The Abolition of Tied Cottages (1975)

From the July 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

The government has promised legislation in the near future to end the tied cottage system in farm employment. A report on it was published on 11th June by the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, supported by the Minister of Agriculture. Last year the Shelter organization produced a report condemning the system.

The promise has a long history. Tied cottages have been a grievance of farm workers throughout the century, and their abolition was part of the Labour Party’s programme in the nineteen-twenties. In Sharpen the Sickle! The History of the Farm Workers’ Union, 1948 (pages 215-220) Reg Groves describes the expectations that the second Labour Government in 1929 would legislate on the lines of statements and pledges made; and the great bitterness when it failed to do so.

The number of farm workers is smaller today than ever before, of course. The total number was 1,591,300 in 1881 and 1,198,000 in 1931 (Astor and Rowntree, British Agriculture, 1939). In 1951 it had fallen to 882,000 and was only 352,000 by 1970, including seasonal and part-time workers (Agricultural Statistics, MAFF). Thus, it can be said of the tied cottage — as of many another social problem — that the reformers step in valiantly when the high tide has gone, forty or fifty years late.

Poverty the Problem

According to the Tavistock Institute report, about 90,000 farm workers live in tied cottages today. The official term is “service tenancy”, and it should be pointed out at once that agricultural tenancies of this kind are part of a much larger member covering various occupations and circumstances. The provision of a dwelling subject to remaining in a job applies to tenant licensees of public houses policemen, many shop workers, caretakers, country teachers, and others.

When the employment ceases so does the right to the dwelling. The worker may have bad health, or be sacked, or choose another job; in the end anyway he must retire; and in all these circumstances he can be and generally is told to go. Though a court order is required to evict him, there is no case he can present against it. The NUAAW reports about 300 farm-cottage evictions a year, but these are the cases reported to it and the true number is estimated to be three times greater. If a worker dies, his widow and children may be evicted.

A large number of workers in service tenancies make early applications for council houses, and this is where reformers have always sought the remedy. In 1925 Noel Buxton, Minister of Agriculture in the first Labour Government and a former President of the farm workers’ union, wrote:

The tied cottage is an almost equally serious grievance suffered by the farm-worker. Adequate provision by local authority of cottages in or near villages is the solution best calculated to deal with this evil.

(The Book of the Labour Party, Vol. 2)

The deputy director of Shelter says the same thing in 1975: ‘“That is where the problem must be tackled — by ensuring that adequate housing is made available in the rural areas,’ he said,” (Guardian, 11th June.) This well-established “answer” contains its own implication that it is addressed to the wrong question. The tied cottage system is an effect, not the cause, of farm workers’ miserable situation. Adequate housing is available — see the property advertisements in any local paper, or Country Life; but poverty makes it inaccessible and makes them mendicants to employers and local councils (the same people, quite likely).

Past and Present

Despite its promises, the Labour Party in office was no more likely than any other government to abolish tied cottages in the past. In the nineteen-twenties farm workers’ wages fell from a national minimum of 46s. in 1920 to an average of about 28s. in 1924 and in 1938 were about 35s. Agriculture was depressed, with bankruptcies common and land going out of cultivation. According to sources quoted by Groves, one reason for farm wage cuts in 1923 was “a hope that a big upheaval might bring Government action to help farmers”.

Tied cottages (together with living-in by unmarried farm hands and domestics) helped keep wages down, and legislation which would have tended to raise them was therefore impossible. It can be added that the standard of accommodation was rock-bottom. Rural areas were almost universally without piped water, electricity or drainage, and the maintenance of cottages cost practically nothing.

The position today is much different. Farming is supported by subsidies; not only does it employ only a quarter of its pre-war numbers, but there is now a high proportion of skilled workers. The dissolution of small farms has meant a further reduction in the dwellings required, and in the last ten or fifteen years large numbers of cottages and farmhouses have been sold as private houses. In many cases they are certified as unfit for habitation, but this makes them eligible for the high-priced market in which they are renovated to become "period cottages" and "houses of character”.

A further consideration from the Government viewpoint is that maintaining evicted families in public institutions, as well as intensifying a grievance, is costly. This is the "practical" case urged by the reformers; since the families have to be housed by local authorities in the end, why not recognize that and do it in the beginning? Along with this goes the fact that farm wages are now rising. In the opinion of many farmers there is an imminent shortage of skilled labour and wages must rise higher. In that case, the farm operative may pay a council-house rent or have a mortgage like any other worker: the problems of the tied cottage are redundant.

Reform leading Where ?

At any rate, farmers are not strongly opposed to the idea of abolition. The Guardian report on 11th June said that 46 per cent. of them claimed tied cottages to be necessary; which, put the other way round, means that more than 50 per cent. apparently do not mind.

There is a special reason why many should not. Between 30 and 40 per cent. of farmers in Britain are tenants (figures given in Farming in Britain Today, J. G. S. and F. Donaldson, 1972) and are themselves required to move out on retirement or in difficulty. Though the majority would not have to fall back on council housing, legislation which protected them from the demands of takeovers, for instance, would be very acceptable.

One other motive which should not be overlooked is the Labour Party’s hopes of winning votes in rural constituencies which are mostly Conservative. Only about 30 per cent. of farm workers belong to the NUAAW and about 5 per cent. to the Transport and General Workers’ Union. This is largely due to the difficulty of organizing workers who are scattered over wide areas; but it also represents disappointment with the unions’ inability to extract the fulfilment of Labour promises in bygone years.

The tied cottage system as it has always existed is a crude example of what the working class gets from capitalism — cheap maintenance, and out on the scrap-heap after use. If an end to it is made, we shall have the familiar situation over reforms: a grievance remedied when it has diminished, not for humane reasons but to suit the needs of capitalism, and with other beneficiaries than those named.

Of course nobody would wish a system which permits summary evictions to continue. However, if the proposed legislation is to aim at farm cottages only, the facility for evictions from other service tenancies can still remain. Certainly farm workers will find that when bad old days have gone things will have altered less than they may have thought, and their basic position not at all. That will happen only when they and other workers decide to change to Socialism.

Robert Barltrop