and the different policy orientations that first opened up at the turn of the century and were to be of continued importance throughout the 1920s. The First World War had massive significance, but the events of the time do need to be understood in terms of previous developments. Englander has thus shown that long-term tensions over rent and security of tenure underlay the political significance of the Rent Restrictions Act.[15] Even more importantly, Offer demonstrated a massive fall in London property values between 1903 and 1913, which he thought marked the onset of a crisis in private landlordism.[16] The nature of the crisis has been debated, and its implications have yet to be fully unravelled.[17] However, it certainly involved political considerations which bear on our central concern: policies relating to quantitative and qualitative defects in existing housing provision. Without the war, change would have been far less dramatic and some cyclical recovery would probably have occurred. The absence of war, however, would not have relieved political pressures that were a quite legitimate response to the extension of the franchise, and this would have had important economic repercussions, as Offer showed. These are complex matters which will receive further discussion in Chapter 5. What is important here is to emphasize that the fall in property values before the war, enhanced and anchored by the Rent Acts, and later prolonged by other factors, was of fundamental significance. There was, empirically, a major structural divide between the late Victorian period and the regime of low land and property prices that subsequently prevailed for nearly 70 years. All housing and planning programmes, and particularly slum clearance and redevelopment, have to be examined in this context. The main features arising from the war were rent control and a new attitude to subsidies, but both of these had a conflicting impact on existing policy orientations. Pre-war Progressive policy had seen the expansion of housing supply as a means of reducing rents and capital values. With the introduction of rent restrictions, the position became rather reversed: expansion of housing supply was needed to keep rents from rising. This was variously viewed as intrinsically useful or politically necessary, but it also coincided with a Treasury interest in counter-inflation policies. However, the links between decentralization and the pre-war land campaign were now distinctly weaker. Paradoxically, the new 28

Re-establishing housing programmes

compensation code obtained by a Conservative council was the only real gain made in this direction as a result of the war. Old faithfuls were left to bewail the abandonment of the true path of reform in favour of the slippery slope of subsidies and charity rents. Yet subsidies also in some ways reinforced the progressive position. They increased the possibility, depending on allocation practice, that suburban council housing could take on a hybrid character, reflecting not only ability to pay but also housing need. This sounds paradoxical, but the Rent Acts had brought about new conditions in which those with larger incomes could not necessarily obtain the accommodation they needed by outbidding others in the market. Moreover, councils might be regarded as more legitimate recipients of subsidies than private landlords or their tenants. Council housing could be used directly as an instrument of policy, and there was reduced likelihood of subsidies feeding through into enhanced rents and capital values. For the advocates of slum clearance, the new developments also had mixed implications. The heightened political climate now made it impossible to contemplate schemes which did not rehouse at least a substantial portion of the displaced tenants, and this was reinforced by the effect of the Rent Act on security of tenure and the reduced level of empties. That same Act, however, kept property prices down, a result enhanced by the new compensation provisions. This was extremely important, given the major impact of acquisition costs on the economics of rebuilding. Both measures had adverse effects on property owners, raising an important source of political opposition. But equally, opposition was weakened in another direction, since it was less easy to claim that landlords profited from clearance. Subsidies were now available to cover both building and acquisition, and there was much potential in the claim that they should be directed to those in greatest need, and hence to those least able to move to suburban areas. Once building costs had returned to more normal levels after 1921, slum clearance became a difficult but by no means impossible proposition. The new housing policy announced by Mond in July 1921 recognized an “urgent necessity for making what improvements are possible under present financial circumstances in slum areas”. An annual sum of £200,000 was allocated to meet deficiencies. A clear distinction was made between the “problem of slums”, which was an appropriate sphere of public action, and “the question of housing” in which “private enterprise can be taken as on the way to ensure its normal position”.[18] When Boscawen was made Minister of Health, these links with pre-war Conservative policies were reinforced in a directly personal way. In the 1922 crop of elections, Labour attacked the “betrayal” of the government over housing, but in a climate 29

Reconstruction: the pattern of the future

of retrenchment it made little headway. There were much greater difficulties for the Conservatives, however, once the immediate appetite for economies had been assuaged. Addison pointed out the main problem: the Government prevents the accumulated shortage being made good by state or municipal assistance, and by prolonging the shortage, commits the community to the continued operation of that statute [the Rent Act] which effectively prevents its being met by private enterprise.[19] Not unnaturally, the government tried to escape from this dilemma by transitional measures. It adopted a policy of “gradual decontrol”, while a new state housing scheme, more oriented towards private enterprise, tided over the remaining period of housing shortage. But before this could be brought into effect, Boscawen was defeated in the Mitcham by-election of March 1923, and it was left to Neville Chamberlain to introduce the new Housing Bill in April. The spectacular by-election losses of early 1923 pointed up the continued political importance of housing. They convinced the Coles that “the housing question is the most acute, though not the most fundamental, domestic issue of the day. It has shown its capacity to arouse deep political feeling”. They argued that “the knowledge that rents cannot be decontrolled until some new houses have been built is the chief reason for bringing forward a new housing scheme”.[20] From an opposite point of view, the Estates Gazette also had “an uneasy suspicion that control will never be relaxed and that sufficient political pressure will always be forthcoming to prevent its removal”. Except for slum clearance, council housing was not desirable, and any new arrangements should allow for council houses to be sold to their tenants, since “it is our duty to make occupying ownership easy and natural. No nation need have any better bulwark 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 a transition to “normal conditions”. This would be done by “the encouragement of private enterprise and the stimulation of the desire…among large sections of the population to be able to own their own homes”. Subsidies would be available both to private enterprise and local authorities, but the latter would “have to satisfy the Minister that the needs of a particular area can best be met in that way”. Lower rents were essential to meet demand, and would be produced by reduction of subsidies, so lowering costs, and by building smaller houses. Ironically, he had 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] 30

Re-establishing housing programmes

Wheatley, replying for the opposition, saw housing as “really a problem of finance. It is part and parcel of that great social problem by which, at every step, 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 this country”. He was particularly scathing over slum clearance: housing reformers of a certain type always appeal to ones emotions by talking of the poor folk in the slums, but…this is not the way to deal with the housing problem at all. The way…is to provide healthy houses, and to say to the people in the slums, come out of these wretched dens…and then you say to the owners of these houses, as you would say to the owners of diseased meat, we are not going to allow you to make a profit out of these unhealthy houses, but are going to pull them down and remove them at your own and not at the public expense.[23] As it was, the later defeat of the government, and the advent of a minority Labour government, was to provide an opportunity for a temporary modus vivendi. Wheatley left the Chamberlain Act on the statute book, while at the same time through his own Act in 1924 he restored the local authorities to a central rôle in house production, albeit with rather reduced subsidies and standards compared to the Addison scheme. When the Conservatives returned to power shortly afterwards, they in turn left the Wheatley Act intact, accepting the necessity for public housing provision in the immediate future. At this stage, however, the two main parties were still far apart in their approach to the slum. Wheatley’s views could have been taken straight from any pre-war Progressive polemic, and in so far as colleagues such as Herbert Morrison departed from this, it was only to go further and advocate new towns.

Town planning and redevelopment Although the immediate priorities of the housing programme pushed town planning into the background, the context of reconstruction also favoured a wider review of urban futures. The best known product of this was the Unhealthy Areas Committee, but it is important to recognize that its work took place against the background of a larger debate. The committee itself summed up the issues in a generally agreed form:

31

Reconstruction: the pattern of the future

in view of the excess population in the crowded areas of London, it is clear that there are only two main alternatives before us by way of remedy. The one is to allow the population to expand vertically instead of horizontally; the other to remove a large part of it bodily elsewhere, re-arranging what is left on the old sites, but with adequate accommodation including the requisite open spaces.[24] The committee’s answer was to favour planned decentralization in which housing provision was linked to transport and to the location of industry. In this way, support could be given to “self contained garden cities”, and congestion relieved without a continuous spread of the builtup area. This solution, however, required major changes in current practice: control over transport, some means of influencing the location of industry, and a new local government and planning structure. Chamberlain went so far as to suggest that “if a Federal system were introduced into this country under which a Government were set up for London and its suburbs, that would be precisely the body I have in mind”.[25] At this stage, the decentralist approach was everywhere dominant in planning and fully reflected in such books as Aston Webb’s The London of the future (1921).[26] Moreover, it commanded a wide range of support cutting across party lines. The most notable exemplar of this in the reconstruction period was Herbert Morrison, the new leader of the London Labour Party. Morrison entered the fray at an early stage, when he presented the Labour view on reconstruction to the LCC in May 1918. The existing slum must go, “but what is of even greater importance is that new slums 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, to encourage the exodus outwards…and to plan a wide outer ring on garden city principles”. “We would build no more tenements…we would build new towns where possible, or garden suburbs where that was the best we could do”. If such a policy were carried out it would “reduce materially the human and industrial congestion of inner London, and bring down the price of land and the cost of public improvements”. [27] Planned decentralization meant an approach to the existing city which envisaged its long-term restructuring into a more orderly and less congested shape. There was to be no substantial redevelopment for an indefinite period, and slum clearance was opposed as it meant dense rebuilding in tenement form on sites which were often inappropriate in size or situation. However, it was necessary to begin immediately to shape the city towards its ultimate end. The Chamberlain Committee proposed to deal with slums through “improvement areas”, which would allow substantial blocks of property to be publicly acquired for later 32

Town planning and redevelopment

reconstruction, and in which the inhabitants could be trained up to match the standards of this future environment. Another important concept was the zoning of land uses. There was concern over congestion of population caused by the extension of industry into residential areas, which also pushed up site values. These effects could be prevented by the gradual separation of land uses into their own protected zones, determined by an overall town plan. Like the new-town proposals, these solutions had wide appeal, but they were difficult to bring into practice. Zoning raised the “compensation and betterment problem”, and the question of nonconforming industry. Worse still, for the immediate future, many of the slums which the LCC was tackling with clearance and rebuilding programmes lay in areas which planners thought should not be zoned for residential use. The predominant Labour view of existing cities also entailed a holding operation until decentralization had done its work and emphasized, as the Progressives had done, action to force landlords to keep their property in proper repair. One important exception to this, however, was Alfred Salter’s project in Bermondsey. According to Fenner Brockway The Salter plan for Bermondsey was breathtaking. It was nothing less than to demolish two-thirds of the Borough, and rebuild it as a garden city…. The only healthy and civilised policy in his view was to take half the people to the outskirts, linking them with their places of work by speedy and cheap transport, and to reconstruct for those who remained on the basis of cottages and gardens.[28] What distinguished Salter from other enthusiasts was his readiness to get on with the job and start bringing the garden suburb to Bermondsey immediately. He set up a Beautification Committee to carry out tree and flower 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 of tenements did nothing to remove congestion, and it created a highly undesirable building form. The Chamberlain Committee emphasized the social disadvantages of the flat. Even in the immediate post-war period, however, some support for tall flats could be found within the British utopian tradition. Thomas Collcutt planned a London of the future as a “city of pleasant places and no evil slums”. The author was an architect and former president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and his scheme has two interesting aspects. It was a project for rehousing slum dwellers, beginning with a site on the South Bank from County Hall to Waterloo Bridge, presently covered with wharves and warehouses. It 33

Reconstruction: the pattern of the future

would at the same time rectify a situation in which “the Thames in central London on one side takes rank with the most beautiful of city rivers, while on the other side it looks as ugly as a mean river in some dirty manufacturing town”. An embankment lined by public gardens would then be fronted by tall flats—ten storeys high at this point, which would rehouse the slum dwellers and contain all the usual accompaniments of ideal flat living—lifts, central heating and hot water, electricity and gas supply, and “the roofs would form splendid playgrounds for children”. The new flats would stand in marked contrast to Peabody Buildings which reflected “the narrow and un-Christian idea of humanity which seems to govern public bodies when they take in hand the housing of the working people”. [29] Collcutt’s scheme embraced the concept of the tall flat both as a beautiful building in a garden setting and as a locus for a merging of class distinctions. It resembled the case for planned decentralization in that the proposals depended on protecting residential areas from the pressures of urban economics. Most advocates of tall flats, however, saw them as a means 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 translation of Vers une architecture was published in 1927.[30] In Britain, Sir Martin Conway was the most prominent supporter of tall buildings and bête noire of the Chamberlain Committee. He drew inspiration from the United States and was mostly interested in skyscrapers as office blocks, but also commented on tall building as a solution to overcrowding. It was primarily an economic question but “far better to live under regular town conditions 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”. A massive extension of cities could “only be prevented by discouraging horizontal and encouraging vertical expansion”. Moreover, “if on an acre of slum land the miserable property was replaced by a high building, the people displaced could be accommodated and more open space provided.”[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 on reconstruction in 1921.[32] In these he made a case for planned redevelopment which would preserve existing urban densities and values. For him, the location of business was the key to the use and value of central-area land and the economics of its reorganization. He agreed that industrial penetration had contributed to slum formation by reducing housing accommodation and lowering residential quality, but added that “the resultant commercial sites are too often ill-shaped and difficult of 34

Town planning and redevelopment

access, and at the same time ill-placed in relation to surrounding dwellings”. He therefore favoured “the establishment of user zones such as have been laid down in New York”, but envisaged zoning as a framework within which more active redevelopment could take place, providing better industrial areas “in large blocks laid out in regular plots and provided with adequate means of access”. The key to this was largerscale redevelopment: wherever opportunity permits slum clearance schemes should be large schemes, their limits being determined with a view not merely to the removal of slums, the improvement of communications, and the provision of small public open space, but also to the provision of large regular plots for industrial users. Orr then attempted to show that planned redevelopment could reconcile healthy living with economic pressures, while also providing the cheapest way of dealing effectively with the mixture of industrial and residential uses. This involved public intervention: “the opportunity for increasing the value of the land by a combination of small plots, each incapable of economic development in itself, may never occur under private redevelopment. Here it will be in the public interest for the LCC to undertake clearance schemes and secure the benefit of enhancement of land values for the public purse”. The inadequate provision of open space could be rectified by the “substitution within the residential area of high for low buildings”. Within three miles of the centre these would be at least six storeys high and provided with lifts. Residential redevelopment had necessarily to be carried out at public expense, so to reduce the loss to a minimum we should house as many people as possible on the land and charge the highest rents we can get. There will then be the major gain in the shape of well-placed labour to set against the minimum loss due to the adoption of a user which is financially not the most favourable. The general conclusion of the public debate at this time was that, while there were no overriding aesthetic objections to high buildings, there was a strong town-planning case against them. Unwin and Mumford joined the fray, the former arguing that if high buildings were spaced so far apart as to allow light and air, and if the streets would be laid out of such widths as to carry their concentrated traffic without congestion, the total area covered would then be little if any 35

Reconstruction: the pattern of the future

less than that required to provide for the same community with buildings of normal height. A leader in the Architects Journal in 1924 concluded that “the vertical expansion theory has…been knocked on the head for ever. Lateral expansion, properly planned…is the only solution…. A large number of comparatively narrow streets rather than a few very wide ones is now the ideal aimed at by modern town planning”.[33] In practical terms, however, the arbiter of this early debate was not public or professional opinion but cost inflation, slump and the abandonment of the reconstruction programme. Although there were several important projects for tall flats (to be reviewed in Chapter 6), neither planned decentralization nor planned redevelopment were to re-emerge as important players until the mid1930s. The LCC decided it no longer needed a housing director, and Orr lost his post.

Notes 1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17

Orbach, L.F. 1977. Homes for heroes: a study of the evolution of British public housing 1915–1921. London: Seely Service; Swenarton, M. 1981. Homes fit for heroes: the politics and architecture of early state housing in Britain. London: Heinemann. Addison, C. 1922. The betrayal of the slums. London: Hubert Jenkins. MM 16 Feb. 1915. HC 16 Jan. (19) 1918. MM 15 Oct. 1918. HC 16 Jan. (19) 1918, 16 May (19) 1918. ibid., 10 July (8) 1918. MM 23 July (26) 1919, HC 23 Oct. (12) 1919. HC 19 Feb. (18) 1919. MM 18 Feb. (29) 1919, HC 5 Feb. (9) 1919. HC 19 Feb. (11) 1919, MM 19 Feb. (33) 1919. PRO HLG 47/699 Unfit houses and Unhealthy Areas. Ministry of Health, Unhealthy Areas Commitee, reports, March 1920, April 1921; Cherry, G. 1980. The place of Neville Chamberlain in British town planning. In Shaping an urban world, G. Cherry (ed.), 166–170. London: Mansell. Unhealthy Areas Committee, Final Report, 10. Englander, D. 1983. Landlord and tenant in urban Britain, 1838–1918. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Offer, A. 1981. Property and politics, 1870–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Daunton, M.J. 1984. Introduction. In Councillors and tenants: local authority

36

Notes

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

housing in English cities, 1919–39, M.J.Daunton (ed.), 1–35. Leicester: Leicester University Press. Hansard, 155 cols 1483–92, 7 July 1921, 155, cols 293–9, 13 June 1922,. Addison op. cit, 42. Cole, G.D. H. & M. Cole 1923. Rents, rings and houses, 11, 14. London: Labour Publishing. Estates Gazette 101, 1923, 17, 155, 555. Hansard 163, cols 303–8, 24 April 1923. ibid., col. 334. Unhealthy Areas Committee, Interim Report, 2–3. PRO HLG/101/258B Doc. 35. Webb, Sir A (ed.) 1921. The London of the future. London: T. Fisher Unwin. HC 15 May 1918 (20). Brockway, F. 1949. Bermondsey story: the life of Alfred Salter, 92. London: Allen & Unwin. Collcutt, T.E. 1921. London of the future, 24, 27, 36. London: Leonard Parsons. Le Corbusier 1923. Towards a new architecture., trans. 1927, reprinted 1989. London: Butterworth. Conway, Sir M. 1923. My view of high buildings. Architects Journal 57, 537; 58, 936. HC 19 April (5) 1921, 30 June (8) 1920. Unwin, R. 1924. High buildings in relation to town planning. Architects Journal 60, 487; 59, 4.

37

CHAPTER 4 Decentralization, reconditioning and slum clearance, 1923–33

The 1920s have often been presented as a period in which slums were neglected, and there is some truth in this, particularly if action against the slum is equated with slum clearance. Nonetheless, in many ways this is an interesting period of policy formation and practice, and one vital for an understanding of later developments. The chapter concentrates on three aspects: the progress of slum clearance, the connected attempts by Chamberlain to establish reconditioning as an alternative policy, and finally the efforts by progressives to adapt their position to the changing circumstances of the late 1920s, as pressures mounted to push the focus of local authority action towards poorer social groups. Greenwood’s Housing Act (1930) is seen as a compromise closely connected with this process of adaptation.

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 the LCC, and another 6,850 by those of the metropolitan boroughs. The remaining schemes were very scattered. Liverpool had schemes confirmed for 1,500 dwellings, but this was a low total in comparison with its pre-war activity. Many cities and smaller towns had a scheme which was locally important, but outside London there was no slum clearance programme, and some of the biggest cities such as Birmingham and Leeds had little or no action of this kind.[1] By mid-1929 the LCC programme was about half completed. This was the period that saw the greatest extent of suburban council 38

The vicissitudes of slum clearance

building for general supply. All the major cities built in considerable quantity: Liverpool had completed 19,000 dwellings by 1930, and large estates such as Norris Green were coming into being. London was no exception: the LCC used the Wheatley Act to continue to develop estates such as Becontree, which it had purchased in 1919, and added others such as Watling and St Helier. By 1930 it had completed 34,800 houses on these cottage estates.[2] All this activity does not concern us directly, except insofar as it contributed to the relief of housing pressures and was related to housing need rather than simply to ability to pay. This will be discussed later. Obviously, slum clearance was completely dwarfed in scale, but this was partly due to the fact that it ran into difficulties of its own. There was no sense of gathering momentum, on the contrary 70 of the 121 schemes had already been approved by March 1925. Whereas even at the height of financial constraint in 1921 the government was prepared to allocate £200,000 to meet annual clearance deficits, by 1930 the approved programme was estimated to involve a liability of only £100,000–130,000 a year.[3] This situation is explained by the problems that beset clearance schemes, as clearly exemplified in the London programme. Col. C. Levita was the most important housing chairman of the LCC in the Municipal Reform period, and it was during his tenure of office from 1922 to 1928 that most progress was made in the building of extensive suburban municipal estates in response to the Wheatley Act. It was an impressive achievement in which he took pride: The LCC…develops its estates well, whereas private enterprise in the past, and some municipalities, have given endless repetition of common place design…note the variety and charm of the layout, the preservation of natural features and country environment. For all that, Levita’s work took place in a context of relative theoretical orthodoxy. It was essential that “nothing should be done to hamper the production of houses for sale by the private builder. A clear line of demarcation, and of economy, can be preserved by reasonable limitation of size”. A surplus of vacant accommodation needed to be recreated, but “ultimately the economic law of supply and demand must fix rents”. Once restored this free market should not be sullied by handouts to individuals. He deprecated the fact that “many well-meaning persons glide into the formula of fixing rents on capacity to pay…in accordance with a system not practised outside poor relief”. Like many others in his party, he reacted strongly to “Poplarism”, fearing that generous grants for poor relief would be used as a means of obtaining votes. Similarly, he feared that permanently subsidized housing would “become a monopoly of the local authorities— 39

Decentralization, reconditioning and slum clearance, 1923–33

a potential corruption of municipal politics”. The “solution would lie in the compulsory vesting of completed municipal cottages in selected Trustees”.[4] Slum clearance was one municipal enterprise that Levita unequivocally supported. He showed strong personal interest in the environment and in matters of physical and moral health. A new classification of unhealthy areas was made in 1922 in which 6,283 properties were placed in the “most urgent” category, these housing some 40,000 people.[5] Levita set out vigorously to restore a clearance and rebuilding programme, personally selecting most of the sites. In addition to Brady Street three other schemes had already been declared, and nine more were added by 1929 to complete the programme already described. This was a respectable rate of progress by pre-war standards, but it fell well short of current ambitions. It reflected no lack of political will on the part of the LCC, but rather the ease with which large suburban programmes could be effected compared with the difficulties that emerged in the process of clearance and rebuilding. These difficulties were traditional ones: the rehousing of the tenants and the compensation of the owners. The details will be described in Chapters 5 and 6; here the concern is with the effects on the programme. Initially, rehousing was the principal problem. In 1922 officers advised on the “extraordinary difficulty of finding any sort of accommodation to which the tenants of old houses can be transferred, consequently the work of carrying out any scheme will in all probability be spread over a period of 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 county in preference to a few concentrated large schemes”.[7] A new, more economical 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 flows improved with new building, particularly after the purchase of a number of rehousing estates in inner London. The availability of land formerly occupied by a hospital at East Hill, Wandsworth, purchased in 1923, was thus important in facilitating clearance in Lambeth. Generally, there was some easing of rehousing pressures in the mid1920s, but just as this constraint seemed to be diminishing another emerged. The potential difficulties on compensation had become apparent in 1920, when at a public inquiry into the Bell Lane scheme, Stepney, the feeling that small owners would suffer undue hardship was “displayed to a marked degree”.[8] However, it took some time for the workings of the new Act to be realized in the settlement of claims. In November 1922 the first reports came of a large leasehold claim being disallowed at Brady Street, the entire compensation money having been absorbed in the 40

The vicissitudes of slum clearance

payment to the freeholder. A series of other cases of this kind began to emerge, and in 1924 the question of compensation was taken up by the London Property Owners Protection Association. Opposition mounted considerably in 1925, and about that time another front was opened up on trade disturbance and goodwill. It was not until 1927 that the position that neither was payable on unfit property was confirmed by all the legal processes, and in the meantime the settlement of trade claims was slowed considerably. Although much of the owners’ opposition was couched in terms of an inability of the procedures to distinguish properly between the true slum landlord and the rest, it inevitably spilled over into opposition to clearance itself. The view was expressed that “most of these defects seem capable of cure without the necessity of entirely clearing away the areas in which they exist”.[9] This feeling that reconditioning rather than clearance might provide a way out for the owners was reinforced by Chamberlain’s attempts in government to find a way of legislating f or the kind of proposals contained in the Unhealthy Areas Report. Indeed, in February 1926 he promised “in introducing new housing legislation to try to find some new basis of compensation”, partly justifying this on the grounds that “local authorities were rather shy of carrying out a scheme of compensation which they themselves thought was not fair”.[10] The fact that the government was known to be contemplating a revision of its clearance and compensation policies certainly did nothing to help the development of a sustained programme. Levita, however, was dismissive of reconditioning, and his frustrations at this time were reflected in an increasing attention to the clearance and rebuilding scheme at Ossulston Street in St Pancras, for which the architect had produced a plan for ninestorey tenement blocks. Although this never came to fruition, it represented a serious attempt to break out from an apparently remorseless cycle of low rental capacity and rebuilding standards towards the kind of modernity that had been envisaged by Orr. At the same time another important project for tall flats was proposed by the Municipal Reform Borough of Stepney. With the exception of Bermondsey, all the most notable projects in the 1920s were by Municipal Reform councils. St Marylebone, for instance, commissioned a team of architects to prepare a phased redevelopment of extensive parts of Lisson Grove, in which most of the borough’s slums were concentrated.[11] This presented considerable problems for the Labour Party in London, which like the Progressives wished to present itself as the party of municipal action. The dilemma was that London Labour Party policies required control of the LCC. The Labour strongholds in the boroughs, with the exception of Woolwich, were 41

Decentralization, reconditioning and slum clearance, 1923–33

already largely builtover. Here the only programme that could be offered was one of forcing landlords into repairs, although boroughs such as Poplar did initiate small-scale slum clearance and find sites for some limited extra building. “Bonnie Bermondsey” remained the Labour standard bearer, and Salter achieved some success when Wheatley sanctioned a clearance scheme at Salisbury Street where 151 houses occupied by 1,000 people were replaced by 52 cottages built by direct labour on the Wilson Grove Estate, opened in 1928. However, the whole Bermondsey project not only raised major intrinsic difficulties, but also encountered fierce political opposition which prevented its continuance. According to the LCC it would create not only hardship to…such persons who would have to be accommodated elsewhere, but an unnecessarily large burden on the community for the sake of the favoured few who would be housed in the cottages.[12] Ewart Culpin, architect of Wilson Grove, was a prominent new-town supporter and Labour spokesman on the LCC. The party made frequent visits to the Welwyn home of another leader Emil Davies, and in 1928 it was stated that “the Labour Party has definitely adopted the plan for the building of satellite towns and the preservation of a permanent belt of green country between the new towns and London”.[13] By this time, however, such projects had slipped well down the political agenda. There was growing recognition that the Bermondsey plans could not be carried through, and opposition to the tenement block and more conventional clearance gradually lessened to provide a way back to a position where Labour boroughs could take a more active rôle. There is little doubt that Morrison felt uncomfortable in this period of frustrated activity, which formed an essential stage on the road from his early “idealistic” stance towards the “realist” approach of his later years. By the late 1920s, difficulties over compensation had spread outside London to affect schemes in all parts of the country. In Leeds, the West Street scheme was delayed pending possible higher compensation for landlords, and in Liverpool the Queen Anne Street scheme was subject to a legal dispute on which judgment was not forthcoming until 1931.[14] In 1929 owners achieved some success in the “Derby case” in which a scheme was held invalid on the grounds that it did not contain sufficiently detailed proposals on the future use (and therefore the compensation standard) of the land. The ministry was unable to confirm new schemes, and matters were further held up by other court proceedings. It was

42

The vicissitudes of slum clearance

evident that the long-delayed Chamberlain proposals would now have to be forthcoming. Chamberlain was, however, able to take action in other spheres. The number of council houses rose rapidly to a peak in 1928, a year in which the total output of houses—239,000—was a record, and not to be exceeded until 1934. The private total, although always larger, had however peaked in 1926, and Chamberlain responded to this by cutting subsidies in September 1927. This he claimed would keep contract prices on a downward slope, and allow more houses to be supplied at economic rent. Further subsidy cuts were projected for September 1929, and councils were urged to concentrate on providing for lower-paid workers. The LCC responded to this in July 1928 by announcing a new type of housing: flats built in or near the central areas of London for relief of housing pressures, as opposed to rehousing after clearance. This new policy of central area flats involved the Municipal Reformers in considerable political risk. The sites available were mostly former middle-class properties where a large housing gain could be achieved. Sites of this type were to play an important part in future London housing. But the LCC’S own medical officer complained that “people living in good healthy houses are to be compulsorily displaced to make room for houses less in harmony with the neighbourhood”, while a councillor in Wandsworth thought it “an affront to every property owner here…to build workmens’ dwellings in the finest residential part of our suburb”. The advantage to the Municipal Reformers was that it enabled them to take council housing down market, and to reduce the commitment to the suburbs. In July 1929, they followed this up by announcing a new slum clearance programme to deal with between 25 and 30 areas in which 30,000 people lived.[15] The progressive approach was coming under increasing fire.

Chamberlain and reconditioning Throughout the latter part of the 1920s, it was understood that the government was contemplating new legislation on slum housing. In 1923, Chamberlain had expressed the intention of taking a fresh view, and an outline of new legislation was ready by the end of 1925. Four years later, the expected legislation had not yet materialized, and when another outline was presented to the Cabinet before the 1929 election campaign, the proposals had not greatly advanced. Chamberlain’s project is thus of interest from several points of view. It presented a policy distinct from that of clearance and rebuilding. It caused a faltering of clearance activities in the late 1920s when they might have been expected to gather pace. 43

Decentralization, reconditioning and slum clearance, 1923–33

And the factors that prevented its adoption, despite such powerful patronage, are important in understanding why practice was to take another course. In January 1926, the Cabinet considered two different proposals regarding slum prevention and rural housing, both of which incorporated the notion of reconditioning, but in quite different form. For rural housing, it was proposed to make loans and grants available to landlords for reconditioning in return for a period of control over rents. Chamberlain argued that the benefit would thus go to the tenant, but it offered “a splendid chance to the owners of poor cottage property to get rid of the menace that had been hanging over them, and the reproach that they lay under as bad landlords”.[16] As Wilding recognized, a rural context offered the strongest possible grounds for such proposals. Agricultural wages and rents were low, both landlords and tenants had a relatively favourable image compared with their urban counterparts and, Chamberlain argued, “it would be something like an act of vandalism if we were to destroy these remainders of an older and more picturesque world”.[17] Yet these proposals ran into major opposition, both within the Cabinet and from political opponents. One main question was put—why do you propose to use public money to induce landlords to do what they ought to do themselves without public assistance? Churchill, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, opposed a subsidy that would interfere with the normal workings of the market. He emphasized the “great evils that had followed the Rent Restrictions Acts which had placed housebuilding on an uneconomic basis. The present scheme would perpetuate some of the evils of that system.” In his view, it was better to put public money into new housing because this would act on the housing shortage, and “multiplication of houses would depreciate the value of existing ones and would increasingly tend to make owners put their own houses in proper repair”.[18] Chamberlain eventually got his Bill through as the Housing (Rural Workers) Act 1926, but faced with such difficulties how was it possible to contemplate reconditioning in urban areas? The problem, evidently, did not lie mainly in an assessment of the condition of dwellings: politicians and the public were quite prepared to accept that there were houses that might be improved, as well as those that should be cleared. There was, of course, a question of priorities, nonetheless the principal problem concerned the question of who should pay, and how this would react on the rest of the housing market. In fact, the “slum prevention” proposals for urban areas met with general acceptance from the Cabinet in 1926, because they could be presented as an intervention outside of and separate from normal housing economics. These proposals remained, 44

Chamberlain and reconditioning

however, very much in outline form, and the difficulties they presented were kept largely hidden from view. Much the same might be said of the more elaborate 1929 memorandum, although this was to form the basis of the housing section of the Conservative manifesto. The Chamberlain scheme was developed from the Unhealthy Areas Committee proposals. Councils would compulsorily purchase blocks of property for reconditioning, but now they were to cede control to a special commission which would be responsible for the management of the houses. In the 1929 version, the “slum prevention” proposals were to operate alongside slum clearance, and both were to be encouraged by a higher level of subsidy. It was argued, however, that “slum clearance being necessarily slow, tedious and costly, and presenting even when completed no very striking and attractive picture, is in the nature of things never likely to be very popular among local authorities”.[19] No doubt Chamberlain concurred with the views expressed by F.E. Fremantle, a close associate at this time: we may be compelled to build yet more blocks of five and even an occasional block of ten storeys in expiation of last century’s errors. … But within the next half century it seems not improbable that such buildings will be looked upon as atrocities, and denounced as vertical slums.[20] Slum clearance would therefore have a limited rôle, whereas the slum prevention proposals were meant to deal with “extensive areas”. In these, a more systematic reconditioning could be carried out than was achieved through enforcement notices. Chamberlain emphasized, “it must be remembered that at the root of the slum problem lies the question of management.” This had often led in the past to “carelessness and destructiveness on the part of slum tenants, followed by deterioration of property, and the lowering of the general standards of the neighbourhood”.[21] In turn, faulty management was linked to “the fact that the ownership of such property in the dark places of our large towns is divided up to a bewildering extent”.[22] Instead, it was necessary that “over a really considerable area there should be a uniform system of management, at once firm and sympathetic, which may raise the whole tone and atmosphere of the neighbourhood and convert slum tenants into self respecting and careful householders”. Local authorities were not to be entrusted with this task. That would mean “an enormous addition to the number of municipal tenants”, and it was essential for their “material and moral welfare” that such tenants be removed from “political exploitation”.[23] According to the Estates Gazette, they were to be “relieved 45

Decentralization, reconditioning and slum clearance, 1923–33

from that electoral pressure which has had such unhappy consequences in certain poor law areas”.[24] Instead, a commission would manage the property through women house managers operating on Octavia Hill lines. There would be limited reconditioning but, more importantly, “an attempt to deal with the human problem by the education of the tenant to a higher standard”.[25] The Chamberlain scheme relied enormously on this management factor. Aimed at the poorest tenants, it necessarily involved some of the oldest and poorest houses. There was a danger that, without considerably more improvement than was envisaged under the Octavia Hill system, commissions would be left holding property that was far from commendable. This was all the more likely in that there seemed to be no concurrent proposals for the relief of overcrowding. It was still envisaged that ultimately the areas would be redeveloped, if only because this was a necessary device to reduce the purchase price. Otherwise, the “slum prevention” proposals had now become much more detached from any planned decentralization. This, and the more hostile attitude to local authorities, were the principal changes from the Unhealthy Areas Report. Whatever the efficacy of “slum prevention”, it also raised serious problems with the owners. They were looking to Chamberlain for relief on the subject of compensation, and it was from this angle that he drew much support. The existing compensation code favoured clearance rather than improvement, being based on the principle that houses could be condemned as unfit for habitation. Moreover, this formed a clear basis for compulsory acquisition. It was more difficult to draw up provisions where buildings continued in use, yet this seemed to be essential to the economics of the scheme. The 1929 plans were to be based on the scheme outlined in the Unhealthy Areas Report, which had suggested market value compensation, reduced to about one half by giving the buildings a life of ten years. Commenting on this, Gibbon remarked that “the man who has been fobbed off with half market value and sees the local authority still using the property for the same purpose…may not unreasonably cry out that he has been the victim of confiscation”.[26] The criteria for establishing improvement areas would certainly not have been easy to establish in practice, and equally it would have been difficult to separate “improvement” and “clearance areas”. Any radical change in compensation might undermine the financial basis of rebuilding, and once let go it would be unlikely that such terms could be re-established. These were weighty issues and explain why no proposals were forthcoming before the 1929 elections, and why even then much flesh needed to be put on the bones. In the event, it was the Labour Party that formed the new government and adopted a different line, but all the 46

Chamberlain and reconditioning

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

Decentralization and the Greenwood Act By the late 1920s, the dominance of progressive policies was being challenged. On the one hand, there was a view that the edge was being taken off the housing shortage, and that subsidies should be lowered to allow private enterprise to push down market. On the other hand, there was also a view that more direct action should be taken against the slums, so that the progressive push to the suburbs threatened to be squeezed between these positions. The London Labour Party, as inheritor of the Progressive tradition, contributed little in defence, although a small London element was retained through Booth’s old lieutenant LlewellynSmith who continued to support a suburban solution in the New survey of London life and labour. Outside London, the progressive case remained much stronger, both within and without the Labour Party. Its strongest defence, and attempt to adapt it to new circumstances, came from E.D. Simon, the Liberal spokesman and former chairman of the Manchester Housing Committee. Progressive doctrine had held that housing need was not confined to the slums, especially if the latter were defined by the criteria of the slum clearance legislation. Overcrowding, in particular, was more widely spread, and Llewellyn-Smith f ound some support for this in his survey of new LCC tenants 1918–29. He compared the inhabitants of the cottage estates with those of the “block” estates, the latter containing a large proportion of slum clearance tenants. The median income of the chief earner on the cottage estates, at 75s. per week, was much above that in the block estates at 60s. 6d. He went on, however, to discuss “the curious fact that the families moving into the cottage estates were living previously under conditions of greater crowding than the tenants of block dwellings”. The cottage estate tenants had been living at an average of 1.92 persons per room, and 65 per cent of them at more than two per room. He drew the conclusion that since of all housing defects overcrowding is admittedly the most serious, the cottage estates appear to be vindicated as an essential element in the solution of the housing problem. They have provided an outlet for numerous families who, while ready and able to afford better homes at a distance, had hitherto been condemned by the shortage to live under conditions of serious congestion.[27] 47

Decentralization, reconditioning and slum clearance, 1923–33

Simon, in his prolific writings, stressed that “merely to meet the economic demand of those who are prepared to pay economic rents for houses is no solution of the housing problem”. He held to two basic tenets of progressivism: the stress on overcrowding, and hence on housing supply, and an insistence on high standards. He took pride in post-war workingclass houses and thought that “if we can continue building houses of this standard until every family could live in a house of this sort, we shall have dealt finally and satisfactorily with the housing problem.” However, he was equally clear that new methods were needed to advance this levellingup process, since “we are well on the way to solving the housing problem so far as the clerk and artisan are concerned. But we have done nothing for the poorer workers.” His solution was to embrace firmly subsidies, and to use them in a more directed manner so as to provide lower-paid workers with suburban houses at below 10s. per week rental. One way of doing this was to use a system of child allowances, and he also supported rate relief, within a framework of regulated rents.[28] Simon did not approve of Chamberlain’s slum policies, but looked back favourably on Manchester’s pre-war attempts to enforce improvements on landlords at their own expense. Houses had deteriorated since the war because such policies had fallen into abeyance in the housing shortage. The ultimate solution was rebuilding, but for the moment this should be confined to the worst cases. Indeed, “one of the real difficulties in dealing effectively with the slum problem was the popularity of the phrase ‘slum clearance’”. The slum was “not…principally a problem of destroying bad houses but rather a problem of building good ones”. “The only way to deal with the slum problem is to build new houses of good standard, and under such conditions that the slum dweller can afford to live in them. When that has been done, there will be little difficulty in pulling down the slum”.[29] There was, however, now an important locational problem for the progressives to f ace. At the turn of the century they had accepted that the poor could not be moved out of the inner city, but argued that there were plenty of others who could. Working with the grain of the market they could achieve more than working against it. The effects of suburbanization on the inner city were presented as benign, because competition would force qualitative improvements on the landlords as well as better space standards. By the late 1920s such a wholly beneficial scenario seemed much less plausible. Arguably, inner city landlords were still protected from competition, but certainly any improvement in housing quality seemed further off than ever. It seemed likely that going with the market and digging down yet deeper into the class strata would leave a poorer population that would make such improvement even more difficult. 48

Decentralization and the Greenwood Act

Equally, moving the poorer sections of the population to the suburbs remained problematic. Greenwood, in 1925, had spelt out some of the difficulties. A product of “a century of decay and neglect”, “the slum is not a mere excrescence which can be cut away by a simple surgical operation. It is an institution which has become firmly rooted and worked its way into the life of every town.” It affected not only house owners and employers but, for example, “the religious community which would lose its membership if the slum population were dispersed.” Above all, for the inhabitants themselves, “all their interests, their friends and relatives are centred in it or in the contiguous districts, while the wage earners are often employed near at hand.”[30] There were difficult problems of economic and social adjustment, particularly if resources allowed poor command over transport. Simon acknowledged these points, but argued that the main factor was financial, and this could be solved more easily in the suburbs than in situ. Cases of difficulties in the outmovement of slum clearance tenants at Hulme (1925) and Stockton (1927) (to be discussed in Chapter 6) did not solve the debate, since both brought big jumps in rent. Moreover, that kind of displacement involved a large element of compulsion. One great advantage of slum clearance, however, was that it could provide rebuilding sites in the inner city, allowing many inhabitants to be rehoused in their old districts, and if tenements were admitted this proportion could be large. In 1929 the return of a Labour Government with Liberal support gave the 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 council housing eff ort in the suburbs, promoted by the continuance of the Wheatley subsidy at existing levels despite lower building costs, and by requiring councils to draw up a quinquennial plan to meet their housing needs. The third prong was to be town planning. Originally, Greenwood intended to prepare a Housing and Town Planning Bill, but he took advice to separate the two. In later introducing the Town Planning Bill he took pains to reconnect the themes: “the planning of built areas is a necessary corollary of any legislation designed to make a definite attack upon the slums… areas which are cleared of slum property should be developed on sound, sane and economical lines, and in the rehousing…the local authorities should act upon a definite plan”.[31] Generally, his town planning poli cies were decentralist in tone and akin to the Chamberlain view. In all, two of Greenwood’s prongs were firmly in the progressive tradition. The third, slum clearance, was not, but even there Greenwood was to include a number of progressive themes.

49

Decentralization, reconditioning and slum clearance, 1923–33

Ministry civil servants were still firmly wedded to the Chamberlain approach to the slum. Greenwood was advised that the cost of slum clearance on any extensive scale was “really prohibitive and certainly out of all proportion to the benefits obtained in the number of slum dwellers rehoused and the amount of overcrowding abated”. He thus had little difficulty in seeking to minimize public expenditure by emphasizing the responsibility of the landlord for dealing with slum conditions. Two possibilities were put forward. The first, a pooling arrangement under which owners would be made jointly responsible for financing rebuilding, was thought impracticable. The second was to try a “clearance and demolition procedure only”. This was “a very attractive proposal” which might be made to work, although local authorities thought it “so drastic as to be likely to defeat the object of getting on with slum clearance”.[32] Greenwood defended such provisions as “frankly designed to enable local authorities…to secure the removal of a bad slum without being obliged to incur enormous capital expenditure”.[33] This procedure was an important part of the Bill, but it only made sense in terms of an overall strategy of decentralization. Local authorities would have to rehouse the displaced, and the future use of the cleared sites was problematic. Civil servants considered that “a considerable amount of derelict property, worthless except for site value would be left in the hands of private owners. There is little doubt, however, that the private market would quickly take advantage of the situation and find the proper use for the sites”, subject to any planning that the local authorities might be empowered to enforce.[34] In reality, however, owners would be placed in very varying situations. In some cases, especially on small sites, there might be no practicable use for the land, the owners would receive no compensation, and the site remain unused. In other cases, land might be redeveloped for commercial uses at substantial advantage to the owner, with all the restrictions of the Rent Acts removed. It was noted that the existing type of clearance scheme would “still be necessary in some cases, and probably generally in London, where rehousing on the cleared slum areas is considered necessary”.[35] The constraints of capital expenditure on slum clearance were also the major factor in considerations of compensation. Here, Greenwood’s approach can be seen mainly as a defence of the settlement of 1919. The central principle of site-value compensation for unfit housing was re tained. More surprisingly, there was to be no reapportionment between the various interests, and although provisions were made for trade disturbance, they were left to the discretion of the local authority. The reduction factor was retained. At one level Greenwood simply rejected the owners’ demands: “there may be here and there a hard case, there are 50

Decentralization and the Greenwood Act

hundreds of thousands of hard cases of slum tenants with whom I am more concerned”.[36] However, some concessions were made on procedure which might exclude more houses from the unfit category: clearance areas were to be more tightly drawn, with greater flexibility as to the number of houses each contained, and more formally separated from 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 and scattered clearance schemes rather than very extensive areas of land for rebuilding. Greenwood saw the slum problem as primarily one of rehousing, and the centrepiece of his Bill was therefore the provision of rehousing subsidies. Chamberlain had already envisaged increasing the government proportion of costs from half to two thirds, a measure thought necessary to stimulate local authority action. Civil servants, however, put up considerable resistance to the Greenwood proposals on two grounds. The first was that the higher level of subsidies was explicitly linked to a desire to reduce rents. It was argued that “artificial reductions in rent in the interests of low-paid wage earners would tend to reduce the standards of rents generally, thus casting an unnecessary burden on the community.” The proposed rent allowance would be “almost undisguisedly a subsidy in aid of wages”, and “to subsidize the wages of a portion of the poor seems indefensible, especially if the only criteria…is to be residence in a slum followed by residence in a local authority house”. However, it was accepted that the type of rebuilding could be “very little different from the ordinary non-parlour houses built by local authorities”, therefore subsidies had to be accepted as a necessary part of the Bill. Probably half the displaced slum tenants would require an extra subsidy, the state meeting two-thirds of the estimated deficit on each person displaced and rehoused. This gave rise to a second, linked problem in the Civil Service view—“that local authorities should differentiate between tenants of what must in the main be very much the same class of house according to the ability of the tenant to pay.” It was a difficulty that might be overcome by flexibility, leaving “as much freedom as possible to the local authorities”. Differential rents were not to be imposed. Moreover, “it is not intended that the grant be dependent on the actual individuals displaced being given accommodation in the new house”.[37] The Bill was explicitly formulated in terms of a norm of suburban housing and, perhaps for the first time in such legislation, London was treated as a special case apart from the main problem. Greenwood was not a London MP, the LCC were in the hands of the opposition and although he consulted them, a larger part was played by the Association of 51

Decentralization, reconditioning and slum clearance, 1923–33

Municipal Corporations, led by Miles Mitchell of Manchester. The main reason for this approach, however, was simply that London was the most intractable area to a decentralist approach and was therefore set apart as a special case. At a conference attended by LCC leaders in March 1930, Greenwood dealt with the case of which London was the most outstanding example, but which also occurred in Liverpool and might arise elsewhere. He distinctly did not encourage rehousing on the cleared site, the land was very expensive and each case must be sanctioned by the Ministry. Housing would have to be in tenement or block dwellings of four or five storeys high. In cases where the Minister was satisfied that rehousing was necessary on site, he was prepared to offer an additional sum per head.[38] This amounted to 25s in addition to the basic subsidy of £2 5s, and it was the first time in which such an explicit subsidy for expensive land entered into legislation. The final part of the Bill made provisions for Improvement Areas. These, on the one hand, provided a counter-model to Chamberlain’s approach to the same question. They were “the only scientific form of reconditioning”. The local authorities would declare such areas, deal with overcrowding and environmental improvement and then “say to the landlord…you must put this house into repair…and you must not overcrowd it any more”.[39] On the other hand, Improvement Areas were also connected with another of Greenwood’s concerns: I suppose it is clear that local authorities who provide additional houses to cream off the surplus population in the semi-slum will be eligible for the slum grant…we discussed the case of middle-class houses now sheltering three or perhaps more families…which might be alright for two families…this sort of case should be covered.[40] The problem here was how to define overcrowding, and how to attach the extra subsidies to a specific group of the population. Dealing with Improvement Areas was a convenient way of doing this, just as slum clearance areas allowed extra subsidies to be attached to a particular group. Greenwood’s Act was therefore a compromise, but a compromise which attempted to deal more directly with the slum, while preserving as much as possible of the decentralist case, and continuing to place much of the onus of responsibility on the landlord. It did not satisfy purists such as 52

Decentralization and the Greenwood Act

Wheatley, for whom it was another example of “short rations of my socialism from the present Government”. The slum was “a recurring factor and it will go on as long as we set aside for a particular section of the community an inferior quality of housing accommodation”. This would inevitably be the result of the new proposals. On the other hand, an emphasis on the gradual levelling up to a classless standard for everyone meant taking an apparently hard-nosed attitude to the poor that curiously 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 a voice in the matter… it seems to me that the slum dwellers are to get all the houses and other people will not get them unless they pass through the slum.”[41] The potential effects of Greenwood’s legislation were shown in the quinquennial plans drawn up by the local authorities. As in all such exercises a great deal of optimism was displayed, as well as much variation in approach, but the figures do provide some very general indications. Slum clearance was projected to displace about 472,000 people in the urban areas. The “big five” outside London—Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield—planned to displace 86,130 between them. They were to build 49,950 houses under the Wheatley Act and 20,300 under the Greenwood.[42] The LCC promised to complete its existing clearance schemes, and to take on a further 27 areas containing 30,000 people. This was essentially the November 1929 list now programmed more tightly. Improvement Area procedures were to be tested, and building continued on central block estates. However, the council refused to consider the type of sites used in the central flat programme for slum dwellers as they “mainly consisted of houses standing in large gardens situated in districts of good residential character”.[43] It was thus forced to conclude that there were insufficient sites within the county to enable the council to accelerate its clearance programme. One third of the clearance rehousing was likely to be provided 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 the suburban estates, with 14,000 new houses at Becontree and St Helier, and 11,700 on new sites. This was the easiest and most cost-effective way of providing a much increased hous ing programme. With the onset of the financial crisis, it was a programme never to be completed. The year 1931 saw a disastrous performance by Labour in the polls following the formation of the National Government. In London they lost further ground on the LCC, and in the later borough elections were reduced to the three core riverside boroughs of Bermondsey, 53

Decentralization, reconditioning and slum clearance, 1923–33

Deptford and Poplar. It was at these borough elections that Labour first put forward the idea that in time London will have to be redeveloped and replanned, and already this problem presses in the older and more congested London boroughs…. By big slum clearance schemes and redevelopment over wide areas of London we can gradually make a new and finer London from the old.[44] For the moment, however, their opponents were in charge. The new LCC Housing Chairman, H.R. Selley, was a leading member of the Property Owners Protection Association and his views on the municipal rôle were in marked contrast to those of the Labour Party: municipalities should erect homes for those of low earning capacity and many whose families had to be assisted by the poor law. This was the class which the municipality should house, educate them to become clean, self-reliant and less troublesome tenants.[45] Although Selley’s views were in abstract similar to those of Levita, they lacked the latter’s patrician colouring, more closely representing local Conservative politics and the views of local residents or ratepayers associations. Among these bodies, longstanding opposition to municipal schemes or interference with property owners was strengthened by the prospect of increased activity under the Labour Government, then legitimized by the economies that were thought necessary thereafter. In October 1932, the Report of the Committee on Local Government Expenditure (Ray Committee) seemed to endorse such an approach, arguing that the better-off tenants in council properties should either pay higher rents, buy their houses, or vacate the property. This report was of special 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 the Wheatley Acts and a return to the pre-war position in which “the normal provision of working-class houses (by whomsoever undertaken) should cease to be a charge on either the taxpayer or the ratepayer”. The 1930 Act subsidies should also be reduced in line with lower costs and, in order to create a freer housing market, the Rent Restrictions Acts should be repealed. The Ray Committee also made important recommendations on poor relief, calling for the “almost complete removal of the whole problem from the sphere of both local and national politics”, which would lead to “substantial reductions in expenditure”. There was “a grave danger of a permanent pauper class growing up, marrying and rearing families at the 54

Decentralization and the Greenwood Act

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

Notes 1 2

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Ministry of Health. Annual reports esp. 12th Report, 1931, Cmnd 3937. The general council housing programme is treated in Bowley, M. 1945. Housing and the state, 1914–1944. London: Allen & Unwin; Burnett, J. 1978. A social history of housing, 1815–1985, 2nd edn. London: Methuen; and Jennings, J.H. 1971. Geographical implications of the municipal housing programme in England and Wales 1919–1937, Urban Studies 8, 121–38. Ministry of Health. 12th Report op. cit. Levita, C. 1928. Housing. Municipal Reform election pamphlet. Guildhall Library LMS 78, 20, 25–6, 35–6. HC 6 Dec (7) 1922. ibid., 5 April (20) 1922. ibid., 6 June (3 xxiii) 1923. ibid., 15 Dec. (6) 1920. Estates Gazette 105, 1925, 190, 199. Report of Property Owners’ Protection Association meeting. Estates Gazette 107, 1926, 331. St Marylebone Borough Council, minutes, 15 July 1926. MM 12 April (31) 1927. GLRO London Labour Party ECD 3237. 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. HC 24 Oct. (55) 1928; London News Feb. 1930; MM 23 July (8) 1929. 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 University of Manchester. Hansard 198, cols. 2841–2, 3 August 1926. PRO CAB 27309 op. cit. PRO CAB 24/202 CP 100 (29). Fremantle, F.E. 1927. The housing of the nation, 88. London: Philip Allen. PRO CAB 24/202 op. cit. Chamberlain, N. 1927. Introduction. In Fremantle op. cit, x–xi. PRO CAB 24/202 op. cit. Estates Gazette 107, Jan. 1926, 159. PRO CAB 24/202 op. cit. PRO HLG/47/700 memo by Gibbon 13 May 1921.

55

Decentralization, reconditioning and slum clearance, 1923–33

27 28 29

30 31

32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

Llewellyn-Smith, Sir H.L. 1931 New survey of london life and labour, London: P.S. King, Vol. 6, 213, 215. 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. Simon, E.D., 1930. Slum clearance. Nineteenth century and After 107, 331; How to abolish the slums, 3; Simon E.D. op. cit., 1928. The need for a Royal Commission on housing. Contemporary Review 133, 20. Greenwood, A. 1925. The problem of the slums. Contemporary Review 127, 441. 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. PRO HLG 29/170 Housing Bill 1930 memo by Gibbon 19 July 1929; by Forber 30 July 1929. Hansard 237 col. 1811, 7 April 1930. PRO HLG/170 note 19 July 1929. ibid. Hansard 237 col. 1817, 7 April 1930. PRO HLG/170 memo 9 July 1929; memo 25 Oct. 1929; parliamentary counsel 26.9.29 6b. HC 26 March (12–15) 1930. Hansard 237 col. 1814, 7 April 1930. PRO HLG 29/170 Minister’s minute. Hansard 237 cols 2035, 2013–14, 2020, 7 April 1930. Ministry of Health 1931. 12th Annual Report, Cmnd 3937, appendix 5. HC 16 Oct. (11)1930. GLRO, London Labour Party, ECD 4686. Estates Gazette 109, 1927, 331. Report of the Committee on Local Expenditure 1932. Cmnd 4200.

56

CHAPTER 5 Money matters: property values, compensation and housing costs Property and finance are at the heart of the question of slum housing and its politics, but they pose complex questions, not easy to discuss. A series of boxes needs to be opened out, increasing in their implications and generally in the uncertainty of the conclusions that can be reached about their contents. The first box concerns the slum clearance compensation code, its effect on various property interests and on the cost of housing sites. The second concerns the wider array of measures designed to keep houses in proper repair and to enforce standards. The third concerns the property market generally, and particularly its relations with the factors in the two other boxes. The narrower effects on property of slum clearance, for instance, might be judged by relating compensation payments to market values, but was the whole market affected by the compensation code or by wider sanitary provisions? How was the property market at its lower levels affected by such matters as the Rent Acts and suburbanization? The approach adopted is to deal in this chapter with the compensation code and its politics, and to raise some of the general issues relating the themes of the book to the property market. The first section concentrates on a factual presentation, and this is f ollowed by a wider discussion. Some treatment of the question of repairs and improvement and an updating on the 1930s is 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 and the effects on the cost of housing sites for rebuilding are the three linked factors which dominate the compensation question. The provisions of the 1919 Act worked on the principle that housing judged unfit for human 57

Money matters: property values, compensation and housing costs

habitation had no value other than that of the site and of the materials of the building. This sounds drastic, but the theory of valuation held (and still holds) that as a property deteriorates with age its value gradually reverts to that of its site. However, theory might not correspond with practice, depending on the condition of the market, the nature of the site and the nature of the houses included in a scheme. Moreover, the Act also made another important change by including a reduction factor to eliminate any commercial values higher than the value of the site for housing purposes. Finally, the various interests in property were affected very differently, with major consequences for leaseholders and traders. The reduction factor only applied where the land was reused for housing purposes, and a council could therefore avoid its use altogether if it chose to do so. The reduction particularly affected property well situated for commercial purposes, and generally that near the centre of cities. It was in London that the reduction factor had its greatest impact, since commercial values were greatest there, and clearance sites had to be substantially used for rehousing. The possible impact is shown by ministry calculations that in the 1890s Boundary Street scheme a 53 per cent reduction would have been necessary to lower the commercial value of the site to the value for housing alone.[1] However, the reduction factor was difficult to calculate, and easy to manipulate for administrative convenience, so that from the beginning its use was softened in response to pressure from the owners. The LCC agreed with the ministry not to press the reduction factor too hard. At Basing Place, Camberwell, it was claimed that the proper reduction factor was 36 per cent, but the LCC had used only 10 per cent.[2] A figure of about 20 per cent was more usual in LCC schemes, ranging up to 30 or even 40 per cent for the most central sites. There is no reason why the market value of a property considered as a site should be related precisely to its market value when sold at auction. In the compensation for unfit houses, properties were valued by the square foot, taking into account area and the nature of the frontages. At auction, the level of existing rents was a primary factor. Calculations based on rentals do, however, provide some standard of comparison. Figures taken from LCC papers relating to three early schemes suggest that the years purchase of the gross rental of condemned freehold property varied from 0.94 to 3.69 years, averaging about 2.0. Half the cases were settled at 1.7 to 2.3 years purchase.[3] Compared with a mean of 8.96 years purchase for the gross rental of condemned residential property at Boundary Street this shows a substantial reduction. However, a great deal had been happening to general property values since the mid-1890s, and a comparison also needs to be made with current market valuations. Table 5.1 shows the 58

Prices, compensation and housing costs

gross rentals, purchase prices and years purchase of freehold properties in weekly tenancy from two groups of locations. The first, in Bermondsey, Bethnal Green and Stepney, represents the core areas for slum property and clearance action. The second, in Battersea, Fulham and Peckham, represents areas more recently built and little affected by clearance in the inter-war period, while still containing much working-class property.[4] Table 5.1 Freehold rents and auction prices in London, 1892–1925

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.

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 therefore the compensation value of unfit property in terms of years purchase was a little under half the market rate for working-class property as a whole. At Boundary Street condemned houses had been purchased at some 70 per cent of the years purchase of freehold weekly property in Bethnal Green, then about 12.70. Special slum clearance compensation, therefore, had its effect, but the key movement in property values was widely spread affecting weekly tenancies generally rather than slum properties in particular. The larger part of the decrease occurred between the middle 1890s and 1911–13, years purchase in the “core” areas being then reduced by half. This is fully in line with Offer’s findings, as one would expect since the calculations are made from much the same data.[5] Afterwards, there was 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 cent increase in rents allowed by the government from 1920. The general decline in property values was an important factor in the 59

Money matters: property values, compensation and housing costs

politics of compensation. Owners often compared their compensation money with their purchase price. When offered, say, £70 for a property that had cost £300, the greater part of the difference was due to the general shift in the market, but the case could be presented as a spectacular example of “confiscation” under the site-value provisions. Slum clearance intervened to make the decline in capital value real, and to exclude any possible rebound if the Rent Acts were further relaxed. Site-value compensation thus compounded changes in the market, and where the reduction factor was important, owners could lose a good deal if their purchase price had taken account of the potential commercial value. In seven freehold claims reported at Carlisle Street (St Marylebone), mortgages of some £2,240 were outstanding while the compensation offered totalled £940. This was despite the fact that the reduction factor was 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 the original LCC proposals, it did not terminate existing contracts and apportion the values. Instead, where property was leased, the ground rent had first claim on the value of the site, the leaseholder receiving only that which was left over, if anything. The ground landlord was therefore the principal beneficiary of the way in which the Acts were applied, although the extent to which the market value of ground rents was recovered would vary according to the length of lease and the operation of the reduction factor. The leaseholders were among the principal losers, and their cases make up a large proportion of those to whom the owners’ representatives gave prominence. Two important judgments which established the legality of the procedures were those of Gardbaum and Lithman. Mrs Gardbaum 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 for the superior interests, which were awarded £770 and Mrs Gardbaum £44. Two years later she died insolvent in Germany.[7] Lithman had a 60 year lease on 41 houses at Ellen Street (Stepney). He claimed to have bought his lease for £5,500 and to have a net income of £500 a year, which if correct was almost twice the annual income accruing to the ground landlord from the £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 to have no value. He had an outstanding mortgageof £1,000.[8] In most slum clearance areas such leases as still existed usually had only a relatively short time to run and low capital value. Trading and business interests, however, had a much greater financial stake, and their treatment had an important effect on the overall cost of schemes, since shops and 60

Prices, compensation and housing costs

businesses of various kinds often lay adjacent to, or mixed with, slum housing. If property was condemned, then considerable losses were possible under the site-value and reduction factor provisions. Businesses that held a lease might suffer in the same way as other leaseholders. In all cases, business usages might be affected by the loss of compensation usually paid for “goodwill” and disturbance. This was established in law by the Northwood case, which involved a public house. The arbitrator awarded £200 for a leasehold interest, but nothing for trade disturbance or goodwill. The LCC calculated that this decision saved them £15,000 on the Brady Street site alone.[9] The extent of the loss to individual usages can be seen from the treatment of the “blue” premises, which escaped condemnation but were included in a scheme as “added lands”. Business users here were granted 1.5 to 2 years profits f or goodwill and disturbance, which amounted in the case of small shopkeepers to some £300-£600. Traders had often paid such a sum in the purchase of their business, and would need to do so again to re-establish themselves. Even when the LCC erected shops in the redevelopment, often the rents of these new premises were beyond the capacity to pay of the old traders. Two examples illustrate these points. Miss E. Eyre had a newsagent, tobacconist and confectioners shop at Ware Street (Shoreditch), and had paid £600 to take up the business eight years previously. After clearance she moved to premises at an extra rent of 8s. a week and the purchase money on the new business was £300. She was granted £100 ex gratia payment.[10] Joseph Katz, a shopkeeper to be displaced at Ossulston Street (St Pancras), wrote to the council: the new shop you offer me will cost three times the rent of the old one, with no cellar accommodation…a position outside the market, and the practical certainty of failure which will mean all the years I have spent building up my goodwill and living are absolutely wasted.[11] As it was particularly important for traders to have their premises placed in the blue category, a more flexible approach to this categorization was one of the main ways in which the compensation question could be eased by administrative procedures. On the residential side, too, the exclusion of more properties from condemnation was the principal demand of the owners. Their organizations wanted explicit recognition of a type of house that 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 61

Money matters: property values, compensation and housing costs

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 premises in the same area cost £2,200; a cabinet factory at Ware Street £4,000, and two shops let on lease at Bell Lane £3,570.[12] The ultimate effect of these factors on the cost of the first seven post-war clearance schemes in London is set out in Table 5.2. Comparable figures for Boundary Street and Tabard Street are also given. These costs include not only property compensation but also transaction and other site costs. Very varying estimates for schemes were produced in this period as part of a process of negotiation with the Ministry.[13] I shall use the highest figures set out in the LCC publication Housing (1928) as probably being most comparable to the estimates produced by the council for previous and later schemes. It should be recognized that apart from any inaccuracy in the figures, the costs of clearance sites are difficult to compare. Each occupies a different position on the general land rent gradient, and local factors could have considerable effect. One way of partially correcting for these factors is to look at the costs per room demolished, which makes some allowance for different densities. The general position, however, is reasonably clear. There was a major fall in the cost of post-war schemes compared with Boundary Street. Even the very well situated Bell Lane site was reckoned at only half the value per acre that had been spent at Boundary Street. Costs per room in all schemes were also more than halved.

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 properties accounted for 36 per cent of the property compensation costs in these schemes.[14] Originally, the ministry had begun bargaining at much lower levels, and the estimated costs probably already made some allowance for increased administrative flexibility. The effects of the owners’ pressure are, however, seen more clearly in the figures that the ministry were prepared to allow for subsequent schemes which are illustrated in Table 5.3 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

The much higher costs for these schemes may owe something to favourable location in the case of Ossulston and Carlisle Streets, but the effects of this should have been lowered by the reduction factor. Political concessions over compensation are certainly involved. Officials were already more flexible in practice, and this was extended by ministerial judgments. Thus far more changes from red to blue were made at Ossulston Street than the LCC had anticipated, reflecting the impact that owners made at the local inquiry.[15] It seems likely that the effect of changes made in the Greenwood Act (1930) was often to formalize concessions that had effectively been made in administrative procedure beforehand.

Politics and finance One of the major imponderables in the analysis of property trends in this period concerns the interaction of political and economic factors. The one political f actor that is clear, at least in its direct effects, is the introduction of rent control. This pegged down the prices of existing property, and opened up a large gap between new and old property prices, such as was to emerge again after the Second World War. Government strategy was generally to reduce this gap by increasing supply and lowering the cost of new housing. However, the main explanation usually offered for the low cost of new property in the early 1930s is that developments in transport produced a marked increase in the supply of land for building. Otherwise, 63

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politics is usually mentioned in the negative sense: there were no planning controls to restrict greatly this additional supply of land. Given the major developments of the period, a case can be made that transport, by establishing low costs for new housing on the outskirts of cities, kept the price of existing property down, and eventually allowed the gap between old and new property prices to be substantially closed, while keeping the latter well below their levels at the end of the Victorian period. If this is correct then the owner of old property could not blame his considerable loss of asset value between 1900 and 1930 on political intervention. At most this would have brought down prices well below trend level from 1915 before they began to recover from 1920. However, the property owners’ organizations strongly linked their reversal of fortunes to pressures arising within the political system that were directly consequent upon the introduction of universal suffrage: where an electoral system allows representation without taxation, there will be an ever increasing predominance of political influence in the hands of persons who are not owners of property.[16] Owners had felt themselves under the pressure of this political influence well before 1915, and at a time when Rent Acts were hardly contemplated. A key point had been reached earlier when the Progressives had harnessed municipal trading in transport and housing to produce the first clear alternative to the supply of working-class housing by the private landlord. They too argued that improved transport was a key to lower housing costs, but only if directed in such a way as to break down the landlords’ monopoly. Looking back from 1930, a Progressive might maintain that this strategy had had a decisive influence since the turn of the century. Arguably, even where municipal developments were not themselves directly responsible for increased supply of low-price houses, the challenge they represented was important in bringing about changes in the private sector in response. Neither the “transport” nor the “political” factor can directly explain the slump in property values before the First World War, because after 1903 supply was generally decreasing. Either one has to argue that the market anticipated a structural change, or else that what appears empirically as a long-term downgrading of asset values came about by an interaction of disparate factors. The latter seems the most likely explanation. Property values at the end of the Victorian period do not have to be regarded as an unimpeachable yardstick. The years purchase then offered on the gross rental of old property represented an extremely low rate of return, justifiable only in anticipation of future rent rises. There was 64

Politics and finance

therefore some speculative element, and equally a cyclical effect as Daunton has maintained.[17] Offer took the view that economic factors were important in explaining the slump, and certainly economic performance and a government strategy of deflation were relevant factors in the 1920s. Offer’s main contribution, however, was to reintroduce politics into the discussion of property values. Increased rates, themselves partly due to social expenditure by councils might explain some of the decrease, but they were only part of a much more widely ranging series of effects, which however are difficult or even impossible to quantify. Similarly, after the war political effects were not confined to rent restriction; they operated on the whole universe of property values and housing costs, but again in ways that are not easily isolated from other factors. The Progressives in promoting their suburban strategy had explicitly seen it as a way of avoiding the use of subsidies. They were to act as municipal traders in the market situation. Even when subsidies were introduced, a great advantage of their strategy was that by working with the grain of the market large numbers of houses could be produced for relatively little money. This was not, of course, true of the Addison programme, but it was true of the Chamberlain and Wheatley programmes, as Bowley noticed.[18] Moreover, applying subsidies to new houses limited the extent of government commitment, which might even be eliminated depending on the results that private enterprise was able to achieve. However, whether by private or public production, governments were 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 for maintaining qualitative standards of housing much more readily. This, however, consisted entirely of enforcing sanitary standards. It remained the standard doctrine in the 1920s: landlords were responsible for the repair of their properties. Built into this practice was an ultimate deterrent: the intervention of the state to close or remove insanitary houses. All these provisions were made with scrupulous attention to the nineteenthcentury view of the way that markets should operate. As a result, public investment only came into the system once rebuilding on slum sites was admitted, and then only at first in such a way as to be largely hidden from view. Faced with pressures to relieve qualitative defects in housing, governments responded by attempting to force the market to take them into account, and to value property accordingly. The ultimate position that

65

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a property might have no value other than its site fitted quite happily into this strategy. Daunton provides a three-fold typification of the private landlord in this period: lower middle class, isolated from political influence particularly at national level, and wedded to a laissez-faire ideology.[19] The typification can, I think, be supported, although with certain qualifications. Property distributions are always highly asymmetrical, so that whereas the largest number of owners are small men or women, a large proportion of the property by value is held in comparatively large estates. This was true even of slum property. Also, the landlords’ political influence was far from negligible. Their interests were represented at local level by such organizations as the London Property Owners Protection Association, and at national level by the National Federation of Property Owners. The activities of such figures as Edwin Evans and H.R. Selley have already been remarked, and the owners organizations had recognized spokesmen in both the Commons and the Lords. They had close links to the building societies, with many personalities performing a rôle in both types of organization, and also broad support from the property professions. Despite this, they certainly thought of themselves as isolated and victimized: “today property owners have every reason to know full well that if any capitalist interest is to be sacrificed theirs will be the first to go.”[20] An important factor in the failure of the private landlord to achieve more, despite relatively good political influence, was the inability to find a strategy that wider political interests could support. The owners organizations projected a total opposition to all forms of political intervention, and had an especial hatred of the municipalities. Even in respect of town planning, which a politician such as Chamberlain saw as a means of promoting private enterprise, the federation’s Gazette in 1925 saw the possible extension to built-up areas in the blackest possible terms: “the object of course in applying town planning to built-up areas is to depreciate all property and all businesses so that they may be acquired by the Corporations for a mere fraction of their actual value.”[21] Not surprisingly, the only remedy such organizations offered for housing deficiencies was a return to pre-war conditions. Their only explanation of the slum was to blame it on the tenants. In one sense their appreciation of the situation was correct: their difficulties did stem from the increased political power of the tenants. But given this, they took a high risk strategy, for although the promised land of a return to pre-war conditions appeared several times on the horizon, it constantly retreated from view. However, the owners’ position is more understandable given the diffi 66

Politics and finance

culties of the alternatives. The concept of housing need which came to the fore in the 1920s was not easy for them to handle. Subsidies applied to redress this need, or even rate relief, had to be seen to benefit the tenant, and the private landlord could only become an agency through which subsidies were directed if some form of rent regulation were adopted. Subsidies, however, were not the only problem, for other projected ways of removing housing deficiencies might be equally painful. There was already interest in the creation of large private or semi-private organizations to build and manage houses, which could rival councils in economic efficiency and management of tenants. The ordinary private landlord was, however, excluded from this thinking. Nor was there much salvation, as we have seen, in the more traditional nineteenth-century responses to the question. The landlord’s best ultimate defence was that housing deficiencies simply reflected the way in which income distributions operated in the housing market: that the landlord was neither more nor less to blame for the slum than his tenants. In this sense, the government having willed the end of removing these deficiencies should also will the means. Money might then have become available for the improvement of existing houses, instead of being applied only to increasing competition through new supply, or to rebuilding after demolition. This is an argument to be taken up in Chapter 9. In the debate on compensation, the “penal” basis of the provisions played a large part on the surface of the argument. This language occurred in the LCC’S original proposition to the government in 1919, and it undoubtedly had political appeal. Arguably, political factors also played a part in the treatment of the leaseholder, a frequent target for those who sought to assign blame for slum conditions to individual agents. Was it simply fortuitous that so many of the principal test cases of the 1920s involved leaseholders with noticeably foreign names, presumably of Jewish origin? Behind the political play with responsibilities, however, lay the question of the cost of sites and the possibilities of effecting clearance and rehousing. Cost was the LCC’S main motive in supporting the new code, and it remained their main argument when in the late 1920s they opposed any fundamental change. However, they were quite happy to try and defuse political opposition by supporting a reapportionment of the reduced values among the various interests: under the present basis of compensation freeholds are treated too generously, bearing in mind the evident intention of parliament that the owners of insanitary property…shall be penalised. [But]…we feel that undue hardship is in many cases inflicted upon lessees.[22] 67

Money matters: property values, compensation and housing costs

The LCC recommended a compromise between site-value compensation and market values. The former, with its concomitant rigid division between fit and unfit, would be kept in place in order to keep overall costs down. However, once the overall level of cost had been determined, it would be distributed to the various interests in proportion to the current market value of their properties. This would bring advantages of flexibility: “properties of differing degrees of badness can be distinguished… while…every interest in the property will receive some compensation strictly in relation to the market value.” In the Lithman case the leaseholder would have received a substantial amount—perhaps as much as £2,000—while the freeholder’s compensation would have been considerably reduced.[23] The owners’ organizations, however, were opposed to reapportionment. They were happy to use cases involving leaseholders and traders as their main ammunition, but they did not want any partial settlement that would make the achievement of root and branch reform more difficult. Another factor came into play in respect to reapportionment and the treatment of traders, and was probably a reason why neither achieved much direct redress in law, despite support from the LCC and the Association of Municipal Corporations (AMC). This was the manner in which the legislation was mapped into the ordinary practice of English law. Here the position of the freeholder was paramount, and the precarious position of leaseholders was only masked by the fact that in practice the strict tenets of the law were not often put into effect. However, cases were reported in the 1920s whereby leaseholders were being forced by their freeholders into expensive repairs for dilapidations, without which the freeholder could institute proceedings to obtain reversion of the property. The 1919 procedures had introduced the provision that dwellings found to be unfit for human habitation had no value. The easiest way of concording the new compensation provisions to the existing law was therefore to assume that the liability for the buildings rested with the leaseholder, and that if the value of the buildings was lost, his share of the total compensation should be anything that remained in the annual value of the land after the ground rent had been paid. The chief valuer was opposed to any alteration in this position. He advised Greenwood: “I do not think there is much force in the complaints about the lessees position. If the property is leased at a rent not less than the annual equivalent of the site value, he has no beneficial interest for which he is entitled to compensation.” Moreover, “there is no real difference in principle between ignoring the value of the structure and ignoring the business carried out in it”.[24] The legal basis of property ownership was also the basis of the financial 68

Politics and finance

security of property. The security of freehold ground rents contrasted with the more insecure position of the leasehold, which in the case of poorer property was a risky venture from which high profits could be demanded. The holder of ground rents could be seen as someone who had invested money in a low-risk security, and should be protected, the leaseholder as someone who had gambled and failed. This was, for example, the LCC valuer’s reaction to the claims of a Brady Street lessee. He “took up in 1908 a new lease for a term of 99 years on old and outworn property, which obviously would not last out this further period, and presumably realised he was making a highly speculative venture”.[25] If leasehold was a speculative tenure in the case of poor property, special slum clearance provisions could be seen as merely adding a new element of risk to those presented by the demands of the freeholder or sanitary inspector. It was up to the market to adjust to take account of these provisions, as it did for other risks, although there would be transitional difficulties. The trader also took a risk in locating his business in unfit premises. Administrative measures might be taken to see that business premises were more often counted as added lands, although many were still at risk, particularly where the premises were partly converted dwelling houses. Where property was ruled unfit, there was to be no sullying of the site-value principle through statutory right to trade compensation, but the local authority might be officially empowered to make ex gratia payments in this respect. When an owners’ deputation met Greenwood in 1930 he told them that “it was essential that the necessary work of slum clearance should be carried out at minimum cost to the taxpayers and ratepayers”.[26] The owners’ organizations recognized that they had been baulked by the local authorities who “reiterated the plea to the Government that any alteration in the existing value of compensation would increase the cost of slum clearance to the local authorities and thus make the Bill unworkable”.[27] Indeed, the very strength of support for the owners within the property professions seemed to work against less draconian provisions. Civil servants advised Greenwood that it was essential not to leave matters to the arbitrator: the whole course of events prior to 1919…showed that the intentions of Parliament had been completely defeated by…the failure to apply a power to make deductions from full market value, and it was the realisation of the faults of this system which produced the rigid distinction of the Act of 1919.[28]

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More flexible ways of procedure were rejected on the grounds that they would simply produce a drift back to market values of a kind that failed to take sufficient account of the state of the property. It was thought that only the strongest of dividing lines would do the job, and the inevitable difficulties, discrepancies and injustices of applying such a line in practice would have to be overlooked. The same grounds encouraged resistance to the idea that houses “fit in themselves” should be excluded from site-value compensation. This was one of the strongest arguments put by the owners, who condemned the “doctrine of environment”. Owners, they argued, should only be judged according to whether they had kept their houses in repair, not according to the situation of the house which was a matter beyond their control. However, the LCC was firmly opposed to any suggestion that houses be judged “apart from their surroundings”. “It has in the past been consistently held that all houses in an unhealthy area contribute in greater or lesser degree to the insanitary conditions in the area.” “Any reversal of this principle…[would]…destroy the whole foundation upon which schemes for the improvement of unhealthy areas have been based.”[29] Nonetheless, this was an issue on which governments felt sensitive. While rejecting the idea that narrowness, closeness and bad arrangement should not be taken into account, the 1930 Act insisted that a clearance area must consist only of condemned property. The formal separation of clearance areas and added lands did something to counter the landlords’ case. The impact of this in practice was minimized by the fact that clearance areas could vary in size (down to only two houses if necessary), and that several clearance areas could be included in the same compulsory purchase order. Abolition of the reduction factor was a popular target for reform among civil 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 the amount of compensation should depend on the future use of the land. Yet in some ways the reduction factor was one of the most defensible parts of the new procedures. After all, the necessity to use sites for rehousing was the fundamental factor behind the whole concept of clearance areas. To value the sites as if they all had an effective commercial demand was doubtful practice in the context of “floating values”, and was becoming even more doubtful in the economic context of the inter-war period. There was certainly an arbitrary factor involved, in that sites not required for future housing use might receive a higher valuation, but again this arbitrariness was also present in the normal workings of the market—not all land could capture a floating value. Moreover, this same issue was present in the debate on town planning. If planning was to be made effective, then it would necessarily impose losses and gains on individual 70

Politics and finance

landowners according to the future use ascribed to the land. For these reasons Greenwood resisted abolition, but it was later to be HiltonYoung’s method of conceding something to the landlords in 1935. In the end, then, one has to see the politics of compensation as a complex, linking both to general public attitudes on the one hand and technical factors on the other. At its heart, however, was a perceived necessity to reduce site values. Compensation practice was not the direct result of the low political standing of landlords, or anti-landlord feeling, but these were factors in making it possible. If owners were also occupiers an entirely different perspective applied as is brought out in a note from Miss Lawrence to Greenwood about her West Ham constituency: I have come across cases where landlords have induced excessively poor persons to purchase by instalments houses which in my opinion are unfit for human use…the existence of this class will be a serious hindrance to clearing a slum. Could we have some exemption for the owner occupier of a slum house? [30] The compensation provisions certainly involved hardship to many of those affected, and often injustice. It cannot be said that a great deal of effort was put in to finding ways of mitigating these features. This, however, was the product of an interplay of political priorities and technical factors. Arguments that “hard cases make bad law”, and that the state could not protect individuals from all the hazards of life, were applied, just as they were in many other areas.

Notes 1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10

PRO HLG 29/170 memo 9 July 1929. Estates Gazette 116, 1930, 140. HC passim. Twenty nine cases were found for the Brady Street, Bell Lane and Hickman’s Folly schemes. 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 ten cases for one area (e.g. Bermondsey) was taken in alphabetical order. Offer, A. 1981. Property and politics 1870–1914, 254–81. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. HC14 Sep. (5–47) 1931; Estates Gazette 119, 1932, 84, 123. HC 1 Nov. (3ii) 1923; 7 Feb. (10) 1923; 6 Jun. (39) 1923; 14 Jan. (15) 1925. ibid., 30 Nov. (17) 1927; 31 Oct. (57) 1928; 23 Jan. (57) 1929. ibid., 6 Oct. (6–69); 19 Oct. (42) 1927. ibid., 9 April (6) 1930.

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11 12 13

14 15 16 17

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

ibid., 20 Feb. (8) 1930. ibid., 4 Feb. (27) 1925; 3 Mar. (30) 1925; 17 Jun. (21) 1925; 6 Apr. (5) 1927. 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 figures are from HC 21 Oct. (10), April 1927 from MM 12 Apr. (31–2). The later calculations are from global figures from which £80,000 has been deducted as the sum agreed for Watergate St and £53,500 added for Brady St. PRO HLG 49/15. HC 1 Dec. (6) 1926. National Federation of Property Owners (NFPO), Gazette, 15 June 1929, 14. Daunton, M.J. 1984. Introduction. In Councillors and tenants: local authority housing in English cities 1919–39, M.J. Daunton (ed.), 7. Leicester: Leicester University Press. Bowley, M. 1945. Housing and the state, 47. London: Allen & Unwin. Daunton op. cit., 6. NFPO Gazette, 13 April 1929,1. ibid., 15 June 1929, 2. HC 3 Dec. (3) 1928. ibid. PRO HLG 29/173, Vol. 4, no. 9,10 Sept. 1929. HC 5 Dec. (3) 1923. NFPO Gazette, 24 March 1930. ibid., 30 Sept. 1930, 3. PRO HLG 29/170 undated memo, draft clauses of new Act, clause 37. HC 3 Dec. (3) 1928. PRO HLG 29/170 memo 18 Dec. 1929.

72

CHAPTER 6 Rebuilding and rehousing 1918–33

This chapter concentrates on three aspects of rebuilding and rehousing in the first 15 years after the war. First, it looks at the extent to which rehousing of the displaced was accomplished, either in the suburbs or by rebuilding on 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 to accommodate displaced tenants in the new buildings when it had been impossible before. The second section considers more directly the tensions between building standards and the rental capacity of tenants, and also shows the continuing importance of policies aimed at ensuring that lower rents should be reflected in lower quality accommodation. Finally, attention is given to a number of projects for tall flats, which figured quite prominently 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 workingclass housing laid down in council provision. It followed prewar precedents in the cottage style and low densities adopted, and equally relied on the availability of relatively cheap land on the outskirts of towns. In this way many working-class families were able to move out to improved housing conditions. But in the late 1920s, this was also the type of housing that was expected to absorb the bulk of slum displacees from clearances in provincial cities. Although much remains to be discovered in detail, studies have shown how, while the post-war style was still broadly retained, the high standards of the Addison period were gradually whittled down. At the same time, there was a considerable reduction in the cost of building—in

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Liverpool, for instance, non-parlour houses of the smaller type cost £345 to build in late 1928. However, much of this gain was offset by lower subsidies and, despite the changes, rehousing from slum clearance remained very problematic. A ministry review in 1930 of 5,742 families displaced by clearance in provincial cities during the 1920s, found that some 55 per cent of the tenants were rehoused in houses under the scheme, 14 per cent in other council property, and 31 per cent found non-council properties. The proportion rehoused by councils varied considerably from place to place. A group of councils achieved high rehousing rates, with only 7 per cent not rehoused by the council, and 76 per cent rehoused under the scheme. These included Liverpool, Doncaster, Brighton and Norwich. Another group, including Middlesborough, Stockton-on-Tees, Hull and Wolverhampton achieved low rehousing rates with 60 per cent not taken into council housing and only 33 per cent into houses formally allocated under thescheme.[1] Two clearance schemes of the late 1920s illustrate the difficulties that arose, and allow matters to be taken further. At Hulme (Manchester), 200 houses occupied by as many families were demolished in 1925 and rehousing allocated on the Fallowfield Estate two miles away. Eventually, 140 families transferred to the estate. However, by mid-1928 another 65 families had left voluntarily and 13 more had been evicted, so that only 31 per cent of the displaced families were then rehoused in the accommodation to which they had been formally allocated. The principal cause of this was undoubtedly rent. The old four-room houses had gross rents 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 an enormous difference. At Stockton-on-Tees, the Housewife Lane area was cleared in 1927 and housing allocated on a special estate called Mount Pleasant. The proportion rehoused is not clear, but in Stockton as a whole it 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 by McGonigle, who showed that over the period 1928–32 the death rate at Mount Pleasant was 33.6 per thousand, and much higher than in the Housewife Lane area before clearance. The difference was almost certainly due to increased malnutrition.[3] Such cases obviously raised important questions about standards, subsidies and the viability and effectiveness of slum clearance. In most cases, councils do not appear to have specially subsidized suburban housing for clearance tenants, and most councils—with the major exception of Liverpool—possessed little or no older housing stock. Nonetheless, these schemes had taken place on low-cost land. In London, 74

Setting the standard

the problems posed would seem to be even greater, since before the war its higher costs had meant that rehousing from clearance was minimal. The buildings that had been put up at that time, and were then occupied by artisans, were now, however, available for use by transfers, and special subsidies were available. It is not until 1928 that any general statistics become available to cover the large London programme. But in the two years to the end of September 1929, about 31 per cent of those displaced were rehoused in new council blocks, and another 8 per cent on suburban estates. About 18 per cent were rehoused in older council blocks, 28 per cent were housed by the council temporarily in old houses and 15 per cent moved to noncouncil property.[4] Judging by a report in 1930, those not rehoused by the council included three particular groups: old, small and poor households; single persons; and poor families with a large number of children.[5] The rehousing of tenants in relation to incomes and family size will be considered in Chapter 10 in the changed circumstances of the 1930s. Here, the main concern is the rebuilding standard, and its cost implications in relation to rehousing. In London this involved quite separate considerations from those that governed suburban housing. The standard that was to become the norm in the 1920s was established after the demise of homes for heroes, but before this there was an interesting period in which the ministry attempted to improve blocks of flats and make them more comparable to houses in their standard of amenities. The Manual on unfit houses and unhealthy areas advised that blocks should be no more than three storeys, that each flat should be self-contained and have a bath and kitchen-scullery, and that 70 per cent should have four rooms, implying a persons per room ratio similar to that on cottage estates. It also deprecated the use of balcony access.[6] This context was reflected in the first post-war LCC blocks, Becket and Geoffrey Houses, on the still uncompleted Tabard Street estate. These retained balcony access and five-storey height, but the latter had a living room of 160 sq. ft compared to 149 sq. ft in a block begun in 1915, a bathroom, improved internal access, bay windows and a small experimental lift[7] By 1920 the council was basing its plans on four-storey maisonettes for the intermediate zone, between the cottage estates and the centre, and in the centre “where higher tenements are necessary we see no objections to six floor blocks, provided the three upper floors are served by lifts. Even eight floor blocks…would probably be well patronised if lifts were provided”.[8] However, these developments were soon brought to an end by considerations of cost. The building cost at Becket House had been £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 75

Rebuilding and rehousing 1918–33

being submitted suggested a cost of £377 per room. The implications for rehousing displaced tenants were also poor, for the rents at Becket House compared 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). The new tenants at Becket House were therefore drawn from the ranks characteristic of new blocks pre-war: craftsmen, tradesmen and such occupations as policeman and fireman. Even so, many of them had to take a room less than in their previous accommodation.[9] Clearance was unsustainable under such inflationary conditions, but after the general collapse of wages and building costs between 1921 and 1923, a new type of standardized accommodation emerged, represented by flats at Pellew House on the Collingwood Estate, Brady Street. This was to become the “normal” type in 1920s rebuilding. Average room sizes were retained at 160 sq. ft for the living room, 120 sq. ft for the first bedroom and 100 sq. ft for the others. But internal passages were abolished, leaving a small 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 copper to the bath. Most of the fittings were in the kitchen, except for a large cupboard in the main bedroom. The plans show two lettings per balcony or four per staircase, with the kitchens and a few bedrooms occupying the balcony side. The flats were incorporated in blocks which were to vary somewhat in style during the 1920s, but were of five storeys and neoGeorgian. The two upper storeys were arranged as a maisonette with mansarded bedrooms which, together with the striking chimneys, gave a picturesque element to the roof. Llewellyn-Smith thought that “with their walls of golden brick, red quoins and arches and red-tiled roof, the blocks have a simple and dignified exterior which is a welcome addition to the street architecture of London”.[10] They were, however, less attractive 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 a comparison with the pre-war high point in building standards at Boundary Street. The room sizes at the older estate varied greatly from block 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 definite improvement in kitchen space and fittings, including of course the bath. Post-war estates also often had rather lower densities. Nonetheless, it is reasonable to conclude that in cost implications the normal type was fairly comparable to blocks at Boundary Street. Costs per room are sometimes quoted for superstructure only, but those used here are for the whole 76

Setting the standard

building works. Costs also vary according to the size of tenement and the scale and location of the building project. Any figures given are therefore general approximations, but the larger movements in costs can easily be discerned. At Boundary Street there was much variation from block to block, but a fair average is the £87 per room quoted for the “latest type of selfcontained tenement” in 1893. A cost of £180 per room would seem to be a fair average for 1924–5. [11] This was a major reduction on early postwar costs, but it is still more than twice that at Boundary Street. By comparison, Booth had thought 21s. a week to be the income required to keep a family above the poverty line, and the New survey of London life and labour 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 that since the 1890s building costs had risen in much the same proportion as wages, as one might expect. However, the economics of Boundary Street had not enabled the rehousing of the displaced tenants, and its costs to the ratepayer had been so high as to bring the whole future of slum clearance into question. How could the equation of costs and rents be squared without unacceptable costs to the rate—or taxpayer? The answer lay in the reduced cost of land, which had a major impact since redevelopment normally implied the turning of rents into ground rents. The costs of acquisition and clearance have been discussed in Chapter 5. In order to allow comparisons to be taken through eventually to later periods, I shall assume that the same number of rooms were put back on the land as existed before. On this basis, 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 three rooms, the comparative costs of a tenement are set out in Table 6.1. Table 6.1 Costs of a three-room tenement in London, 1895 and 1924–5

The total costs for normal blocks in 1925 were therefore only a little higher than at Boundary Street, but land now accounted for 22 per cent of the total compared with 61 per cent before. The rents charged for such a tenement in 1924–5 were also somewhat higher, with a fair average of 10s. 6d. or 11s. compared with a fair average of 8s. 6d. at Boundary Street. Costs and rents had therefore been reduced substantially in relation to wages without substantially increasing the charge to public funds, indeed 77

Rebuilding and rehousing 1918–33

the burden on the ratepayer had been much reduced since national taxation now paid half the deficit. It is here that the significance of the discussion carried out in the last chapter becomes apparent. Without lowered rents and property values and reduced compensation, slum clearance and redevelopment would not have been politically feasible in the 1920s.

Adjusting to rents The existence of a clearance scheme meant that the ability of tenants to afford different types of accommodation was placed under scrutiny. It was soon found that the population was by no means homogeneous in this respect, and LCC officials talked of “the kind of stratification to which they become subject when displaced”: some going into new houses, even in the suburbs, others to older council houses, many back into old houses in the private sector, some into poor law institutions.[12] This stratification was not simply the product of long-term differences in income or status. It also reflected life-cycle stage, family composition and factors such as sickness and unemployment. In the poorest parts, as at Ware Street in Shoreditch, it was found that Many of the tenants are living in distressing circumstances. In one case eight persons were found to be living in one room. In another case neither the tenant or his wife had been outside their home for ten years due to infirmity. Very great difficulty was experienced in inducing these people to move from the immediate neighbourhood. This was particularly emphasized in the case of men out of work in receipt of parish relief.[13] The LCC, like many other councils, operated a rent policy in which quality and location were roughly adjusted to rent by shadowing the private sector. The policy was directly descended from that adopted in 1893, and rents were to be “fair having regard to the rents paid in the neighbourhood”. Rents were therefore not related either to the existing payments of the displaced or their rental capacity. Instead, where tenants were obviously unable to meet the rents the aim of housing management was to find them some other accommodation of lower standard. More surprisingly, neither construction costs nor deficits falling on the rates were directly significant. Instead, what was important was that in a given area, tenants paying lower rent should be seen to be receiving a lower quality of accommodation. As

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the LCC clearance programme began to get underway, this principle evidently raised important questions. Should the council accommodate more 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 rest of the stock. The medical officer put the matter in the following way. In his view common lodging houses provided accommodation “in all fundamental respects more sanitary than is generally to be found in the poorest class of tenement”. Two other possible types to fill the gap between this and the self-contained tenement were either, (a) selfcontained sleeping accommodation with the rest in common, or (b) separate sleeping and living rooms with the rest in common. Both types would require increased supervision and control. The architect, however, put up a strong defence of existing arrangements, arguing that the new normal type was “by far the cheapest tenement accommodation produced in central areas under any post-war municipal housing scheme”. Economies would be lost unless tenants went out onto an open balcony to reach their shared facilities, and such a system would require more secure fittings and greater supervision. Above all, there was “the danger of such a class of property being regarded long before its structural life is terminated as incompatible with the standard of living which may later be regarded as the minimum acceptable”.[14] The architect, with some support from Levita, managed to fend off the more drastic types of shared accommodation, and to limit its quantitative importance. Nonetheless, a simplified type was approved in 1925. Flats were arranged in groups of two or three: Each flat has a living room which is equipped with an open fire…a small gas cooker with a ventilated hood over it, and a small ventilated larder. The bedroom(s) open out of the living room Each flat has its own small scullery and its own water closet. These two are approached from the common lobby on which is also a washhouse with a bath and copper for use by the two or three flats in rotation.[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 this type had been erected. At Kennings the simplified type cost about £8 per room less to construct, but was let at 1s. 6d. to 2s. per week below the rent of a normal flat of the same size, the deficit being correspondingly higher.[16] The principles of the council’s rent policy were particularly well 79

Rebuilding and rehousing 1918–33

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 cheaper appearance. The principal differences were to be found in the finish of walls, doors and woodwork, and the provision of skirting boards, mantel shelf and cupboards. The valuer wanted “a greatly reduced standard of finish in order to produce the effect of a different standard of accommodation. If this difference can be made sufficiently great I see no reason why the full amount of 3s. a week difference in rent should not be made. It is quite true that externally there would be little to distinguish such a block from the normal. If it were possible to indicate the difference externally it would be all to the good”.[17] The reduced finish made a minimal difference in the costs of construction so that reduced rents meant higher deficits. On the Comber Estate in 1928 there was a deficit of £248 per annum on blocks with reduced finish compared with £132 per annum in 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 of accommodation in return for lower rent. So far, “simplified” blocks of various types had involved only a small portion of the rebuilding programme. The 1930 Act brought a new and much larger challenge which was to test Wheatley’s contention that a direct connection between housing and slum clearance would inevitably mean a lowering of housing standards. This was not inevitable, it depended on how the Act’s provisions were interpreted in practice. The subsidy scheme was based on the notion that 50 per cent of the persons dealt with would be unable to pay “Wheatley” rents, and the extra subsidy provided was intended to cover this. The LCC did not dispute this 50 per cent figure, which indeed reflected statistics which had been submitted to the government by its officers. However, there was an implication, strongly resisted by the valuer and the Housing Committee, that rehousing would simply be a matter of using the subsidy to make current types of accommodation available to poorer tenants paying a lower rent. Instead, they favoured the maintenance of the present system wherein “by reducing amenities the rent payment can be reduced in even greater proportion”. There was a great deal of activity, which continued into 1931, concerning costs and standards of council housing, preparing the way for a further round of “simplification”. The lcc valuer also investigated schemes involving rent rebates, although without any enthusiasm. He concluded 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 others unjustifiably in relation to income. A scheme which also took account of income would be more equitable, but “must raise serious difficulties in administration on any large scale, both in ascertaining the income in the 80

Adjusting to rents

first instance, and in revising it from time to time”. The most likely means of checking tenants’ earnings would be a certificate from the employer, and this would raise the possibility that the rent allowance would become a subsidy to wages. Moreover, “the demand for accommodation by those whose circumstances would entitle them to rent allowances would tend to fall on the Council”, and personal appeals to members of the council would be increased.[18] In October 1930, the Housing Chairman E.M. Dence was able to suggest a compromise solution to the rent problem. There would be no direct relation between rent and income, but a periodic review of lower-rented accommodation would be carried out to move on any higher-income tenants. The rents of rehousing tenants could be banded into three types roughly related to ability to pay. The lowest rental category would be rehoused on the clearance sites. Those able to pay standard rents would be housed on other separate clearance sites or on new or existing cottage estates. A final class involving some 10 per cent of tenants could pay median rents, reflecting the fact that they “might have been able to afford standard rents in London, but would not be able to do so with the additional travelling expenses involved in living outside the County boundary”. However, he emphasized that it must be clearly understood that on no one estate should there be any differentiation in rents for the same type of accommodation. If it is found desirable to have a different scale on an estate, then there must be different types of dwellings, such as normal and simplified types, for which a different scale of rent is paid, so that it is quite evident that a lesser rent is being paid by reason of certain reduced amenities.[19] As far as the council was concerned, the events of 1931 removed many of these difficulties, and rehousing returned to a more traditional routine. When the clearance programme was relaunched in June 1932 with the purchase of a large rehousing site at Honor Oak Park (Deptford), a further round of “simplification” to produce low rent dwellings was revealed. Type A 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, and the mansarded roofs, upper floor maisonettes and drying rooms of the normal type were abandoned. Room sizes were reduced to 149 sq. ft for living 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 living room, and a reduced standard of finish, including stained wood work in lieu of painting and omission of plaster in lobbies and kitchen. Type B 81

Rebuilding and rehousing 1918–33

dwellings were to be similar but without a kitchen. A gas cooker and shallow sink were sited in a recess off the living room. Three of these flats shared a common washhouse with bath and sink. For three rooms the 611 sq. ft of the normal type was reduced to 488 sq. ft for type A and 469 sq. ft for type B.[20] It was estimated that building costs were reduced, compared to the normal 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 cent lower than for the “normal” type. At this point in 1932 the gradual reduction in building standards which had occurred since the Addison period thus became more threatening. At the same time lower standards were introduced into LCC suburban estates although, as in the block dwellings, alongside continuing types. Passages were omitted, the bath placed in the scullery and the toilets located downstairs. Further economies were contemplated. In October 1932 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 on costs.”[21] This would indeed have symbolized a return to pre-war traditions.

Tall flats Alison Ravetz has traced the “practical and ideological” arguments that produced a transition from working-class tenement to modern flats between the wars.[22] This, as the last section will have shown, was only one aspect of the approach to flats. Nonetheless, it was real enough, and a large proportion of the attempts to break through into a modern pattern of flat building involved tall flats, although the two do not entirely overlap. As the homes for heroes period demonstrated, the traditional five-storey blocks were subject to two kinds of pressures when the question of raising standards was posed. One direction was to reduce heights and to try and make flats as much like houses as possible, for instance through the use of maisonettes. The other possibility was to try and build on potentials inherent only in the flat. This had the advantage over the first approach in that it seemed always to hold out the prospect of economic advantage, rather than simply to offer better living conditions at greater cost. Paradoxically, although tall flats almost always turned out to be more expensive than traditional designs, they at the same time offered the possibility of a technical advance, which alone appeared likely to break the cycle of low rental capacity and low building standards.

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Tall flats

About 1925 a number of schemes for nine or ten-storey blocks appeared. L.H. Keay seriously considered their use in Liverpool, and was finally deterred by costs.[23] In London, tall flats seem to continue the homes for heroes discussions, and the Ossulston Street scheme in particular is linked to the thinking within the LCC in Orr’s period of office. As described in detail by Pepper, Ossulston Street involved two successive designs, the first and more ambitious being a large wholly nine-storey structure.[24] The project was explicitly based on experience in the United States, which Topham Forrest, the architect, had recently visited. In particular, the economics of the scheme had American references, the cost of the nine-storey buildings and lifts being offset by the use of light-steel framing and the incorporation of a proportion of higher-value users, including shops, offices and “superior” flats. This mixing of uses was intended to produce economic rather than social benefits. The workingclass dwellings were to be on the upper floors, but “each class of property should have its own entrance, and the entrances should be as remote from one another as possible”.[25] The flats themselves were not spacious, but were to be all-electric and have central heating and hot water, 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 site was a high-cost one relatively near the West End, which made the possibility of accommodating higher-value users while still rehousing 30 per cent more working-class residents than in five-storey blocks highly attractive on paper. The first scheme was, however, withdrawn without submitting any detailed costings. In 1927 a second and less ambitious hybrid scheme was put forward in which nine-storey parts were present only as towers (for the superior flats) above more conventional six-storey blocks. Even then, there were no costings on the nine-storey parts, and these did not become available until February 1929. Once available, they were to show that even in the new design such flats were not an economic proposition. The building cost, at £189 per room, was distinctly higher than that of normal flats by this date. Above all, the central heating and hot water required an additional 2s. 7d. per week, and the gross rent of the flats would have to be 20s. per week, well beyond the reach of the displaced families. The economics of the middle-class flats were even worse, wholly removing 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-room flat if a small profit were to be obtained, and such rents were unobtainable on a site overlooking the goods depot of the LMS railway.[26] The Limehouse Fields (Stepney) project for ten-storey dwellings is of equal interest to Ossulston Street, although less well known. This was a 83

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more typical clearance area, and the tall flats were to rise above a traditional East End landscape alongside the Regents Canal. High land values played a lesser part in underpinning the scheme, and the project was located in a low-rent area for rehousing tenants alone. The economics of this were never really properly explored, but it is an interesting example of an idealistic scheme promoted by a Municipal Reform council. It was justified by the mayor, J.D.Somper, as an attempt “to house within the municipal confines of Stepney…the totality…of the existing inhabitants who are in overcrowded unfit conditions”. Like Ossulston Street, the scheme was to depend on modern building methods: “steel framing and concrete filling”, and mass production. The mayor was proud to claim that the ten-storey buildings, grouped around three courts, would be “probably the largest combination of dwellings in contemplation in this or any other country”. However, whereas Ossulston Street had looked to the United States and also to Vienna for its design inspirations, the Limehouse Fields project sought to take on the garden suburb not only through rival amenities, with particular emphasis on gardens and playgrounds, but also through incorporating traditional elements into the design. The accommodation was to consist of self-contained maisonettes with sun balconies. The elevations were to reproduce “within the limits of economy…the best features of the domestic work of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries”. The windows, for example, had a vertical emphasis and were made up of small panels. Special attention was paid to the colour scheme, the general idea being to treat the lower storeys in darker tones, with white above and an Italian-style tiled roof. The windows and iron work were to be in a shade of green. [27] Another interesting feature of the Stepney scheme was that, although put forward by Municipal Reformers, its authors were W.R. Davidge and Harry Barnes, both mainstream housing and planning experts, the latter of Liberal and afterwards Labour sympathies. Both the Ossulston Street and Limehouse Fields schemes played an important part in electioneering, appearing on the eve of the 1925 elections. Limehouse Fields was fiercely opposed by the local Labour Party in Stepney, who regained control of the borough. The London Labour Party was, however, less certain in its approach to these new developments. It was recognized that the Ossulston Street scheme was a “quite a different proposition from the old block dwellings and has very attractive architectural features”. The proposed mixed development would “establish the principle that the municipality is no longer confined in its housing operations to accommodation which is financially unremunerative”. It was also “very pleasing to know that the architecture is modelled to no small extent upon that of the Socialist municipality at Vienna”. There was a considerable 84

Tall flats

interest in these Viennese flats, and Monison led a Labour tour there in 1928.[28] However, for the moment the garden suburb was to remain the predominant model. A resumption of Municipal Reform control of Stepney, in 1931, was to bring forward another scheme for tall flats at Branch Street, this time designed by Adshead and Ramsey. Again, these appeared on the eve of the 1934 elections, and this year also saw another LCC project at Drysdale Street (Shoreditch). The Drysdale Street project was, however, very different in emphasis from the vision of tall flats reaching up into the sunlight above the gloom of the East End. Economics was paramount— the project was started because Selley, as housing chairman, believed new techniques would “enable the erection of lofty buildings without the use of so much heavyweight iron and steel”. The flats were to be merely of the balcony access A type, and although the usual temptation was offered of playing space on the roof, the two lifts were to go directly to the fifth floor and then stop. The scheme was therefore rather like two four-storey blocks of walkup flats superimposed, with additional storeys formed by maisonettes and drying rooms on top. By these means the architect estimated that building costs could be kept to £138 per room. This was, however, 30 per cent above the current cost in five-storey blocks, while only 30 per cent more accommodation could be provided despite very high densities—326 rooms per acre. Given the extra cost of the lifts, deficits would be much higher, and according to the valuer the tall flats could only be preferred where land costs exceeded £40,000 per acre. With the advent of the Labour Party to power in 1934, the project was dropped.[29]

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

PRO HLG 101/587. Simon, E.D. 1929. How to abolish the slums, 45–8, 125. London: Longmans. HLG 101/587; McGonigle G. & J.Kirby 1937. Poverty and public health 108–29. London: Gollancz. Figures taken from MM and HC passim. HC 10 July (12) 1930. Ministry of Health. 1919. Manual on unfit houses and unhealthy areas, 21–2. HC 14 Apr. (25) 1919; 17 Dec. (5) 1919; 7 Jul. (5) 1920. HC 26 Jul. (8) 1920, 13 Oct. (2) 1920. HC 1 Dec. (11) 1920, MM 7 Dec. (25) 1920. 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

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23

24 25 26 27 28 29

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. ibid., 19 Mar. (34) 1924. ibid., 15 Oct. (10) 1924, 19 Mar. (34) 1924. ibid. LCC op. cit, 63. HC2 Jul. (45) 1928. ibid., 9 May (46) 1928. ibid., 10 Apr. (8) 1930. ibid., 16 Oct. (11)1930. MM 12 July (17) 1932. HC 12 Oct. (16) 1932. Ravetz, A. 1974. From working-class tenement to modern flat: local authorities and multi-storey housing between the wars. In Multi-storey living: the British working class experience, A. Sutcliffe (ed.), 122–150. London: Croom Helm. Pooley C.G. & S. Irish 1984. The development of corporation housing in Liverpool 1869–1945, 42. Centre for North West Regional Studies, University of Lancaster. Pepper, S. 1981. Early LCC experiments in high-rise housing 1925–1929. London Journal 7, 45–64. HC 28 Jan. (14) 1925. Pepper op. cit.; HC 12 Feb. (4) 1929, 24 Apr. (49) 1929. Architects Journal 62, 1925, 507–13. London News October 1927; London Labour Party GLRO ECD 3302. Estates Gazette 122, 1933, 167; HC 18 Apr. (32) 1934.

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CHAPTER 7 A new deal 1933–5

The period 1933–5 is a crucial one in the development of British housing and town planning policies. The divergent trends and tensions of the late 1920s and early 1930s were brought to a climax, and a new basis for action established. As with most such key transitions, the new deal was not the result of any single dimension of policy, nor indeed can it be understood as the single product of any political party. In this case, the essential starting point was the government programme, set out in the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act 1933, which sought to direct the public effort to a limited programme of clearance, while freeing the rest of housing for private enterprise. This programme was, however, caught up in a political context in which something more seemed to be demanded. What that something more should be, other than a bigger slum clearance programme, was for some time uncertain. The Moyne Committee recommended in favour of reconditioning through public utility societies. In the end, however, this was to be rejected in favour of a local authority attack on overcrowding, coupled with larger-scale redevelopment of the central parts of cities. After the establishment of such a programme in the 1935 Housing Act, slum clearance and redevelopment became mutually supporting policies which dominated the late 1930s. The former was much more important immediately, but the latter was to be an essential ingredient in the emergence of 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 housing policy. Two developments came together which seemed to offer an irresistible 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 a housing policy rather than simply as a financial measure. The building societies 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 a view to letting at rentals within reach of the working classes”. The scheme would 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 the valuation. At the same time, it was proposed that local authority subsidies for general building should be removed, that permitted densities be increased to 20 houses per acre and that there be a relaxation in local road building requirements.[1] The government’s successful conversion of Warloan from 5 per cent to 3.5 per cent in the summer of 1932, provided a more 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 its financial consequences had brought an unexpected embarrassment. The leader of the National Building Society observed that because of the lack of highyielding securities the societies were “in some danger of being swamped and overwhelmed by a huge increase of capital which it was quite impossible to utilize”. The societies wanted the government to enable them to extend their activities to working-class housing. However, although the government supported extended borrowing, density and other standards were maintained. A boom in owner-occupation was stimulated, but results in terms of houses to let to the working class were very 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 extensive programme of new building carries with it the danger of ending in oversupply and consequent loss to those who found the money”.[2] The new direction in policy meant a return to a situation in which slums were separated from the rest of housing. The removal of the Wheatley subsidy meant, claimed Hilton-Young, a return to forms of provision which were “normal and natural to the economic life of the country”, whereas subsidies were “abnormal and artificial machinery”. The problem of the slum was, however, a public health problem. It is not in the first line a problem of housing; it is a problem of ridding our social organism of radiating centres of depravity and disease…subsidies are appropriate in this region as a measure for the protection and preservation of the public health.[3] 88

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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 the social and moral leaders of the nation: “this question stands high above party. A most significant lead was given in the first place by the members of the Royal House, and by the Prince of Wales in particular, and secondly by the leaders of all the great churches of the country.”[4] Moreover, in language strikingly reminiscent of that used by Cross in 1875, he claimed that the slum was “in the main a relic of the time when general law and byelaws did not prevent the establishment of housing conditions which are 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 its solution”.[5] Nonetheless, despite this careful presentation, there was a great deal of opposition. Greenwood concentrated on the Bill as an economy measure, a limitation rather than a concentration of effort. In this he was joined by E.D. Simon and by J.M. Keynes, who thought the Ministry of Health, along with the Foreign Office, “the outstanding failure of the National Government”.[6] Arguments also developed within the government’s own ranks. Lord Eustace Percy described Hilton-Young’s programme as “only nibbling at the problem”. Austen Chamberlain argued that “the slum problem…covers a great number of entirely different cases for entirely different remedies are required.” In the West Division of Birmingham, which he represented, “the bulk of the constituency was built in old times according to standards which are not our standard today, which I frankly confess cannot be brought up to our standards.” But reconditioning could make such houses “habitable at decent rents barely exceeding those charged before…we could do that at small expense in preference to spending vast sums of money in pulling down everything in the hope that someday, somewhere…we shall have the ideal house in ideal surroundings”. Sir Percy Harris, Liberal member for Bethnal Green, spoke of the existence in London of “miles of similar conditions” to those described by Sir Austen. However, he emphasized the problem of overcrowding: “I am all in favour of slum clearance, but far more important than pulling houses down is the building of more houses”.[7] Behind this opposition lay many varied political positions. Some continued to see the expansion of housing supply as the main ingredient of any attack on urban problems. Another line of opposition continued to press the Hydra-headed and overlapping issues with which Neville Chamberlain had grappled. The issue of reconditioning versus clearance and rebuilding continued arguments over the flat as a form of living, the importance of “Octavia Hill methods” and the suitability of suburban 89

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rehousing. More important politically was the relationship between public and private enterprise. Austen Chamberlain thus viewed with anxiety “the trend of recent events, which tend to turn our local authorities into owners and still more managers of small house properties”.[8] Many were anxious to promote public utility societies as an alternative form of organization, although not always in the context of reconditioning. The other important matter to which reconditioning had become linked was that of property values and compensation. This rumbled on, and indeed was to become more important, with particular centres of opposition developing in Leeds (where the Labour Party was proposing a sweeping clearance programme) and in Chamberlain’s home domain of Birmingham. Here owners, with support from the council, strongly favoured reconditioning. It was reported that “Birmingham claims that in the ordinary acceptance of the word it has no slums, and that consequently the city council has found it difficult to formulate schemes.”[9] For the moment the government was in a strong political position, and it retained confidence in a strategy that would assign the local authorities a definite but limited rôle, while opening the way for as much private enterprise as possible. Supporters warned that “anything that would interfere with the clear-cut line of the government’s change of housing policy would invalidate the incentive to private enterprise.”[10] However, the government was clearly taken aback by the strength and range of the opposition, which at the very least had defeated the attempt to present the Bill as a policy around which all reasonable people should unite. One response was to set up the Moyne Committee to investigate some of the larger issues, notably reconditioning and the rôle of public utility societies. The other was to yield ground immediately on the quantitative side. During the passage of the Bill Hilton-Young was already back-peddling strongly on his original definition of the slum as a distinctly limited problem, and the maximum programme of clearing 12,000 houses a year, which he had announced, was relaxed. However, there is no reason to think that Hilton-Young had yet committed the government against reconditioning, or to the scale of the clearance programme that was eventually to emerge in the late 1930s. This was something that also owed much to consideration of the Moyne deliberations, and to the changing political situation in 1933 and 1934. In certain centres, such as Birmingham, there continued to be some resistance to increased clearance until after 1935. The new Housing Act of that year was to give a significant impetus to clearance by highlighting the wider possibilities of inner-city redevelop ment. Already in 1933,

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however, there were strong political pressures for a significant widening of the clearance campaign. One of the crucial factors was the re-emergence of the Labour Party at the local electoral level, making a strong advance in 1933. There was every sign that, after the unusual events of 1931, politics was returning to a more normal pattern. There was, moreover, the problem for the Conservatives that whereas the Depression had originally favoured them politically, its longer-term results and implications might underpin a 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 context in which the most cherished gains since the war were seen to be at risk. Generally, there was a consolidation behind the municipal rôle, and the slum seemed to offer its most appropriate focus. The Greenwood Act had further eroded principled opposition to clearance on the left, although decentralization and the house versus the flat still remained contentious issues. The long period since the late 1920s in which many Conservatives were seen to favour reconditioning (now prolonged to some extent by the Moyne Committee) increased Labour support for the alternative of clearance. By supporting slum clearance the left could find itself again in the rôle in which it was most happy: as the champion of municipal action. However, in so doing it relinquished much of the former emphasis on a municipal trading element. Thus, the recovery of the Labour Party much increased the pressure on local councils and the national government to do more, while the more demanded was something to which Conservative councils and governments could respond. The two events that most clearly demonstrate these generalizations were the victory of the Labour Party in Leeds in November 1933, and the advent of Labour to power in the LCC elections of spring 1934. In both cases housing and slum clearance were major ingredients in this success, although the policies differed in detail. The Leeds story has been told by Finnigan, Hammerton and others, but it needs to be recalled here as an essential part of the argument.[11] Leeds had a long-established tradition of cheap housing, which was particularly associated with the back-to-back form. House owners were well organized and important within the local Conservative Party. This had been reflected in the 1920s by sensitivity to the compensation question, and a reluctance to engage in slum clearance, despite its strong advocacy by the Medical Officer of Health. It was, however, the advent of Charles Jenkinson, vicar of Holbeck, on to the political scene that was to transform this issue. A relative newcomer to Leeds, he had been elected to the council in 1930, 91

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and proceeded to mastermind Labour ’s housing campaign, which concentrated initially on the inadequacy of the existing council’s response to Greenwood’s housing initiatives. The Labour approach on housing was widely based and, like that of Jenkinson himself, by no means confined to slum clearance. It was the combination of local housing circumstances and national events that focused attention on this issue and produced a clearance crusade. These events were to bring the local Conservatives into a conflict which raged on two fronts—one against Jenkinson and his supporters, the other against their own side in the national government. In the approach to the 1932 elections, they attempted to defuse the issue by setting up a special committee on the housing question. However, by the time that the Jenkinson group issued their minority report in March 1933, the national situation had moved in their favour, so that the report could become a powerful manifesto. The local Conservatives’ attempts to restore their position by accelerating the clearance programme only resulted in Jenkinson raising the stakes even higher. The result was that Labour won in November 1933, and proceeded to submit a programme for the demolition of 30,000 houses inhabited by 111,000 people. This was by far the largest programme to be submitted by a provincial authority, and it was to lead to a full-scale political battle with local owners, symbolized by the “red ruin” map on which the potential clearance areas were depicted. Jenkinson’s approach retained the progressive emphasis on housing supply and high standards. He was strongly committed to a suburban solution, and to the garden suburb tradition, seeking to bring these within the range of rehousing tenants by means of differential rents. Characteristically, however, when faced with the need to engage with inner-city rehousing, he opted for the adventurous solution of the modern Quarry Hill flats. In Chapter 10, these practices will be counterpointed against those which developed in London. The situation there was less dramatic, but in some ways equally surprising. Unlike its counterpart in Leeds, the Municipal Reform LCC had strongly pressed slum clearance in the 1920s. Yet once national policy made this easier, it proceeded to lose power, and the mantle was inherited by a Labour Party that had previously opposed this kind of action. Moreover, unlike Leeds, clearance in London essentially meant rebuilding on inner-city land and a frank acceptance of the tenement flat. It involved, therefore, a more complete movement from the old progressive tradition, although suburban council housing for general needs was still promoted. Once Morrison had made the transition from one paradigm to another he was characteristically thorough in the manner of its presentation. He had enormous assistance, 92

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however, from the way in which his opponents themselves responded to events in the early 1930s. In some ways this response was understandable. The legal problems created by the Liverpool and Derby cases had brought clearance representations to an end, and it was not until the Greenwood Act was on the statute book that they could be revived. Almost immediately, the financial crisis brought a necessary reduction in expenditure. However, this was accompanied by rhetoric and action which took the Municipal Reformers away from the ground that Levita had occupied, and closer to that on which the Conservatives in Leeds stood. The close association of the party with the Ray Report was one aspect of this. Labour was able to make much of the difficulties of their opponents in pushing forward clearance, and in establishing new estates in such areas as “select Streatham”. Both of these they could represent as a surrender to vested interests. In statistical terms, housing supply by the council, capital expenditure, and support from the rates, all fell to new post-war levels in 1931–3. The result was that, as in Leeds, Labour could increasingly campaign on the theme of action versus inaction. As in Leeds, the Municipal Reformers responded by accelerating their own clearance programmes, but this came too late. Labour, having found its slogan of “up with the houses, down with the slums”, carried the LCC elections of 1934, and later that year broke through in the metropolitan boroughs, establishing a strong hold over the whole of working-class London that was to last for over thirty years.

The Moyne Report and reconditioning Hilton-Young agreed to set up the Moyne Committee at the committee stage of the 1933 Bill. It was to have two references: first, the “facilitation of the efforts of public utility societies”, and, secondly, reconditioning, particularly that involving the compulsory purchase of houses by local authorities. The two could be linked, however, because the committee was to investigate whether “local authorities themselves are always the appropriate persons to hold houses, so that when the houses have been bought and reconditioned there should be a provision for some authority to hold them”.[12] An important constraint was that reconditioning had to be seen as an extension of (rather than a replacement for) the clearance policies already announced. Equally, there was to be no further general subsidy. From the beginning, therefore, the committee was on difficult ground. It had to wrestle not only with the various problems of reconditioning but, more importantly, with the larger matter of the 93

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respective roles of private enterprise, local authorities and the proposed third force. Lord Eustace Percy was one of the Conservative members who had done most to put public utility societies on the agenda. He took the view that the great vice of our slum legislation has been to frighten the owner before we have been ready to replace him. As a general rule, the more risky is the business, the lower will be the type of man who is prepared to engage in it. For many years good landlords have been increasingly reluctant to bear the odium of owning old house property. The result has been to accelerate the tendency to create a worse and worse class of slum landlord.[13] We seem here to be back on very Victorian ground: the equation of economic status with moral worth. The small man in the slum is implicitly contrasted with the great estate, ignoring any objection that the latter had tended to corner the more profitable sections of the market, leaving the small man with the business that could only be made profitable by overcrowding or undermaintenance. Percy’s complaint that private enterprise was too often taken to mean “the small man building and occupying a few houses, the small landlord and the small builder” might be taken as a class-based patrician approach to the problem. However, it also reflected a theme that was very much that of the moment: an emphasis on the importance of economic viability and particularly on the creation of large efficient economic organizations: the real charge against the small owner of old working-class property in the centre of great towns is that he is a small owner, and that he has neither the capital nor the control over large blocks of property which would enable him to develop his property to the best advantage of both himself and the community as a whole. This evil can only be remedied by concentrating the management and development 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 give local authorities compulsory powers to take over large blocks of properties which would be handed over to public trusts. This might seem drastic, but he waived aside objection with specific reference to Joseph Chamberlain: “the question is what loss it is worth while for property owners to incur as an insurance against a general revolt against urban property owning altogether.” Once formed, a trust should operate on economic lines. It would 94

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have much more freedom than local authorities to acquire a general range of properties or to use sites for profitable non housing purposes. Likewise, the trust would not be limited to reconditioning, to which he gave little support. Instead, he pointed out that “if you take any of the overcrowded areas of London this can be nothing more than the merest palliative…you are not going to relieve overcrowding by these means. You have got to redevelop the area.” The most effective trust would be one which “owned a large mixed improvement and clearance area, and which enjoyed a substantial income from state subsidies in respect of rehousing.” Percy, however, did not confine himself to older housing, but went further in setting out a rôle for public utility societies in new housing development. A National Corporation or Housing Board would coordinate the activities of local or regional societies, and as a large buyer it would be “able to bring pressure to bear on the building industry to build at the lowest possible cost”, and later it might undertake large-scale development of housing estates directly. A typical local society would manage 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 even higher”. This was because it would “need to own a substantial proportion of the larger type of house if it is to make both ends meet”. Moreover, “on social grounds I think mixed-bag development is the only kind of development which any agency ought ever to go in for. I think a dreary enormous block of one type of house in which the poorest are to live, the principle of the ghetto, is horrible.” Percy’s schemes, therefore, revolved around the creation of a largescale organization which would substitute for the local authority, but be economically efficient. His concerns overlapped to some extent with those of the Moyne Committee, but ultimately they developed in a way which the committee found embarrassing. This was even more true of the efforts of Raymond Unwin, who as president of the Royal Institute of British Architects acted as co-ordinator for an important pressure group, which included Lord Balfour of Burleigh, Harry Barnes and Sir Edgar Bonham Carter. Unwin attracted a great deal of national attention by proposing the creation of housing societies which would be organized under a National Housing Board or Corporation. This would take in hand “the sphere of housing work lying between slum clearance…and the lowest rented dwellings which private enterprise working on a profitable basis can be expected to supply”.[14] As in Percy’s scheme, their efforts would not be confined to reconditioning. On the contrary, what was most needed in Unwin’s view was the continued supply of new suburban houses at affordable rents. He told the committee that

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You cannot recondition without abating overcrowding, you cannot abate overcrowding unless you have an additional supply of lowrented houses available. The efforts of the Unwin group were meant to rescue something of the decentralist and planning orientations that had been attached to the reconditioning proposals in Chamberlain’s original formulation of the problem. They were very worried that a stress on the provision of lowrented housing by competitive private enterprise would lead to an erosion of post-war standards of housing and planning. Once again, therefore, an alternative to local authority organization was proposed, but the main grounds for this suggested by Unwin was that “it is not wholesome that town councillors should be dependent for election on large numbers of voters living or wishing to live in Council-owned houses.” Advising his Housing Committee, the LCC valuer commented acidly: “whether this is a serious problem worthy of the Committee’s attention is a matter entirely for them. But much of the argument in favour of a National Housing Board is founded on considerations such as this.”[15] While the local authorities resisted this attack on their position, a much greater problem for the committee, in the existing political climate, was the reaction of the property interests. Initially, they were well disposed to the concept of reconditioning, and welcomed the stress on the unfitness of councils to hold and manage property. A very different tone, however, emerged when the larger implications of the proposals were realized. The Estates Gazette referred to the “megalomania” of those who sponsored the National Housing Corporation, and even thought there was a danger that “it might become a dictator of rents all round, and even perhaps what is absurdly called a ‘fair rents court’.”[16] One of the most striking features of the evidence presented to the committee is the hostility expressed by bodies representing private enterprise to any large rôlefor a “third force”. The National Federation of Housebuilders believed that “if public utility societies are encouraged to build a large number of houses even of the smaller type it will discourage investors”. Families in the slums should be divided into those that could pay economic rents and those that could not. Support for the latter should be “kept quite distinct through the Public Assistance Committee”. Nobody should get a municipal house unless they could establish that they were in real need by means of a properly supervised means test. The National Federation of Property Owners and Ratepayers submitted similar views: “it should be the duty of the local authority to provide houses for those who cannot pay an economic rent, and this duty should not be entrusted to any other body.” Again, this should be looked upon as a form of poor relief: “the family should be 96

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relieved rather than the home should be subsidized.”[17] Such bodies were not going to support Percy or Unwin’s proposals at a time when the government was intent on delivering the profitable sectors of housing into their hands, while leaving the public authorities with the rest. They preferred a clear dividing line. The Moyne Committee sought to distance itself from these problems by clearly rejecting any rôle for public utility societies in new building. There was still damage in several respects, however. Lack of any new building inhibited relief of overcrowding, which was generally recognized as a necessary conjoint procedure to reconditioning. Also, events had cast a cloud of suspicion over the committee’s activities which did nothing to help it resolve another major problem: how to find a clear space for reconditioning in relation to slum clearance. Austen Chamberlain and others had attacked the 1933 Bill by pointing to large areas of deficient housing that would not be affected by a limited programme of slum clearance. It would seem almost self-evident that above the lowest tier of housing suitable for clearance, there must lie another tier suitable for improvement, which would allow both policies to go forward together. In fact this whole area bristled with difficulties. A useful starting point is the actions that were already being carried out under the 1930 Improvement Area provisions. Little or nothing has been written about their application in provincial cities, although plans were certainly made in Birmingham, Liverpool and in the north-east county boroughs. Certainly, their use in London followed a definite line. In 1930 the medical officer presented the LCC with a survey of possible areas in which “a most anomalous result has emerged…unsatisfactory insanitary areas, not yet bad enough to justify inclusion under schemes for clearance …would at first sight appear the most fruitful field in which to seek for improvement areas. But upon inspection...such houses…are structurally incapable of withstanding the reconditioning necessary to remove the evils from which they suffer. The greater part of the older working-class houses in London are of this character.”[18] Returning to this theme in 1933 he says improvement area property should be not less than three-storeys high, well-built and of sound fabric, well-arranged on site, and while originally designed f or one family is now unsuitably occupied by several, overcrowded and roughly used, the disrepair or sanitary defects being of such a nature that they can be effectively remedied at reasonable cost and thereafter properly maintained.[19]

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It is noticeable that whereas the first formulation was exclusively struc tural, in the second there is a stronger economic element. Nonetheless, this does not go so far as to recognize a primacy of economic factors: given economic constraints are accepted in deciding which structures can be improved, and what lies beyond this is written off as structurally beyond improvement. In the case of improvement areas the conditions complained of had to be “effectively remedied.” This, however, had to be done without much increase in rents, and without subsidy. The local authority took on the responsibility and expense of rehousing surplus tenants, but again the landlord had to meet any resulting effects on the rental. This was the basis of Percy’s argument that such schemes would reduce economic viability and deter responsible landlords. It also necessarily limited the kind of improvement that could occur. There was, therefore, no weighing of relative costs and benefits of redevelopment or improvement. A set of properties was distinguished that could structurally be considered as improvable, in the sense that there was not too large a burden of expensive repairs. As far as the LCC medical officer was concerned such property was “practically limited to certain parts of the County, chiefly in the north and west; Kensington, Islington, and Paddington being particularly suitable”. It was thus quite different from clearance property in location as well as in type. The medical officer emphasized, however, that it would be a mistake to suppose the new powers were “applicable only to areas which are less urgently in need of attention in the wider sanitary sense. The overcrowded ‘slum’ presents worse conditions than those which arise merely from structural defects and deficiencies in houses otherwise cared for.” Such improvement areas were to be declared at Clarendon Street (Paddington) and Southam Street and Treverton Street in Kensington. Clarendon Street was representative of the type. Improvement there consisted of closing the basements, where extra toilets were installed together with sinks in the rooms, 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 the classic remedy for dealing with large buildings in which poor families with children shared staircases and other amenities.[20] One possible direction for future policy was to found reconditioning on structurally sound properties, and to go for a higher standard of conversion and amenities that might justifiably be ranked as “improvement” rather than “repair”, so attracting a public subsidy. This was the route taken by the parallel Whiston Report on Scotland.[21] The Scottish Committee’s recommendations were explicitly based on developing the Rural Workers legislation, and they had in mind a 98

The Moyne Report and reconditioning

standard of reconditioning which included the provision of a separate water closet inside the building, and preferably inside the dwelling, hot and cold water and, where practicable, a bath in a bathroom. Reconditioning also meant amalgamation of rooms into larger flats where this did not involve extensive reconstruction. Grants would be available to cover 50 per cent of improvements, but not repairs, up to a limit of £75 per dwelling. In return for the grant there would be some— imprecise—control over rent, and the committee recognized that there would be little in it for the landlord. Many landlords would be unwilling to co-operate, but it was essential, they thought, not to leave a sporadic distribution in which some properties in a street were improved and others not. This would “diminish the advantage to be derived from the reconditioning, and would cause great difficulty in future when the unreconditioned property became ripe for demolition.” A Scottish Housing Corporation—a public body removed from direct electoral control—would take over such property where necessary, buying at market value. It would receive improvement grants in the same way as private landlords. The route chosen by the Scottish committee was therefore not without its difficulties. But it did succeed in identifying a field for improvement which was distinct from that of clearance, and in quantitative terms much more important—they estimated that some 200,000 dwellings might be improved in this way, compared with 40,000 needing demolition. The approach recognized the special nature of the Scottish housing problem. There was an inheritance of “a substantial type of house built of stone or granite with walls of exceptional thickness”. Problems lay mainly in the small size of dwelling within the house, overcrowding and lack of amenities. In London there were large tracts of houses formerly in middleclass occupation, but in most cases in England house property was of a less substantial character. Nonetheless, policies of reconditioning had in the past sometimes involved substantial alterations, such as the conversion of back-to-backs into through houses. There was a possibility of extending the Rural Workers approach to the cities, but the Moyne Report did not even consider this. Instead, it opted for the opposite route which involved a minimum of reconditioning in houses that were close to the slum clearance limit, and this brought inevitable problems of demarcation. The Moyne Committee approach was not based on any characteristics of the dwellings, but rather on their management. It relied a good deal on the practice of a small number of London societies, such as the Kensington Housing Trust and the Improved Tenants Association, whose methods were founded on Octavia Hill principles. It was argued that “you cannot 99

A new deal 1933–5

take people wholesale out of the slums and put people in new property.” Reconditioning was practised only in a limited way. The trust explained that “reconditioning in that sense only means repair. The essence is to have sufficient reconditioned property to educate people up to ultimately going into the new.”[22] The Moyne Report itself found that there was no “marked difference between the standard of repairs which can be required under the Housing Acts and that which is secured by Housing Societies as landlords; the important difference lies in the improved management of the houses…and their subsequent maintenance in good repair.”[23]. Other societies had different practices—for example Evelyn Perry and Irene Barclay giving evidence on behalf of the St Pancras House Improvement Society recommended demolition and rebuilding “in the case of all houses of the pre-London Building Act period”.[24] The Moyne Report considered, however, that public utility societies provided striking examples of the practical advantages which can be obtained from the transfer of working-class property from a number of small private landlords to responsible public or quasi-public ownership and 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 property above that taken in slum clearance. The report specifically argued for the purchase of “working-class houses which are not in all respects fit for habitation, but can be made fit and to which a possible life of up to twenty years can be given”. The phrase “not in all respects fit for human habitation” was one that constantly recurs as a way of demarcating property which was not “unfit” in the sense of clearance legislation, yet needed special measures. In support of this view, and in order to justify the compulsory transfer of property, the language used by the report regarding landlords was strikingly similar to that contained in slum clearance and sanitary legislation. The report claimed to aim at the elimination of all owners who have proved themselves unwilling or unable to discharge the obligations of ownership and who 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 have a salutory effect in inducing those owners who can afford it to put their property generally into a good state of repairs.[26] 100

Plate 1

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

Alvar Street, Deptford, 1934.

Plate 2

Plate 3

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

Plate 4

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

Plate 5

Plate 6

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

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

Plate 7

White City Estate, Hammersmith, August 1939.

Plate 8

The Moyne Report and reconditioning

This stance, however, left the committee in a the grip of contradictory pressures when it came to the crucial problem of compensation. Having laid such emphasis on the failure of landlords to do their duty, it had to be careful not to be seen to be taking the property off their hands at a favourable rate. The committee explicitly rejected the view that problems of housing quality were the result of post-war policy, and they were advised by the chief valuer that such houses were overvalued on the market, allowing insufficient monies for repairs and maintenance. This was because of “the general reluctance of local authorities to exercise their powers for compelling owners to keep their premises in habitable condition”.[27] The report itself blamed the housing shortage for the fact that landlords could “curtail their expenditure on repairs without endangering their income from rents”. Against this, owners had looked to improvement as a means of shifting the compensation question in their favour, and the government would not be anxious to exacerbate the kinds of 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 value less the cost of putting the property in good repair, as “hardship would be inflicted on a number of poor people”. In the end it advocated refunding the purchase money of a property, a weak scheme to which all kinds of objections could be made, and which would have been almost impossible to carry into legislation. [28] The Moyne Report’s recommendations continued a line of policy development that had begun with the Unhealthy Areas Report. Like the Chamberlain proposals of the late 1920s, they reflected a changed political context: one in which planned decentralization found less support and “slum prevention” more. This left “improvement” largely encapsulated in a set of meanings inherited from the Victorian period. It was, in this form, an alternative to slum clearance rather than complementary to it, focusing attention on the slum tenant and the landlord as much (or more) than on the slum building. Although slum clearance also clearly bore the marks of its Victorian origins, its meanings seemed capable of greater extension, to include public investment in new urban forms, and this made it more acceptable across the political spectrum. The most likely context for acceptance of “slum prevention” rather than clearance and rebuilding was one in which political support for local authority intervention in housing was at a very low ebb, and there was thus no need to provide it with a strong focus. This might have been a possibility in 1931–2, but by 1933–4 the 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 slum clearance, but involved management rather than buildings. However, Hilton-Young was instead to reinforce the clean sweep of clearance with the wider concept of redevelopment. Alison Ravetz sees a “clean sweep approach” to towns in terms of the utopianism of certain politicians, architects and planners, emerging from a hatred and rejection of the Victorian city, and hence an easy willingness to discard its existing form.[29] This seems to me to be exaggerated, but above all it presents only one side of the equation. What was equally important were the factors that prevented any effective intervention to improve existing forms, and led to action being concentrated on competitive new development or on redevelopment. Some of these factors are intrinsic or empirical in nature. But they were also greatly reinforced by an ideological approach which was already deeply embedded in Victorian society, and involved political and economic interests much more powerful than planners, architects, or utopian politicians. This was a desire to establish a “clear dividing line” between a sphere of “free enterprise” and a sphere of public intervention: the hope that by radical intervention at the bottom it would be possible to preserve the rest from any intervention at all. Slum clearance had always represented such an approach, only now events were to conspire to extend it to redevelopment.

The 1935 Act: overcrowding and redevelopment By the summer of 1933 the political scene had changed considerably, and the success of the National Government in the next general election could no longer be guaranteed. Civil servants preparing the new Housing Bill felt that the 1933 Act had been a technical success, in the sense that it had stimulated slum clearance and private-sector housing starts had increased. It had, however, been a political failure, and this unpopularity might increase as local authority starts were still benefiting from transitional arrangements. The essential context of the Bill, therefore, was that a new move was required to recapture the initiative in the housing field, while preserving as much as possible of the clear dividing line between public and private housing that had been established in 1933. A possible Bill called Housing (Moyne Report) was pencilled into the agenda in October 1933, and in December policy aims were summarized as follows: “to remedy the evil of slums action is needed on two parallel lines (1) clearance…(2) reconditioning of house…capable of being made fit for a number of years at reasonable cost.” Later that month Hilton-Young put this proposition to 102

The 1935 Act: overcrowding and redevelopment

the Cabinet, but also mentioned some provision for the relief of overcrowding. Any idea of public utility societies being given a central rôlehad already been ruled out, and overcrowding increasingly came to replace reconditioning as the focus for a second prong of the attack on the slum. Officials highlighted the references to this in the Moyne Report, and indeed decided that “overcrowding is a more serious menace to health than deficiencies which can be met by reconditioning”.[30] In the event, the 1935 Act was to repeal the 1930 Improvement Area procedure, and although reconditioning could occur in other ways, in practice it was of reduced importance. The main difficulty in dealing with overcrowding was that its relief had always formed part of the case for local authority building, and it was more difficult to detach from the general housing market than slum clearance or slum prevention. Indeed, the opposition were to charge the government with a volte-face: “the most obvious course in 1932 to provide housing accommodation for overcrowded working-class families was the total withdrawal of the subsidy. The most obvious course in 1935 is to renew 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 meant more than simply targeting the overcrowded or setting an overcrowding standard. Overcrowding could only be tackled by “rehousing on the overcrowded and slum sites”. This was a very necessary argument. A Cabinet committee set up to consider the matter reported that suburban building 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 the central sites by means of blocks of flats.[32] Hilton-Young then put the proposals to the local authorities and to the National Federation of Housebuilders. The latter was firmly opposed to any further suburban building by councils, even for slum clearance rehousing. There were many council tenants who could afford economic rents, and “if the local authorities evicted these persons the slum tenants could take their place and the evicted persons could be catered for by the private builder.” The local authorities, however, while welcoming the possibility of an overcrowding subsidy, were strongly opposed to confining its 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 obtain Cabinet permission for suburban housing in special cases sanctioned by 103

A new deal 1933–5

the Treasury.[33] He was then able to present the matter to Parliament in the following terms. Overcrowding was characteristically present in the inner and older areas of our towns, with mean streets badly developed, a wasteful layout of land, which according to modern ideas are neither proper from the point of view of amenities nor economic from the point of view of housing the maximum number under proper conditions.

Local authorities should therefore boldly take over into their own hands the central overcrowded badly developed areas and…redevelop them as regards the layout so as to make the most economic use of the sites, and then reconstruct or rebuild so as to house the greatest possible number of wage earners on those sites under proper conditions.[34] The Bill therefore involved two major new features. One of these was the redevelopment area which could be declared where one-third of the dwellings were unfit or overcrowded. The other was a legally-enforced overcrowding standard. This standard was complicated in detail, but based generally on a maximum of two persons per room and separation of the sexes over 10 years of age for sleeping purposes. The precise effects of this standard in terms of rehousing needs were to be established by means of an official overcrowding survey. The standard was seen both as a means of targeting the worst cases and of concentrating attention on the largest cities. Owners organizations were not opposed to a legally-enforced overcrowding standard, which had indeed been suggested to the Moyne Committee by the Property Owners Protection Association.[35] They had, however, been looking to the Moyne Report as a means of renewing the compensation question, and Hilton-Young faced intense opposition at the Conservative Party Conference. Some new provisions became essential, but with the support of the Cabinet he was able to limit the extent of the concessions, 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 the grounds of “bad neighbours” would merely “legalise what was already the practice”.[36] The 1935 Housing Act was recognized both by contemporaries and

104

The 1935 Act: overcrowding and redevelopment

later writers as an important measure, and there are three linked ways in which this should be examined. First, in the political sense the Act was much more successful than that of 1933, and re-established the kind of modus vivendi that had been present in the mid-1920s. By confirming the position of the local authorities, and providing them with a rôle that was clearly both important and no longer confined to a limited time horizon, ground had been conceded to the left. The latter, however, was compelled to accept in practice that the rôle of councils should be complementary to private enterprise rather than competitive, and that they should deal with the most difficult, least prestigious and least profitable part of the market. It is certainly wrong to interpret this as consensus, if by this term one means a meeting of minds. The recognition of a local authority rôle in combating overcrowding was of major significance because it breached the strict lines of a sanitary policy which distinguished between quality and quantity. Councils were given a rôle in housing supply, and although this was strictly demarcated and limited, it had evident possibilities of future extension. Wilding saw the Act as “a further step towards the establishment…of a national minimum standard of housing.” Going further, he suggested that it was “a tentative shuffle towards the idea of housing as a social service.”[37] Whether one accepts this latter point, or whether the Act should be seen rather as an extension of sanitary policy needs to be considered in relation to its practical workings. Also relevant here is the attempt to confine local authority action to rehousing in flats on expensive land. This, however, had equally large significance in other directions. The introduction of redevelopment areas brought the concept of “obsolescence” on to the practical agenda alongside “unfit housing”, with major effects on the way in which cities were viewed. The scope for redevelopment of the inner parts of cities was dramatically widened, and undoubtedly this also encouraged wider conceptions of slum clearance. Through redevelopment, housing and town planning were once more linked, and indeed Hilton-Young referred to his measure as “town planning in practice and not on paper”.[38] Town planning in Britain, hitherto almost exclusively decentralist in tone, found itself with a major challenge, and the decentralists main weapon—the need to relieve overcrowding—was turned back against them. The Act greatly reinforced those who favoured the flat as a solution to urban housing, and it is worth noting that Greenwood complained of this and claimed that in 1930 he had envisaged flats only for three or four areas such as London and Liverpool.[39] Finally, the Act brought land values back onto the political and planning agenda. Lord Balfour of Burleigh, an important Conservative supporter of planning, thus immediately 105

A new deal 1933–5

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

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

GLRO CL/HSG/1 /5 Housing policy: economic situation 1931–2; PRO CAB 23/ 73 64(32)7 CP 409 (32); CAB 70(33)21 Appendix II. Estates Gazette 121, 1933, 129. Hansard 273, col. 559, 15 Dec. 1932. Hansard 280, cols 651, 7 July 1933. HC 26 Apr. (9) 1933 confidential memo. Moggridge, D. (ed.) 1971–80. J.M.Keynes: collected writings. Vol. 21 Activities 1931–9, 155. London: Macmillan. Hansard 273, cols 573–6, 578, 588, 15 Dec. 1932. Estates Gazette 121, 1933, 203. ibid., 123, 1934, 469. F. Fremantle, Hansard 274, col. 83, 7 Feb. 1933. 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 in Leeds 1919–39. M.Phil thesis, University of Bradford; Hammerton H.J. 1952. This turbulent priest: the story of Charles Jenkinson. London: Lutterworth Press. Hansard 274, cols 55–6, 7 Feb. 1933. 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 PRO HLG 52/792. HLG 49/7; Other references to Unwin are drawn from Estates Gazette 121, 1933, 19; and PRO HLG 52/792. HC 3 May (6–2) 1933. Estates Gazette 121, 1933, 685. PRO HLG 52/793. HC 3 Oct. (7) 1930. HC 28 Jun. (7) 1933. HC 3 Oct. (7) 1930; HC19 Jun. (44) 1935. Departmental Committee on Housing (Scotland), Report, Cmnd. 4469 Dec. 1933. PRO HLG 49/7; PRO HLG 52/792; Departmental Committee on Housing (Moyne Committee), Report, Cmnd 4397, 1933. Moyne Report op. cit, 12.

106

Notes

24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

PRO HLG 49/7; HLG 52/792. Moyne Report op. cit, 12. ibid., 17–18, 56. PRO HLG 52/791. Moyne Report op. cit., 17–18, 53. Ravetz A. 1980. Remaking cities, 19–24. London: Croom Helm. PRO HLG 29/213; CAB 70(33)21 Appendix II. Earl of Listowel, Hansard (Lords) 97, col. 324, 5 Jun 1935. PRO CAB 24/247 CP 12(34), CP 46(34). PRO HLG 68/30; CAB 24/250 CP 208(34). Hansard 297, cols. 362, 367, 30 Jan. 1935. PRO HLG 49/7. ibid., conference with officials 10 July 1933. 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. PRO HLG 52/128:1934 Bill 12 Feb. 1934. Hansard 297, col. 389, 30 Jan. 1935. Lord Balfour of Burleigh 1935. Overcrowding: a bad Bill. Contemporary Review 147, 388; Hansard 297, col. 546, 31 Jan. 1935.

107

CHAPTER 8 Action against the slum: programmes and distributions

The aim of this chapter is to examine the various programmes designed to remedy slum conditions in the 1930s, and to show the extent of their achievement. The clearance programme in England and Wales is first discussed, and statistics presented relating to the main cities and regional groupings of the county boroughs. Attention is given to the varying types of process that clearance involved, only a portion of the effort requiring the compulsory purchase of sites on which rehousing could take place. By contrast, this was the main process in London, and the clearance programme there is considered in more detail in the second part. Finally, overcrowding and multioccupation are examined; there is a discussion of their incidence in relation to 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 that in England and Wales over 250,000 houses were demolished or closed in clearance programmes during the 1930s, and over a million persons displaced. Table 8.1 gives the official figures to end September 1934 and end March 1939. Bowley then went on to compare such figures with the programmes that had been submitted under Circular 1331 by October 1933. These amounted to the demolition of 266,851 houses, the displacement of 1,240,182 people, and the building of 285,189 replacement houses. The 1933 figures did not include a few programmes yet to be approved, nor clearance areas already declared under the 1930 Act. Nonetheless, it was clear from the comparison that in global terms the programme had been a success, and that it dwarfed all previous attacks on unfit housing. Despite this, the end of the slum was not in sight because local authorities had raised their 108

Unfit housing and slum clearance

programmes by March 1939 to include demolition or closure of 472,000 houses.[1] 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 and Wales, 1934, 1939.

It was also clear that the overall totals concealed very substantial variations in the performance of different authorities. Some had considerably exceeded their programmes, and others had fallen substantially behind. However, it is 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 programmes generally exceeded those of 1930, some authorities such as Birmingham had scaled their programmes down. In certain large cities, notably Leeds and Liverpool, the 1933 programmes were always intended to run over a longer period. Again, the nature of the programme that authorities had to carry out presented very varying degrees of difficulty. One should not therefore accept that the extent to which targets were completed is the main yardstick by which local authority performance should be judged. Moreover, both the ministry at the time, and Bowley later, rely too much on measuring performance through quantitative statistics rather than in terms of the quality of achievement as related to circumstances before and after. Throughout Bowley’s work there is an absolute certainty in the rightness of a programme the ef f ects of which are never really examined. Bearing this in mind, the programmes submitted in 1930 and 1933 are nonetheless useful guides to set against the extent of achievement. Tables 8.2 and 8.3 set out the programmes of leading cities and of all the county boroughs grouped into conurbations and regions. Together, the county borough and London County programmes accounted for about two thirds of the 1933 totals. Unfortunately, the achievement of programmes is less easily measured by disaggregated data, for which the most complete set relates to the number of houses built for rehousing.[2] Once more, the overall number of such houses—273,389—matches those demolished, but in some districts, notably London and north-east England, a larger surplus 109

Action against the slum: programmes and distributions

of new houses was needed over those demolished. Probably the best comparison to make is that between the proportion of new houses built in each district, and the proportion of the population that was programmed to be displaced in 1933. Thus Greater London had 23 per cent of the 1933 programme (by persons) but built only 10 per cent of the replacement houses. The seven leading cities (Table 8.2) accounted for 48 per cent of the programme, but completed only 29 per cent of the houses. These figures clearly bear out the proposition, originally established by Bowley, that slum clearance made least progress, in relation to the programmes submitted, in the large cities and conurbations where the problem was most severe. More progress was made in other county boroughs, and yet more in the aggregate of industrial districts, suburbs, country towns and villages that made up the remaining local authority areas. 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-war period in England and Wales. Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 17, 201–2.

The figures given in Table 8.2 reflect the fact that slum clearance was easiest to accomplish in smalzl towns and less organized settlements where rebuilding land lay close at hand. Indeed, there were in fact two separate types of programme being carried out. In one of these the local authority ordered the demolition or closure of houses and built rehousing accommodation on undeveloped land. In the other, the authority purchased the properties, usually by a compulsory order, and used the sites for rehousing, although parts and sometimes the whole of such areas could also be allocated to other land uses. These programmes therefore had very differ ent implications and degrees of difficulty of implementation. In some 110

Unfit housing and slum clearance

cases all that was needed was to proceed with normal cottage building activities, and to issue orders for closure or demolition, with only a general requirement to keep the two parts in balance. In other cases there needed to be a complicated scheduling of purchase, demolition, rebuilding and rehousing, which had to be planned over several years and might involve co-ordination of activities on many different sites. Table 8.3 Slum clearance in the 1930s: county boroughs, by conurbation and region

Sources: see Table 8.2, p.111.

Exactly how much of the 1930s programme fell into each of the two categories is impossible to determine. It is clear, however, that the demolition or closure of individual houses did not usually involve the purchase of the land. Such houses comprised 31 per cent of the demolitions completed by April 1939, and as much as 48 per cent of those achieved by 111

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

October 1934. Figures available at Kew allow some insight into the extent that clearance of individual houses formed part of the programmes submitted in 1933, although they do not cover all parts of the country. In some county boroughs demolition or closure of individual houses accounted for a substantial part—as much as 56 per cent in Bolton, and over 30 per cent in Portsmouth, Wolverhampton and Dudley. More typical were cities such as Bristol, Oldham, and Southampton (11 per cent -16 per cent). It is known that 16 per cent of the houses actually demolished in Sheffield were dealt with individually. Individual houses, however, made up a very small part (2–5 per cent) of the programmes in Newcastle, Gateshead and Sunderland, and negligible proportions in Liverpool (0.7 112

Unfit housing and slum clearance

per cent) and London.[3] Given the relative weight of the different areas, it seems unlikely that individual houses made up more than about about 10 per cent of clearance properties in London and the county boroughs, and hence it follows that the bulk of clearance activity outside those districts probably took that form. The clearance or closure of houses on an individual basis meant that they were considered independently in legal procedure, it did not necessarily mean that these were free-standing buildings. This procedure passes naturally into that of the clearance order, which was the method of dealing with clearance areas which the local authority did not wish to purchase. Such areas might comprise as few as two houses, but equally might range up to several acres if, for example, the area was zoned for industrial usage. One kind of situation to which individual action or clearance orders were particularly applicable was the presence of infill which had occurred at the rear of houses during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and has been described by Conzen and Beresford.[4] At Middlesborough, where at first individual back-to-back houses were taken down to improve light and air for the rest, later “all the houses fronting onto little courts have been pulled down, and nearly everywhere the sites have remained vacant.”[5] These were processes that would have been repeated in many parts of the country, and account for a considerable proportion of the clearance programme, although the results would often not be visible from the main streets. Even in the most detailed accounts of provincial cities, no mention is made of the extent to which clearance orders were used, or of the extent of compulsory purchase orders and the resulting land uses. This is one of the gaps in research that needs to be filled. However, from 12,591 houses submitted as part of clearance areas by Liverpool between 1933 and 1939, some 4,068 were included in clearance orders.[6] It would thus appear that nearly one-third of the houses in the programme were dealt with in this way. If this was the case in one of the major cities, and one in which central area rehousing was given the greatest priority, it suggests that this must have been a major procedure in provincial cities generally. Certainly, taken together with the fact that one-third of the clearance programme in the country dealt with individual houses, it is clear that the bulk of the interwar programme did not involve compulsory purchase of land. This is the main consideration to bear in mind in comparing the extent of clearance from one district to another, or in comparing inter-war pro grammes with those of 1955–75. Several other implications also follow. The bulk of owners affected by clearance between the wars would not have received any compensation. They would simply have been left with the sites or, where only closure 113

Action against the slum: programmes and distributions

was effected, with the buildings for which other uses would have to be found. Where the owner was left with the site, this was often of little value, although clearance might benefit other buildings nearby. In other cases, however, sites now free of sitting tenants could be turned to more valuable uses. Also, the bulk of the inter-war programme did not involve rebuilding on clearance sites. This has many implications, but one might raise here E.D. Simon’s contention that “a serious mistake was made in 1930 when the Greenwood subsidy was made available for new houses only on condition that when a family from a slum clearance area had been put into a new house, the slum house was pulled down”.[7] His view was that continued use of many of such houses would have further relieved overcrowding, kept property prices down and prevented compulsory removal of some tenants who wanted to remain. Against that, most of the houses involved were of the worst type surviving from the pre-1860 era. They not only had the cramped, ill-ventilated sites targeted by the legislation, but had also often been the least well built property, now suffering from dampness and other defects. The main factor, however, was that it was the clearance that legitimized the slum rehousing subsidy. Everywhere, the nature of the clearance programme depended on the interlinking of a number of crucial factors. The nature of development in the pre-1860 period, the closeness of suburban land and the political response all varied from place to place. Perhaps surprisingly in this period, unemployment does not appear as a factor which clearly affects the pace of the movement at the regional level. It is true that South Wales saw 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 the nature of its housing stock. There was a considerable programme in the north-east which kept well to schedule.[8] Generally, the south and midlands bulk fairly large in the totals itemized in Table 8.3, in relation to the nature of their housing, but this reflects the fact that clearance was not carried out according to a national standard, and nearly all authorities had some property which came within the scope of the Acts. Because of this, even slum clearance may not have done a great deal to counteract the tendency found by Stephen Ward for urban development spending to be concentrated on “‘middle’ Britain i.e. the most favoured parts of outer Britain and the most peripheral parts of inner Britain”.[9] Among individual cities, Leeds has received the most detailed attention, although this partly reflects the rather unusual circumstances in which its programme took place, Jenkinson’s fervour being balanced by the strength of the owners’ political power base. One attitude to property clashed with another which had been developed over a long period. Leeds 114

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demonstrates, too, how the early nineteenth-century inheritance shaped the early twentieth-century response. The strength of the case for clearance was based on the Medical Officer of Health’s condemnation of the 30,000 back-to-backs that had been built before the introduction of bylaws in the Leeds Improvement Act of 1866.[10] Leeds was a prime example of a city in which most of the housing could be categorized into a number of broad types of roughly similar style. In Liverpool, less than 2,000 houses of the pre by-law court type still remained in 1930 and clearance was beginning to bite into the next category.[11] The Leed’s programme, with its clear categorization and all-embracing nature, may have favoured the creation of relatively large clearance areas, lying in a girdle round the city centre, as depicted in the “red ruin” map. Everywhere, however, much depended on the desire to create central rehousing sites, and on the disposition of non-residential property that might have to be taken as “added land”. Birmingham is a good example of this. It possessed a clear inner ring of back-to-back houses, but many slum clearance sites were initially zoned for industry, and in the early years often stood vacant or were adapted to temporary usage. Large-scale clearance was only implemented when the programme was accelerated in association with Manzoni’s plans for redevelopment areas (see Chapter 11).[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 contro versy, and change of council in 1935, which were largely responsible for the fact that whereas Leeds submitted the largest programme of any provincial city in 1933–33,000 houses—it only demolished 11,132 houses. Further south in Sheffield, only 9,000 houses were submitted in 1933, but by end-1939 houses scheduled numbered 22,808 and 11,248 were actually demolished or closed.[14] This was one of the most smoothly developing programmes of any major city and it owed much to the circumstance, noted by Abercrombie in 1924, that “there can be few towns where land from which unsatisfactory houses are to be cleared is so consistently wanted for factory purposes, and again where open land is to be found so near to work areas.”[15] The importance of suburban land is again emphasized in the Liverpool programme. The original plan put forward by L.H. Keay in 1933 envisaged rehousing of one-third on the outskirts and twothirds on the central sites. In the event, however, houses and flats were built in more equal proportions, which suggests a greater concentration on the suburbs. Among other factors, there was always a need to obtain a large amount of initial rehousing before embarking on a major clearance and rebuilding programme.[16]

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Clearance in London It was where suburban development was least appropriate, either because of the disposition of the land, or the nature of local employment, that central area rehousing was also most costly. The two factors were necessarily linked, and London was the outstanding example of the condition. Land for overspill, and to obtain an initial surplus to get clearance going, was the most controversial aspect of the capital’s programme. In May 1934 the council already possessed sites covering nearly 100 acres for increasing housing supply in advance of clearance. It acquired some further sites for cottage estates, such as the 138 acres at Kidbrook, Greenwich, bought for £200,000 in 1936. More important were a series of more expensive purchases within 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 land could be bought—such as the Exhibition site at White City. More usually, however, the purchases followed the pattern set by the Central Block Dwellings programme of 1928—except that they could now be used for slum clearance as well as other tenants. Tulse Hill is a typical case. It consisted of “60 houses, private residences, partly let in flats and in a few cases used for institutional purposes.… The majority are large oldfashioned residences many of which stand in exceptionally large gardens.” The estimated population was 400–500, of which only 10 per cent were working class. 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 per acre. Although these sites generally eased the rehousing situation, many of them were still remote from the principal clearance areas. Within the area of inner east London, few comparable purchases were possible. On a few small sites housing gain could be made where the land was no longer needed for industrial purposes—such as the 3-acre Red Lion Brewery site in Stepney purchased for £70,000 in 1935.[18] Attention was therefore turned elsewhere, particularly north of the river into Hackney. The valuer reported in May 1934 that suggestions had been made to utilize part of Victoria Park. This would be without precedent. It may be, however, that the pressure to deal with East End slum clearance will necessitate this step being taken, replacing a part of the park…by an equal amount of park or open space in another part of London. [19] 116

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The other suggestions he made were hardly more appealing. These were three small sites “on the extreme county boundary in an area which has always been recognized as more suitable for industry than for housing”. The land was almost entirely “made up ground” and adjacent to chemical works and other industrial activities. In July, officers reported on the acquisition of a part of Hackney Marshes for housing purposes, suggesting that alternative open space might be offered in Hainault Forest, although strenuous opposition could be expected. Indeed, this soon developed into a major political row, symbolic for some of Labour’s determination to grab land regardless of the public interest, for others a test of the new council’s powers to break through established opposition and effect radical change. Ultimately, a compromise was reached involving an exchange of lands for a site offered by a private landowner immediately south of the marsh, and on this land the Kingsmead Estate was built. The Municipal Reformers opposed most of these developments, which they saw as an encroachment by the Labour Party on to their territory. Instead, their leader Sir Harold Webbe emphasized that the council should concentrate on the East End and similar districts. Rehousing should be on clearance sites and in redevelopment areas and include, where necessary, the use of ten-storey blocks of flats.[20] However, in other respects the political situation in London differed radically from that in Leeds. The Municipal Reform appeal to the electors in 1937 simply promised to do more than Labour in clearance and redevelopment. In these circumstances, the implementation of the programme became an absolute political priority. For the Labour Party the clear objective was to show that it could govern London efficiently, and ultimately be entrusted with the government of the country. Establishing Labour in power meant above all erasing the image of financial irresponsibility attached to the party as a result of the debacle of 1931 and earlier struggles over “Poplarism”. The party thus claimed to have maintained “the highest tradition of local government for efficiency and uprightness in the Council’s administration”. “Labour at power in County Hall is clean, competent, constructive and public spirited.” “It can be safely left in control of the world’s greatest municipality.” “The Tory policy of stops and starts and wobbling has ended. The Labour policy of persistent drive holds the field.”[21] All this clearly bears the mark of Herbert Morrison himself, although he was closely supported by others such as Charles Latham and Lewis Silkin, the new chairman of the Housing Committee. It meant that although slum clearance obviously had its idealistic aspect, in London it appeared more as an efficient programme than as a crusade of the Jenkinson type.

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Externally, the most important feature of the clearance initiative was the relationships with the boroughs. Here what the Labour LCC wanted was a traditional relationship in which the county council dealt with the larger areas, most suitable for rebuilding, and the borough council with the smaller areas, for which, however, the LCC would accept the rehousing rôle. Not all boroughs were, however, prepared to accept this. Labour controlled Bermondsey wanted to retain and build up the large housing workforce it had developed, and to clear and rebuild themselves. This had to be conceded. At nearby Camberwell, the borough originally stated that it was not their policy to build houses, but later when Labour took control they wanted some of the larger clearance areas as well as the small. A third south London borough, Lambeth, which remained in municipal reformcontrol, left the LCC to do most of the clearance, large and small. Boroughs with housing land tended to have housing departments regardless of party, so that Wandsworth and Woolwich both wanted to undertake most of their own clearance. The LCC also interfered little with the municipal reform heartland in the West End, where many Boroughs in any case had few large clearance areas, but it did more in Paddington and St Marylebone. Elsewhere in London the pattern of the LCC undertaking the large schemes, and the boroughs the small, was generally followed. As in other major cities, clearance areas in London were formed around lists of unfit houses drawn up by the medical officer. The original list of 1911 has already been mentioned in Chapter 2.[22] In the latest revision of 1933, 31,402 houses were enumerated in the first two categories of the list, divided amongst 1,688 separate areas, which thus averaged 19 houses each. Larger clearances could be made by combining these nuclei, together with added lands. Despite this, clearance areas remained relatively small in size. Between 1934 and 1939, 214 areas were declared averaging 2.27 acres and 466 persons displaced. In London, contrary to the practice elsewhere, it was the smaller areas that tended to be left, while preference was given to sites on which rebuilding could take place. But the medical officer had pointed out in 1922 that such smaller areas “constitute by far the larger part of the most insanitary dwellings, and representing as they do the worst conditions, their clearance is the more imperative”.[23] Despite the acknowledged aim of dealing with the larger areas first, some of the largest clearances were in fact declared in 1937–8, such as the Ocean Street scheme in Stepney covering 17.3 acres of which 5.4 acres were added lands. They reflected the impact of larger-scale thinking associated with the concept of redevelopment areas. Another way in which clearance scheduling departed from the priorities dictated by the clearance lists was that areas 118

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in which rehousing was easiest were favoured, especially where housing gain might be made on the sites. Clearance in south London thus made more rapid progress than that in the heartland of the East End. London had virtually no back-to-back property by this period and in the larger clearance areas property, although in poor condition, was probably, better, in terms of plan and structure, than that taken by clearance in most other parts of the country; it was also more varied. Barclay and Perry, in their surveys of various boroughs, distinguish between tenement houses of six to ten rooms and “cottages”, varying from two to four and sometimes five rooms. Defined in this way, the cottage was not such a dominant element of London housing as might be imagined, when one excludes the more “modern” versions. In the older development of London it was the “tenement house” rather than the “cottage” which predominated, and even in the East End the larger part of the accommodation was in subdivided tenement houses, even though these structures were smaller than those found further west. It was upon the cottage that the clearance programme fell most heavily, and undoubtedly this was often the worst property from the structural point of view, although it had other advantages (Plates 1–2).[24] These variations among residential properties were one of the causes of the small size of clearance areas. Larger structures often lined the main streets, with the smaller tucked in behind. A much more serious matter, however, was the presence of non-residential premises. In the Umberston Street area of Stepney there was “unusually intensive congestion”. “Many of the smaller (cottage type) houses are in cul-de-sacs or very narrow alleys…spaces in the rear are small and shut in by obstructive structures of every sort.” These included factories, warehouses, a church, synagogues and 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, the nugget. polish factory and large gasworks”.[25] The close association often found between industry and slum was thought of as a causal relationship. Industry caused overshadowing, and sometimes noise, smell, vermin, or other disturbance. Nearby housing was often of low social status. However, the presence of industry, particularly where it was of a substantial nature, also served to protect slum property by dividing it into small portions, difficult to combine into large clearance areas except at great expense. The first clearance programme of the new LCC was launched in July 1934. Over the three-year life of the council it envisaged the declaration of 132 clearance areas, including some 13,867 houses and 83,250 people.[26] Another 13,000 people were expected to be displaced from additional land taken as part of the programme. It was envisaged that most of the 119

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currently scheduled unhealthy areas in London could be cleared within four to five years, with the exception of those in the boroughs of Bethnal Green, Stepney and Shoreditch. Also there was a large population remaining in small areas and individually unfit houses which might be estimated at between 100,000 and 250,000 people. By the time the council launched its second clearance drive in June 1937, 141 areas and 10,973 houses had in fact been declared since June 1934. A somewhat larger programme was thus announced for the next three years amounting to 16,973 houses, of which about half were in fact to be declared before clearance was slowed and eventually ended by the onset of war. It was again thought that this programme would “go far towards solving the slum clearance problem in London”, the exception being the East End boroughs. A more definite note of caution was, however, now added: “the London housing problem is not static…it is impossible to formulate a definite programme which on completion could be said to eliminate every slum or unfit house in the County.”[27] Table 8.4 sets out the populations involved in clearance declarations in London 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 local council, which was responsible for nearly half the metropolitan borough programme. Overall, 71 per cent of London clearance (by population) was carried out by the LCC. The share of the total taken by the inner east rose consistently. Similarly, boroughs in the south-east, particularly Camberwell, 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 people displaced and rehoused through clearance increased from 7,549 in 1934–5 to 10,432 in 1935–6 and 16,055 in 1936–7, before falling back to 14,541 in 1937–8. During the first Labour council, clearance involved 34,036 people, compared to 6,823 in the previous three-year council period 1931–4, and 12,055 in the peak period 1928–31. Nonetheless, displacements obviously lagged well behind clearance declarations. The most important column in Table 8.4 is therefore the last, showing the population actually displaced by 1939–92,272 people. The completion rate had been particularly low in the 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, by borough.

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had only recently been declared. Clearance had proceeded much more rapidly south of the river, and some 36 per cent of the population actually displaced by clearance before the war lived there, even excluding Bermondsey and Southwark. All this had two important implications. First, a very large programme of clearance remained in various stages of completion when war broke out. Secondly, the East End saw much less demolition than clearance declarations would suggest, and this, taken together with the acknowledged failure to include all scheduled areas there, shows that a great deal of property condemned by pre-war standards still remained intact. 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 1930 and 1935–6 Acts. Sources: LCC, London housing statistics, 25; LCC MM, 16 May 1939.

Overcrowding and multi-occupation One of the advantages of “unfit housing” from an official point of view was that it provided a criterion of the slum which both limited its extent and gave it a strong territorial definition. Overcrowding as a criterion was always more difficult to limit in this way, and it was inherently easier to capture various degrees of qualitative deficiency in statistical terms. In addition to the usual measure of 2 persons per room, the 1931 Census included statistics for families at over 1.5 persons per room. Some 1.17 million families containing 7 million persons were thus enumerated. By the “Manchester Standard”, which measured bedroom accommodation in relation to needs, 70 per cent of children under 14 in Holborn, Southwark and Stepney lived in d wellings with a deficiency of bedrooms, and over 60 per cent in Bermondsey, Bethnal Green, Fulham, Kensington, St Marylebone, St Pancras and Shoreditch.[28] 122

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It is evident that if the standard of overcrowding had been set at 1.5 persons per room, not only would the numbers of person affected have been greatly increased, but there could have been no question of tackling such overcrowding through a legal limit, and reduction would have had to take a voluntary form, encouraged by extra subsidies. The 1935 Act, by linking overcrowding to a legal limit, had to set that limit at a level which could reasonably be expected to be enforced within a certain time.[29] Unlike the standard of unfitness, the same legal limit was set throughout the country, tempered only by variation in the date of the “appointed days” beyond which new overcrowding was to be an offence. This necessarily 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 was intended to entrench. Two questions obviously then arise. One is whether it was good policy to effect a concentration of effort that necessarily excluded a very large number of deserving cases. The other is whether a policy of compulsion resulted in a satisfactory outcome for the families affected. The advantage was that it reached down to families that might otherwise have been left aside by a voluntary policy. Against this it is difficult to support a compulsory policy unless it results in real benefit for those affected. Some evidence on this will be presented in Chapter 10, but it should be said that, as for slum clearance, there was little attempt at official 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 in the overcrowded areas through redevelopment The introduction of the standard was accompanied by much insistence on the fact that the problem was concentrated in the centre of large cities. The 1936 Overcrowding Survey certainly depicted a large concentration in London, although the county’s proportion of the total was no greater than that for slum clearance (Tables 8.5 & 8.6). Within the county, moreover, such overcrowding was highest in the inner east, where the percentage overcrowded in Shoreditch, Stepney and Finsbury was exceeded only by Sunderland among the county boroughs. Even so, the inner east contained a lesser proportion of the population overcrowded (41 per cent) than it did of that affected by clearance declarations (54 per cent). Outside London, overcrowding was less concentrated in large cities than unfit housing, although it may be true that it was frequently concentrated in their central parts. Although overcrowding was a problem in Liverpool, the six main cities outside London had only 10 per cent of the country’s overcrowded families, and the five provincial conurbations only 20 per cent. Overcrowding was

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Action against the slum: programmes and distributions 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 for 1936, Table ix; Registrar General, Census of England and Wales 1931, Housing, Table 5.

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

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

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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 that had received little mention in the presentation of the 1935 Act, and it made rather a nonsense of the initial insistence on flats as a form of rehousing. The overcrowding statistic produced by the 1936 survey was smaller than the LCC had expected from consideration of the 1931 Census. This was thought to reflect some improvement in between the surveys, but it mainly resulted from differences in the criteria used, the 1936 survey recording in a considerable decrease in the overcrowded population in one and two room dwellings. Nonetheless, there were still 70,676 families or 357,989 “equivalent persons” officially overcrowded in London. How exactly this might be translated into a figure for new dwellings was difficult to calculate. Adjustments would have to be made house by house, and the action the public authorities were to take in meeting the resulting overspill was not clearly spelt out. There would not necessarily be a straightforward transfer of excess families into local authority housing. On the contrary, it was thought that much could be done by readjustment within the private sector, although there was no provision for rent support if families were obliged to take extra rooms. Thus while commentators have generally welcomed the 1935 Act as official recognition an overcrowding standard, it also bore some of the marks of Victorian sanitary legislation. Moreover, the Act involved a major administrative effort as the largest number of overcrowded households lay close to the limit. Families could easily pass from one side of the divide to the other by birth, death, or children leaving home. Some of these difficulties were avoided 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 and allocated to relief of overcrowding. Such stock did not necessarily correspond to that occupied by overcrowding cases, but the low numbers do show the limited achievement of the campaign so far. This was partly ministry policy, since slum clearance was to take preference, but also reflected the initial insistence on the provision of flats, and the lower subsidies that were available until 1938. By that time, it was believed by the ministry that fewer council houses would be needed to relieve overcrowding than originally estimated. Even in London, where the requirements of the Act were put at 23,780 dwellings in July 1936, the abatement of overcrowding weighed much lower in the scale than slum clearance.[30] However, there was, of course a major difference, for slum clearance also provided the land on which the greater proportion of the 125

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displaced population could be reinstated. By contrast, all the new dwellings for abatement of overcrowding required new sites. Some 550 acres were originally thought to be required for flatted estates, a figure small by suburban standards, but which may be compared with the 664 acres of land declared in LCC slum clearance schemes between the wars, or the 760 acres occupied by the whole borough of Bethnal Green. Hence the importance of Redevelopment Areas. Multi-occupation, unlike unfit housing and overcrowding, was not connected to any official programme of action. It should not for that reason be neglected, since it has a bearing on the question of priorities. Many observers, including E.D. Simon, considered that the worst conditions were to be found in multi-occupied dwellings. This can be given some support from cases such as the improvement area at Clarendon Street, which had been recognized as a “notorious slum”, but could not be brought within the unfit category; Jerry White’s “Worst Street in North London” similarly survived until the 1950s. [31] Large buildings occupied by several families meant sharing of limited amenities, increased labour, and often gave rise to friction and difficulties in maintenance. By contrast, the smaller buildings on which clearance was particularly concentrated usually had the advantage that they could be occupied by one family. Similarly, although basements contained some of the worst cases of “unfitness”, compared to the upper rooms they could more easily be made self-contained, with separate access to the backyard. Again, old tenement blocks, such as Wolsely Buildings (Bermondsey), gave rise to major problems due to dense occupation of small flats by large families, sharing of lavatories and water taps, and the dumping of household rubbish. However, it was not until the eve of the Second World War that such buildings were admitted into the clearance programme. Multi-occupation was the norm rather than the exception for families within the county of London before the Second World War: 63 per cent of households there shared a dwelling in 1931. Indeed, it is perhaps this statistic rather than any other which reflects the severity of the capital’s housing problem. Of course, behind it lies a great variety of circumstances—in most cases sharing meant the presence of only one other household, often a small one. Nonetheless, multi-occupancy in its worst forms clearly showed an extension of various degrees of “slum” beyond the more limited case of “unfit housing”. Such localities cannot be plotted, but the geographical concentration of multi-occupation differed significantly from that of unfit housing. In London, the percentage of the population sharing a dwelling in 1931 was highest in Islington and St Pancras, and also high in such places as Hackney, Battersea, Lambeth, Camberwell, Fulham and Hammersmith as well as in the East End 126

Overcrowding and multi-occupation

boroughs. Moreover, whereas overcrowding was declining in London, multi-occupation was slightly increasing, fuelled by the formation of new households. The distribution of multi-occupation in English cities also differed considerably from that of “unfitness”. This can be illustrated by the number of families “surplus” to the number of dwellings in the county boroughs. Such a statistic is not equivalent to multi-occupation, since there were other families with whom the surplus shared, but it does give a useful simple index. Multi-occupation was above all a characteristic of London and the south of the country. London County itself contained 41 per cent of the “surplus families”, and 57 per cent lay within Greater London as defined by the census. Even outside London, however, county boroughs in the south of the country contained a greater number of surplus families than any other region. Merseyside was another area of concentration, but West Yorkshire had a very low level. The five conurbations outside London had only 9 per cent of the surplus families of the country compared to 31 per cent of the unfit housing. Outside London, Plymouth and Bristol ranked next to Liverpool, and other places such as Cardiff, Portsmouth, Brighton and Southampton, which figured low in the 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 be measured in terms of degrees and combinations, and it is now impossible to judge the relative significance of overcrowding, sharing and other forms of disadvantage. However, the record of contemporary action is equally an insufficient guide to the extent and incidence of empirical problems. Almost certainly, official action concentrated on the demolition of houses to a greater extent than would be supported by consideration of “livability”. The political reasons for this have been discussed in Chapter 7. The particular type of housing and urban development in Britain during the Industrial Revolution certainly provided a strong empirical basis for slum clearance, but it did not in itself justify such a concentration on this particular form of action.

Notes 1 2

Bowley, M. 1945. Housing and the state 1919–1945, 147–60. London: Allen & Unwin. Data were published in Marshall, J.L. 1968. The pattern of housebuilding in

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3 4

5 6 7 8

9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

the inter-war period in England and Wales. Scottish Journal of Political Economy 17, 184–205. PRO HLG 96/3–5; City of Sheffield 1939. Annual report on the health of the city, 47–8. 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. Loch, M. 1947. County Borough of Middlesborough survey and plan, 186. Middlesborough Corporation. PRO HLG 96/3. Simon, E.D. 1945. Rebuilding Britain: a twenty year plan, 93. London: Gollancz. 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. Ward, S. 1988. The geography of inter-war Britain: the state and uneven development, 171. London: Routledge. 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. Jones, D.C. (ed.) 1934. The social survey of Merseyside. Vol. 1, 265. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Manzoni, Sir H. 1955. Redevelopment of blighted areas in Birmingham. Journal of the Town Planning Institute 41,90–102. Finnigan, R. 1981. Housing policy in Leeds. M.Phil. thesis, University of Bradford, 194. City of Sheffield, op. cit., 47–8. Abercrombie, P. 1924. Sheffield: a civic survey, 85. London: Hodder & Stoughton. City of Liverpool 1951. Housing progress 1864–1951. HC1 Apr. (86) 1936. ibid., 23 Jan. (60) 1935. ibid., 2 May (33) 1934. MM 9 Apr. (7) & 30 Jul. (59) 1935; Ratepayer, Sept. 1935. GLRO Labour Party ECD 6108; Morrison, H. & D.H. Daines 1935. London under socialist rule. London: Labour Party. Yelling, J.A. 1990. The metropolitan slum: London 1918–1951. In Slums, M. Gaskell (ed.), 193–205. Leicester: Leicester University Press. HC 6 Dec (7) 1922. Yelling, op. cit, 193–205, 214–16. HC 12 Jan. (7) 1937; 6 Jun. (6–47) 1933. MM 17 Jul. (29) 1934. ibid., 15 Jun. (13) 1937. Registrar General 1935. Census of England and Wales 1931. Housing, xxvi—

128

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29

30 31

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. 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 the same room unless husband and wife, and (b) the maximum number of persons was 2 for one room, 3 for two rooms, 5 for three rooms etc, children under ten being counted as half. Rooms under 50 sq. ft not counted, and the figure of 2 persons per room only permitted where room at least 110 sq. ft. HC 15 July (68) 1936; in HC 26 Jun. (43) 1935 the estimate had been 31,000– 38,000 houses. White, J. 1986. The worst street in north London: Campbell Bunk, Islington, between the wars. London: Chapman & Hall; Yelling op. cit, 214–22.

129

CHAPTER 9 Landlords and property (with Mona Paton)

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

Property and the slum campaign Despite the intervention of the Depression, property had made something of a recovery in the mid-1930s when compared to the low values in the middle 1920s. In Table 9.1 the auction price data presented for two groups of London localities in Chapter 5 is updated to cover the periods 1933–5 and 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 that taking both localities together the price of property traded at auction had increased by 31 per cent. This was a substantial gain at a time when wages and prices (including the price of new houses) were generally falling, and no doubt the changes in years purchase were a response to this deflation. 130

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Nonetheless, one has to keep this in perspective: years purchase values had 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 now much 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 of living had risen considerably. The whole position of housing was still underpinned by the massive devaluation that had occurred. 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 4 formethod of usage.

The nature of these statistics means that too much reliance should not be placed on their accuracy, and of course they relate only to the position of property in the county of London. They are, however, indicative of the larger trends. The gap between market and rent-controlled values, and hence between new and old house prices, had reached its peak in the early post-war years. This gap was now very substantially closed. Precisely how far is impossible to say, but it is notable that in 1935, at the low point in the cycle of building costs, these were 43 per cent above pre-war levels, taking the country as a whole, a position comparable to that of old property prices in London.[1] Moreover, it is noticeable that while wages and prices tended generally to firm in the latter part of the 1930s, the value of older property underwent little change (Table 9.1) and years purchase values if anything seem to have drifted back a little. This may simply reflect a return of inflation, but may also be in part a reaction to the large building programme of the mid-1930s, and to the other factors making for a continued decline of population in inner London. 131

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

The auction-price data can be supported by consideration of the costs of clearance sites, measured per acre and per room demolished. As previously argued (Chapter 5), the latter figure makes some allowance for the varying location and density of schemes, although of course this is not a wholly adequate correction. In all cases, costs include estimates of the purchase price of property and the costs of site preparation. The results( Table 9.2) suggest that clearances declared in 1934 involved an increased cost of some 44 per cent over those of 1923–5, when valued per acre, and of 43 per cent when valued per room. The 1938 clearances then involved further increases of 13 and 33 per cent respectively, so that the cost per room was then 90 per cent 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 large Turin Street (Bethnal Green) scheme cost £19,000, and estimated costs increased to £29,863 at Umberston Street (Stepney) and £31,428 per acre at Riley Street (Chelsea). This kind of variation makes it impossible to measure the rise in land costs precisely, or to apportion it chronologically. Nonetheless, the major shift which had occurred since the comparatively well-located schemes of 1923–5 is very evident. It carried forward into the economics of redevelopment, to be discussed in Chapter 10. However, it also reflected the improvement in the position of the owner, and indeed the 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 the 1920s, the revisions of the 1930 Act, and those of 1935, particularly the 132

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abolition of the reduction factor. Although the importance of the latter had already been scaled down before abolition, its elimination had a major effect on well-located schemes. Most likely, the reduction factor changes, and indeed the general improvements to compensation, had their main impact in London, where site values were at their highest and where the property taken was more varied. In a city such as Leeds, where most of the property taken took the form of back-to-back houses, there was less possibility of shifting property to the “added lands” category. Moreover, the sites of these houses were very small and often incapable of supporting any profitable rebuilding when taken individually—matters that were crucial to the calculation of site-value compensation. As a result, Finnigan reports that the market for property in older back-to-backs in Leeds was severely affected by the slum clearance proposals, to the extent of seizing up altogether.[2] Table 9.2 Land costs in London clearance schemes, 1934 and 1938

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

By contrast, the property market in London appears to have been remarkably resistant to the impact of slum clearance and the projects for redevelopment At least, there is no clear evidence from the auction data either of any increasing distinction between the prices in the two different groups of localities studied, or of any decline in the lower quartile of property prices relative to the mean. To some extent, the improved compensation terms may have balanced the impact of larger-scale clearance action. However, it seems more likely that, as in the 1920s, the state of demand and security of the rental were major determinants of prices, and that the Rent Acts, by increasing demand, continued to support property prices at the lower end of the market Where demand was high, property might often reach a higher price when sold individually than when sold in large blocks, but in terms of slum clearance compensation the position became more favourable the larger the site. From this point of view the familiar asymmetry of property distributions needs to be borne in mind, 133

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

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

In 1934 Ronald Sunnucks, a surveyor and estate agent, published a book called Investment in housing, which although brief, contains some useful examples of practice, with prices and yields ruling in London. He began by dividing property into three classes. First, freehold ground rents, from which 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 reasonable risk, represented terrace houses in good districts which were well tenanted. Here an 8.5 per cent return could be obtained on outright purchase for cash, and more by use of a mortgage. On the third class, or speculative property, new mortgages were rarely obtainable. Much of this was a poor investment, 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 working man type, mainly because they are easily lettable and the tenants do not demand expensive repairs and are satisfied with cheap renovations. The main difficulty with this class of property is to secure regular payment of the rents.[4]

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He warned that “great care should be exercised in searching for the possibility of the property being in a condemned area”, and also to “any possible ‘force measure’ that may be brought to bear on the owner by the Sanitary Inspector or District Surveyor”. With leases, possible claims for dilapidations would have to be considered. Above all, this class of property required the “close attention of the owner”, and absorbed a great deal of time. “In most cases risk will boil down to a question of successful management.” There were agents who specialized in this class of property, but it would be necessary to deduct 5–10 per cent for their services. He gave as an example “five freehold houses in a good letting industrial district and let to working tenants such as labourers, dockers etc.”. Each house, 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 years purchase of the gross rental. The net rent was £127 5s., giving a return of 12.5 per cent. There were £71 fixed outgoings on rates and water, but remaining expenses (mainly on repairs) were more within the owners control.[5] It was the high proportion that the “headline” figure of the gross rent bore to the capital value that supported the market for substandard property, provided there was sufficient demand to provide constant letting. Although Sunnucks contrasts his own attitude with that of staid lawyers, his calculations represent a traditional attitude to valuation. The object is to obtain a steady rate of return, if possible in perpetuity. The element of historical change, of rise and fall in asset values, hardly enters in. Arguably, this might have been a reasonable position to take looking forward from 1934, but the case is not discussed, and the major historical change in asset values since the Victorian period is not mentioned. The complexities of the property market in terms of asset values or rates of return are here very evident. The position of the owner depended very much on the timing of his investment, be it in 1903, 1913, 1923, or 1933, for example. For new owners, if they had invested wisely, profits were bound to be satisfactory in relation to the purchase price. However, the main problem for property owners, and for the controlling authorities, lay not with new purchases but with the old, with the slow manner in which property changed hands and in which historical changes worked their way through the system. Sunnock’s “speculative” investor was assumed to spend some 15 per cent of the gross rental on repairs. This was not a large amount for this kind of property. The Rent Act (1920) allowed a 25 per cent increase for repairs on the basis that their index cost was 250 (1914=100), and that expenditure on repairs was one sixth of the gross rental. By 1930 the index had fallen to 180–200, but the Marley Committee recommended 135

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unchanged rents on the grounds that in smaller houses the provision for repairs needed to be one quarter of the rental.[6] Such a proportion, set aside each year with unspent balances taken into reserve, would have done much to maintain the condition of property. Similarly, by use of a sinking fund, money accumulated in the early stages of a property’s life could be used to offset the rise in maintenance expenditure that became necessary with age. This was rarely the practice, however, so that as properties aged, either the landlord spent more on maintenance and accepted a lower net return, or the cost fell on the tenant in higher rents or the acceptance of under-maintenance. Traditionally, the latter position had prevailed, and this was the way in which housing supply had been adjusted to rentpaying capacity. In theory, government now intervened to insist that houses should be properly maintained, without placing any extra burden on the tenant. This was, however, very difficult to enforce. Inspectors could not be expected to ensure that maintenance money was regularly spent or put into reserve. Without this, there was likely to be an accumulating backlog of more expensive items eventually requiring a large investment that could not be met from current rentals. This then made it difficult to enforce repairs on the landlord, and failure to deal with the worst property (when it was still needed) compounded the difficulties of intervening higher up the chain of deterioration. In Unwin’s view the standard that could be obtained “tends to be not that of a really good landlord but only that of an indifferent or even the bad ones”.[7] Thus a cycle set in by which enforcement was difficult because of lack of previous enforcement. Indeed, historically, when enforcement procedures began in the Victorian period, there was already a large proportion of property with an inherited condition of under-maintenance. It was never possible to begin with a new start. This was a great attraction of clearance and rebuilding. Empirically, the extent to which the enforcement of the Housing and Sanitary Acts made a difference to the qualitative condition of older houses between the wars is difficult to determine. Much of the commentary relates to the earlier part of the period when houses were in particularly short supply in relation to demand. The number of inspections and repair notices added up to impressive totals: 126,000 London houses were repaired or had nuisances abated in 1930. [8] Much useful 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 voluntary action by landlords, Barclay and Perry write of Southwark in 1929: The amount of property which is hopelessly defective and altogether deplorable is very large. Damp, dilapidation of every kind, obsolete 136

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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 than structural faults, are also much more general. Few except the most modern working-class dwellings are entirely free of these defects. They are responsible for much dirt and discomfort, and for the depressing atmosphere of squalor associated with so many workingclass homes.[10] There were conditions in which a new start was possible without redevelopment. When major investment was forthcoming, houses could be transformed, and Randall Phillips in The house improved (1931) provides several examples of workmens’ cottages remodelled inside and out in a way strikingly similar to that which was to become more familiar 30 or 40 years later.[11] The source of this new investment was the wealthy owneroccupier taking advantage of the presence of suitable old property in well-located situations such as Chelsea (Plate 6). The importance of finance needs to be insisted upon, if only because there tends to be an impression that house improvement was neglected at this time simply because architects and others imposed a new vision of urban form. More important are the economic and political conditions and priorities to which architects responded. Although “gentrification” could occur between the wars, there was a restricted market for this type of activity. Within the confines of the private-rented sector there was much less potential for major improvement. One source of improvement was, however, now limited due to the Rent Acts. This came not so much through the control of rents as through the concomitant increase in security of tenure. It was less possible, even in favourable locations, to alter the market position of a property and effect 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 Moyne Report (Chapter 7), the most likely point for such intervention would have been the “structurally sound” house, well removed from the conditions that rendered houses liable to clearance. Such an intervention would have required a relatively generous separation of “improvements” from repairs, that might have been applied to such matters as conversions, provision of amenities, and perhaps items such as damp courses which were not normally incorporated in these houses when they were built. There would have been difficulties: even by starting with the clearest 137

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possible division of property it would never be easy to combine providing money on the one hand with condemning properties on the other. Moreover, when the benefits had to be seen to go to the tenants, it was difficult to provide the landlord with a clear incentive to carry out the work. More could have been done through public utility societies or local authorities, 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 to intervene only in a negative manner, and the Treasury could not be committed even partially to what was seen as a bottomless pit of expenditure on housing repairs and improvements. Public investment could come only through new supply or redevelopment, forms of expenditure that might, it was hoped be reduced once the sharp edge had been taken off the housing situation. In response, the great force of the landlord was his capacity to occupy the ground, and to shape the course of events through inertia. The very large number and variety of landlords, and the complexities of ownership and physical form, were all strengths from this point of view. Landlords had immediate control over expenditure, and were in a position to offer some resistance to the assumption that they should meet the costs of eliminating slum conditions. In face of this resistance, neither increased competition from new houses nor enforcement procedures were able to bring about radical improvement in housing quality. The result was a messy compromise, not very 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 return to an older world in which they were given back full control over their property, and no one bothered too much about slums. Equally, however, failure to achieve improvement within existing patterns of ownership and physical form meant that, if the political stakes were raised, there was a greater 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 the relationships between tenure, types of owner, fragmentation of ownership, and the condition of property. The debate tended to emphasize large contrasts: between major aristocratic estates and small men, and between the West End of London and the East. To some extent, modern research has prolonged this emphasis. However, no detailed studies of the East End 138

Landlords in the East End

have been undertaken, and the contrast with the West End has simply served to present a homogeneous picture of its owners, type of tenant and condition of housing. The present study seeks to examine this presupposition, with particular attention to the two boroughs of Stepney and Bethnal Green. It makes use of the 1910 “Domesday” records, of interwar 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 not accord with the general presuppositions made about owners in the East End.[12] In particular, there were to be found nearly 30 large to medium ground owners. These properties (henceforth referred to as the estates) ranged upwards from 10 acres in size, several were in the 20–40 acres range, and the largest were 74 and 90 acres. A conservative estimate of the proportion of properties under their control would be in the region of 30 per cent in Bethnal Green and 25 per cent in Stepney. There is evidence of better building standards on several of these estates, and some of them were used by local authorities, religious and welfare institutions, to pro vide clinics, clubs, places of worship and educational facilities, thus having an important input into the development of these services. However, there were significant differences between these estates (to be discussed later) and all of them were developed under the leasehold system, so that it was the lessee who was responsible for management and maintenance. This resulted in a “vertical” fragmentation of property which compounded the “horizontal” fragmentation found outside the estates. 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 over 70 per cent of all leased property. Leases could, of course, be taken for various amounts of property, and a large leaseholder might unite under one management the properties of several small owners of ground rents. Moreover, a large proportion of lessees were persons connected with the property business, ranging from small house agents to larger surveying firms, builders and associated trades.[13] In many cases it might be argued that they provided more professional management than could many owners of ground rents. Despite this, the leasehold system was in steep decline in these districts, and by the 1930s it had become a very minimal part of the property market, only surviving to any extent on one or two of the later-developed estates, and in some mixed business/residential property. In the slum clearance areas declared in the 1930s, only 17 per cent of properties were subject in leases in Stepney, and only 13 per cent in Bethnal Green.[14] 139

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It might be thought that such declines in leasehold ownership were connected with the new circumstances of the post-war period: rent restrictions and the new slum clearance compensation provisions. The latter were a major blow, but rent restrictions had some beneficial effects on the owners of old working-class property. By increasing the effective demand, the Rent Acts provided much greater protection for the rental. During the early part of the 1900s and until the First World War there were many empty properties, and greater competition. The number of empty houses in Stepney 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 a time when they were faced with increased pressures to improve maintenance and sanitary conditions. On many of the larger estates there were endless disputes about the level of repairs that were required under the covenant of the leases. The London Hospital, for example, felt that even when repairs were done by lessees they were generally of a superficial nature, 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 layers of wallpaper at the insistence of the sanitary inspectors to reduce bugs and other infestations. There were cases in which lessees surrendered their leases early, and some even defaulted on paying the ground rent. In general, however, the leasehold system could survive as long as the original building leases and ground rents were still current. The owners of new 21 year repairing leases were usually faced with a large increase in ground rents, and those who had taken out such leases in the 1880s and 1890s were particularly likely to find themselves in difficulty later. The 1910 Field Books indicate that ground rents on repairing leases granted by estates ranged from 40 to 50 per cent of the gross rent. In effect, the lessees income was reduced at a time when these old houses were requiring much greater maintenance expenditure. An alternative was a large injection of capital by the ground landlord to put the house in order for the new period of the lease. The ground landlords, however, had not been in a position to build up any maintenance fund from the low ground rents. From their position it was apparent that if they were going to meet the expenditure of heavy repairs they would need to be in possession of the rack rents rather than the lessees. In the older working-class districts, the falling in of 99 year leases therefore constituted an important point in the decline of the leasehold system. For this and other reasons, even in 1910 leaseholds were not as prevalent in Stepney and Bethnal Green as many commentators seemed to suggest. The 1930s clearance areas mentioned earlier had respectively 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 best regarded as a continuation of an already established trend. 140

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The Mercers Estate in Stepney made a decision in 1908 to manage their property directly, and by 1914 over half their estate was under direct management as leases gradually fell in.[16] This estate was the largest in the area, mostly situated north of the Commercial Road and south of Stepney Green. At 90 acres and some 1,500 houses (as well as other property) it had been developed at a low density and to relatively high standards. From the inception of the estate there had been a court of electors who met frequently with their surveyor and land agent. They therefore had an organizational structure to make executive decisions and thus were quickly able to develop an efficient team to run their estates. This ranged from an estate manager to rent collectors and there was a direct labour organization to undertake repairs managed by the surveyor. This estate therefore provided an instance of exemplary direct management and illustrates both the advantages of large-scale ownership and 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 their tenants, 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 in material costs, were throughout the 1920s and 1930s spending on average three times as much per house per annum. Their expenditure on maintenance averaged 26 per cent of the gross rent at this time. Moreover, an estate like the Mercers or the London Hospital could afford where necessary to concentrate large amounts of capital on the maintenance of individual houses—sums corresponding to several years’ value of the current rental. Unlike small owners, they could do this while sustaining the general level of their income. Not surprisingly, local authorities found such estates relatively easy to deal with in carrying out their functions under the Housing and Public Health Acts. From the beginning of their direct management policy, the Mercers established that maintenance of markets was positively interlinked with maintenance of property. Maintenance expenditure contributed to tenant satisfaction and brought a low level of arrears and a low turnover of tenants. This was not simply a function of the Rent Acts. The Mercers seem to have carefully controlled their markets by careful selection of their tenants, and they had specific ideas about what constituted a good tenant. A sample of tenants’ occupations was obtained from the New survey household cards, and this reveals that they had policemen, office workers, skilled workers such as lightermen and tailors, with almost none of the poorer occupations in sweated or dock-related trades represented.[17] In this way, by sustaining their maintenance and their market, the Mercers were able to maintain their income. 141

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Two other estates, London Hospital and Pemberton-Barnes, were also brought under direct management and were in a situation to retain higherpaid tenants. Earl Winterton was the only owner in Stepney to take on direct management of an estate with poorer property and poorer tenants 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 introduced a large degree of social welfare into their management and held annual Christmas parties for their tenants which they attended, often together with the mayor of Stepney. Winterton did not simply undertake repairs to his property, but also built some small blocks of modern flats and worked in close co-operation with the local authority. However, his actions were not based on economic grounds alone, but on a political and moral commitment. The estate of Lady Glammis in Shadwell, abutting on the river and the docks, contained similar property in a poor neighbourhood. Her surveyor advised in the 1890s that if she undertook any improvements it would have to be on moral rather than economic grounds. These improvements were not carried out, and the estate was to break up gradually after the First World War, parts being sold off to the Peabody Trust.[18] The history of the other estates in Bethnal Green and Stepney shows that the presence of large ground owners was not necessarily beneficial to an area in terms of the standard of housing they provided. Much of the large ground owners’ development in Bethnal Green lay in the western and central parts of the borough, where industrial and commercial activity was to develop. A more superior type of residential development did take place 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 any particular profile in the area. Several of the estates were not geographic units, but were made up of several different blocks of property. None of them took their houses into direct management, and the decline in the leasehold market affected the options they took with regard to the future of their estates. Their response in the 1920s was either to put their property into the hands of large managing agents or to sell out directly to their existing lessees. Many of these estates were to fall within the Bethnal Green 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 Estate and the Mclntosh.[19] The Cotton Estate was sold in 1921 because the family were advised that they could get a 6 per cent return if they invested their capital elsewhere, without the associated problems of holding house property. They sold their 1,200 properties in 835 lots, and 50 per cent of the buyers were existing lessees. Similarly, the Mclntosh Estate covering 32 142

Landlords in the East End

acres with over 1,000 houses, shops, wharves and factories, and comprising mainly freehold ground rents, was put up for auction in 1924 in 347 lots. The break-up of these estates offers the most striking example of increasing “horizontal” fragmentation, which ran counter to the decreasing “vertical” fragmentation brought about by the decline of leasehold. Indeed, as on the Cotton Estate, the two processes often connected. Whereas leasehold had once been a cheap way of entering the property market, the decline in capital values made freehold purchase possible for the small man. Outside the estates, property was already horizontally fragmented in 1910. Over 80 per cent of owners owned ten or fewer properties. Nonetheless, as on the estates, the decline in vertical fragmentation over the next 30 years was partly compensated by an increase in horizontal fragmentation. Before the First World War trustees and some other small ground owners were disposing of their property. In the early 1920s, auctioneers and estate agents were advertising blocks of property belonging to trustees and other estates for sale in small lots. The effect of these changes was to confirm and enhance the local nature of property ownership, already apparent in 1910. It also strengthened links between house ownership and other aspects of the property business, and also links with small business in general. A large proportion of lessees had been engaged in various aspects of the property business, such as builders, surveyors and estate agents, and they were more likely to buy their freeholds than other lessees. In Stepney, there was a significant increase in the percentage of property held by those in the property business between 1910 and the mid 1930s. Business interests in Stepney were on a larger scale than those in Bethnal Green, for instance businesses connected with the shipping industry. These owners often had a small-scale estate organization. Other property owners reacted to the decline of leasehold by engaging agents, again reinforcing the local nature of management. In Bethnal Green much property was in the hands of various small-scale local businesses and tradesmen, and agents were more uniformly employed than in Stepney—for instance in the mid1930s 57 per cent of properties in clearance areas, and 62 per cent of those in the Redevelopment Area no. 2, were managed by agents. It will be recognized that the resulting patterns of ownership and management were very complex. So were the relationships between pat terns of ownership and the condition of property. By the 1930s the leasehold 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 the original building leases. In slum clearance areas of the 1930s, the degree of “horizontal” fragmentation had only slightly increased since 1910. 143

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Outside, there was a great deal of variation, but no simple correlation between fragmentation and the condition of property. Nonetheless, it is clear that some large estates drew a selected clientele. Other owners had to cater for the rest of the market dependent on the traditional East End trades, ranging downwards to such Victorian survivals as rag sorting, cardboard box making and fish curing in smoke holes. Most of the property was old and required increasing expenditure on maintenance, some needed major capital investment even to bring it up to standards required by the Housing and Public Health Acts. These conditions of market and property would have posed major problems whatever the nature of the ownership. It would be quite wrong, therefore, to concentrate solely on fragmentation as the cause of difficulties in the condition of property in the East End without taking into account the wider aspects of the workings of the property market. No doubt the question of fragmentation was often highlighted because it was politically convenient to do so. Many ground landlords had not taken an active interest in the management of their property, and they were usually more remote than the new type of owner. Moreover, some new owners, particularly those in the property business, were able to substitute their own time and labour for capital in managing and maintaining their houses. Nonetheless, it is evident that small owners did possess additional disadvantages in maintaining older property for reasons that are the reverse of the advantages accruing to a large estate such as the Mercers. For most small owners the maintenance of current income from the rental was the major preoccupation, and any large expenditure which ate into this tended to be resisted. Fragmentation did therefore remain a problem, despite the decline of leasehold. However, the absence of fragmentation still left owners with more general problems within the changing housing market. This can be shown by returning to the example of the Mercers Estate. Since they came into direct control through reversion, the Mercers did not have to meet any large initial capital outlay. They were able to provide a high maintenance standard from the current rental, but they did not have the range of amenities such as bathrooms which were to be found in new local authority buildings, albeit in the form of flats. Although Munby states that no redevelopment was undertaken by large owners in Stepney because of the absence of a renewal fund, the Mercers had in fact built up a substantial renewal fund by the late 1930s.[20] The problem was rather whether a sufficiently high return could be obtained on this capital—a return that in any case would require a large increase in rents. Even if the obstacle of the Rent Acts could be overcome, this would mean attracting a new type of tenant—a problematic factor even for the Mercers in the 144

Landlords in the East End

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

Notes 1 2 3

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18

19 20

The figure of 43 per cent is derived from Reiss, H.L. 1945. Municipal and private enterprise housing, 25. London: Dent. Finnigan, R. 1981. Housing policy in Leeds 1919–1939, 179–88. M.Phil. thesis University of Bradford. Table 9.3 includes only freeholds, excluding those which include trade compensation. The payments include those for “added lands” as well as for unfit property. Sunnucks, R. 1934. Investment in housing, 27. London: Banbury. ibid., 28–9. Committee on the Rent Restrictions Act (Marley Committee) 1931. Report. Parliamentary Papers 17, Cmnd 3911. PRO HLG 52/791. Moyne Committee: circulated papers no. 31. Llewellyn-Smith, Sir H.. 1931–5. The New survey of London life and labour. Vol. 6, 171. London: P.S.King. Barclay, I. & E. Perry. 1929. Report on a survey of housing conditions in the Metropolitan Borough of Southwark, 3. London: Westminster Survey Group. Llewellyn-Smith, op. cit., 188. Phillips, R. 1931. The house improved. London: Country Life. PRO IR /58 1910 “Domesday” records: field books for Stepney and Bethnal Green; Borough of Tower Hamlets, Local History Library: quinquennial valuation lists, 1910–35. ibid., Kelley’s Trade and Post Office Directories 1910–35; title deeds. LCC Housing confirmation orders, HC passim; Stepney borough housing confirmation orders. Archives of the London Hospital: house committee minutes 1890–1955. Archives of the Mercers Company: minute of the court of assistants, 1907–55. London School of Economics: Records of the New survey of London life and labour (1929–31), household cards. Church Commissioners archives. The commissioners were the ground owners of this estate until about the 1880s when they sold the freehold to the then lessee Lady Glammis. At that time the estate covered about half of Shadwell and contained 577 properties. Estates Gazette, 1915–25; East London Observer, GLRO Cotton Estate records. Munby, D.L. 1951. Industry and planning in Stepney, 88. London: Oxford University Press.

145

CHAPTER 10 Tenants and estates

This chapter is essentially a continuation of Chapter 6, enabling developments to be carried forward into the 1930s. However, it begins with a more detailed analysis of the characteristics of the tenants and the changes in their circumstances brought about by clearance and rehousing. The second part contains a discussion of building standards and costs during the main period of the slum clearance campaign.

Tenants and rehousing In a study of rehousing the ideal would be to proceed from a complete survey of the population affected, and to follow progress through various stages. In fact, most available data relate only to families received into council dwellings and, moreover, have seldom been analyzed, so that Pooley and Irish’s recent study of Liverpool was a pioneering account.[1] The approach adopted here is, therefore, to begin with an analysis of the circumstances of various types of LCC tenant in the late 1930s and then to proceed to wider questions and comparisons, including the important issue of differential renting. LCC housing rules operated to give first priority to clearance rehousing, then to overcrowding under the 1935 Act, and to certain special preferences (a group which before 1936 included many overcrowding cases). However, even at this time, “ordinary” cases made up much the largest single group of new tenants, this being mainly due to the large number of re-lets on suburban estates.[2] During the period covered by the statistics, some 70–75 per cent of the population of LCC clearance areas were taken into council housing. As a result, the mean income of clearance tenants was considerably lower than that of other groups. In 1937–8 it was 45s. 8d. compared with 64s. 8d. for the ordinary tenants (Table 10.1). Clearance families, however, raised considerable extra earnings, the chief earner contributing only 59 per cent 146

Tenants and rehousing

of family income compared to 85 per cent among the ordinary cases. This reduced, but did not eliminate, the difference in income per head. It reflected the fact that clearance families were larger and (on average) at a later stage in the life cycle. They included more older children and young adults and fewer children under ten than the ordinary cases. The position of the overcrowding families is also worthy of notice. The proportion of these taken into council housing is not known, but the relatively high income of the chief earner suggests that there must have been considerable selection. Table 10.1 LCC tenant groups: family composition and income

Notes:The total covers other groups including out-county tenants. Children are those under 10, and in the income per unit column these are counted as 0.5 and others as 1. s=shillings (1 shilling=5 new pence).

The previous occupancy rates of tenants coming into council accommo dation were lower than those found by Llewellyn-Smith for the 1920s, but still high by contemporary standards. The highest rents were naturally found among the overcrowding tenants and, early on, among the special group which had previously contained such cases. Once again, it is noticeable that clearance and ordinary tenants had very similar occupation levels (in terms of persons per room) prior to becoming council tenants. After rehousing, occupancy rates remained very high, particularly among the overcrowding group, but also in the clearance category. By contrast, the ordinary tenant achieved a reduced occupancy rate, partly through 147

Tenants and estates

moving outwards to a suburban estate. Even so, the occupancy rate on these estates remained much higher than in neighbouring private estates. It was, indeed, a feature of the 1936 Overcrowding Survey that a higher proportion of overcrowding was found in council dwellings than in the private sector. While this partly reflected differing household sizes, it also serves as a reminder that it is not simply differences in the size and form of private or council houses and flats that matter, but also the manner in which they were inhabited. Table 10.2 LCC tenant groups: rehousing changes

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

Changes in occupancy level were closely associated with changes in rent. In the case of ordinary tenants the change was mitigated by the move to the suburbs, rents increasing on average by 14 per cent in 1935, reducing to 3 per cent in 1938. The overcrowding tenants, however, faced a 33 per cent increase in rent in 1935, reducing to 25 per cent in 1938. The proportion of family income taken in rent in this group rose, on average, from 13 per cent to 16–18 per cent, assuming no change as a result of the move. This brought it into line with the proportion paid by other groups, but necessarily restricted other expenditure which might be expected for large families. For the clearance tenants, rehousing meant only a small change in occupancy rates, and rent rises, on average, were confined within the range of 4–6 per cent. This was one of the major differences compared with the 148

Tenants and rehousing

experience of slum clearance in the late-Victorian period. The first slums selected for clearance had been sites of intense overcrowding—at Rosemary Lane 70 per cent of families had lived in one room, and 50 per cent did so at Boundary Street. The change in occupancy level required on entering the new buildings had been a major factor inhibiting rehousing. General factors were responsible for the improvement that had since taken place— changes in family size and housing supply, for example. But clearance was also extended in the late 1930s to cover a wider range of population, and probably there was also a declining correlation between the areas taken for clearance and the incidence of overcrowding in London. Table 10.3 shows the improvement in the occupancy rates of families affected by clearance declarations after 1935. Table 10.3 Occupation rates in LCC clearance areas, 1923–38

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

Family size and occupancy rates are the only statistics available in London to cover the whole population of clearance areas. They can, however, be used to shed some light on the families that were not rehoused by the council. A.R. Holmes, an employee of the LCC, collected details of 1,600 families rehoused from clearance areas in Bethnal Green, Shoreditch and Southwark declared in 1931–4.[3] These made up 73 per cent of the families in the clearance areas, and had on average 4.0 persons per family and 1.47 per room. Deducting from the overall figures for these clearance areas, it would appear that the 550 families not rehoused by the council had on average 4.21 family members and lived at 2.0 persons per room. It is known that the groups not rehoused by the council included a large proportion of the smallest and poorest families—single persons and aged couples, for example. Given this, there must also have been a significant number of large and overcrowded families among the group not rehoused by the 149

Tenants and estates

council. Indeed, this would conform with the statistics already examined— not all large families living in clearance areas could have had the kind of support from supplementary earners that is shown in Table 10.1 Holmes’s statistics are also useful in that they allow some penetration into the circumstances behind the averages that are otherwise the only available material in London. In the case of Shoreditch tenants, for which he provided more data, the population in the clearance area, prior to rehousing, had a very similar range of occupancy rates to Shoreditch as a whole—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 of tenants were rehoused at between 1 and 1.9 persons per room. The effect of the change on rent paid in the three boroughs is shown in Table 10.4. A decrease was experienced by 32 per cent of tenants, and in 7 per cent of cases this meant a substantial decrease of 4s. a week or more. However, the larger proportion—67 per cent—d an increase in rent. In 42 per cent of cases this was more than 2s. a week and in 21 per cent of cases more than 4s. Poorer families were more likely to face an increase, but there was a wide range of experience at all income levels. Family composition was an important factor, and major changes in rents would usually be accompanied by changes in occupation levels. Those that found their rents decreasing would also find themselves occupying less space, while those with high increases would have more space than before. Holmes rightly contrasted these results with earlier cases such as that at Stockton (Chapter 6). Even so, these figures mean that a majority of families affected by clearance in the cases he studied—some 68 per cent—were either not taken into council housing or experienced an increase of at least 2s. a week in rent. Nearly half were either not rehoused by the council or paid an increase of 4s. or more in rent. Table 10.4 Rent changes on slum clearance rehousing: Bethnal Green, Shoreditch and Southwark in the 1930s (after A. R. Holmes)

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This kind of statistic is not, of course, a demonstration of the proportion of tenants who benefited or were adversely affected by slum clearance. It could be that many who paid a much-increased rent nonetheless found that improved conditions more than compensated, while those who paid less rent on moving may have resented disturbance on other grounds. The statistic is, however, a factor to bear in mind in weighing up the advantages and disadvantages of a sanitary approach which involved compulsory movement, 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. Against this, the late 1930s certainly constituted a favourable period for such action, and arguably a much greater number of poor families benefited from improved conditions than would have been accommodated by other methods. Sanitary policy meant that councils had to manage their property so as to make clearance and rehousing possible. New accommodation had to be available to enable tenants to be moved and programmes to be completed, indeed the need to adhered to schedule provided tenants with a lever that they could use in negotiating rehousing. The scale of clearance meant that tenants had to be rehoused largely on estates that were currently being built, as re-lets could not be relied upon to provide the necessary accommodation at the time and place required. The maintenance of the Greenwood subsidy at its original rate, despite lower costs, reflected this priority. However, the rents that tenants faced were not necessarily a product of the cost of building less the subsidy. Councils were only generally constrained by such factors and otherwise had considerable freedom of action in their rent policies, a freedom increased by the 1935 Act, which made specific provision for the pooling of housing accounts. The LCC valuer had always favoured a rent policy which shadowed the market and enabled relative values to be maintained between different types of accommodation and different localities. It took no direct account either of tenants’ incomes or construction costs and subsidies. He continued to press this policy after the advent of the Labour council, but in July 1934 a compromise was reached.[4] It was agreed to introduce differential renting according to a new factor—the general wage level of the slum dweller as compared to the ordinary applicant. Estates likely to be occupied by slum rehousing tenants saw reductions in rent, for example from 9d. through to 3s. 6d. a week for a two room dwelling. Cottage estates were omitted, and on the whole the more suburban estates saw the lowest reductions. However, the “below normal” types were given little or no rent reduction, presumably on the grounds that they had already pro vided a device through which rents 151

Tenants and estates

could be reduced to the required levels. The overall result was to allow the valuer to retain his comparable rent structure while introducing a larger differential between inner block estates and suburban cottages. This helped rehousing in the cases studied by Holmes, and facilitated a large-scale clearance movement less reliant on filtering either into cottages or older blocks. In the six months to March 1939, for example, 10 per cent of LCC clearance tenants went into cottage estates, under 2 per cent into pre-war blocks, and the rest into new flatted estates. Between March 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 the Greenwood subsidies differentially by estate. Pragmatically, this was a response to the preference of clearance tenants for rehousing in their existing localities, reflecting existing ties and travel costs for families with several earners. On the other hand, the tenant was faced with a choice which was loaded in favour of the retention of existing conditions, replacing the old slum house with the new tenement flat. From the Pooley and Irish study it seems likely that a similar policy was followed in Liverpool. The lowest rents were charged for inner-city flats, slightly higher rents for more suburban flats, and higher still for non-parlour houses. However, there seems also to have been a differential reduction for non-parlour houses built under the 1930 Act, compared to other such houses. Pooley and Irish’s statistics also allow some insight into the changing circumstances of clearance tenants, although they are arranged by type of estate and location rather than according to the class of tenant. They emphasize the distinction in income level between demolition and other types of tenant. Clearance families in Liverpool were rather larger in size than in London, but had lower incomes (particularly family incomes), and previous to clearance were more crowded and paid considerably less rent. Correspondingly, there seems to have been a greater improvement in occupancy rates on rehousing, and a greater increase in rents. Pooley and Irish sampled 2,336 households in 13 inner-city estates built after 1935, demolition tenants forming 74 per cent of the total. It can be calculated that there were, on average, 1.99 persons per room prior to rehousing and 1.35 afterwards, a decrease of 32 per cent. Rents rose by an average of 18 per cent. On four estates on which clearance tenants formed 85 per cent of the total, the average rent rise was 46 per cent. On the Sparrow Hill estate of non-parlour houses (demolition cases 79 per cent of the total) there was a 56 per cent increase in rents and a 37 per cent reduction in occupancy levels.[5]

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No other comparable statistics appear to be yet available. One would expect, however, that the general run of towns and cities in which rehousing was mainly in suburban cottages, would have had an easier transition. Tenants may have suffered in other ways from suburban rehousing, but generally the greater availability and suitability of suburban land for rehousing in such locations meant that costs were lower and that there were lower occupancy rates prior to clearance. Rents would thus not have to reflect a large jump in both qualitative and quantitative conditions. Another factor at work outside London and Liverpool was that many councils applied rents differentially by tenant as well as by estate, The usual way of doing this was to take rents in the Wheatley houses as standard, and to apply the extra money available through the Greenwood subsidy differentially across the clearance tenants according to their incomes. In a few cases, and most notably in Leeds, rents were standardized, and the subsidies available for all categories of houses were allocated differentially to tenants according to their incomes.[6] The Leeds differential renting scheme was yet another of Jenkinson’s radical innovations. It produced what was known as a differential rentrebate scheme, in that rents were first standardized at “economic” levels, and rebates then granted to tenants, in this case according to ability to pay as measured by a formula taking into account income and subsistence scales. The scheme is described, and strongly supported, by Finnigan, who claims that it allowed 85 per cent of clearance tenants in Leeds to be rehoused by the council, and broke the link between low income and inadequate housing, particularly for larger families. It must have prevented large rent rises which created financial difficulties for rehousing families. It also probably helped to reduce the social distinctions between estates, and there were strong arguments in favour of rebates for poorer tenants irrespective of their classification under the Acts. However, Jenkinson’s scheme ran into considerable opposition, and was partly responsible for his fall from power. The new Conservative administration retained an element of differential rent rebates, but within a framework of more conventional differential renting, distinguishing between “voluntary” and “compulsory” tenants.[7] Differential rent rebates were opposed by property owners and the Conservative Party in Leeds on grounds similar to those advanced in London by the Municipal Reformers (Chapter 6). But other Conservatives saw an ad vantage in such a policy on grounds that equally alienated much Labour support, including that of the LCC leaders. This was the highlighting of “economic” rent, which became a kind of norm, so that tenants 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 of accommodation and the social composition of council housing were held constant, then this might appear as a simple act of social justice, redistributing subsidies to those who needed them most. In other circumstances, however, it could be used to force council housing into a more residual rôle, for if a large proportion of tenants did not need the subsidies, so it could be argued neither did they need the houses. Eleanor Rathbone 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 rather than the tenant is merely to encourage sponging on public funds by persons who do not need them.[8] According to such an argument, subsidies should cease to be applied in the Wheatley sense, as a means of bringing the general standard of workingclass housing closer to that of the middle classes. Instead, subsidies should be individualized and subject to a means test. Moreover, the old poor law principle that subsidy meant giving up something in return was never far below the surface in this period. Although the opposition among tenant groups obviously owed much to resistance to increased charges by the better-off, there was also fear of greater supervision and regulation. Arguably, the preservation of ability to pay as a major element in council housing also helped to preserve a degree of liberty more comparable with that in private housing. Because of opposition from diverse sources, differential rent rebates made little progress before the war. In many ways, it is their absence which is of principal importance to the theme of this book. In this absence of any precise indicator of social class and income level, slum clearance areas acted as a rough substitute. Greenwood sought to extend suburban council housing down the social scale by introducing a differential subsidy tied to the proposition that otherwise clearance could not take place. Later, Hilton-Young used this same link in an attempt to limit new council housing to the lower income class. Without it, it is unlikely that slum clearance would have come to occupy the same importance in national policy.

Building standards and costs The foundation of all types of building in the mid-1930s was the exceptionally favourable context of low interest rates and building costs. 154

Building standards and costs

In the case of suburban cottages built for slum clearance, there was also the continuance of the Greenwood subsidy at a relatively generous level until 1938. As a result, although the type of dwelling remained very small, there was not the further falling off of standards that many had feared. Pooley and Irish argue that the search for cheap land often led to slum clearance estates being located in remote and unsuitable districts, and the introduction of tenement blocks into nearer suburban localities might also be regarded as a reduction in standards. However, in Leeds, where A3 dwellings were being 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 among Greenwood estates than among Wheatley estates, but that though in many towns it may be possible to draw visual or economic distinctions between Wheatley Act and Greenwood Act estates, there are no nationally applicable generalizations about differences in character.[9] Although there is clearly much to learn about these suburban dwellings, the inner-city tenement presented a more acute problem. It departed from a less assured and more contested base, and its future was more uncertain. For some, these flats were simply a device to escape from the general standards still being maintained, more or less, in the suburbs. For others, the flatted estate could be improved to form an equally desirable part of the city’s housing stock. This was a matter of increasing significance. As the major cities reached the latter parts of their slum clearance programmes, so a much larger proportion of their new dwellings would take the.form of inner-city flats. Moreover, the redevelopment area proposals envisaged extensive reconstruction in this manner. To this end, the Housing Act 1938, while cutting the slum clearance subsidy to the level of that for overcrowding, nonetheless provided more generous subsidies 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, and then 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, and one designed in the face of mounting inflation to leave more room to the private sector by cutting back on public activity.[10] But it was also a measure with strong territorial implications, which brought subsidies more into line with the whole trend of public policy towards a greater concentration 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 an endeavour carried out on relatively traditional lines, it forms a useful comparison to the more spectacular and better-known projects such as the Quarry Hill Estate in Leeds. The first Labour council (1934–7) benefited from favourable economic circumstances and managed to combine a sustained clearance and reconstruction programme with improvement of housing standards. The first step, in 1934, was to abandon the B type of dwelling with shared facilities, of which 13 blocks were in process of completion. The importance of this decision was above all symbolic: it leant substance to the Labour claim that they were engaged in a new start, and that the downward trend in housing standards under their predecessors had been reversed. There were distinct limits, however, to any improvement in standards, given that the party was above all committed to making slum clearance work and achieving a large programme involving a steady flow of tenants into new accommodation. The new set of block dwelling types announced in July 1934 involved cautious change. The first of the main types (type 1) was essentially the old type A subject to improvements in finish and extra amenities. The second (type 3) had larger rooms comparable to those in the previous “Normal” type: the living room being 160 sq. ft, the first bedroom 110 sq. ft and the second bedroom 100 sq. ft There were additional amenities in these flats, rooms were higher, and the bathroom and w.c. were separated. In both these types washing was done in the kitchen using a copper, and two drying rooms per block were provided at the expense of some accommodation. types 2 and 4 were variants on the two basic types in which common wash houses were provided for every three lettings, and the drying rooms and the copper in the kitchen were omitted.[11] Although the changes made in flat design were modest they nonetheless had important cost implications. On the eve of the change type A had a building cost of £113 per room, and the Normal type cost £142 per room, or £133 with a reduced standard of finish. Fifteen examples of type 1 and 2 blocks in 1934 cost a mean of £137 per room, and 14 examples of type 3 and 4 blocks £152. The Finance Committee thought that the average cost of building was now £140 per room compared with an average of £129 per room in the previous range of accommodation, and that this would entail £1.5 million extra expenditure over the whole projected clearance programme.[12] Viewed over a longer period, the building cost of the standard type in 1924 had been £180 per room, the equivalent type in 1934 was costing about £150. However, according to our calculation of the cost of slum clearance land (Chapter 9) the larger part of this cost advantage was lost because of a £23 per room rise in the 156

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

cost of land. Figure 10.1 depicts the long-term trends in building and land costs, 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 the 1934(3) type cost £174. Since 1934 the differences between these types had been much reduced by the requirement of the 1935 Act that all new accommodation should have a fixed bath in a bathroom, and by an increase in the height of rooms in types 1 and 2. These and other changes largely completed the process whereby the “below Normal” types of the post 1924 period were phased out. By 1938, the building cost of the standard block had returned to something near the 1924–5 levels. However, in the meantime, the cost of clearance land had doubled, and was now £101 per room, assuming no density changes. Rough calculations for a three-roomed flat would suggest a total cost of £699 in 1924–5, £678 in 1934 and £825 in 1938. This was a much larger increase than any current rise in incomes and shows the importance of the erosion of the special clearance compensation provisions, although cost levels in real terms were still well below those experienced at Boundary Street The architect emphasized the importance of standardization in the design and construction of blocks, in order to achieve both economy and rapid progress. But this did not rule out some variation, aimed at experimenting with improved features and avoiding monotony. In November 1934 a more modernistic design was approved for certain blocks including larger and more horizontal windows, metal casements, flat roofs, and sun balconies accessible to the living rooms.[14] When Silkin led a visit to the continent in 1935, the prospect of redevelopment on a hitherto unprecedented scale was the main spur:

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it is clearly necessary that careful thought should be given not only to the types of dwellings which should be erected but also to the general methods of development suitable for large areas comprising possibly hundreds of acres. The object of the visit was not only to examine the details of continental housing experience, but also ways in which mass housing in the form of block dwellings might be reconciled with attractive architecture and townscape. Standardization needed to be countered by deliberate planning and design and by allowing “scope to be afforded for progressive development and individual expression in the treatment of the dwellings and their associated amenities”.[15] This was rather similar to Unwin’s recipe, although the visit produced a greater emphasis on rationalist layout. In July 1936 proposals for the large White City Estate incorporated some of these ideas. The layout would give maximum north-south direction for the blocks, with such variation as is called upon to give interest and variety to the planning by a courtyard arrangement open on the southern side…the effect being assisted by vistas through central arched openings in blocks occupying the north side. This development “built up by the repetition of blocks of similar size and arrangement, lends itself to rapid and economic construction and to execution by a process of multiple contracts”. If it was to be consistent with attractive appearance, however, much depended on the treatment of the courtyards, which were to consist of grass lawn and play space with a limited planting of trees. The LCC valuer thought that although this was undoubtedly attractive, “the retention of its attractiveness will involve the Council in heavy expense”.[16] It was recognized that such a layout would provide a more pleasant effect if development was not too dense. Indeed, the report on the Continental Visit stressed the importance of density in the success or failure of housing development. It noted, in particular, “in one large town where there had been a large amount of building of expensive and monumental type dating from less than sixty years ago there is already evidence of slum conditions on a considerable scale 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 higher densities, but was interested in the “mixture of a proportion of cottage treatment in association with block dwellings”. This might be possible on the “outskirts of London” where land was too expensive for cottage development alone. 158

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The Report on the Continental Visit found that there was usually a higher density of persons per room on the continent, but this was often offset by three advantages which pointed the way to future improvements in London. In London, balcony access had been adopted “in the interests of economy”. On the continent most flats had staircase access which “tends to make a flat more homely, better-lighted and more attractive internally”. In addition, by avoiding marked difference in treatment of the front and back it allowed greater flexibility in the layout of estates, and Silkin thought that “the Council should during the next few years experiment on a considerable scale with dwellings on the staircase access principle”. A second feature was a superior standard of finish: “the impression was found that the higher standard that the finishing treatment gave to the interior of the flats gave a good return in economic maintenance and greatly enhanced the appearance of the flats.” The attention given to the entrances to the flats and to the staircases “gives the tenants pride in the dwellings, which was encouraged in every possible way as being an important factor in management”. Finally, there were the common amenities of many continental flats that were often noted in England: central heating and hot water supply, common laundries, the Garchey system of waste disposal. These were all marked down for future investigation, but it should perhaps be underlined that the general tone of the report stressed the “homely” aspects of continental living, and it falls generally within the school that sought to make flats more like houses, rather than that which sought to build on different principles. [18] In 1936 it was proposed to introduce a new type of flat that would be used in a “mixed development” together with the 1934 types on the White City Estate. The new type involved the introduction of staircase access blocks. 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 or three smaller ones. Private balconies were to be provided in the larger flats, and there were to be more refuse chutes. In flats of three rooms or more there was a larger kitchen (75 sq. ft instead of 65 sq. ft), and slight increases in the size of the smaller bedrooms, producing an overall increase in size from 580 to 630 sq. ft in the case of three-room flats. All the flats had a superior internal finish, and it was estimated that the building cost per room would be £208. This was therefore a considerable increase on the cost of the type 3 flat, and overall these developments constituted the first real improvement on the standards that had been adopted since 1923. Although still relatively small in size, these flats were more compa rable to the standards of contemporary houses.[19] 159

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It was normal to announce new schemes and improvements in the year prior to elections. Immediately afterwards, the Finance Committee had a greater say. However, after 1936 this cycle was compounded by rising costs and stable subsidies. One underlying problem was that whereas the rateable value of the county had increased considerably in the 1920s from £48.4 million in 1921 to £59.4 million in 1931, the 1936 quinquennial review produced an increase to only £60.4 million. It was increasingly difficult to prevent rises in costs feeding through into electorally damaging rate rises, and this posed a problem for a party which prided itself on sound finance. The rate contribution had almost doubled in the five years since 1933–4, admittedly from a low level. In 1937 the Finance Committee 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 flats per acre. It pressed for a minimum density of 200 rooms per acre on land costing £10,000 per acre, and more where the cost was considerably above this. Westwood, the new valuer, put up a strong case against these recommendations based on the requirements of large-scale development. At White City the proposed layout might already be criticized for failing to provide the requisite amenities for a population which would be that of a small town such as Faversham (10,000), yet the Finance Committee’s proposals would raise its population to 15,000. On the more costly Bethnal Green land the result would be to “create large congested areas comparable as regards population with the present congested districts of the East End”. The mere thought of this suggested that “there is a serious fallacy in the argument that density of development should be dependent on cost of land”. The maximum density of the larger schemes should be 40 flats or 125 rooms per acre: if land proposed in a housing site is so expensive that the financial results of a development at these densities is prohibitive, then... the Council should not proceed at all with the proposal except f or urgent housing considerations.[20] Nonetheless, the Housing Committee decided that in development of expensive sites (over £10,000 per acre) they should as near as possible secure 60 dwellings or 200 rooms per acre. Although in practice schemes were usually to fall short of this target, there was a distinct halt to decreasing densities, and reversal of the previous trend. At White City, on less expensive land, 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 type flats at White City from 50 per cent to 14 per cent of the total. This improved 160

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type did not appear at all in the proposed layout for the first Bethnal Green Redevelopment Area, and only to a token extent in plans for the large and important site in Woodberry Down. The Housing Committee retained some interest in varying the appearance of block dwellings, and in November 1938 the architect E. Wheeler was obliged to defend their treatment He argued that there was already considerable diversity, for example in the length and form of plans (straight, quadrangular, crescent-shaped, and so on) and particularly in the distinction between Georgian and modernistic styles. The latter were proposed for many of the larger new estates, including Kings Mead, White City and Tulse Hill. Greater variation might, however, be introduced in the height of buildings. It was to be achieved not through differing blocks of varying height, but through “reduction in the height of part of the building by the omission of one or more storeys. When this is combined with quadrangular planning and breaks in the line of blocks, the interest and variety of grouping are still further increased.” This was to be applied in the Bethnal Green no. 1 Area, where although five storeys would be the predominant height, there was to be much at four storeys, as well as a few blocks of twoand three-storey buildings.[22] As in previous periods, the more radical attempts to improve the character and image of the flat tended to bifurcate from the standard fivestorey design. One direction was to reduce the number of storeys and produce a form more like that of the house. The other was to opt for lifts and to increase the number of storeys, a solution usually combined with an emphasis on collective amenities and open space. Leeds opted for the second type, so producing the famous estate at Quarry Hill, a unique venture already fully described by Ravetz.[23] A number of points are, however, worth underlining. The estate was a product of Jenkinson’s new start, in collaboration with the architect R. Livett. It aimed to produce a form of inner-city living that would provide a real alternative to suburban dwelling (the form that Jenkinson preferred). The estate was mainly built at eight-storey height, with staircase access and numerous small lifts, and was of large size. Its symbolic character was emphasized not only by the modern style but, as Finnigan notes, by its location at the eastern end of an axis which connected to the town hall and other symbols of civic pride of the Victorian era.[24] Improvement necessarily raised the question of cost, and any improvement that made flats more like houses posed difficulties in economy of land. This was one of the concerns of the report Slum clearance and rebuild ing produced by the Council for Research in Housing Construction (1934). The council was chaired by the Earl of Dudley, and the architectural co ordinating committee by Lord Melchett of ici, with 161

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important inputs from the LCC architect, Topham Forrest, and L.H. Keay the Director of Housing at Liverpool. The report emphasized that the tenement block was the only solution to inner-city rehousing. There were very few districts where the population could not be rehoused at existing densities, and indeed “the only general remedy is to rebuild at densities greater than those found to be existing at any rate until an adequate pool of cleared land has been built up.” They were “concerned that 5 storey buildings…will frequently be found insufficient to prevent rehousing operations in the central areas of large cities and especially London from being seriously restricted”, and therefore proposed and illustrated a scheme for 10-storey tenements with attendant-operated passenger lifts.[25] Quarry Hill, in conformity to its idealistic origins, was not built at a very high density. It did connect, however, with the other main prong of the committee’s recommendations, the idea that, whereas the process of reducing costs in cottage building was now coming to an end, that in flat development was only just beginning. The whole basis of progress and cost reduction in motor manufacture had been “standardization, mass production, 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 the building industry. Quarry Hill pioneered the use of the Mopin system of construction, imported from France. According to Ravetz this produced financial results that were favourable compared to traditional construction of similar products: £430 per flat, plus £95 for roads, lifts and other amenities, and £100 allowed for land.[27] However, there had been major problems during construction and the flats were still expensive by Leeds standards. They never had to carry the main burden of slum clearance rehousing, accounting for only 3 per cent of the Leeds total, and although there was a substantial clearance contingent, the majority of the tenants were from the “voluntary” group. Despite the example of Quarry Hill, no clear way had emerged before 1940 by which an improved quality of flatted estate could be reconciled with the need for economy of construction. In terms of quality the new estates were only a limited ad vance over the peak of late-Victorian achievement at Boundary Street. The big difference was that they rehoused the population displaced, whereas Boundary Street had not. There had been some reduction in building costs, in real terms, but the main contribution to this progress had come from subsidies and especially from the reduc tion in the cost of land. However, the latter had come about in one major period that now lay well in the past, and since 1920 the advantage had been reduced. 162

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Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9

10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Pooley, G. & S. Irish 1984. The development of corporation housing in Liverpool 1869–1945. Lancaster: Centre for North-West Regional Studies. Data are taken from quarterly returns in the HC. Holmes, A.R. 1947. Investigation into effects of rehousing by the LCC. M.A. thesis, University of London. HC 11 July (35) 1934. Pooley & Irish, op. cit., esp. Tables 4.9 and 4.10. 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. Finnigan, R. 1981. Housing policy in Leeds 1919–39, 259–94. M.Phil. thesis University of Bradford. Quoted in Estates Gazette 120, 1932, 307. Jennings, J.H. 1971 Geographical imiplications of the municipal housing programme in England and Wales 1919–39. Urban Studies 8, 133–4; Pooley and Irish. op. cit., 86, Finnigan op. cit, 243. Bowley, M. 1945 Housing and the state, 166–68. London: Allen & Unwin. LCC 1937 London housing, 38–43. HC 31 Oct. (48) 1934; examples are taken from HC 1934 passim. 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 for the United Kingdom published in Mitchell, B.R. & P. Deane 1971. Abstract of British historical statistics, 344–5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. HC 21 Nov. (29) 1934. LCC 1936. Housing: working class housing on the continent, 4, 27. HC 22 Jul. (53) 1936. LCC op. cit., 5. ibid., 15–16, 28. HC15 Jul. (63) 1936; LCC op. cit, 44–8. ibid., 23 Jun. (61) 1937. ibid., 28 Oct (37) 1937. ibid., 16 Nov. (38, 40) 1938. Ravetz, A. 1974. Model estate: planned housing at Quarry Hill, Leeds. London: Croom Helm. Finnigan op. cit, 253. Council for Research in Housing Construction 1934. Slum clearance and rebuilding, 129, 90. London. ibid., 77. Ravetz op. cit, 80.

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C H A P T E R 11 Redevelopment and town planning

This chapter gathers together some of the themes that connect redevelopment to wider issues of town planning. It begins with a study of redevelopment areas and their use in Liverpool, Birmingham and London. In the second part, there is a discussion of certain underlying themes that supported the switch of attention to the inner parts of cities as a focus for redevelopment and rehousing, and to the development of town planning strategies in response. This part is less concerned with the extent of public action and more with factors shaping the direction of such action. Finally, some social aspects of rehousing policy are discussed within a context of contemporary 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 of the war had not progressed far in practical terms. In the early years slum clearance took priority, and it was not until 1938 that a more favourable pattern of subsidies was brought into being (see Chapter 8). In early 1939 a committee was set up to inquire into the slow progress of redevelopment areas. [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 the implications of the procedure can be studied. At the local level, redevelopment areas were a device for the extension 164

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of clearance beyond the limited scale and purpose for which “added lands” could be acquired. The change in scale could be more or less important, and wider aspects of land-use planning could come more or less to the fore. At the larger level, redevelopment areas, by catering for both quantitative and qualitative needs, played an important rôle in shifting the focus of rehousing from suburban to inner-city areas. L.H. Keay, the Liverpool Director of Housing, strongly supported this shift, and in consequence attached great importance to the 1935 Act. Liverpoors Central Redevelopment Area, declared in October 1935, was the first scheme in the country to be submitted to the Minister of Health. It covered 51 acres of land on which 6,640 people were to be rehoused. Other major redevelopment areas were declared before the war at Pitt Street/Kent Square (1936)—40 acres, 3,661 population, Athol Street (1937), the largest area containing 97 acres and 17,364 people, and Warwick Street (1938, 50 acres). These were, therefore, major schemes, but the speed and scale of the Liverpool programme reflected a tradition of inner-city rebuilding which the new programme served to reinforce. The redevelopment areas were of comparatively small size, and such schemes might be completed within a short span of years. Clearance areas comprised a large proportion of the whole, and work could begin relatively quickly within the context of the existing clearance programme. Otherwise, the areas gave greater scope f or zoning, retention, or reallocation of industrial land use, a limited introduction of open space and provision of various buildings for civic services. The Central Redevelopment Area included a major road scheme. [2] In Birmingham, the introduction of redevelopment areas was associated with a more dramatic switch in policy. This owed much to the activities of Herbert Manzoni, the new city engineer. As Gibson and Longstaff rightly note, he “altered the terms of the policy debate”.[3] Manzoni’s own account of this process says that the idea of redevelopment in Birmingham was born in 1936. Unlike Keay, Manzoni advocated redevelopment on a large scale, in areas stretching from the core of the city out to the edge of more modern property. Such areas needed to be redeveloped over a correspondingly lengthier period. This scale was partly associated with empirical conditions in Birmingham, which possessed a distinct “inner ring” of back-to-back houses constructed before 1875. Moreover, this ring also contained numerous industrial premises associated with the Birmingham trades. The land uses of the first redevelopment area, declared at Duddeston and Nechells in 1937, were to be often quoted in subsequent literature, and figured in the Uthwatt Report as an example of the conditions that planners had to deal with in inner-city areas. Duddeston and Nechells 165

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was some 300 acres in size, and contained 6,800 dwellings (80 per cent classifiable as slums) mixed with 15 major industrial premises, 105 minor factories or workshops, 778 shops, 18 churches and chapels and 51 licensed premises. The opportunities for rezoning were central to the strategy, and it was also estimated that a saving of 20 acres of land could be made in the street layout. Manzoni remembered that “this single fact…more than any other, was a vital factor of encouragement…in the early days of the ide”.[4] The Duddeston and Nechells Scheme was to link directly into war-time plans for reconstruction, and into post-war planning practice. By contrast, the redevelopment plans in London were radically altered by the war, and redesigned to take account of areas cleared by bombing. Because of that, they have tended to be overlooked, but they merit much greater recognition as an important part of pre-war planning practice. The LCC had already been in contact with the ministry during the preparation of the redevelopment area proposals, and had submitted several examples of suitable areas. Active work continued, and by May 1935 the valuer was able to make very far reaching proposals. He advised that redevelopment area 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 on the south and the Regents Canal on the north, consisting in the main of old residential property, and forming a corridor some 1 3/4 miles in length and 3/4 mile in width.[5] Defining this more closely, he distinguished four parts. An area of 250 acres lying south of the Whitechapel Road was “particularly old and congested— practically the whole calls for redevelopment”. A second area of 175 acres between the Whitechapel Road and the LNER railway contained “a considerable amount of old residential property, large patches of industrial property new and old, and some modern developments”. Another 175 acres stretching north to the Old Bethnal Green Road was mainly residential and requiring redevelopment, while the remaining 100 acres between that road and the Regents Canal contained old property together with “a considerable amount of residential and industrial property either modern or in fair condition”. However, while the condition of the property might direct attention first towards the southern area, sites for initial rehousing were only obtainable in Hackney, and “it would be unreasonable to expect a large proportion of persons living in unsatisfactory conditions in Stepney to move to new accommodation so far from their present homes and work.” The valuer therefore, recommended be ginning in the north and proceeding 166

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progressively southwards, and this indeed was to become the council’s strategy. The end result, it was hoped, would be the creation of “a corridor of redevelopment on modern lines stretching from London Fields in the north to the docks on the south.” Various other areas were to be considered for redevelopment procedures. The most important of these was the area traditionally known as the “Hoxton 80 acres”, lying in Shoreditch west of the Kingsland Road. Another possible site lay in Bermondsey, near Hickman’s Folly (now the Dickens Estate). Whatever their individual merits, however, these areas did not offer a key for the opening up of redevelopment in the East End as a whole, and for the grand strategy offered above. From the start, then, an ambitious programme was envisaged, which would take clearance and rebuilding well beyond the limits of traditional slum clearance, and offer a new approach to the problems of the East End. However, the Finance Committee was rather alarmed by the potential size of the programme, immediately pointing out the extent of the council’s current commitments. There were also many potential administrative difficulties in applying the new procedures. It was thus decided in April 1936 to go ahead at first with a comparatively small scheme—the Bethnal Green Redevelopment Area no. 1, consisting of about 45 acres with a population of about 5,000. In redevelopment, some 5,200 persons might be accommodated, and there would be 5.5 acres for industry in a separate zone, which would cater not only for the area “but also in some measure for industry which will have to be dealt with in redevelopment or clearance areas lying further to the south. The industrial land would be sold or leased by the council.” Housing would be contained in two large zones, together with another 10.5 acres along main road frontages, where it would be combined with shop. Not all the property in the area needed to be acquired and redeveloped, and the scheme put to the council in December costed the acquisition and site works at £1.25 and rehousing at £0.5 million.[6] In April 1937 the prospects for redevelopment seemed bright. A conference with Bethnal Green Council achieved their general support, and officers “anticipated that the scheme would be approaching completion in three years”.[7] In July another project, the Bethnal Green Redevelopment Area no. 2, was brought before the committee. It was a larger scheme of 126 acres in the south of the borough which would “embrace the whole of the district requiring redevelopment between the Council’s Boundary Street estate on the west and Pott Street (Horwood Estate) on the east”. Here too, a considerable amount of space would have to be reserved for industrial and commercial premises, as well as for the inhabitants of the area.[8] This was probably the high point of pre-war 167

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redevelopment area planning in London. From then on setbacks occurred that were to prevent the immediate implementation of plans for area no. 1, and the declaration of area no. 2. In particular, in November 1938 there was an appeal to the High Court against a compulsory purchase order for clearance property in area no. 1, on the grounds that the order was not within the powers of the 1936 Act, a redevelopment area having been declared. The two projected redevelopment areas necessarily covered a much wider range of property than the normal clearance area. In area no. 1 were 693 working-class houses, 11 other houses, 156 premises which combined shops with working-class housing over, 12 licensed premises and 59 business and industrial premises. Of the working-class houses 47 per cent were regarded as unfit. The second redevelopment area included 17,505 working-class and 1,042 non-working class inhabitants, and contained 1,429 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 seize on, but the extent of the opposition is difficult to establish. Bethnal Green Council was presented with a petition from the Residents and Ratepayers Society with 717 signatures opposing the scheme for area no. 1. Assuming all these were residents, they would still represent a small minority of the total, but of course all those objecting may not have signed. Small traders made up a fairly large proportion of the signatories. At the local inquiry, William Catmur submitted that the authorities should “deal with the unfit houses very carefully and not to interfere more than necessary with the fit houses”. He asked the inquiry to give more consideration to the “choice of the people and the kind of housing they prefer” and to reject “this particular way of making a shop window” of town planning.[9] There was some 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 flat dwellers…the danger with local authoritie…[is that] they are inclined to sweep away quite decent streets, and pull down houses with back gardens in order to substitute five storey block dwellings. [10] Although such opposition managed to obtain some success in delaying redevelopment on technical grounds, there was little prospect of winning the wider battle. Large-scale redevelopment of the East End was the major item on the British urban agenda, and its potential significance involved much more than changes to the local built environment. Various questions of territory loomed large, and their significance can be shown by a brief examination of contemporary housing statistics. At the Greater London 168

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level, there was a marked leap in private output between 1933 and 1934, and although this declined somewhat in 1937–8, it still remained above pre-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 until 1938, but it then fell off rapidly. The production of flats built up from a low level in 1933–4 to peak in 1936–7, with relatively high levels in the succeeding years (Table 11.1). Table 11.1 House production in Greater London, 1930–9

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

Table 11.2 shows associated changes in the location of LCC dwellings. In 1934, 61 per cent of these were located out-county, and further suburban estates 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 per cent, although 35 per cent of new families were drawn from this district. There was still a high proportion of out-county building, while the surge in the north east and south of the river marked the increased construction of flatted estates, only a minority of which were on slum clearance sites. Although LCC housing operations were no longer concentrated on the export of families beyond the county boundary, they still involved a strong outward flow of population from the inner areas both onto undeveloped land and onto sites which provided a large housing gain. Once again, this underlines the significance of the fact that housing programmes were interrupted by the war before the main thrust of the redirection towards inner-city building could be carried into practice. The programmes that were accomplished still reflected the earlier orientation towards outward movement. 169

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How one interprets these figures depends, of course, on attitudes to the balance between public and private housing, between slum clearance and relief of overcrowding, between suburban and inner-city building. The figures may be used to point up the advantages of the government’s strategy of compartmentalization. Conservatives were certainly entitled to regard private house production in this period as a considerable success, and it was to be one of the main planks around which their plans for the post-Second World War period could be formulated. Arguably, the figures demonstrate the lack of direct action on inner-city problems that commentators claimed could only be rectified by preventing local authorities from turning their attention elsewhere. Some shift in the balance toward inner-city rebuilding was certainly required, and in the meantime the large existing stock of suburban and cottage dwellings still allowed outward movement through the system. However, if decentralization was still a major requirement then the figures also support the case for continued local authority building in the suburbs. It is highly unlikely that the families newly housed in private dwellings around London were drawn from the inner east in anything like the same proportion as those on the LCC estates. Moreover, although public and private housing had necessarily to cater for different markets, strong compartmentalization of the kind favoured in the late 1930s was bound to strengthen corresponding social and geopolitical divisions of the type highlighted by Young and Garside. [11]

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

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

170

Obsolescence and redevelopment

Obsolescence and redevelopment So far, in this book, the introduction of redevelopment areas has been presented as a process largely propelled by the politics of housing in England. However, these more direct relationships need also to be seen in a context of wider concerns. The direction of official policy both promoted a switch of attention to inner-city conditions and at the same time fed off a number of underlying themes prominent in public debate in the period. There was a mutual reinforcement. These underlying themes themselves can be approached through the characteristic manner in which large cities were seen and depicted. Attention was given, schematically, to an inner ring of obsolescent housing and land uses, counterpointed with an outer ring of development around or beyond the city. It might be said that there was nothing much new here—such rings had been recognized since at least the time of Charles Booth and the decentralist paradigms of the turn of the century. In those models, however, the inner ring had been seen in terms of overcrowding or congestion, which needed to be relieved by decentralization. An insistence on obsolescence rather than congestion was much more favourable to the centralist case. Obsolescence as a theme is best approached through its development in the United States, whence the term “blight” was imported into Britain. Mabel Walker ’s study Urban blight and slums (1938) provides a key reference.[12] Blight and obsolescence were largely synonymous terms, whereas a slum might be defined as an area with “an extreme condition of blight”. Blighted areas were much more extensive and, as in Baltimore (1933), were typically depicted as “a ring of blighted residential tracts of the most serious importance and size. The centre of the city is almost completely girdled.” Concomitantly, there was another shift of focus, since blight was also given “more of an economic connotation”. It was “a condition where it is not possible to make or maintain improvements”. This condition was not just a product of the house itself, indeed it was often argued that the ordinary dwelling had a life expectancy much greater than that of its neighbourhood. Above all, blight was connected to a long-term process of deflation resulting from large-scale economic and social developments. Essentially, this meant the outward pull to the suburbs of residence and (latterly) of industry, coupled with a “new and scarcely recognised pull inwards toward the skyscraper centre”. The relative loss of value thus caused was disguised by the 1920s boom, but the onset of depression caused a reverse that was seen to be both cyclical and structural. The inner ring was faced with a loss of demand, and as Hoyt put it in his study of Chicago: “there is now a valley in the land-value curve between the Loop and the outer residential areas.” In response, 171

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Economists and real estate men have recently become convinced that these blighted areas are cancers that are sapping the strength of our cities, and that they must be removed to preserve the property values of the other urban areas.[13] In terms of the public interest it was, arguably, “desirable to keep the blighted areas of the city in full and appropriate use, and not to encourage indefinite expansion to such an extent as to lead to the abandonment of vast portions of the core of the city”.[14] Public money might be re-focussed on the inner areas instead of on the promotion of outlying improvements and subsidy of high-speed transportation. However, it was generally agreed that renewal could not take place without more realistic pricing. For Hoyt, “the hope of success in rebuilding the blighted areas lies in the extent to which outlying subdivisions are controlled, and the extent to which the cost of acquiring slum land is kept within reason.”[15] For Walker, however, the whole key to revival of these areas lay in removing the discrepancy between the value put on the property by the owners and “its value for any uses to which it can be put, appropriate to the public welfare, under existing circumstances”.[16] Blight resulted from unrealistic land and property values which had to be driven down further before these areas could be revived. She admired British legislation on slum clearance compensation, and supported other measures which revived some of the arguments traditionally associated with the “land question”. The British context presented certain points of difference which should be underlined. Neither the cultural/political climate nor the empirical trend of events were the same. Social considerations remained much more to the fore and, particularly before the Second World War, it was more usual to extend the term “slum” to denote the kind of extensive area normally demarcated in America as “blight”. Property values in Britain had already been profoundly affected by political developments earlier in the century, so that there was neither the large property boom of the 1920s nor the subsequent crash at the onset of the Depression. Moreover, competitive trends in America had gone further, so that although the inner parts of British cities were physically much older, they possibly suffered less from economic obsolescence. The effects of the Depression on industrial land use in those parts was patchy, and certainly land and property values in London generally stood higher in the mid-1930s than in the mid-1920s (Chapter 9). Despite this, parallels could be drawn with the American experience. It was clear that industrial invasion of the inner area would not be of the same importance as previously thought, and offered no support for property values. The Town Planning Institute told the Barlow Committee in 1938 that the pace of suburban development had 172

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“caused substantial areas around the inmost core of towns to become semi-derelict, whole neighbourhoods tend to become slums, not only housing but business and industrial slums”.[17] The Depression in Britain certainly had important effects. It underlined the contrast between the fortunes of old and new industries, and of old and new industrial areas. Political response to the regional problem, developing from the Special Areas Act (1934), led to increasing recognition of its structural aspects. The position of industry in the inner ring of cities could be seen in the same light. Equally, industry and housing in the older areas 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—factories and housing could be seen as part of the same problem. The regional question and the condition of cities were famously brought together in the Barlow Committee set up by Neville Chamberlain in 1937. This committee, by recommending a certain degree of control over the location of industry, was to resuscitate the decentralist cause. But its eventual significance should not be allowed to push aside the fact that in the meantime the current was running strongly in another direction. Turn-of-the-century decentralists such as Howard and William Thompson had been able to embrace fully a competitive model without having to do much in the way of thinking about developments at a later stage. Competition was depicted as a wholly benevolent process which would draw off population, reduce rents and force landlords to improve their property. The qualitative benefits, however, had been slow to emerge, if only because this was something over which property owners could still exercise some control. What seemed to result in the 1930s was a messy condition in which some congestion remained, combined with obsolescence, and property values remained obstinately high. However, if in Britain as in America the suburban solution could now increasingly be challenged, an even more potent factor in Britain was the reaction against suburban “sprawl”. This question has already been extensively covered in the literature, and it is only necessary here to underline its impact. Keay, supporting redevelopment areas, argued that “there need be no anxiety on the part of those who associated another housing drive by the local authorities with a further absorption of agricultural land. The country could still be saved by redevelopment of our towns so long as the private speculator was curbed.”[18] Boumphrey went further in this direction, but also maintained that if “by slow degrees the mock-arcadians draw the townsfolk away…then will come a slump in land values and rates in the old town—the first signs of which are even now perceptible—and public money will have to be poured into them to prevent utter calamity.”[19] 173

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In America, plans for the redevelopment or improvement of inner-city areas were usually drawn up in a framework of private ownership. There were numerous schemes, on paper at least, which were designed to allow owners in a local area to pool their interests or co-operate in order to achieve neighbourhood improvement. Concerted investment, and environmental changes, could protect investments and often allow a move up-market. In Britain I.G. Gibbon was a leading advocate of such schemes as a way by which property could continue to develop within private ownership. The real task was not just slum clearance but “to replace what is antiquated and inefficient and to bring the whole area— including what the Americans call blighted districts—up to modern requirements”. The great obstacle was the “multiplicity of separate ownerships, rendering it difficult to plan for the best purpose without excessive compensation”. Gibbon showed interest in Lex Adickes schemes in Germany, but these were followed by redistribution to the several interests. What he wanted was a compulsory pooling scheme whereby authorities would “map out areas in which ownership should be pooled,” a management Board being set up for each pool. In effect, this would be a modern version of the great estate, the virtues of which Gibbon seemed to recall in his view that planning should “lay down such provisions for the use of land as would be made by a person of enlightenment and public spirit if he owned all the land”.[20] This kind of rationalization scheme involved thinking similar to that presented by Percy and others to the Moyne Committee. If the small owner could be relieved of moral condemnation by a new economic emphasis in policy, he remained impaled on the other fork of economic efficiency. The reordering of ownership and control in the management of housing was, moreover, part of a much wider movement for reform that had developed in response to the Depression. Large-scale industrial schemes were formulated, usually on the basis that in return for protection industries should re-organize themselves into more efficient entities using modern methods of production. Harold Macmillan in Reconstruction (1933) talked about “haphazard and un-coordinated competition” and of the way in which “a minority of ‘rugged individualists’ may arrest the progress which the great majority have recognised to be essential”. Lord Melchett, on behalf of the Industrial Reorganization League, attempted to obtain legislative powers to supplement by a degree of coercion the volun tary schemes in industries such as cotton. These were schemes for “orderly capitalism” as Macmillan 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. They also, however, demonstrate a new-found confidence in the ability of private enterprise to push back the frontiers of public activity, providing that the opportunities presented by new methods of organization were grasped. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the building industry. Reorganization into large companies had proceeded much further in Britain than in America, and there was close co-operation between the industry, building societies and the government. A series of British representatives lectured in the United States on the benefits, stressing the extent to which such reorganized private enterprise could meet demands.[22] The Political and Economic Planning (PEP) Industries Group in Housing England (1934) advocated national organization of working class housing via an “English Building Company” and an “English Housing Company”, the latter for management. This report strongly supported the limitation of subsidy, so that the possibilities for cost reduction should be fully realized. At the same time, measures to keep down land costs were welcomed, and the report argued that there was “an unanswerable case for the provision of a limited or licensed life for buildings”. At the end of the licensed period, an extension of the term would only be granted “providing the building reached certain standards of repair, convenience and amenity”.[23] The compensation costs of official redevelopment schemes would be reduced. Similarly, the Council for Research in Housing Construction (1934) looked forward to major economies in flat building on redevelopment sites (Chapter 10). It is worth noticing that Keynes, who sharply attacked the government’s original restriction of housing action in 1933, was much more favourable to the 1935 settlement, not only on the grounds of sustaining employment, but also because of the greater emphasis on largescale activity. Redevelopment proposals which he put forward in 1936 were much wider in scope and purpose than those of the government, but the 1935 Act found an echo in his argument that we should demolish the majority of existing buildings on the south bank of the river from the County Hall to Greenwich, and lay out these districts as the most magnificent…working-class quarter in the world. The space is at present so ill-used that an equal or larger population could be housed in modern comfort on half the area or less, leaving the rest of it to be devoted to parks squares and play grounds, with lakes, pleasure gardens and boulevards.[24]

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In the late 1930s there were many proposals for large-scale redevelopment in England, although with much variation in the character of the proposed rebuilding. The advocates of low density cottage development were still inhibited by its apparent impracticability, but Trystran Edwards and the Hundred New Towns Group were more confident in advocating highdensity cottage schemes, albeit still with a large degree of overspill. E.D. Simon favoured cottages at 20 to the acre, but thought that four-storey tenements were the most practical solution for the redevelopment of Manchester’s “slum belt”.[25] The flat received much increased attention from architects, partly stimulated by the advent of refugees from the continent, notably Gropius and Lubetkin. In 1937, L.H. Bucknall in his presidential address to the Architectural Association called for the redevelopment of a whole inner ring of London, stretching east from Regents Park to Whitechapel, south to Bermondsey, west to Battersea, north to Kensal Green, and so east to Regents Park again.[26] At the beginning of the war, Boumphrey proposed completely to reshape and contract existing towns around modern ten-storey flats. Adshead, another advocate of tall flats, presented a map showing areas covering 30 sq. miles of London, within which “the whole of the property…should be pulled down, and made subject of a new layout of flats, tenement buildings, parks, gardens etc, the reconstruction covering a period of, say, fifty years”.[27] In such a context, the task of the Barlow Committee in redirecting attention to planned decentralization was not an easy one, although it was able to connect with the view that there was something seriously wrong with the great British conurbations. Generally speaking, the report took the line that obsolescence was a consequence of congestion, so that relief of the latter was still the primary aim. It could support “continued and further redevelopment of congested urban areas” within a context of dispersal, and offer the possibility of controlling urban sprawl through planning. The report’s great advantage was that, appearing in 1940, it fed this directly into the considerations of post-war policy that were then beginning. Modern commentators have generally concurred with Osborn’s view, given at the TCPA Oxford Conference (March 1941), that Barlow represented the new “orthodoxy of planning”. But they have also increasingly recognized his qualification that it was only a “bare outline”.[28] Indeed, the conference proceeded to blur such outlines as were discernible. One of the strongest of the papers presented was given by Manzoni. He extended the concept of redevelopment area to include favoured elements of the town planning tradition:

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Redevelopment should be carried out in large areas and not attempted in small isolated packages. This type of redevelopment, which must be the mainspring of the check and eventual contraction of our overgrown conurbations must be conceived on the basis of complete communities, i.e. as the rebuilding of towns within our towns. Such communities should contain nearly all the elements of necessity which we should give to a satellite town.[29] Manzoni argued that “we must plan our homes to suit conditions imposed by industrial necessity”. Cities could not stand still: “they must progress or decay. I am very doubtful whether the activities of a prosperous town can be much reduced without serious damage to its enterprise.” But he held out the prospect that industrial cities equipped with modern flats could be contained, or even contracted, “by a rigid application of space economy”. It was very clear that the Barlow Report had not settled arguments about the direction of planning policy.

Estates and communities Although the New survey of London life and labour (1931) was less interested in topographical information than the Booth survey, it reproduced similar street maps and paid much attention to local concentrations of the poor.[30] It drew some comfort from a finding (probably incorrect) that such concentrations had been much reduced since Booth’s day, partly by slum clearance. 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, in the West End. The whole of the inner east was characterized by a very low level of middle-class presence and influence, a fact that was generally deplored. This was one of the ways in which the question of social mix continued to be examined in the inter-war period. But there were developments from the Victorian position not reflected in the conservative approach of the New survey. Slum clearance was still associated with dispersal of population, but also with rehousing, often concentrated on similar sites. Those who most strongly saw the slum problem in terms of incorrigible slum dwellers were now less attracted by the clearance process, although it might still be thought of as a measure that imposed a salutary shake-up of populations and change of environment. Increasingly, however, clearance and rehousing, like other housing operations, was seen to bring 177

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about its own patterns of social concentration, that in some ways reinforced the segregation within the housing market. This produced two characteristic approaches that crystallized in the late 1930s and continued to develop during the war and afterwards. Both acknowledged the improved housing of the inter-war period, but set against this the rise of a more individualistic or mechanistic society against which they sought to develop concepts of “community”. These were, however, different concepts: an older tradition developed the theme of social mix, whereas a newer one stressed the advantages of social homogeneity and of the independence of working-class districts. Social mix was a dominant theme of L.E. White, who wrote an account of Tenement town based on his experiences as a Christian pacifist on a community project during the war. This was a study of the LCC’S Honor Oak Park Estate (Deptford), and later the National Council of Social Service published his book Community or chaos?, in which he reflected more widely on the inter-war experience. In White’s account lack of social mix had increasingly deleterious effects as one moved down the social scale. These effects were evident on inter-war municipal estates, particularly those with populations drawn from the slums. The new housing estate “has no independent corporate existence of its own, yet it is not an organic part of the parent city”. It was “the true habitat for a rootless generation”.[31] However, inner-city flats were no solution, as they increased social isolation. Flats (some of low standard) were part of the problem at Honor Oak, but this quasi-suburban estate was also cut off from the surrounding world by railway embankments and social hostility. The estate contained some 5,000 people, but “no provision had been made for the social needs of the people…no community centre, no church, no cinema, 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 from participation in group activities. He thought that “the most serious criticism which may be made of every slum clearance estate is that it fails to provide natural leaders who will play their part in the development of the life of the community.” At Tenement Town, partly because of very high turnover, “far too many families were drawn from the lowest income group.” The end result, in his view, was a sad story of juvenile delinquency, destruction of trees, apathy, and some nostalgia for old haunts. 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 christian influences.” The remedies, he thought, were that “the one-class estate must never be allowed again.” New housing areas should be developed as neighbourhood units, with full social facilities. Flats should not be used for families with children, and rehousing should be accompanied by “social education in the broadest sense. Women house managers and welfare advisers…but schools, clubs, community centre and church all have their parts to play.” Writing in 1946, he was rather optimistic that these points would be taken up.[33] Contrary to what might be thought, the LCC drew the various types of tenant in the late 1930s in similar proportions from the different districts. This was because of an allocation policy adjusted to the needs of individual boroughs.[34] Thus the inner east contributed 43 per cent of the clearance tenants, 42 per cent of the overcrowding class, and 36 per cent of the ordinary tenants. There were, however, different consequences for rehousing, and the clearance group was most likely to be rehoused within its own district, although there was still a small net outward flow (Table 11.3). As a result, the Inner East had a much larger proportion of clearance tenants on its estates, although lower than suggested in the table, which does not allow for turnover. Tenants were not usually rehoused on the site from 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 to Kennington Park, and most of the rest to six other estates, including Dorset Road itself. North of the river there was usually rather more dispersion than to the south. In the inner parts of London, the estates predominantly occupied by clearance tenants were those of the inter-war rather 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 of estate location and costs, and partly the result of management practice including differential renting by estate. Although White gives the impression that Honor Oak’s population was drawn from the slums, it did not have a high proportion of clearance tenants—only 845 people were first rehoused here. This did not mean, of course, that the tenants were not drawn from poor families, but it is unlikely to have been exceptional in that respect In the year to March 1939 the turnover at Honor Oak was very high, at 20 per cent compared with an LCC average of 11 per cent. Three other estates in Deptford with a high proportion of clearance tenants had lower than average turnover. Turno ver 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 per cent on those with a low proportion. The exceptionally high turnover at Honor Oak is probably indicative of problems on the estate, but more generally there was no simple correlation between turnover and tenant group, or between turnover and type and location of estate. Table 11.3 LCC slum clearance rehousing, by district, 1920–39

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

The second concept of “community” was less prevalent before the Second World War, but important planks do appear in the work of a f ew left-wing authors. Chesterton rejoiced that “once over the frontier of the City you feel a surge of social independence that dominates East London right down to the docks.” She was happy to apply the term “slum” to large sections of London. Thus, “North Southwark…residentially speaking is pure slum, with occasional tracts of better-class houses.” However, in contrast to the New survey approach, she is not interested in the slum as a seat of social problems, or in separating out concentrations of the very poor. Instead, working-class life is presented in a positive light, even celebrated. Thus in the streets of North Southwark she encountered a vivid crowd, eager for simple fun and honest pleasure, there was a sense of life about these men and women that blew like a strong wind …the consciousness of the contrast between them and the foul holes in which they lived kept on recurring.[35] It is this contrast between the positive view of social life and the negative view of the physical infrastructure which particularly marks this second approach. Complementary to this, there is no sense of physical change destroying local communities. Chesterton thought LCC flats were rather 180

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mean, but saw them as a distinct advance on the slums they replaced. In the 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 on any individual who disturbs the public peace. The community spirit has survived the slum, the attractive balconies and wide passages have taken the place of the doorstep.[36] Bentwick argued in 1941 that “although Bermondsey people have a strong affection for small cottages with individual gardens, they prefer flats in Bermondsey to cottages elsewhere.” This was because of social as well as economic ties, and “one reason for the happy atmosphere of the Borough is the fact that 95 per cent of its population is working class. It is the mixed boroughs like Kensington and Wandsworth which lack this extreme civic pride and consciousness and sense of unity. And the homo geneous boroughs which make the best citizens.” Unlike White, she was happy that “Bermondsey is not riddled with social work in the same way that some Boroughs are, where the local authority itself does not do so much for its citizens”.[37] After the Second World War, Ruth Glass was one of the main propo nents of this kind of view of community, but it was present in her earlier thought. In her pre-war study of the LCC suburban cottage estate at Watling, she lamented the lack of social provision, but still thought that “there is more neighbourliness, more corporate life on the estate than in adjacent suburbs or in the parent town. In London’s inner boroughs clubs have been established for the people; the community centre at Watling was planned and is run by the people themselves.”[38] Writing of Bethnal Green in 1946 she portrays an essentially homogeneous society: “everybody is poor and hence competition does not spoil personal relationships.” The same contrast appears as in Chesterton’s writings: Bethnal Green had “solved one of the most urgent problems of modern planning, how to create an urban community”. Yet it was “one of London’s outstanding reconstruction areas”.[39] One great advantage of this second approach to community is that it helps to liberate us from some of the otherwise all-pervasive assumptions of the first school. There is a breath of fresh air in its celebration of the warmth of much working-class life, and its refusal to focus relentlessly on social problems. Particularly at present, from the vantage point of early 1990’s, when this approach is again unfashionable, it has something to teach us. However, like the social mix approach it is clearly selective: tensions, divisions and social impoverishment within the working class 181

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are simply pushed aside, the degree of independence of the communities described is exaggerated, and contrasts between the physical and social are overdrawn. Much of this arises, indeed, from a deliberate distancing from previous interpretations, the desire to establish a clean break from which a new view of the world can more readily appear. Part of this view was an emphasis on reconstruction in a form that would allow the whole community to be rehoused within its local area. It was a feature that brought an important source of left-wing support to the redevelopment strategies of the period.

Notes 1 2

3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13

14 15 16 17

PRO HLG 37/61, Central Housing Advisory Committee, Sub-Committee on Redevelopment Areas, 1938–41. 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. Journal of the Royal Society of British Architects 46, 293–8. Gibson, M. & M. Longstaff 1982. An introduction to urban renewal, 204. London: Hutchinson. 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 on Compensation and Betterment (Uthwatt Committee), Report, 7, Parliamentary Papers 4, 1941–2, Cmnd 6386. HC 29 May (43) 1935. ibid., 1 Apr. (65) 1936; LCC. 1937. London Housing, 26–9. ibid., 14 Apr. (6–92) 1937. ibid., 21 Jul. (76), 11 Nov. (6) 1937. ibid., 31 June 1938, day 2, 32, 62–4. Hansard 331, col. 1758, 15 Feb. 1938. Young, K. & P.L.Garside 1982. Metropolitan London: politics and urban change, 173–218. London: Edward Arnold. Walker, M. 1938. Urban blight and slums: economic and legal factors in their origin, reclamation and prevention, 6–8, 21. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Hoyt, H. 1933. 100 years of land values in Chicago, 357–8. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Hoyt, H. 1942. The valuation of land in urban blighted areas. In According to Hoyt 1916–1969, 454. Washington: H. Hoyt. Wright, H. 1938. Rehabilitation of blighted urban areas. In Walker, op. cit, 94. Hoyt (1942) op. cit, 459. Walker op. cit, 6. Royal Commission on the Distribution of the Industrial Population (Barlow Committee) 1938. Minutes of evidence, day 19.

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18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30

31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

Keay, L.H. (1935) op. cit., 912–13. Boumphrey, G. 1940. Town and country tomorrow, 132. London: Nelson. Gibbon, I.G. 1937. Problems of town and country planning, 121, 14, 32, 13. London: Allen & Unwin. Macmillan, H. 1933. Reconstruction, 25, 37, 22. London: Macmillan. Perry, C.A. 1939. Housing for the machine age, 40–5. New York: Russell Sage. Political and Economic Planning (PEP) Industries Group 1934. Housing England, 6–7, 123–4. 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. In Moggridge op. cit., Vol. 21, 154–161. Simon E.D. & J. Inman 1935. The rebuilding of Manchester, 112. London: Longman Green. Reported in Architects Journal 85, 1937, 120. Boumphrey op. cit; Adshead, S.D. 1941 A new England, 116. London: F. Muller. Towndrow, F.E. op. cit., 39. ibid., 97. 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 see Yelling J.A. 1990. The metropolitan slum: London 1918–1951. In Slums, M. Gaskell (ed.) 186–233. Leicester: Leicester University Press. White, L.E. 1950. Community or chaos?: housing estates and their social problems, 13. London: National Council of Social Service. White, L.E. 1946. Tenement Town, 13, 66. London: Jason Press. ibid., 16, 66, 74–7. LCC statistics in this section are taken from LCC London Housing Statistics 1938–9, and from HC quaterly returns. Chesterton, C.E. (Ada Jones) 1937. I lived in a slum, 152, 68, 109. London: Queensway Press. ibid., 268. GLRO AR/TP/1/56. report on Bermondsey, 3 May 1941. Durant (Glass), R. 1939. Watling: a survey of social life on a new housing estate, 117. London: P.S.King. Glass, R. & M. Frenkel 1946. A profile of Bethnal Green, 39, 10, 3, 7. London: Association for Planning and Regional Reconstruction, report no. 39.

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CHAPTER 12 War-time plans

In previous chapters it has been shown that the Second World War intervened at a critical stage in the slum clearance and redevelopment programme. Clearance and rebuilding had proceeded most rapidly outside the major cities, and where combined with decentralization. The later stages of the programme, with more inner-city rebuilding, were never reached and almost the whole of the redevelopment area programme planned for major cities had yet to be started. Before such extensive physical and social change could occur, redevelopment plans were modified during the war, and the first part of the chapter examines the most relevant single document of that period, the County of London plan. The second part then goes on to look at war-time planning in the wider national context, and at relationships between housing and planning. Whereas by 1942 it was almost universally conceded that planning had been too weak between the wars, the housing policies and programmes of the immediate pre-war period could be presented in a more favourable light. Tensions between housing and planning 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” began to be shaped in the latter part of 1940.[1] It originated from within the LCC and reflected projects of both the leadership and certain key officers. These embraced 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 the draft town plans had been concerned only with private development, and they had omitted the council’s own constructive proposals (including its redevelopment areas) which were promoted quite separately from these plans. In December 1940 new opportunities were set out in a draft paper by the architect F.R. Hiorns, who since 1937 had been in overall control of 184

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town planning. This anticipated large-scale reconstruction in the east and south, and noted that in making proposals “due regard would need to be paid 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 of property value but by what is shown to be desirable in the best interests of the future of London and those who live and work in it.[2] Hiorns recommended the appointment of Abercrombie as consultant. He may have been informally approached early in 1941 but his appointment was not confirmed by the council until April, and the aim was to finish the plan by the end of September.[3] Abercrombie’s position was enhanced when Hiorns was replaced by his deputy Forshaw. An outline plan was indeed completed in late 1941, and this already contained essential features of the plan that was to be published in May 1943. There are three general aspects of the plan that call for comment. First, it was an attempt to change the balance between development led by the private sector and that led by the public sector. In particular, the object was to move away from control of development by individual landowners, from a system which emphasized the most valuable use of individual plots to one that considered the larger scale, and brought in wider objectives, social and environmental as well as economic. Such considerations were basic to planning and common ground between the council and Abercrombie, who took the view that “planners simply wished to put land to its best use without considering financial consequences based on the fortuities of ownership.” Going beyond that, he was clearly sceptical of much current financial thinking. He thought “it would be well if we could get rid of the dead hand of the Treasury which was the greatest enemy of planning” and worried about Keynes becoming institutionalized.[4] Keynes’ advice at this time was clearly influential. His whole approach was based on cleaning up a confusion between “the problem of finance for an individual and the problem for the community as a whole”. He thus condemned “the vile doctrine of the nineteenth century that every enterprise must justify itself in terms of pounds shillings and pence of cash income with no other denominator of values but this”. Keynes developed no original town planning ideas, but he supported belief s that a new and better London could be created, and that planning 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 and bold schemes. Let our plans be big, significant, but not hasty.”[5] Unlike statutory town plans, the London plan was always intended to be advisory in nature, and to be concerned with the more general lines of development. 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 property ownership or the powers of the 1932 Act but essentially is to be based upon what is required to effect the “positive” improvement of London …on bold and comprehensive lines.[6] The LCC leaders wanted to ensure that the council would continue to be seen as a leader in the planning field, to widen the scope of its action and to lessen some of the existing constraints. It was surely for more than technical reasons that the council’s financial officers, including the valuer, were distanced from the plan, and their subsequent criticisms were to give an early indication of the difficulties that post-war planning would face. However, the existence of the plan provided the Labour leaders of the council with a counterweight which had previously not existed, and henceforth they would be in the more favourable rôle of arbitrating between two positions. The second general aspect of the plan leads on from the first. The object in seeking Abercrombie’s assistance was to give the plan a professional status, elevating it above the level of a document reflecting the narrower concerns of the LCC or the Labour Party. The presentation of a plan that would be in some ways “above politics” carried with it certain dangers, which were stressed by subsequent commentators, notably those of American origin. Catherine Bauer thus asked Are the citizens of the East End so degraded that they cannot find leaders of their own to help decide whether a quarter or a half of them should move away…what happened to the lively tenants’ organizations of pre-war days?… What neighbourhood organizations exist that could galvanize the boroughs and districts to positive action within the larger scheme of things?[7] These were strong arguments and, like the relations between public and private sectors, relations between plan making and political involvement were subsequently to be crucial. Without active involvement could a sufficiently strong political constituency be developed to sustain a plan? 186

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Against this, the plan reflected the long-term tradition of British planning relying on the impact of “model” developments, which then served to guide public demands. As Bauer implies, it might be possible to bring the two approaches together, but there were inherent difficulties in such a project. The plan was devised as a document that transcended individual and group interests in favour of general long-term goals beneficial to the whole community. As an example of a “model development” on a large scale, the plan necessarily required some agreement on the general nature of the end product. This was an area in which differences between the council and Abercrombie were more apparent, but they should not be overemphasized. It was common ground that compared with the pre-war position a greater element of decentalization should be planned for, and that redevelopment should be widened in scope and take place on more generous lines. Abercrombie was disposed to reconciliation, and was on record as advocating a compromise position on the issue of flats versus houses. The council was not prepared to accept the kind of radical decentralization envisaged by Osborn. However, it wanted to develop estates at lower density and recognized the need, in the wake of the Barlow Report, to take “decongestion” further. Moreover, Barlow had also placed the issue of regional planning on the national agenda, with potential consequences for local government. In 1940, when Charles Latham succeeded Monison as leader of the Labour LCC, he emphasized the rôle of planning, and asserted that “no effective replanning of the County can be contemplated without taking into account the wider aspect of Greater London”. He wanted a “city beautiful” which “embraces not only the select parts but the whole city”. This required decentralization and that the local authority “should embrace the area into which factories and people are to be relocated”, preferably in a two-tier system with a regional authority as the highest tier.[8] In the event, the national government resisted the idea of regional authorities, and their expected development did not take place. In 1943, Latham was forced to abandon such policies in the face of entrenched opposition from within the London Labour Party, but at the time the plan was drawn up his views were in the ascendancy. Keynes’s emphasis on the long-term was clearly incorporated into the plan, and complemented by a large-scale geographical organization into land 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 was related to the schematic nature of the plan and to its rôle as a political document, which required it to be big and bold, devised with firm lines and setting out a clearly intelligible framework. At the same time, the plan 187

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reflected pre-war tradition by separating zones in which the council’s own action was to be predominant from those in which planning would continue to take a rather more traditional line. The four main land use zones within the county were described as (a) the central area of the City and West End; (b) the port and heavy industrial areas; (c) the central residential areas and (d) the suburbs outside those areas. It was the central residential areas that were the locus of the plan’s main recommendations. The east central area comprised “the working class districts extending north of the river from Poplar to Kentish Town, and bounded approximately by the Regents Canal, and south of the river from Maze Hill Greenwich to Battersea, and bounded by rising ground to the south”.[9] It largely corresponded with congested 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 of total bomb damage…they contain the main areas of slum, obsolescent property and overcrowding as well as the worst examples of large-scale “peppering” of industries within residential areas. It is here that the main deficiencies in public open space lie. The area roughly corresponds to the proposed area of decentralization of population and industries.[10] The “decentralization area” comprised the boroughs of the inner east: Bermondsey, Bethnal Green, Finsbury, Poplar, Shoreditch, Southwark and Stepney, together with parts of the neighbouring boroughs of Battersea, Camberwell, Deptford, Greenwich, Islington, Lambeth and St Pancras. Its 1938 population totalled 1,584,946 and it covered 17,936 acres. Some significant overcrowded areas were thus excluded, and placed in the west central zone, extending “from Regents Park round the west side of Hyde Park to Pimlico”. Here the existing infrastructure was held to be fundamentally sound, so that any reconstruction could take place within its framework, and this also justified higher densities. By contrast, the decentralization area contained those parts considered to be “ready for comprehensive development. Even though there may be in these areas a number of dwellings which are not yet sufficiently decayed as to warrant demolition, we consider it would be wrong from social, practical and economic points of view to redevelop obsolete areas in any way other than comprehensively.”[11] The plan clearly envisaged that reconstruction would take place within large redevelopment areas, and it pointed to studies of an 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 east central zone the plan simply took the pre-war redevelopment strategy to 188

Figure 12.1 Congested areas in the County of London, 1943. (After E.J. Carter & E. Goldfinger 1945, The County of London plan, 29. Harmondsworth: Penguin.)

its logical conclusion, including within it those parts for which over a lengthy period this treatment seemed suitable. It was clearly within the spirit of pre-war proposals that a large zone should be set aside for inner-area redevelopment, balancing the new development outside the city. Both parts of this twin focus, however, were to be modified in practice to take account of contemporary planning concerns. An important feature of the plan was thus to be its emphasis on community structure. An analysis of London, it was claimed, “discovers a living and organic structure still persisting in spite of overgrowth and decay”.[12] Abercombie is said to have considered the community structure as his main contribution, and certainly he intended it to be important. Redevelopment was no longer to be merely a matter of creating housing estates but to involve the creation of whole communities. Buildings and indeed whole areas might be conserved and incorporated in these communities, but this should be done in relation to the overall plan, not simply by leaving large areas out of account and simply rebuilding the parts in between. As the rebuilding would ignore existing frameworks as far as possible, the community structure was all the more important in provid ing a focus and meaning for the emerging urban form. In turn that form would reinforce the identity of the communities, and as in the new towns provide the most suitable physical planning framework for their social development. The reconstruction 189

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areas would therefore consist of communities of a size similar to that in new towns (60,000–100,000 people) divided in turn into smaller neighbourhood units of 6,000–10,000 people. The community would be given physical expression: The open spaces, apart from…playgrounds, are designed as far as possible to surround the whole community, forming a natural cut-off between it and its neighbours. New opportunities are now presented for…groups of public and other buildings to form nodal points around which the general interest and life of the community would centre.[13] A further important aspect of the plan was its use of population density zoning. This had the advantage that given levels of population could be related to appropriate amounts of open space and other amenities, and it also allowed the authors to distance themselves to some extent from the controversy over flats versus houses. The zones set out “a maximum number of persons who theoretically can be housed as the authority or builder wishes”.[14] For the decentralization area a calculus was set up based on the premise that population and housing had to be moved out together in order to limit commuting. The possibilities of industrial decentralization thus limited residential decentralization, although the planned reduction was still substantial in relation to the 1938 total, amounting to 611,000 people or 39 per cent. A residential density figure of 136 per acre was then derived from land use requirements which provided for an unchanged industrial area and open space at 4 acres per 1,000 population. In its density proposals the plan made no direct reference to land values or other financial considerations. However, in practice it seems clear that a number of pragmatic decisions were made in 1941, so that the final population of the decentralization area corresponded to the current population, assuming that no evacuees would return.[15] The plan proposed to “anticipate the present loss of population, but arrest any further movement by increasing the amenities and attractiveness of London for those who remain”.[16] It was certainly envisaged that the necessary decentralization would largely take place before redevelopment, and that it would be achieved at a relatively early stage of the plan. The density of 136 per acre was crucial in that it provided a compromise between zoning at 100 per acre (mainly houses) and at 200 per acre (all flats). The latter was recommended for the west central zone. In the east mixed development was advocated whereby “a great variety of interest and a wide range of choice of dwellings could be achieved”. Lifts should be provided in flats of more than four storeys and “a certain number of 190

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high blocks up to 10 storeys might prove popular, in particular for single people and childless couples”.[17] A picture was given of a proportion of lofty blocks of flats, spaced well enough apart for groups of trees, with terraced houses dispersed in regular but not monotonous f orm, the whole interspersed with open space and organically related to the smaller neighbourhood centre and finally the centre of the whole community.[18] In February 1945 the architect stated that “as an example of the type of mixed development envisaged in the Plan it was proposed that in Bethnal Green 7.3 per cent of the population should live in high blocks, 59.3 per cent in 3, 4 and 5 storey blocks and 33.4 per cent in houses.”[19] The plan certainly aimed to accommodate one third of the population of the reconstruction area in houses, but its treatment of flats was rather ambiguous, and the detailed projects by the architect all involved a much higher proportion of tall flats. In a worked example of a site of 93 acres with a population the size of a neighbourhood unit, 62 per cent of the population would be housed in eight-ten storey flats.[20] Mixed development 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 prewar clearance campaign. The plan might be interpreted as an endorsement of mixed development in its whole range—in terms of architecture, land use, social class, age and family type—as a plan which aimed to keep a relatively high population and avoid divisions caused by the selective outmigration of the pre-war era. However, after 1943 pressure from decentralists such as Osborn and the Stepney Reconstruction Group based at Toynbee Hall began to have an impact. Although many London boroughs supported the flat, nearly all those in the East End wanted a higher proportion of houses, and only Chelsea supported the tall flat. The ministry in its comment on the plan in 1943 noted that a reduction to 120 persons per acre could be achieved by adding only 90,000 people to the decentralization total. This was said by the plan’s authors to be closer to the figure they would have liked to recommend, and Abercrombie advised the council to adopt it, providing the ministry took responsibility for the alteration.[21] Indeed, in the Greater London plan, written postUthwatt and free from the LCC context, his decentralization proposals were more radical, and he even suggested that the density of the county plan decentralization zone might be reduced to 100 per acre “if a high degree 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 two most expensive forms of development—the house and the tall flat. Even at 25 per acre, land costs in inner London would amount to £400 a cottage, and this was not a practical proposition in the years immediately ahead.[23] Indeed, as the end of the war approached, attention was increasingly focused on the pressing problem of the immediate housing shortage, and it became clear that the need for an early start would dictate that most early estates would be built on pre-war lines. The valuer’s main battle was with the architect’s attempts to introduce eight-storey flats with lifts in mixed development. Despite his opposition this was allowed to go ahead 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 London area, of which 50,000 in the county. It would require a maximum output by the 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 block dwellings totalling 180 acres. In addition there were 71 acres of “substantial” bomb damage and larger areas of surrounding lighter damage, but because of existing inhabitants such sites could not provide for more than 5,000 units in the first five years.[24] It became clear that cottage estates would have to provide at least half the new accommodation, and sites were identified at an early stage at Aveley and Chigwell (1942) and at Oxhey (1943). The comptroller regarded these as “the most promising and …least expensive field for the early and rapid provision of housing accommodation”.[25] The Greater London plan (1944) thus allowed for 125,000 people to be accommodated in these “quasisatellites.” The attack mounted by the financial officers on the plan involved much more than its compatibility with the immediate housing crisis, important though that was. They took the view that costs were beyond present resources, and that implementation would reduce these resources by removing population and industry. Capital expenditure on the proposed open spaces was particularly opposed, as was “locking up of large amounts of financial resources by purchasing in advance, possibly on favourable terms, large areas of war damaged property which there will be no possibility of dealing with for years to come”.[26] The valuer was very hostile to the community structure, which he saw as unnecessary: “the theory of community in excelsis is the keystone of the plan, but we are asked to accept it without adequate proof except the word of the cognoscenti.”[27] Both officers supported pre-war patterns of development, led by the private sector, rather than planned for within the public sector. The comptroller was thus worried that the plan might mean 192

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“property stagnation and depression” for the private sector, and “the adoption of a standard so much in advance of current ones would have the effect of rendering all existing housing out of date. This improvement…would press very heavily on landlords of existing small house property.” Correspondingly, the new standards would deter new private building and local authorities would have to do the bulk of the work, with large subsidies from public funds. The proposals for the east central zone “would produce a gross density of development little more than half that usually adopted by the Council hitherto” and use tall flats in such a way as to “nullify any potential site economy”.[28] In evidence to the Dudley Committee (before the plan), the council had mentioned desirable 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 to compare with the new density standards depended on how population per area was translated into physical building terms through an occupancy rate per dwelling. The comptroller’s view was that “a higher density than the average should be aimed at in the case of low rented houses…subsidized out of public fund”.[30] In July 1945 the council was finally able officially to approve certain broad principles of the plan, including a 136 acre density for the decentralization area.[31] General support was given to the community idea and the open space proposals. Mixed development was supported in both the architectural and social sense, and key projects were outlined, including the Stepney-Poplar redevelopment area. New post-war outcomes were thus clearly indicated, and undoubtedly some of the original objec tives in producing the plan had been achieved. The difficulties encountered in respect to the post-war housing crisis might be considered as exceptional, a prologue before the plan really began. On the other hand reactions to the plan since its publication had already shown that there were major long-term difficulties to be overcome, not only in relating to financial constraints and controls, but also to general robustness 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 period was the Uthwatt Committee report on compensation and betterment. The Report bears several resemblances to the County of London plan. It was remarkable for the absence of financial or Treasury input into proposals which had major implications for taxation and the distribution of wealth. Instead, the committee saw its function as one of achieving a workable 193

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framework within which the major aims of planning could be realized. It was to ensure that “the best use is made of land with a view to securing economic efficiency for the community and well-being for the individual, and that it will be recognized that this involves the subordination to the public good of the personal wishes and interests of the landlord”.[32] The committee in effect simply examined various planning objectives that were put to them by the ministries concerned and made recommendations on compensation and betterment designed to facilitate such objectives. The Planning Department of the Ministry of Works thus gave them a memo setting out a history in which property had gradually been compelled to accept wider limitations on the form of development without attracting compensation. It went on to stress that “the question of excluding compensation in respect of a restriction to agricultural use is of particular importance”.[33] The committee was further prompted by the Ministry of Health on the merits of the Robinson scheme for the nationalization of development rights. As Sir Arthur Robinson was himself Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health, his scheme, put originally to the Barlow Committee, had practically an in-house status. The committee was able to build on it to propose a single method for control of undeveloped land that provided a basis not only for green belts but also for new towns. In November 1941 the committee secretary set out the issues as they concerned developed land.[34] The central problem was high land values and “finding a means by which…public authority can overcome or break down these inflated urban values. Otherwise the control which exists in theory will remain largely fictitious.” The paper went on to list the kinds of action that a public authority might wish to take, including “rebuild devastated or slum areas at lower density”, “provide land for open spaces”, “widen streets and cut new streets”, “provide suitable houses close to places of work”, “build social centres and other amenities”, and “provide opportunity f or the redevelopment either through public or private enterprise of the acres of obsolete houses which form the inner ring of every city”. The committee’s report would be “the cornerstone of the whole physical reconstruction in the post-war period both of damaged and undamaged areas”, but for this it would need to overcome factors which had hindered public control in the past, and “prevent the future absorption in the form of increased land values of a large proportion of the wealth created by the community”. The paper suggested that the Robinson scheme might also be applied to developed land, but this would create a formidable workload and might lead to its breakdown. In any case control of redevelopment rights was not of the same urgency. The committee agreed, and went on to deal with developed land along the following lines: (a) extension of public ownership through 194

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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 beginning there was a bundle of separate proposals which could easily be detached from each other. In its proposals for the public ownership of land, the committee worked from two directions. One of these was that shifting values at the root of the compensation-betterment problem could best be solved within large areas of uniform ownership. Organizations related to property were willing to support “pooling schemes”, but the committee thought this insufficient. The other starting point—the need for redevelopment—was thought to provide a more satisfactory answer. The Town Planning Institute pointed out that if a redevelopment scheme was “well considered and a significant area had been purchased considerable betterment should ultimately accrue to the planning authority”.[35] The Committee paid much attention to the evidence of the LCC, which referred to an area “of some 3,000 acres forming the whole or a considerable part of the boroughs of Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, Stepney, Poplar, Finsbury and Hackney, which has for many years called for comprehensive redevelopment”. In such areas, a much wider treatment was necessary than was possible under the Housing Acts “to provide mixed development including middle-class dwellings and general urban amenities”.[36] The Committee did support a relatively wide definition of redevelopment and envisaged an extension of public ownership through this process. It recommended that when land came into such ownership it should not be alienated except in the form of a lease. Questions surrounding the “life” of buildings were one of the most interesting aspects of the Uthwatt treatment of developed land, reflecting as they did both views of the existing state of urban property and of the necessary remedies. The Planning Department briefing suggested that the right to maintain non-conforming buildings in perpetuity would “make drastic replanning on any large scale impracticable for financial reasons”. The LCC in its evidence (Nov. 1941) suggested that planning authorities should have the power to place a life on non-conforming buildings not exceeding 20 years, taking into consideration (a) the age and probable effective life of the building and (b) the degree and nature of the nonconformity. Compensation payable should be assessed by reference to the remainder of the life outstanding. These proposals were largely adopted by the committee. A larger question was the placing of a life on other types of building, for instance, at the time when planning consent was given. This was rejected, largely because “the standard of architecture and of construction might deteriorate deplorably”. However, the committee went on to examine 195

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the point that there was “no halfway house as between the site value for houses unfit for human habitation and full market value”.F. R. Evershed suggested 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 in the country would fall into Evershed’s definition”. In the end it was agreed that properties purchased as “added lands” or in redevelopment areas “which although not unfit for human habitation are by reason of their age, design, construction, arrangement or density not in accordance with the standards arrived at in new buildings for similar purposes” should be assessed for compensation as though not capable of use beyond 10 years of the date of compulsory purchase.[37] While the work of the Uthwatt Committee reflected the aims of town planners, it can also be seen within the wider context of planning promoted before the war by such organizations as Political and Economic Planning. A major objective was economic efficiency achieved through large-scale organization, coupled with a need to achieve improved standards not by subsidy but by cutting costs and removing obstacles to lower land values. In 1943 the Ministry of Health was assuming a target of 3–4 million houses to be built in the first 10 years after the war. Since a stable population was predicted, most of this would involve competition with, or replacement of existing houses. Osborn used this to invoke “a painful process of city slump, the creation of blighted areas...and here and there a municipal bankruptcy”. There could, however, be a planned alternative, involving decentralization together with reconstruction. For this to work, special measures had to be taken over obsolete property protected by its situation. He suggested that all pre-1914 buildings be given a “life” for compensation purposes which reflected not only their age and state of repair, but also “their comparative value as against new buildings if their situation were disregarded”.[38] Labour Party document Housing and planning after the war (1943) also reflected these concerns. The ideal was to build workingclass houses without subsidies, requiring low interest rates and low land values. Some 4 million houses would be built in 10 years, with major competitive effects on the value of existing housing. Owners would be required to carry out necessary works of reconditioning, otherwise property would be demolished and rebuilt. “This task, which might well involve dealing with the majority of houses built prior to 1914, should be completed within the second ten year period.”[39] Property owners groups naturally saw this as a serious threat. The National Federation attacked the Uthwatt principles on the ground that “betterment is more often created by the enterprise of owner…and more 196

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often accrues to the state in the form of higher rateable value”. The proposals would “seriously reduce the value of land and create uncertainty and fear so prejudicial to private enterprise and building operations”. Moreover, they would tend to create a “leasehold community” at the mercy of local officials instead of a nation of owner occupiers. There was certainly strong grassroots opposition. David Smith, general manager of the Halifax Building Society and immediate past president of the Building Societies Association, giving his presidential address to the Halifax Property Owners Association, ended with the words “The Englishman’s home is his castle, and here and now we must act together to man the ramparts of the castle.”[40] Such reactions set up strong reverberations going to the heart of Conservative Party philosophy. It was not surprising that the government should eventually choose not to implement the Uthwatt recommendations but to 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 was a 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 of land tenure may be reconciled with the best use of land in the national interest.”[41] Nonetheless, the periodic levy was specifically rejected, and instead it was proposed that owners of all land should be subject to an 80 per cent betterment charge on increased land values arising on development or redevelopment. All this reduced the impact of the Uthwatt proposals for developed land considerably, left inevitable uncertainty about implementation and postponed important matters of detail until some time after the end of the war. The limits of consensus were more apparent in the Town and Country Planning Act (1944) that followed. Culling worth has dealt in detail with its history, and particularly with the 1939 price standard laid down for acquisition purposes.[42] In a significant move, owner occupiers were given a 30 per cent increase on 1939 values. The London Municipal Reformers had opposed the Uthwatt proposals, and their leader Sir Harold Webbe was one of 42 Conservatives who voted against the Bill. However, while the Bill facilitated local authority purchase of redevelopment areas, it involved separate provisions for the purchase of bombed and blighted land, gave greater financial support for the former, and set both within a complicated timetable. It showed little enthusiasm for a major extension of public ownership or enterprise, with limited provisions for open space and no conception of reconstruction in the Manzoni sense “on the basis of complete communities”. Instead, the Bill showed concern to direct local authorities towards certain urgent but 197

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narrower tasks, and probably reflects a resumption of Treasury control over events. Reconstruction was divorced from any proposals for planned decentralization, leading Lord Balfour of Burleigh to describe it as “a Bill for the intensification of suburban sprawl”. Latham emphasized that once again local authorities would be “left with the unremunerative development”, which would “enable it to replace more or less to the same pattern which has been destroyed”, rather than to implement the new proposals of the London plan.[43] During the closing years of the war, therefore, local authorities were able to plan for reconstruction, but only on a limited basis. The compensation and betterment problem remained unresolved, and there were no mechanisms yet in place by which wider conceptions of planning could be financed. Moreover, no central planning authority had been created along the lines suggested by Barlow and Uthwatt, nor any regional body or other change in local authority organization. Despite this, there had 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 Lord Balfour 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 industrial economy and “the impending decline of our population which…may in a few generations reduce this country to the level of a third class power”. The document supported most of the aims of planning as set out by Barlow, Scott and Uthwatt and condemned “the persistence of a perverted conception of private ownership as implying an unhchallengeable right to do as one pleased with ones’ own without regard to ones’ neighbours interests”.[44] Town planning thus found itself in a sufficiently encouraging context to continue to develop the impetus provided by Barlow and the outbreak of war. The Greater London plan (1944) was more radically decentralist in tone than the county plan. Other cities began to draw up documents which reflected the approaches adopted in the London plans. The City of Manchester Plan (1945) thus stated that “in twenty five years from now about one half of the houses in the city may have been swept away and replaced; so also may a considerable proportion of the commercial and industrial buildings”.[45] The medical officer found that 68,000 houses or 38 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 next to the city centre contained the areas most urgently in need of redevelopment. Proposals for redevelopment were decentralist, and aimed to produce a minimum of flats even in the inner areas. In Liverpool, however, Keay proposed to base redevelopment on density levels of 200 198

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and 136 persons per acre, figures taken from the London plan which would require mainly rebuilding in flats.[47] Developments in Birmingham were among the most important of the war period, reflecting the continued impetus given by Manzoni. Proposals for the Duddeston area were recast around a lower density of 41.7 dwellings per acre, and this now required a net outflow of 2,293 families. Mixed development was also now advocated, ranging from three to eight storeys, with some 15-storey towers or “hostels” along the main roads. A small proportion of houses was included, but large-scale development in this form was rejected as repeating the errors of the past:” congested in appearance, and the whole district assuming an enclosed and somewhat drab aspect with a high density.” The Duddeston proposals formed the basis for the extension of redevelopment plans to four other areas, which would involve replacing the whole inner ring of back-to-back houses. It was on the basis of these plans that Birmingham Council proceeded in 1946–7 to purchase under the 1944 Act a thousand acres containing 32,000 houses and over 100,000 people as well as numerous industrial and commercial premises.[48] There was general agreement in political circles that a large housebuilding programme would be required after the war in order to stabilize the economy, stave off unemployment and hold the country together. However, the parties still diverged widely in their approach to the respective rôles of private and public building. In the immediate postwar period local authority building would predominate, and be aimed at higher social groups than those affected by the pre-war slum clearance and overcrowding programmes. Higher building standards were once more appropriate, and in the case of flats the Dudley Committee embraced mixed development, and recommended more staircase access, lifts in blocks above three storeys and wider use of the maisonette form. The Pole Committee on Private Enterprise Housing wanted in addition some subsidized private housing immediately in order to pave the way for a greater rôle once the immediate shortage was over.[49] However, it was in plans for this second period, beyond the emergency, that differences in approach became more evident. It was anticipated that new housing would then involve upgrading standards of quality and quantity, but how would this be arranged? Jenkinson gave a common opinion on the left: since there is no money in slum clearance…activities in that and allied fields will gladly be left to municipalities…. But it is extremely undesirable that there should be any confinement of local authorities. … For important sociological reasons they should be 199

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allowed…to extend their housing activities over the widest possible range. 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 type could be a very useful aid in combating unemployment. It is therefore worth considering whether the demand for middle class housing could be stimulated by a change in financial methods.”[51] The Conservative Party document Looking ahead: policy for housing (Jan. 1945) suggested that “national interests are best served by as many as possible of our countrymen owning their own homes.” It looked forward to the time when “lower building cost and higher earnings generally will make it possible for every tenant to pay an economic rent. It must be our constant aim to achieve conditions…once more governed by the laws of supply and demand.”[52] It was not easy to see how these conditions could be reconciled with a stable population and the view that after the emergency “the next step” was to concentrate on slum clearance and relief of overcrowding, except by a strict compartmentalization of public and private effort along prewar lines. Could such policies be grafted on to a post-war planning framework and 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 slum clearance and redevelopment would come back to prominence once the immediate shortage was over. The second was that political decisions over the rôle of public and private housing would continue to have a dominant impact on the nature and extent of redevelopment programmes.

Notes 1

2 3

4

5 6

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. GLRO AR/TP/1/54; CL/TP/1 /33. GLRO AR/TP/1/56 letter from Osborn 17 Feb. 1941. Abercrombie’s appointment was approved by the Town Planning Committee only on the casting vote of the chairman of the whole council. Towndrow, F.E. (ed.) 1941. Replanning Britain: report of the Oxford Conference of the Town and Country Planning Association, 30. London: Faber & Faber; GLROAR/TP/1/61. D.Moggridge (ed.) 1971–9. J.M.Keynes collected writings, Vol. 27, Activities 1940–1946, 264, 268. London: Macmillan. GLRO CL/TP/1 /33 London replanning—notes on a meeting 21 April 1941,

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7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

39 40 41

meeting with Abercrombie 26 Mar. 1941; AR/TP/1 /54 conference, 22 Aug. 1941. Bauer, C. 1944. The County of London plan, Architectural Review 96, 81–2. London News, Oct.-Nov. 1940, 192. Forshaw, J.H. & P. Abercrombie 1943. The County of London plan, 22. London: Macmillan. ibid., 28. ibid., 83. ibid., 3. ibid., 9. ibid. GLRO CL/TP/1/33. A summary of the plan. Forshaw & Abercrombie op. cit, 79. ibid., 78. ibid., 9. LCC minutes of the Town Planning Committee, 6 Feb. (10) 1945 Forshaw & Abercrombie op. cit, 81. LCC Minutes of the Town Planning Committee 12 June (10) 1943, Nov.-Dec (17) 1944, 6 Feb. (10) 1945. Abercrombie, P. 1945. The Greater London plan (1944), 5. London: HMSO. HC 9 Feb. (8) 1944. ibid., 2 Dec. (13) 1942, 2 Jun. (9) 1943. ibid., 8 Mar. (4) 1944. ibid., 2 Jun. (10) 1943; minutes of the Town Planning Committee, 24 June 1943. GLRO Modern Records Section GLC/HG/HHM/9 Box 3 H 16, County of London Plan, memo on community groups, March 1944. HC 2 Jun. (10) 1943. ibid., 12 Jul. (12) 1942. ibid., 7 Feb. (10) 1945. MM 17 Jul. (13) 1945. Expert Committee on Compensation and Betterment (Uthwatt Committee), report, 11. Parliamentary Papers 4, 1941–2, Cmnd. 6386. PRO HLG 81/2 Uthwatt Committee papers 1941–2, CBC 146. ibid., 81/5 CBC 137. ibid., 81/4 CBC 64. ibid., 81/20 LCC evidence July 1941. 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. 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. Labour Party 1943. Housing and planning after the war, 4. London: Labour Party. National Federation of Property Owners, Gazette, October 1943, 109. The Control of Land Use 1944. Parliamentary Papers. 8, Cmnd. 6537.

201

War-time plans

42 43 44

45 46 47 48

49

50 51 52

Culling worth, J.B. 1975. Environmental planning 1939–1969, Vol. 1., Reconstruction and land use planning 1939–1947, 87–144. London: HMSO. Hansard (Lords) 133, cols 796, 740–9, 31 Oct. 1944. Central Committee on Post-War Reconstruction 1944. Looking ahead: foundations for housing. Interim report of the Conservative sub-committee on housing, 12. London: Conservative Party. Nicholas, R. 1945. City of Manchester plan, 14. Norwich: Jarrold. Simon, E.D. 1945. Rebuilding Britain: a twenty-year plan, 116. London: Gollancz. ibid., 252–3. City of Birmingham, Public Works Committee 1943. The Duddeston and Nechells Redevelopment Area; Gibson, M. & M.Longstaff 1982. An introduction to urban renewal, 211–12. London: Hutchinson. Ministry of Health 1944. CHAC sub-committee on the design of dwellings (Dudley Committee), report. London: HMSO; Ministry of Health 1944. CHAC sub-committee on private enterprise housing (Pole Committee), report. London: HMSO. Jenkinson, C. 1943. Our housing objective, 3. London: Dent. Tyerman, op. cit., 69. Central Committee on Post-War Reconstruction 1945. Looking ahead: policy for housing in England and Wales, 7, 10–11. London: Conservative Party.

202

Review

The main purpose of this book has been to provide many detailed results rather 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 associated development of remedies and forms of action, is not a specialist endeavour tied to slum clearance and rather narrow and technical in scope. Rather, it off ers an essential key to unravelling housing policies and urban development, and to understanding the polarities that marked the period: 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 a fundamental factor in promoting slum clearance and redevelopment policies, these have also to be understood in terms of contemporary developments and political priorities. One part of this is the high political profile of housing in the period, and the support for public housing within the Labour and Liberal parties. But emphasis also needs to be given to compartmentalization—the separation of public and private spheres- and to the predominant financial objectives in the period. Such considerations favoured the direction of public intervention toward clearance and rebuilding. This not only affected the balance between such action and methods aimed at increasing housing supply, but also had a fundamental impact on the whole treatment of older housing. Compensation rules, improvement policies and other aspects of the official approach to older housing all need to be examined in this context. 3 The built environment inherited from the past was also being constantly re-evaluated according to its changing position in contemporary urban geography. Competition from new suburban development was the dominant theme, and the main action against the slum continued to take a decentralist form. New supply through suburban building in the 1920s was prolonged by the “progressive” aspects of the Greenwood

203

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programme which, outside London, largely used clearance to extend suburban housing to a poorer client group. From a narrow version of slum clearance in 1933, a new paradigm began to emerge in 1935 which offered a stronger challenge to the decentralists. Very generally, it stemmed from the material and intellectual repercussions of the Depression, and a recognition that competitive suburban development was not wholly beneficial. More specifically, it involved offering inner-city redevelopment as a means of overcoming overcrowding as well as a wider range of qualitative defects, linking housing with town planning. This orientation was strengthened in 1938, but the war intervened before the practical effects of the new turn in policy were widely seen. 4 Direct action against the slum was most successful during the favourable period from 1933 to 1938 when decreased building costs combined with Greenwood subsidies that had increased in real terms. A larger number of new tenants from poorer groups obtained improved housing in this period than ever before. Despite this, the results were mixed, and there was still an element of Victorian sanitary policies: the enforcement of change despite deleterious effects on the tenants themselves. Those rehoused from clearance schemes felt the disad vantages of the contemporary mode of suburban development more than most, while inner-city rebuilding continued to be expensive and at high density, and in some cases to include large rent increases. The switch of emphasis to inner-city rebuild-ing at the end of the period was accompanied by adverse movements in the cost of both land and buildings. This highlighted the fact that extensive rehousing of the poor in satisfactory new buildings on such land had been largely made possible by a downward revision of land and property values that had come to an end by 1924. The control of land values, and other means of cost reduction through large-scale organization and activity, were taken into the planning agenda of the war-time period, alongside the blueprints for a better future.

204

INDEX Abercrombie, P. 6, 115, 128, 184–191 Addison, C 22, 24–5, 36, 106 Adshead, S.D. 85, 176, 183 Alington, Lord 142 Architects Journal 36 Artisans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings Improvement Act (1875) see Cross’s Act Association of municipal Corporations 52, 68 auction prices 19, 28, 58–9, 130–32, 135 back to back houses 91, 115, 119, 133, 165, 199 Balfour of Burleigh, Lord 95, 106, 198 Baltimore 171 Barclay I. 100, 136, 145 Barlow Committee 6, 173, 176–77, 187, 194, 198 Barnes, H. 84, 95 Basing Place 58 Battersea 59, 127, 130–32, 176, 188 Bauer, C 186, 201 Bell Lane (Holland Estate) 40, 60, 62 Bellman, Sir H. 200 Bentwick, Mrs 181 Beresford, M. 113, 128 Bermondsey 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 areas 167–68 Birmingham 4, 19–20, 27, 38, 89–90, 97, 109, 115, 164–66 blight 171–72, 174, 196 Bolton 112 bomb damage 192 Bonham-Carter, Sir E. 95 Booth, C 17, 19, 47, 171, 177 Boscawen, A.Griffith 20, 29–30 Boumphrey, G. 173, 183 Boundary Street 14, 17, 59, 62, 76–78,

149, 157, 162, 167 Bournville 19 Bowley, M. 3, 8, 55, 65, 72, 108–9, 155 Brady Street (Collingwood Estate) 24, 40, 60, 69 Brighton 74, 127 Bristol 112, 127 Bucknall, L.H. 176 building societies 66, 88, 197 Burnett J. 55 business interests 61–62, 143, 168 Camberwell 24, 58, 118, 120, 127, 188 Cardiff 27, 127 Carlisle Street 60, 63 Carter, E.J. 138–9 Chadwick, E. 10 Chamberlain, A. 89–90, 97 Chamberlain, J. 94 Chamberlain, N. 5, 27, 30–31, 32–34, 41, 43–46, 48, 66, 89, 96, 101, 173 Charity Organization Society 13, 17, 21 Chelsea 137, 191 Cherry,G. 36 Chesterton, Mrs C. 180, 183 Chicago 171 Churchill, W. 44 City of London 14 Clarendon Street 98 Cole, G. & M. 30, 37 Collcutt, T. 34, 37 Collingwood Estate (Brady Street) 76 Comber Estate 80 Committee on Local Government Expenditure, see Ray Committee on Private Enterprise Housing, see Pole Committee on the Rent Restrictions Act, see Marley Committee community 177–82, 189–90, 192–3 compartmentalization 4, 11, 20, 24–25, 29–30, 54–55, 88–89. 103–4, 127, 169– 70, 200, 203 compensation and betterment 33,

205

Index

194– 5, 197–98, see also slum clearance compensation congestion 1, 15, 18, 32–33, 171, 176, 187 Conservative Party 4, 20, 29–31, 45, 91– 93, 153, 170, 197–98, 200 see also Municipal Reform Party Conway, Sir M. 34, 37 Conzen, M. 113, 128 Cotton Estate 142 Council for Research in Housing Construction 162, 175 council housing, rôle of 2, 14, 18, 20, 64–65, 92, 101–6, 169–70, 184–85, County of London Plan 184–193 Cross’s Act 3, 12–14 Cross, Sir R. 12–13, 17, 21, 89 Croydon 164 Cullingworth, J.B. 197, 202 Culpin E. 42 Daunton, M.J. 37, 55, 65–66, 72, 106 Davidge W.R. 84 Davies, E. 42 decentralization 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, 188 Derby 42, 93 Dewsnup, E. 10, 21 Doncaster 74 Down Estate 116, 192 Drysdale Street 85 Duchy of Cornwall 11 Duddeston and Nechells redevelopment area 165–66 Dudley 112 Dudley Committee 199, 202 Dudley, Earl of 162, 198 Durant, R. 183 East Hill Estate 40 Ecclesiastical Commissioners 11 economic conditions 19, 22, 36, 39, 64, 91, 171–73 economic policy 11, 28, 63, 65, 88, 138, 185

Edwards, T. 176 electoral influences 19, 25–26, 28, 30, 54–55, 96, 99 Englander, D. 28, 37 Estates Gazette 30, 88, 96 Evans, E. 25, 66 Eve, G. 196 Evershed, F.R. 196 Fenner-Brockway, A. 33, 37 Finnigan, R. 55, 91, 106, 133, 155, 161 Finsbury 9, 14, 123, 188, 195 flats amenities 76, 79–83, 156, 159 building costs 75–83, 154–63 density of development 33–36, 76, 106, 160–62, 193 density of occupation 47, 75, 146–52, 159 methods of construction 83–84, 162 room sizes 76, 81, 156, 159 styles of 76, 81,161–62 tall 33–36, 75, 82–85, 117, 158, 162, 191, 193 types of 75–82, 156, 159–61 versus 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, 201 Fraser, D. 21 Fremantle, F.E. 45, 55, 106 Fulham 59, 122, 127, 130–32, 164 garden cities and suburbs 6, 32–33, 85, 92 Garside, P. 56, 184, 200 Gaskell, M. 19, 21, 183 gentrification 137 Gibbon, I.G. 27, 46, 174 Gibson, M. 3, 8, 165, 182 Glammis, Lady 142 Glass, R. 181, 183 Goldfinger, E. 188–89 Greater London Plan 187, 151–52, 198 Greenwich 116, 120, 175, 188 Greenwood, A. 5, 47–53, 68–9, 71, 92, 106, 154 ground landlords 11, 60, 139, 141–45 Grytzell, K.G. 15–16, 21 Hackney 24, 116, 127, 166, 195 Hackney marshes 117 Hammersmith 116, 127

206

Index

Hammerton, H.J. 106 Hardie, K 20 Harris, P. 89 Hayes-Fisher, W. 24 health and disease 10, 17, 88–89, 140 Hickmans Folly 62, 167 Hill, O. 13–4, 27, 46, 90,99–100 Hilton-Young, E. 5, 71, 88–90, 93, 103– 4, 154 Hiorns, F.R. 185 Holborn 15, 122 Holmes, A.R. 149–50, 163 homes for heroes 2, 22–26, 75 Honor Oak Estate 81, 178–79 houses versus flats 13, 32–33, 42, 52, 92, 103, 105–6, 115, 151–52, 155, 169– 70, 178, 187, 190–91 housing costs 31, 44, 75–83, 154–63, 167, 192-93 densities 33–36, 42, 76, 88, 158, 160-62, 185–86, 190–93 estates 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, 19 1923 30–31 1924 31, 39, 54, 88, 153, 155 1930 5, 38, 49–53, 63, 80–82, 91, 93, 97–98, 132, 152, 155 1933 5, 55, 87–90, 175

1935 5–6, 71, 90, 102–6, 123–25, 132, 175 1938 155 Housing (Rural Workers) Act 1926 44, 98–99 Housing and Town Planning Act 1919 26 Howard, E. 6, 18, 173 Hoyt, H, 171–72, 182 Hull 12, 74 Hulme 49, 74 improvement areas 33, 52–53, 97–99, see also reconditioning industry 32–33, 35, 116, 119, 143, 165– 68, 172–3, 187–88, 190, 199 Irish, S. 86, 152, 155, 163 Islington 15, 98, 126, 188 Jenkinson, Rev. C. 91–92, 114, 153, 200, 202 Jennings, J.H. 55, 155, 163 Keay, L.H. 83, 115, 162, 165, 173, 182, 199 Kennings Estate 79 Kensington 24, 98, 122, 181 Kensington Housing Trust 99 Keynes, J.M. 89, 106, 175–76, 183, 185– 86, 201 Kingsmead Estate 117 Kirby,D. 3, 8 Labour 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, 186 Land and House Property Yearbook 59, 131–32 land 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, 172 land uses 33–36, 116–17, 119, 165–68, 187–88, 190, 194–95, 199 landlords 11–12, 18, 25–28, 31, 44, 49, 64–71, 100–1, 132–45, 138–45, 193, 196–97 Latham, C. 117, 187, 198 Lawrence S. 71 LCC, see London County Council LeCorbusier 34, 37 leaseholders 60–61, 68–69, 139–41, 143 Leeds 27, 38, 42, 90–93, 109, 114–15, 133, 153–54, 155, 161–62 Letchworth 19

207

Index

Levita, C 39–41, 54–55, 79, 83, 93 life of buildings 175, 195–96 Limehouse 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. 22 Local Government Board 24–26 London County Council, clearance areas 26, 40–41, 62–63, 120–22, 133, 157 housing estates 17, 38–39, 43, 53–54, 75–76, 81–82, 152, 158–61, 178–80, 190–92 output 39, 93, 169–70 policy 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, 192 town planning 34–35, 84–93, 166–68, 195, 198 Hospital Estate 140–42 East End 84–85, 116–20, 138–45, 166– 70, 177, 180, 186, 188–91 South Bank 34, 175 West End 83, 118, 120, 138–39, 177, 188 government 32, 118, 187 Longstaff, M. 3, 8, 165, 182 Lowestoft 164 MacDonagh,O. 10, 20 Macmillan, H. 174–75 Madigan, R. 8 Manchester 12, 47, 176, 198–99 Manzoni, H. 115, 128, 165–66, 176–77 Marley Committee (Rent Act) 135 Marshall, A. 17 MeGonigle, G. 74, 85 Mclntosh Estate 142 Medical officer of health 9–10, 91, 97– 98,118 Melchett, Lord 162, 174 Mercer’s Estate 141–42, 144–45 Metropolitan Board of Works 14 Middlesborough 74, 113

Mitcham 30 Mitchell M. 52 mixed development 159, 191–93, 195 model dwellings companies 12, 16–17 Moggridge, D. 106, 183 Mond, A. 29 Morrison, H. 31–32, 42, 85, 92, 117, 187 mortgages 60, 88, 134 Moyne Committee 47, 90–91, 93–102, 137, 174 multi-occupation 98, 126–7 Mumford, L. 36 Munby, D.L. 144–45 Municipal Reform Party 19–20,22–26, 39–41, 84–85, 92, 116–18, 142, 153, 197 National Council of Social service 178 National Federation of Housebuilders 96, 103 National Federation of Property Owners 66, 96–97, 197 National Government 23, 54, 102 National Housing Corporation 95–96 Nettlefold, J. 4, 19 New Survey of London Life and Labour 47–48, 56, 177 New York 35 new towns 31–32 Nicholas, R. 202 Norman, P. 8 Norwich 74, 164 obsolescence 171–76, 188, 194–96 Ocean Street 118, 192 Offer, A. 19, 17, 28, 37, 59, 65, 71 Oldham 112 open space 33–34, 190, 192, 194 Orbach, L.F. 22, 36 Orr, J.P. 34–6, 41, 83 Osborn, F.J. 176, 187, 191, 196 Ossulston Street 41, 61, 63, 83–84 overcrowding problem 14–17, 23–24, 47–48, 52, 95-106, 122–27, 147–50, 200, 203 relief programme 103–5, 125–26, 200 standard 5, 103–4, 123–25 subsidies 103, 125 Overcrowding Survey 1936 104, 123– 25, 148 owner-occupation 30, 71, 88, 200 Oxford 164 Paddington 98, 118

208

Index

paradigm 3–6, 18, 92, 171 Peabody Trust 16, 34, 142 Peckham 59, 130–32 Pemberton-Barnes Estate 142 Pepper,S. 83, 86 Percy, Lord E. 89, 94–96, 174 Perry,C.A. 183 Perry,E. 100, 136, 145 Phillips R. 137, 145 Plymouth 127 Pole Committee 199 Political and Economic Planning 175, 196 Pooley,C 78, 86, 152, 155, 163 Poplar 15, 54, 188, 195 Poplarism 39, 117 Portsmouth 112, 127 private enterprise 11, 20, 22, 29–31, 39, 65, 88, 93–97, 102, 174–5, 184–85, 193, 199–200, 203 Progressive Party 3–4, 11, 14, 17–20, 25–26, 41, 47, 64–65 progressive model 4–5, 17–20, 28–29, 31, 38, 41–43, 47–52, 92, 173, 204 property fragmentation of 27–28, 45, 94, 134, 138–45, 174, 195 interests 25, 41, 54, 60–62, 66–69, 96-97, 138–45, 197–98 ownership 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 Society 25, 41, 54, 66 public utility societies 46, 90, 93–96 Quarry Hill Estate 156, 162 rates 19, 26, 55, 160 Rathbone, E. 154 Ravetz, A. 82, 86, 102, 161–3 Ray Committee 54–55, 87, 93 reconditioning 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 clearance redevelopment 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, 133 Regent’s Park 176, 188 regional government 32, 187, 198 Reiss, H.L. 145 rents 18, 28–30, 39, 47, 51, 59, 74, 78-82, 95–6, 98, 101, 130, 146–54 rent control 22, 28, 30, 44, 55, 57, 60, 135, 137, 140 rents, differential 39, 51, 74, 80–82, 151–54 Robinson, Sir A. 194–5 Roehampton 25 Royal Commission on Working Class Housing 17 rural housing 20, 44 Salter, A. 33, 42 sanitary policy 7, 10–11, 13, 65–66, 97–98, 100–1, 105, 123–25, 136–38, 141, 151, 204 Scotland 98–99 Selley, H.R. 54, 66, 85, 198 Sheffield 112, 115 shopkeepers 61, 168 Shoreditch 9, 15, 61, 78, 85, 120–23, 149–50, 167, 180, 188 Silkin, L. 117, 154 Simon, E.D. 47–49, 56, 89, 114, 126, 128, 176 Simon, Sir J. 10–11, 13, 21 slum clearance, added lands 51, 61– 63, 70, 115, 164–65, 196 slum clearance closure orders 50, 113 compensation 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, 118–22 rehousing 11, 13, 40, 47–49, 74–76, 78–79, 116–18, 146–54, 170, 177–78 rehousing sites 12, 17, 35, 74, 103, 110, 115, 168–70 subsidies 13, 20, 25, 29, 51–53, 80–82, 114, 152–55, 164 policy 1, 4–6, 9–14, 17–20, 24–26,

209

Index

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 slums conditions 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 197 Soissons, L. de 198 Somper,J. D. 84 South Wales 114 Southampton 112, 122, 127, 136 Southwark 15, 149–50, 188 St. Helier Estate 39 St. Marylebone 15, 41, 60, 63, 118, 123 St Pancras 15, 41, 61, 63, 120, 123, 126, 188 Stepney 9, 15, 40–41, 59, 62, 84–85, 116, 118, 120–23, 130–32, 138–45, 166, 180, 195 Stepney Reconstruction Group 191 Stepney-Poplar redevelopment area 189, 193 Stockton on Tees 49, 74, 150 Stoke Newington 116 Streatham 93 suburban 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 decentralization Sunderland 123 Sunnucks, R. 134–5, 145, 198 Sutcliffe, A. 86 Swenarton, M. 22, 36 Tabard Street 20, 62, 75–76 Taylor G. 20 tenants 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 rehousing territorialization 1, 43, 116–18, 122–23, 155, 169–70

Thompson, W. 18–19, 21, 173 Topham-Forrest, G. 83, 162 Torrens’s Act 3, 11, 13 Town and Country Planning Act 1944 197 town planning 1, 5, 31–37, 49–50, 64, 66, 70–71, 96, 105, 173–77, 184–203 transport 16–8, 32, 64–5 Tulse Hill Estate 116 Tyerman, D. 201 Umberston Street 119, 132 unemployment 78, 114 unfit dwellings 9–11, 15, 25–26, 100, 108–22, 126–27, 198 Unhealthy Areas Committee 15, 27– 28, 32–34, 41, 45–46, 101 United States of America 34–35, 83, 171–72, 175 Unwin, Sir R. 36–37, 95–96, 136 urban structure 12, 15–16, 169–74, 176–77 Uthwatt Committee 165, 191, 194–98 Victoria Park 116 Vienna 84–85 wages 47, 77, 81, 146–48, 182 Walker H.de R. 24–25 Walker, M. 171–72, 182 Wandsworth 40, 43, 118, 181 Ward, S. 114, 128 Ware Street 62, 78 Watling Estate 39, 181 Webb, Sir A. 32, 37 Webbe, Sir H. 117, 197 West Ham 71 Wheatley, J. 31, 53, 80 Whiston Committee 98–99 White City Estate 116, 160–61 White, J. 126, 128 White,L.E. 178–79, 181 Wilding, P.R. 3, 8, 44, 55, 105, 107 Wilson Grove Estate 42 Winterton, Earl of 142 Wolverhampton 74, 112 Woolwich 42, 118 Wright, H. 182 zoning of land-uses 33–35, 165–68, 187, 190, 199

210