Faint Hope for the Homeless. The Housing Targets Shrink
It will be remembered that at the General Election the Labour Party set very high targets for their proposed solution to the housing problem. Their spokesmen made wild promises about what would be done if a Labour Government were returned to power. To a large extent on the basis of such assurances they were given a mandate to administer capitalism by a majority of the working class.
For example, in a pre-election pamphlet it was stated that :
“The long-term housing programme should provide for the erection of at least 4,000,000 houses over a period of 10 years commencing at the end of the war.” (“Housing and Planning After the War,” 1944, p. 4.)
At the Labour Party Conference in 1943 Mr. Tom Williamson, speaking for the National Executive, had said that:
“If the war ends now it is a fair estimate to say that 4,000,000 houses will be required,” and “the longer the war proceeds the worse it will be. Something like a quarter of the population is inadequately housed.” (News Chronicle, June 19, 1943.)
Again, in the handbook provided for speakers at the election, the Labour Party maintained that:
“This total of up to 4 million houses will certainly not be enough to meet the need when account is taken of all the different components of demand.” (“Speakers’ Handbook,” 1945.)
This was in reference to the then Minister of Health’s estimate of requirements over ten years to provide each family with a separate dwelling, relieve overcrowding, replace slum dwellings, and “those grossly deficient in modern amenities.”
By 1947, however, after two years in office, sights had been dropped to more modest targets A new target, borrowed from the Conservative Party, was being used. In the “Labour News Special,” published as part of the “Sell Britain Campaign,” it was claimed that we were “more than half way towards the immediate target of the 750,000 needed to provide a separate home for every family.” The target was borrowed; but even the Conservatives had not claimed that this would provide a separate home for every family.
In the Conservative pre-election housing pamphlet they had written:
“The above figures [for England and Wales] reveal that the present [November, 1914] deficiency is scarcely less than a million houses. When these have been provided and all the damaged houses have been repaired, there will be numerically a separate house for every family. But even then the supply will not be adequate. For houses are fixtures and …. a surplus is always needed to meet the needs of a constantly shifting population. It should also be noted that these approximations include no allowance for a possible future increase, in the number of families. . . .” (“Looking Ahead,” January, 1945, p. 14 our italics.)
An estimate of 500,000 was given as the demand created by increase of population and families between 1939 and 1944, an average of 100,000 a year. But it should also be noted that no allowance was made for the replacement of old houses. On the basis of a total of 12,000,000 houses and a life of 100 years, 120,000 fall due for replacement, on the average, each year.
Thus, even if we accept the Conservative Party’s estimate of a “numerical” shortage of a million houses in November, 1944, and add to that figure 5 per cent, to allow for “a constantly shifting population,” and again, say, 80,000 a year for increase of population and 120,000 a year for “replacements,” then by the end of 1948 the shortage becomes 1,850,000.
It will be seen, then that the figure of 750,000, of which the Government has recently made so much play, bears no relation at all to the provision of a separate home for every family—not even, if the allowance for “replacements” is ignored.
It is therefore quite evident that in this respect, as with other efforts, the Labour Government has found it quite impossible to administer Capitalism and at the same time fulfil its election promises, or even the much reduced promises of its early years in office. Moreover, it does no service to the working class to attempt to conceal the true situation. If Labour theories have proved false then the working class should be told. To say, as Mr. Bevan does, that “probably the first estimates for houses were wrong because they did not take into account the matrimonial enthusiasm of the British people” (News Chronicle, 28.9.1948) just will not do. Mr. Bevan must know quite well that “matrimonial enthusiasm” has considerably abated since the war-time estimates were made.
And what of the future? At the last, housing debate in the House of Commons the Minister of Health said :
“We are going on building and we have decided that we are going to keep 180,000 houses under construction in England and Wales. . . . But we may not he able to go on at that rate. It depends on a number of factors which we are not able to predict. Therefore I am not going to say at this moment how many houses we shall build in 1949 and 1950.” (“Hansard,” 11/7/1948.)
Allowing an average annual increase of, say, 80,000 families a year, it takes ten years to catch up with a. deficiency of one million (not four million) houses, if an average rate of 180,000 houses a year is maintained, and if all existing houses are left standing. And apparently there is some doubt about maintaining even a building rate of 180,000 a year.
In view of these facts Walter Elliot, certainly had a debating point when he quoted Aneurin Bevan as saying at Durham on July 20, 1946:
“When the next election occurs there will be no housing problem in Great Britain for the British working class.” (“Hansard,” 11/7/1948),
though in view of the Conservative Government’s pre-war record, we know that if was only a debating point.
The important lesson for the working class to draw from their experience of three years of Labour rule is that it is Capitalism, not lack of planning or the wrong kind of politicians, which stands in the way of a solution to the housing problem.
The Labour Party believed they could control Capitalism to the benefit of the working class. They thought that more “planning,” more nationalisation, would provide the workers with a higher standard of living and that State control would solve the housing problem. But the exigencies of Capitalism have already forced them to cut national expenditure on housing and resist increases in wages to meet the rising cost of living. They are forced by the nature of the capitalist economy, like capitalist governments elsewhere, to encourage the production of luxury cars from the steel which could not be spared for “Portal” houses. They are forced to expend capital on preparations for war while the housing situation worsens. All their “explanations” tor their failure to keep election promises stem from the contradictions, conflicts and restrictions of a capitalist economy. The workers must face up to the fact that the housing problem, as all their other economic problems, cannot begin to be solved until they abolish Capitalism and put Socialism in its place.
M.