12
At 5.45am on the morning of 16 May 1968, Ivy Hodge, the tenant of 90 Ronan Point, Freemasons Road, London E16, went to make a cup of tea in her kitchen. As she tried to light her gas stove an explosion occurred. It blew her across the room, and started a partial collapse of one corner of the 22-floor block. Fortunately, the building had just been completed and was not fully occupied, but 4 people were killed and 17 injured. Visually, the damage was both spectacular and terrifying and news of the disaster was quickly spread by radio, TV and newspaper. Images of the block, with one corner ripped out, flashed around the world. Psychologically, it was an enormously significant event and was quickly presented as a wake-up call to a country that had built so much modern housing – a sign that something, somewhere, was awry. In the years that followed, that interpretation was accepted by a great many people, and “Ronan Point” (the name itself being sufficient to conjure up both the image of the collapse, and the dreadful context in which it supposedly occurred) has passed into history as a prime example of a serious mistake made during the post-1945 period of high state spending. The block was referred to by many in unflattering terms, from the highest level down to popular historians like Alan and Veronica Palmer who note in The Pimlico Chronology of British History (1995) “May 1968 Tower Block municipal housing discredited when new high-rise flats at Ronan Point, Newham, collapsed after a gas explosion”.
Ronan Point was one of nine such blocks built along Freemasons Road from the mid-1960s. The area had previously been occupied by traditional streets of terraced houses, dating from the 1890s, housing a population that worked in the Royal Victoria and Albert Docks together with the adjoining industrial, commercial and transport businesses across Canning Town, Custom House and North Woolwich. Heavily damaged by aerial bombing between 1940 and 1944, many of the original houses were demolished after 1945 and replaced by prefabs until, in 1960, a comprehensive scheme to redevelop the area was agreed. Not all of this was high-rise: there were low-rise terraces of houses, smallish blocks of flats and maisonettes, and shops and garages too. The design wasn’t particularly distinguished and was a modification (by Taylor Woodrow, the contractor) of the Larsen-Nielsen system developed in Denmark in 1948, and was one of many such adopted across Europe after 1945 to provide millions of urgently needed homes. Unlike traditional brick buildings, or even buildings based around a strong steel or concrete frame, Larsen-Nielsen involved constructing a terrace, block or tower from large concrete panels, cast in a factory, that were bolted together on site. The system was perfectly safe for 4 floors, and not recommended without modifications for buildings above 8 floors. As altered by Taylor Woodrow, Ronan Point was nearly three times as high.(1)
Via James Callaghan, Home Secretary, the government responded to the events of 16 May 1968 by arranging an enquiry, and announcing, through the Ministry of Housing in August, that it would “discourage” the building of any more tower blocks. This immediately struck a discordant note with many architects. Among these was Erno Goldfinger, at that point designing Trellick Tower for the GLC, who stated he was “appalled” by a “ridiculous attitude which will put us back 30 years”. The report from Callaghan’s enquiry arrived in November after it had deliberated for slightly less than six months. Produced by Hugh Griffiths QC, Sir Alfred Pugsley and Sir Owen Saunders, its findings were announced to Parliament by Lord Kennet on 6 November 1968: “The Tribunal find that this behaviour of the building was inherent in its design and was not due to faulty workmanship”. In other words, the large panel system was wrong from the start and the Ronan Point collapse was nothing to do with whether the block had been properly built. Rather curiously, the findings then went on to say that buildings of this type above 6 floors should be strengthened to make them safe, and that the use of gas for cooking and heating in such schemes should be phased out. By which they appeared to be admitting that large panel systems below 6 floors were fine (as Larsen-Nielsen had always stated) and that the practice, in the UK, of incoming tenants bringing their own, often elderly, gas cookers with them into new flats in high-rise buildings was not very safe.(2)
Suitably strengthened, Ronan Point survived and became fully tenanted. Today, one is struck at how insular the 1968 enquiry was. Had it looked abroad, say to Denmark, it would have found no problems with the Larsen-Nielsen system, which continues to function there, and elsewhere, to this day.(3) Equally, it was never clear how thorough any official discouragement of new tower blocks would be, and criticism of this type certainly didn’t apply to the City of London’s Barbican Estate. In truth, such was the impact of Ronan Point in popular consciousness, it probably didn’t need to be. After 1970, most local authority architects opted for lower rise developments of a type that responded to the expectations of tenants. And tenants, in keeping with many politicians and opinion-formers, continued to have preferences that Osborn, Howard, Morris, Ruskin and many others would have endorsed: in an ideal world a house with a garden was better than a flat in the sky. Consequently, however much the local authority tried to “normalise” and improve Ronan Point, neither it, nor its sister blocks, became popular. In the mid-1980s, faced with high maintenance costs, resident demands and doubts about how resistant they might be to a serious fire, the London Borough of Newham decided to demolish them.
This was not arranged as a spectacular fun-for-all-the-family “blow down”. Instead, the blocks were dismantled panel by panel and the quality of the workmanship examined. When this was done, cracks were found in the concrete that had been used for their construction and they were shown, in some cases, to be kept together by the weight of the panels pressing down, and across, on each other. Bolts and joints specified in the drawings had been left out by Taylor Woodrow. Not a great deal resulted from this. Given the deaths of four residents in 1986 one might have expected a police investigation, followed by arrests, court appearances and prison sentences. There was no appetite for this at official levels in the UK in 1968. Nobody at Taylor Woodrow was prosecuted or imprisoned. No one lost their pension. Instead, the site of each of the tower blocks was replaced by small terraces of “English vernacular” houses, often arranged at right angles, Radburn-style. They survive to this day. As do the original medium-rise blocks and terraces that accompanied Ronan Point, albeit massively depleted in numbers (as social housing) by post-1980 right-to-buy purchases. The lack of action in trying to establish effectively the cause of the Ronan Point tragedy, and ensure that justice was done is striking. But perhaps not surprising. Construction News noted, for instance, on 7 December 1990 that “Taylor Woodrow tops the league in Conservative Party donations with £170,000 a year, according to figures released this week by the Labour Research Department”.(4) In fact, Taylor Woodrow, which first came to prominence developing London suburbs during the long building boom in the 1930s, had long been significant sponsors of the Conservative Party, along with many other house-builders. The idea that anyone in the Thatcher government, in 1986-1987, would have pushed for action against them, on an historic case, was extremely unlikely.
If the wheels of justice were permanently jammed on Ronan Point, they moved with somewhat greater speed when dealing with the business affairs of T Dan Smith. In a case strung out across nearly four years – and one that the state pursued with some tenacity – the former Leader of Newcastle City Council was charged with bribery in January 1970, acquitted in July 1971, arrested and charged with corruption in October 1973 and, after pleading guilty, sentenced to six years imprisonment in 1974. The allegations against him related to his connections to John Poulson, who ran a major architectural practice,(5) and Bovis, the building contractors owned by Sir Keith Joseph’s family. These arose out of the nexus between development, house-building and politics – at both local and national level – that had arisen during the long post-1945 period of high spending on public housing and civic development. The overwhelming majority of local authorities, local councillors, planners and architects were honest and won contracts openly and fairly. But there were exceptions, and John Poulson was one of them.
Poulson started down the road that led to imprisonment in 1958 when his friend Herbert Butcher, National Liberal and Conservative MP for Holland and Boston, advised him to use lobbyists to get business. Lobbying was legal, albeit somewhat novel in the 1950s, and its effectiveness depended on the contacts available to whoever was doing it. In this respect, Butcher was lacking. By the 1950s the National Liberal group of MPs had been almost wholly subsumed within the Conservative Party and they had few members at local level who could open the appropriate doors. Fortunately, Bovis, who worked closely with Poulson’s firm, had noted the enthusiasm displayed by T Dan Smith for major construction projects and recommended that he join Poulson as a lobbyist. He was appointed as such in February 1962, and his extensive local government connections were immediately put to use on Poulson’s behalf.(6) A key figure in the Poulson-Smith network was Alderman Cunningham, a major player in trade union and local government circles across the North East. Cunningham held positions on a number of quangos and was subsequently judged to have improperly helped steer contracts in Poulson’s direction. In fact, Poulson’s firm designed an entire housing estate in Felling (Cunningham’s home town) which Bovis built: Crowhall Tower and its surrounding maisonette blocks, all of which utilised the same Larsen-Neilsen system that was used at Ronan Point.(7) Construction of this began in 1966, the same year that Reginald Maudling MP, previously Chancellor of the Exchequer, accepted a directorship in Poulson’s company.
The idea that there was something murky going on in local government, principally in “the north”, seems to have taken root in public consciousness circa 1970, after the Ronan Point collapse.(8) And, in truth, Poulson routinely used bribery to win contracts. The extent of this became clear in early 1972 when, after Poulson had filed for bankruptcy, official hearings took place into how he had conducted his company’s affairs.(9) In July that year Maudling, now Home Secretary with responsibility for the Police, resigned as Poulson’s intricate web of dealings with local politicians, civil servants, lobbyists and MPs came into focus. Poulson was prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned, and Smith and Cunningham were dragged down in his wake. No legal proceedings were ever taken against Maudling, Joseph or any of Poulson’s other significant political contacts.(10)
Given the shift in public attitudes toward modernist architecture, town centre redevelopment and high-rise residential schemes that occurred as a result of the coverage of both Ronan Point and the lengthy proceedings against Smith, Poulson and Cunningham, it is worth pointing out what type of buildings Poulson and his practice produced. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s they turned out libraries, rebuilt railway stations, swimming pools, hospitals, housing estates, office blocks, hotels and shopping centres. Some lasted, some were demolished. None was particularly outstanding and a few exhibited maintenance issues from early on in their existence. But most did what they were intended to do for a reasonable period of time, and some survive to this day. In short, his output was typical of the period.
The issue with Poulson was not specifically what he was developing (though there are many who excoriate what he erected, and prefer the buildings he replaced) but how he obtained contracts, and to a lesser degree, given how local authorities and similar organisations made decisions then, how much input local people had into such proposals. This was a logical point of view, but such things do not always prevail. By 1970, there was an audience for an alternative to state-funded full-on modernism and the media duly provided it. On television John Betjeman, by now a notable campaigner against demolition, made an early impact with John Betjeman’s London (1967) before triumphing with Metroland (1973). This explored the evolution of London’s outer suburbs and, in its own way, endorsed the type of popular low-density development – almost all of which was for private sale, to respectable middle-class buyers – that had been carried out by the Metropolitan Railway in the early years of the century. Betjeman was urbane, witty and poetic in his choice of language and music. For those wanting a more denunciatory tone, Ian Nairn provided it via his TV series Nairn at Large (1969), Nairn’s Journeys (1971) and Nairn Across Britain (1972). In these extended travelogues, Nairn, often motoring to and from his destinations in a Morris Minor, frequently displays a curmudgeonly tone not always apparent in his writings.(11) The apogee of anti-developer feeling, though, was surely the 1973 paperback book Goodbye London.(12) Written by Christopher Booker and Candida Lycett Green (Betjeman’s daughter), both of whom were contributors to Private Eye magazine, this listed virtually every significant building in London that was either abandoned, empty or threatened with demolition. Developers were named, with Seifert cast as a major villain. Illustrated with photographs of the main perpetrators (presumably so that campaigners and activists could recognise and accost them in the street) it also commented on their background and/or ethnicity: Sir Max Rayne (“son of Polish immigrant in rag trade”), Joe Levy (“son of a bookmaker”), C H Elsom (“son of Russian-Jewish tailor”). Some of the concerns raised by Booker and Lycett Green were reasonable, but the overall tone of the book was not, and it veered into unpleasant territory.(13)
Nor was this type of anti-modernist/anti-development sentiment restricted to middle-class sections of the media. The 1970s was notably a time when newspaper reports about council estates, and anything newsworthy that occurred on them, began to concentrate on their supposed failings. A depressing liturgy began to emerge, based on broken lifts that stank of urine, burnt-out cars that never got removed, vandalised entry doors, graffiti, broken glass and gangs that loitered… threatening the law-abiding and terrified tenants who were usually quoted (though usually not named) as stating that they couldn’t wait to move out. The fact that most people didn’t live in tower blocks, and that most council estates were well-managed low-rise developments was never mentioned, and it didn’t help that this imagery matched much of the landscape portrayed in Stanley Kubrick’s version of A Clockwork Orange. Filmed in 1970 and 1971, this was his follow-up to the hugely successful, and influential 2001: A Space Odyssey. It featured key scenes shot at the then brand-new Thamesmead South Housing Estate, showing Alex and his gang in action in a gleaming, modern, concrete environment. A grim – and brilliant – cocktail of sex and violence, A Clockwork Orange was eventually withdrawn from distribution by Kubrick in 1973 in the midst of a sustained campaign to have it banned led by various local authorities, moralising activists and MPs.
The dramatic opportunities that the new urban terrain provided were also seized on by JG Ballard in his definitive trilogy of novels, Crash (1973), Concrete Island (1974) and High Rise (1975). The first of these was about how moral values and personal behaviour declined in a society where the motor car is allowed free rein. The second takes place on a battered, overgrown and demolished piece of miscellaneous land, surrounded by new urban motorways, a sort of inner-city atoll on which the survivor of a car crash finds himself marooned without prospect of escape.(14) The third is set in a massive Goldfinger- or Seifert-style residential block, an immense vertical utopia lovingly planned by a messianic architect in which everything that can go wrong, does go wrong. It ends with a brutal civil war breaking out amongst class-based groups of residents. Ironically, no one was more suburban than Ballard, who lived in Shepperton, Middlesex. His books, though, should not be seen as fantasies, but rather as careful observations of emerging modern trends, that drew from the same material that inspired Kubrick and Nairn.
The truth was that unashamed modernism was fading by the 1970s, and if architects wanted to press forward in that style, they increasingly needed to justify themselves. In 1970, the BBC came looking for Alison and Peter Smithson, showcasing them in a 30-minute documentary, The Smithsons on Housing.(15) Filmed when Robin Hood Gardens, their only housing estate, was under construction, the tone here is defensive and both are quick to stress how adventurous the GLC are when commissioning work, and how much they regret the levels of vandalism they see around them in London. (Mentioning in passing how little the UK is like Europe, where vandalism is much less of a problem). Above all they explain the rationale for Robin Hood Gardens: separating pedestrians, particularly children, from traffic whilst providing spacious, high-quality homes. It’s all very logical, but the fact that this now required explanation is indicative of the changing times.
The Smithsons on Housing was directed by the experimental novelist BS Johnson, one of a number of TV productions he did at this time, and he seems an appropriate choice to record this for posterity. After its completion, the design by the Smithsons quickly became the butt of criticism. The extensive walkways that linked the flats had many blind spots, encouraging antisocial and even criminal activity, and the level of maintenance required to keep the fabric of the building in good order was higher than predicted. There is much validity in these claims and it was clearly a mistake by the Smithsons, given the UK’s climate, to use so much unweathered concrete in the estate’s construction. Poplar was not the south of France. (The south of France features in their film as something they were trying to emulate). By 1970, many architects building similar schemes were airing their concerns about resident security within a block, given how large individual buildings were becoming and how many people might be circulating, or loitering, within them. Trellick Tower, for instance, was intended by Goldfinger to have a concierge system but none was installed as the GLC did not wish to pay for such a measure.(16) Any block of that size in Europe would have one, and today many in the UK do too. This should also have been considered for Robin Hood Gardens, if not by the architects, then by the client. And if mounting maintenance costs in later years were an issue, the Smithsons, to be fair, could not have foreseen the spending cuts that would fall on local government, and housing, after 1979. Watching The Smithsons on Housing today, it is odd (and sad) to see a project like Robin Hood Gardens being explained, justified, and then built, on screen, with the Smithsons looking as they narrate their vision like avant-garde visitors from a future that never materialised.(17)
For all its anti-modernism, Goodbye London fails to mention either Trellick Tower or Robin Hood Gardens, though it is rather sniffy about the role (and power) of the GLC. In this it was following an emerging trend, already noted in the playing out of the Ronan Point disaster and the Poulson scandal: blame was now being pushed onto local councils and/or their architects. Both were deemed to be out of touch with what people really wanted and meddling in things they didn’t fully understand. It was a point of view Howard and Osborn would have appreciated.
* * * * * *
For the moment, despite these warning signals, the new town programme continued to expand. During the Wilson and Heath years another batch were designated: Milton Keynes; Newtown, Powys; and Ballymena (all 1967); Northampton; Peterborough; and Warrington (1968); Londonderry (1969); and finally the rather vaguely named Central Lancashire (1970) notable for being the largest and based on a combination of Preston, Leyland and Chorley. The expansion into Northern Ireland, an area with much poor housing, was of note. More importantly it was clear that government planners were abandoning Howard’s purist vision of the stand-alone, built-from-scratch, low-density city surrounded by a wide belt of surrounding countryside. The proposals for Northampton, Peterborough, Warrington and Central Lancashire were all based around existing, long-established settlements and consequently somewhat easier (and cheaper) to plan and build.
The one that wasn’t, Milton Keynes, would turn out to be easily the most Americanised development ever undertaken in the UK. Plans unveiled for it in March 1970, showed a city built along the same US grid system that Howard had observed in Chicago 100 years earlier, with the caveat that absent the vast number of high-rise buildings characteristic of Chicago, this was more akin to Los Angeles, Buckinghamshire. Free and unimpeded circulation of motor vehicles was prioritised, whilst a railway station, finally agreed in 1978, took until 1982 to arrive. Early proposals for a water bus service to London, along the Grand Union Canal, were dropped and a proposed monorail system – once again the transport of the future, albeit one that never quite arrives – was quickly abandoned.(18) But, even if it were the butt of many jibes, Milton Keynes, which enjoyed easy access (for car owners) to the M1, was successful, and popular with its residents.(19) Major employers, led by the Open University, relocated there and its population had reached 76,000 by 1976, passing 100,000 eight years later. It continues to grow today. Above all, and contrary to the ethos that dominated UK political discourse after 1979, Milton Keynes owed its success almost entirely to state planning, and an abundance of state funding. It could never have been built by Howard, given his rejection of this model, and if attempted today by the private sector would require either similar amounts of support, or comparable subsidies – possibly the same sort of exemption from taxes granted to the developers of Canary Wharf in the 1980s.
Originally, the intention had been that Milton Keynes should be even bigger, with a brand-new international airport, the largest ever built in the UK, sited ten miles south at Cublington. This was proposed by the Roskill Commission, which deliberated between 1968 and 1970 and issued its findings in January 1971. Alas, its findings were not unanimous: one member, Sir Colin Buchanan, issued a minority report, suggesting the airport be built instead at Foulness, an island in the outer Thames estuary, and the government eventually opted for this, via the Maplin Development Act (1973).(20) Nor was this intended to be solely an airport. The very pinnacle of state planning, it was to include the largest container port in Europe, an oil terminal and a new town for up to 600,000 people. The development would be connected to the rest of the UK via high-speed rail and motorway links. In 1973-1974, trial foundations were built. But the Labour Party was opposed to the scheme, and their Shadow Spokesman on the Environment, Anthony Crosland MP, had already declared the project a “mad plan for Heathograd in South-east Essex”. In February 1974 when Heath failed to win an election and was replaced as Prime Minister by Wilson, a review was announced. Maplin/Foulness was duly cancelled later the same year, and the last, and largest government-led new town project faded away.(21)
Yes, of course Maplin would have been expensive, and taken time and resources, but it was at least an honest attempt to plan in a meaningful way for the future. Its scale was also an admission, by its proponents, that the UK had fallen behind its European and global rivals and needed to catch up. What replaced it was piecemeal. It is hard to imagine Aneurin Bevan in 1945 taking the same view about either the NHS or public housing, both of which were also expensive, long-term commitments designed to improve the UK far into the future. It is also interesting to see Crosland using a comparison with the Soviet Union to debunk the scheme, echoing the attacks made 25 years earlier on his own colleague Lewis Silkin in reference to Stevenage. There was certainly a sense by the late 1960s, particularly in the Labour Party, that housing had been tackled effectively as an issue. In October 1969, the post of Minister of Housing ceased to be a cabinet position. When Edward Heath became Prime Minister in June 1970, this was restored, with Peter Walker MP taking the role. Four months later Heath created an immense new ministry, adding housing to transport, public buildings and works as he established the Department of the Environment. Walker was appointed to run that too, the first such political position of its type anywhere in the world, but housing was now just one of several junior ministries within a larger organisation and had lost its unique identity and status.
Such a move was typical of Heath’s ambition. He was aware, for instance, that many regions within the UK were falling behind London and the South East in terms of growth and that there was an over-centralisation of power in Whitehall. In 1972, he addressed this by creating six new metropolitan county councils: Greater Manchester, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, West Midlands and West Yorkshire. All were existing, highly urbanised areas and they became active from 1 January 1974 exercising almost unlimited borrowing powers. Part of the rationale for their creation lay in a desire to disperse government work, and departments, from London. They were also intended to address the inner-city blight that often arose when traditional towns and cities were depopulated by the construction of new towns and suburbs on their fringes. There was certainly much to be done in that respect, and action was not restricted to long-term problems. In London, for instance, criticism of Centre Point lying empty continued, with Lena Jeger MP commenting in Parliament in 1973 “Centre Point is a symbol of a society in which those who make money are more blessed than those who earn money”. The building was duly squatted, had its name appropriated by a homelessness charity (and newly registered housing association) and became the subject of unrealistic compulsory purchase proposals. Hyams eventually found a tenant for his tower and the protests faded away, but they were symbolic of people wanting real, and perceived, local issues addressed. Typical of this, in London, were the start made to redeveloping redundant and abandoned waterside areas like St Katharine’s Docks and the switch, partly as a reaction against tower blocks, to “more human” housing estates, such as the Brunswick Centre, and the Whittington Estate.(22) Both of these were medium-rise developments in Camden involving a lot of concrete, rather like the Smithsons’ Robin Hood Gardens, and there were many similar projects that appeared as the decade saw itself out.
* * * * * *
The culminative impact of high spending on public housing by successive governments was certainly noticed by the public, even if they didn’t like every manifestation of this largesse. By 1970, the majority of UK households had either bought or were buying their own home. Renting from a private landlord, once commonplace across the working and middle classes, had become unusual and something only a minority did. The remainder rented from local authorities, or new town corporations, with the percentage that did so rising slowly each year as the private rented sector crumbled. With a continuing commitment, by both the political parties, to full employment, a sound manufacturing economy and state planning, there seemed no reason why this shouldn’t continue.
Being an adult member of the public during the 1970s might have had drawbacks, but it also meant living at a time when safety nets existed, training and education were accessible and affordable, and destitution could be avoided. And with politicians in Westminster focussing on a more community-based approach to the UK’s beleaguered and knocked-about cities, there were openings and opportunities to be had. The continued decline in the population of urban areas, as existing residents moved out to the ever-expanding suburbs and new towns, led to many municipal housing departments advertising “hard to let” properties: usually unfashionable pre-war flats, or small bedsit/1-bed apartments in newly built tower blocks that were often allocated to anybody on their waiting list who wanted one. It was better than leaving them empty.
Similarly, a great many of the wide-ranging proposals launched by the larger local authorities (the GLC, and after 1974, Heath’s new Metropolitan County Councils) involved compulsory purchase orders and slow, phase-by-phase, systematic redevelopment. Inhabitable properties were often left empty for extended periods, during which time they might be squatted and then licensed as “short-life” homes by whoever owned them to whoever was living in them. Some curious figures could be found in these. At one point Astrid Proll (late of the Baader-Meinhof Gang) and more recently employed by Hackney Council, was living in a feminist housing cooperative in Broadway Market whilst the GLC sorted out its plans for that area. She remembers this period in Goodbye to London: Radical Art and Politics in the 70’s which strikes a somewhat different tone to the similarly titled work by Brooker and Lycett Green.(23)
But the political weather was changing, even if few realised it at the time. A shift in attitudes was taking place, propelled by the right wing of the Conservative Party, and it selected public housing as an early battleground. Broadly, the stance taken by Powell and Thorneycroft in 1958 was attracting adherents. In 1965, Powell contested the Conservative Party leadership, finishing bottom with only 14 supporters, albeit some of these would later exercise immense influence.(24) Following Heath’s significant 1966 electoral defeat there were plenty within the Conservative Party open to the idea of a change in direction and Heath, despite quickly sacking Powell after his appalling 1968 “rivers of blood” speech, duly trimmed toward them.(25) In June 1970, the Conservatives won a general election on a manifesto that, by the standards of the time was considered to be quite right wing. It stated, inter alia, that the government would reduce taxation, reduce the size of the state, increase home ownership and, most significantly “…encourage local authorities to sell council houses to those of their tenants who wish to buy them. Thus, many council-house tenants of today will become the owners of their own homes tomorrow. As a result, more money will be immediately available for the local authorities to provide housing for the aged, for the disabled, and for those on the housing lists… Our policies for encouraging home ownership will also mean that more council house tenants can move into homes of their own, thus releasing their council houses for those in need…” (26)
Heath was as good as his word. The standard rate of income tax was reduced to 7s 9d (38.75%) in 1970 and then cut further to 30% in 1973, a level that was beginning to creep below that levied in many other comparable European economies. And legislation was passed giving any local authority that wished to do so the power to sell a council home to its tenant, if the tenant asked to buy it. There was no compulsion on the local authority to do this. Any council that had, say, lengthy waiting lists could decline to participate in the scheme, and there was no discount for the buyer. Sales were at full market value, and the tenant had to agree to use the property as their main residence post-purchase. Most importantly, the money raised from sales had to be recycled, by the local authority, into providing replacement social housing. In practice, most of the sales were made by Conservative-run local authorities, many in rural or suburban areas, and many Labour councils didn’t participate in the scheme.
This was a shift, but, in housing terms, the essentials of the post-war settlement remained in place. There was a laudable commitment to helping the homeless. The network of existing new towns carried on expanding and, whilst a higher percentage of the homes in these areas were now for sale than in previous years, there was still an abundance of state funding and a considerable amount of state planning.(27) Heath, as his manifesto made clear, was determined to achieve growth in the UK. After UK unemployment rose by 75% in the opening 18 months of his premiership, edging in early 1972 dangerously close to the totemic figure of a million, he abandoned the liberal economic approach that had been brokered with the pro-Powell group a few years earlier and reverted to the standard post-1945 Keynesian methods of managing the economy. Heath, like many in Parliament then, had been a young man in the 1930s and didn’t subscribe to the view that it had been an era of unbridled prosperity to which the country should revert.
The upshot of the Heath U-turn was an increasing schism within his own party. By 1973, the core of the right-wing opposition to him had coalesced around the Selsdon Group, the President of which was Nicholas Ridley, an early supporter of Powell. Members of this were required to subscribe to the Selsdon Declaration, something not widely known to the public, and a requirement that suggested their views had a kind of formal, semi-religious standing. Indeed, if one takes Ridley’s concluding remarks at their inaugural meeting seriously, it is clear that they were based on the libertarian, free-market and pro-business opinions of William Boetcker, a prominent US Presbyterian clergyman (and anti-union evangelist), circa 1915, even if on the day Ridley misattributed them to Abraham Lincoln. Both Ridley’s remarks and the Selsdon Declaration itself were expressions of the type of political direction this group wished to take. As was to be expected amongst the generalisations about lower taxes, less regulation and a smaller role for the state, it was not obvious – then – what they might actually do, if they obtained power.(28) Another reasonable view might have been that they were saying not much more than the right had been saying for about 30 years, without, to that point, significantly changing too much of the post-1945 arrangements. Their opportunity to demonstrate exactly what they meant came sooner than expected. In early 1974 Heath called and failed to win an election, and then lost another, by a wider margin, later the same year. The Selsdon Group, and other like-minded colleagues moved against him. They demanded a review of how the Conservative Party elected its leader, making it easier for a contest to be held against Heath. After this had been granted Heath, thinking he might beat off a challenge, called a leadership election. He lost, and Margaret Thatcher, the candidate backed by the Selsdon Group, won.(29)
For the moment, this seemed less significant than would be the case in later years. In 1975, Harold Wilson was Prime Minister of a Labour government which put the standard rate of income tax back to 35%, trimming it only slightly to 34% (1977) and 33% (1978) both of which were, more or less, within the parameters levied by other western European economies. In housing, both Wilson and Callaghan retained Heath’s Department of the Environment and treated it as an appropriately senior position: the post of Secretary of State was held by Anthony Crosland and then by Peter Shore, both regarded as significant figures.(30) Beneath them a Ministry of Housing continued to do its work, with the position of Minister of Housing occupied by Reg Freeson MP for the entire duration of the 1974-1979 Labour government.
During Freeson’s tenure funding for new housing remained at a high level and the new towns continued to expand. Most notably his period in office continued the shift toward regenerating urban areas with the passing of the Community Land Act (1975) and the Home Purchase Assistance and Housing Corporation Guarantee Act (1978). The latter, in particular, enabled a growing number of small housing associations, and housing cooperatives, to function on a proper basis with their own staff, premises and development programmes. In terms of the number of properties these actually built, or renovated, their output was relatively limited, but their concentration in particular inner-city areas made a significant visual impact as well as providing much needed accommodation.
Both these pieces of legislation paled in significance, though, when compared to the 1977 Housing (Homeless Persons) Act. Passed under a Labour government, and endorsed by a Labour housing minister, this was actually sponsored by a Liberal MP, Stephen Ross.(31) Prior to its arrival local authorities had dealt with the homeless by maintaining waiting lists, to which people could apply, with the local authorities being obliged to give a reasonable preference to the various categories of persons on their lists when allocating housing. In an era when up to 200,000 new local authority homes were being completed annually (and 100% of their funding met by the state) the argument that additional legislation was needed to give “rights” to the homeless may appear – today – to be rather strange. But there were problems: some local authorities built relatively little housing and could not (or would not) meet the needs of genuinely homeless households within their area, whilst other local authorities, despite building a great deal of housing, could not meet the demands placed upon them in anything approaching a reasonable period of time. Ross’s Act created a statutory entitlement for the homeless to be housed, either temporarily or permanently, by the local authority to whom they had applied. It gave, in practice, their cases greater priority than those of other persons who for the moment had accommodation of some type where they could remain. The impact of this was immense, particularly after 1979 when state funding for new housing diminished. Effectively, it reversed the lettings policies of every local authority in the UK. Up until 1977 most new council housing had either been let to existing tenants of other council properties in the same area, who were moved into better, improved properties, or was offered to whichever households had registered for the longest periods of time on their waiting list. After 1977 a high proportion of all new lettings went instead to people who were considered to be immediately homeless and/or destitute. Clearly not foreseen by Ross, Freeson and the Act’s many supporters this was the start of treating council housing as housing of the last resort, rather than a facility to which all could have access.
Notes
1. Specifically, Taylor Woodrow modified the unreinforced H2 joints and adapted the design, pushing it up to 22 floors.
2. On the enquiry see: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1968/nov/06/ronan-point-flats-inquiry-report Sir Alfred Pugsley was a structural engineer with expertise in aircraft design and suspension bridges and Sir Owen Saunders was a mathematician.
3. The use of large panel systems to build significant amounts of public housing was extremely widespread. As well as the eastern bloc, where it was commonplace, Sweden adopted the system when implementing its 1965-1974 “Million Programme”. Proportionally, this saw Sweden building three and half times the amount of state funded housing provided by the UK during the same period, which certainly puts into context how significant (and adventurous) the UK programme really was. Most of the examples of panel-system housing built outside the UK tended to be low or medium rise, though, and there were no examples abroad of spectacular Ronan Point type collapses.
4. Quoted at https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/archive/07dec90-uk-tory-cash-donors-have-taylor-woodrow-at-head-of-list-06-12-1990
5. And, for those who wish to make the comparison, like Le Corbusier, Poulson was not a qualified architect.
6. As to how he got noticed in the first place, it helped Smith that he had been named Man of the Year by The Architects’ Journal in 1960. It is worth stressing that councillors were not paid at this time: payment of attendance allowances was only introduced in 1972, by Heath, as part of his local government reforms.
7. Four of the low-rise maisonette blocks were demolished in 1987 owing to their poor state of repair and unpopularity with tenants. At the time of writing two maisonette blocks and the high-rise block Crowhall Towers remain. Poulson provided Cunningham with holidays abroad and a (non-existent) job for his wife.
8. Note in this context the rather odd timing behind the production of the film Get Carter which was filmed from July to September 1970. The novel on which this was based was optioned prior to publication, and the action was switched from Scunthorpe to Newcastle. The cast of characters includes a seedy amoral Mr Big (played by John Osborne) who dominates the area and a key scene has the anti-hero (played by Michael Caine) defenestrating one of the villains from the top of Owen Luder’s brutalist car park in the centre of Gateshead after an attempt has been made at bribery.
9. Poulson had managed by this point to get himself appointed as a Commissioner of Taxes, despite his own tax affairs being in considerable disarray. The Inland Revenue were eventually awarded a judgement against him in November 1968, and Poulson was removed from control of his companies just over a year later.
10. Maudling had resigned his role with Poulson in 1969, after the Inland Revenue’s successful action and prior to the removal of Poulson from control of his companies. Poulson had paid him £5,000 per annum, approximately £140,000 today. Other MPs on the Poulson payroll were Albert Roberts (Labour, Normanton 1951-1983) who received £2,500/£70,000 pa and John Cordle (Conservative, 1959-1977) who received £1,000/£28,000 pa. Cordle was – eventually – forced to resign because of his dealings with Poulson.
11. For all that, Nairn was quite measured in his comments about Owen Luder, the architect responsible for the much-derided Tricorn Shopping Centre in Portsmouth and Eros House, Catford. The latter was opposite another Luder scheme, the Catford Centre, built in expectation that the Fleet Line tube would be extended to south-east London. It has yet to arrive, though current plans might see the Bakerloo Line pass nearby quite soon.
12. On brutal town centre schemes Sandbrook in White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties (2006) notes p624-626 that over 500 had appeared by 1965. This equates to about 25 proposals a year from 1945, which in a heavily populated and highly urbanised country, at a time of high state funding and post-war recovery, doesn’t actually seem that excessive. Specific mention is made of the 1954 plan from Pilkington Glass to roof over 83 acres of Soho (roughly 13% of the area) with six high-rise residential blocks perched on top of this. As expected, it was never built but demonstrates the ambition, and avant-garde nature of many such plans at that time.
13. Booker, who died in July 2019 was latterly a pronounced Eurosceptic and climate change denier.
14. Technically, a site like this is known as a SLOAP (Site Left Over After Planning). There were many such miscellaneous parcels of land scattered around UK inner-cities from the 1960s, some taking decades to redevelop. Ballard would have seen many of these on his daily journey to work along the Westway via Trellick Tower.
15. This can be watched at www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH5thwHTYNk
16. On Goldfinger and his failure to get agreement for a concierge at Trellick Tower see Erno Goldfinger: The Life of an Architect by Nigel Warburton (2003). It is possible that the 1967 change of political control at GLC affected the approach made to Trellick Tower. The addition of large swathes of suburban London when the LCC was replaced in 1964 resulted in Labour losing control of the expanded body after 33 years and not returning to office until 1973.
17. Particularly Alison Smithson who appears in the latter half of the film in a silvery glittery top. Peter Smithson makes do with a silver tie. They may have been emulating the garb worn at Grope Fest, which celebrated on 19 May 1970 the July 1969 death of Walter Gropius. The press coverage of this mentions men in silver ties and guests in shimmering silver robes. See: The New York Times 20 May 1970 at https://www.nytimes.com/1970/05/20/archives/gropefest-honors-gropius.html The article also states that those assembled were entertained by two rock bands and a nude revue. Which seems extraordinary until one considers that in his early life Gropius was the partner of Alma Mahler and, with Freud, Schnitzler and others, part of the avant-garde cultural life of pre-1914 Vienna.
18. One wonders why the water bus service was ever considered a viable option. Milton Keynes is approximately 60 miles from London via the Grand Union Canal, which skirts the development rather than passing through its centre. The locks along the route are of limited width and any water bus would have been a narrow vessel akin to a long boat, capable of no more than 5-10 mph, implying a journey time of 6-12 hours.
19. For a typical example of the mockery inflicted on Milton Keynes, listen to The Style Council’s 1985 hit single Come to Milton Keynes.
20. The Roskill Commission also included Alan Walters an economist who later helped justify the policies pursued by the Thatcher governments. There was considerable criticism of the cost benefit analysis that was used to identify Cublington as the original site. Heath, who had sat, as a civil servant, on the committee that oversaw the plans for the expansion of Heathrow in the late 1940s was a strong supporter of Foulness.
21. As well as cancelling Foulness, the incoming Labour government also cancelled the Channel Tunnel rail link, Anthony Crosland claiming “it is out of the question that the Government should approve or finance an investment of this magnitude” and added into the mix a referendum on membership of the European Union. Interest in Foulness was briefly revived in 1979 by the then Conservative-led GLC and Essex County Council and finally died a few years later when Alan Walters persuaded the government that the project was too costly. For a detailed account of this see: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN04920/SN04920.pdf
22. The redevelopment of St Katharine’s Docks, a GLC project, was undertaken by Taylor Woodrow, without mishap. The Brunswick Centre was originally a mixed-use, private-sector scheme, the residential portion of which was eventually leased by the council. Whittington Estate was designed by Peter Tabori, a Hungarian émigré and protégé of Erno Goldfinger.
23. Similarly, the author encountered Andy “Thunderclap” Newman in “short-life” housing in south London in 2013, 44 years after he had enjoyed an enormous worldwide hit record with Something in the Air.
24. Among Powell’s backers in 1965 were Nicholas Ridley (Secretary of State for the Environment 1986-1989), John Biffen (Lord President of the Council 1982-1983, Lord Privy Seal 1983-1987), Michael Alison (Principal Private Secretary to Margaret Thatcher 1983-1987) and Harold Gurden (an early member of the Monday Club, and a keen advocate that council tenants should have a right to buy their properties). It is thought that Geoffrey Howe (Chancellor of the Exchequer 1979-1983, Foreign Secretary 1983-1989) may also have supported Powell.
25. The right were clearly on the march when Powell unveiled his notions of what an ideal Conservative government budget would look like, at Morecambe in October 1968. This called for a reduction of the standard rate of tax to 21%, mass privatisation and the ending of all “housing and rent subsidies” except for those “who could not afford their own housing” (ie, ending future council house-building and reducing council housing to housing of the last resort). Under a Powell government the UK would have quickly returned to the house-building arrangements of circa 1880: private house-builders, building for rent and sale and a few isolated charities providing dwellings for the thrifty and well-to-do working classes.
26. The 1970 Conservative Party manifesto is at http://www.conservativemanifesto.com/1970/1970-conservative-manifesto.shtml Containing much that seemed radical then, it reads now like an ongoing massive compromise: lurking behind each section, the comments in which are inevitably caveated, can be glimpsed nastier ideas waiting for their time.
27. Stonehouse, in Lanarkshire, was designated a new town in 1973. Due to take Glasgow’s overspill it was de-designated in 1976, only a few days after its first residents had moved in, and never built. Its cancellation reflected a change in government thinking: the UK should stop dispersing its population and industry from traditional urban areas and concentrate resources on these instead.
28. Ridley’s speech at Selsdon on 19 September 1973 is at: https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/110861 The Selsdon Group met, and were named after, the Selsdon Park Hotel where Heath’s shadow cabinet had formulated their election manifesto in early 1970. Boetcker, a kind of prototype motivational speaker, made remarks frequently attributed to Abraham Lincoln, and Ridley is not alone in making this mistake.
29. Both Enoch Powell and Keith Joseph prepared the way for Heath’s eventual ousting. Powell stood down from his UK constituency in February 1974, announced that he would be voting Labour and urged his supporters to do likewise. In October 1974 he re-entered Parliament as an Ulster Unionist MP, also urging his British supporters to vote Labour. In both elections he gave as his reasons for doing so that Heath had taken the UK into the EEC without a mandate (which was untrue) and had reneged on his manifesto ie, Heath had not implemented the policies agreed at Selsdon in 1970. Joseph gave a speech on 19 October 1974, shortly after Heath’s second electoral defeat, firmly putting the record straight about his own views and calling inter alia for a smaller state, lower taxes and compulsory birth control for those “of low education and… low educational attainment” to save the nation as it “moves toward degeneration”. The speech can be read at https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/101830
30. So much so that both contested, albeit without success, the Labour Party Leadership, Crosland in March 1976 and Shore in November 1980.
31. Ross was able to pass his Act due to the Liberal-Labour pact that functioned during a period when the Labour Party lacked a majority, between March 1977 and September 1978. Des Wilson, a founder member of the housing charity Shelter, was a key figure advising the Liberal Party on their policies at this time. Legislation giving the homeless (and those threatened with homelessness) statutory rights had regularly been sought, without success, particularly after the huge success of the November 1966 BBC TV play Cathy Come Home. This was because both the main political parties were committed to the provision of state housing, and, indeed, building unprecedented amounts of it at that time and for many years thereafter. Would Labour have passed Ross’s Act if it had enjoyed a majority in the House of Commons?