Homes Fit For Heroes

Homes fit for Heroes looks at the pledge made 100 years ago by the Lloyd George government to build half a million ‘homes fit for heroes’ – the pledge which made council housing a major part of the housing system in the UK. Originally published in 1981, the book is the only full-scale study of the provision and design of state housing in the period following the 1918 Armistice and remains the standard work on the subject. It looks at the municipal garden suburbs of the 1920s, which were completely different from traditional working-class housing, inside and out. Instead of being packed onto the ground in long terraces, the houses were set in spacious gardens surrounded by trees and open spaces and often they contained luxuries, like upstairs bathrooms, unheard-of in the working-class houses of the past. The book shows that, in the turbulent period following the First World War, the British government launched the housing campaign as a way of persuading the troops and the people that their aspirations would be met under the existing system, without any need for revolution. The design of the houses, based on the famous Tudor Walters Report of 1918, was a central element in this strategy: the large and comfortable houses provided by the state were intended as visible evidence of the arrival of a ‘new era for the working classes of this country’.

Homes fit for Heroes looks at the pledge made 100 years ago by the Lloyd George government to build half a million ‘homes fit for heroes’ – the pledge which made council housing a major part of the housing system in the UK. Originally published in 1981, the book is the only full-scale study of the provision and design of state housing in the period following the 1918 Armistice and remains the standard work on the subject. It looks at the municipal garden suburbs of the 1920s, which were completely different from traditional working-class housing, inside and out. Instead of being packed onto the ground in long terraces, the houses were set in spacious gardens surrounded by trees and open spaces and often they contained luxuries, like upstairs bathrooms, unheard-of in the working-class houses of the past. The book shows that, in the turbulent period following the First World War, the British government launched the housing campaign as a way of persuading the troops and the people that their aspirations would be met under the existing system, without any need for revolution. The design of the houses, based on the famous Tudor Walters Report of 1918, was a central element in this strategy: the large and comfortable houses provided by the state were intended as visible evidence of the arrival of a ‘new era for the working classes of this country’.

In 1918, at the end of the First World War, Britain believed she had been victorious. But victory had come at a colossal price and Prime Minister David Lloyd George knew he must also win the peace. Within a fortnight of signing the armistice his famous speech spoke of the future, "What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in." After the trauma of the war, those returning home required jobs and, with them, clean and modern homes for their families. The slums and tenements of the pre-war years were not going to enable a healthy workforce that was fit to tackle the challenges of the new post-war world. At all costs Britain had to avoid the riot and revolution that had swept Europe in the later stages of the war. This book describes the re-building of the country during the decades after 1918. Bold advances were made in social provision, especially in housing, with ambitious schemes by local authorities, no longer solely through private builders. These early developments were not always able to keep ahead of the economic realities of the time and many faltered. But through such pioneering improvements, housing was fixed firmly at the center of British politics. It remains so today.

This collection of papers is part of the series Studies in Imperialism. The series aims to examine imperialism as more than a set of economic, political and military phenomena and explores the intellectual, cultural and technical aspects of imperialism in the era of European world supremacy. The books seek to demonstrate that imperialism had profound effects on dominant as well as on subordinate societies.

Lynsey Hanley was born and raised just outside of Birmingham on what was then the largest council estate in Europe, and she has lived for years on an estate in London's East End. Writing with passion, humour and a sense of history, she recounts the rise of social housing a century ago, its adoption as a fundamental right by leaders of the social welfare state in the mid-century and its decline - as both idea and reality - in the 1960s and '70s. Throughout, Hanley focuses on how shifting trends in urban planning and changing government policies - from Homes Fit for Heroes to Le Corbusier's concrete tower blocks, to the Right to Buy - affected those so often left out of the argument over council estates: the millions of people who live on them. What emerges is a vivid mix of memoir and social history, an engaging and illuminating book about a corner of society that the rest of Britain has left in the dark.

This new book explores Britain's intensely urban and increasingly global communities as interlocking pieces of a complex jigsaw; they are hard to see apart yet they are deeply unequal. Jigsaw Cities examines these issues using Birmingham, Britain's second city, as a model of pioneering urban order and as a victim of brutal Modernist planning.

"Despite Bill Brandt's fame and considerable influence on the development of modern photography, the photographs in this book are a little known body of work." "The photographs were taken between 1939 and 1943 when Brandt worked on a commercial assignment for the Bournville Village Trust which was set up by George Cadbury in 1900 to manage the Bournville Estate, a model housing development which he created near his factory on the outskirts of Birmingham. The prints and negatives have been with BVT for some 60 years." "The photographs illustrate the living conditions in a range of housing types. For example, the back-to-back slums built in the nineteenth century through to modern municipal housing built in the 1930s. The majority of the photographs were taken in Birmingham but also some in London where he looked at 'old residential' properties near to his own home in Camden Hill. London was undoubtedly one of Brandt's favourite subjects and these photographs, taken around 1943, are amongst a much larger body of work Brandt shot in the capital city during the war-years."--BOOK JACKET.