Where the Other Half Lives: Lower Income Housing in a Neoliberal World edited by Sarah Glynn
Pluto Press, £16.99
At last, I thought, when I saw the front cover of this book about the social revolution which has taken place over the past 30 years; a revolution largely ignored by academics, broadcasters and journalists. “At last”, eerily echoing my words, begins an endorsement on the back cover of a book which demolishes the arguments used by governments, in particular but not only “new” Labour, about public housing and, in particular, council housing.
Until Sarah Glynn’s analysis of what caused the housing crisis in Britain the only other book on the revolution in housing in this country was Estates by Lynsey Hanley. What angered me about that book was her lack of gratitude of being fortunate enough to have been brought up in council housing and then put up by the local council when she came to London. It is a book that began with good intentions – by declaring that council estates are nothing to be scared of, unless you are frightened of inequality – but which ended by endorsing Labour’s proposals to demolish the estate on which she lived in Tower Hamlets.
In her book, Hanley talks about “the wall in the head” that permeated her outlook on life after being brought up on a council estate. By voting to demolish the estate on which she lived she may have removed that “wall in her head” but she failed to see that she was colluding, willingly in her case, with New Labour’s plan for council housing – which was to remove it from the public sector.
Sarah Glynn puts the thinking behind the policy into its global context and the
neo-liberal ideology that has held sway over the past 30 years. In addition, the devastating effect it had upon public housing and how housing was a key factor in the financial services industry and how its snake oil salesmen brought about the biggest economic crisis for the past 70 years.
The title of Glynn’s book harks back to How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis which described the miserable housing conditions in New York in the 1890s. Glynn seeks to tilt the analytical balance in the housing crisis towards those who are suffering from the flip side of neo-liberal economics and whose plight has not been worth reporting. The book’s core message is a repudiation of neo-liberal economics and the levels of inequality that have resulted from its adoption and to put housing at the heart of the debate about economics and politics.
Housing has been at the heart of the debate about economics and politics for the past 30 years, but only in the sense that it has been viewed as collateral for credit and as an investment. It is a mindset that has been encouraged by Labour’s obsession about home ownership; when Ken Purchase, Labour MP for Wolverhampton North East, asked Tony Blair about council housing in 2005, Blair said Labour had helped a million more people become home owners.
In 1924, it was the first Labour Government of Ramsay MacDonald that instigated the first major council house building era. In 2001, under a Labour Government, there were fewer homes built in England than at any time since 1924. In these tougher times, tenants are more reluctant to become home owners. A survey published by the Tenant Services Authority last September shows how attitudes have changed from Thatcher’s time. It found that only 12 per cent of tenants wanted to become a home owner.
Over the past 30 years, council housing was increasingly seen by both Labour and Conservative governments as being for people who could not afford to buy their own home. Home ownership was represented as natural and normal. Owning your own home was seen as part of the freedom agenda which allowed neo-liberalism to be portrayed as a system based on the core values of our civilisation.
Council tenants, myself included, who expressed their freedom of choice by rejecting the opportunity to transfer from council control, despite all the bullying and the blackmailing, discovered that the alternative was to be told that the coffers were bare for the repairs that were desperately needed to meet the Government’s decent homes standard.
Most people, Glynn writes, did not freely choose to support the neo-liberal world order. They were given no alternative. It is not just the initial impositions of neo-liberalism upon the weakest that sits uneasily with its ostensible ideology of freedom: “The contradictions thrown up by neo-liberal economics in practice have prompted the emergence of a growing neoconservative authoritarianism. New forms of governance curtail opportunities for real political debate and can be used to destroy existing independent organisations.”
Glynn ends, as she begins, by placing housing in its historical context; she records the importance of the labour movement in co-ordinating and supporting housing struggles and how tenants now feel isolated and abandoned. Parliamentary support, she writes, has always been fickle, but “the concerted attack on public housing by Labour has left tenants stranded.” Yes there has been “some support from the unions – primarily passive, with some (largely financial) help for high profile campaigns – but they have been generally emasculated by their uncertain relationship with Labour”.
There is a still a chance for Labour to save itself – and save council housing – with the publication of the report by the House of Commons council housing group in reply to the Government’s review of council housing finance. It calls for fair funding and investment in council housing. It is not too much to hope that the Government’s response to its findings will decide not only the future of council housing in this country, but also whetherLabour has any future in the government of this country.
Terry McGrenera
