Be economic boom since 1945 saw an increase the wages of large sections of the working ss. What it disguised was that in many areas the social services, in education and in health situation of the working class had got no ter. In fact in some areas it had got worse. bably the most obvious example of this is housing.
The situation in 1945 was extreme. Of the ½ million homes which had stood at the beging of the war, half a million were either comtely or partially destroyed, another 250,000 re severely damaged, and three and a quarter lion needed repair. Yet when the post-war bour government faced its first Balance of /ments crisis in 1948 housing was amongst : first things to be cut (from a programme of 0,000 to one of 200,000).? Throughout all • fiddles of the '50s and '60s the situation has t improved materially. In 1965 there were 13,500,000 houses which were either slums not worth repairing. 2 Even in relative terms the rest of Europe Britain's record is appalg. In 1965 6.9 houses were completed per 00 of the population compared to 7.6 in ance, 8.1 in Italy and 9.7 in West Germany.3 as been estimated that 500,000 houses per ar must be built simply to replace those coming unfit. But the highest figure that has en reached for slum clearance is just over 000.5 The last period of the Labour government in ice was actually marked by a decrease in use building-particularly council housing. real start in this direction was made in the st-devaluation cuts when the number of ancil houses to be built was cut by 15%. me idea of the cuts involved can be judged the figures for the following boroughs:
No. of houses built in: 1968 1969 wer Hamlets rking wham 1393 uthwark 3345 teshead 1317 lisend TOW orksop fine record for the last full year of Labour rernment!6 The housing conditions this added up to were palling. In 1968 for example there were 110 0,000 families waiting to be rehoused by the C and 45,000 in Birmingham.? In 1967 it s found that there were 1,700,000 houses fit for human habitation, of which 79 out of ry hundred lacked a wash basin, 77 out of ery hundred lacked an inside lavatory, and out of every hundred had no proper bath.® London there are 155,000 one-room useholds. Of these 84% have either no bath cnly a shared one, 80% share a lavatory, and % of these do not even have their own sink stove. It is undoubtedly the disgusting using conditions and the large rents that have be paid that are a contributory factor to the t that in 196848% of all British children fell ow the British Medical Association's ptimal" nutritional standards. 10 ERCROWDING e conditions needed to qualify for overwding are unbelievably barbaric. "Provided it each room is a minimum of 10ft by 10ftee good steps in each direction -the rules are follows: each room may have up to two officially overcrowded even if they are an elderly widow, her fifty-year-old daughter, and a grandson of twenty.
The type of conditions this produces for racketeering is of course fantastic, and, to put it in a form that will avoid libel, the role of the police is not all that could be desired. Similarly with magistrates. The maximum fine they can give for harrassment is now £750 but the average is only £16.12 The Milner Holland Report found that only in one quarter of cases where clearly illegal acts had been committed were the police successfully appealed to. 13 Here is a description of one such incident: "violence of this kind (for eviction) was expected by a family (which was under the protection of a tribunal) consisting of a married couple, three small children, and their grandmother. The landlord... had already carried out the same threat against another family in the house, with the help of two strong arm thugs. And he had done this on the day (it was the day he always collected rents) and at the same time that he had said he would. In order to prevent this happening twice, the police were informed and were all the more urgently asked for help because the mother of the family was a polio cripple. They said that they were extremely sorry but they could not afford the time or the men. The right thing would be for the family to telephone if help was actually needed. If they had no telephone there would be a box not far away. The landlord's threat was duly carried out. The children were dragged from their beds, the father knocked down, and their mother and grandmother dumped on the pavement."14 FURNISHED ACCOMMODATION There is least protection where conditions are worst. For example, 75% of all furnished accommodation is in houses built before 1914 and in furnished accommodation there is virtually no protection for tenants. 15 directly attributable to capitalists and not merely the system they represent. To take just one staggering fact, the amount of private investment in housing actually went down by 14% between 1964 and 1969. But the capitalist system fouls up every part of housing.
If a person buys his own house, then at least 100% profit in interest will be made by the firm lending the money. On Council housing, the vast bulk of rent payments also go to money lenders. For the GLC in 1969-70 for example it was estimated that 18/3 out of every El income from rents will go to money lenders. " Under the Labour government the proportion going in this way went up steadily from 79% of all income from rents to 89% of all such income. The biggest racket is of course privately rented housing. To begin with, private landlords charge the most. For example, on a house worth £3,750, the average rent charged by a private landlord is three times as much as that charged by a local authority and half as much again as it would cost the occupier to buy the house himself. 18 The housing conditions in privately rented houses are also the worst. An official survey in 1967 found that 35% of all privatelyrented housing was unfit. 19 In the light of all these features of the situation, it is no surprise that for many people the housing situation has now become a nightmare, and that whereas for the average family expenditure on basics such as food, heating, etc. is going down as a proportion of the family budget, for housing it is going up. 20 In many places the situation has become extreme. For example, the average rent for furnished lettings in London is 25% of the national average wage. In other words, many people are payin than a quarter of their income just to k roof over their heads. The Tories annot plans to end the control of all homes w the situation still worse. It will affect 1 tenants or roughly 4,500,000 people.?
All these facts show two things. Firs show that even in the most favourable stances-that of a 20-year economic bo capitalism cannot solve the problem of elementary social requirements such as adequate housing. Secondly the situatic figures reveal means that we must expe increasing struggle on the housing quest problem of housing will become even m pressing for the working class as the gor policies make it harder to make relative gains on the wages front. So far most ca around housing have been dominated b reformist politics of the C.P. But there inside the British working class moveme another tradition-that of the great Glas rent strike of the First World War. It is t tradition and that of using industrial act defence of housing conditions that revol naries must revive in the coming period J. Marshall NOTES 1. H. Rose: The Housing Problem-2. Kincaid 3. Ibid-4. The Times 24.10.63 cited in A. Ha Tenants in Danger-5. Kincaid op cit-6. Not on the Rents 1970-7. Rose op cit p. 20 & 27 8. Prest: A Manual of Applied Economics-9. cit p. 35-10. Ibid p. 36-11. Ibid p. 38-12. T 12.3.71-13. Rose op cit p. 43-14. A. Harvey p. 101-15. Holman: Socially deprived familie Britain-16. Rose op cit p. 37-17. Not a Penr Rents 1970-18. Holman op cit-19. Prest op Between 1959 and 1969 it went up from 9.49 12.2%. The price of housing in the same perio up by 65%21. Tribune 12.3.71-22. Ibid.
NO
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The Bill..