Sillars: Build 50,000 houses a year until waiting lists are wiped out

When I quit the Royal Navy in 1960, and applied for a council house in Ayr, I was told that the waiting list was seven years. The housing shortage  was due to the post WWII problem of how resources  were allocated between industry and social need, in the national reconstruction programme. 

It may seem that 1960 was a long time after war’s end in 1945, but between 1939 and 1945 there had been no serious investment in key pieces of infrastructure;  railways and roads, or in key industries like coal mines and steel works, and not a single house had been built. Moreover, the NHS had to be constructed, with calls upon both capital and revenue. Education was also a problem, with uncertificated teachers in classrooms.  Recovery was not a short time event. 

Post-1945 the juggling of decisions on resource allocation were not made easy by the fact that Britain was skint, and had lost export markets, and thus was handicapped by a consistent  balance of payments crisis, with a greater demand for imports than could be covered by exports. The achievements of the Attlee government in the circumstances immediately after the war, are more heroic than most people realise. 

Balancing the competing demands for material resources was one of the main headaches for the 1945 Labour government, and also for the Tory one that followed it in 1951.  Post war, people lived in redundant  military camps, or were lodgers in the homes of others.  Nye Bevan was housing minister as well as being responsible for health. He had to decide on whether material and manpower resources were used for a housebuilding measured in numbers, or quality. He opted for the latter, on the basis of a high standard of living for the working class. My family was allocated a 5 apartment house. 

The Tory government, with Harold Macmillan as housing minister announced it would build 300,000 houses a year. Bevan said that was impossible. But then he did not contemplate what Macmillan  would do - drastically reduce house building standards, so that the same material was used, but delivered different numbers built.  He delivered the 300,000 target.  In my home town, as in others, there exist in housing schemes,  one of superb quality, alongside others of poor quality. The best, and also much of the lesser standard, are now no longer council housing, having been bought in the great Thatcher private ownership drive. 

^{The first council estate in Scotland was built in 1919 in Logie, Dundee. Photo courtesy of Dundee City Archives} 

But even that Tory target did not end the housing shortage, hence the long waiting list in 1960. The Labour government elected in 1964, with Willie Ross as secretary of state, set out to build 50,000 new houses a year, year on year. The local government system at that time was fragmented:  small towns, large towns and county councils, and while they could build, they could not meet the target on their own. So, the Scottish Special Housing Association was formed to build and, in cooperation with local councils, rent out the houses. 

Basically, the 1964 government worked on the principle that if there is a serious housing shortage, then the way to solve the problem is to build more houses. That is not a piece of logic today’s professional political class seems to grasp. Then came that  Thatcher time, of a fire sale of council housing. As councils did not build a house to replace one sold, that three had  consequences -  the best of the public housing  disappeared from the stock available for rent, leaving only the  poorer quality for the poorer sections of the community; and waiting lists soared. 

There are two things of vital importance to the working class: a job with a good wage, because, having no wealth to generate income, all we have is the ability to sell our  labour; and a house that becomes a home in which we can live in security and comfort, and bring up our families. There is a  transformation in the lives of a working class family when they enter that kind of home for the first time. That I know from experience. There is no comparison between life on a waiting list, and life in your own home.  

But there is also the economic side to a huge social house building programme of the kind we need now – 50,000 a year, year on year until waiting lists are wiped out.  Whether a house is built in the traditional way, or pre-fabricated and assembled on site, all components have to be manufactured, transported, with the final product put together by skilled workers and apprentices. When built house are then furnished, with more jobs resulting.  In short a 50,000 a year programme by itself creates a supply chain of materials, goods, services and jobs.  

If the Scottish government wants to re-start the economy, no other programme will make the kind of decisive contribution to recovery than housing the families who need homes but cannot at present get them.