Housing the People: the Contested Role of the State from Pre-industrial Times to the 1930s.

John Boughton’s talk will cover the early history of public housing from the almshouses and parish housing of pre-industrial times to the council housing of the interwar period. As the Industrial Revolution came to transform Britain’s economy and society and democratic forces grew, Victorian elites came slowly to accept the inevitability of state intervention in housing. John will discuss the forces that shaped council housing in the later nineteenth century and the ideals motivating housing reformers. He’ll look at how council housing developed before the First World War and the crucial impact of the War itself in creating the ideals and forms of mass public housing that emerged in the interwar period. He’ll conclude with a brief examination of how the form and politics of council housing evolved in the 1920s.