children at the huge, showpiece Quarry Hill estate in Leeds were in danger of losing their three playgrounds unless vandals methodically destroying sets of swings were detected. ‘The police can’t be here all the time.’
The following June the subject arose on
Any Questions?
of the social status of public housing. ‘Of course I don’t think for a moment it’s degrading to live in a council house, obviously that goes without saying,’ declared the young, ambitious Labour MP Anthony Crosland. ‘But there certainly was a time obviously, twenty years ago, when it was considered degrading to live in a council house, to some extent.’ This was, he insisted with undisguised egalitarian passion, an issue of central importance:
Today the situation is much better, partly because council houses obviously are so improved in quality that it’s nonsense to say that they’re worse than other houses. They’re extremely good on the whole now; and partly also because council house estates are manned by a much wider social group than they used to be, I mean they’re much more widely drawn. Now I feel very strongly about this because I’m a Socialist and my definition of Socialism quite simply is a classless society – it’s a society in which people don’t think of themselves as belonging to the working class, or the middle class, or the upper class, or whatever class you like, they haven’t got that feeling. Now at the moment I think very strongly what still allows this sense of class to persist, isn’t so much income differences that people have, it’s differences in education and housing and general social and family background like that. And the most important thing that one could do to eliminate the sense of class in Britain today, isn’t now so much to tackle income differences – although that’s still important – as to tackle these sort of things like housing and education and to make certain – and this is the crux – that you can’t tell that a person belongs to this class, that class or the other class, by looking at the sort of house he lives in or by asking him what school he went to. And when we’ve got to that state of affairs we shall have a jolly good society . . . HEAR. HEAR. APPLAUSE.
The implacable fact remained, though, that type of housing and social class were inextricably linked. It was mainly the working class (though at this stage often the respectable, improving working class) that occupied council houses and flats, while owner-occupation was almost entirely a middle-class preserve. Also in 1952, a Gallup poll revealingly found that 65 per cent of the people interviewed, of whom 56 per cent were Labour voters, approved of the sale of council houses to tenants – a controversial policy being applied rather nervously and ineffectually by the new Tory government. ‘Socialist voters were not so wholeheartedly against the sale of council houses as Socialist councils were,’ a Ministry of Housing official reflected on the findings. Telling also, on that
Any Questions?
programme, was the contribution of the next panellist, the bluff, right-wing Wiltshire countryman Ralph Wightman, who deployed a sarcasm that, however unattractively, did its job in undercutting the indignant upper-middle-class product of Highgate and Oxford:
On that point of Tony Crosland’s I would suggest that they have made a completely new class, a superior class, living in council houses, they’re the only class in the community – the only class of tenants whose rents can be raised by their landlords. They’re the only class of tenant who can be turned out if they take a sub-tenant, if they don’t cut their front lawn in conformity with the Council’s instructions. LAUGHTER. They are a completely privileged class . . . LAUGHTER . . .14
‘Had party in the evening,’ recorded John McGarry, a 15-year-old schoolboy living in Bournemouth, on 8 January 1952. ‘Dorothy came, had super time. Dots really got me.
The following June the subject arose on
Any Questions?
of the social status of public housing. ‘Of course I don’t think for a moment it’s degrading to live in a council house, obviously that goes without saying,’ declared the young, ambitious Labour MP Anthony Crosland. ‘But there certainly was a time obviously, twenty years ago, when it was considered degrading to live in a council house, to some extent.’ This was, he insisted with undisguised egalitarian passion, an issue of central importance:
Today the situation is much better, partly because council houses obviously are so improved in quality that it’s nonsense to say that they’re worse than other houses. They’re extremely good on the whole now; and partly also because council house estates are manned by a much wider social group than they used to be, I mean they’re much more widely drawn. Now I feel very strongly about this because I’m a Socialist and my definition of Socialism quite simply is a classless society – it’s a society in which people don’t think of themselves as belonging to the working class, or the middle class, or the upper class, or whatever class you like, they haven’t got that feeling. Now at the moment I think very strongly what still allows this sense of class to persist, isn’t so much income differences that people have, it’s differences in education and housing and general social and family background like that. And the most important thing that one could do to eliminate the sense of class in Britain today, isn’t now so much to tackle income differences – although that’s still important – as to tackle these sort of things like housing and education and to make certain – and this is the crux – that you can’t tell that a person belongs to this class, that class or the other class, by looking at the sort of house he lives in or by asking him what school he went to. And when we’ve got to that state of affairs we shall have a jolly good society . . . HEAR. HEAR. APPLAUSE.
The implacable fact remained, though, that type of housing and social class were inextricably linked. It was mainly the working class (though at this stage often the respectable, improving working class) that occupied council houses and flats, while owner-occupation was almost entirely a middle-class preserve. Also in 1952, a Gallup poll revealingly found that 65 per cent of the people interviewed, of whom 56 per cent were Labour voters, approved of the sale of council houses to tenants – a controversial policy being applied rather nervously and ineffectually by the new Tory government. ‘Socialist voters were not so wholeheartedly against the sale of council houses as Socialist councils were,’ a Ministry of Housing official reflected on the findings. Telling also, on that
Any Questions?
programme, was the contribution of the next panellist, the bluff, right-wing Wiltshire countryman Ralph Wightman, who deployed a sarcasm that, however unattractively, did its job in undercutting the indignant upper-middle-class product of Highgate and Oxford:
On that point of Tony Crosland’s I would suggest that they have made a completely new class, a superior class, living in council houses, they’re the only class in the community – the only class of tenants whose rents can be raised by their landlords. They’re the only class of tenant who can be turned out if they take a sub-tenant, if they don’t cut their front lawn in conformity with the Council’s instructions. LAUGHTER. They are a completely privileged class . . . LAUGHTER . . .14
‘Had party in the evening,’ recorded John McGarry, a 15-year-old schoolboy living in Bournemouth, on 8 January 1952. ‘Dorothy came, had super time. Dots really got me.
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