Home ownership and socialism in Britain : a bulwark against bolshevism

Abstract

This paper suggests that the British working class is roughly equally divided between tenants and home owners, and that the growth of home ownership is likely to continue, encouraged as it has been by both Labour and Conservative govern ments. Nevertheless government promotion of relatively insecure low income owner occupation in the inner city has illustrated the limits of such a strategy. Homeownership has not depoliticised the housing question for the working class but has transformed it into a central part of the politics of prices and incomes. Socialist policies which concentrate on the defence ofpresent-day council housing or an even-handed approach to council tenants and homeowners are doomed to favouring the latter. The problems of a more radical reformist approach to the housing question are outlined.