The Spirit of '45 Page #7

---

that was improved under nationalisation.

Dramatically improved

under nationalisation.

But in the pits, it was

still the same old struggle.

Our safety improved tremendously.

Safety committees were set up.

Investment went in,

which meant safety was more important.

It must have felt like it was

the beginning of a new world.

It succeeded

because you had central planning.

The capital cost of building

power stations and transmission systems

across the whole of the UK,

in current-day costings, you're talking

tens of billions of pounds,

so you needed central control

to be able to fund such an operation.

Most of the gas, water and electricity

was part of the local authority

council-run services.

There was no national structure to it.

Gas, electricity, water;

They tend to form natural monopolies.

They tend to be things

that can only be done efficiently

on a very, very large scale.

There's not much point building

two separate distribution systems

of water in a city.

You have one and everybody uses it

because it's the same stuff

that comes out of the tap.

If you allow private competition

to be that one supplier,

all the advantages that are claimed for

private enterprise suddenly disappear.

So you take it into public ownership

and that way you can set the prices,

you can set long-term investment

for the utility,

you can start to control and manage

how the thing's distributed.

At the end of the war,

we had two problems.

We had the inherited slums from the '30s

and we had the war damage.

We had millions of people coming home

from the war wanting to get married,

set up home and there was

an acute housing shortage.

So what the Labour government did

was to authorise local authorities

to build houses for rent

rather than for sale.

I think it's very hard on the young

people out of the forces, newly married,

who don't stand a chance at all.

I should be really very happy

when my husband comes home

and I have a house for him

to come to from Singapore.

Well, I only want to say

I put my application in in 1935

and I'm still waiting for a house. Why?

With repeated applications renewed...

Well, I've been married six years now.

Two children and in one room only.

One room for four. I think it's a shame.

It's about time something was done.

I used to go queue up at

the council offices every Monday morning

and there'd be a queue

about a mile long,

all the women grumbling, of course.

Everybody trying to get in there.

One particular morning,

this lady came out in a fur coat

and held up a key.

"I've got one," she said.

"I let him lock the door

and have what he wanted."

So I said, "Well, if that's the way

I'm going to get one, I'll go without."

Well, they told us we'd have

to have another 60 points at least

before we stood a chance

of having a place.

We'd always planned

to have four children.

So I said to Ben,

'Well, let's have another baby."

'We'll get a house then."

So after a lot of persuasion,

we decided.

We had another baby.

We got down there and they said,

'We're very sorry, Mrs Adams,

but about 300 other couples

did the same as you that night."

And we were back to square one,

in a worse position, really,

with another baby on the way

and, you know, no place to put it.

We had to find out everything

about this great city

we were planning to rebuild.

Everything about its history

and its geography,

its people and the way they live.

We had to find out how much of it had

been totally destroyed

and how much of it

was in such a bad state

that it would have to be rebuilt anyway.

And that didn't just mean

the bombed buildings.

The housebuilding

programme is enormous.

Target of 200-300,000 homes a year

constructed after the end of the war.

This is an economy

that is absolutely battered

as a result of six years

of total warfare.

So the scale of the ambition

of what was being achieved

is really quite unbelievable.

First, let's look

at one of the neighbourhoods

and see how that's arranged.

Here, near the centre,

is the junior school.

The people would live in streets

or squares of terraced houses,

each with its own private garden.

So it's not an inhuman plan at all,

but one that is designed to make life

better and pleasanter for all of us.

And so we started in 1945 with great

expectations, with great enthusiasm,

to try and build the new London, to make

good all the devastation of wartime,

to really provide a new London

for the people who deserved it,

trying to give them a better kind of

environment than they'd ever had before.

It was Bevan. He was

the Minister for Health and Housing.

He very much saw the need for housing

in terms of the knock-on effects

poor housing was having on health.

The need at the present time

is to build houses for poor people.

(APPLAUSE)

I am not prepared

to associate myself with a policy

where well-to-do people

can afford to build luxury homes

and poor people go without homes.

(APPLAUSE)

His attitude was, "Nothing but the best

is good enough for the working class."

'We are going to have

really good houses."

And he built really good houses.

The Labour government not only housed

people, they housed them well.

The broadest objective

was human welfare.

Human welfare in terms of health,

so that everybody could be healthy,

everybody could have a reasonable diet,

everybody could have

a reasonable space to live in.

There would be no illnesses

consequent on bad housing,

so obviously, housing

was the most important priority.

He insisted on certain minimum standards

which many at that time

thought were probably too good

for ordinary working-class people.

I shall never forget

the uproar that occurred

when he proposed

to put upstairs and downstairs loos

in order that the kids

didn't have to go upstairs

every time they came in from the garden.

Planning is absolutely important.

I mean, if you look at all the most

successful housing developments

where there are libraries and parks

and even a swimming pool

and all sorts of facilities

provided as part of the development

or whether it's the new towns.

The schools were being planned

alongside the housing

and the doctors' surgeries

and the employment.

So it was just perfect

for young families.

The new house had French

windows.

We laid in this room

on these mattresses.

When we woke up in the morning,

there was all this light.

There were stairs and a bathroom.

You know, like that.

So, yes, it were brilliant.

Me and my dad,

we set about building a garden.

You loved to get rocks

and make rockeries and do all that.

So yes, it were brilliant.

I moved into a council house

not long after I got married.

It was the best thing

that ever happened in my life.

To see a house with a bathroom in it

and a back garden...

I was completely taken in.

And the council houses for people

in them days

was the bat thing

that ever happened for them.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes