In August 1980 Margaret Thatcher’s first government,
barely a year old but already deeply unpopular and bogged down by problems,
produced a Housing Act. Even more than most legislation it was prolix and
repetitive, but its bold intention stood out: “to give ... the right to buy
their homes ... to tenants of local authorities”. It envisaged a revolution in
how a large minority of Britons lived. That revolution had been an awfully long time coming. Contrary
to the conventional wisdom, cleverly sown by the Conservatives in 1980 and
doggedly cultivated by rightwing Britain ever since, selling off council homes
was not a sudden stroke of genius by the Thatcher government. The idea was as
old as council housing itself. This is an extract from Promised You A
Miracle: UK80-82 by Andy Beckett, to be published by Penguin on 3 September.
Read more on the Guardian website.
No comments:
Post a Comment