Upward or outward? Politics, planning and council flats, 1919–1939

Abstract

High-rise housing — although now generally seen as a post-1945 disaster — was built up to 14 storeys high in late Victorian London, before being severely restrained by the London Building Acts of the 1890s. Between the wars the issue of flats versus cottages for social housing became highly politicised, with Labour taking a consistently strong stand against multi-storey solutions until the party won control of the London County Council (LCC) in 1934 and, with it, responsibility for delivering the capital's slum clearance and re-housing programme. This paper tracks the course of the high-building debates during the inter-war years. It argues that the adoption of a flat-building policy after 1934 by the Labour-controlled LCC should be seen as a critical turning point, stimulating changes in the design and image of the working-class flat, encouraging a number of pro-flat initiatives, and smoothing the path for the adoption of very much higher social housing proposals after 1945.