The funding of social housing provision (cont.): Neville Chamberlain and John Wheatley

(The image above shows John Wheatley)

By Eamon Dyas

In parts 11 and 12 we examined the issue of the funding of social housing provision from 1851 to Chamberlain’s Housing Act of 1923 just before the advent of the first Labour Government. The subject of this part of the investigation will take that issue of funding further and begin with that first Labour administration. But to set the context for that it is necessary to outline the political circumstances under which Labour came to power in 1924. 

Those political circumstances had their immediate roots in the general election of November 1922. That election was unique in many ways. Technically, it was the first to take place after the end of the First World War as the December 1918 election, although it was called immediately after the Armistice, was held before the signing of the 1919 Peace Treaty. The 1922 election was also significant as it was the first to take place without the participation of the electorate from the south of Ireland as a result of the signing of the Articles of Agreement for a Treaty on 6 December 1921. Labour was to take part in the election on a domestic programme that proposed the nationalisation of the mines and the railways, the imposition of a levy on financial capital, higher living standards for workers and better housing. On the basis of that programme the party won 142 seats pushing the combined Asquith and Lloyd George sections of the Liberals into third place and becoming the main opposition for the first time. 

All these issues combined to mark the 1922 election as a landmark in British parliamentary politics. The result of that election saw the Conservatives under Bonar Law winning 344 seats – enough for them to have been guaranteed a full term in government. However, it didn’t turn out that way as it wasn’t only the Liberals who went into that election as a divided party.  The Conservatives were themselves divided between those advocating tariff reform and those with an over-arching commitment to free trade. Bonar Law, the leader of the Conservative Party had promised at the outset of that election not to introduce any measures that served to advance the cause of tariff reform. However, he was to resign from the positions of Leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister on 22 May 1923 having been diagnosed with terminal cancer (he died five months later) and was replaced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Stanley Baldwin. Baldwin, who could have seen out the remainder of the four-year term in office by continuing Bonar Law’s policy, chose instead to go to the country for a mandate to introduce policies of tariff reform and imperial preference. He also believed that such a mandate would provide him with the means of exerting control over the dissenting free trade element within the party. As a result, Parliament was dissolved on 16 November 1923 and a new election was held on 6 December which resulted in a hung parliament. The Lloyd George and Asquith sides of the Liberal Party were opposed to working with Baldwin on the basis of his policies. Baldwin subsequently advised George V to offer the reins of government to the Labour Party as it had the second largest representation in Parliament. For his part Asquith chose to give the Labour Party a clear road to minority government in the belief that Labour policies would be discredited with the result that the disenchanted Liberal voters who had voted Labour would then return to the Liberal fold. Through this route, with 191 seats, Labour came to government under Ramsay MacDonald in January 1924 in a way that it was always going to be a government by sufferance of the Conservatives (with 258 seats) and the Liberals (with 158 seats) and as such it found itself in a situation that was not conducive to the implementation of the most radical parts of the Labour programme. However, despite its vulnerable position this first Labour administration managed to achieve quite a lot a lot in the short period of time it found itself in the position of forming the government. During its time in office between January and November 1924 it:

• introduced improvements in the benefits for pensioners as well as extending the coverage of those benefits to embrace 70% of the over-70s bringing 150,000 additional elderly within its reach – 
• doubled the children’s allowances, 
• increased the unemployment benefit and extended the period for which it would be paid – 
• removed the benefits means tests for the long-term unemployed –
• empowered local authorities to raise the school leaving age to 15 at their discretion as well as tripling the adult education grant and increasing the number of secondary schools –
• limited the number of pupils in elementary school classes to 40 and removed the restrictions on grants providing school meals for children,
• passed the Education Act of 1924 which modernised the secondary school system for those between the ages of 11 and 14,
• increased the school maintenance allowance provided to local authorities from 20% to 50%,
• passed the Agricultural Wages (Regulation) Act of 1924 which restored the minimum wage for agricultural workers resulting in a significant increase in agricultural wages,
• cut direct and indirect taxation in ways which benefited the working population,
• passed the Workmen’s Compensation (Silicosis) Act of 1924 under which miners suffering from the complaint became eligible for workmen’s compensation,
• passed the London Traffic Act of 1924 which regulated privately-owned public transport and compelled them to set timetables and safety standards.

There were other improving measures dealing with public health, child welfare and maternity services and the improvement of public spaces. Where the Labour Government could be said to have failed was on its programme for nationalising the mining and railway industry, on its commitment to impose a financial capital levy and introduce an extensive public works programme to alleviate unemployment. However, these were measures, that given its minority position, were never going to find a majority in Westminster. Instead of wasting parliamentary time on such forlorn hopes, the Labour Government concentrated its efforts on measures which it felt would command sufficient support in Parliament from the socially conscious conservatives and liberals. Given that housing was an area which at this time, immediately after the First World War, continued to engage the attention of both the Conservatives and the Liberal Parties, this was also an area which the Labour Government identified as one where they could push their agenda with more hope of a successful outcome. Hence, the introduction of a law modifying the right of a landlord to obtain possession of a house for his own family’s use, if such action resulted in unnecessary hardship for the sitting tenant. The Government also passed the Eviction Act of 1924 which provided a degree of protection for tenants in the event of landlords using unjustified evictions to seek vacant possession as a means of establishing “decontrolled” status for their properties as a prelude to raising future rents on those properties. Similarly, in the area of housing the Labour Government created a fund for the repair and modernisation of 60,000 government-built homes as well as increasing the grant for local government slum clearance programmes. But in terms of housing the most significant measure introduced by the first Labour Government was the passing of the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act of 1924, known as the Wheatley Housing Act. John Wheatley was the Minister of Health in this first Labour administration. He was born in Waterford in 1869 and emigrated with his family to Scotland in 1876 where he began his working life as a miner before going on to establish a printing business that published leftist political works including several of his own booklets. He was a devout Catholic and influenced by the early Christian-socialist movement joined the Independent Labour Party in 1907. He was also the founder and first chairman of the Catholic Socialist Society. He opposed Britain’s involvement in the First World War, campaigned against conscription and helped to organise rent strikes in Glasgow. Following his election as a councillor on Glasgow City Council his popularity in that role led to his election to the House of Commons in the 1922 General Election as MP for the Glasgow Shettleston constituency, a mere two years before he was to become Minister of Health in Ramsay MacDonald’s first Labour administration.

Chamberlain’s 1923 Housing Act and Wheatley’s 1924 Housing Act

Under Neville Chamberlain’s 1923 Housing Act the Conservative Government had committed to providing a fixed subsidy (grant) of £6 per house for twenty years (after approval by the Ministry of Health) to encourage house-building. Although local authorities could dispense the allotted funding they could not themselves build such houses unless it could be demonstrated that there was no means by which such building could be done by private enterprise. Chamberlain’s subsidy represented a replacement of the arrangements under the Addison Act of 1919 where the subsidy to local councils had been based on the shortfall between what the local council could afford by way of commissioning house building and the actual cost of building such housing. Because of its nature as an “open” subsidy the Addison arrangement was fated to increase the cost to central government as the cost of house building increased. Among the subsequent criticism of Addison’s 1919 Act was that tended to create a demand-driven market where increases in house-building costs would manifest themselves and thereby create an inflationary cycle. Chamberlain’s idea in replacing the “open” subsidy with a fixed £6 per house annual subsidy was designed to mitigate as far as possible the supposed inflationary impact of those local government house-building programmes while at the same time encourage the construction industry to continue to build houses.

Post-war governments had sought to increase the overall housing stock as the means of solving the problem of working-class housing. But the Conservative and Liberal perspective ensured that their solutions were projected from a position that favoured private housing over public housing and the belief that the main vehicle for delivering the solution was private enterprise rather than the local authority. That was the main emphasis of Chamberlain’s 1923 Act with the result that houses constructed under its operation tended to be those that were constructed for sale or to be let at a level of rent beyond the reach of the majority of the working class.

When Labour came to power in January 1924 Wheatley sought a more radical approach to the housing issue. Under his scheme the machinery of the State was to be utilised on an unprecedented scale to provide a serious alternative to the inherited “solutions” to the housing problem that had so far failed to deliver. He began by establishing a committee that reflected all the interested parties whose cooperation was required to make a success of his ambitious scheme. This committee involved representatives from the construction industry, the trade unions, the suppliers of construction materials, and the local authorities. This was the first time such a committee had been established in peacetime by a government in its attempt to address a serious social problem.

“His approach was corporatist. The committee he appointed to advise on the legislation ‘comprised fifteen union representatives and nineteen representatives from the employers; there was nobody from the government’. Wheatley offered the unions ‘fair wages’ in housing contracts and promised secure employment via a 15-year rolling house-building programme in return for ‘dilution’ in entry terms to the building trades. He promised the housing industry full order books and told the builders that he wanted the houses erected ‘at a fair and reasonable price, and we want you to meet us in that spirit’.” (Lund, p.154).

Though he had hoped to procure a ten-year housing programme involving the construction of 200,000 homes per annum with a unit cost of £500 per home let at a rental of 7s per week, and had spent days pushing his argument on the Cabinet Standing Committee on Housing, he was compelled to settle for a less ambitious programme. Consequently, what emerged from the debates within the Cabinet was a dilution of his original proposals although not the abandonment of the principles behind it.

From the outset Wheatley stated openly that his housing measures were not socialist in nature and he acknowledged that in many ways they would have the effect of encouraging the involvement of private enterprise in his housing programme. He explained this in his introduction to the Second Reading of his Housing (Financial Provision) Bill on 23 June 1924 as follows:

“Nor is it true to say . . . that these proposals discourage private enterprise. They do nothing of the kind. I stated, in introducing the Financial Resolution, that these proposals were anything but Socialistic proposals. Far from discouraging private enterprise, they actually do more to promote private enterprise than any Measure that has been before this House in recent times. Let me examine what they do. They leave intact the provision of the 1923 Act which gives a subsidy to private enterprise in building houses for sale. Hon. Members opposite will realise that there are many things about that provision with which I disagree and many things that I should have found great difficulty in defending if I were submitting them to the House and subjecting them to criticism; but I took the view, suggested frequently from the other side of the House, that these provisions were producing houses. I want to get houses. The people engaged in the production of these houses for sale had been led by the 1923 Act to expect this subsidy for a period, and I was not, although I dislike the provision, going to step in and reverse a policy which, undoubtedly, was giving houses, although it was not producing houses for that section of the community which I felt was most in need of houses.

“I have left private enterprise exactly as I found it in regard to the provisions of houses. If I go so far as the Right Hon. Member for Ladywood (Neville Chamberlain – ED) or the party opposite in regard to private enterprise, I cannot be regarded as an enemy of private enterprise. Do they want me to go further than they did in their provision? Do they want me to give larger subsidies for houses for sale than those which they have provided? I am sure that they do not expect me to do anything of the kind. I had a deputation from the small builders during the period of negotiations and they asked me what I intended to do on this particular point. I stated at a very early date that I intended to leave that provision as it was. They were delighted with my decision, and said that I was doing everything that could be expected from a most moderate Member of the House for their particular industry.

“I go further than that. When you are discussing this question of private enterprise, always remember that it is private enterprise that is killing private enterprise today. It is not Socialism that kills private enterprise today. What is happening today is that one section of private enterprise throttles another. As Minister of Health my duties would have been comparatively light, had it not been for keeping the ring for these competing sections. I find that when private enterprise in manufacture puts up its prices in order to get higher profits and be successful as private enterprise, it chokes off the little builder who depends on cheap production, and the little builder comes to me – I am not exaggerating – with tears in his eyes and asks me to protect him, not against Socialism, but against private enterprise that is killing him. So as the protector of the small builder, I am the defender of private enterprise and one of its best friends. I am quite honest about it. I have said that this country has accepted private enterprise as a means of carrying out its business. I deplore it, because I think it is out of date and ought to be scrapped, but, at any rate, the country says that we have gone on for a number of years with private enterprise, and I have accepted it. I have come in as a judge of the situation and have tried to act as an honest man amongst these competing people and have tried to do my best for all of them. By promoting a larger market for houses, I am creating a field for private enterprise that it could not possibly have in anything but these proposals. It required Labour proposals, Socialist proposals if you like, in order that private enterprise could get going again.” (Minister of Health, introducing the Second Reading of the Housing (Financial Provisions) Bill, 23 June 1924).

A core component of Wheatley’s Act was that it was structured to operate in favour of the building of houses for rent rather than for sale. It achieved this by the creation of a new form of financial assistance which operated in tandem with the annual rates (tax on assessed rental value) of the built houses. This stipulated that houses rated less than £4.10s were to be rented at figures not exceeding the rents charged for similar pre-war houses in the district. This was meant to negate the tendency of new housing programmes to act as an inflationary influence on the rent demanded for older pre-existing homes. As these new homes (both private and public) were compelled to charge a rent that was related to the cost of their construction the resultant rent, which reflected the higher costs of land materials and labour, in turn tended to set the level for all pre-existing accommodation and thereby ended up generating a higher return for those landlords in possession of older properties. Wheatley sought to reverse this relationship by using the pre-war rental as the benchmark for those new houses needed by the working class (hence the £4.10s rate). However, in order that such an arrangement did not discourage the necessary ongoing investment in housing for rent, his scheme offered a subsidy of £9 per year for forty years in urban areas and £12.10s for a similar period in rural areas. 

At the same time the 1924 Wheatley Housing Act did not revert to the terms of Addison’s 1919 “open” subsidy arrangement for similar reasons that Chamberlain had previously identified. It retained Chamberlain’s idea of the fixed subsidy arrangement but with three significant modifications. Firstly, it extended for a further five years the period for which a council could submit applications for the fixed subsidy scheme (under Chamberlain’s Act it was due to expire in 1925-26). This meant that local councils would continue to be eligible for the subsidy provided they made a successful application within that extended period. Secondly, the period for which the per-house subsidy would be provided was extended from 20 years to 40 years. This meant that councils would receive this annual per-house subsidy for the period of the “life” of the house (i.e. the estimated period within which the cost of building the house would be repaid through rent which, dependent upon the rental, was usually 30-40 years). After that period the ongoing rental income would then be used to bolster the capital funds that local councils would require to continue their house building programmes. Thirdly, it increased the annual per house subsidy from £6 to £9 for those 40 years.

On top of that the Wheatley Act improved on the Chamberlain Act by slightly increasing the dimensions of the standard house as well as being the first housing act to compulsorily direct that the homes be equipped with a bathroom instead of a bath in the scullery. Local councils were also given the authority to provide their own assistance by way of grants to builders or other bodies who submitted plans to construct houses for the working class providing such plans were approved by the Minister of Health. This was to be facilitated through the use of discretionary power to increase the grant by accessing local taxes. These grants were made for houses built either for sale or for rent but as things turned out these grants were principally used for houses built for sale by private enterprise.

In terms of the direct involvement of local government in house construction, under Chamberlain’s 1923 Act 

“Local authorities were allowed to build only after demonstrating that private enterprise could not meet identified need. Moreover, local authority Direct Labour Organisations, introduced in 1892 by the LCC and spreading to other local authorities, were curtailed.” (Lund, p.153). 

Here again, Wheatley’s Act ensured that the existing restrictions on local authority house building were removed and they were once more permitted to use directly employed  labour in their construction. 

Overall, Wheatley’s Act represented a significant improvement over everything successive governments had achieved before by way of council housing and private rental housing.  While Chamberlain’s 1923 Act is estimated to have resulted in a little over 75,000 new council homes Wheatley’s 1924 Act over the inter-war period that it remained operational is claimed to have been responsible for the production of 493,449 new council homes (see: The British Housing Programme, by N.H, Engle in Current Developments in Housing. Published in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 190, March 1937, pp.194-195, and Municipal Dreams: The Rise and Fall of Council Housing, by John Broughton. Published by Verso, London, 2019, p.42).

But aside from the Wheatley Housing Act the achievements of the 1924 minority Labour Government which held office for such a short period from January to October were quite impressive. In fact, those achievements were enough to spook the establishment into orchestrating the fall of the Government in October 1924 through the use of red scare tactics – tactics that extended into the subsequently general election campaign where the Daily Mail was to publish the infamous Zinoviev letter four days before voting as a means of ensuring that the Labour Party would be kept out of office.

The aftermath of Wheatley’s 1924 Housing Act.

Having abandoned calls for protection, the Baldwin Government replaced the Labour minority government in the General Election of 29 October 1924 with an overall majority of 223. The Conservative Government lost no time in making its mark on the housing issue with the 1925 Housing Act. This was mostly significant because of the way one of its provisions was later to have a resonance with the Thatcher Government of 1979. That resonance related to the provision in the 1925 Act which gave local authorities the authority to sell council houses to their tenants. However, while the 1925 legislation provided local authorities with this power it was a power vested with the local authority which would be the agency by which such sales might or might not be enacted. With the Thatcher Government that authority was vested in the tenant who was given the right to compel the local authority to sell, a right backed up by law in the “Right to Buy” schemes. 

The main political and social issue during Baldwin’s ministry was the 1926 General Strike during which he had no hesitation in deploying the military and volunteers to break the strike. In that new government Neville Chamberlain once more became the Minister of Health where was again responsible for housing. However, not before his political career experienced a nasty scare. During the election he had only survived as an MP in his Birmingham Ladywood constituency by a mere 77 votes over his Labour opponent, Oswald Mosley and he subsequently moved to the more affluent Birmingham Edgbaston constituency where he felt he was safe against a potential ousting at a future election. Chamberlain initially chose not to interfere too radically with the operation of Wheatley’s 1924 Housing Act as the political atmosphere of the time continued to inhibit any radical attack on it or on the existing rent controls. Nonetheless, his political instincts were not conducive to him providing indefinite support and he was soon to come under pressure from the National Federation of Master Builders who wished to assume a greater share of government sponsored house building programmes by removing, or at least reducing, local authority involvement in these programmes. At a Cabinet Meeting in February 1926 Chamberlain revealed his priorities with regards to housing when:

“he gave assurances that ‘it is his desire and intention to bring the Wheatley Scheme to an end as soon as practicable and also to proceed actively with the policy of the sale of Addison Houses.” (Housing Politics in the United Kingdom”: power, planning and protest, by Brian Lund. Published by Policy Press, University of Bristol, 2016, p.154).

However, given the political situation in 1926, which in May of that year culminated in the General Strike, whatever his personal preferences, Chamberlain found his options limited with regard to the continuation of the Wheatley Scheme. But on 28 December 1928, with the Baldwin administration in the final months of its hold on power, he announced that he intended to use the provisions under Section 5 of the Wheatley Act to abolish the subsidy he himself had introduced in his own Housing Act of 1923 (and which had been allowed to continue under Wheatley’s Act) while at the same time reducing the Wheatley subsidies that had been introduced in 1924. He did this through a proposal put to Parliament under Section 5 of Wheatley’s Act which gave authority for the Minister of Health to adjust the housing subsidy in the light of changed circumstances. That proposal was duly carried and came into effect in 1929. The design requirements of houses eligible under the existing Wheatley scheme were diluted, with the result that “parlour” houses became rare and fixed baths in kitchens once more emerged in place of dedicated bathrooms; the annual per-house subsidy was more than halved from Wheatley’s £9 to £4. 

Wheatley participated in the debate on the proposals that Chamberlain had put to Parliament on 28 December 1928. During that debate Wheatley stoutly defended his housing act and his contribution to the debate provides further insights into his thoughts on the housing problem and its solution. At its core was a desire to use State power to re-configure the housing and rental market in ways that made it much easier for a greater proportion of working class to access decent housing. The quotation is necessarily long as it confronts an issue that in itself is quite complicated. It also serves to illustrate how a robust Labour Party armed with genuine defenders of working-class interests can expose the nature of the opposition to those interests in ways that survive the test of time and experience. In dealing with the object of his subsidies he said:

“The object of the subsidy was to bring the rents of habitable, healthy houses within the reach of the average working man, and the cost of the houses did not necessarily bear a relation to it. Let me put it this way. If a house was costing £600 to build and the wages of the man for whom it was provided were £6 a week, and the cost of the building came down to £300 and the wages at the same time to £3, the fall in the cost of building had not brought you one step nearer the solution of the problem that confronted you. The problem was to enable the man, out of the wages which he was receiving, to pay a rent for the house that was being erected at the current cost. What the right hon. Gentleman leaves out of account altogether is the fact that, while the cost of building has come down, the rate of wages has come down proportionately, and that the rent of the houses is no less for the man for whom they were originally intended than it was when the cost of building was double what it is to-day. Nominal wages have come down, and with nominal wages coming down, the product of labour comes down. If the house has come down from £600 to £300, and the wages from £6 to £3, the fall in the cost of the house is not to be claimed as a reason why we should refuse State assistance to the man whose wages are also down.

“My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgeton (James Maxton, a fellow ILP member and one of the leading “Red Clydesiders” who had been imprisoned during the First World War for his activities as a conscientious objector – ED), the other evening, said that it seemed to be the settled policy of the Government to give as many parting gifts to their friends as possible before they meet their fate at the General Election [which was later held on 30 May 1929 – ED]. I ask the House to regard the draft Order (Chamberlain’s proposals), which is to be pressed through by the Government majority to-day, as one of the Government’s death-bed gifts. In the old days, if one had assisted one’s friends out of public funds, it would have been done in such a crude manner as to be evidently corruption. The modern method is more scientific and respectable. The Government put through an Act of Parliament which is quite clearly calculated to help the friends to whom they look to give them backing. Considerable capital is sunk in dwelling-houses for letting purposes; I suppose that there are few industries in which a larger amount of capital is invested. The return on this invested capital depends, of course, upon the rents that can be obtained for the houses, and the new publicly-built houses naturally come into competition, in the fixing of rents, with the existing privately-owned houses. If the new houses are scarce, if building is slow, the supply is reduced, and you put up under the competitive system the market value of the commodity. If the rents of the new houses are kept high, the rents of the old houses can be kept high; and if the rents of the old houses can be kept high, there is to a greater extent that extra return on capital which was desired by the hon. Member for Mossley [Austin Hopkinson, eccentric maverick Liberal M.P. and vociferous advocate of the benefits of free trade -ED].

“When the subsidy is withdrawn, undoubtedly rents will be put up. You will shift the burden from the State, from the taxpayer, and to a corresponding extent from the ratepayer, and put it on to the shoulders of the working-classes who are the inhabitants of these houses. You at the same time enable the private owners of houses to put up their rents and you put millions of money into their pockets as a result.”

With regard to the overall object of the 1924 Housing Act, Wheatley went on:

“The 1924 Act, . . . expressed the Labour View of how the housing problem ought to be faced. That Act is based on the idea that State help should be given only to those who need State help. . . The 1924 Act set out to give substantial assistance to the local authorities to enable them to provide houses to let. . . If everyone could afford to buy his own house, there would be no housing problem to trouble us at all. In the 1924 Act, unlike the 1923 Act, stipulations were made to ensure that the assistance given by the State for the erection of houses would reach the people for whom the assistance was intended. The local authorities were bound under that Act to pass on the subsidy to the tenants.”

He then called on local authorities to mount “vigorous opposition” to the implementation of the Government proposals and that he opposed this proposal

“on the ground that it violates all the pledges given by the Government of 1924 to all the people interested in the solution of the housing problem. Hon. Gentlemen opposite may sneer at the violation of pledges given to our own people. That is characteristic of them. If we give pledges to Frenchmen, those pledges are sacred; but if we make promises to our own people, they are to be regarded as belonging to the piecrust order. Hon. Gentlemen opposite sneer at their own people, but they hail with reverence and deference the people of other countries in their negotiations with them and in the promises made to them. We violate here solemn pledges to our own people in 1924. It is impossible to convey to this House, even after a brief period of four years, the difficulties which stood in the way of housing in 1924. Hon. Members opposite and their party were completely helpless, and came to this House and confessed their helplessness. The fundamental criticism in 1924 was that out of the chaos in which the industry was it was impossible for us to carry out our policy and impossible to build houses. The party opposite had tried it. The right hon. Gentleman had put his Act of 1923 on the Statute Book, but no houses were being built, and, after all, it is houses that matter, not Acts of Parliament. The right hon. Gentleman, or his successor at the Ministry of Health, had to come here and state in the most lamentable language that they could not get houses built.

“I remember the Conservative predecessor of the right hon. Gentleman at the Ministry of Health, now the Home Secretary (William Joynson-Hicks, who during the First World War advocated the indiscriminate bombing of German civilians and in 1919 supported General Reginald Dyer’s role in the Amritsar Massacre – ED), coming to the Treasury Box here and telling us that he had been practising bricklaying. They had started off on the assumption that the first step necessary in solving the housing problem was to smash trade unionism. You could make no progress till you had smashed the trade unions. The right hon. Gentleman the present Home Secretary wanted to demonstrate that there was really no craftsmanship in the laying of bricks, and so he accepted an invitation from a speculative builder who later, I suppose, pocketed the 1923 subsidy, and went down to where houses were being built, and then solemnly came back and told the House that with the aid of a hoard which served as a guide line he could lay six bricks while a bricklayer was laying one. I submit that as just a sample of the tone which prevailed in the House at that time. There was a shortage of houses, there was a shortage of men, there was a shortage of materials, and right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite, whom many of you here believe to have superior business capacity- wrongfully believe it, because they are inferior to you, so far as my experience of them has gone- held up their hands in holy horror, and said: ‘We cannot get out of the difficulty until we smash something. Let us begin with the bricklayers, let us go for the plasterers, let us go for the joiners, let us smash everybody who can help in the building of houses, and then we shall be able to solve the problem.’ That was the attitude adopted towards the problem, and that was the basis of their policy in 1924.

Although always admitting that his Housing Act was not a socialistic measure Wheatley had hoped that the model it created in its formulation would be used as a template for solving other issues relating to the working class and capitalism.

“I submit that the 1924 Act was more than an Act of Parliament. It was a first-class piece of national industrial organisation. We are witnessing to-day not merely the breaking up of an Act of Parliament, but deliberate, smashing blows at probably the one intelligently organised industry in this country.

“In 1924 we found the building industry in chaos, and we brought together all the people interested in a solution of the problem. We made an appeal to them on high moral lines as well as on other grounds. We appealed to them for the sake of the nation to come together and help us. We got the local authorities, operatives, manufacturers, contractors and merchants to meet the Government and the representatives of the tenants, and these people agreed to terms which, for the first time in this country, put the building industry on a solid basis. The Government gave pledges to the country, and I say that those pledges are just as solemn and worthy of recognition as any pledge given to any nation in the world. If the people of this country know their own business and have any respect for their own honour, they will make short shrift of the Conservative Government that violated the pledges which were given in 1924. . . .

“It was the duty of everybody to improve upon the scheme of 1924 and extend it to every branch of the industry. Now the people who prate about the importance of national unity are taking every possible opportunity to strike a blow at the poorer section of the community, and they are doing this to put an extra penny into the pockets of their own supporters. This is something which is not only indefensible but it is scarcely respectable in politics, and it certainly emanates from a mentality that deserves no respect from the people on this side of the House or the people whom we represent.” (House of Commons Debate, 28 December 1928).

However, as has been said, despite Wheatley’s speech, the large Conservative majority in the House secured a victory for Chamberlain’s proposals. Yet, those proposals hardly had time to bed in before the General Election of 30 May 1929. The result of that election was that the Labour Party increased the number of its MPs from 151 in 1924 to 287 in 1929 while the Conservatives dropped from 412 to 260. Yet, despite having the highest number of seats in the House (representing another historical landmark for the party) with the Liberals also increasing the number of their MPs from 40 in 1924 to 59 the Labour Party once again had to be content with forming another minority administration. In the meantime, Wheatley, who was a member of the ILP and had become increasingly critical of Ramsay MacDonald’s leadership of the Labour Party, was not allocated a position in the 1929 Labour Government. He died on 12 May 1930. What followed the emergence of Ramsay MacDonald’s 1929 minority Labour government in terms of housing will be described in the next instalment.