Abstract
In Britain the most direct involvement of the state in housing is the provision and management of what is popularly known as ‘council housing’, whereby the local authority under government supervision acts as a major housing developer and landlord. As Table 5.1 indicates, before the First World War there were virtually no council houses in Britain, but today about 30 per cent of the housing stock is occupied by tenants of the local authorities, though it seems that this steady growth over five decades has now reached its peak. The extent of direct government provision of housing in Britain exceeds by far the provision in other capitalist countries. In Western Europe governments fund workers’ housing through ‘quasi-public bodies’ similar to housing associations, while in the USA public housing only accounts for 2 per cent of the housing stock.1
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Notes and References
See Public Housing in Europe and America, ed. J. S. Fuerst (London: Croom Helm, 1974);
and A. Heidenheimer, H. Heclo and C. Teich Adams, Comparative Public Policy (London: Macmillan, 1976) Chapter 3.
Various interpretations are offered by the following: Housing Policy: Technical Volume 1 (London: HMSO, 1977), pp. 3–7; P. Wilding, ‘Towards Exchequer Subsidies for Housing 1906–1914’, Social and Economic Administration, vol. 6, no. 1 (1973); B. B. Gilbert, British Social Policy 1914–1939 (London: Batsford, 1970) Chapter 3.
See A. S. Wohl, The Eternal Slum: Housing and Social Policy in Victorian London (London: Edward Arnold, 1977) p. 324.
P. Dickens, Social Change, Housing and the State, Centre for Environmental Studies Conference Paper (London: 1977) p. 16.
M. Foot, Aneurin Bevan: a Biography, vol. 2 (London: Davis-Poynter, 1973) p. 95.
R. Crossman, The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, vol. 1, Minister of Housing 1964–66 (London: Hamish Hamilton and Jonathan Cape, 1975) p. 43.
R. McCutcheon, ‘High Flats in Britain, 1945 to 1971’ in Political Economy and the Housing Question (London: Conference of Socialist Economists Housing Workshop, 1975) p. 97.
See F. Berry, Housing: the Great British Failure (London: Charles Knight, 1974) p. 249.
M. Harloe, R. Issacharoff and R. Minns, The Organisation of Housing in London (London: Heinemann, 1974) p. 32.
M. Bowley, Housing and the State 1919–1944 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1945) p. 129.
This is explained further in B. Kilroy, ‘How a Council Loses on Sales’, Roof, vol. 2, no. 3 (1977) pp. 76–80.
See S. Schifferes, ‘Council Tenants and Housing Policy in the 1930’s’ in Housing and Class in Britain (London: Conference of Socialist Economists Housing Workshop, 1976) p. 67.
See J. G. Bulpitt, Party Politics in English Local Government (London: Longman, 1967).
R. Parker, The Rents of Council Houses, Occasional Papers in Social Administration no. 22 (London: Bell, 1967), p. 47.
Fair Deal for Housing, Cmnd. 4728 (London: HMSO, 1971). This was the White Paper which laid out the principles of the Housing Finance Act, 1972. For further discussion on this act see P. Beirne, Fair Rent and Legal Fiction (London: Macmillan, 1977) Chapter 3.
See L. Sklair, ‘The Struggle Against the Housing Finance Act’ in The Socialist Register 1975, eds R. Miliband and J. Saville (London: Merlin, 1975).
The council’s story and the context of the struggle is told in D. Skinner and J. Langdon, The Clay Cross Story (Nottingham: Spokesman, 1974).
Wohl, The Eternal Slum, p. 188. See also G. Stedman Jones, Outcast London (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971) pp. 193–6.
B. Webb, My Apprenticeship (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971) p. 267.
See J. Tarn, Five Per Cent Philanthropy (London: 1973) Chapter 8.
S. Darner, Working Class Housing and Working Class Incorporation: Glasgow 1861–1919, unpublished paper given to the Conference of Socialist Economists Housing Workshop (1976) pp. 15–23.
S. Darner, ‘Wine Alley: the Sociology of a Dreadful Enclosure’, Sociological Review, vol. 22 (1974) p. 225.
In a submission to a government committee in 1938 the Incorporated Society of Women Housing Managers suggested the further employment of women as managers because of ‘the greater facility with which they are able to establish friendly and confidential relations with the housewife, the real manager of the home’. Central Housing Advisory Committee, Management of Municipal Housing Estates (London: HMSO, 1938) p. 10.
J. Tucker, Honourable Estates (London: Gollancz, 1966) p. 11.
C. Ward, Tenants Take Over (London: Architectural Press, 1974) p. 12.
R. Wilson, Difficult Housing Estates (London: Tavistock Institute, 1963) p. 14.
D. S. Byrne, Problem Families — a Housing Lumpenproletariat (Durham: Durham University Department of Sociology and Social Administration, 1974) p. 12.
Central Housing Advisory Committee, Council Housing Purposes, Procedures and Priorities, Cullingworth Report (London: HMSO, 1969) p. 252.
D. Evans, Where Do We Go From Here?: a Study of Eviction From Council Housing in Birmingham, M. A. Dissertation, Applied Social Studies Department, Warwick University (1976).
See B. Glastonbury, Homeless Near a Thousand Homes (London: Allen & Unwin, 1971) Chapters 3, 4, 5.
See J. Baldwin, ‘Problem Housing Estates’, Social and Economic Administration, vol. 10 (1976) pp. 131–4. See also Whatever Happened to Council Housing? and Coventry’s Council Houses: the New Slums (London: Shelter, 1974).
R. Means, Social Work and the Undeserving Poor, Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, University of Birmingham, Occasional Paper no. 37 (1977) p. 34.
J. Lambert, B. Blackaby and C. Paris, Neighbourhood Politics and Housing Opportunities, Centre for Environmental Studies Conference Paper (London: 1975) p. 9.
N. Lewis, ‘Council Housing Allocation: Problems of Discretion and Control’, Public Administration, vol. 54 (1976) p. 155.
See the following: M. Harloe (ed.), Captive Cities (London: Wiley, 1977) particularly the Introduction and Chapters 1, 2 and 7
R. Pahl, Whose City? (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975) Chapter 13
P. Norman, Managerialism: A Review of Recent Work, Centre for Environmental Studies Conference Paper (London: 1975).
See J. English, R. Madigan and P. Norman, Slum Clearance (London: Croom Helm, 1976) pp. 121–2.
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© 1979 Norman Ginsburg
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Ginsburg, N. (1979). Council Housing. In: Class, Capital and Social Policy. Critical Texts in Social Work and the Welfare State. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16169-0_6
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