Austerity Britain

by David Kynaston

  It was a dreadful place at first for social, shopping and recreational facilities, and I know that the lack of proper schools caused considerable aggravation on the part of many people. Some people left the area because of this. Others left simply because there was nothing here and we were paying high rents. We used to go back to the South Side for the pictures and to do the shopping.

  There was nothing in the scheme at all. The men missed the pubs the most. People used to go back to the old places all the time to see their friends and visit the old haunts. People who came from Govan took others who came from other areas back with them to the Govan shops. In any case, the shops in the older areas were cheaper than the shops in Pollok and the vans were very expensive.

  The vans and the small shops in the area made a fortune. I know that in several cases, the money they made touring Pollok enabled them to buy more expensive shops elsewhere in Glasgow.

  All the people settled down well together, although there wasn’t the same feelings of community life that we had in the older tenements. Mind you, there was nowhere to meet the other tenants.

  People got on okay together but there was no community spirit. By the time you came home from work, if you could get on to a bus that is, there was little time to get ready to go out. That was one of the main problems living so far from the work – it was the time getting there and back.

  This general lack of amenities (typified by the poor and expensive bus services) to accompany the new housing can probably be explained, even justified, by the all-out emphasis on getting as many houses and tenements up as quickly as possible, but cumulatively their absence made a big difference to Pollok’s chances of becoming a successful estate. Nor overall was it a plus that the Corporation did not allow pubs or bars on its property – a ban going back to 1890 that would last until 1969. There were also some basic failures of planning and design that might otherwise have helped alleviate the often dreary, barrack-like appearance of the flat-roofed, walk-up tenements themselves. The original pre-war layout for the estate (intended for terraced and cottage-type housing) was left largely unaltered; long, unbroken rows of tenements were laid out opposite each other, resulting in parts of the road virtually never seeing the sun; the roads between the tenement blocks were often too narrow; there were no communal gardens; and indeed the main communal facility was the ‘midden’, or concrete bin-shelter – and even it became, notes Gerry Mooney, ‘a point of much criticism as far as the tenement residents were concerned’. All in all, this was a formidable catalogue of defects. But whether the main culprit was undue haste, lack of resources, indifference or just sheer lack of imagination, it is impossible to be sure.

  Yet even as the Govan Press asserted in September 1950 that ‘there are a thousand people living in the Pollok housing scheme who do not want to live there’ – which may well have been an underestimate – the plans had been drawn up and completed for similarly vast new estates in Glasgow’s three other corners: Drumchapel in the north-west, Castlemilk in the south-east and Easterhouse in the north-east. The very names would in time resonate.25

  14

  That Dump?

  Quarry Hill Experiment was the treat served up to Home Service listeners on the evening of Friday, 6 April 1951. Billed as a ‘factual report on thirteen years of community living’, it was a judicious and thorough one-hour exploration of how the model estate in Leeds had fared since 1938. A series of critical and perceptive if sometimes buck-passing viewpoints were heard. Accepting that the youth club and social centre had been a failed experiment, the Housing Committee’s spokesman declared that ‘the rest is with the tenants, the appearance and happiness of the estate depends upon their response and civic pride’. A tenants’ spokesman agreed: ‘They just don’t think of themselves as a community with community responsibilities.’ But an officer of the tenants’ association was more inclined to blame the Corporation: ‘The people who live in Quarry Hill usually don’t know what is going to be done till it is done. And so they feel that it’s no business of theirs.’ All in all, the programme concluded that unless the ‘community such as finds itself now in Quarry Hill can adapt itself fully to what is, in many essentials, an un-English way of life’, then there was ‘a danger that for lack of those very provisions which were to have made community life possible, something of the squalor of the slums may eventually return’. Even so, ‘it is something to have attempted such a great experiment’ – and ‘no one dare deny that the material standard of life in Quarry Hill is as high as any yet provided for what are called “the lower income groups”.’

  That, no doubt, would have been that – one more worthy radio documentary – but for the fateful, well-meaning contribution of one tenant, Joan Mann: ‘Of course, one of the troubles I find is that people look down on me because I live in Quarry Hill. Whenever I mention it, someone is sure to say “What – that dump?” and you can’t have pride in a place when people think like that about it.’ The term `dump’ touched the rawest of nerves. Within days an angry petition had been signed by about a hundred tenants, complaining that the programme had brought Quarry Hill ‘into disrepute’ and given ‘the impression that the intelligence and social standing of its residents are of an extremely low degree’. A protest meeting was called for later in the month.1.

  Sunday the 8th was Census Day, and next morning a young, bound-for-London journalist, Keith Waterhouse, traipsed the streets of Leeds (but probably not around Quarry Hill) with a Census enumerator collecting forms. ‘Resentful? Churlish? Not a bit!’ declared the talkative official:

  Most people are terrifically bucked at the idea of being counted. They like to feel that the Government knows that they personally do exist, and that the Government is interested in their especial job and the fact that they have to share a bathroom with the people upstairs. They like being counted. Mark you, some of them haven’t the faintest idea what it’s for. One woman asked if it was to do with the voting. Another thinks it’s a kind of Gallup Poll, or some thing or other. I didn’t bother telling them.

  ‘Everyone on his round of 300 houses gave their information without a murmur,’ commented Waterhouse. But the last word went to ‘the Census Man’, who professed himself ‘satisfied’ with the whole exercise. ‘It has not been good weather for counting heads, but people have been courteous, patient and intelligent. I’ve had more cups of tea today than I’ve had in my life before.’

  Also on Monday the defeated English cricket team docked at Tilbury. Among the several inexperienced tourists to have disappointed was the 20-year-old Brian Close; his consolation prize was to report back shortly to the Royal Signals at Catterick and complete his National Service. That evening, a touring revue called Sky High opened for a week at the Sunderland Empire. Next morning, there was only tepid praise in the local paper for one of its comedy stars – ‘I thought Reg Varney’s personality pleasing and warming, but was not so “taken” with some of his comedy’ – and no mention of the other, Benny Hill. This was tactful, because Hill’s solo spot, successful enough in southern theatres but already in trouble the previous week in Hull, had bombed, culminating in a merciless slow handclap. His confidence shot, he was allowed to stay on for the rest of the week but only as Varney’s ‘feed’. No such problems that Tuesday evening for Judy Garland, who played two ‘triumphant’ houses at the London Palladium, complete with ‘Clang Clang Clang Went the Trolley’.2.

  Tuesday the 10th was also Budget day – Hugh Gaitskell’s first. Among those in a packed Commons (though with Attlee absent, in hospital with a duodenal ulcer) was Ernest Bevin, a sick man recently eased out of the foreign secretaryship. Sitting in the press gallery, Mollie Panter-Downes watched him ‘turn his drawn face toward the debonair, carnation-buttonholed Gaitskell, already like the ghost of a grand old trade-union Labour movement, hovering on the edge of the banquet of the brainy new order that has met the workers via the London School of Economics rather than via the hard-life school of the poor’. Another observer of the scene, fr
om across the floor, was Harold Macmillan. ‘It was like a very good lecture to a Working Man’s Club,’ he thought, before summarising the main aspects of a fiscal package designed to meet the spiralling costs of rearmament: ‘6d more on income tax; 50% instead of 30% on distribution profits; double the purchase tax on motor-cars; 4d more on petrol’. Gaitskell also proposed that, in Macmillan’s words, ‘the patient shd pay half the cost of the spectacles and half the cost of the dentures supplied at present gratis’ – at which point, unrecorded by Macmillan, a muffled cry of ‘Shame!’ was heard from Jennie Lee, standing next to her husband behind the Speaker’s chair. Aneurin Bevan himself, ‘red in the face and breathing like an angry bull’ according to another Tory diarist (‘Chips’ Channon), walked out as soon as Gaitskell ended that passage. ‘What will Bevan do?’ Macmillan asked himself. He added that his expectation was that Bevan would not resign.

  Gaitskell’s Budget was overall moderately well received, but Gladys Langford spoke for most people after most Budgets in the immediate post-war period when she noted gloomily, ‘Oh, dear! What a THIN time lies ahead.’ With the Westminster atmosphere at its most febrile, the Parliamentary Labour Party met on Wednesday morning. There, Bevan duly attacked the NHS charges but announced to applause that he had ‘decided not to take a certain course’ – which most observers took to mean that he would not be resigning over the issue. ‘Bevan Gives Way On Health Charges’ was the confident headline of the Daily Telegraph next day. Labour’s youngest MP, Anthony Wedgwood Benn, was among those speaking at the meeting. ‘I welcomed the budget,’ he recorded in his diary. ‘On this question of “principle” of a free health service, it is nonsense. There are many national scandals it would be costly to correct. This is not a question of principle, but to the contrary, it is a practical matter.’ He also noted how during his speech a half-asleep Bevin had woken up, looked at the speaker and asked, ‘Who is that boy?’ And how, told who it was, the weary titan had said, ‘Nice boy, nice boy.’3

  Another nice, Oxford-educated boy was sampling the delights of the British seaside. ‘I am writing this from Blackpool,’ V. S. Naipaul reported back home next day. ‘It is a big machine made to extort money from the people on holiday, full of fortune-tellers, gypsies, all named Lee, and all claiming to be the only Gypsy Lee on the front – eating places and amusement shops.’ Just up the coast, almost all attention that Wednesday was on the latest news from Fartown, Hudders-field. Barrow’s rugby-league club had on Saturday drawn 14–14 with Leeds in the cup semi-final at the cavernous Odsal stadium, Bradford; today, with no floodlights available, the replay was scheduled for a 5.30 kick-off. The outcome was 28–13 to Willie Horne’s team. ‘Well done, gallant warriors of Craven Park!’ exalted the Barrow News. ‘The great exploits of its Rugby team have brought joy and honour to the town, and Barrow is proud of them.’

  But not everyone saw the bright side, as Nella Last, herself this side of the moon, found out on Thursday:

  I was talking to a shopkeeper today, & he was a bit gloomy about all the money taken out of Barrow already by the Rugby . . . In the paper it said 40,000 went to Odsal & 4,000 to Huddersfield for the replay. They couldn’t do it at less than £1 a head on the average – and tonight the fare to Wembley was announced – 54/6, & in another column is announced 10,000 tickets for Wembley Stadium would be allotted tomorrow! With little or no overtime being worked in the Yard at present, if people do flock to Wembley, it stands to reason some one or something will suffer!

  There were indeed troubles at the Barrow Shipyard, where for three months the engineers and coppersmiths had imposed a ban on overtime and piecework, but the previous Saturday, even as most Barrovians were flocking to Bradford, that had not stopped the Barrow Shipyard Band competing at Bolton in the North Western Area Brass Band Championship, albeit to finish unplaced after being unluckily drawn to play first.4.

  That same Saturday, the day after the Quarry Hill radio programme, a listener living elsewhere in Leeds had walked through the estate, and on Friday the 13th his or her unflattering description, under the name ‘Sightseer’, appeared in the local press and raised the controversy up a further notch: ‘“Dump” is a correct expression to apply to the condition of the estate itself . . . The Quarry Hill perspective is one of dirty, ugly concrete, equally ugly and none-too-good tar macadam, bare, clay earth, combining to create an appearance of monstrous desolation. It is evident there is unrest among the people who live there.’ ‘Sightseer’ was especially affronted by walking through ‘the arch facing the Headrow’ and being ‘greeted around the corner with a display of rubbish around a large and disreputable rubbish box’ – something which ‘I do not think would have been tolerated in the old Quarry Hill!’ Perhaps ‘Sightseer’ should have been accompanied by Anthony Crosland. ‘Is extreme tidiness a virtue or a vice?’ the Any Questions? team was asked that evening in Frome, shortly after the rising Labour star had entered a stout defence of Gaitskell’s Budget. ‘It’s the most disgusting vice,’ he answered. ‘It’s on a par with being a vegetarian, with not smoking, not drinking. (Laughter.) I feel more strongly about this than I can possibly express to you. I’m perfectly speechless with the strength of my feeling on this subject.’

  Next day, Saturday the 14th, Gladys Langford was not much more enthusiastic than ‘Sightseer’ when, motivated by a desire to see the preparations for the imminent Festival of Britain, she went to the Embankment: ‘WHAT a muddle! Hideous buildings in a sea of mud!’ The Festival would never be seen by Ernest Bevin, still occupying the Foreign Secretary’s official residence at Carlton Gardens. That afternoon, reading official papers in bed (in his capacity as Lord Privy Seal), he had a final heart attack and died – ‘the key to his red box’, according to his biographer, ‘still clutched in his hand’. If the weather had not been so bitingly cold, he would have been at Wembley to see England lose 3–2 at home to Scotland after playing most of the game with ten men following Wilf Mannion’s early injury. ‘All right, we lost the British Football Championship,’ began Desmond Hackett’s typically bombastic match report in the Daily Express, ‘but, by jove! we found something that has been missing around English Soccer for years – that good old fighting spirit.’5.

  In the Commons on Monday tributes were duly paid to Bevin – including one by Herbert Morrison, deputising for the still-hospitalised Attlee and speaking, according to Macmillan, ‘very clumsily and inartistically’ – but far more people were interested in that evening’s Twenty Questions, partly to find out whether Gilbert Harding was going to be even shorter-tempered than in recent weeks. Among them was Nella Last. ‘Quite the worst of a few bad 20 Questions since Gilbert Harding assumed the post as Quizmaster,’ she noted afterwards. ‘He didn’t sound sober to me, horrid pompous man. How Richard Dimbleby keeps as patient as he does – or Jack Train swallow the sneering way he is addressed some times, beats me.’ Next morning, the press went to town, reporting how the microphone had been accidentally on as Harding, introducing his team to the studio audience, had said testily, ‘This is the last time we shall have this nonsense’, and also how he had ended the programme with a barely coherent monologue: ‘Well, there is a hectic evening for you. I have four successes, the team has had six, which seems all right. I have nothing more to say whatever except that they done one thing in 18 and, one thing or another, and after all you have been listening, and if you have not it serves you right.’ The BBC announced that day that he was to ‘rest by agreement’ from the programme. But he still had to go to Edinburgh to record his final Round Britain Quiz in the current series, and at King’s Cross ‘burly, red-faced, bachelor Harding, nearing 44’ spoke briefly to the press: ‘I’ve persuaded my sister to come with me, because I don’t want to be alone just now.’6.

  In Scotland itself, there was the formal opening on Tuesday afternoon of the new primary school in Muirshiel Crescent, Pollok, built from prefabricated timber units specially imported from Austria. ‘The people who were responsible for planning Pollok and oth
er districts had made insufficient provision for the schooling of the children,’ conceded Bailie E. J. Donaldson, Convenor of Education, but ‘it was hoped that by September approximately 18 temporary schools with 90 classrooms to accommodate 4,000 children would be completed in Pollok.’ The big event of the day, however, was back in London. Since the 9th the trial had been taking place at the Old Bailey of seven unofficial dockers’ leaders, charged with offences under Order 1305, a wartime regulation designed to prevent industrial disputes. For several months there had been widespread unofficial strike action by dockers on the Mersey and in London, and the prosecution – brought by the Attorney-General, Sir Hartley Shawcross – was a clear attempt to break the unofficial movement. After a summing up by the Lord Chief Justice, the implacable Lord Goddard, that emphasised that ‘strikes intended to overawe courts or juries are illegal’, the jury on the 17th was considering its verdict. Outside, several thousand dockers waited for hours, among them Jack Dash. ‘Things seemed to be going very slowly, the lads were getting edgy and restless,’ he recalled:

  So we decided to break into song. It’s amazing what meaning you can put into such songs as Rule Britannia, Sons of the Sea, and Land of Hope and Glory if you’re in the right combative mood, and there was a moving rendering of Kevin Barry from some of the Irishmen present. Now, I don’t know if we were being too patriotic, or if we were disturbing the office staffs in the adjacent buildings, but quite suddenly, up from the direction of Snow Hill Police Station, our tuneful chants were interrupted by a clip-clop, clip-clop, and sure enough, there were the Cossacks – the mounted police – trotting towards us.