Grenfell: an unquenchable blaze (2024)

From the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Imagine waking at night inside walls of dripping flames in a fire that’s engulfing your flat in the tower block that is your home. A crackling storm of searing flames, where the walls turn to molten polyethylene (uPVC), a material described by Peter Apps, an editor at Inside Housing magazine, ‘like a solid petrol’ burning. It’s a material that melts as it burns, which it does easily at low temperatures. The air itself becomes as hot as the fire itself, scalding your lungs with each breath. Many victims of fire die in hospital from burn damage to lungs, days or weeks later after inhaling a suffocating thick black petroleum-based smoke. One element of the chemical cocktail released from burning uPVC is cyanide.

The escape routes, once familiar corridors and communal areas, now transformed into dark labyrinths of despair. The firefighters had told you stay put for safety but now the building’s uPVC shell is quickly and fully alight, dripping flaming materials floor to floor.

Grenfell Tower’s residents experienced this horror on 14 June 2017, when the 24-storey block was engulfed in fire, causing 72 deaths. The fire began with a malfunctioning fridge-freezer but spread due to the building’s combustible cladding, revealing systemic safety failures in UK construction and government oversight.

Survivor and campaigner testimonies

Survivors and bereaved families had consistently criticised the lack of accountability from authorities. They argue that Grenfell happened because the people in power saw the residents as expenses, not individuals. Grenfell Action Group (GAG), which was instrumental in raising concerns before the fire, repeatedly warned that a disaster was inevitable. Their warnings, however, were ignored. In a blog post written months before the fire, GAG chillingly predicted, ‘only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord’.

Testimonies to the Inquiry, whose final report was published at the beginning of September, revealed that fire safety was sidelined in favour of cost reduction and aesthetics. Architects and contractors ignored basic safety practices, contributing to the mass killing. As lawyer Stephanie Barwise KC, representing survivors, noted, there were repeated opportunities to prevent the fire, but none were taken.

The inquiry has also shone a light on the inequality and indifference shown towards social housing tenants and marginalised communities.

Refurbishment and cladding

It started with regeneration. Decisions in relation to Grenfell made during the refurbishment of the tower avoided consulting residents who before the fire had formed a residents’ committee. The refurbishment project was carried out by private contractors under the direction of the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO)

Following decades of deregulation and privatisation, social housing management has often been outsourced to private contractors, as was the case with KCTMO, which managed Grenfell on behalf of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. This system of privatised management prioritised efficiency and cost-reduction over the safety of the residents.

Originally, fireproof cladding was planned for Grenfell’s refurbishment. However, the material was downgraded to save money. An email from one contractor revealed that lower quality cladding was selected to save money despite warnings about the fire risk posed by the material. As one Inquiry expert aptly described it, ‘the cladding was a time bomb waiting to go off’.

The decision to downgrade the type of cladding was made to increase profits for the subcontractor. It directly led to the rapid spread of the fire. It was a decision that didn’t involve the people whose lives would be affected, but whose lives were ended by this decision. The money ‘saved’ on the cladding and which ultimately ended 72 lives was £293,368.

Grenfell was a block in the midst of one of the most affluent areas of London, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and was considered by its rich neighbours as an eyesore. The cladding served more for aesthetic purposes, making the building blend in with the affluent neighbourhood of Kensington rather than improving its safety. It was, as one resident put it, just ‘lipstick for the building’.

The residents themselves pointed out that they were more concerned with the activities inside the building such as the decommissioning of the communal boiler in favour of installation of individual boilers in the hall outside of the flats. These boiler cupboards were installed so the KCTMO could reduce their own servicing costs while passing the cost of heating and hot water to individual residents, while still jacking up service charges, an area where regulation doesn’t prevent extortion of residents. These same boiler installations were cited by one victim of the fire as what prevented him from getting his daughter and pregnant wife out of the building during the fire. What was previously a straight line to the fire exit was now a series of enclaves that in the thick tar of petroleum-based plastic fuelled smoke, had trapped his family.

Systemic inequality and class divide

The KCTMO repeatedly ignored safety concerns raised by residents. Residents had formed grassroots resistance against the faceless body managing their lives, but their warnings fell on deaf ears. The KCTMO, motivated by cost-cutting, neglected the safety of Grenfell’s working-class residents. The residents were living in unsafe conditions.

Social inequality, an essential aspect of capitalism, was a core underlying cause of what happened. Survivors and campaigners pointed out that the fire would likely not have occurred in a building which housed wealthier residents, because standards of safety and maintenance would have been higher. Edward Daffarn, a Grenfell resident and campaigner, stated:

‘We were treated as second-class citizens because of our postcode and because we were poor’.

Dr Lee Elliot Major, a social mobility expert, concurred: ‘Grenfell exemplifies how housing policy in the UK, driven by neoliberal economics, has led to a profit-driven culture where the most vulnerable are treated as afterthoughts’.

A major critique emerging from the Grenfell fire is how capitalism treats housing as a commodity rather than as satisfying a basic human need. Housing policy has shifted towards encouraging individual ownership, with little regard for the safety of those left living in social housing. This has been underfunded and neglected for decades, often outsourced to private contractors whose primary concern is profit, not safety. Grenfell epitomises where this leads.

Corporate negligence and government deregulation

The corporate entities involved in Grenfell’s refurbishment, which included Rydon, Arconic and Celotex, are rightly criticised for their role in the mass killing. These companies continued to sell or install materials that were known to be unsafe, driven by the profit motive. Internal documents from Arconic, for example, showed that the company knew their cladding was highly flammable but continued to supply it because it was cheaper and there was little regulatory pressure to stop doing so.

These corporate entities are not just the few bad apples. Maximising profits is the standard practice not just in the housing and building industry but within all capitalist enterprises. Everyone living under capitalism is subjected to this law of the jungle that permeates every aspect in life.

The role of successive governments in the mass killing cannot be overlooked. They must share the blame. The previous Labour government brought in the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, weakening fire safety regulations. This measure transferred responsibility for fire risk assessments to building owners and landlords, who rely on private contractors who, as always under the pressure of profit-making, are incentivised to minimise costs rather than maximise safety.

The Tory-Lib Dem coalition government which took over from Labour in 2010 is also to be blamed for its role in the policies and decisions that contributed to the Grenfell Tower fire, especially Eric Pickles, who was its Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government from 2010 to 2015. His time in office was marked by several actions related to fire safety and housing regulation, many of which are now seen as contributing to the fire.

Pickles cut back on regulations including fire safety, as part of the broader government push to reduce public spending and further ‘cut red tape’. Under Pickles’s leadership, there was a move to reduce the burden on housing developers and councils to meet stringent safety standards. One example was the weakening of building regulations, which reduced the requirement for fire safety inspections in some types of properties.

This drive to deregulate was touted as making construction and housing development more cost-efficient, but by unleashing profit-seeking private companies it compromised safety; it was an outgrowth of capitalist ideology that places emphasis on reducing government oversight in favour of what are euphemistically termed market-led solutions. Profit always trumps the lives of working-class people. As socialists we know no matter how much the market is regulated no length of leash will hold back the mad dog of capital from attacking when his food bowl is threatened.

The role of capitalism

The decisions leading to the Grenfell killings are a reflection of capitalism’s systemic failures. The drive for profit at all costs, the deregulation of safety standards, and the neglect of social housing tenants are all inherent features of this economic system. As a result, the lives of working-class people are deemed expendable in the pursuit of wealth.

In 2017 in the aftermath of the fire David Lammy, now Foreign Secretary in the current Labour government, summed up the situation as: ‘This is what happens when you deregulate and allow market forces to dictate safety in housing. Profit comes first, people come second’.

Grenfell is not just a story of corporate and governmental negligence; it is a symbol of deep-seated inequality. The fire exposed the glaring class divides in London, where working-class residents of social housing are treated as expendable. Now that the Inquiry has reported, the survivors and campaigners remain determined to hold those responsible accountable and to ensure that no other community suffers the same fate.

For survivors and the bereaved, justice remains elusive. As survivor Edward Daffarn stated during his testimony: ‘No one has been held to account for what happened at Grenfell. We don’t just want words; we want to see real change.’

‘Justice for Grenfell’ is not merely about criminal charges or compensation—it is about systemic change, ending capitalism with its class inequality and profit priority.

A. T.

Editorial: The capitalist witches’ brew that led to Grenfell (2024)

Editorial from the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The final report of the Inquiry into the Grenfell Fire makes devastating reading.

There was an active lack of interest in fire safety at the heart of central government:

‘In the years between the fire at Knowsley Heights in 1991 and the fire at Grenfell Tower in 2017 there were many opportunities for the government to identify the risks posed by the use of combustible cladding panels and insulation, particularly to high-rise buildings, and to take action in relation to them. Indeed, by 2016 the department was well aware of those risks, but failed to act on what it knew’ (Executive Summary (tinyurl.com/GrenfellExec), p. 7).

Then the most damning paragraph of the report:

‘One very significant reason why Grenfell Tower came to be clad in combustible materials was systematic dishonesty on the part of those who made and sold the rainscreen cladding panels and insulation products. They engaged in deliberate and sustained strategies to manipulate the testing processes, misrepresent test data and mislead the market. In the case of the principal insulation product used on Grenfell Tower, Celotex RS5000, the Building Research Establishment (BRE) was complicit in that strategy’ (p. 10).

A regulatory body had been captured by the construction industry:

‘The National House Building Council (NHBC) […] failed to ensure that its building control function remained essentially regulatory and free of commercial pressures. It was unwilling to upset its own customers and the wider construction industry by revealing the scale of the use of combustible insulation in the external walls of high-rise buildings, contrary to the statutory guidance’ (p.14).

The local authority, Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), managed the property at arm’s length through a Tenants Management Organisation (TMO):

‘RBKC and the TMO were jointly responsible for the management of fire safety at Grenfell Tower. The years between 2009 and 2017 were marked by a persistent indifference to fire safety, particularly the safety of vulnerable people. […] RBKC was responsible for overseeing the TMO’s activities, not monitoring its operations on a day-to-day basis, but its oversight of the TMO’s performance was weak and fire safety was not subject to any key performance indicator’ (p. 16).

The TMO allowed an unqualified person to be the fire safety manager, who carried out substandard assessments:

‘The demands of managing fire safety were viewed by the TMO as an inconvenience rather than an essential aspect of its duty to manage its property carefully’ (p. 17).

The TMO ‘wanted to reduce the cost’ by using the specific type of cladding panel that failed so appallingly but were badly advised by an incompetent firm of architects. In fact:

‘[not] one of those involved in the design of the external wall or the choice of materials acted in accordance with the standards of a reasonably competent person in their position’ (p. 19).

Here, then, were the ingredients of the capitalist witches’ brew that caused Grenfell: a housing market largely geared towards the wealthy, with workers squeezed into as little land and living space as possible. Politicians driven by an ideological aversion to regulation and a desire to please the construction industry. A local authority holding its tenants (many of whom were vulnerable people on benefits) at arm’s length as an unwelcome cost not to be listened to. A regulator captured by the industry it is supposed to regulate. Builders concerned with growing their profits over the wellbeing of the people who will live in the buildings. Unscrupulous manufacturers willing to gamble with people’s lives to sell a few more units of their goods, knowing profit-hungry builders wouldn’t look too closely and would cut them in on the action.

Grenfell was not a mistake but the result of a combination of regular occurrences under capitalism.

So They Say: Ungrateful Lot (1976)

The So They Say Column from the August 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ungrateful Lot

Much play has been made recently by both Labour and Conservative! groups on their various schemes to allow Council tenants to purchase the properties they occupy. The Southwark Community Development Project and the Joint Docklands Action Group of Newington decided to conduct a survey to discover the appeal of such schemes to those concerned, and came up with the conclusion that “few are interested in buying a typical council flat.” The report in The Times of 29th June seemed to have regarded the findings as something of a foregone conclusion. It argued:

While new houses with gardens on suburban estates or in new towns, for example, would attract ready buyers flats in inner city tower blocks would have little or no appeal.

While surveys like this never cease to amaze us, it shows just, how unreasonable workers can be. Who else but the members of the working class would express disapproval at the prospect of spending their lives, and paying for the privilege at that, packed together well above ground level in noisy and uncomfortable cells of concrete (often, as in the case of Ronan Point, with no visible means of support, or lifts—even if installed), albeit with magnificent views over the previously erected low-rise slums? Come to that, who else but the workers would be offered such a glorious opportunity to join "the property owning democracy”?

O Brother!

"We should not destroy or split or seek to destroy in any way the Labour Government” said Mr. Benn on the 4th July, and no doubt the Labour government gave three cheers for Benn and said "Amen”. He was speaking at the Institute for Workers’ Control in Keele University, in his capacity as Labour’s Energy Secretary, when he also revealed to his audience the information that capitalism was in "irreversible decline.” We do not know if he was standing on his head at the time.

Now we who advocate the abolition of the capitalist system were naturally agog with excitement at a “leak” of this magnitude. Was there to be a surprise announcement from the government? We scanned the newspapers. Yes, there was an announcement from Healey. No, it was not a surprise—except perhaps for his fellow minister Benn.

Britain would be one of the few countries which could look forward to a rapid recovery over the next 18

months . . .

The Times, 7th July 1976

Followed presumably by three more cheers and back-slapping. Considering that both these men are “united” in a political party which expresses the view that a system of exploitation is the only one to which workers are entitled, and capable apparently of both declining and recovering at the same time, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that were they to pool their respective talents and issue a joint statement, it would prove twice as ignorant as either of their individual efforts.

Sir Willie?

The fanaticism with which William Hamilton attacks the Royal Family appeared to have abated somewhat when he voiced “concern” over a motion from other Labour MPs—themselves expressing “surprise” over the Queen’s purchase of Gatcombe Park for her well- breeched offspring Princess Anne. The price was reported in the Daily Telegraph of 12th June as £500,000. No, No, said the microscopically-minded Hamilton, the Monarch should spend her money as she saw fit. What was wrong was that “the Royal wealth which makes such expenditure possible has been due to the failure of successive governments to tax that wealth in the same way as that of all other citizens.”

Can it be that he is angling for something? Considering his immense publicity services to the Crown, he must surely be deserving of some appropriate medal or title. This would be no more than he deserves. We note incidentally that in the Register of MPs’ Interests, he gives one source of income under the appropriate heading of “royalties”—a reference to the money from his literary masterpiece on the Royal Family. While he, and others, spend so much of their time and effort in expressing a petty outrage at the size of the molehills, they have missed the mountains—capitalism rumbles on. But then Labour MPs could hardly be expected to think about anything as fundamental as that.

What could be fairer ?

It is usually the practice, after being led up the garden path by one man, to find at the end of it another who then exhibits a bag from which he releases a cat. Although capable of fulfilling both rôles, Eric Varley, Secretary of State for Industry, has been releasing the cat.

The dictionary definition of a scientist is given as: “A person learned in one or more of the natural sciences” and science as: “Systematic and formulated knowledge.” Now Mr. Varley has not so much altered the definition, but put it into perspective! within the context of capitalism—where, like all other members of the working class, scientists must live by selling their mental and physical energy to the ruling class. He was bemoaning the fact that “to be a technologist or a manager in industry is considered to be a pretty lousy job” and from this erudite premise, drew the conclusion that potential but reluctant scientists just did not know what they were missing:

Qualified scientists and engineers, although numerically a small category, have a particularly significant role. They have the innovative capacity to generate and translate the technology into competitive and saleable products and the responsibility for managing the production processes.

Daily Telegraph, 7th July 76

A significant role therefore, not in an abstract sense of the pursuit of Knowledge, but in the real economic field where the owning class is in pursuit of something else, the accumulation of capital.

Class Distinction

“More than 1000 London dockers, who are being paid £57 a week for doing nothing, at a cost to the Port of London of between £6 million and £7 million a year, are ‘moonlighting’ to double their earnings”, reported the Daily Telegraph of 30th June. “A scandal” is their description. They do however concede that the men, on average 1,250, do no work for the reason that there is often no work for them to do. The men are protected, however, under the National Dock Labour Scheme from sacking on this ground alone, and even the inducement of a £5,250 “golden handshake” to accept redundancy has failed to shift them. Considering the apparently universal exhortations from the press for workers to pull out their respective fingers and earn themselves a living, we would have thought that the taking of a second job would have merited praise. Apparently not, so “a scandal” it remains.

Surprising then to note that the moral indignation of the Telegraph respectfully faded to nothing when it reported on the twelve, no doubt “just”, women whom Paul Getty “richly remembered in his Will” (10th June 76). Among others they noted that Lady Ursula D’abo, sister of the Duke of Rutland, was to receive 1000 of his shares, worth £93,361, and how she was duly “surprised by the gift. The shares will remain in Getty Oil until I die, as he would have wished.”

All highly commendable; no mention here of a “scandal.” No mention, incidentally, of what happen to the share dividends either—we refer to the large cheque which drops through the letter box from time to time. Work for a living? My dear, who do you think opens the envelope!

Idle-ized

Who was Eric Singer? If you never heard of him— Snap! But on 30th June The Times published an obituary of him. What were his achievements? Take note.

According to the article, he was “an early, though later disenchanted” member of the German Communist Party. In Britain he became “a planning consultant”. To illuminate that, he was able to do his day’s work “before most people had roused themselves from their beds”, which clearly means it was a very small day’s work. What did he do after the rest got up? “He left behind an uncompleted book on inflation and an unpublished work on architecture.” He spent the war “at the roulette tables in Lisbon”, and became “a purveyor of gallantries to ladies, snuff and gossip to men”. “He greeted each day with his freshly-plucked button-hole, his stick and his joie de vivre”.

This reminds us strongly of Fred Bloggs. In his teens Fred joined the Balls Pond Road Libertarian Society, resigning when he discovered he had mistaken its name for “Libertine”. He was widely known in all four corners of the betting shop, while his élan and the je ne sais quoi with which he rolled a Nosegay cigarette made him a favourite of barmaids everywhere. He always alluded to his lifelong redundancy with the characteristic epigram: “Never done a stroke and don’t intend to, mate.”

What a curious world where a man is praised for having had political delusions and spending his life as a fashionable idler.

Alan D'Arcy

The Housing Problem: The Socialist View. (1933)

From the January 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

The problem of housing has been brought into prominence again by the Government's decision to discontinue subsidies except for the purpose of slum clearance. What is the so-called housing problem? And what have Socialists to say about it ?

The first thing to be noticed is that, properly speaking, it is not a housing problem at all. There is not a universal shortage of housing, but only a shortage among part of the population. Those who have enough money experience no difficulty in renting, buying or building new and spacious accommodation. It is only the workers who need help, and that is simply because they are poor. The housing problem is only another aspect of, or another name for, the general problem of working class poverty.

Does capitalism produce houses (or any other articles) for the use of the population? By no means. It produces houses only when it is profitable to the capitalist to do so, and to the extent that those who need accommodation can afford to pay for it. Mr. Harry Barnes, formerly Vice-President of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and Liberal M.P. for Newcastle East, in his book, “Housing" (Pub. by Ernest Benn, Ltd., 1923), points out that the rate at which new houses were being built during the 110 years from 1801 to 1911, was not constant, or increasing with the increase in population, but rose and fell in accordance with the amount of profit to be obtained in house building as compared with the rate of profit to be obtained by investing money in other directions. (See pages 17 and 43, and all chapter V.) He says: —

In times of great trading, commercial and industrial activity, building will slacken owing to the engrossing and profitable character of other occupations. (P. 43.)

Thus, instead of building houses to meet the growing needs of a growing population, 19th century capitalism showed “a period of considerable activity in house-building from 1801 to 1841, then half a century in which the pace of building fell away, from 1841 to 1891. Last of all, a period from 1891 to 1911, during which the greatest effort in absolute numbers by private enterprise to supply this fundamental human need was made." (P. 17.)

At no time, however, could it be said that all the working class were decently and adequately provided for. Mr. Barnes states that, in 1801, the estimated number of “surplus families" (i.e., “the family for which no structurally separate dwelling exists, which can only find its shelter by inhabiting the home of another family, a result producing, in innumerable cases, the deadly social evil of overcrowding") was 320,000. By 1911 it had risen to nearly 900,000. (See p. 18.)

He wrote (p. 18):—

Year by year during the century it is seen that there has been a steady falling short of the number of houses required to be provided.

And again (p. 37): —

The housing shortage of to-day is not something that comes like a bolt from the blue . . . . but is rather the slow accumulation of a century, suddenly and terribly increased by the conditions arising out of the war.

As early as 1835, when elected local councils were set up, these new municipal authorities "began to obtain private acts empowering them to demolish insanitary dwellings and to impose stringent regulations upon the builders." (See Houses for All, by E. D. Simon, now Sir E. D. Simon, Pub. Daily News, Ltd. 1923. P.3.) But it was the Shaftesbury Act of 1851 which brought local authorities into house building in an endeavour to make good the declining supply of working class houses. It will be noticed that 1851 was ten years after the year in which house building began to decline. The number of houses built in 1851 was only about three-fifths of the number built in 1841. (Barnes, P. 37.) The position was, of course, that the workers could not afford to pay a rent which would make the building of new houses as profitable to the capitalist as it was to invest his money in industrial and commercial buildings, or in mining, iron and steel, railways, etc., at home or abroad. Between 1851 and 1914 many other Acts were passed with the object of promoting the building of working class houses, and in 1884 the whole subject was inquired into by a Royal Commission.

The period 1891 to 1911 was a period of great activity in house building. The reason was the trade depression: Capitalists found their investments in industry yielding only small profits, and the consequent glut of money forced down the yield on Government stocks, so they turned their attention to houses until such time as trade revived again.

Yet, in spite of this burst of building, and in spite of numerous Housing Acts and the activities of local authorities, we have Mr. Barnes' admission referred to above, that in 1911 the number of families without a home of their own (rented or owned) was nearly three times as great as in 1801.

The Effects of the War.

Then came the War, during which every other activity had to give way to the needs of the fighting forces. House Building practically ceased for five years or more, and in 1919 the position was far worse than in 1911. Mr. J. G. Martin, Secretary of the National Housing and Town Planning Council, in a letter to the Morning Post (January 14th, 1927) quoted an official estimate that there was a deficiency of 800,000 houses, that being the number required to restore the pre-war position. It was also estimated that at least 100,000 new houses are needed each year to replace wastage due to the demolition of old houses and the demand caused by growing population. (See Houses for All, E. D. Simon. P. 4.)

This does not mean, of course, that only 100,000 houses would be needed to satisfy the requirements of the population, but that 100,000 new houses are needed each year to satisfy that part of their requirements which the workers can afford to pay for—a very different matter.

When the census was taken in 1921, 9.6 per cent, of the population in England and Wales was living in a condition which corresponds with the official definition of overcrowding. (See How to Abolish the Slums, by E. D. Simon. Longmans. 1929. P. 13.) In Manchester the percentage was 7.9,% in the County of London 16.1, in Bermondsey 23.2, and in Shoreditch 32.

E. D. Simon, in the above-mentioned book, questions the value of the official definition of overcrowding. According to that definition, a house is only overcrowded if there are more than two adults to a room (two children under ten count as one adult). Simon suggests a standard of two-and- a-half persons per bedroom, or a standard which holds a house to be overcrowded unless it enables the parents to have one bedroom and enables boys and girls over ten to be separated. (P. 7.)

On either of these standards the percentage of overcrowding would be shown to be far higher. They would, for example, show the overcrowding in Manchester to be at least 25 per cent. instead of only 7.9 per cent.

The Great Post-war Housing Schemes.

All three of the big political parties have had a hand in “solving" the housing problem. The Tories began with the 1851 Act, and the Times (March 25th, 1927) boasted that the Tories had a record of achievement in this direction extending over seventy years. The Liberals and the Labour Party both claim credit for several Acts under which house building has been helped by the Government, through subsidies or otherwise.

The late Mr. Wheatley, prominent member of the I.L.P., was responsible as Minister of Health for the Labour Government’s Housing Act in 1924. Imposing figures have been presented showing what has been done. Up to November, 1932, over 1,800,000 houses had been built since January, 1919, 1,096,387 with State aid and 797,249 without aid., (See Manchester Guardian, November 2nd, 1932.) The cost to the Government in respect of subsidies is now over £13 million a year, with another £3 million paid out of local rates. (Manchester Guardian, November 12th, 1932.)

As long ago as 1928 the Conservative Party, in a leaflet called “Conservative Social Reform," claimed that their Government had been able "to wipe out the housing Shortage by building nearly 650,000 houses in less than four years."

And yet, after the problem has been “solved" many times during the past century, and after all the chief reformist parties have had a hand in it, supplemented by innumerable philanthropic and semi-philanthropic efforts, the evil is with us still, as huge and as devastating as ever.

Let us see what some acknowledged authorities have to say about the position now or within the past year or two.

The Problem Still Unsolved.

It is true that between 1919 and January, 1927, 768,000 new houses had been built, but most of these were needed to meet the ordinary wastage and the demands of the growing population. Mr. J. G. Martin, Secretary of the National Housing and Town Planning Council (Morning Post, January 14th, 1927), said that less than 100,000 of these 768.000 could be counted towards wiping out the abnormal shortage caused during the War. In January, 1927, therefore, there were still 700,000 houses needed to restore the pre-war position (as compared with 800,000 needed in 1919).

The utmost that can be claimed for the new houses built between 1927 and 1932 is that they have been sufficient to catchup the war-time arrears and restore the pre-war position.

The Eighth Annual Report of the Scottish Board of Health for 1926 said of Glasgow slums: —

The majority of the houses were dark, many of the tenants having to burn gas all day, winter and summer . . . Everywhere we noticed an almost total lack of sanitation. Ceilings are falling down, woodwork is rotting away, there are holes in the walls of houses through which the street can be seen. The houses are a hunting ground for vermin of every description. The tenants complained that they could get no peace from these pests. . . . .

In addition to the insects which I have mentioned we found evidence of a perfect menagerie of animal life, including rats in great numbers, mice, snails and even toads. Can it be wondered that such places breed an unhealthy and discontented people?

(See Morning Post, June 21st, 1927.)

Lieut.-Colonel Freemantle, Medical Officer of Health, in The Housing of the Nation (see Times, March 25th, 1927) said: —

For a large section of the working-class there is really no such thing as home. Home life has no meaning for them. They have no part or lot in such things.

. . .Herded together, family upon family, in the same tenement, in the same room, what chance have they of life worth having in houses, meanly built, crowded round courts, dark, dingy, and out of repair, too often dirty and verminous from generations of tenants past, destitute of life and air, devoid of the necessary equipment for domestic needs, packed tight to help pay the rent that even such accommodation can command.

Mr. F. N. Kay, Medical Officer of Health for the L.C.C., in his report for 1929, said (Daily Herald, October 16th, 1930): —

There are about 30,000 basement dwellings in London which are considered unfit for human occupation.

. . . No worse housing conditions exist anywhere than in the underground rooms of the Metropolis.

The Times editorial (March 25th, 1927), which acclaimed the Tories' seventy years' work for housing, had to admit that the problem was still unsolved, and that even after the war-time shortage had been removed “there will still remain the problem of the slums, and the housing of the people in our great towns."

The Bishop of Southwark (in an article in the Evening Standard, November 9th, 1929), wrote:

On a moderate estimate, that of the last census there are 3½ million persons living in overcrowded conditions; but the standard adopted by the Registrar-General is a very low one . . . If a rather higher standard is adopted, one and a half persons per room, no less than 9,000,000 would be living in overcrowded conditions.

He said that on a very moderate estimate there are over 100,000 persons in London living in insanitary houses or areas.

He said that the subsidised building of houses since the War has—

not drained the slums of their occupants. . . . They have had no appreciable effect on the worst and most overcrowded districts. . . . Usually the new houses are too far away, the slum dweller cannot afford the long journey to and from his daily work. More serious still is the fact that he cannot afford the higher rent required for these houses.

Mr. E. D. Simon (now Sir E. D. Simon, formerly Lord Mayor of Manchester, / Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health in the National Government, and Chairman of the Manchester City Council Housing Committee), writing in the Manchester Guardian (August 10th, 1927), pointed out that as regards workers' houses rented at 6s. to 8s. a week:—

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that nothing has yet been done to help these people--just those whose need is greatest.

And further:—

The overcrowding in the low-rented houses is no less than it was in 1919, while the larger houses are under-tenanted.

The same authority on housing conditions (in a letter to the Times, February 12th, 1931) wrote: —

According to all the available evidence there has on the average been no reduction whatever in the terrible overcrowding in the slum areas: the houses are steadily deteriorating; the position of the slum- dwellers is worse than it was ten years ago.

Sir Raymond Unwin, President Royal Institute of British Architects, and formerly a housing official at the Ministry of Health, admits that the houses built since the War have not done more than make up the deficiency of the War years, and that:—

In some ways the housing position is worse than it was in 1921. (M. Guardian, 2 Nov., 1932.)

Mr. Norman McKellen, Secretary of National Federation of House Builders, in a letter to Manchester Guardian (November 12th, 1932), wrote: —

Notwithstanding the annual cost of subsidies, little or nothing has been done to house the poorer working classes; and the National Housing and Town Planning Council, a body largely composed of representatives of local authorities themselves, are reported as saying: “It is lamentable that 14 years after the conclusion of the war medical officers of health should find it necessary to report that there is still a large amount of gross overcrowding, that indecent occupation of sleeping-rooms is not infrequently met with, and that many unhealthy basements are being used as dwellings by the poorer families. Moreover, only the fringe of the slum problem has so far been touched.

Now we have the Government, as an economy measure, stopping the payment of subsidies except for slum clearance, although, in common with the Liberals and the Labour Party, it has hitherto proclaimed subsidies as the only way of tackling the problem. In addition, the Government is negotiating with the building societies for them to take on house building, on condition that in future there shall be twenty instead of twelve houses to the acre—a definite worsening of the standard.

As in the period 1891-1911, the world depression is making the capitalists turn once more to house building owing to the decline of profits in other fields of investment.

Socialism the only Remedy.

There is no remedy except Socialism. There will always be a working class housing problem so long as there is a working class, that is a class producing wealth not for themselves but for the capitalists. None of the schemes of the reformers will touch the problem. The late John Wheatley himself had to confess that his Housing Act was only “patching up the capitalist system," yet his I.L.P. worshippers claimed his Act as the outstanding achievement of his life! What a confession for alleged Socialists to have to make. Municipal and State owned housing estates are no solution at all. The recent eviction case at Dagenham illustrates this. A widow was thrown out of her house by her landlords, the London County Council, in spite of resistance organised by local “direct actionists." In the struggle several were injured on both sides and several workers were imprisoned. Yet it is this municipal capitalism on the Dagenham and other L.C.C. housing estates of which the I.L.P. in its Socialist Annual, 1925, boasted as being instances of “Socialism."

As an actual fact, Judges in the East End of London have several times declared in court that the municipal authorities are more harsh than private landlords in their treatment of tenants who cannot afford to pay their rent.

Cases have come to light of the London County Council refusing to let their houses to workers employed in the Post Office (the institution which the I.L.P. describes as “Socialism in practice"), on the ground that their pay is too low to enable them to afford the rent.

The most damning indictment of capitalism and of reformism is the recent discovery that some houses condemned by Engels as unfit for human habitation in 1844 (see Condition of the Working Classes in England in 1844) are still inhabited and overcrowded to-day. (See Some Housing Conditions in Chorlton on Medlock, May, 1931.)

Part of the post-war shortage of new houses is due to the Rent Restriction Acts, which, by keeping rents low, reduced the margin of profit to be made by house building. Thus—as is usually the case— the attempt to reform one evil effect of capitalism creates or aggravates another evil.

The working class should decide to waste no more time and energy on the Liberal-Tory-Labour reformists, and to organise for Socialism. Not till then will the housing and other aspects of the working class poverty problem be solved.

Edgar Hardcastle

Houses off the Conveyor Belt (1944)

From the June 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

The need to resort to a more rapid technique of building, in face of the unprecedented shortage of housing facing us at the end of the war, has occupied the minds of our ruling class, its government and technical advisers, for some considerable time. Houses made in standardised sections, mass produced in factories and rapidly assembled on the site, were being considered. We who may have to live in them have been duly warned of what to expect by articles and reports in the daily papers. Most of these seemed anxious to assure us that the only thing wrong with prefabrication was the name, and that houses built by this method could be every bit as good as houses built by the more traditional methods (our emphasis).

The under-current of support and opposition by various sectional interests need not concern us here. The fact is that the Government has now decided to build factory-made temporary houses during a two years’ period after the war in the hope of weathering the storm which will occur on demobilisation.

Socialists are not concerned with what could be the advantages of prefabrication as viewed in an economic and social vacuum. We do, however, consider it necessary to point out some important aspects of the question as they exist under capitalism.

In announcing the Government’s decision. Lord Portal, Minister of Works, stated that these pre-fabricated houses would be “publicly owned” and licensed for only ten years. (Speech in House of Lords, News-Chronicle, 9.2.44.)

It follows therefore that an attempt will be made to produce these houses at a cost to some extent related to their limited life. Experience so far in this country and America has not shown that by means of factory methods any reduction in cost can be achieved which is at all commensurate with this reduced life.

We can therefore expect a reduction in those standards, such as they are, to which we have been accustomed in new housing. Moreover, the mere issue of a licence is no guarantee that at the end of ten years these houses will be pulled down. If alternative accommodation is not available, it will not be an unprecedented occurrence if the State extends the licence on what would be, after all, in spite of the words “publicly owned” its own houses. Having in mind the halting development of housing programmes after the last war, and the fact that the economic conditions which produced scarcity prices and subsidy cuts will be the same, it seems reasonable to doubt whether sufficient permanent houses will be available at the end of the ten years’ period. The slums of to-morrow may only differ from those of yesterday in the fact that they will be prefabricated.

With regard to prefabrication in general and as applied to ordinary houses, one of the main arguments put forward in its favour has been the fact that cost of production could be considerably reduced if mass production on a sufficient scale were achieved. Experts write as if this would be of some advantage to the occupiers. Some go as far as suggesting that the money saved would be spent on improved equipment or better standards of accommodation.

Let the workers have no illusions. Improved housing will not come by these means. If the cost of housing, and therefore rents can be generally reduced, this will only give our employers an excuse to reduce wages.

The official attitude is well expressed in the following extract from the Report of the Departmental Committee on Housing (Ministry of Health, 1933): —

“In arriving at the suggested figures of subsidy we have had regard to existing levels of cost. We are, however, far from accepting the position that no further economies can be made in planning and construction of working class dwellings. . . . We consider that the position should be reviewed at frequent intervals with a view to reduction of the subsidy. …” (p. 27).

And how would this reduction in cost of production be achieved? By the replacement of skilled labour by unskilled, with its consequent reduction in wages. By a reduction in building time, and therefore of the number of workers required.

In a recent conference report, architects and builders expressed themselves as being “deeply concerned, both as to the future of the industry and conditions with regard to wages and employment if factory operatives and unskilled labour should supplant their building technique and the work of the craftsmen.” (The Architects Journal. 27.1 44, p. 90.)

Reduced building costs means to the workers lower wages and more unemployment. Just as the introduction of factory methods and machinery have always done.

Under Socialism an improvement in building methods would mean better buildings and more leisure—not so under capitalism,

John Moore

Proper Gander: Flat broke (2023)

The Proper Gander Column from the May 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Since 1953, BBC One’s Panorama has been unearthing problems in society, but as it’s part of the mainstream media we shouldn’t expect it to dig deep enough to reach the root cause of inequalities and inadequacies. In What’s Gone Wrong With Our Housing?, reporter Richard Bilton aims to explain how our current housing crisis has happened, but focuses on the role of legislation rather than more fundamental factors about why the housing market is as it is.

Bilton visits the Bampton Estate in the part of south London overseen by Lewisham Council. Its tower blocks and streets were built in the 1960s as part of a drive to replace dilapidated slums, with its 290 properties initially being owned and managed by the local authority. Then, one of Margaret Thatcher’s flagship policies, The Housing Act 1980, expanded the rights of council tenants to buy their properties at a discounted amount. Since the Act was introduced, 2.8 million council homes have been sold off in the largest privatisation initiative we’ve seen, according to Rachael Williamson of the Chartered Institute of Housing. For some people, buying from the council didn’t lead to the freedom they expected. Properties in tower blocks tend to be leased rather than sold outright, meaning that the council retains ownership and control of the building itself. A consequence of this for Bampton Estate leaseholders Anthony and Gloria is that Lewisham Council imposed new windows on them at a cost of £27,000 which they can’t afford.

Around 40 per cent of former council homes in London are now owned (or mortgaged) not by those who live in them but by private landlords. Avril, who bought and then sold one of the flats on the Bampton Estate returns to see what it looks like now it’s owned and rented out by a private landlord. She’s shocked to see that the flat has been divided into six tiny bedsits, their tenants each being charged a whopping £960 rent a month to live in what used to be the bathroom or the kitchen. Bilton confronts dodgy landlord Joel Zwiebel who with his wife owns 24 bedsits on one road and receives around quarter of a million in rent a year. Most of this rent is paid through benefit payments by the council which sold the properties off, ironically. Rather than explaining about his substandard properties Zwiebel drives off in his car without saying anything. Lord Best of the Affordable Housing Commission says that the current situation is ‘an absolute disgrace’, with the right-to-buy legislation leading to a return of ‘slum landlords’ profiteering.

The housing shortage benefits private landlords because it means there are lots of people hunting for places to live, so landlords have more choice over who to let to and can charge high rents knowing that someone will pay. Rent amounts for private sector properties tend to be greater than the maximum amounts which can be claimed in housing-related benefits, pricing out many people without sufficiently paid employment. Landlords like Zwiebel can easily find tenants because their properties are cheap enough to have rent covered by benefits, with shoddiness being almost expected.

People on lower incomes are likely to aim not for private rented properties but ‘social housing’, such as that owned by councils, which tends to have lower rent and more secure terms. But local authorities haven’t been building enough new properties to replace those they have sold off, leading to a dire shortage of social housing stock. Some properties on the Bampton Estate remain council-owned. Bilton speaks to one council tenant who waited two years after reporting mould and only managed to get some plasterboard replaced after he got a solicitor involved. In 2022, Lewisham Council had a budget of a million pounds for repairs but almost three quarters of this went on legal fees and compensation, leaving not much money to spend on actual maintenance.

Most of the properties on the Bampton Estate which weren’t sold off privately are held not by the council but by the L&Q housing association. Housing associations represent the other kind of social housing, not being run to make profits for themselves. According to the English Housing Survey, they are responsible for around two and a half million properties in England, a million more than councils. Housing associations were intended to be more reactive and flexible than councils, to better manage estates in the interests of their residents. Over the decades, though, the original model of the small-scale community-based housing association has been replaced by larger, more corporate organisations such as L&Q, which is the second biggest housing association in the country. Of its 51 residents on the Bampton Estate, 11 said they were unhappy with how it operates, especially its repairs service. Tenants have reported damp and mouldy flats and waited years for a resolution.

Bilton says that 1980’s right-to-buy legislation has ‘fragmented the estate between tenant and owner’. It’s true that the Housing Act triggered a decrease in ‘social housing’, and that ownership of homes on any estate is a complicated mix of owner-occupiers, leaseholders, and tenants of councils, housing associations or private landlords. But even if the Act hadn’t been passed, there would still be a divide between tenant and owner. The ‘social housing’ model hasn’t proved itself to be necessarily better than the private rented sector, as demonstrated by the council and housing association tenants putting up with run-down properties. As always, more investment and new legislation are promised, but never end up solving the problems. Being an owner-occupier isn’t an ideal solution either, as it means decades of debt alongside the responsibility and cost of maintenance. So, the real problem isn’t the ‘right to buy’ legislation, it’s how properties are owned in capitalism. When ownership is based on who has the wealth to buy a legal right, what people need for a decent life becomes much less important. Money’s rationing of resources means that there’s never enough to keep homes to a decent standard. ‘The system isn’t working’ says Bilton, but it’s just as fair to say that the system is working in the expected way.

Mike Foster

Housing reform examined. An illustration from Vienna. (1927)

From the December 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The housing problem is—for the workers —neither new, nor limited to any one country.

It existed before the War and exists still, despite the much-advertised efforts which have been made by the post-war Governments all over Europe. In essence the problem is simple. The workers cannot afford to pay rents high enough to make the building of houses a profitable undertaking for the capitalist building concerns, and even when the municipalities or the Government step in they are faced with the choice either to let their houses at rents less than sufficient to meet the cost, have them unoccupied, or else overcrowded with two or more families. In the “New Leader” (October 21st) there appeared an article by an Austrian writer, Olga Misar, bestowing high praise upon the Austrian Labour Party for the housing policy which they have carried out on the Municipal Council of Vienna. They have built some 25,000 working-class dwellings and have thereby greatly reduced the pressure on accommodation which immediately after the War was probably worse than in any other European city.

The writer points out that whereas in pre-war days the Viennese worker had to pay away about 25 per cent. of his wages as rent, the present proportion is only about 2 or 3 per cent. A man with £1 per week wages, instead of paying 10s. rent, now pays only about 1s.

If this is true, does not the Austrian Labour Party fully deserve the praise which Olga Misar showers on them?

In fact, however, this is only part of the story. Other information is contained in an Austrian Labour Party pamphlet, “Die Wohnungspolitik der Gemeinde Wien (1926)” (Housing Policy of the Vienna Municipality), which very admirably illustrates the soundness of the Socialist opposition to the advocacy of reforms.

True, rents are proportionally less, but SO ARE WAGES. What has happened is as follows :

Seventy per cent. of the production of the Austrian factories is for export, but as Austria has few sources of raw materials or fuel, she must import them at world prices. Faced with the problem of exporting manufactured goods in competition with big and better equipped German, English and American industries, and lacking the capital to re-equip their factories on modern up-to-date lines, the only solution for the Austrian capitalists was to lower wages, and at the same time, if possible, increase the efficiency of their workers.

By the almost complete elimination of rent from the expenditure of working-class households wages could be and have been reduced without sacrificing the indispensable minimum of food, clothing, etc., necessary to maintain their working powers.

That this is a correct view of the situation is confirmed by a report published by the International Labour Office of the League of Nations. The report says :—

“The item of expenditure on rent in working-class budgets was reduced to practically nothing ; in July, 1923, it was barely 1 per cent. of the total expenditure of a working-class family, whereas before the war it might be estimated at about 20 per cent.

The change, however, directly benefited certain classes of workers only. But this applied only to unskilled wage earners in a few industries. Most of the workers were in the same position as those of Germany; they had practically no liabilities under the heading of rent, but the corresponding amount was not included in their wages. The actual gain was thus nil.

Industry, on the other hand, benefited, as in Germany, by the reduction in the cost of most labour by the full amount which rent represented in wages before the war.” (The Workers’ Standard of Life in countries with depreciated currency. International Labour Office, Geneva, 1925 P. 97.)

The nett result is that the efficiency of the workers has been maintained or increased by the added comfort and contentedness promoted by better and less-crowded housing accommodation than would have been supplied by private capitalist builders. And since this could not be carried through as a financially self-supporting scheme it has been financed at the expense of the Austrian landlords, by means of heavy house and rent taxes levied on landlords money was raised by the Municipality to build and subsidise working-class dwellings.

In short, the landlords have been plundered by the Labour Party in order to subsidise the export trade of the Austrian factory owners. The workers pay less rent, receive wages which are correspondingly less than before, and give better service.

The “successful” Labour housing policy is then just part of the sectional struggle between exporting and landowning capitalists.

Even so, there remains the question of the better housing accommodation. It will be said that this at least is a gain to the workers. True, but did it need a “Labour” majority to secure that incidental gain, and is the securing of it a justification for the policy of fighting for reforms of the capitalist system ?

It was in the interest of the manufacturers to have their employees well housed, contented and efficient. Henry Ford, Bournville, and Port Sunlight are instances of the care taken by more progressive capitalists to ensure that the home conditions of their workers do not militate against their efficiency as wealth producers ; and the activities of almost every government (including the Austrian Central Government) in the direction of restricting rents or of building or subsidising houses, show that they will not neglect their own interests as an employing class. Instead of allowing themselves to be used as the instruments of a section of the capitalist class, the party of the workers should concentrate on the very necessary and at present largely neglected task of demonstrating the impossibility of solving the poverty problem inside the capitalist system.

Edgar Hardcastle

Local Authority Housing (1967)

From the June 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Working class housing, and by that we mean houses for those who depend upon wages and salaries for a living, has for a very long time been provided in three ways: by private enterprise builders, by employers and by Local Authorities. Of these, Local Authorities came last on the capitalist scene in an attempt to carry out a rescue operation after others had failed dismally to provide for even the minimum requirements of an efficient labour force.

Like any other capitalist venture, private enterprise building must promise a profit to those who engage in it, or lend money for it, before such “enterprise" is even contemplated. Moreover the rate of profit must compare favourably with that from other kinds of capitalist investment. The fluctuations in the rate of building have, since the beginning of capitalism, been attributable in the main to the movement of investment caused by the search for the greatest profit. Particularly has this been the case in respect of housing for the lower-paid workers, able to pay only small rents, and where profit margins are consequently small. The situation has been aggravated by “boomerang reform measures" — Public Health, Building and Housing Regulations — which have raised the minimum standards of working class housing from the dismal levels of 19th. century slums. The result of such legislation has been to still further reduce the prospect of profit in private enterprise building with a consequent drying up of supply.

Of the second category of house building, that undertaken by employers, little need be said, except that it suffers from similar limitations to those found in “spec" building. In the early part of this century a few idealistic employers such as Cadburys and Lever Brothers built model housing estates for their workers (Bournville and Port Sunlight) which provided the shining example for those reformers of capitalism who saw in these ventures a means of solving the housing problem without disturbing the edifice of a capitalist economy. The movement however did not spread to the extent envisaged. Industrialists in a competitive world can seldom afford to provide better housing for their employees any more than they are generally willing to raise their wages.

Whether houses are built by speculative builders or enlightened employers, standards are still limited, directly or indirectly, by the purchasing power of the worker.

Against this background of failure the housing shortage developed, slums proliferated, the decayed housing of the middle income groups was split up into “flats" to provide cheap accommodation for their less fortunate brethren. Wars and slumps brought building to a virtual standstill, until at the end of the last World War politicians were estimating the housing shortage in this country at figures ranging from one to four millions, according to their political outlook.

It was early realised that slums threaten the health of the community and reduce the efficiency of the workers. Herbert Morrison, later leader of the LCC, writing in 1923, pointed out that

In addition to the public money spent on slum clearance, it has to be realised that, consequent on evil housing conditions, much expenditure on Public Health Services is involved. A not inconsiderable proportion of the £1,880,884 spent by the London ratepayer in the financial year 1916-17 on Public Health Services . . . was the consequence of bad housing, and the same is true of the £500,000 estimated expenditure in connection with tuberculosis in the year 1921-22.” (A Housing Policy for London).

and George Hicks in a pamphlet published by the TUC and the Labour Party in 1922 has this to say about slums:

Bad housing creates illness and encourages crime. Illness and crime mean public expense. The effect of overcrowding upon industrial efficiency, unemployment in building and allied trades, loss of public revenue as a result of arresting the normal increase of rateable property — these are included in the price we pay for housing neglect.” (How to Get Houses).

Industrialists appreciate all this but, as has been seen, can do little about it on their own account. Political parties cannot ignore acute housing shortages when they appeal for votes at elections. If private enterprise cannot provide the housing required, then the State must step into the breach. Which brings us to our third category of housebuilding: Local Authority Housing financed by Government grants and contributions from the rates.

Since 1890 a succession of Housing Acts have provided subsidies for the building of houses by Local Authorities together with powers to charge part of the cost of building to the rates. (Some of these Housing Acts have offered subsidies to private builders but their interest in such offers has steadily declined since they were first made in 1919).

It might be thought that here was the answer to the housing question and it seems strange that after 77 years, some ten Housing Acts and a succession of Conservative and Labour Governments, there should still be an acute housing shortage. The reasons are however not hard to find. One has only to look to see where the money comes from.

Government grants for housing derive from taxation. In the last analysis income tax is paid by the capitalist class since employers have to pay their workers not only enough to enable them to live but also enough for them to pay their taxes. And they have their own taxes to pay as well. It is no wonder therefore that capitalists become as alarmed as anyone when the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposes an increase in Income Tax. They, in the end, carry the burden of it. Taxation eats into their profits in more ways than one. Money flows to where profits are greatest — even right out of the country when things are bad — and no Government, Labour or Conservative, can allow this to happen.

If we examine the history of the Housing Acts we see this situation reflected in repeated economy measures, restrictions, limitations and sometimes complete abolition of subsidies. The same situation exists in respect of rates, the other source of housing subsidies. Rates are only another form of taxation, property-based instead of income-based. Faced with such restrictions in expenditure, with an increasing population, the deterioration of old property, the destruction due to war and the cessation of building during wars and slumps, the fact that Local Authorities cannot solve the housing problem, even for the lower-paid section of the working class, is not difficult to understand.

Before the 1914-18 War the almost universal type of working class urban house was what came to be known as the “tunnel-back” — mostly two-storey terrace houses containing living room, parlour, kitchen and scullery on the ground floor and three bedrooms on the upper floor. With the rapid improvement in means of transport which took place at the beginning of the century, it became practical to spread new housing over the cheaper agricultural land surrounding the towns and considerably reduce the density of building. Apart from this, and the addition of a bathroom, the accommodation provided was generally the same and room sizes no larger. In fact, in many houses the parlour was surrendered in exchange, for the bathroom. These were the “Council houses” brought into being by the Housing Acts.

The first of the Government “housing manuals”, published in 1918 as a guide to Local Authorities, indicated space standards for various types of houses and sizes of families. This manual set the pattern for many subsequent manuals by suggesting minimum sizes for individual rooms and by providing typical plans showing room sizes and over-all areas for various types of dwelling. If we trace through these manuals the recommendations for three-bedroomed houses for a family of five, we find that between 1918 and 1961 (the date of the last manual) there is remarkably little increase in space standards. The following table illustrates this.

To sum up the present position it is therefore fair to say that the provision of State-subsidised Local Authority housing has, in spite of repeated Government promises, neither met the demand for working class housing in terms of numbers of dwellings, nor shown a material advance in space standards over a period of nearly fifty years. The housing standards of the working class remain a reflection of the wages they receive. The housing problem is essentially a poverty problem and cannot be solved until the workers exchange capitalist poverty for socialist plenty.

John Moore

Why must the rent go up (1972)

From the February 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

House-property is, proverbially, the best investment. The proverb in fact dates back to before the first world war, when over 90 per cent of the households in Britain were rented from private landlords. The legislation for rents at present being framed by the government has already given it some fresh vigour. A house bought as investment—that is, for income from unfurnished letting—may now cost half as much again as a year ago, in a rising market created by anticipation of the new Act.

Today about 20 per cent of houses and 30 per cent of households are privately rented (the figures given by Robert Millar in The New Classes, 1966, and D. V. Donnison in The Government of Housing, 1967, are 21 per cent and 28 per cent respectively). The difference is accounted for almost entirely by furnished letting. Nearly 50 per cent of houses are owner-occupied, and the remainder—approximately a third of the total—are council-owned dwellings. The only other mode of tenure, by housing associations, is statistically insignificant : less than 1 per cent.

The proportions vary, of course, from place to place. The 1965 Report of the Committee on Housing in Greater London informs us that while Kensington has only 5 per cent council tenants in its population, Dagenham has 67 per cent. Nearly half of Newcastle lives in council houses. Under Labour governments since 1945 local-authority building has been favoured over building for sale, while the Tory emphasis has been the opposite. In rural areas council building is small-scale, concerned chiefly with housing the elderly whose working lives and therefore their tenure of tied farm cottages are over. Over Britain as a whole, however, more than half the population are tenants, and have to pay the rent.

All private tenancies except those of furnished accommodation are governed by the Rent Acts of 1957 and 1965, which lay down control of rents and security of tenure. “Furnished” lettings have only minimal sketchy controls. The tenant—usually of a flat or rooms—may be evicted at two months’ notice. He may appeal to a local Tribunal over his rent, and be given six months’ security while he does so; but legal intervention ends there. This is the only form of letting in which a market exists. There are special agencies for directing tenants to furnished flats, the normal fee being one week’s rent.

The 1957 Act solidified the processes begun by the Rent and Mortgage Interest Act of 1915 (which marked, in fact, the beginning of the end of private building for letting). It fixed rents at the figures being paid by tenants in 1956, but with a “repairs increase”. The aim was to arrest the deterioration of older houses with rents kept low by the previous legislation. Landlords had protested since the first world war that rent restriction made it impossible to maintain houses decently from income. From the governmental point of view, slums were being created by the failure of proper maintenance; to allow two-fifths extra on rents was at least a palliative.

The next few years opened disparities, however. Under the 1957 Act, rent control ceased when a house became vacant: the owner could charge what he liked to the next tenant. This itself was an inducement to “Rachmanism”, the harrassing of statutory tenants to leave so as to make way for exorbitant rents. More generally, as wages and prices rose in the nineteen-sixties a wide gap appeared between the “controlled” and the “decontrolled” rent. To give examples, a London suburban house built before 1914, in reasonably good condition but lacking modern amenities, might have been let before 1956 at 19s.6d a week; and the increase permitted by the 1957 Act took this to 27s.6d. Should the tenant have died or moved away in, say, 1963 the house immediately became available for letting at £5 or more.

The 1965 Act was to some extent a consequence of the newspaper publicity over Peter Rachman’s activities. It extended controlled tenants’ security of tenure to the decontrolled, who were now to be known as “regulated”. Local Rent Officers were set up, to consider applications from tenants or landlords of these properties to have “fair rents” settled-upon and registered. These are for three-year terms, and supply-and-demand is excluded as a factor in determining rent. To return to the example of the last paragraph, the “fair rent” of the same house under the 1965 Act would be perhaps £3.15s. a week.

Theoretically, the 1965 Rent Act was a tenants’ charter. In practice, more landlords than tenants invoked it. “Decontrolling” after 1957 had been so new a phenomenon that many landlords has not fully grasped the opportunity offered, and had been cautious about asking rents hugely disparate from “controlled” figures. Controlled rents became a mounting grievance amongst landlords, however: houses paying not much more than £1 a week, when one might rent a garage for not much less !

The governmental problem has been to try to maintain the stock of habitable houses. The improvement grants system has had hardly any effect on landlord-and-tenant housing. A landlord may increase rent by, annually, one-eighth of his own expenditure on recognised improvements. If he received a grant of £400 (the maximum standard grant under the pre-1969 system) and spent £400 himself, the extra return would be less than £1 a week. The revision of the system under the 1969 Act offered the special inducement that a “controlled” house brought thoroughly up to standard would thereby pass into the “regulated” class. So far, it has remained unattractive to most landlords.

The economics are simple. A house standing empty represents a realisable value of, say, £4,500. The installation of a tenant at £4 a week at once reduces the capital value to about £1,500. The return on the capital is, therefore, roughly 7½ per cent. If repairs and insurance are deducted, the figure comes down to about 6 per cent. A fairly substantial outlay on improvements raises the capital value and the income; but within the present rent structure the increases are not enough to make the expenditure worth the property-investor’s while.

Moreover, tenants themselves are frequently opposed to improvements which would raise their rent: a sad demonstration of the chronic poverty-problem of the working class. Before 1969, a landlord could not modernise a house without the tenants agreement. Now, if he is determined about it, he can go to the County Court and apply for an order that the tenant let work be done and pay the consequent increase. In every city there are large areas of near-slum dwellings which, much as the reformers inveigh against them, are sought after and tolerated by the occupants because they are the only cheap housing available.

From the landlords’ point of view, cheap housing is either a safe but poor investment, or one made adequate from neglect permitted by the tenants’ poverty. Since the Rent Acts, the most profitable form of letting has been “furnished”. Most often it means the division of houses into rooms and flatlets, producing multiple rents from single properties; it means tenants can be got rid of, and in any case tend to be short-term; and, besides higher rents, there are means of additional profit from gas and electric meters that arc permitted by law. The obvious effect of this situation has been to reduce further the stock of unfurnished housing available for letting.

The new legislation is therefore a Bill to increase rents—in this case, the controlled-property rents which have been static since 1957. They are to be put on the same basis as regulated rents, which means something over a million households will have proportionately far greater additions to pay each week than were permitted in 1957. As an estimate from the kinds of figures now laid down as “fair rents” for regulated tenancies, the increase is likely to be 150 per cent above the present “controlled” amounts—as against the 1957 increment of 40 per cent.

Conscious of the economic consequences of so heavy an increase in the cost of living, the government proposes that it be staggered over a two-year period. It is proposed, too, that the rent-subsidy scheme become general so that poorer-paid workers can have some or all of the increase made up. This, posing as a paternalistic scheme to help the needy, is a strategy to try to keep wages in check. The principle, which was first applied socially in Family Allowances, is to see that extra money to meet extra expenses is paid only in the cases where the expenses exist. Why, the reasoning runs, should an army of workers claim more pay when the ones to whose need it refers can be selected?

One interesting aspect of the proposed Bill is that it intends taking local-authority houses into the rent structure. Until now, councils have been outside the Rent Acts. They have been able to levy increases according to the needs of their housing accounts, to impose their own conditions of tenancy, to serve notice on tenants without showing reason. Their incorporation in a general system with private landlords, to whom these privileges have been an irritation, may well mean their becoming the pace- and precedent-setters in applications for rent increases in the future.

Why do half the people in this country have to pay rent for their homes? It is an ignominy that is taken for granted: a weekly fee for living in someone else’s house, with the assurance of being able to stay a matter of the temper of parliamentary Acts. The answer to the question is that under capitalism you get only what you can buy, and half the population can buy only the use of a house week by week. Not that the alternative, owner-occupation, gives exemption from the problem. For most people it means crippling mortgage repayments for the greater part of their working lives, and the same shadow always there: if you can’t pay, you’re out.

The proposed legislation is another in the endless series of attempts to solve particular problems in the complex of the housing problem. It seeks to extend the lives of older houses by making investment in them more profitable, and so forestall the need for expensive clearance schemes and the addition to housing lists of still more people in sub-standard accommodation. The fact is that the majority of the working class have never been satisfactorily housed since capitalism began. Even today, many are not housed at all — living in hostels, on muddy caravan sites, with relatives — and, in appalling cases which come to light, in places like the back seats of cars.

In 1872 Engels wrote, in The Housing Question: “But one thing is certain: there are already in existence sufficient buildings for dwellings in the big towns to remedy immediately any real ‘housing shortage’, given rational utilization of them.” This is at least equally true today. Two or three years ago a Housing Minister was slated on all sides for remarking that the number of empty houses in Britain was about the same as the number of housing applicants. Of course it was fatuous—the implication that the two could tidily be brought together, in society as it is. The more important implication, however, is that capitalism’s sovereign remedy of continually building more houses is no remedy at all.

Given houses built to the cheapest standard, whose maintenance is a matter of their profitability as investments, there is no end to the housing problem. As in Engels' day, the clearance and replacement of run-down houses is their being “. . . not abolished; they are merely shifted elsewhere! The same economic necessity which produced them in the first place, produces them in the next place also.” (Today, for instance, many councils use their “old”—i.e. pre-1939—housing estates for families deemed unsuitable for better new accommodation.) Thus, legislation like that of 1957 and its present continuation is inescapable under capitalism, but it cannot answer the problem inherent in the way society is organised.

Bricks and mortar are of vital importance to human beings. Housing is involved in innumerable social and personal questions: health, sex, the facilities for both privacy and sociability, education, recreation. Nor is bad or good housing a matter simply of the building by itself. A dwelling which is suitable at one phase of a person’s or a family’s life will be inconvenient at another; a well-to-do person can buy mobility as necessary or desired, but most people are stuck for life. Underlying it all are the coercions of the society which produces only for profit. One may compare the technical possibilities of our civilisation with the way people have to live, and see that in this regard as in all others Socialism offers what capitalism cannot.

Robert Barltrop

The fair rent system (1972)

From the February 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The “Fair Rent" system is fundamental to the operation of the 1965 Rent Act introduced by the Labour government. Broadly speaking, its object was to please both landlords and tenants, by ensuring that the tenant paid a “fair” rent, and that the landlord received a “fair” return on his capital. This was to be achieved by ignoring the existence of the laws of supply and demand. Not a very promising start. However, it is intended that this system will gradually replace the present forms of rent control which have existed since 1915.

State control over rents is supported by all political parties (except us), including Communist and Left-wing splinter groups, and is hailed by them as a measure which is in the interests of the working class. It is nothing of the kind. Since 1915 most rents from workers houses let by private landlords have been kept artificially low by successive statutes controlling rents. The result has been that little or no fresh capital has gone into working class housing, either to replace old houses or maintain existing ones. In 1915 there were 8 million houses in England, 90 per cent were owned by private landlords. In 1970 there were 17 million houses, of which 3.4 million or 20 per cent are now owned by them. (White Paper Fair Deal for Housing, 1971). In Scotland in 1915 practically all houses were owned by private landlords. In 1970 only 13 per cent are now owned by them. (Francis Committee on Rent Acts, 1971).

According to the White Paper Fair Deal for Housing, there are over 2 million houses without bathrooms or indoor sanitation, etc. and which urgently require basic improvements like installing hot water. When the alleged benefits of low rents and rent control are paraded by Labour and Communist reformers, this should always be balanced against the disadvantages and inconveniences suffered by those workers whose house is rapidly deteriorating into a slum. It cannot be said to be in the interests of the working class to live in overcrowded conditions in sub-standard decaying houses, even if the rents are low.

One other effect of rent control has been virtually to abolish the letting of unfurnished houses and considerably increase the rents of furnished apartments. In theory these are subject to control, but in practice, anyone taking advantage of the Acts to get his rent reduced almost signs his own eviction notice.

Governments always claim that through rent control they are protecting the tenant from exploitation by the landlord during periods of housing shortages. What in fact they are doing is to take the sting out of wage demands and prevent wages from rising. Wage restraint and rent control are twin policies pursued by all the major political parties. Undoubtedly some workers have benefitted initially from low rents at the expense of the landlords, but as their accommodation becomes dingy and dilapidated they will begin to wonder whether it was worth it.

The Labour Party rank and file have apparently miscalculated the effect of their own 1965 Act. Most of them thought it would reduce rents. The reverse has happened. The Committee on the Rent Acts (Francis Committee) reported in 1971 that in the majority of cases where an application was made to the Rent Officer the rent was increased. From 1965-1970 29.3 per cent of rents were decreased, 8.7 per cent were unchanged, and 62.0 per cent were increased. In over 40 per cent of the cases where the rent was increased, the increase was over a half.

Probably the unkindest cut of all was when the Tories decided that Labour’s Rent Act, based on the fair rent principle, should in future be applied to council houses. At present there are 4.5 million council houses in England and 894,000 in Scotland. Hitherto these have not been covered by the Rent Acts. The present Housing Finance Bill before Parliament will alter this. The subsidies, at present running at the rate of £220 million per year, will be discontinued. Rents will then be fixed on the “Fair Rent” principle, which, in effect, means they will rise. Local authorities are to be legally bound to charge economic rents. Tenants who cannot afford the new and higher rents will receive rent rebates up to a maximum of 60 per cent. For the purpose of calculating the rebate, the incomes of man and wife together with any interest on Post Office savings or other income, plus 0.1 per cent of any uninvested capital over £300, i.e. savings, will be included. This Means Test will also apply to tenants of private houses who, under this Bill, will be given cash grants to help pay their increased rent. The Means Test dragnet will leave nothing uncovered.

The general strategy is that those workers who can afford to pay the higher rents will help those who cannot, with the government making up any deficit. Any deficit will be spread over the general body of tenants, and rents adjusted upwards to get rid of it. This redistribution of poverty among the working class is nothing new. Neither is the appalling ignorance of Labour MP’s and their Communist and other supporters of how the capitalist system works. The worker, generally speaking, receives only sufficient wages to enable him to live and reproduce future workers. The value of his labour power determines his purchasing power. He cannot increase his wages without attacking the capitalists’ profits. He cannot get something for nothing, whether it be food, housing, etc. The social reformer will never face these facts.

The debate on the Housing Finance Bill has put the Labour Party, and their running dogs, the Communists and Trotskyists, in a curious position. They were responsible for the legislation embodying the “Fair Rent” principle, as the Tory government spokesmen shrewdly reminded them.

They are in real difficulty. If they vote against the Bill they will be voting against the principle of rent rebates (which they accept) and financial assistance being given to needy tenants living in private houses. If they support the Bill they will be in favour of supporting rent increases for millions of Council tenants. Such is the dilemma of the reformer. As it is, the entire effort that has gone into legislation to abolish or even ameliorate the workers’ housing problem has proved to be a complete waste of time.

After fifty-five years the greatest political minds working within all three of the major political parties have produced a solution to the housing problem which really amounts to the proposition—that the worker will get what he can afford to pay for.

The real solution to the housing problem is not financial but social. The freeing of the technical means of production from their financial stranglehold is a task of a Socialist society.

Jim D'Arcy