Introduction

At the end of the First World War, approximately 23 per cent of households in England were home owners, with almost all others located in the private rented sector; but, by the start of the Second World War, ownership had risen to 32 per cent and public housing to 10 per cent. The construction boom of the interwar period (see Figure 6.1) took place in both the public and private sectors, aided by the introduction of significant building subsidies from central government for the first time. The rise in home ownership in the 1930s was also supported by the availability of cheap finance and the rapid growth of building society lending. But the expansion in housing and property ownership more generally also had political motives. Lloyd George's commitment to ‘Homes for Heroes’ recognized the poor physical condition of British soldiers, compared with their US counterparts; the average height of (non-officer) volunteers and conscripts was five feet six inches; the height was lower among those who came from industrial compared with rural environments and among those living in overcrowded conditions. The relationship between poor housing and health had been recognized since the second half of the 19th century (see Chapter 11), but it was not until 1919 that municipal housing began to grow on a significant scale.

The expansion took place at a time of European revolutionary movements and real fears that major political unrest would spread to Britain. Although mainland Britain did not experience a revolution, the number of working days lost to industrial disputes rose sharply in the early 1920s, even before the 1926 General Strike, and easily surpassed the levels recorded in the era of unrest in the 1970s. The phrase ‘property-owning democracy’ was first used by Conservative MP, Noel Skelton, in 1923. Writing against the background of industrial unrest and the extension of the vote in 1918, Skelton proposed broadening the property ownership base as a necessary complement to the extension of the electoral base, advocating this as an alternative to the collective ownership model supported by Socialists. The idea was subsequently taken up by party leader Stanley Baldwin.