How eloquent both Mr. Neville Chamberlain, the present Health Minister, and Mr. Wheatley, his predecessor in that office can become over the deplorable housing conditions of the workers! And what grand schemes both can produce to solve the problem ! And yet the housing problem is as troublesome as ever. Why?
In that Conservative newspaper, the Sunday Chronicle, March 1st, Mr. Harold Begbie has an article, entitled “The Selfish Builder”, from which we cull the following: —
‘Of all the sections of Labour which have thus paralyzed our industrial activity and brought incalculable sufferings and sorrows on the head of the working classes, none stands so clearly and so cruelly guilty as that section of Labour which controls the building trade . . . the guilt lies at the door of those politicians of Labour who have encouraged the operatives of the building trade to make a selfish use of the nation’s direct necessity.’
The national and municipal housing schemes of the Labour Party have not succeeded, for the same reason that other schemes fail. Capitalism, whether private, municipal, or under State ownership has no mere ethical or ‘spiritual’ basis, its basis is material profit, obtained by the exploitation of the workers and realised by the sale of goods. If there is no sale there is no realisation of profit, and it is solely because the great majority of workers can neither buy nor even rent a newly-built house that the output of houses is restricted.
Now if one were to go to the National Federation of Building Trade Operatives . . . their secretary has repeatedly pointed out that bricklayers and plasterers are on the books as unemployed, despite the cant of the employers about the shortage of skilled labour.
Moreover, is there any cry about the shortage of labour when a warehouse, mill, factory, bank, theatre or cinema is wanted? No, these jump up like mushrooms overnight.
(From an unsigned editorial “The Truth About the Housing Question”, Socialist Standard May 1925.)
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