Down and out in Toronto (1986)

From the Winter 1986-7 issue of the World Socialist

"Thousands Hungry in Metro", scream the headlines of the Toronto Star (March 29, 1986) which proceeded to give details of exactly who is starving in metropolitan Toronto, which charity organizations are providing food and which reformist methods the Star advocates should be applied to solve the problem.

As pathetic as the Star's attitude is, the very fact that such an article was published has its positive side. All too many highly-salaried workers in the major industrialized countries, who live pretty well by capitalism's crummy standards, think of hunger and homelessness — in a word the very 'pits' — as being problems folks have in Ethiopia, other parts of Africa and various sundry banana republics, but don't realize the same problems face some folks in the same city. This further emphasises one of capitalism's greatest contradictions: though the tools of production exist to supply an abundance of the necessaries of life, people still live in want, and in the parts of the world where those tools have reached their most developed form.

Toronto is a bustling modern metropolis with over 2 million people, most of whom, we are told, enjoy the good life — whatever that might mean. However, it would seem some are not, according to that arch-epistle of conservatism, the Star. The hungry in Toronto, it informs us, are single mothers with children, unemployed youths, unemployed men with families, pensioners, the homeless, the disabled, ex-psychiatric patients, refugees and working families whose pay cheques can't stretch to cover rent and food.

"Hunger in Toronto is not the same as hunger in Ethiopia. It's not a child with big eyes and a swollen stomach", Karen Shaver, manager of Second Harvest, a volunteer agency that picks up surplus food throughout Toronto and drops it off to agencies and shelters that need it, told the Star. "Hunger in Toronto is a baby getting sugar-water during hunger week just before the cheque arrives. Hunger is a child eating catsup sandwiches and mother not eating at all. Hunger is eating popcorn to fill you up, it's malnutrition and obesity caused by a carbohydrate diet. It's not knowing where your next meal is coming from and having to make that your daily struggle". As Shaver points out, the specific situation maybe different to Ethiopia, but it doesn't mean a thing particularly when every winter many homeless die from hunger and cold in Toronto.

How many go hungry? 

It is difficult to determine exactly how many people are hungry in Toronto. Both city and provincial governments admit they don't know the extent of it because they have not yet begun to collect data from the dozens of agencies and churches that provide emergency food aid.

Some agencies, however, do keep records and publish them. It was found that in February, 1986, 43 received requests (if begging can be called a request) for help from 15,198 people with families at home; that provided food for 37,327 people. These figures leave little doubt that hunger exists, and also indicate that the crisis once thought limited to the inner city, has spread to the suburbs.

• The Salvation Army, Toronto's largest distributor of food aid, receives an average of 5,000 requests a month for emergency groceries and food vouchers. Every month it takes on more than 400 new cases. Last year it assisted 37,000 families who needed help feeding 40,107 children.
• The St Vincent de Paul Society, which provides emergency food vouchers through chapters operating in 110 parishes, gave out $226,000 in aid to 20,000 people last year. Their headquarters receive 20 to 50 calls a day from families seeking food aid.
• When Second Harvest began in April, 1985, it distributed 2,500 pounds of food. Now it moves more than 7,500 pounds of surplus food every month, contributing to about 50,000 meals.
• Two hostels run by the City of Toronto provided 69,000 free meals. The Salvation Army provided 20,000 meals in its two hostels.
• In February, Stop 103, a food depot, supported mainly by Anglican churches, provided groceries to 2,100 families.

Besides the 70 or so charity groups which help feed the poor, the provincial government itself, in its benevolence, sometimes lends a hand. The Ontario government's Emergency Shelter and Assistance program was started in 1984 as a one time grant to selected agencies throughout the winter months. It is now in its third year of operation with funding increased from $1.1 million to $1.8 million. This year $456,300 was provided to help feed Toronto's hungry. Ontario Community and Social Affairs Minister, John Sweeney, is now reviewing the program to determine if it should be extended.

The majority of the thousands who line up at the food banks — the present-day equivalent of the depression era soup kitchens — are people on social assistance programs that were designed to provide people with the basic necessities of life, but are hopelessly failing to do so for the simple fact that production of these necessities are with view to profit not to satisfy human needs.

In February, 70,073 Toronto people were living on family benefits, a long-term form of direct provincial assistance available to single parents, the disabled or others unable to work while raising a family. A single mother with one child receives $558 a month, with up to $155 in shelter subsidy, while a mother of two can receive up to $832. Another 34,119 people were supported by general welfare, a short-term program for those considered able-bodied, but who are unemployed. The maximum paid to a single employable person is $394 and a man with a wife and two children can receive up to $882 a month.

Despite the government's hand-outs, the plain fact is that more and more recipients are unable to make their cheques last throughout the month. In the words of Salvation Army's Captain Bobbitt, "A lot of people are relying on agencies as part of their budgeting every month, they're saying if we can get through to the 23rd, then maybe we can go to the food bank for a couple of days." Bobbitt points out it's not only welfare recipients who are relying on charity for food: "We're now seeing a significant number of working people, working for low incomes and paying high rents and just not managing especially during the winter months when they have to pay for heat" (Toronto Star, March 31, 1985).

As usual the more brain-washed members of the working class believe the poor are poor because they are too lazy to work, ignoring completely the high unemployment rate. Particularly outspoken in his criticism of this attitude is Rev. Dennis Drainville, an Anglican minister, who runs Stop 103, and author of a report called Poverty in Canada. Drainville believes the majoritv of people who rely on charity to stave off hunger are undeserving victims, but he said, affluent people would rather believe the poor deserve their lot. "This is an affluent consumer-oriented society and people tend not to look beyond the things they know — their friends, families and careers", he said, "if people really took seriously how many hungry people there are in Toronto, they might have to do something" (Toronto Star, April 2, 1986).

One wonders what Rev. Drainville would consider as "something", though, like most, he would probably opt for doing something about it within capitalism, like a wishy-washy reform. Most people involved in agencies like Drainville's lay the blame on Toronto's shortage of affordable housing. Too high a percentage of income is going into rent, leaving less for food, they argue adding that this is greatly aggravated by high unemployment and social assistance which is a pittance. So let us take a look at the housing situation.

The worsening housing crisis 

Tens of thousands of people are estimated to be poorly housed, in substandard apartments, public housing projects, rooming houses, hostels and drop-in centres. According to tenants, landlords, politicians, housing experts and government officials, plus numerous housing studies, these thousands are the victims of an unprecedented housing squeeze.

Forced to either pay rents that have out-stripped their budgets, or to compete for run-down accommodation in cockroach and vermin infested buildings, they are plunged ever more deeply into a cycle of poverty, spawning all kinds of other charming social ills. The situation is worse still in Toronto for the thousands who are completely homeless, with an underground parking lot as their place for the night. "We have reached a real crisis", said Bob Couchman, executive director of The Family Service Association, an agency that provides counselling and assistance to about ten thousand families in crisis. "I've never seen the problem as severe as it is now," said Couchman (Toronto Globe and Mail, April 5, 1986).

Severe, means a family of five sleeping in one bedroom and a ten-year old afraid to turn on the light because she'll see cockroaches scatter. Severe means a single mother lining up at a food bank because the rent took all her grocery money, or a father who can't sleep because he worries about feeding and clothing his new-born twins. Severe is an elderly couple forced out of their apartment after thirty years because the owner began renovations which would have raised the rent beyond their reach. Severe is an unemployed fisherman too proud to take welfare, who spent winter nights sleeping on a church floor with more than seventy other homeless men.

Their struggle for adequate shelter continues in the shadow of demolitions, conversions and renovations that eat away at a shrinking rental market. Thousands of low cost apartments, flats and rooming houses are being turned into single family homes for the more affluent From 1981 to 1985 to almost 9,000 rental units were lost in the city of Toronto alone.

The Housing Hostels Coalition, a lobby group of churches, hostel workers and community clinics seeking improved housing for the homeless, estimates that fifty percent of the central care rooming houses have been lost in the last ten years. The shortage of rental housing is so severe that the Metro Council may soon be hanging "No Vacancy" signs at its borders. At present, only two out of every 1,000 apartments are empty.

Tracking the number of poorly housed is a difficult task, but housing experts and community agencies have identified various trends and produced numerous reports showing how wide-spread the problem is. Their statistics show that about 95,000 rental households struggle to pay their rent

An estimated 19,500 people are waiting for subsidized housing. Almost 175,000 income-earning rental households in Toronto are paying 25 percent or more of their income on rent and utilities according to Statistics Canada's most recent data. Of the 447,955 income earning households in the census area, 125,427 were paying 30 percent of their income on rent and utilities. About 41,000 of those households are paying up to 40 and 50 percent of their income on rent, according to the Metro Social Planning Council, which also stated that in January, 1986, 22,721 of the 32,287 people on welfare were renting on the private market and paying an average of 64.1 percent of their total income on rent.

A survey for the Provincial Housing Ministry found 25 percent of all low-rise rental housing in Toronto, Hamilton and Ottawa in need of "rehabilitation". Those hardest hit are society's most vulnerable groups: the elderly, single parent families, the unemployed, low-wage workers, students and the disabled. Working families earning $15,000 a year must struggle to pay Toronto's high rents. And some single people in social assistance may have as little as $47.00 a month left over after paying average rents. Social service agencies blame the housing crises for other social problems, including family breakdown, domestic violence, psychiatric disorders and prostitution.

However, not so disturbed is Don Richmond, general housing manager of the Metro Toronto Housing Company, who said, "Show me a growing city that doesn't have a housing crisis and you've got a city that's decaying and dying" (Toronto Globe and Mail, April 1, 1986). Without intending to, our friend Mr. Richmond, provides a pretty potent indictment of capitalism.

No one knows the exact number of homeless people. The last study released three years ago, found there were 3,440 and there are probably more now. Community, church and hospital workers say it could be anywhere between 5,000 and 10,000. The metro government say it's as low as 1,300, but their figure excludes people who spend nights in donut shops, bus stations, cheap hotels and jails, instead of a home.

No profit in rental accommodation

One thing is for sure, and that is the crisis has gradually worsened over the last twelve years. The specific reasons are the disappearing stock of rental housing, made particularly worse as so many rental apartments have been turned into condos, with heavy mortgage payments, high utility costs and of course, a high down payment, with the tenant told "buy it or get out!"

Skyrocketing costs for land financing and energy have also been a factor. Changes in the world economy have made construction of new rental housing uneconomical. Builders and developers moved into ownership housing; since 1979, 1,000 condos a year have been built, mostly selling for $100,000 or more, while the non-subsidized construction of low-cost rental units tapered off.

Beginning in the 1970's rooming houses and houses divided into flats became single family homes. In many cases houses in slum neighbourhoods were gussied-up (or as city hall calls it, "gentrified"), and sold to two people, whilst up to ten previous occupants were kicked out

The imposition of rent review scared many landlords out of rental construction; they feared they would not get a fair return on their investment. In Toronto an average two-bedroom apartment costs approximately $60,000 to build; landlords say limits on rent hikes make it difficult to earn more on such an investment than they could by putting the money in the bank.

Though there is a rent review board, the government's only major attempt at reform, it isn't beneficial to many because of the high annual rental hikes, which are usually higher than any salary raise. Many landlords circumvent the regulations of the board by making renovations and claiming they need the increase in rent to pay for it

The number of boarders and lodgers in private homes in Ontario was 200,000 in 1961, falling to 122,000 fifteen years later; the figures for 1986 were unobtainable, but it will certainly be less. Also, the average family size in Toronto fell from 4.2 to 2.4 from 1951 to 1981 (isn't it amazing how capitalism has us expressing people as a decimal point?). Both these trends increase the demand for rental housing. According to Keith Ward of the city of Toronto Housing Department "with the same population, smaller size households give more households; that creates a greater demand for housing generally. The forces that have given rise to smaller household sizes, the creation of single parent families, have stacked the deck in favour of rental demand."

Another factor contributing to the problem is the end of large public housing projects. By the mid-1970's, politicians were unwilling to risk the social problems they fear from such projects that integrated people of different income levels.

As you can see, the whole housing situation is a typical capitalist cock-up which, given the false nature of capitalism, couldn't be anything else.

Reforms of no lasting value

One only has to listen to workers explain their point of view to know that all too many look at these matters from the good guys/bad guys premise, which has nothing to do with it. Typical is the view expressed by Leslie Robinson, a spokesman for the Federation of Metro Toronto Tenants Associations: "in the past governments have had political and ideological blinkers on. We are looking for strong new initiatives from the current government" (Toronto Star, April 11, 1986).

What is needed is an understanding of the way capitalism operates. Production is with view to profit; if it is not thought that returns on investment will be sufficiently profitable (and businesses won't last long without profits, and sometimes without increasing profits), there v/ill be no investment hence no production, which in this case means fewer rental accommodations. If it can be shown, as it has, that there are more profits in turning rental buildings into condos, for sale to a more higher income section of the working class, then it will be done. This occurred, among many places, to buildings where the majority were pensioners who had lived there for twenty to thirty years; most had to leave because they couldn't afford to buy.

It is also pointless complaining about governments. One need not expect anything from a party in power which stands for the interests of big business, but by the same token, a party of well-meaning people, who wish to reform away the harsher edges of the system, are in many cases powerless to do so once elected. For various reasons; the one concerning us now is their own lack of understanding of how capitalism works. Some years ago, the New Democratic Party said if elected it would to a certain extent solve the housing problem by lowering the mortgage rates to 6 percent The financial people who put up the money for mortgages said, that if that was so, they would invest their money in areas of the economy that would give a better return; therefore, few members of the lower income section of the working class, if any, would get houses.

Any party elected to power without a mandate for socialism can do only one thing, whether they stand for the interests of finance, commerce, heavy industry, light industry, shopkeepers, the working Joe, or Uncle Tom Cobley and all, and that is administrate the affairs of capitalism in general, to the limited extent that it is possible to administrate the affairs of such a crazy system. The means giving in to certain pressures once in office. Though these pressures may be different specifically, in the broad, general sense it all amounts to the same thing — profits.

All major government decisions, long-term and short-term (directly and indirectly), are with view to the interests of returning a profit This is something the working class have no stake in; it's their failure to realize this that makes some of them hungry and homeless.

Reforms are of no lasting value to the working class. They can only be of benefit to the capitalist class, directly through profits or indirectly because reforms are conducive to perpetuating capitalism. Reforms, and those who advocate them, deceive the working class into thinking that their problems can be solved within capitalism. Some reforms may indeed seem to reduce some particular pressure on some part of the working class for a while, but with the passing of time become obsolete and new ones are called for. All kinds of reforms have been introduced and none have solved humankind's problems and none will. Capitalism, because of its basic nature, can never be made to work in everyone's interest.

There is only one answer—socialism; and one way to get it by political organization. In a socialist society the fundamental basis of society will be totally changed: from a society based on production for profit it will be a society based on production for use. All will have free access to all they need for a full and happy life. Problems concerning food, shelter and clothing, will no longer exist and this being the case, people will be able to satisfy their other needs, recreational and intellectual.

All will be free to develop their personalities and abilities to the fullest possible extent and all will contribute according to their various skills and abilities. Because the premise of production will be based on serving humankind, people will get satisfaction that is unknown under capitalism.

Ray Rawlings (Canada)

Letter: For the present (1974)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

For the present

Until socialism is established, we have to live under the present capitalist system.

Features of this system are institutions such as Building Societies, Insurance Companies and banks, all of which many workers invest money into and unwittingly aid capitalism.

Seemingly they do not have a choice. There is not enough rented property in the private or public sector to meet the demand, despite years of government by the Labour Party. The Building Societies do offer a way out at a price

Insurance schemes are contributed to, understandably, by many workers who want to provide safeguards for their families should misfortune occur.

The banks use people’s money to finance their existence and keep the system rolling, for that, they provide the service of looking after our money.

All three institutions under the present system exist because of human needs. How do people at present obtain the necessities of life without contributing to a system that exploits them? The obvious need is for Socialism; until it arrives where does the Socialist Party stand on this problem ?

Kevin Parkin

London S.E. 1

Reply:

Banks, Building Societies, and Insurance Companies do not exist to satisfy human need. They are features of capitalism — a system of commodity production based on the class ownership of the means of life. As such they only exist to make a profit and only too often stand between human beings and their means of subsistence. They are “necessary” only in a money-dominated society which has profit as the motive for production.

While capitalism lasts the working class will need to sell themselves on the labour market, use banks and take out mortgages and insurance. Because they own no property they must work for wages and in so doing they will be contributing to the profits of the capitalists. Socialists realise this only too well, that under these circumstances workers have no option but to be involved in the whole sordid business simply in order to live — after all, we are in the same position ourselves. It is Utopian to believe that workers can isolate themselves from or opt out of these and other oppressive features of capitalism.

What the Socialist Party continually points out, and urges working people to act on, is that the society we live in can be done away with. When the majority of the working class realise this they will need to take upon themselves the task of abolishing capitalism and establishing Socialism through democratic political action. This is the only real choice facing the working class. Why not join with us and help to bring the establishment of Socialism that much closer?

Macmillan changes nothing (1962)

From the September 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have been here before. There is no novelty in Government changes, even if they are in one big purge at the top, as Mr. Macmillan has just pushed through. Punch greeted the news with a reprint of a cartoon which showed a shelf full of discarded top ministers from the Balfour government of 1905. Clement Attlee was always liable to make important changes and in some of them won for himself a reputation for ruthlessness.

In one of his reshuffles he called to Ten Downing Street a minor minister who was generally accepted to be running his department satisfactorily. The minister left smiling brightly and the newspapers decided that Attlee had called him only to say, “Well done—carry on.” In fact, the minister had been brusquely sacked and was never seen on the front benches again.

This may have been typical of Attlee’s handling of his men, but it does not fit in with the popular conception of Macmillan. Up to his last purge the Tory premier had stuck to some of his men through thick and thin. When the responsible minister offered to resign after the shake-up over the Portland spy case, Macmillan refused to let him go. He has stood by Selwyn Lloyd under the opposition’s fiercest fire, answering criticism with promotion. This had given Macmillan a reputation for personal loyalty to his ministers.

So we have had a lot of nonsense from the press, who like us to think that the men who run British capitalism are affected in their work by sentiments like loyalty and friendship. There is a certain grim humour in this. Politicians, after all, are the men who must try to hold down our wages, decide to explode bombs which they know will release lethal fall out, declare war which they know will kill hundreds of thousands of people. And while they are doing all this, they must justify it by telling us that it is done in our interests.

So politicians must be hard and cynical and ruthless. They must be cold liars. They must be calculating mass killers. It is too much to believe that they are also the sort of men who will regret sacking a colleague because he went to Eton with them, or because he once took on one of capitalism’s dirtier jobs for them.

The men who are at the head of capitalism’s affairs are very remote from the rest of us. It is, therefore, difficult to discover the reasons for government changes, but we can discuss one or two aspects of them. Were the changes intended to reinvigorate the government? It is a popular delusion that a vigorous minister who runs a better department means a better life for us all. The Guardian plugged that line in 1950, when it thought the Labour government was tired and in need of a rest. It thinks something like that about the Tory government today. It may be that an energetic minister is better at his job than one who has been broken by years of trying to solve capitalism’s insolubles. But nobody has yet demonstrated that an energetic and efficient administration of capitalism benefits its people. Problems like bad housing and slumps and wars persist in capitalism, whoever may try his hand at getting rid of them. Sometimes, in fact, they can transform an energetic minister into one who is washed out. They did this to Anthony Eden. Sometimes they can break an entire government, as they did the Labour administration in 1951.

This goes, too, for the theory that young men make better ministers than old men. This theory is beloved in many places—perhaps most strongly among young workers, who hope that a young minister understands their problems. This was one of the themes on which Kennedy took power in the United States. Yet the facts shoot the theory full of holes. Young men who have risen fast in the government—men like Anthony Eden, Harold Wilson and Hugh Gaitskell—have shown no more skill than their older counterparts in taking capitalism’s hurdles. It cannot even be said for them that they have brought any especial benefits to young people. They have, for example, always eagerly supported the wars in which young men are pushed into the extremities of danger and suffering. In fact, young ministers have run capitalism, as best they may, no better and no worse than old ministers have run it.

Perhaps the Macmillan purge was designed to improve what is called the image of the government—its appearance before the doubtful electors. A government’s image is important; in some cases it wins or loses them votes. Yet in one way the changes do nothing to help the government’s image. For the image must be a successful one. And can a government which has had to be put through a shattering change be described as successful? Perhaps there are different interpretations of the word. Up to the last moment the government were assuring us that Selwyn Lloyd was successful, that his policies were correct and that he was administering them firmly and wisely. What sort of an image has Lloyd, now?

We could go on like this for a very long time; the politics of capitalism are full of double dealing, lies and worse. But let us consider the reshuffle from the point of view of the people who are meant to be impressed by it; the people who vote governments in and out; the people who keep capitalism running; the working class. For them, what are the changes worth?

In a word: Nothing. We have been here before and we have seen it all before. Governments have come and gone, been reshuffled, turned upside down, inside out and up the right way again. Prime Ministers have been ousted and replaced. The governing party itself has been changed. Through it all the same old problems have kept nagging at us.

Many workers who decided in 1945 that the Tories were a pack of played out, hard-faced men, were disappointed at the Labour Party’s efforts to do better. Whatever changes are made in any government’s personnel the results are roughly the same.

There need be no mystery about this. Governments run capitalism. And capitalism will keep throwing up economic troubles, personal insecurity, international disputes and the rest, as long as it exists. Whoever is in charge of any particular ministry can have no effect’upon these problems. Foreign secretaries have failed to remove war from capitalism. Chancellors have not been able to budget poverty out of existence. Housing ministers have been baffled by slums.

The evidence of the past says that this is true. So does the evidence of the present. One of the brightest stars to rise in the recent reshuffle is Sir Keith Joseph, who is now the Minister of Housing and Welsh Affairs. This man seems to have everything. Educated at Harrow and Oxford. A beautiful home, a lovely wife. Oozing with culture and knowledge. The top papers rushed to eulogise him and to tell us how lucky we are to be bossed by somebody like the elegant Sir Keith. One of them, carried away, described him as man who offers his opinions like fine sherry served on a silver platter.

Now what sort of sherry has Sir Keith to offer on the housing question, which nags and depresses and desolates so many workers? This is how The Guardian, on August 1st last, reported his contribution to the House of Commons debate on the homeless in London:

“The remedy was more new houses. At first he wondered if slum clearance could be stopped, but when one realised the condition of some of these slums. Cable Street, Stepney, for instance, no Government would wish to stop their clearance, however bad the housing shortage . . . ‘That is undoubtedly what we need, more low-cost housing in London, and my purpose is to try to help the L.C.C. and other authorities, and private enterprise, to achieve just this’.”

The remedy is more new houses! Not a very original conclusion—we have been hearing it for as long as there has been a housing problem. At the same time, we have also been hearing why capitalism cannot get around to building enough new houses; they can’t be afforded, or must take their turn in the queue behind armaments. We’ll be hearing the same from Sir Keith, before long.

Wondering if slum clearance can be stopped! Here, perhaps, is one solution to the housing question. But it can be extended. Has Sir Keith wondered about housing workers in caves, or in disused coal mines? There are going to be more of these going soon and some of them are probably better than Cable Street.

We need more low-cost housing! In other words, if the working class are to be housed they need more cheap, poky, substandard, working class homes. If they are to be cleared out of today’s slums, tomorrow’s must be ready to receive them.

This is what we are invited to accept as rare sherry on a silver platter. Sir Keith Joseph may be a charming, cultured, educated man. But capitalism has him beaten and fumbling, just as it has the people who vote for it and who don’t need an expensive education to do so. Yes, we have been here before and we shall be here again. Because capitalism keeps throwing up the same problems and bringing us back to the same realities. It is like a nightmarish roundabout, driven by nonsense and ballyhoo and simple lies.

Ivan.

Cooking the Books: Housing: the market versus promises (2026)

The Cooking The Books column from the June 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of Labour’s election promises in 2024 was to build 1.5 million new houses by the end of its normal term in office in 2029. Actually, it wasn’t a promise that the government would itself organise the building of this number of houses but a promise that it would create conditions in which profit-seeking housing ‘developers’ would.

This made achieving the 1.5 million target dependent on it being profitable for the house-building firms to build that many new houses. Which was why, in an article in February 2025, we expressed scepticism about Labour being able to meet its target as it had no control over which way the market would turn. ‘The 1.5 million target,’ we wrote, ‘will only be met if the market expands enough’. Now, analysts are concluding that the market won’t expand to that extent.

An article in the Times (4 May) by Tom Haywood headed ‘Mayday: distressing signs in housing data’ and subtitled ‘Labour’s 1.5m target may be dead in the water after a steep fall in property enquiries’ is a case in point. Noting that a survey of estate agents covering March ‘showed the steepest monthly drop in new buyer enquiries in almost three years’, Haywood wrote:

‘All of this is yet another blow to Labour’s ambitious target of delivering 1.5 million homes by the end of 2029, which now looks close to impossible. The government needs developers to be busier, not quieter, given that they will only build when they can sell at the price they need to make a decent return for shareholders’ (our emphasis).

Precisely. As further evidence, and more convincing than one month’s figures, Haywood noted that hedge funds are betting that the share prices of house-builders and their suppliers will fall in the future, an indication that these vulture capitalists are not expecting the companies they have targeted to make much profit in the next few years. The betting takes the form of ‘short selling’, in which the vultures borrow shares at their current price, sell them, buy them back at their expected future lower price, then return them to the original owners and pocket the difference. Money, apparently, is also to be made from houses not being built!

Faced with rising costs but falling demand, house-builders are unable to pass on to potential buyers all the increased costs and so ‘are struggling to make the economics of projects in the capital stack up’, but not just in London as one survey ‘found that it was not financially viable to build homes in almost half of England.’

There is not much the government can do to make building houses more profitable. Why, then, does the government not give money to local councils to build more houses, as certain naive reformists are demanding? Well, for a start, it hasn’t got the money to give or, rather, could only take it from profits either through increased taxes (these ultimately fall on profits) or borrow it at a higher interest rate that would have to be paid from profits. Which no government, under economic pressure to give priority to profit-making, as all governments of capitalism are, can do, at least not without making general economic conditions worse.

Under capitalism, where houses are commodities produced for profit, there is no way out. Houses will only be produced directly for use — simply for people to live in — when this is the aim of all production. And that is possible only when the resources to produce what people need cease to be managed by profit-seeking companies pursuing ‘a decent return for shareholders’ and become the common heritage of all under democratic control.

Editorial: Labour “fiddles” with the Cost of Living (1947)

Editorial from the September 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

When we insist that the abolition of capitalism and introduction of Socialism is the only way out for the working-class, members of the Labour Party usually give the answer that Socialism is something for the future and what is needed is a practical policy for the present, a policy to deal with everyday things like prices and wages and rents and fares. Let us then take a look round and see just what the Labour Government has done about these things.

Between the wars the Labour Party denounced the official Cost of Living Index on the ground that it had long ceased to be reliable. Since 1939 the Index has moved further and further away from reality. Government policy, both in the war-time Coalition and since Labour came to power, was to juggle with the Index in order to prevent it from rising beyond the point it reached in 1942. Thus the pretence was kept up that the cost of living had increased since 1939 by only 31 per cent., or about 4d. in the 1s. This juggling was done by using subsidies to keep down the prices of certain articles that were included in the Index and ignoring the much bigger increases of prices not included. Of course almost everybody (except the Government) admits that the increase is much more than 31 per cent. As long ago as April, 1946, the Manchester Guardian concluded, on the basis of other official figures, that “the cost of living has increased by 55 per cent.” (Manchester Guardian, 15/4/46), and recently Mr. Bernard Harris, City Editor of the Sunday Express, summed the matter up with the remark, “That Index has apparently become incapable of movement, and no one pays any attention to it any more.” (Sunday Express, 1/6/47).

Now the Labour Government has thought up a new deception, A more accurate index is to replace the old one, but, and here is the snag, it is to relate only to future movements of the cost of living and will not indicate how large an increase has taken place already; and although the cost of living has been rising sharply during the past year the workers are now told by Mr. Attlee not to ask for wage increases. ”I appeal to all of you not to press at this time for increased wages.” (Daily Herald, 7/8/47).

So prices have risen and wages are not to rise, which is just the opposite of Labour promises. They promised to support higher wages, and what they said about prices was, “everybody knows that money and savings lose their value if prices rise so rents and the prices of the necessities of life will be controlled.” (Labour Party Programme at the General Election, 1945, “Let us Face the Future.”).

True the Labour Party kept that promise to continue rent control and indeed extended it by setting up Rent Tribunals for furnished rooms ; but here again there are several niggers in the woodpile. While net rents are controlled, actual rents are rising because of the increase of rates, landlords being able to pass it on owing to the acute shortage of accommodation; and everyone knows that the Tribunals have only touched the fringe of the problem for the unfortunate tenants of furnished rooms, many of whom are afraid to lodge a complaint for fear of being turned out a few months later.

Here are a few news items on the increase of rents. 

“Rents of many houses and flats are jumping because of stiff increases in rates. Uncontrolled flat and house prices are soaring.” (Sunday Express, 1/6/47).

“Six hundred homeless families applying for council houses at Maltby, South Yorkshire, have to answer a wages quiz to make sure they can pay the rents. Rents of pre-war council houses range from 9s. to 11s.; new houses between 14s. and 16s. a week.” (Daily Express, 25/6/47).

“The rents for council houses being built here [Tunbridge Wells] . . . are claimed by Labour Councillor John Hutchings to be so high that two-thirds of the 1,238 families on the Royal Borough’s waiting list will be unable to afford to live in them . . . The rents for two types of houses have been confirmed at 26s. 6d. and 27s. 6d., inclusive of rates. The rents for the 14 largest houses, worked out on the same basis, will be 32s. 9d. a week.” (News-Chronicle, 5/6/47).

Another item of expenditure is fares. In 1942 Mr. Bevin, at that time Minister of Labour and now Foreign Secretary, had something to say about the workers’ inability to afford both the rents and the fares, then being charged.

“It would be essential for the cost of habitation to be reduced. Rent and transport took too big a slice out of the wage income of our people.” (In a speech to the National Chamber of Trade News-Chronicle, 16/7/42).

That was the promise, now for the performance. After several war-time increases of fares by London Transport and the main line railways the Minister of Transport announced in Parliament on August 5th, “all railway charges will be raised to 55 per cent. above pre-war with effect from October 1st next.”

The moral of all this is that Labourism does not solve the workers’ problems. Socialism is the only hope.

What right to housing? (2002)

From the March 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every week we are treated to the latest front-page-filling concern for the paid scribblers of the capitalist class. The current crisis is concern over the spiralling cost of housing. In recent weeks, we have had announcements by banks, such as the National Westminster, that they intend to withhold mortgages on houses in certain post-codes (mostly in London), for fear of a burst in the house-price bubble. Simultaneously, on 7 February, we were treated to a round of reports about the average house price exceeding £100,000 in Britain. At the root of all this is the continuing inability of the market system to provide for even this most basic need of a human being, a place to live.

Over the last century, the structures of home ownership in Britain changed dramatically, from a situation where most people rented their home (with an average of 4 people per household), to a situation where the majority of homes are privately owned by their occupiers, with the famous 2.4 people per household. As the population of the UK grew by some 50 percent in that century the number of houses tripled. Since the 1970s the numbers in rented accommodation has steadily fallen, and now represent only 8 million out of 25 million households. Over that century, we saw numerous initiatives from rents controls, to council houses and housing associations to try and ensure proper provision of housing, none of which worked over the long run.

In the aftermath of the Thatcher regime, housing has been left almost exclusively to the open market, with councils at best being able to cut deals with developers to build “social housing” in exchange for planning permission on lucrative projects. Between 1988 and 1996 production of new houses fell yearly (especially compared with the simultaneous clearance of slum housing stock). In 1988 a net gain to the housing stock of 234,500 houses was made, compared to net gain of only 178,000 in 1996. This fall can be seen more clearly in the general reduction in output (in terms of raw materials for houses) of building products over the same period, with bricks being the best example, falling from 4,654,000 tonnes in 1989 to 2,939,000 tonnes in 1999.

Much of this malaise will be due to the falling investment by the state. In 1988 the state (central and local governments) spent a total of £5,273 million on housing expenditure, this plummeted to £2,825 million in 1999. Some of that fall was achieved by transferring housing stock from the public to the private sector in 1999. As has been noted in the columns of this journal before, the state is currently in the processes of divesting itself of as much capital as possible, hoping to transfer it into the private sector where it can be both valorised for profit, and used in a capitalistically more “efficient” manner. This has obviously, though, had some knock-on in terms of building of new houses.

This is particularly so with regards to being unable to manage the demand thrown up by the uneven nature of the market system. Given that workers must migrate to where they can find work, in some areas, such as London, the cost of houses is much higher than in areas of low employment, such as Hull. As the labour time that goes into their building and maintenance will be about the same, the difference is the price of the land on which they are built. What this illustrates is the difference between the cost of the house itself and the cost of the land it is on.

Land monopolists

In an agricultural economy, the rental value of the land would be derived from the differences in the quality of the soil. That is, land which could produce more, say, grain per hectare per hour of labour would give up a higher rental value than the least productive land (that is, land which could be exploited only for the given rate of profit in the economy). This remains partially true of land for industrial use. In the big cities, such as London, however, there is not the remotest chance of returning the land to agricultural use, and so it becomes human geography that provides land an income, from firms wanting office space, or volumes of people (with particular disposable wealth to hand) wanting housing.

Rent is derived not from any inherent feature or use of the soil, but solely through the titular owners’ parasitic capacity to prevent capital from being invested in an area without them being given a share of the surplus value generated (usually any in excess of the average rate of profit prevalent in the economy). This capacity is derived solely through their possessing property rights legally enforced upon others. The price of land itself, not being a product of labour, is calculated by taking the income it can generate and projecting it as a rate of return on capital over a number of years (so land that, say, generates £1 million rent per annum at a rate of 10 percent would have a nominal value of £10 million).

This is, in part, recognised in the national accounts, in that the “subsoil value” of land is now listed alongside computer software patents and electromagnetic spectrum rights as “non tangible fixed assets”. It is not the quality of these “things” that creates their rental/asset value, but merely proprietorship over them.

Pressure on wages

In recent years – as part of the “property owning democracy” gimmick – government policies have tended to encourage workers to buy houses and use them as a form of savings and investment to try to climb the property ladder. This increases the number of housing transactions (as some people speculate), and also means that the government is locked into policies which must attempt to ensure the continuing appreciation house prices (or which at least prevent negative equity).

According to the Office of National Statistics, in 1998 the average person was paying 17 percent of their gross income on housing costs. Obviously, that is a percentage of wildly differing incomes, so the top 10 percent of incomes would be paying £120.80 per week on housing, whilst the lowest would be paying £19.80. Even then these figures are somewhat deceptive, since many of the lower income households were only meeting their full housing cost of an average of £59.40 per week through housing benefit (which is tapered to achieve the 17 percent cost).

This means that any increase in demand for housing due to labour migration, or other events outside a general rise in wages, will increase the share of wages needing to go into housing, and thus create upwards wage pressure. An example of this is the current plan to raise the London weighting on salaries from £2500 to over £4000. This effectively means a potential transfer of wealth from productive capitalists to landholding ones (as well as some of the financial intermediaries involved). Given that the workers could press for higher wages (thus cutting profit rates), to off-set these rises in housing costs, unlike employers landowners have no direct interest in holding such costs down. Since the employers need their workers – and during periods of growth, more and more workers – they have to surrender this indirect tribute to the landowners.

This is why capital was once willing to accept rent and housing market controls to prevent the landowners taking its profit. Hence why, now, the state pays a portion of rent to smooth out the proportion of wages spent on housing. Given, though, the size of the housing benefit budget, and the notorious capacity of landlords and tenants to make “fraudulent” claims, the state is under pressure to curb even that mechanism for taming housing costs.

What all this means is that the anarchy of capitalist production – with its self-seeking economic agents, periods of boom and slump, its uneven migratory population pressures – creates a clear contradiction between profit seeking and providing for human needs. In a world in which everyone could be easily housed, even in a country like Britain we find millions leaving in what even the government classifies as housing unfit for human habitation and actual homelessness on the streets, while nearly everyone has financial worries over satisfying this basic human need.

Pik Smeet

In the Augean stables (1974)

From the June 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 70th anniversary issue of the Socialist Standard carried throughout its pages a series of snippets from old Socialist Standard articles highlighting the SPGB's unique position on issues of the day. Where possible, I've provided a link to the full article.

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).

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.

[From “The Housing Problem — The Socialist View”, Socialist Standard, January 1933]

Cooking the Books: A good question (2025)

The Cooking the Books Column from the February 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 8 December the Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, did the rounds of the television studios to publicise the Labour government’s plan to get 1.5 million new homes built over the next five years. The next day the press gave her a hard time with such headlines as ‘Rayner contradicts herself saying there “is plenty of housing” then admits there’s a “housing crisis”’ (tinyurl.com/3vjw84v4).

One of the things she said was: ‘There is plenty of housing already, but there’s not enough for the people that desperately need it.’

This is saying that there is enough housing available but that it’s too expensive for a lot of people. Which would indeed be a paradox. It would also mean that what is called the ‘housing crisis’ is not a crisis arising from there not being enough homes but from people not having enough money to be able to buy the homes that are for sale. In other words, a crisis due to people being too poor to pay for what they need.

So, strictly speaking, we should be talking about an ‘affordability crisis’. In which case, building more houses won’t solve the problem. As the headline of an article in the Times (11 December) by columnist Alice Thompson asked, ‘Building homes is fine but who will buy them?’

Good question, as Rayner would have had to prevaricate had this been put to her. Houses today are not built to provide accommodation for people, however desperately they might need it. They are built to be sold with a view to making a profit. As the Home Builders Federation explained to Thompson, ‘bluntly’ as she put it, ‘Builders can only build if buyers can buy’. The problem is that not enough buyers can buy.

In fact, not only is the affordability crisis preventing people using existing housing; it is also preventing more houses being built:

‘Big commercial housebuilders already have stockpiles of land where planning permission has been granted … yet more than 40 per cent of homes granted planning permission are paused.’

Thompson went on to explain why:

‘This is because housebuilders only build at the rate they can sell. Taylor Wimpey’s chief executive, Jennie Daly, defends the strategy thus: “We are not delivering more homes than the market can absorb”’.

Since the population of Britain is expanding there may well be a paying demand for more houses to be built and the profit-seeking housebuilding firms will meet this spontaneously. Whether this will lead them to build another 1.5 million over the next five years is another matter. They will certainly try not to build ‘more than the market can absorb’. The 1.5 million target will only be met if the market expands enough. But this would require dealing with the ‘affordability crisis’ by giving more money, one way or the other, to those who currently ‘desperately need’ better housing but can’t afford it because it’s too expensive.

That’s not going to happen, if only because the present government is actually cutting back on housing benefit by not increasing the rate in line with rising prices. Besides, if subsidising people to buy a house or flat became the norm then employers would not need to pay the same amount of wages. It would be back to square one.

Crisis and scandal – Happy New Year? (2025)

From the February 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The first few days of 2025 has seen the news dominated by two features, neither of which are anything new. That there is a housing crisis is a frequently covered issue, while, unfortunately, reports of sexual exploitation are all too common.

Friedrich Engels, accounting for the many privations he documents in his 1845 book, The Condition of the Working Class in England, draws what would have been a controversial conclusion. Despite laissez-faire being the dominant economic attitude he voiced the necessity of the state playing a much more active mitigating role.

Subsequent history bore this out. The slums and overcrowded tenements of the new industrial towns Engels saw had, just 45 years later, resulted in government action. The 1890 Housing of the Working Classes Act enabled London councils to begin building houses, with Bethnal Green seeing the first of these in 1896. This initiative was extended to councils outside London by the 1900 Housing of the Working Class Act.

The poor physical health of so many working men revealed by First World War recruitment led to such state intervention being further extended in 1919 by the Housing Act. Also known as the Addison Act, it made housing a national responsibility, requiring local authorities to build 500,000 new homes over three years. The rationale was that healthy homes would furnish a healthy population. How ironic and tragic that over a century later, during a time when health services are being overwhelmed, there is currently a housing crisis.

The present government, echoing the one of 1919, has done what it seems all governments do when facing a serious social problem, it has set a target. 1.5 million homes to be constructed by 2029, around 370,000 a year. That is 140,000 more than the quota set by the previous administration. All well and good, to an extent, if building on that scale actually happens. The real problem ultimately is not housing but wealth, or the lack of it.

A recent radio interview with a woman in Liverpool illustrates the difficulties. She has two young children and presently is having to live with her own mother in her two bedroom home. This means the younger mother and her daughters are required to share a bed. Her local authority has a duty to house this woman and her children. Its failure to do so is due not to malfeasance, but to not having the physical property to supply. Nor does it have the resources to build houses.

Affordable housing, whether to buy or rent, is supposed to be an obligation on builders. However, builders do not build to meet need, they do so to make profit. They are driven by the same ethos as all of capitalism. More modest, cheaper properties do not cost substantially less, pro rata, to build than larger, premium properties that can command higher-end prices. A house, just like a single brick, is a commodity that must return the best possible profit for its maker.

Around Barnsley, for example, there are a number of brownfield sites for which planning permission has been granted. Many of these permissions have subsequently lapsed without a brick being laid. Whatever potential for profit exists or existed on these sites it seems insufficient for the market to act. The local authority has not been unwilling or obstructive, nor is there an absence of housing need. No matter whether targets are set locally or nationally, that need will not be met if there is a more pressing need for money.

No matter how sympathetic the radio interviewer, the listeners, politicians and pressure groups, that Liverpudlian woman and her children are, in brutal capitalist terms, not economically viable. It is quite possible that those children, and all too many like them, are or will become vulnerable. The scandal dominating the news at the moment is the seemingly huge sexual exploitation of children, dating back over decades.

Like the housing crisis this is by no means a new phenomenon. The age of consent to marry, in England in 1700, was 12 for a girl, 14 for boys. The Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885, raised the age to 16 for girls, with more severe punishments for those procuring those under 13.

Just as housing need is addressed by politicians setting targets, so they deal with this exploitation through establishing, or calls to establish, enquiries. These meet, gather evidence, propose action and then the story drops from the headlines until it re-emerges years later when little has changed.

How such things are legally considered reflects the prevailing economic structure of society. The 12-year-old requirement referred to the minimum age a girl could marry and was first established in the 13th century. Then the feudal system based on land ownership led to marriages via which estates could be secured and expanded through marriage. The Crown, then being the arbiter of law, determined that minimum age by which a female could wed.

By the time Engels was writing his book capitalism had become, and still is, the system through which social relations are produced. Virtually anything can be turned into a commodity for sale. It is a system based on the exploitation of individuals’ labour.

That labour might be employed in making widgets or supplying a service. Child labour in the UK is mainly prohibited except for a few exceptions that are highly regulated. When it is sex work that’s the issue, and there are children involved, legal and moral disapprobation is invoked.

However, for those so steeped in capitalism’s overriding ethos they are willing to risk repercussions, legislation is an inconvenience to be circumvented. If there’s a demand there will be suppliers. The worldwide trade in illegal drugs is a more visible example.

These crises and scandals are undoubtedly connected. At the root of both is money and the power it confers, or nullifies, depending on a person’s financial circumstances. Houses will be built, young persons traded, if there is profit to be made.

For as long as capitalism is allowed to continue, both legal and illegal pursuit of profit will be the ultimate determinant of whether people’s needs, in all respects, will be met. Political posturing and moral handwringing will not make a fundamental difference. Crises and scandals will remain distressing and recurrent features of headlines.

Dave Alton

Notes by the Way: The Housing Problem Solved Again. (1933)

The Notes by the Way Column from the December 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Housing Problem Solved Again.

The housing problem has been solved at least half a dozen times since the end of the war. At any rate, each Government in turn has confidently announced that it was in process of being solved. The present Government is relying on its own slum-clearance schemes plus the activities of private builders and the building societies. Sir Paul Latham, who is Conservative M.P. for Scarborough and a member of the London County Council, writing in the Evening Standard (October 23rd, 1933), says that the present rate of dealing with unsatisfactory housing conditions, even the increased rate which is being urged by the Act of the Ministry of Health,

will do little in the lifetime of our generation to solve the housing problem in London.

The Architects' Journal, “After an exceedingly careful and detailed investigation," states that 1,400,000 houses are needed to abolish overcrowding (quoted in Evening Standard, November 17th, 1933).

Other authoritative statements quoted by the Evening Standard (November 17th, 1933) are the following: —

On the basis of the houses condemned in Manchester there must be a million slum dwellings in the country (Sir E. Simon).

Of the million slum dwellings which are estimated to have been in existence in 1918 only 20,000, equivalent to 2%, have been demolished and replaced by new buildings. In the last 60 years only 200,000 slum dwellers have been rehoused.

There are houses which were condemned 40 years ago and are still standing and being used. 

#    #    #    #

The Cause of War.

Mr. A. A. Baumann, who writes for the Evening Standard over the initials A. A. B., is known as an old, crusted Conservative, who often shocks a more mealy mouthed generation by his crude statement of his principles. On October 4th, 1933, he dropped a brick by a candid statement about war. He said: —

It is the lust of money, and nothing else, that provokes and protracts modem war . . . the cause of all wars is lust for money.

The late Lord Brentford, when he was plain Mr. Joynson-Hicks, was equally candid. He said: —

We conquered India as the outlet for the goods of Great Britain. We conquered India by the sword, and by the sword we should hold it (quoted by A. G. Gardiner in Daily News, October 17th, 1925).

It is interesting to notice how the Liberal Manchester Guardian managed to convey precisely the same idea as the Tory Joynson-Hicks, but without his bluntness:—

There are two chief reasons why a self-regarding England may hesitate to relax her control over India. . . . The second is that Great Britain finds in India her best market, and that she has a thousand millions of capital invested there. (Manchester Guardian, December 30th, 1929.)

A last comment on the Great War is provided by Mr. A. G. Gardiner. Writing in the Star (October 11th, 1933), he discovers that the Kaiser was really quite a democrat: —

“Even under the Kaiser there was freedom of the Press, freedom of organisation, and a freely elected Parliament. . . ."

Those who have long memories will recall that Mr. Gardiner, in 1914, was Editor of the Daily News, and in that capacity was one of those who backed up the war on the plea of guarding English civil liberties against being reduced by a victorious Germany to the state of suppression supposed to exist in that country.

Now, 15 years after the war to end Prussianism, Mr. Gardiner discovers that Hitlerism is the real evil, and that the Kaiser was not so bad after all.

#    #    #    #

Arms and the Workers.

When Communist advocates of armed revolt were asked from what source the workers would obtain arms, dark hints were sometimes thrown out indicating that Russia would oblige. Incredible as it may seem, this has at last been partly realised, for the Russian Government has made a gift of five bombing planes to the neighbouring State, Turkey, as a little memento on the 10th anniversary of the Turkish Republic. (See Daily Herald, October 27th, 1933.)

The promise is, however, only partly fulfilled, for the planes have been given, not to the Turkish workers, but to the capitalist Government. 

#    #    #    #

Woman in a Sack.—40 Years of Progress.

Mr. George Lansbury related recently (see Daily Herald, October 23rd) how it was he first became converted to what he calls Socialism. He was making a canvass of the Devons Road area of Bow for the voting register when the door of one house was opened by a poor woman dressed in a sack, in which three holes had been cut for head and arms.

That must be nearly 40 years ago—40 years of reforms introduced by the Liberals, Tories and Labour Party, 40 years which might have been devoted by Mr. Lansbury to working for Socialism but for the fact that he decided instead to follow the line of trying to get “something now."

Yet he admits that, touring the same district recently, he “Was horrified to see the conditions in which the people are still living."

Even the sack is not entirely gone, for two weeks later the Daily Herald published a letter in which a correspondent, who signed himself “ Disillusioned," said that he had just seen “ The huddled form of a woman, covered by a dirty piece of sacking," sleeping out on a seat near Buckingham Palace.

The writer was disillusioned about the “peace" which has followed the war. He could, with equal justification, have been disillusioned about the 40 years spent in vain trying to patch up the evils of capitalism bit by bit. The Rev. William Dick, of Trinity Church, Poplar, says that there are, to his knowledge, hundreds of families in the East End hungry—“They have absolutely no food in the house." He claims that in Poplar alone (where there has long been a Labour Council) “40,000 people are living on the poverty line or are in actual want " (Daily Herald, November 3rd, 1933).

#    #    #    #

How Reforms Divide the Workers.

Of all the political errors which have hampered the growth of Socialism there is hardly any so ill-founded as the idea that the way to unite the workers is to get together a list of non-Socialist demands, relating to so-called practical, every-day questions. The truth is that each such demand provokes opposition among one section of the workers while eliciting approval from another.

The Daily Herald (November 4th) provides an example. Mr. Alfred Barnes, Labour ex-M.P. for East Ham South, speaking at Enfield on November 3rd, said: —

“. . . a few years ago the Tories asserted that Socialism meant the bureaucratic State—industry being directed from Whitehall by well-paid officials, and initiative disappearing.

“That was just what they were doing themselves—Electricity Commissioners, London Transport Board, Milk and Bacon Boards. . . .

“All these represented the regulation of industry from Whitehall by well-paid officials in a desperate effort to bolster up capitalism.”

Now quite apart from Mr. Barnes' criticism of these Boards as being an effort to bolster up capitalism, there is the important point that while one body of workers inside the Labour Party accept his view, another body of workers inside the Labour Party are actively pressing for the multiplication of such boards. Indeed, it was Mr. Herbert Morrison who, as Minister of Transport in the Labour Government, introduced the London Passenger Transport Bill.

By one of those curious coincidences that sometimes happen even in the most judiciously sub-edited Labour papers, Mr. Barnes' speech attacking Mr. Herbert Morrison’s London Passenger Transport Board was published in the Daily Herald immediately below the report of a speech by Mr. Morrison.

Edgar Hardcastle

Building trade’s decline. (1914)

From the September 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

A leading article with the above heading was published in the “Daily Chronicle” of Saturday, July 11th, 1914. This article is remarkable for the damaging information against the private ownership of the means of life, and for the “tender-heartedness” shown by this capitalist politician. Mr. Chiozza Money, M.P., the author of the article, has, as usual, condemned the economic and political state of the country, and switches the attention of working-class readers to Parliament—the saviour of the people—the place from which can issue the commands, the admonitions, the laws to make it so that all shall be well for the working class in the “better times” that are coming under capitalism.

Mr. Money says: “Between 1901 and 1911 an army of men passed out of the building trade in England and Wales, and that in spite of an increase in population of three and a half millions. Whereas in 1901, the population being 32,500,000, the Census showed 1,042,864 men employed in building and works of construction, in 1911, the population having advanced to 36,100,000, the number of persons employed in building and works of construction fell to 946,127. Three more years have elapsed, and in the interim, there is reason to fear, the number of persons employed in the industry has been stagnant or even subject to further decline. . The decline in employment is therefore a very serious thing for the nation, merely regarding the matter from the point of view of engaging our people in worthy occupations. When, however, we remember the nature of the industry concerned, we have to deplore in the figures referred to, not merely a decline in a noble employment, but a decline in the consumption of buildings, and especially of buildings in their aspect as the homes of our people.” Noble employment! Ye gods! So noble that the State has taken pity on those employed in the building trade to the extent of seven shillings unemployed benefit and ten shillings on sick ; so noble that they swarm like bees about a big job, and try to get the “glad eye” of the foreman ; so noble that when in work they have to speed up and compete one against the other—”Brothers” in the branch, and Brutes on the job.

We of the Socialist Party can tell where a great many of the builders’ “hands” have gone. Many have been forced to seek the shelter of the “Homes” provided for those broken on the wheel of industry—the workhouses ; many have “downed tools” for good, and walk the streets of “Old England” with “dull-eyed melancholly.” Hundreds have packed up and gone to distant lands with, the hope of getting “the staff of life” easier, and of securing a better prospect for their children. They have left this “tight little island,” blessed with hundreds of Acts of Parliament passed in the interest of the working class—so we have been told—left the land “blessed” with the history of “great men” who have looked after those who worked in “noble occupations.” “The Salvation Army” can account for some who have “got out and got under” ; in the workshops of the “Blood and Fire” brigade they have tasted the sweets of capitalism.

Mr. Chiozza Money has criticised the workings of capitalism, and we must try and “better the instruction.” Let us quote again. “It is fundamentally important that Britain should be rebuilt. It is by far the most important social question. The inside of a house matters much, and the outside of a house matters no less. Between their interior and their exterior aspects, buildings for an industrial nation become the framework of the lives of the majority of its people. They either let in or keep out the sun. They either form beautiful and healthy cities or environ town populations is ugliness and misery. They either make or mar our lives. Let no man imagine that by securing himself in a decent home he has rid his own person or his own family of the curse of bad housing. A house can never be an individual thing or a private thing. . . The private investor has failed and is failing to give the nation the houses which it needs. With the money which has been invested abroad in the last four years by British investors every slum in this country could have been wiped out, and when I say this I use the term ‘slum’ to include not merely the most squalid streets, but to cover about one-fifth of all the town dwellings of the country.”

What is the “remedy” of this capitalist M.P. ? It is to make it the duty of local authorities to “house their people well,” and to assist them with “supplies of cheap capital.” We can understand Mr. Money very well in his insidious way of keeping working-class attention still longer fixed on the lips and promises of the capitalist politicians. We understand from his wail that this social mess in the shape of “houses” is because of naughty capitalists ; much “good” will result when the “good” capitalists predominate. We, of the working class are according to this capitalist prize-fighter—the children of those who house us, of those who feed and clothe us, who pay us wages, and kill our brothers and sisters in Factory, Mill, and Mine, and fine themselves, through a manager, £24 for murdering over 400 miners in a pit in “gallant little Wales.”

Mr. Money wants our capitalist fathers to be more thoughtful for their children; but Mr. Money is in that section of capitalist politicians who raised the load line to suit the ship-owners; who ticketed and numbered the proletariat to suit the masters, and who have mucked about a “Home Rule Bill” for over 30 years while the workers have been stifled in slums—and polish their tools in case something turns up.

“Cheap Capital” to house the workers. Very well. The only way to attain this desired end of capitalist “goody goodies” is to exploit the working class more and more—and improved methods of hastening the wealth production under capitalism will swell the unemployed army, will crowd the workers in the slums, and make them fit instruments to produce wealth for “Cheap Capital.”

We, of the Socialist Party think that it matters everything to preach to the workers that they are wage-slaves; that their so-called decent homes hang together by but a slender thread ; the evolution of a rotten system of wealth production will scatter many home nests of those who think they are safe.

So, then, we are framed in by slums, by unemployed men, by starving children, by factory hells, by want of the necessaries of life in the midst of plenty. We want bread and it is difficult to get—but the steam plough is working. We want decent houses—but the workmen are not allowed to build. We want life, freedom, the obstacles hewn out of our path to get food, clothing, and shelter after the working of our brain and muscle—and some of greatest obstacles in the path of the toilers of the world are those who preach that we are “but little children weak” and they—the “great intellects” who will some day do us some good.

Look to Parliament and see there the agents of the capitalist class, who spin silky words about and around our social sores. When the delegates of the class-conscious workers sit in Parliaments of the World, the days of the “kind perishers” will be numbered.

S. W.

Socialism and the Housing Problem (1945)

From the August 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bomb Damage and The Housing Shortage

Several million houses have been damaged by bombs and rockets during the war. but the problem of slums and overcrowding did not begin with the war. There was vast overcrowding and housing shortage between the war, and before 1914. Under capitalism there has always been a housing shortage for the poor—but not for the rich. The Earl of Shaftesbury, nearly 100 years ago, was carrying on a campaign to “solve” the working-class housing problem. Speaking in the House of Lords in April, 1851, he gave figures about the deplorable housing conditions in London.

Starting in 1851, Acts of Parliament were passed and succeeding governments repeatedly inquired into the problem and promised to deal with it: but it has never been solved. A well-known housing authority, Mr. Harry Barnes, in his book, “Housing” stated that in 1911 he found “the housing position worse than at any time since 1801.”

Writing of the position in 1923. after the Great War, he said : —

“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.”

The governments went on promising to build houses, but still the problem was not solved. Sir E. Simon, former Lord Mayor of Manchester, and Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health, stated in 1931 that the shortage was getting worse.

“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 10 years ago.” (Letter to the Times February 12th, 1931.)

PIGS BETTER HOUSED THAN WORKERS

It was in 1936, before the bombing of the present war. that Sir Benjamin Dawson, Chairman of the Bradford Central District Conservative Association, declared that his pigs were better housed than some of the workers. He examined the houses in his constituency and declared :—

“When I had finished my tour, I felt thoroughly ashamed of my country, thoroughly ashamed of the National Government, and thoroughly ashamed of the Conservative Party.

“The pigs on my farm are better housed and fed than some of the people I saw that day.”

Make no mistake about it, none of the parties of capitalism (Tory, Liberal, Labour) can solve the housing problem of the workers

LIBERAL, TORY AND LABOUR PROMISES

Since 1851, when the first Housing Act was passed, many other Acts have been introduced by Liberal and Tory Governments and by the Labour Governments which were in office 1923-24 and again in 1929-31. None of these measures have done more than touch the surface of the problem. The workers’ housing problem is not due to shortage of building materials or shortage of building workers. In 1933, for example, a quarter of the building workers were out of work. The workers endure slum dwellings, overcrowded houses, houses badly equipped and unhealthy, because they are too poor to afford anything better. The housing problem is a poverty problem. The rich are not victims of the housing shortage. All through the years of insufficient accommodation for the workers, the rich have been able to afford their spacious and luxurious houses, often having a town house and a country house as well.

RENTS AND WAGES

There is much talk of building houses to be let at rents low enough for the workers to afford, though Mr. Charles Boot, President of the Federation of Master Builders, declared early this year that houses will never again be built at pre-war prices and that rents will go up (News-Chronicle, January 12th, 1945). Even if rents do not go up, but go down, the problem will still remain. Rents fifty years ago were much lower than they are now, but there was just the same overcrowding and slums. Under capitalism the pressure of unemployment enables employers to keep wages down to the amount just about sufficient for the workers to live on. If rents are reduced, wages will fall also and still the workers will be unable to afford decent and spacious accommodation; quite apart from their worsened position when unemployed.

PREFABRICATED HOUSES

One of the remedies now offered for the housing shortage is the building of small and cheap “prefabricated” dwellings—as a temporary measure. “Temporary” is likely to become permanent and it is only the workers who are to have the “benefits” of these houses. The rich will continue to get what they can afford to pay for, as soon as the wartime control over private building is relaxed.

SOCIALISM IS THE ONLY REMEDY

Under capitalism the best housing, like the best of everything, is within the reach only of the propertied class, the owners of the land, factories, railways, etc. The working class, who own little or nothing and have to live by selling their mental and physical energies to the employers for wages, will continue to live in poor houses, and suffer discomfort and ill-health through overcrowding. Only Socialism will remedy this by making the means of production and distribution the common property of the whole community. Only then will resources be made available for building decent accommodation for all. Houses will no longer be built for profit, but solely for use.

There is no other way of solving the housing problem.