SPGB Snippets: Flats and ghosts (2026)

From the Socialist Party of Great Britain website

February 11, 2026

The i paper (5 February) ran a story about a 70-year-old man who is living in a house with five others, the only way he can survive on his pension. Far more people over 65 now share homes than a decade ago.

Also many properties advertised on flat-sharing sites have no living room, as turning a lounge into a bedroom means more income for the landlord, so the tenants each live and sleep in just one room. Yet there are many ‘ghost homes’ in Britain, expensive new flats that remain empty because few people can afford to buy them.

This is the reality when housing is for profit, not to meet human need.

Letter: . . . And another view (1976)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

. . .  And another view 

Socialists have always attributed slums to capitalism, yet I have yet to hear them protest against the influx of immigrants into the slums. Have you? This shows how much they care about them, but of course they all have to toe the line like a regiment of soldiers. If all socialists were compelled to put up with immigrants in their houses they would call it downright dictatorship and that is what compulsory integration is nothing less. The landlords and property tycoons want the so-called socialists to tell the workers immigrants do no harm over here and while these money-grabbers are getting fatter the slum-dweller is stuck on a waiting list for a house because the capitalist classes with the co-operation of so-called socialists won’t let them have the houses that they can afford to rent because they are occupied by immigrants.

These immigrants have no sense of social responsibility, they come here knowing we are overcrowded, they drive up the rents of millions of workers, they occupy houses badly needed by our own people, they plant themselves in the slums where they are not wanted, they don’t know where they are wanted, and they are too lazy to fight for better conditions in their own country, and most people know what is meant by their country, but they have been taught that they have a right to stay here. I believe the slum-dweller should enjoy the same privilege as the rest of the community enjoy that is to keep immigrants out of their abodes, but that would be too democratic for integrationists.

Our “Moral Uplifters” tell us we should treat coloured immigrants with respect and decency. Should we really! Indeed! Do these black and white immigrants treat our own people with respect and decency? Do they not plant themselves in the very houses that are already overcrowded with previous immigrants and where they have no state protection from immigrants? It is true they are not wanted anywhere else but that is a sound reason for repatriation not to foist them onto the slum-dweller he has quite enough to put up with, without immigrants.

I have done my best to give a clear and logical answer to your article in the S.S. However if you hear of a more logical explanation for slums I do hope you will let me know.

John Binder

London W.4.

Reply:

Your letter in full would take up four pages of the Socialist Standard. Since it is largely repetitive, we have published a representative extract. We must add that, though you speak of “a clear and logical answer’’ to our article on immigration, most of your letter attacks Aunt Sallies in the form of views not stated by us at all. It also contains a fiction, repeated several times, that people are being forced to have immigrants living in their homes with them. This is not possible under existing legislation.

The single point you make that is relevant to our article is your contention about slums, and over this you present a series of striking self-contradictions. You complain of slums and say (1) that the slums are “lumbered with” immigrants, (2) that “without these immigrants the houses they are occupying would be available to our own people”. As far as we can see, this means that you want “our own people” to have the slums to themselves. You acknowledge that pre-war slums were not caused by immigration, but say “this does not invalidate the argument that immigrants are the cause of crowded slums”. That is not an argument: it is an assertion knowingly made against the facts.

However, what you miss altogether is consideration of the nature of slums. Slums are cheap housing. They are places unfit for habitation that are inhabited nevertheless. Why? Because the inhabitants cannot afford to live anywhere else. Our statement that capitalism causes slums refers to this and nothing else; their existence as dwellings is a direct consequence of working-class poverty. You do not explain how this would be changed by repatriating immigrants, which you advocate. Your assertion that “landlords and property tycoons” are getting “fatter than ever” through immigration is also mistaken. In recent years the number of dwellings let out by private individuals and companies has steadily declined because of the low return from it. This has nothing to do with immigration in any case, but is the result of housing legislation.

We therefore find your letter to be ill-informed, lacking argument, and founded on beliefs similar to those of the Hindu caste system.

Editors.

Jottings. (1909)

The Jottings Column from the August 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

Owing to the agreement between the L. & N.W. and Midland railway companies, there results a reduction in the wages bill where that agreement is in operation.

* * *

We are often told by the advocates of railway nationalisation that the shorter hours of labour which would result from State ownership would mean an increase of workers employed. The details of the agreement between the above named companies have been issued as a White Paper, and certain statements therein disagree with the pro-nationalisers’ contentions.

* * *

The Midland Company ran to Rugby over a branch line and the L. & N.W. ran to Leicester over a branch line. The L. & N.W. now work the Rugby section and the Midland the Leicester section. The result is a considerable reduction in the number of working hours. The employees now work but 3½ or four days per week. If this is the result of but a sectional inter-working, what would be the result upon employment of a State effort at organising traffic ?

* * *

It must not be forgotten that “nationalisation” presupposes the capitalist State still existent, the dividend mongers still in power, and a proletariat still unable, because of its lack of class-consciousness, to assume control of ALL the industries in the interest of the community. Now, as “nationalisation” of industries is carried out, necessarily, by and in the interest of the exploiting class, it would certainly involve a greater displacement of labour and a smaller wages bill, which in turn would mean decreased purchasing power on the part of the workers in most branches of industry. Of course, if the “nationalisers” can show that the exploiting class will pay a double or treble wages bill to that now paid for the same traffic receipts, then my contention falls to the ground.

* * *

I fear we Socialists will have to admit the truth of our opponents contention that “Socialism will abolish the home.” It were folly to deny that we mean to abolish such homes as are described below.

* * *

“At a Huddersfield inquest yesterday on a baby that was said to have been suffocated, it was stated that the child’s father and mother and three children all slept in one bed in a one-roomed house. Natural causes was the verdict.” Manchester Guardian, 13.7.09.

* * *

Natural causes, indeed ! To say so is to say that the conditions are natural. 0f course; the capitalist-minded jury could return no other verdict. To say that the death was “unnatural” at once lays a charge at someone’s door. The question then arising, followed to the solution, turns the inquest into an inquest on the capitalist system. It is better to resort to the old lie “natural causes.”

JAYBEE.

Blogger's Note:

My educated guess is that 'JAYBEE.' was the pen-name for Manchester Branch's Jim Brough, who had written other Jottings columns under his own name.

Housing in London (1965)

From the May 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The root cause of the housing problem in big cities like London is the capitalist system under which housing accommodation is bought and sold. For many years now the housing market has been subject to various controls but neither these, nor council houses, nor subsidies, alter the basic characteristic of housing under capitalism.

Once a city is established as such, the economics of capitalism ensure that the growth of demand for workers assumes a momentum of its own, for the great concentration of people in a city provides a vast market for so-called consumer goods and services. Even in times of depression the drift to the cities continues. But it is in times of full employment that the housing problem becomes acute because in such conditions the rate of growth of employment usually exceeds the rate of growth of housing. Inevitably this creates problems. This basically is what is happening in London today. As the Milner Holland Report puts it:

If the growth of housing does not match the growth o( employment there will be trouble of some kind.

Precisely, and they might have added that, given this basic situation, any measures applied to deal with it can only be palliatives. The Report is in fact a very useful document for exposing the futility of reformism on the housing question, though of course it was not meant to be.

Before going on to look into this, however, it will be useful first to clear up any misunderstanding that the words landlord and rent may create. The source of all Rent, Interest and Profit is the unpaid labour of the working class, using the term Rent to refer to the share of the proceeds of working class exploitation which those who own the land are able to extract from the capitalist class. It does not refer to house-rent which is a different thing altogether. House-rent is not a share of the unpaid labour of the working class but it is a price; in fact the price paid for accommodation.

In the 19th century it was correct to speak of a landlord class distinct and separate from the industrial capitalist class, and indeed between these two classes there was a struggle over taxation and the control of the state. This landlord class was composed of landowners pure and simple. Today the term is also used to refer to those who are engaged in the business of selling accommodation. These two types of landlord should not.be confused; the Labour Party and other demagogues frequently attack “landlords” just as, long ago, John Stuart Mill or Lloyd George tried to dupe the workers into doing the dirty work for the capitalist class in dealing with their enemies, the landowners.

As a matter of fact most of the so-called landlords today are not landowners at all. It is a fact that among the groups which the notorious Rachman swindled were those who owned the land on which his houses stood. The basic point here is this: the worker is exploited at the point of production. He is not exploited anywhere else—and no more by the private landlord from whom he purchases accommodation than by the shopkeeper from whom he purchases the other things he needs. He can be swindled by such people—and the Milner Holland Report does expose some swindles by landlords—but this is a different matter altogether and besides is not confined to working class buyers. The worker is exploited as a producer, not as a buyer.

Further, many members of the working class are themselves technically landlords as the table reproduced from the Report shows.

As can be seen the vast majority of private landlords in London only have up to two or three tenants while sixty per cent have only one tenant. These figures speak for themselves. They suggest that many private landlords are members of the working class letting a room or two to supplement their income from working—a point which should be borne in mind when the demagogues shout about “private landlordism”. It means that measures taken against private landlords in general, while perhaps bettering the position of some members of the working class, hit those others who supplement their wages in this way. This, incidentally, confirms that it is impossible to unite the working class on any reform issue because reform movements are not based on the class interests of the working class as exploited producers. Housing reform movements are no exception.

The Table also shows inequality in the ownership of housing accommodation. This inequality is not as great as might be expected. Another Table in the Report shows that “only about six per cent of all dwellings in Greater London are financed by capital drawn directly from the capital market.” This figure also speaks for itself: investment in private houses for rent is unprofitable. This has various results. The big capitalists stay clear of housing, which is thus left to small capitalists and people like Rachman. The Labour Party went to town over Rachman but they overlooked the fact that he was the product of the policies, such as Rent Control, they had been advocating against private landlords. It was these measures which contributed in no small way to making investment in private housing for rent unprofitable—thus opening the way for the Rachmans!

When the Rent Act of 1957 was being discussed Socialists were invited to oppose it,—in effect to support Rent Control. Besides pointing out that at best Rent Control could only be a palliative, we drew attention to the fact that there was evidence to show that Rent Control gave rise to its own problems, in particular to the neglect and decay of privately owned and rented houses, thus worsening conditions for some workers. In other words it made the situation worse for some in improving it for others. A typical reform. Rent Control is in fact a classic case of the futility of reformism, of running fast to get nowhere. The Milner Holland Report contains many similar examples of much-touted reforms and their miserable results.

On compulsory purchase of sweating landlords by local authorities:

Some authorities expressed the view when giving evidence to us, that compulsory purchase was no way of dealing with this problem. They pointed out that even if a compulsory purchase order was confirmed the owner received the full market value of his house as compensation, inflated in some degree by the very high rents which he was charging. With the proceeds of the compulsory sale he was then able to buy another house and charge the same high rents, thus defeating the whole purpose of the exercise.

Of local authorities refusing to use statutory powers to improve conditions:

. . . statutory powers, though in theory adequate to deal with overcrowding and the worst effects of multiple occupation, are virtually unused in some districts where the problem is most acute. This may be due to the fear that any action taken is likely to result in evictions to relieve overcrowding, to obviate the need for extra facilities, to make room for extra facilities, or simply as a reprisal against tenants whose complaints have prompted action by the local authority. The use of the available powers in a situation of acute shortage therefore tends to improve the situation in terms of dwellings but may shift the people suffering bad conditions into equally unsuitable accommodation elsewhere, or may even make them homeless . . . The choice is between two evils: on the one hand, allowing over-occupation to continue, and on the ether, insisting on improvements which at best cause distress, and at worst result in homelessness.

Of slum clearance making the situation worse:

The progress of slum clearance intensifies the competition for living space, since it must cater for numbers of households substantially larger than the number of dwellings to be demolished, and it may also encourage a further subdivision of existing households into smaller and more numerous units.

Other examples of the futility of reformism which can be gleaned from the Report are: of slum clearance getting nowhere as slums appear faster than they are cleared; of tenants' legal rights as mere scraps of paper for fear of eviction; of concentration on building new houses leading to the neglect of old homes; of tenants refusing improvements because they could not afford the higher rents which would result.

In conditions of shortage it is always the supplier, in this case the private landlord; who has the upper hand. What is happening in London is that in the competition for housing accommodation those who can't pay get the worse. Some don't get anything. At present there are 1,500 homeless families, some 7,000 people, in London and their numbers are growing. These are the lower-paid section of the working class, who have to put up with really bad housing conditions.

It seems likely that the next reform in this field will be a measure to try to improve the position of this section by giving them greater security of tenure or subsidising special housing for them. No doubt this reform too will have its catch: some other section of the working class will find itself worse off. To quote again the passage from the Report: “if the growth of housing docs not match the growth of employment there will be trouble of some kind". The only question is of what kind, and for which section of the working class. The point is, given the basic situation some people must suffer. The politicians are merely arguing about who this should be.

Overcrowding, high rents, homelessness intimidation and the other ills from which many workers suffer are a direct result of fact that demand for accommodation exceeds the supply. In large cities like London this must happen and is likely to be permanent. The Report itself says as much: “the housing problems confronting great cities . . . are of a long term if not permanent character”. The Report also, very appropriately, draws attention to the fact that this problem is not new. They quote from a similar report made by Charles Booth in 1901. Of course since then some housing conditions have improved in many respects but as the Report points out the problem “remains fundamentally the same."

Adam Buick

Sharing our rising prosperity (1962)

From the December 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

A recent issue of the West Middlesex Gazette front-paged the story of the plight of Indian immigrants in Southall, West London. Unable on arrival in this country to compete with the native-born workers for housing, the Indians are forced to spend a sardine-like existence in houses owned by their fellow countrymen.

These landlords are determined to make something out of their investment and by living themselves in one or two rooms they can let off the rest, with complete disregard for comfort or sanitation. The small exploiter is often the more ruthless, for his field of operation and expansion is so much more limited. The wretched tenants are charged sums ranging from £4 for one room with little or no furniture. In some cases 15 persons are using a kitchen or 20 using one W.C. Housing laws are disregarded, no rent books are issued and attempts to protest are met by threats, or expulsion. The tenants often unorganised and being coloured and poor have only a remote chance of obtaining accommodation elsewhere. For this reason, the newspaper concerned was careful to suppress the names and addresses of the lodgers they had interviewed.

Local officials, councillors and M.P’s. all express concern and promise to look into the matter. When immigrants flock into areas already suffering from inadequate housing for the working class, one would have thought that local dignitaries must at least have some idea about where they are going to live and under what conditions.

Industries and transport then needed certain types of labour (generally for the lower paid jobs) and politicians will seldom seriously interfere with the urgent needs of the capitalist class. After all, the working class elected them to office to run capitalism, whether they call themselves Tory or Labour.

Local councils will run into a problem if they force coloured landlords to unload their over crowded tenants. Where can they go? A strong prejudice prevents most white landlords from having them, and so does their low wage earning capacity. It would be a brave council unconcerned about the threat of not being re-elected, that placed coloured persons at the head of an ever-lengthening housing list. While such sores of human tragedies can be eased somewhat, there is a very real danger that coloured groups will remain in their plight. Capitalism pulls down and rebuilds the Gorbals and recreates at the same time a 20th century brown skinned Seven Dials in Southall and elsewhere.

Statements made by George Pargiter, Labour M.P. for Southall, reflect the mental floundering of our left wing planners. "We must deport the landlords," he says. But what if the landlords are native or have become naturalised? Property ownership has inflicted some shocking human misery on the needy, and nationality has little or nothing to do with it. Mr. Pargiter condemned the Tory government's Immigration Act; he now advocates that everyone, black or white, should be discouraged from settling in Southall. He need have no worry about keeping out one group in society; the capitalist class, irrespective of their colour, by virtue of their wealth have a strong objection to eating with a dustbin under the dining table or having their penthouse overshadowed by a gas works.

"The new towns must take more people” points out Southall’s M.P. Alas for our Labour planners, the mills of capitalism are now throwing up the evil of unemployment in such new towns as Stevenage and newcomers are not likely to be very welcome there.

People live in bad surroundings because their wages do not enable them to get anything better. Being without property, most people have to sell their energies to an employer in order to live. The wage we receive for that is basically determined by the social cost of producing our skill and knowledge. No matter how hard people may work, their wages remain low because it costs little to reproduce their labour power.

The working class as a whole are poor, especially when their incomes are compared with the amount of wealth they as a class produce. Within the wages system some sections of the working class are forced down to the point of degradation. We have the technical means to produce fine homes for everyone, but capitalist society will not readily do so unless a profit can be made from them. The higher the prospective profit the greater the incentive to production.

The threat of unemployment is always with us and with it can come more serious clashes between black and white, British and foreigners, over precious jobs. The maniacal theories of Hitler, despised and crushed only yesterday, can be revived again in certain conditions; and those conditions are always latent in capitalism. It is not yet too late for workers to start to overthrow the false conceptions that crowd into their minds.

T. Law

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

An Englishman’s Home! (1932)

From the November 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Ministry of Health report of the census taken last year contains information of the abominable housing conditions suffered by numbers of London workers: —

“Despite a general improvement there were still 2,086 families of from six to ten persons occupying a single room when the census was taken.”—News Chronicle, June 24th

50 years Ago: Cathy – no home to go to (2020)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Cathy – shall we ever forget – was the fair, slim, lovely young girl whose family and life were wrecked simply because they could not find a home. They went from one hopeless situation to another, from verminous slum to wet tent to reception centre. She was parted from her husband and then from the last of her children. In the end she stood by the roadside with the passing lamps of the lorries playing across her face. She was going home, back the way she had come.

The play was an instant success, owing nothing to the fact that it was the work of an ex-Etonian. There were one or two rather half-hearted attempts to debunk it but the author had got in first; all the incidents in the play, it was announced at the beginning, had happened, in London, during the previous year. This was reality. Shocked, everyone agreed; something must be done about the homeless.

That was several years ago. Since then, there have been countless promises and schemes to deal with the problem. Statistics have been computed, weighted, published. Speeches galore have been made and applauded. And last month the latest figures came out, in the annual report of the grandly titled Department of Health and Social Security. (…) The report said that in 1969 20,820 people lived in emergency accommodation. In 1967 the figure was 16,176. which means that during the past two years the numbers of homeless people have risen by one third. (…)

The same month these figures were announced, saw the launch of Shelter, heralded with a procession of grim statistics: three million families in Britain in slums, near slums or in grossly overcrowded conditions; in Glasgow 100,000 unfit houses, in Liverpool 73,733; a waiting list in London of 150,000 families, in Birmingham 38,000. (…)

Poverty is ineradicable under capitalism but the system’s leaders can never admit their impotence to deal with it. They must go on. with their promises and their assertions and their programmes. Meanwhile, the harsh reality remains.

(Socialist Standard, November 1970)

The morality of slums (1987)

From the September 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

It has become fashionable of late to look back with a certain nostalgia to an age of "Victorian values". In fact, it was an age of often heartless cruelty and indifference. When it did not patronise the poor with a sickly sentimentality, it abandoned them to the cold calculus of market forces.

Underlying these attitudes there is a recurring theme: the sense of apprehension at the prospect of social disorder. Indeed, change was. to a great extent, induced by the need to evolve more effective strategies to defuse that threat as old solutions proved increasingly ineffective.

Before 1850 the threat of social disorder appeared to centre on the industrial north, not metropolitan London. The Industrial Revolution had given rise to large-scale factory production and the very methods of combination that industrialisation had promoted served in a sense to make the working class more amenable to control. It created disciplined structures through which conflict could be mediated at the same time as it enabled workers to mitigate some of the harsher consequences of industrialisation by means of mutual aid.

But just as the industrialised north seemed to project a more subdued image, so the Metropolis itself began to take on a more threatening prospect. The concern to which this gave rise needs to be set in the context of mid-Victorian optimism about the inexorable march of progress which coloured contemporary perceptions of poverty. It came to be seen as a residual feature of a bygone age. The poor, it was believed, owed their poverty to the subjective defects in their personality, rather than the structural inadequacies of the market economy. The solution to poverty, therefore, was to socialise the poor into an appropriate morality that emphasised thrift and hard work.

It was. therefore, with mounting alarm that the Victorian ruling class viewed what appeared to be a large and growing number of the underprivileged — especially the "casual poor" — slipping beyond its control. How had this situation come about?

Prior to the Industrial Revolution London contained a wide range of handicraft industries producing high value consumer goods. In addition, there was a significant semi-processing and capital goods sector. Relatively crude and costly methods of transportation ensured that proximity to the market was a vital factor and London was favoured precisely because it was such a sizeable market. As well as that it was a major port and seat of government.

The Industrial Revolution significantly altered the economic base of London. Firstly, it greatly reduced its attraction as a centre for semi-processing and capital goods production. Its distance from sources of coal and iron put it at a competitive disadvantage because of the cost of transporting these materials. In addition, London suffered from an acute shortage of space — and thus, high land values — which inhibited the growth of large-scale steam-powered factory production.

Secondly, London's role as an administrative. commercial and trading centre was considerably enhanced by the Industrial Revolution. The construction of an elaborate railway network radiating outward from the city sucked in people and products in ever greater quantities, magnifying London's importance as a market at the same time as it facilitated the relocation of low-value bulk production industries away from the city. The acquisition of colonies abroad emphasised the role of London as a port through which manufactures were exported and raw materials were imported.

Casual labour

It is against this background that the problem of casual labour in London emerged. Casual labour is closely associated with irregularity of production, with seasonality.

One way in which seasonality is manifested is in variation in demand for certain products and demand for consumer goods is inherently more volatile than that for capital goods. This poses a dilemma for the manufacturers. Production can be maintained at a steady pace but this would entail some stockpiling. Alternatively, production can be closely tailored to meet demand by reducing capital costs to a minimum and organising output on the basis of shorter production runs.

By and large, it was this latter option that London manufacturers were forced to accept. Consumer goods industries that were able to remain in London, despite intensive competition for space, were nevertheless prevented by that very competition from introducing large-scale factory-based methods of production, and the result was a particular method of production known as "sweating".

The substitution of skilled labour by sweated labour had the advantage for manufacturers of reducing labour costs. Moreover, the invention of relatively cheap hand-driven technology such as the sewing machine removed the need to employ skilled labour. Production could be concentrated in small workshops employing casual labour, thus reducing rental overheads as well. In the case of some industries, namely the clothing industry, this process was taken a stage further with work being carried out on a contract basis from the homes of the casually employed.

Another way in which seasonality manifested itself was in variation in supply. This was mainly a climatic phenomenon. Harsh winters, for example, could severely disrupt the activities of the port and the delivery of such commodities as grain and Baltic timber. This problem was largely overcome by the construction of steamships from the 1880s onwards. The building trade was also affected. By slowing down or bringing to a complete standstill all building work, bad weather not only aggravated the housing problem but caused extra distress in the form of unemployment.

The general increase in unemployment during the winter months, in conjunction with the inevitable rise in the price of fuel and foodstuffs, sharply intensified the plight of the poor. Moreover, superimposed on these annual variations was the more long-term cyclical pattern of trade itself affecting the wider economy. When a trade slump coincided with a bad winter the consequences could be catastrophic. Such a coincidence usually occasioned serious unrest, the most dramatic example of this being the 1886 Riot.

To sum up. the proportion of the workforce casually employed in Victorian London was substantial and this can be largely attributed to the fact that so much of London's economic base was subject to seasonal factors. Seasonality necessitated a large reserve army of workers which greatly undermined the bargaining position of the casually employed. Though poverty was by no means confined to casual labour, casual labour, without doubt, represented the sharp edge of poverty.

Most mid-Victorian social commentators, however, would not have concurred with such an analysis. Conventional belief affirmed, as has been stated, that poverty was simply the outward manifestation of certain moral failings. Yet such failings were themselves seen as the product of a bad environment. Above all. it was the environment of the slum that insidiously sapped the moral strength of an individual.

Victorian slums

Slum conditions existed in many parts of Victorian London. Some were reputedly the haunts of the "dangerous classes", the criminal elements in society. Law enforcement in most of these areas was minimal. To a large extent they existed as isolated islands beyond the reach of the authorities, seedbeds of vice that affronted the stern display of public morality. It was for these reasons that they were regarded as a social threat, symbolically reinforced by the festering, insanitary conditions that encouraged the spread of disease. That threat invited resolute action in the form of street clearances. Yet no sooner had a slum been pulled down than another seemed to materialise in the vicinity. It was obvious that the problem was not being solved but merely displaced from one area to another.

Casual labour did not encourage geographical mobility. Workers had to be constantly on the look-out for work which, in turn, depended on an intimate knowledge of the vicinity. Also, low and irregular wages ensured that the only mode of transport available to the casual poor was walking. This in itself removed the possibility of commuting from the suburbs. Home work, mainly by married women, put them at the mercy of contractors and compelled them to remain in the locality at the same time as it denied them the opportunity to search for work elsewhere. The system of credit used also restricted geographical mobility. It was common practice for goods to be purchased on credit during the winter and the arrears to be paid off in the more prosperous summer months. However, this arrangement depended on a degree of personal trust which meant being known in the area. Moreover, in such areas there was to be found a strong working-class culture that made for a sense of cohesion in the face of otherwise unendurable surroundings. This met with the strong disapproval of the Victorian authorities: the mores of the working class often clashed with the need for a disciplined workforce.

Working class education

This conflict was particularly apparent in the area of education. There was, before the advent of state schools and co-existing with state-aided church schools, an extensive underground network of tiny cottage schools autonomously run by the working class for the education of children. Even a kitchen might serve as a classroom and instruction was highly informal. Victorian commentators, however, were appalled by this apparent laxity. They were also utterly bemused by the fact that parents preferred by and large to send their children to such schools rather than to the local church school which charged a comparable fee.

Yet this incomprehension stemmed from an ideological perspective that refused to acknowledge the realities the working class had to contend with. Thus one of the reasons working people chose to send their children to a cottage school was the flexibility it offered. It was attuned to the rhythm of life among the casual poor.

At the beginning of the Victorian era. central London was still largely residential in character. Suburbanisation had begun in the previous century but was confined to a wealthy elite, the "carriage folk". The growth of London in the course of the nineteenth century. created and sharply intensified a central contradiction.

On the one hand, that growth both stimulated. and was stimulated by. the outward expansion of certain activities that necessitated the conversion of residential land for other purposes. On the other, the nature of their employment and the lack of access to affordable and reliable transport from the suburbs, exerted a centripetal force on casual workers — and even most skilled workers at the time — compelling them to remain within the central area. The result was a dramatic rise in levels of overcrowding right up to and beyond the 1880s when cheaper forms of mass transport became available, facilitating a spurt of working class suburbanisation.

Several factors were responsible for the demolition of housing and the resultant overcrowding. in the central area. One of these were street clearances. Another was the construction of the railway network. Likewise, the extension of the docks, particularly before 1850, was responsible for the displacement of many thousands of workers. So too was the construction of offices and workshops.

Class divisions

All these factors — street clearances, the development of the docks and the railways and the construction of offices and workshops — indicative of London's changing economic base, profoundly altered the physical structure of the city. The pattern that emerged was an increasingly polarised one. Unlike the Georgian period when rich and poor often lived in the same locality, even the same building, class divisions to an ever greater extent coincided with geographical divisions. By the mid-Victorian period this process was virtually complete. Rich and poor lived in largely separate worlds cut off from one another by a no-man's land of commercial development.

This gave rise to growing disquiet among certain sections of the Victorian elite for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was felt that the quality of administration in the poorer districts was bound to deteriorate on account of the departure of the "professional classes" to the suburbs. This would result in a more lax application of the law particularly relating to the eradication of insanitary conditions.

Secondly, the segregation of the classes completely unsettled the delicate balance between Poor Law relief and charity. Under the Poor Law. each district had its own Poor Law union responsible for the relief of the poor in that district. But the displacement of the poor from the richer vestries lightened the rate burden there as it added to the burden on poorer vestries. Indeed, this provided a further incentive for vestries to embark on a programme of slum clearance. But such a state of affairs was effectively terminated by the Metropolitan Poor Act of 1867 which spread the burden of poor relief across the metropolis as a whole. Meanwhile there was a great increase in the flow of charity to the poorer districts to compensate for the additional rate burden they had to bear.

This in fact provided a third reason for the sense of disquiet. Such charity was distributed in a wholly haphazard fashion. This, according to its critics, made the system extremely vulnerable to abuse. The vast wealth of London exerted an irresistible attraction to vagrants from far and wide. The vagrant was seen as a social parasite, corrupted by a life on charity and able to manipulate. with the practised ease of a professional. the gullible giver of alms. He set a bad example to the "honest poor" and they would find it difficult not to follow that example. Whatever other motives there may have been for charity it is clear that a major consideration was to defuse unrest. The segregation of the rich and poor was perceived by the former as a loss of control over the latter. Indiscriminate charity failed to restore this control because it depersonalised the act of giving.

Philanthropy of 5 per cent

It was precisely in order to systematise charitable relief, to circumvent the alleged machinations of the "clever pauper", that the Society for Organising Charitable Relief and Repressing Mendicity was founded in 1869 — otherwise known as the Charity Organisation Society (COS). Together with the new Metropolitan-wide Poor Law Board these bodies represented a much more centralised approach to the relief of the poor, an approach foisted on social reformers by the geographical separation of the classes. By putting charity on a "sound basis", it was hoped that the poor would come to gratefully accept their "dependence" on the rich. It was a hope that hardly squared with another Victorian ideology entertained — that workers should raise themselves up by their own bootstraps, become as bourgeois as the bourgeoisie itself.

Alongside such efforts to halt the "demoralisation of the poor", various attempts were made to improve the housing conditions they suffered.The "philanthropy at five per cent" movement represented by organisations such as the Peabody Trust was one such attempt. It led to the construction of "Model Dwellings" which were intended to house a substantial number of the poor. In fact, it failed miserably in this. By 1873. a mere 27,000 had been housed in these Model Dwellings. More importantly those who were housed were not the casual poor but the better off sections of the working class. Construction costs and the need to maintain a margin of profit, determined the level of rent which proved way beyond what the casual poor could afford.

Moreover, regulations laid down by the Peabody Trust such as an obligation on tenants to keep up with their payments or face eviction, made no allowance for the economic circumstances of the casual poor. In addition, at a time when occupancy rates were steadily rising throughout the poorer districts of London, residents were not permitted to take in lodgers — a traditional working class method of supplementing income.

Another method by which it was hoped to ameliorate the housing conditions of the poor was sanitary legislation. One example of this was the 1868 Torrens Act which enabled a vestry, on the advice of a medical officer. to declare a house unfit and order its owner to carry out the necessary repairs or have it demolished. In fact many vestries preferred by and large not to exercise such powers. Indeed, had they done so this would have aggravated housing conditions considerably by increasing local overcrowding in the remaining households.

Another piece of legislation, the 1875 Cross Act, also attempted to tackle the problem of housing. However the Act was based on the assumption that skilled workers would vacate the inner areas and move to the suburbs while the casual poor would take their place — the "levelling up theory". In the event the hopes of the reformers proved premature. Commuting from the periphery was still beyond the reach of most artisans. Of those who did relocate, many encountered intractable difficulties that forced them to return: the lack of work for spouses, unreliable trains and higher food prices. This highlighted another and much more disturbing development in the eyes of the Victorian ruling class: the gradual blurring of distinctions between skilled artisans and the casual poor.

Henry Mayhew, writing in the 1850s. observed that "in passing from the skilled operative of the West-end to the unskilled workman of the Eastern quarter of London, the moral and intellectual change is so great that it seems as if we were in a new land and among another race". It was the perception of such differences that helped to ease the passing of the 1867 Reform Bill amid the tensions of the 1860s whereby the franchise was extended to skilled workers in the towns. This was seen to provide a bulwark against social chaos. And in the 1870s it seemed as if the problem of the casual poor had been lessened by the beneficial influences of philanthropy and private enterprise.

By the 1880s. however, it was becoming apparent that something had gone badly wrong. The problem of the casual poor had not disappeared. On the contrary, as a Royal Commission on Housing revealed, it was much larger than most had expected and was steadily getting worse. Charles Booth, sceptical at first of the claims of Hyndman, the SDF leader, of widespread poverty, accepted his challenge to investigate the matter for himself and found that this was indeed the case.

Even more alarmingly, the artisans were being increasingly subjected to the same insanitary overcrowded conditions with which the casual poor had to contend, which had had such a "demoralising effect upon their character". Moreover, with the onset of a trade slump, artisans too were being made unemployed in increasing numbers, were being pushed downwards into the ranks of the casual poor. As an employer remarked to a COS Committee on Exceptional Distress: "We have always found as to the artisan, that if he happens to be out of work for three months, he is never the same man again. He becomes demoralised".

Changing perceptions

The 1880s. however, was more than just a decade scarred by economic crisis. It was a period of structural readjustment in ruling class ideology driven by the need to avert "revolution". It was a period when the increasing challenge of "collectivist" ideas could only be met by evolving a more collectivist approach to social problems, by moving away from the free market doctrines of the mid-Victorian period towards state welfare. The economic crisis of the 1880s passed and in the 1890s the tempo of working class suburbanisation began to quicken. Improved methods of mass transportation and subsidised travel began to have an effect, gradually relieving the population pressures on the inner areas.

But the perception of the casual poor also changed. Urban existence had long been seen as inimical to health and morals while the enfeeblement of the urban poor was contrasted with the robustness of the agricultural labourer. Now agricultural depression threatened to depopulate the countryside and flood the towns with yet more of the nation's poor. The theory of the "survival of the fittest" which seemed to legitimise the weeding out of the less fortunate, was now suspended by the advances in medical science and even more importantly by the improvement in sanitary conditions about which the "privileged classes" had professed such concern. The fear of national “degeneration" to which this gave rise increasingly informed the thoughts of politicians and economists against a background of Britain's declining industrial supremacy. Such a fear came to provide a rationalisation for a more statist approach to the solution of social problems, an approach that the very development of capitalism had made functionally imperative.

In Victorian London the perception of the casual poor was systematically distorted by an ideology that took little account of their needs in order to justify the need for them as cheap labour. In modern London, the "casual poor" may not be as proportionately significant as a century ago. But poverty is relative and it takes different forms. Its reality cannot be adequately encompassed by statistics or sanitised by the rhetorical claim that we have never had it so good.

Robin Cox

Homes for wage slaves (1963)

From the September 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Working class housing is a sore that has festered on the body of capitalism right from the beginning. Workers all over the world live in squalid and inferior conditions.

Following the lines of class division, every city and town has its contrasts. Spacious, comfortable houses for those who can afford them, and cramped and shoddy ones for those who cannot. Let’s take one example to show the poverty and insecurity that lies behind the so-called housing problem. When the L.C.C. announced recently that the sum of £3 million had been set aside for loans of up to £5,000 with no deposits, they were swamped with thousands of enquiries. This paltry sum might house something like a thousand working class families. On the other hand, one building, the new Hilton Hotel, cost £8 million; there were no workers enquiring for rooms at up to £40r per day.

While massive blocks of office buildings are appearing everywhere, people walk the streets of London looking for shelter or join those staying in rest centres. Such is the order of priorities under capitalism.

Labour-Liberal and Conservative governments in succession have promised to deal with the problem, but have left it much the same as when they first took office. Workers have been fed on such promises as “ homes for heroes,” only to find they need to be heroes to live in some of the homes. Because of the low standards of working class dwellings, made necessary by the need to keep them within rents workers can afford, their new homes soon begin to look drab and to blend with the old eyesores around them. The best that capitalism’s parties can do is to try to outbid one another in promising to build more cheap and nasty dwellings for workers. But, even then, the rate at which old property deteriorates and needs to be pulled down, is higher than the rate of building.

When the Tories came back in 1951, there was a lot of talk about a “ property owning democracy,” but housing, like the rest of wealth under capitalism, is produced for profit. Six years of Labour Government and nearly 30 years of Labour control on the L.C.C., have done nothing to solve the problem. In 1934, the housing problem and slum clearing was the major issue at County Hall. It still is today; as in all other fields, the reformists are ignorant of the true nature of the forces against which they pit their puny efforts. How many more years of capitalism run by the Labour Party must we endure before workers realise that reformism has no answer?

In an article in the old Sunday Pictorial last October there was a lot of factual information about the squalor and decay that millions of workers live in. We were told of a family of four living in an old car parked m a London street. We were given the contrast of London’s most luxurious penthouse at a rent of £12,500 a year, and of places in Earls Court for £9,500. There are plenty of flats at £60 a week, but few at 60s. The article goes on to enlighten us with the fact that in Manchester there are 68,000 slums and 13,677 people on the waiting list. In Leeds, where the Housing Minister is an M.P., there are 11,000 slums and 18,071 on the waiting list, while in Glasgow a thousand homes are closed each year by the city medical officer; 600 more are so rotten, they fall down unaided. There are 77,000 people on the Glasgow waiting list. This sort of article is fairly common in newspapers, but the press is just as helpless as the politicians when it comes to effective answers. This is what Mr. Michael Stewart, a Labour Party housing spokesman, wants, “Restore rent control; keep a check, or if necessary ban, new office building, and build more homes for rent—at least 300,000 a year.” Rent control did nothing to alleviate the present slum conditions and acted as a weight to keep wages down. Surely the Labour Party knows that office building is more profitable than building homes for workers who can only afford low rents. The Sunday Pictorial should know all about the benefits of new office buildings, the newspaper is printed in one of them. As for 300,000 houses a year, this is the exact figure the Tories promised in 1951. To carry on building places cheaply for workers only perpetuates the problem.

The housing problem is merely one symptom of a sickness that runs right through capitalism, the sickness of riches and poverty. None of the politicians who come vote-catching to the workers ever promise to build them mansions with expensive chandeliers and swimming pools. The life of yachts and sun-following is deemed to be unfit for the class that produces it all. When we arc told that 15 million people have no baths in their homes, swimming pools sound as though they belong to another world and in a way they do—the world of the capitalist.

When wars come along and workers are invited to fight for “their” country, they would do well to look at some of the places they live in and ask themselves what country they own. The Church of England, which always blesses workers in uniform, is one of Britain’s biggest landowners and has £69,000,000 invested in property, not to mention £132,000,000 in stocks and shares.

What can be said for a social system that cannot even provide adequate shelter for the overwhelming majority of its citizens? While capitalism remains, the squalor that it breeds will be with us. Frederick Engels nearly a hundred years ago pointed out that all oppressed classes in history have been poorly housed and that the solution is to abolish the present form of society.

Socialism will lay the foundation for the final removal of the housing problem. Although there will be an ugly aftermath left over from capitalism, when the means of production are held in common and the madness of profit-motivation swept away, we can then set about the task of gearing production to human needs, which means housing of the finest possible standard will be produced, in abundance, to be freely used and enjoyed.

Harry Baldwin

Building profits versus building homes (Part 2) (1984)

From the Winter 1984 issue of the World Socialist

Link to Part 1.

Housing reform and the profit motive

Housing is probably the one basic need which, were it properly satisfied, would be the most conducive to good emotional and mental health. It is, surely, very pleasant and soothing to relax among pleasant and agreeable surroundings.

The fact remains that such a happy situation only applies to the small minority of the population who have the means to buy beautiful homes. The vast majority suffer a housing problem of one sort or another, whether it be living in slums or near slums or being plagued by the fears and insecurities caused by trying to pay off a mortgage.

Governments do initiate various housing reforms to try to solve these problems, but these always fail. Why is failure so total, especially when the materials, know-how and labour power exist to adequately deal with the problem of providing decent housing for all?

Is it because of stupid or corrupt politicians? Many people believe so and view a particular government's shortcomings in the light of the various abilities and characters of its leading members. But in actual fact these factors play a very subsidiary part and make no fundamental difference. Some politicians and civil servants, assigned various tasks, may be very well-meaning and in some respects efficient, but in the final analysis fail because they cannot succeed.

Under capitalism all production, government-initiated or not, is with a view to profit, not the satisfaction of human needs, material and recreational. Since the profit motive is the very life-blood of the capitalist system, it logically follows that government housing programs will also be introduced with a view to providing a profit for some capitalist group or other. Whether or not the politicians involved be good guys or con-artists is immaterial, because the financial institutions putting up the money for these reforms want a return (sometimes a large one) for their investment.

Urban ruin for profit

Never could the profit motive in a housing reform be so blatantly obvious as in the US Government's National Housing Act of 1968. This Act merged the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Many new laws were introduced as part of this act and the whole thing was launched in an avalanche of hype and ballyhoo to the effect that the government would assist every poor working stiff to buy and easily pay for a really nice house. Things didn't exactly work out like this.

FHA began as a product of the 1930s depression. People could not then get mortgages because financial institutions were afraid to loan money after tens of thousands of homes foreclosed when the buyers had no money to continue paying for them. The purpose of FHA was to be a government insurance company. It didn't make mortgages or loan money for them, but it insured the finance company that loaned the money against losing it if the tenants (one can hardly call them house-owners) defaulted. Part of the interest payments on the loan went to paying the insurance for these cases of default.

One of the 1968 housing reforms allowed the FHA to branch out from mortgage insurance into subsidising interest payments on mortgages. Ostensibly this was to benefit the poorer home-buyer but in practice, due to the generous depreciation terms offered to encourage private investment in housing, it became a subsidy to well-to-do taxpayers looking for a tax loss to offset against their other income. This meant that many small time real-estate companies, loan sharks and other sundry tricksters which are part of capitalist society could enter into get-rich-quick schemes at the expense of the home-buyer. Admittedly we are dealing with illegal as well as legal capitalists here but often the dividing line is blurred, particularly where FHA-HUD was concerned.

A typical situation that occurred under FHA-HUD was when a real-estate operator would buy a property for $6,000, put in $1,000 worth of repairs and then sell it for $10,000, loaning this to the buyer against a mortgage on the property. The speculator would then sell the mortgage to an investor looking for a loss-making asset. As the investor wished to record a loss his interest was to let the property fall into decay. The fall guy in this was of course the home-buyer who found himself on an endless trip of payments for a slum house.

The "success" of FHA-HUD in this respect has been well described by Brian Bayer in his Cities Destroyed for Cash (published by Fallet, Chicago, in 1973). Basing himself on observations made on his travels through such major cities as Detroit, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Saint Louis as well as smaller cities like Seattle and Lubbock, Texas, he described a typical situation:

Half and more of the houses on any given block are boarded up with plywood squares. The gutters hang, rain washes through holes in the roof. Ruined by the elements and gutted by thieves, the houses seem to be disintegrating like the stumps of rotted trees. Fires at night cremate the remains. The next day the family moves out and another house is abandoned and eventually destroyed.

In other words, the FHA-HUD program was not screwed up by ignorance, stupidity and carelessness, or just not caring. It was virtually a deliberate program of urban ruin for profit.

Shady practices

One may wonder why people didn't just rent instead of buy (or attempting to), the answer being that the government told them they would help and that they were encouraged by real-estate and financial companies who said it would be easy.

The methods of these companies weren't exactly the kind that would be openly recommended by the Chamber of Commerce. To establish credit for the potential house-buyer they would get blanks of income tax forms, make up false information and submit this as part of the application for a mortgage. Under FHA-HUD regulations a certain amount of money was required to be on hand, therefore these companies would deposit their own funds in the name of the purchaser (the bigger the mortgage the more proportionately the deposit); so when the check was made the purchaser qualified. The information in the tax forms showed up when there was a credit check. So with a good income, good credit and funds in the bank, the purchaser got a house, and of course the funds were removed from the bank as soon as he did.

Though in many cases people were taken advantage of by their naivety and gullibility, and in many other instances home-buyers knowingly entered into shady deals, all of this is part of the normal functioning (if one can use the word normal) of the capitalist system, and prevails in every country.

It may sound surprising that anyone was able to make much money considering the defaults, but the premise was simply to get rich quick. When one buyer defaulted the real-estate operator could always sell quickly to another at a higher price. This could continue until they found a taxpayer looking for a tax loss to hold the baby; by which time they'd made a killing. The end result was a worse slum than before. Parts of the Bronx, Brooklyn, Harlem and East Detroit are evidence of this.

It should be clear to anyone who studies the reasons things occur in society that all investment, hence production, is with a view to profit, and that the need for profit is so acute in such a competitive jungle of a society as capitalism that it doesn't matter how a business makes a profit, as long as it makes one.

It is pointless, and one would be on a totally wrong premise, to moralise. It is not a question of right or wrong, moral or immoral, good or bad, but of the need to understand the economic workings of capitalism and how it cannot function in the interest of the working class—and what socialism is and how it will solve the major social problems.

When Socialism is established

When socialism is established it will be necessary to set up councils at local, regional and global levels for the administration of social affairs in every aspect of productive activity. Also there will have to be councils whose function will be to co-ordinate the work of the various specific councils. The majority of the people in a local area will make decisions affecting that area specifically, the people in a certain region will make decisions for that region and everyone will make global decisions.

This will mean that everyone must have access to vast amounts of knowledge, concerning what each area produces, where it is stored, how what is needed can be got from one place and moved to another. All this knowledge can be stored in computers which can be hooked up to the TV system, so that people can receive whatever knowledge they wish by pushing a button.

When it comes to voting on specific issues people need go no further than their living room. Even today TV stations invite viewers to phone in their verdicts on alternative programs. The results, which depend on what number is dialled, are quickly computer translated and announced in only a few minutes. If this is possible under capitalism, one can imagine the tremendous advantages that can be made in a socialist society when people will be able to utilise the technology built up under capitalism as well as improve on it.

People could, if they wanted to, check and see how a certain project was progressing by tuning into a computerised-TV-News media, so that whatever was happening could be under the constant scrutiny of society as a whole.

First priorities for housing

When socialism is established it will first have two important projects concerning housing. One will be to find homes for the millions throughout the world who have none. The other will be to clear the world of the horrible slums and shanty towns in which so many of its population live. Therefore an enormous world-wide reconstruction project would begin which would involve the democratic participation of nearly everyone, in one way or another.

It would have to be decided, what region and what local area requires houses, how many, what type or style, what materials they will be made from and how much of each is required. Obviously, with this will go the many and various decisions concerning town planning, roads, recreational facilities, shopping centres (though we may not call it shopping then). Though the work involved may require many people, they will be forthcoming from all the occupations made redundant by the overthrow of capitalism, such as production for war and anything concerning finance, advertising, etc. Schools for training and re-training people in the various skills will be set up, and as far as the productive work goes they will have the machinery capitalism has created plus whatever advances on this the first members of socialist society will make.

People with specific skills related to housing, or those who wish to learn them, can give their names and lists of skills to an administrative office similar to present man-power or labour exchange offices and can be notified where their skills can be used.

In the longer run: an end to urban crowding

After socialism has solved the initial task of clearing away capitalism's rubble in every respect (feeding, clothing, housing, educating, clearing away pollution, curing curable diseases, etc), then it will be apparent that the change in society will be more than just production for use instead of profit, but will entail vast changes from top to bottom in every part of society. Nowhere will this be apparent more than over how we group in communities. Cities as we know them today will probably no longer exist as people won't want or need to be condensed in a particular area.

When starvation has been stopped and when every human being has a roof over their head, then socialist society can turn to satisfying people's needs in a more sophisticated way, and this will certainly be the case in housing.

Whenever there is a need for a new type of house, a town or a building for the use of the community, architects will submit plans and models which can be voted on by the community as a whole in a given area. Though there may be competition between the various architects and planners, it will be from the premise of who can best beautify the locality. One can be certain that there will be new types of dwellings. Along with the disappearance of cities as we know them will also go the high-rises, those up-turned shoe-boxes where people are crammed in like sardines, to be replaced with buildings where people can at least live like humans.

With whatever changes in the family structure the new social conditions will create will also come a need for new types of homes; there may be a type of communal home. And it may be that the design of a building will be determined by its functions, its given physical environment and the materials to be used.

Whatever the case, people will be able to choose their home to suit their.own particular needs concerning physical comfort and recreational requirements.

Who would not want such a society? So why not organise politically "for its speedy establishment?

Ray Rawlings (Canada)