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Life and Death of Old Labour (4) - Conclusions
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8. 1950-1965: The steel fist in the steel glove.
Sheffield before 1950 ike other English cities, Sheffield had a long history of civic improvement. In 1864, the borough prohibited the construction of back-to-back houses (though 38,000 already existed).676 In 1887, water was municipalised, and ambitious engineering L 677 678 schemes were undertaken. Drainage was improved. From 1903 onwards there was house-by-house dustbin collection.679 The city also engaged in measures designed to promote child health.680 By 1900 the city had 131 hectares of public parks and recreation grounds,681 while 1910 saw the foundation of the (optimistically named) ‘Beautiful Sheffield League.’682 Without major financial resources, however, there were limits to what the city could do. Most working-class dwellings in the 1870s were owned in blocks of between ten and fifty dwellings;683 individual landlords had neither the capital, nor the motivation, to improve them. By 1914, dwellings either classified as unfit, or built back-to-back, made up almost 25% of the city.684 Publicly-provided housing before 1914 was too expensive for slum-dwellers.685 Patrick Abercrombie was employed to prepare a plan for the city in the immediate post-war era, but it was not put into effect.686
676 Marshall, 'Town Planning in Sheffield,' p.20. 677 Jean Cass, 'Water Supply,' in The History of the City of Sheffield, 1843-1993, ed. Clyde Binfield (Sheffield, 1993), pp.123-4. 678 By 1920, 68% of houses had inside lavatories. Clifford Shaw, 'Aspects of Public Health,' in The History of the City of Sheffield, 1843-1993:Volume II: Society, ed. Clyde Binfield (Sheffield, 1993), p.111. 679 Cass, 'Water Supply,' p.125. 680 Shaw, 'Aspects of Public Health,' p.113. 681 R.J. Marshall, 'Town Planning in Sheffield,' idem., pp.20-22. Sewell, 'Paradise Lost?,' pp.203-10. 682 Sewell, 'Paradise Lost?,' pp.208-9. 683 ibid., p.207. Marshall, 'Town Planning in Sheffield,' pp.18-20. 684 Crook, 'Needs, Standards and Affordability,' p.77. 685 ibid. 686 R.J. Marshall, 'Town Planning in Sheffield,' idem., pp.21-23.. Sheffield 1950-1965 175
On Labour’s accession to power in 1926 it inherited these constraints. So moderate was its policy that, ten years later, the city was praised in ‘The Times’ for its financial prudence.687 It made (largely) symbolic gestures. For example,
• In 1927 it established the country’s first municipally owned abattoir and meat market, and a Direct Labour department; it even took to constructing its own trams. But this was largely symbolic; the Direct Labour Department employed only 254 people by 1933, and only 634 people (even after it had been merged with the repair branch) in 1938.688
• In 1927, it disbanded the Officer Training Corps at the King Edward VII school (despite the protest resignation of the headmaster); two years later, it launched an annual ‘Peace Day’ in schools.689 The council also did what it could to plan for the future; introducing a comprehensive plan for 4,700 acres in the northwest of Sheffield,690 introducing development control, and designating a Green Belt.691 It started to build up a land-bank for housing development.692 It went ahead with the construction of City Hall (a concert hall, not an administrative building); sought to build a city airport; continued the expansion of public health provision,693 continued the programme of sanitary reform started by its predecessors;694 improved the conditions in the Poor Law hospitals,695 and was the first local authority to obtain government approval to provide swimming baths and gymnasia for its schools.696 Its most important improvements were via the house building programme (discussed above).
687 Thorpe, 'The Consolidation of a Labour Stronghold 1926-1951,' pp.90,100. 688 ibid., pp.92, 91, 98-102. Thorpe says that ‘the abolition of the [Direct Labour Department] called into question the’ [Conservative] ‘Progressives’ financial competence and business sense...’ (p.98); however, it is not clear that this claim is supported by the evidence he cites, which consists of a single example in which the Direct Labour Department had submitted a lower tender on one project (a hospital extension) than its private sector competitors. Similarly, he says (p.104) that municipal electricity generation was so efficient that it reduced prices charged to consumers; but in the absence of studies of the industry conducted elsewhere, it is not clear whether this was a result of Sheffield’s policies, of economies of scale, of changing input prices, or of technology. 689 ibid., pp.91-93, 111. 690 ibid., p.93. 691 Marshall, 'Town Planning in Sheffield,' pp.24-26.. These policies were largely continued in the 1945 planning document, Sheffield Replanned. 692 A.D.H. Crook, 'Needs, Standards and Affordability: Housing Policy after 1914,' idem., p.78. 693 Clifford Shaw, 'Aspects of Public Health,' idem., p.113. Thorpe, 'The Consolidation of a Labour Stronghold 1926-1951,' pp.93, 103-4.. 694 Pollard, A History of Labour in Sheffield pp.254-56. 695 Thorpe, 'The Consolidation of a Labour Stronghold 1926-1951,' p.91. 696 Hey, 'Sheffield Schools, 1918-60,' p.319. Sheffield 1950-1965 176
However, Labour’s willingness to pursue radical change was limited by the values of its working-class supporters. Its goals focussed around practical improvement, not revolution; the 1920 election manifesto spoke of: a Healthier City, the Abolition of Slumdom and Poverty, equal Opportunities for All, and the lot of all working men, women and children made far happier and brighter than it has been in the past.697 Many leading Labour politicians were non-conformists, and several (including the Leader in 1946, J.H. Bingham - and even the Leader from 1981 to 1987, David Blunkett) were Methodist lay preachers, with a strongly moral view of social obligation.698 The Party was controlled by a stable elite, as much concerned with civic glory as with a specifically socialist agenda. From 1912 to 1941 it was dominated by Ernest Rowlinson, who was also President of the Trades Council from 1912 to 1927, apart from a break during the First World War.699 By contrast, the Sheffield Gang Wars of the 1920s, had centred around competing gangs in the slums, staking claims to territorial control; there was a large underclass permeated by violence and gambling, with scant acceptance of wider norms.700 Re-making physical Sheffield, and the demolition of the slums, was aimed at eradicating these values as well as at improving material conditions.701
Ideology and values espite its concern for respectability and its tradition of non-conformist leadership, Sheffield Labour Party’s attitude towards other left-wing political groups was Dfraternal. The socialism of most local leaders was a matter of predisposition and values, not of theoretical Marxism; but since this was so, while they consistently rejected extra-parliamentary methods, they saw no sharp contradictions between themselves and others who fought the same injustices.702 There was a long history of co-operation with the Communists in the Engineering Union. In the aftermath of the First World War: The local Amalgamated Engineering Union branches were the bed-rock of Communist influence locally.703 Communist Party influence on the Trades and Labour Council was strong (though Communists were prohibited from being Trades Council delegates from 1934 onwards).704
697 quoted by Boughton, 'Working Class Politics', p.265. 698 Thorpe, 'The Consolidation of a Labour Stronghold 1926-1951,' p.87. David Blunkett and Alex MacCormick, On a Clear Day (London, 2002) p.104. Boughton, 'Working Class Politics', p.249. 699 Thorpe, 'The Consolidation of a Labour Stronghold 1926-1951,' p.88. 700 J. P.Bean, The Sheffield Gang Wars (Sheffield, 1981)., passim. 701 Thorpe, 'The Consolidation of a Labour Stronghold 1926-1951,' p.102. 702 Boughton, 'Working Class Politics', pp.238-80. 703 Backwith, 'The Death of Municipal Socialism', p.195. Sheffield 1950-1965 177
The national Communist Party regarded Sheffield as an important area of activity; throughout the 1930s, local activists were supported by well-trained full-time organisers.705 In August 1939 the Trades Council passed a resolution condemning rival imperialisms for fermenting war, and one month later another congratulating the USSR on invading Poland to ‘save’ it from Hitler.706 Not until 1947 did the national Labour Party start to take strong action against Communist members and sympathisers; 707 but even after that, close ties persisted in Sheffield. In the mid 1960s, it was reported that: Mr. George Caborn, Communist candidate for one of three new AEU national organisers’ posts, is being supported locally by five Labour Members of Sheffield City Council. The five are Group Leader Ald. Ron Ironmonger, Councillors George Goodenough, Roy Thetis,708 Charles Mazola and Henry Starkey. Mr. Caborn - former member of the Communist national executive - was one of the men named a fortnight ago by Sir William Carron as part of a movement of Communists and other extremists to take over the AEU leadership in a series of elections during the next 18 months. He is president of Sheffield district committee of the union.709 Caborn’s supporters were not fringe members of the Labour Party (Ironmonger, for example, was its Leader); and they were backing Caborn against a ‘stalwart’ Labour Party member.710 Labour’s leaders said that they supported Caborn the man; his politics were unimportant. But his politics seemed unimportant to them because they were felt to differ as to means, not to ends. It seems unlikely that they would have backed a Tory, however personally admirable.
704 At least six AEU branches dis-affiliated from the Trades Council in protest at the bar on Communist delegates. ibid., p.207. Pollard, A History of Labour in Sheffield p 265. says that Communists were expelled ‘only reluctantly on orders from London.’ 705 Kevin Morgan and Gideon Cohen, 'Stalin's Sausage Machine. British Students at the International Lenin School, 1926–37,' Twentieth Century British History 13, no. 4 (2002). (p.348). Alan Campbell et al., 'The International Lenin School: A Response to Cohen and Morgan,' Twentieth Century British History 15, no. 1 (2004). Kevin Morgan and Gideon Cohen, 'British Students at the International Lenin School 1926–37: A Reaffirmation of Methods, Results, and Conclusions,' Twentieth Century British History 15, no. 1 (2004). 706 The Labour Party nationally then felt it necessary to act, and expelled the Trades Council President. Thorpe, 'The Consolidation of a Labour Stronghold 1926-1951,' pp.85, 112. 707 Francis Beckett, Enemy Within : The Rise and Fall of the British Communist Party (London, 1995) pp.104-5, 16. 708 Should be Thwaites? 709 ShLSL.AUEW.1965#1 (Sh.Telegraph) 710 ShLSL.AUEW.1965#4 Sheffield 1950-1965 178
Local ‘socialism’ was not highly theorized.711 It often seemed to Labour councillors as if modernism, planning, and socialism were one and the same thing. What was wrong with capitalism was that it introduced wasteful competition and duplication, instead of arriving, by a process of rational analysis, at the common good. A binary opposition, of the squalid past and the bright future, underpinned political discourse.712 Pre-war plans for Sheffield had aimed to build a ring-road, clear the slums, create a new civic centre, and remove all housing from the industrial zones.713 The post-war council followed this programme. 714 It was aided in doing so when - in 1947 - a new statutory framework was introduced, which allowed the clearance of ‘blighted’ land – land filled with obsolete buildings, or ‘badly laid out,’ even if the buildings on it were not ‘unfit.’715 National objectives moved towards comprehensive redevelopment: This fitted with the idea of ‘clean sweep’ planning ….a straightforward causal relationship between the physical environment and social conditions seemed so obvious as to make it unnecessary to separate them. The raison d’être of planning was to change social conditions by changing the environment716 Large and small gestures of modernisation pressed ahead: the modernist Crucible Theatre was planned; trams were removed from the streets, to be replaced by a bright new world of ring- roads and flyovers;717 over 1,000 gas lamps were replaced by sodium lighting;718 parking meters started to appear; the space-ship like ‘Hole in the Road’ Castle Square subway opened; the spectacular ‘Goodwin Fountain’ was turned on; another huge, illuminated fountain was created outside the Midland Station.719 In 1955, the Sheffield Citizens’ Committee for Clean Air was launched;720 smoke control orders were gradually introduced.721 Much time and energy was expended in expanding Sheffield’s control over its water catchment area. In 1956, the City engineer published an essay identifying Sheffield as a city with a ‘lack of civic scale and dignity’; plans (later abandoned) were thus drawn up to remodel the city centre. 722 Just as
711 See Marriott, The Culture of Labourism. passim; and page 44ff (above). 712 Hampton, 'Optimism and Growth,' p.131. 713 Marshall, 'Town Planning in Sheffield,' pp.24-26. 714 ibid., p.28. 715 Ravetz, Remaking Cities p.33. 716 ibid. pp.36, 45. 717 Peter Goodman, Sheffield in the Sixties (Derby, 2001) p.106. Ironically, the re-introduction of trams was a core element in the attempted modernist revival in Sheffield in the early 1990s. 718 Sh.Telegraph 26/8/1965 719 Goodman, Sheffield in the Sixties pp.15, 107, 18, 25. 720 Hampton, 'Optimism and Growth,' p.130. 721 Shaw, 'Aspects of Public Health,' p.131. 722 Hampton, 'Optimism and Growth,' p.119. Sheffield 1950-1965 179 in Southwark the council had sought to build in modern cable-radio systems to its post-war housing, so Sheffield attempted (to the fury of local retailers) to include built-in refrigerators.723 The perennial modernist goal of a civic airport once again was raised but eventually abandoned. Sheffield’s city fathers, as they moved through a long apprenticeship of obedience to party leaders, via local office, to their occasional knighthoods, combined a largely non-partisan approach to local problems – based around the rhetoric of modernisation and planning - with strongly left-wing but largely theoretical opinions on national issues. At the core of their local approach lay modern architecture, and the opportunity it afforded to enable a spiritual, as well as a physical, re-making of the city. Building the Future The 1945 Labour Government removed many of the functions which had previously been under local authority control (such as electricity and health).724 Post-war changes in the system of local government finance made authorities more dependent on central grants.725 Housing was the most important field in which Sheffield’s politicians could still hope to make a mark. The symbolic impact of reconstruction, the praise heaped on Sheffield’s leaders, and the desperate housing needs of the population, made architecture central to Sheffield’s political life. As in Southwark, initially post-war reconstruction failed to live up to its ambitions. 20,000 houses were planned in first three years of peace.; but by 1950, only 3,440 had been handed over;726 in 1951, there were 26,500 people on Sheffield’s waiting list.727 The Communist Party pointed out: It will be the year 2033, at the present rate of building, before every Sheffield family is decently housed.728 In the immediate post-war era councils faced constraints on expenditure;729 later, land- shortages came to the fore, since the town clerk estimated that 54,113 houses were required, while land was only available within the existing boundaries for 9,173.730 Thus in 1952 Sheffield began seeking compulsory purchase orders for land within its boundaries, and started to turn away from building houses with gardens; high buildings were seen as a solution to a
723 Star 16/2/1961 724 Winston W. Crouch, 'Local Government under the British Labour Government,' The Journal of Politics 12, no. 2 (1950): pp.254-58, 43-44. 725 Goss, Local Labour p.49. 726 Thorpe, 'The Consolidation of a Labour Stronghold 1926-1951,' p.115. 727 Crook, 'Needs, Standards and Affordability,' p.81. 728 ShLSL.335.4.S Sheffield Workers’ Gazette, Communist Party, 1949, No 1, Mid-January. 729 Neil McIntosh, 'Council Housing in Southwark,' (London, 1975), p.13. Marshall, 'Town Planning in Sheffield,' p.26. 730 Hampton, 'Optimism and Growth,' p.123. Sheffield 1950-1965 180 lack of space, and as a means of securing rapid development.731 Faced with a lack of space to build, the city also expanded into 190 hectares of its own Green Belt.732 Pressure to speed up the rate of construction came from national government. For twenty years after the end of the war housing was the greatest domestic political priority. The first ever Conservative Party Political Broadcast (presented by Bill Deedes and Harold Macmillan in 1950) was devoted entirely to the pledge to build 300,000 publicly-funded houses a year.733 Roy Hattersley recalled being summoned – as a young Labour councillor in Sheffield – to meet the Conservative minister responsible for housing in the early 1960s: He told me to build more houses. In vain - and with a good deal of resentment - did I tell him that Sheffield built more houses per head of the population than any other borough in England. He urged me to increase the subsidy, requisition more land, build by direct labour without the inconvenience of competing for the work with private builders - anything as long as the number of new dwellings was increased.734 From 1955 to 1960, 12,500 dwellings were built in Sheffield. But waiting lists for housing continued to rise.735 As the council struggled with the rising waiting list, it resorted to piecemeal improvement on existing property: however, this resulted in demands for increased rents on the – sometimes, inadequately - ‘improved’ homes.736 Modernism – and especially pre-fabrication – seemed the best way to speed up construction. A Housing Department report in 1955 reviewed, in glowing terms, the experience of high-rise housing in other European countries. Underlying the architectural vision was a social and political commitment to communal life: … multi-storey housing schemes [which] are essentially of a communal nature and of modern construction, should exploit these two inherent features to the full if they are to be completely successful. …maximum advantage should be taken of the size and nature of the project to make provision for' shops, restaurants, nursery schools, garages and other desirable ancillary accommodation. The large ground space set free by building tall blocks should' be carefully landscaped and adequately maintained as a pleasant park for adults with play spaces for children of various ages. Under these circumstances, it was hoped: the multi-storey flat can give exceptional amenities in the form of open space, community buildings, services and equipment-amenities
731 Crook, 'Needs, Standards and Affordability,' pp.81-3. 732 R.J. Marshall, 'Town Planning in Sheffield,' idem., pp.26-7. 733 Party Political Broadcasts - The Greatest Hits . Video. Politico's Media, 1999. ISBN: 1902301056 734 Roy Hattersley, Guardian, 10/8/1998 735 In November 1960, the general housing waiting list contained almost 29,000 families (and as many as 40,000 households, if the specialised demand from elderly people and single people was included) Star 14/11/1960 736 Star 13/7/1962 Sheffield 1950-1965 181
which,…may have a particular appeal to the younger generation of parents.737 Sheffield Council was not alone in Yorkshire in its pursuit of modernism. Quarry Hill flats, in nearby Leeds, were a pre-war modernist icon.738 Team X, intellectually linked to Corbusier’s CIAM, made extensive use of ‘decks’ in their project in 1953 for Sheffield University.739 The University’s new Arts Tower - with its futuristic paternoster lifts – was opened by the Queen Mother in June 1966, when she opened the new Hyde Park flats.740 But the core of renewal in Sheffield lay in the politically powerful partnership between J. Lewis Womersley (appointed as city architect in 1953), Councillor Albert Smith and (later) Councillor Harold Lambert.741 Trapped by the inability of Sheffield to extend its borders, Womersley aimed for high-density, deck-access developments in the centre such as Park Hill, Hyde Park, and Kelvin, and at using architectural innovation to achieve medium density development in suburban areas (some too steep to build on by conventional means, such as the challenging development of the Gleadless Valley, which sought to retain many areas of wild open space and woodland, mixed with modern housing). Care was taken to include community facilities in each area that was developed, and pursue appropriate architectural solutions for each site. 742 Womersley was: one of the most fervent advocates of high blocks, and one who rejected cottages completely as a possibility for inner urban developments… [He] estimated that 25 to 50% of all households would prefer to live in high flats…743 A particular advantage of high-rise development was, for Womersley, the ability to re-house people close to the areas from which they had been cleared and close to the facilities of the city centre744 - though, as Ravetz has commented:
737 ShLSL.042.S.4 Multi-Storey Housing in Some European Countries, p35-6 738 Ravetz, Remaking Cities p.175. Ravetz remarks: ‘The system was in all respects a prototype of industrialised systems adopted after the war, making promises of speed, cheapness, simplicity and general avoidance of all the labour problems of building. In the event, it produced a contract of exceptional length and acrimony, the architect and inventor grimly pursuing the principle of total prefabrication while the contractor bore the brunt of problems that were later to crop up over and over again in such imported systems.’ (p.175) Quarry Hill Flats were (ironically) also the leaders in another direction; in 1975, they were the first industrialised flats to be demolished. (p187) 739 Glendinning, Muthesius, and Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art., Tower Block. p.121. For a more critical view, see Ravetz, Remaking Cities pp.215-20. 740 Goodman, Sheffield in the Sixties p.129.. These were sometimes called ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ lifts. 741 Hampton, 'Optimism and Growth,' p.132. Lambert and Womersley were amongst the co-authors of the 1955 report, cited above. 742 Vincent Hughes, History of the Growth and Location of the Corporation Housing Schemes (Sheffield, 1959) p.18. 743 Glendinning, Muthesius, and Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art., Tower Block. p.55. 744 Hampton, 'Optimism and Growth,' p.132. Sheffield 1950-1965 182
The irony of the neighbourhood unit as a planning device was that viable existing neighbourhoods were often removed to make way for it.745 To allow his radical schemes to go ahead, Womersley developed innovative management structures.746 The tight control exercised by Sheffield’s political leaders enabled them to create an unusual degree of professional freedom for their architects, even from challenge by other professionals such as the City Engineer.747 As Coun. Roy Hattersley, 1963 chairman of the Housing Committee, put it: In all this work of re-creating Sheffield you can’t over-estimate the impression that Womersley is making. We started late, so now we’re going faster. We are right behind him and we want to see the full expansion of his ingenuity.748 Enthusiasm was widely shared. In July 1961, the Sheffield Telegraph reported: At Gleadless Valley, members and officials ... inspected the latest type of dwelling… [The Conservative housing spokesman said that it] …would be the finest in Sheffield. With magnificent dwellings provided, people would take little persuading to pay a reasonable rent which would leave no burden on the ratepayers.749 Some owner-occupiers complained about demolition; but owner occupation was rare in the areas that were being condemned.750 More typical was the public inquiry into the City Council’s plan to purchase and demolish buildings on 3,605 square yards of land next to City Road; the public inquiry lasted for just 17 minutes, and there was only one objector.751 One key element of the new schemes was purely visual. Lambert repeatedly referred to the developments as aiming for the ‘fascination of the Italian Hill towns’752 Like Rome on its seven hills, Sheffield’ redevelopments were built on three hills. Park Hill was the first to be developed; then there was a completely different design for Netherthorpe - a spine of point blocks, using old grindstones and ponds as features…It was a fantastic thing....walking along the Infirmary Road area, the changing view of Woodside on its hill.... …..At night, looking over from the other side of the valley, Norfolk Park is a
745 Ravetz, Remaking Cities p.52. 746 Glendinning, Muthesius, and Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art., Tower Block. p.105. 747 ibid. pp.262-3. 748 Hampton, 'Optimism and Growth,' p.132. 749 Sh.Telegraph 7/7/1961 750 Star 6/4/1965 751 Star 9/9/1965 752 Glendinning, Muthesius, and Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art., Tower Block. p.128. Lambert, writing in ‘10 Years of Housing in Sheffield 1953-63’, quoted by Hampton, 'Optimism and Growth,' p.132. ShLSL.331.88.SF(c) Lambert Sheffield Forward, 1967 Sheffield 1950-1965 183
marvellous sight - when the lights are lit on all the point blocks, it looks like a great Christmas tree!753 The symbolic peak of this regeneration programme was the Park Hill flats. Park Hill flats had ‘no equal in the country,’ said Hugh Gaitskell in 1961.754 Park Hill itself had been a notorious, violent, slum in the inter-war years, and had already been partially cleared by the time war broke out.755 The project was not especially large. But it was highly visible. … it rose high - 19 stories at its tallest point – [but] it was not laid out on the classic high-rise principle … Parkhill was built out of the fell from which it took its name. Galleries, 10 feet wide, zig-zagged away from the slope on top of each other. They started at ground level and, as the land fell away, ‘rose’ to 19 storeys. Pairs of front doors opened on to the galleries as the front doors of the old terraces had once opened onto the cobble- stoned streets. Prams could be pushed. Milk floats could cruise from step to step. Children could play on the galleries at least as safely as they once played in the road. We knew that the families felt at home when they began to paint white edges on their window sills.756 The development was equipped with emblems of modernity – laundry rooms with electric washing machines, and the extremely expensive Garchey rubbish disposal system – ‘which would float away empty bottles and tins’757 and which would create considerable cost-savings since ‘not much more than 10 dustbins of fine ash’ would have to be removed each week, rather than 1,000 bins of mixed rubbish.758 However, this system rapidly broke down, never to work again.759 Councillors congratulated themselves on efficient project-management. Hattersley wrote later: it was built below budget, by the Council’s own direct labour force (which won the contract on open tender): a symbol of successful, and rationally planned, municipal enterprise.760 But this judgment depended how costs and efficiency were measured: the flats were 66% more expensive to build than conventional dwellings. It was ‘cheaper’ than suburban development only because it attracted higher rates of government grant, and because some services were already available in the central location.761
753 Glendinning, Muthesius, and Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art., Tower Block. pp.261-62. 754 Goodman, Sheffield in the Sixties p.13. 755 Crook, 'Needs, Standards and Affordability,' p.83. Bean, Sheffield Gang Wars. passim. 756 Roy Hattersley, Independent 8/9/1996 757 Roy Hattersley, Guardian, 10/8/1998 758 Hughes, History of the Growth and Location of the Corporation Housing Schemes p.22. 759 Glendinning, Muthesius, and Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art., Tower Block. p.69. 760 Roy Hattersley, Guardian, 10/8/1998 761 Crook, 'Needs, Standards and Affordability,' p.83. Sheffield 1950-1965 184
The use of new forms of building construction – in both high rise and low-rise developments - was seen as a practical solution to cost-constraints and to the lack of skilled labour.762 The Conservative minister- Sir Keith Joseph – announced a major commitment to pre-fabrication (and, apparently, to a planned economy) in a party conference speech in October 1962: Sir Keith plans to have house building going at two or three, perhaps even four times the present rate in just over two years time. This particularly applies to slum clearance. It will be the greatest attack ever mounted by a British government on the slums ... The construction industry’s programme will be analysed so that the ministry knows exactly what unused capacity there may be in any area. 763 Roy Hattersley enthusiastically supported this move: We are especially pleased to see that he hopes this will be achieved by increasing production of the building industry by standardisation of factory production ...764 Pressure to use pre-fabrication continued after the Labour election victory of 1964. The Ministry of Housing and Local Government insisted in a circular of October 1964 that local authorities should use industrialised methods. It seemed to be the only possible answer to the desire to build fast.765 The Sheffield Morning Telegraph reported: members and officials saw schemes with a total of more than 5,300 new dwellings. Their first call was at Norfolk Park, where two 16-storey twin tower blocks, each containing a hundred and twenty six flats [out of 15 planned] were handed over as completed buildings. ... They visited Birley to see a Hallamshire house being built...... while .. I watched the whole upper floor was added ...766 Sheffield’s ‘Hallamshire’ houses (designed in collaboration with Womersley) were a means of applying the techniques of prefabrication to the provision of low-rise housing. An architect, writing in the October 1963 edition of Homemaker magazine said they were the finest council houses in Britain: these are the only houses so far tested that I would really be happy to live in, because they fulfil most requirements of planning… appearances and technical standards … Let us hope that private developers will follow up this enterprising lead. …767 An initial pilot scheme of 203 houses was followed up (almost immediately) by an order for 1000 more.768 In 1964 production was ratcheted up again.769 There was an intensive drive to
762 Glendinning, Muthesius, and Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art., Tower Block. p.189. 763 Sh.Telegraph 11/10/1962 764 Sh.Telegraph 11/10/1962 765 Dunleavy, The Politics of Mass Housing pp.118, 16-17. 766 Sh.Telegraph 16/9/1965 767 Sh.Telegraph 11/10/1963 768 Star 4/11/1963 Sheffield 1950-1965 185 acquire and prepare enough suitable sites. In January 1966, Prime Minister Harold Wilson opened the one-thousandth Hallm house to be handed over to the City.770 At first, residents were said to like the new developments.771 The council had made great efforts to keep old neighbours together as they moved in;772 in a symbolic reversal of the policies of the 1920s and 1930s, the Park Hill development did not exclude public houses: instead, it built them in, each pub having the name of one which had been demolished in the old neighbourhood.773 Councillors basked in the glory. The city produced a self-congratulatory pamphlet, which was translated into French - and Russian: Tributes to… Sheffield Housing Development Committee's brochure, …are coming into Sheffield city architect’s Department every day. Since the brochure was published …, copies have gone to many local authorities in the country. Inquiries are being received from abroad, and copies have gone to France and both the City of Pittsburgh USA … Said Coun. Harold Lambert, chairman of the Housing Development Committee last night: ‘sales are growing steadily and when we have disposed of the 1500 copies which are for sale, we shall show a profit. But it must be realized that ... Sheffield’s approach to housing and the prestige it brings to the city ... cannot be assessed in pounds, shillings, and pence.’ … From the Russian Embassy in London came the acknowledgment: ‘we shall certainly inform interested people in our country of this publication.’774 The high point of the adulation came in an hour-long television documentary, featuring interviews with Womersley, Hattersley (just about to be selected as a Parliamentary Candidate in Birmingham), and others. The programme showed the problems of Sheffield and the slums; it then showed the new schemes which were ‘solving’ the problem.775 Praise continued after that; in about 1965, the Sheffield Telegraph reported that: In the past year more than 80 deputations from all over the world have visited Sheffield to see the city's housing schemes. They have come from Russia - three separate sets of visitors - Germany, the U.S., Ghana, Irak, Belgium, India, Peru, Colombia, Holland, New Zealand and Argentina, as well as from all over Britain. …although some visitors - those from Moscow for instance - had themselves build larger schemes than those in Sheffield,
769 ShLSL.Housing.1964#17 770 Sh.Telegraph 11/1/1966 771 Glendinning, Muthesius, and Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art., Tower Block. p.83. 772 Crook, 'Needs, Standards and Affordability,' p.83. Report on the Park Hill Survey to the Housing Management Committee, September 1962, p.9-10, quoted by Hampton, 'Optimism and Growth,' p.133. 773 Roy Hattersley, Independent, 8/9/1996 774 Sh.Telegraph 28/6/1962 775 Star 3/10/1962 Sheffield 1950-1965 186
they were particularly impressed with the standards inside Sheffield houses, particularly with the amount of space.776 This was enough to turn anyone’s head. It made problems hard to recognise, when they started to emerge. Politics and hierarchy Top-down planning sat easily with the highly directive way in which the Labour Party, and the City, were run. Trade-Union leader George Caborn commented, as late as 1981, that: Sheffield is a unique city. They call it the biggest village in the United Kingdom, and there's something about the place which is remarkable, which helps in relationships at all levels. We've got something here that they haven't got in Birmingham or London or Liverpool or Leeds. …Everybody knows one another, and tha can't kid 'em. If tha takes three or four hundred people in this city, covering all aspects-management, trade unions education, you name it - these people come together again and again, at meetings, on committees, and so on. You don't realise the sort of team there is holding Sheffield together and making it the place it is.777 The Council was – in practice - run by its long-serving senior councillors, so long as the unions were content to support them. Negotiation between powerful local leaders – rather than open debate – became the means by which policy was determined. Consequently, councillors became increasingly detached from the electorate. In 1967, only 46% of Labour councillors in Sheffield lived in the wards they represented – and 66% of Labour councillors said that ‘few’ or ‘none’ of their friends lived in their wards.778 Based on interview data, Hampton reported that: A very low proportion of Sheffield councillors…rely upon informal personal contacts for their main source of information about public attitudes…779
776 ShLSL.Housing.1965#15 777 ShLSL.380.SQ Interview with George Caborn, 1981. 778 Hampton, Democracy and Community p.186. 779 ibid. pp.204-5. Sheffield 1950-1965 187
Figure 8.1 Length of service of Sheffield Councillors, 1925-1966780
Length of Service of Sheffield Councillors
100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 10 Years or more 50% 4 to 9 years 40% Newly elected 30% 20% 10% 0% 1926 1936 1946 1956 1966 Source: W. Hampton, Democracy and Community, 1970 p.186, author's calculations
Councillors were socially representative of the population of the working class population of the city. Most of them, until at least the mid 1950s, were manual workers (or trades union officials).
780 ibid. p.186. Sheffield 1950-1965 188
Figure 8.2 Occupational breakdown of economically active Labour councillors 1936-1966781
Occupational breakdown of economically active Labour councillors 1936-1966 (from ballot paper descriptions)
90
80
70
60
50
40 Full time trades union or political agent 30 Manual 20 Other white collar 10 Business, commercial, 0 professional 1936 1946 1956 1966 Source: W.Hampton, 'Democracy and Community', 1970 p190: author's calculations
But ultimate control of the Labour Party in Sheffield came from control of the largest trades unions, which were dominated by skilled manual workers.782 For much longer than in other parts of England, Sheffield retained a unified Trades and Labour Council. Since the unions were themselves run in strongly hierarchical ways, they did not provide checks and balances on the Council’s leaders. Sheffield had only one-third as many members of political parties (per head of population) as was normal in England – 3% were members of political parties, but 25% of the population (and 43% of all men) were members of a trades union.783 Even those who chose to join the Party had little influence; David Blunkett has described the first branch meeting he attended: When I arrived, I found a couple of people standing outside the door. ‘Can’t we go in?’ I asked. ‘No,’ someone replied, ‘the secretary’s forgotten the key. He’s gone back home to get it.’ ...When at last we got inside, it wasn’t much warmer than out. ... a couple more people arrived …First of all the minutes of the previous meeting were read out and were then hotly disputed for the
781 ibid. p.90. 782 Pollard, 'Labour,' pp.275-6. Thorpe, 'The Consolidation of a Labour Stronghold 1926-1951,' p.109. 783 Hampton, Democracy and Community pp.145-50. Sheffield 1950-1965 189
following twenty-five minutes or so. Next we discussed correspondence received by the secretary and there followed a report on what had happened at the constituency management committee meeting. Politics were not mentioned. …I was twenty then, in 1967, and the other members all seemed to me somewhere over the age of ninety...784 The Labour party remained strongly hierarchical, and opposed to the notion of outside interference in its decisions. The press was excluded from Council meetings. A 1970s Labour leader, George Wilson,785 said: What I want to do is try and encourage the public to take more interest in the meetings and not to encourage certain media to take what they believe is a license to cry out their idea of how the city should be run.786 Equally, the party had little enthusiasm for co-operation with unofficial or voluntary bodies: it was claimed (albeit, by the Liberals) in 1965 that Sheffield was one of a small minority of local authorities which refused to make capital grants towards the cost of establishing youth clubs – what little money is spent in Sheffield is disproportionately directed to helping the nine council centres, as against the nearly 120 clubs run by voluntary organizations.787 Internal challenges were flicked off like flies by swishes of a horse’s tail. One was the attempt - by the Labour League of Socialist Youth - to organise young engineering apprentices into a ‘Direct Action Committee’. In 1964 these unfortunates tried to organise a meeting in the back room of a Sheffield pub. It degenerated into farce. The pub landlady protested that she had been told that it was a meeting to arrange a bus trip, and that it was taking place under false pretences. Then five members of the Amalgamated Engineering Union junior workers' committee said: Nobody consulted the A E U about this-we're bigger than the young Socialists-and we have a definite policy in this matter. This sort of thing has to be done through the proper channels. The meeting broke up in disorder.788 Education was a fault line which divided generations in the local party. The grammar schools were the product of the post-war Labour leaders. The attempt to change to a comprehensive system brought new activists into the party, such as Peter Horton (a teacher) who eventually became chairman of the Education Committee in 1969. But the implementation of comprehensives was carried forward in ways that tried to build on past accomplishments. In a context where very few people went to grammar schools, comprehensives posed relatively few
784 Blunkett and MacCormick, On a Clear Day pp.85-6. 785 later to become the first leader of the new Social Democratic Party in Sheffield 786 ShLSL.Labour.1965#19 787 Star 11/5/1965. The claim was made, however, by political opponents, so it needs to be treated with caution. 788 ShLSL.Labour.1964#20 Sheffield 1950-1965 190 challenges to entrenched interests.789 In the prosperous areas, they would serve relatively upscale communities; in the traditional Labour areas, they would represent an improvement on the education received in the secondary moderns. The process started in the (largely working class) north of city, then the east (including the Park Hill estate), and only at the last stage was it intended to move to the middle class areas in south and south west. By the late 1960s, comprehensives were not controversial in Sheffield: the process was initially implemented by the first Conservative administration to rule the city for over 30 years.790 There were administrative reforms; Horton modified the style of the education department, to promote community participation.791 Other changes – such as the introduction of ‘matrix management’ - reflected current management fashions.792 But none of them represented a real shift in the political style of the party’s leaders. Even the local press formed part of the Labour consensus: Alan Wigfield - Labour Chair of Housing and Chief Whip on the council in the 1980s - said of this period that: The Trades Council was regarded of being such importance that the local newspaper...used to send their journalists along to report on events at the meeting...... the journalists they sent along was always an NUJ member and he or she was obviously sympathetic to the trade union movement...793 The machine was so strong, and control so well-established, that so long as trades unions continued to support it, the leadership could continue to prosper. Thus the growing crisis in social housing which developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s was politically invisible, and the council felt under no pressure to change its course until it was forced to do so by a tenants’ revolt.
The crisis in social housing y the mid 1960s, Sheffield’s triumphal progress was facing three inter-related challenges. The first problem was that the beneficiaries of the housing programme Bchanged. Under national pressure, the programme shifted away from the provision of relatively expensive high-quality housing to prosperous members of the skilled working class, towards meeting the needs of slum-dwellers. Writing about Birmingham in 1963, Rex and Moore argued that: there is a class struggle over the use of houses and that this struggle is the central process of the city as a social unit....a man’s market situation in the
789 Hampton, The Sheffield Voter p.43. 790 Hampton, 'Optimism and Growth,' pp.136-7. Harrison, 'Twenty Years of Public Education,' p.327. 791 From 1970 Local Authority appointees were restricted to holding one-third of the seats on the governing body of any school - a major contrast to past digisisme. Hampton, 'Optimism and Growth,' p.147. 792 Harrison, 'Twenty Years of Public Education,' p.330. 793 Allender, What's Wrong with Labour? p.69. Sheffield 1950-1965 191
housing market depends in part upon his income and therefore on his situation in the labour market but...men in the same labour situation may come to have differential access to housing and it is this which immediately determines the class conflicts of the city as distinct from those of the workplace.794 In Sheffield, the lack of a visible difference (such as ethnicity) between groups in different housing situations tended to attenuate the influence of ‘housing classes’ on the local political environment.795 But the tensions still existed. The second problem was that the rapid expansion in the number of council houses created problems of equity: how was payment for the new programme to be divided amongst Sheffield’s council tenants - on the basis of costs, or on the basis of needs? The new housing was substantially more expensive than the existing housing stock, yet the people being re- housed into it were often very poor. Should they have to meet the full costs of their new housing – and, if they should not, who should do so? The third problem was that the new buildings failed to deliver the technical and social advances that had been hoped for. Initially, they posed management problems; later, at least some of them started to display serious physical problems. The next three sub-sections examine these problems. Conflicts of interest over access Slum clearance created major conflicts of interest over access to council housing. As in Southwark, those whose homes had been cleared had first call; those on the general waiting list saw their chances of getting a home greatly reduced.796 The problem was initially made worse because the council was building slowly;797 the Sheffield Telegraph complained that Sheffield still had an ‘old fashioned, sooty, cautious’ image: yet, a diet of bread and dripping tends to become monotonous.798 Since Sheffield Corporation could put up only about 500 houses a year that were not to be used for slum clearance, it would take about 80 years to house all 40,000 applicants already on the housing list. In May 1962, people moving off the top of the general waiting list into
794 Rex, Moore, and Institute of Race Relations., Race, Community and Conflict p.274. 795 In Birmingham, these pressures were so strong that Roy Hattersley – the recently elected Member of Parliament for a Birmingham inner-city area – moved from a liberal position on race relations to one of advocating strict immigration control over a nine-month period. He also argued that race relations would be improved if English families living in crowded conditions were rehoused with as few obstacles, and as little competition, as possible. ibid. p.211. 796 McIntosh, 'Council Housing in Southwark,' p.15. 797 The rate of housing construction had been greater in the 1930s - Star 12/8/1962 798 Sh.Telegraph 6/5/1963 Sheffield 1950-1965 192 family homes had been waiting on average for 13 years. 799 However, this was regarded as a reason to speed up building, not to hold back demolitions.800
Table 8.1 Sheffield: Waiting list and dwellings completed, 1959-1962.801 Year End Waiting List Dwellings Completed Spring 1959 42,767 1,224 Spring 1960 41,044 1.803 Spring 1961 41,467 1,612 Spring 1962 38,735 1,475 As it became harder to get houses from the General Needs waiting list, the City Council became inundated with ‘hardship cases’. But even ‘hardship cases’ who made it to the top of the list stood little chance of getting a house within 18 months.802 The council (in the person of Roy Hattersley) thus sought ‘drastically’ to reduce the list by ‘strong pruning.’803 Labour dissident Alderman Sydney Dyson (and the Conservative party) argued that allocation should be according to need.804 But, as the Sheffield Telegraph pointed out: It has… long been Labour Party policy that council houses should not be reserved for the ‘ underprivileged.’ But the biggest objection to changing over to a points system has nothing to do with political principles. The people near the top of the waiting list would raise such a fuss that it would be a brave council that would dare make the change.805 Briefly, it looked as if it the problem of competition for access to housing might be solved by the volume of building. In 1965 there was a record level of completions;806 in consequence, in 1965-1966, only one-quarter of lettings were taken by people displaced from slum clearance.807 It was announced that new council housing would increasingly be available to
799 Sh.Telegraph 5/5/1962 The Housing department estimated that the genuine size of the list was closer to 11,000 people; thus, the wait for those coming on to the list in 1962 would ‘only’ be 10 to 15 years. The newspaper thought that twenty years was a more realistic estimate of the likely waiting time. 800 Star 21/9/1962 Sh.Telegraph 26/7/1962 801 Sh.Telegraph 13/4/1962. Figures given in a written answer by the Labour Housing Committee chairman, Harold Lambert. 802 Star 14/11/1960 803 Star 13/7/1962 804 Star 21/4/1964 ShLSL.Housing.1964#5 805 Sh.Telegraph 3/5/1962 806 Star 12/5/1965 807 Crook, 'Needs, Standards and Affordability,' p.84. Sheffield 1950-1965 193 general applicants.808 Waiting lists for access to family housing on some estates fell to 2 years;809 while a few months later, it was reported that new houses are coming forward at such a fantastic rate that the existing general waiting list needs can almost be met at will.810 When the Housing Minister, Dick Crossman, visited Sheffield in March 1965, he was able to see a £10 million high-rise scheme which was due to house 9,500 families over the next three years.811 The situation was not, however, quite as favourable as it seemed. Part of the explanation of the availability of some houses on new estates came from the fact that they were too expensive for slum dwellers to afford. Also, the waiting list did not measure all the potential demand for housing. It could be expanded at will, by allowing more people to apply to go onto it.812 A councillor commented: when you think that an old man cannot put his name down until his 60, and will not be getting a house until he is 71 or 72 it is too ridiculous for words.813 The council expanded the range of people who were allowed to apply (it tried, in particular, to increase demand for its newly-built properties);814 it also expanded the slum clearance programme, by half as much again as its existing level.815 Immediately restrictions on access to the housing waiting list were removed, numbers started to move up again; the waiting list rose by almost a quarter in one year, despite the completion of a record 3,433 new dwellings.816 By October 1969, the waiting time for tenancies was two and a half years (compared with nine months in 1966).817 This pattern continued; the council
808 Star 14/9/1965 809 Sh.Telegraph 7/7/1965 810 Star 14/9/1965 811 Star 27/3/1965 812 Star 12/5/1965 813 Sh.Telegraph 7/7/1965 814 Some of these new categories of applicant were clearly in considerable need – for example, ‘families with children who occupied inadequate or entirely unsuitable accommodation’- Star 14/9/1965 In 1966, applications (but for newly-built homes only) were opened to ‘people living in an unsatisfactory conditions and people paying too much of their income in rent.... families living in houses which lack any or all of certain amenities-kitchen, bath, water closet, hot water, wash basin...[or]... who were overcrowded.’ - ShLSL.Housing.1966#6 Sh.Telegraph, 7/10/965. 815 Star 14/9/1965 816 9,809 people on the ordinary list, 1,323 on the single persons’ list and 8,656 on the aged people's list. Housing microfiche: dated from internal evidence around May 1966. 817 The list itself was suspect: a study by Prof. J.B. Cullingworth suggested that 38% of the 22,000 names on the Sheffield housing list in 1971 were untraceable (Star 28/5/1971). Sheffield 1950-1965 194 completed 2,834 dwellings during the following year, but reported that there was there was ‘no significant reduction’ in the waiting list.818 Conflicts of interest over rent levels These latent conflicts over access to housing were, however, mild, compared to the overt conflicts of interest about rent levels between those already in council homes. All costs related to local authority housing were pooled in one overall account. Rents charged on earlier schemes in effect could cross-subsidise new ones. Because Sheffield had been a major developer of council housing in the inter-war period, and capital debt on those schemes had been redeemed, or reduced by inflation, the pooling effect was large, so long as the post-war building programme remained modest. Once the building programme speeded up, as inflation started to hit building costs, and as the council adopted increasingly expensive construction methods, the amount of cross-subsidy available from the pool for each new home was sharply reduced.819 Because Sheffield’s pre-war council housing had (on the whole) been more accessible to better-paid skilled workers, the question of raising rents on existing houses was especially sensitive for the party (whose activist base was in the skilled working class). But if it did not raise rents, the whole cost of the expensive new dwellings now under construction (net of any national subsidy) would have to be met by their tenants. This would be especially hard for them, because (due to the priority given to slum-dwellers) they would often be much poorer than existing council tenants. Since the Housing Revenue Account had to balance, the council needed either to boost the subsidy available from local taxation to housing costs (but if so, how was the subsidy to be allocated?), or to raise rents (but whose?), or to introduce a system for relating rents to tenants’ incomes (which raised the spectre of hated means-testing and its humiliations, but also risked pushing up rent levels for its own key supporters). These were all deeply unattractive options. In 1960, Sheffield’s housing revenue account began to become unbalanced.820 The city faced a deficit projected at £182,000 for 1960-61 and at £557,000 for 1961-62.821 In July 1961 Bank Rate was raised to 7%; 822 high interest rates sharply increased the cost of Sheffield’s housing programme.823 But the council faced political pressure to expand – not to cut back on – its construction programme. The costs of the housing programme mounted sharply - doubling from 1962-3 to 1964-5 (of this expenditure, over one-third went to the Council’s own public
818 Star 20/10/1970 819 Crook, 'Needs, Standards and Affordability,' pp.83-5. 820 Sh.Telegraph 4/8/1960 821 Sh.Telegraph 4/8/1960 822 Patrick Cosgrave, The Strange Death of Socialist Britain : Post War British Politics (London, 1992) p.74. 823 Ogden, 'Council House Building in Sheffield', p.40. Sheffield 1950-1965 195 works department - which had a turnover of about £3.5m on housing projects).824 By 1965, the Housing Account of the council experienced ‘a deficiency’ well above its budgeted level.825 The 1961 Housing Act had the effect of pressuring local authorities to apply 'realistic' rent policies;826 Sheffield’s first response to this financial pressure was to put up rents on the newer homes. Coun. Hattersley said the rent rises had been determined on the principle that rents should be determined by the value of property, not by the income of the tenant. Any other system would result in a worsening of the relationship between tenants and between the tenants and housing department, and also impose inexcusable indignities on the tenant.. It was also decided that the pre-war property it should bear rather less of the increases at than postwar property…827 This hit the dwellings to which slum dwellers were allocated after clearance, while preserving the financial interests of established council tenants. However, many former slum dwellers could not afford to pay. [Alderman Dyson] accused the annual report of the housing department of covering up a real social problem, rent arrears, questioned the allocation system from the waiting list, and said allocation should be according to need. ... He said ordinary working people could not afford the high rents charged for council houses…828 One measure of the extent to of this problem was the emergence, as early as 1965, of hard-to- let estates.829 Sheffield Council spoke as if difficulty in letting houses showed that the housing problem was nearing its solution: people who registered this year can be almost certain of being housed [next year], providing they take the houses that are available, instead of sticking out for a particular estate.830 Increasingly, however, potential tenants were unable to take the dwellings they were offered, because they were too expensive. The Conservatives in Sheffield argued that ‘we have been building houses at too high cost and constantly too high a rental, and of the wrong type;’831 75% of the people moved from Sheffield's slum clearance areas can no longer afford to rent a new corporation house ... last month only 44 people removed from slum areas moved into new houses and 132 moved into re-
824 Sh.Telegraph - 26/8/1965 825 Sh.Telegraph 11/8/1965 826 Star 15/2/1961 Hampton, 'Optimism and Growth,' p.145. 827 Sh.Telegraph 4/8/1960 828 ShLSL.Housing.1964#7 829 Star 14/9/1965 830 Star 14/9/1965 (emphasis added) 831 Star 16/9/1965. Speech by Conservative Group leader. Sheffield 1950-1965 196
lets, the homes that do not come on such high rents as the modern dwellings the Corporation is providing. The previous month was more startling still. Out of 116 people rehoused, only 14 of moved into new homes, the rest preparing to take re-lets.832 Housing remained the central issue in local politics. The problem was not a lack of demand - rather, it was a lack of economically effective demand, since those in the greatest housing need were also, in general, those who were too poor to afford the council’s high-cost new dwellings. In an attempt to boost demand, the council announced in April 1966 that applicants from the ‘supplementary waiting list’ would only be eligible for the new dwellings; they would not be allowed to apply for (cheaper) re-lets of existing properties.833 As rents rose still further, and the financial crisis deepened, it became essential to consider relating rent levels to the means of tenants. This, however, led directly to the first major rupture between Sheffield Labour Party and its traditional supporters amongst the skilled working class, an issue discussed in the next chapter. Problems with new buildings The third set of problems related to the new housing schemes themselves. Just as it looked as though projects such as Hyde Park (completed in 1966) had ‘solved much of the city’s ‘housing problem,’834 evidence accumulated that the new schemes might not work as well as had been hoped. Labour’s leaders had assumed that once the slums were cleared, and their occupants had been rehoused in decent conditions, they would come to share their own values. The 1960-61 Housing Committee report on Park Hill flats reported, for example: Although soiling of the deck walls seemed likely to become a problem, the tenants immediately reacted to our suggestion and enjoy the activity of washing together the walls by their entrances.835 But communal life did not develop as the planners had hoped.836 Survey data in the 1950s had shown that the old Park district was regarded as a bad neighbourhood, and as many as 30% of those interviewed had said they wanted to move away.837 As early as 1961, the housing department had reported that lifts at the new Park Hill were ‘forming an attraction to the destructive tendencies of teenagers.’838 Harold Lambert commented, thirty years after the event:
832 Sh.Telegraph 11/8/1965 833 ShLSL.Housing.1966#6 (Sh.Telegraph) 834 Glendinning, Muthesius, and Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art., Tower Block. p.320. 835 Hampton, 'Optimism and Growth,' p.133. 836 Glendinning, Muthesius, and Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art., Tower Block. pp.317- 321 provides an overview of the national situation. 837 Hampton, Democracy and Community p.115. 838 Hampton, 'Optimism and Growth,' p.133. Sheffield 1950-1965 197
If you get one or two families in there that were not prepared to toe the line, it’s like putting the proverbial bad apple in the barrel!839 Problems of behaviour, combined with high rents, created an increasing problem of ‘hard to let’ property. Hattersley (although an enthusiastic supporter of the new architecture when it was built) was to comment, thirty years later: prospective tenants rarely liked what produced.840 A later Housing Chairman commented: One of the things that we had created was much more semi-public space - areas not really belonging to anybody, where you get tenants complaining about the nuisance of noise, children, parking. There is no way we, as a council, can deal with such nuisances.841 Physical problems also arose. These were ignored for as long as possible. In Sheffield, prefabrication (to which the Council’s leaders were strongly committed) lay at the core of a growing crisis.842 The Housing Department responded to criticism by seeking to extend its bureaucratic reach, trying in 1963 to take over the Town Planning department, soon after the chairman of the Town Planning Committee had complained at the building cost of Council houses.843 The attempt failed, and shortly afterwards Womersley left the council for private practice.844 Nationally, high-rise flats were beginning to be unpopular with government (because of their cost).845 In 1965, nearby Leeds - Sheffield’s partner in the Yorkshire Development Group – abandoned the policy of building high.846 But Sheffield’s enthusiasm was unabated. Lambert argued that further industrialisation was essential in order to meet building targets;847 40% to 50% of buildings had to be constructed using such methods.848 He rejected the accusation that
839 Glendinning, Muthesius, and Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art., Tower Block. p.320. 840 Independent 8/9/1996 841 Star 10/6/1980 842 Sh.Telegraph 16/9/1965 843 The Star checked the calculations and concluded that while 3-bedroomed houses on the Hyde Park estate were rented at £10 per calendar month, their real cost (before subsidy) was close to £13 7s 4d per month. This contrasted with the purchase price of a comparable private house, with a carport, of £13 14s 9d per month repayable over 25 years - Star 4/11/1963. 844 Glendinning, Muthesius, and Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art., Tower Block. p.262. After his departure from Sheffield, Lewis Womersley was responsible for building Manchester’s widely praised deck-access Hulme housing scheme; tenants demanded to be moved out four years after it was completed in 1971, and it was finally demolished in 1992 – see P.Shapeley, D. Tanner, and A. Walling, 'Civic Culture and Housing Policy in Manchester, 1945-79,' Twentieth Century British History 15, no. 4 (2004), 410-54. 845 Dunleavy, The Politics of Mass Housing pp.36, 172-3. 846 Glendinning and Muthesius, Tower Block. p.312. 847 ShLSL.Housing.1965#16 848 Sh.Telegraph 7/4/1966 Sheffield 1950-1965 198 the city was building ‘slums of the future;’ what mattered was design, layout and landscaping, and Sheffield had a greater variety of types of dwellings than any city in the country. Such opposition as there was to high-rise housing in Sheffield centred around Alderman Sydney Dyson: a half-blind full-time Labour Party agent who was notorious for his dissident views… [He was] certain that the housing committee should build workmen's cottages with a bit of garden round them.849 But Dyson was a maverick, who had previously complained about high rents, and had (heretically) suggested that housing allocation should be related to need. He needed further ammunition. Failure of prefabricated buildings provided it. By 1966, it was clear that Sheffield’s Hallamshire houses were facing serious problems, especially with damp penetration. Dyson (chairman of the Housing Management Committee, responsible for day-to- day running of the housing stock)850 ordered an investigation. It became evident that some of the houses needed to be completely taken apart, in order to trace the faults.851 Disagreement simmered throughout the remainder of 1966-7, with sharp exchanges between Dyson and Lambert (and their supporters) at City Council meetings. Dyson’s vice-chairman pointed out that the prefabricated buildings leaked, especially on the sloping sites of whose use Lambert was so proud. 852 Dyson brought together his arguments about building quality with arguments about rent; prefabricated houses were more expensive than conventional building, and therefore likely to demand higher rent than tenants could easily afford.853 High maintenance costs started as soon as prefabricated houses were occupied. We should not throw traditional techniques out of the window on the basis of some of ...a brochure.854 If designs were not improved: We can get a colossal failure throughout the country which could have a catastrophic effect on our approach to municipal housing. … I don't mind carrying the baby, but I don't want to find it hasn't a nappy on. 855 However, the initial response of local leaders was to find ways in which Sheffield could continue to press ahead. 856 The programme of demolition and building had become central to
849 Roy Hattersley, Independent, 8/9/1996 850 a different body from Harold Lambert’s Housing Development Committee. 851 Star 11/3/1966 Sh.Telegraph 12/4/1966. 852 ShLSL.Housing.1966#8 853 ShLSL.Housing.1966#9 854 Sh.Telegraph 7/4/1966 855 Sh.Telegraph 7/4/1966 856 Star 14/10/1969 Sheffield 1950-1965 199 civic pride, and (in the strongly hierarchical local party) there were no checks or balances. High building (and prefabrication) would only end in Sheffield when external pressure became impossible to resist.
Escape to owner-occupation he link between council housing and Sheffield’s skilled workers (under strain from the pressures described in the previous section) was further weakened by the growth of Towner -occupation in the city. Sheffield Council had no ideological objection to private housing. Sheffield’s Labour Party had its base in skilled manual workers, Sheffield wages were well above the national average, and house prices were relatively low (partly, because the city was able to grow into the surrounding countryside). Assisting marginal consumers to buy private housing was one means for the council to help skilled workers, without being constrained by the pressures of the slum clearance programme. Councillors were reported as saying that: many of the younger applicants, particularly with husband and wife working, should consider buying their own house rather than wait for 10 to 15 years for a Corporation House.857 So strong was Labour’s support for home ownership in Sheffield that, in 1967, the Labour Group even approved the sale of council houses. Despite their feud over pre-fabrication, this policy attracted the support of both Alderman Harold Lambert, who announced the decision, and Alderman Sidney Dyson, chairman of the housing management committee.858 The scheme was, however, rejected by the Labour Secretary of State. In a foretaste of the 1980s (replete with dramatic irony) the council considered pressing ahead with sales anyway, and the local Conservative party said that they would support Sheffield’s Labour administration ‘if they decided to defy the minister.’ 859 The Labour government elected in 1964 also supported the expansion of owner-occupation. It introduced option mortgages, which provided owner occupation subsidy to lower income families. These - as measured by the rate of take-up - were a success; nationally, by 1972 they accounted for 20% of all mortgages.860 But Sheffield was unusual in its high concentration of well-paid workers, and in low house-prices (partly because the city was able to expand into surrounding areas); thus owner-occupation also became unusually important to the Labour Party in the city.
857 Star 14/11/1960 858 Star 5/12/1967 859 ShLSL.Housing.1967#10 Star 20/11/1967, 5/12/1967 860 Burnett, A Social History of Housing p.287. Sheffield 1950-1965 200
Increases in prices in 1960 placed the Sheffield’s growth in owner-occupation under threat;861 by August, some land prices had doubled.862 For five years from 1960, therefore, Sheffield Council developed an increasingly important role as a mortgage lender.863 From 1963 to 1965, as the commercial market for house loans was legally restricted, the importance of council loans increased. The value of loans made in 1964-5 was almost 60% above that in 1963-4.864 Towards the end of that period, the council was reported to be dealing with more than 100 applicants a day.865 By August 1965, some 10,000 loans had been granted. It was reported that: in recent months of the Town Hall has been almost the only place where would-be house owners have been able to borrow money.866 Expansion could not continue indefinitely; as central government sought to control public expenditure, Sheffield was instructed to stop lending. In 1965, the scheme was closed to new applicants.867 The city applied for permission to continue to make loans; the Treasury gave it - but said that loans should be given only to those who found it impossible to get a mortgage from a building society.868 Thereafter, the programme continued, but always under financial pressure.869 Although Sheffield council was helping many of Labour’s key supporters by its mortgage lending programme, the growth of owner-occupation (to almost 40% of all dwellings by 1971 and 44% by 1981)870 broke one of the key links between the party and the skilled workers who made up its traditional activist base. Until the city expanded its boundaries, many of these new home-owners were also located outside its borders.
Conclusion By 1965, the consensus which had sustained Labour’s post-war commitment to planned social intervention was under threat. Some of its core supporters no longer relied on collective provision of housing; for those who did, internal strains, and conflicts of interest, made it a
861 Sh.Telegraph 4/8/1960. Star 18/8/1960 862 Star 18/8/1960 863 Star 23/5/1963. The scheme had been in existence since 1956, and 7,000 loans had already been made by the time it was expanded in 1963. 864 Sh.Telegraph h 5/8/1965. The figures were £684,000 in 1963-4 and £1,089,000 in 1964-5. 865 ShLSL.Housing.1964#11 866 Star 3/8/1965 867 Star 3/8/1965 Sh.Telegraph 5/8/1965 868 Star 21/10/1965, 29/10/1965 869 Star 6/8/1970, 8/10/1970 870 see page 176 Sheffield 1950-1965 201 potential source of division, rather than of solidarity. The failure of the modernist project to deliver hoped-for improvements in social conditions, and increasing physical problems in the newly-built housing stock, challenged the rationalist assumptions on which intervention had been based. The core belief of inter-war and post-war Labour leaders had been that it was possible to plan a better future, on behalf of a unified working class. The twenty years after the end of the war had shown that this was a myth; divisions of interest, rather than unity, were caused, since people were forced to compete for publicly-owned assets. The next fifteen years were to see all these pressures amplified, especially since central funding could no longer be relied upon, as deus ex machina, to resolve local problems. But the strength and isolation of the Labour machine was such that leaders could not be persuaded to change course, until nascent failure has blossomed into full-blown crisis.
Sheffield 1966-1979 202
9. 1966-1979: The rise of the Left
he tensions and contradictions described in the previous chapter did not lead to a revolt within the Sheffield Labour Party. Rather, they caused support to drift away, as Tit seemed to offer less and less of interest to those who had previously been its key supporters. Tensions over a rent rebate scheme for council tenants, and failures in new council housing, reduced the attraction of the (essentially practical) approach of the old generation of leaders. National economic problems restricted the funding available to Sheffield Council, and this further diminished the credibility of the social democratic programme (which had relied on the availability of external funds). The fact that the national government was usually controlled by the Labour Party after 1964 made the crisis in Sheffield much more acute, because it destroyed the moral authority of local leaders and – more practically – led to an unprecedented local election defeat. For many skilled workers, the attractions of buying a home and raising a family seemed more relevant than continuing the post-war programme of social intervention. It became harder to recruit a new generation of activists. Those new members who did become involved were more ideologically driven; it seemed evident to the newcomers that real changes in the situation of the working class would only come about by a fundamental change in British society. National events pitched Labour governments against the trades unions which lay at the core of Sheffield politics, and a powerful alliance developed between leading trades-union based activists within the Labour Party and those outside it. The Communist Party – although negligible in terms of popular support – built a power base in some trades unions, and became very influential in the Sheffield Trades and Labour Council. This helped to inoculate Sheffield against the influence of Trotskyite groups, and was an important factor in preserving good city government in the city. The leftist alliance which emerged was not, however, sufficient to cope with the further contradictions which emerged in Labour’s project. These related to tensions within the local working class; an issue that could not to accommodated within the theoretical framework of the left. Problems over council housing became more acute, as demolitions greatly outstripped new construction, and as some council estates rapidly degenerated into new slums. Rising militancy amongst its own staff created major ideological problems for the council in its role as a large employer. Pressure to be more responsive to tenants and community groups competed with the old, top-down, management style of the local party. The council thus floundered; it could advance no real alternative to the unsuccessful policies it was already pursuing. At the same time, bitterness and tension mounted within the national Labour Party to such an extent that Sheffield politics could, at times, be overwhelmed by national issues. Sheffield 1966-1979 203
Progressive collapse Leadership stability n the early years of the Wilson government the Sheffield party, with its ageing leadership, Iremained strongly hierarchical. Power was still concentrated in the hands of senior members of the Labour Group on the City Council.871 For long periods during their years of office the Labour group were a closed community: exercising a fierce version of party discipline that forbade public expressions of dissent. It was nearly as difficult for the membership of the Trades and Labour Council to penetrate the policy-making caucus as it was for other organizations to do so.872 In 1967 only one councillor was under thirty-five years of age; nearly two thirds were over fifty five.873 The 1966 choice of Ron Ironmonger as Labour leader reflected a generational shift in the Labour group;874 but Ironmonger had been on the Council since 1945, and was an old-school leader. Later knighted for his services to local government, he was a man of tremendous integrity. By seven o’clock each morning he would be at his office desk in a local factory before moving on to the Town Hall to spend the larger part of the day and evening sorting out council matters.875 Ironmonger had a ‘modernising’ agenda - establishing a powerful chief executive, and employing management consultants.876 But this was happening in councils all over England. Even the (brief) loss of the city by Labour in 1968 did little to change the policies followed by the council.877 The party was soon back in control; some administrative changes were made,878 but the old leaders of the council returned to their posts. Not until some key policies such as housing had started to encounter apparently insuperable problems, did the old generation move aside.
871 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' p.155. 872 Hampton, Democracy and Community pp.62,75-6. 873 ibid. p.189. 874 Hampton, 'Optimism and Growth,' p.143. 875 Blunkett and MacCormick, On a Clear Day p.118. 876 Hampton, 'Optimism and Growth,' p.141. 877 Sh.Telegraph 4/1/1968, 27/11/1968 Goodman, Sheffield in the Sixties p.134.. Goodman comments: ‘The Tories were able to claim one record while they were in power - one Council meeting debating spending cuts in July 1968 went on for an incredible 13 hours 14 minutes!’ 878 Sh.Telegraph 5/2/1971 Hampton, 'Optimism and Growth,' p.143. Sheffield 1966-1979 204
The crisis in public housing After 1965 Labour’s council leaders faced increasing problems in administering their post-war achievements. Symbolic modernisation and revival continued; the Crucible Theatre opened, and the Goodwin Fountain was restored, and turned back on (after The Star complained that it had been filled with rubbish).879 But other products of the post-war agenda were harder to put right. Prime amongst these was housing. In the years after 1965, two of the latent conflicts – over rent levels, and over housing allocation and demolition - came to a head. Rent levels The most immediate problem was caused by the long-simmering debate about the appropriate level of council house rents. The pressure from changes in the national subsidy regime was for rents to rise to ‘realistic’ levels.880 In 1966, the City Treasurer recommended adoption of a rent rebate scheme; the rents of the older (cheaper) houses were to increase, while the rents of the newer (expensive) houses were to come down.881 But this meant more redistribution within the working class, and proved highly divisive (as it had been in Camberwell, in 1956).882 Tenants’ movements sprung up;883 symbolically, the secretary of the 20,000 strong Sheffield Federation of tenants’ associations was John Maling, a steel worker.884 The Communist Party attempted to take over the leadership of the Tenants’ Association (and provoked walk-outs by some local groups, and indignation from Maling).885 By December 1967 there was outright warfare between the Tenants’ Association and the Labour council.886 The proposed rent increases were referred to the national Prices and Income Board. The Council was now pushed in two directions: national government was putting up the council’s costs, yet was restricting its ability to respond by charging higher rents.887 The Housing Account went into the red.888 Coincidentally with both the rent-rebate issue, and the extreme unpopularity of the national Labour Government, in 1967 city expansion required a full city-wide election. Labour lost
879 Peter Goodman, Sheffield in the Seventies (Derby, 2002) p.12. 880 Glendinning, Muthesius, and Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art., Tower Block. p.198. 881 Hampton, Democracy and Community p.264. 882 ShLSL.331.88.SF(a) Sheffield Forward January 1967 p2,7 see Page 57 (above) Rent strikes against a similar scheme had caused Labour to lose control of Leeds, as early as 1935. See Malpass and Murie, Housing Policy and Practice. p.42. 883 Hampton, 'Optimism and Growth,' p.145. 884 ShLSL.Housing.1967#12. See Page 231 (below). 885 Hampton, Democracy and Community p.269. 886 Sh.Telegraph 16/12/1967 887 Star 28/3/1968 888 Star 16/1/1968 Sheffield 1966-1979 205 many seats, mainly as a product of the national swing against the Party.889 Next year, it lost control of the City. But this changed little, since the Conservatives were trapped in the same structural dilemmas as their Labour predecessors. The proposals advanced by the Conservative administration backed-down from their own earlier support for income-related rents, and instead favoured tenants in the established estates.890 The approach was bipartisan; Conservatives and Labour on the City Council united in trying to lobby the government.891 Labour’s return to power in the City (although marked by a compromise on the issue of rent levels) left the underlying problem unresolved. Housing Allocation, Demolition, and Construction The rent-rebate scheme had come to a head in a sharp crisis. The crisis over rapid demolition and slow construction was longer-burning, but no less dangerous. Labour’s determination to pursue a large-scale clearance programme pitted it against the interests of some slum dwellers, making it seem as much a bully as a saviour; while the slum-clearance programme also greatly reduced the possibility that ordinary skilled workers would be able to find a home in the social housing sector. The Party thus alienated slum-dwellers, while having little to offer to the better-off. For clearance to be successful, the council needed to persuade about half of the people whose homes were to be demolished to move to the outskirts of the city.892 But many tenants resisted re-housing to remote and expensive estates.893 In November 1969, Lambert called for tenants to show flexibility when asked to move;894 two months later, exhortation was replaced by constraint. The council’s senior officers suggested that people in clearance areas should be given a maximum of two offers of a home; and that their preferences about relocation should be heavily restricted.895 A confidential report made clear the problems the council faced: 45% of housing offers are turned down …[There is] apparent confusion on the part of the public [about priorities for allocating homes and] lack of precise agreement within the department.896
889 Hampton, Democracy and Community p.48. 890 ibid. p.270. Star 23/7/1968, 1/8/1968, 17/9/1968 Sh.Telegraph 25/5/1968, 22/7/1968 891 Sh.Telegraph 22/7/1968, Star 23/7/1968 892 Sh.Telegraph 5/2/1971 893 Sh.Telegraph14/8/1968 Star 14/8/1968, 6/12/1968 894 Sh.Telegraph 10/11/1969 895 Star 17/3/1970. The acquisition process was also expedited, to enable the council to seize houses (by serving a ‘notice of entry’) before any compensation figure had been agreed with the landlord. Some of these areas people had to choose between were very large; one contained 10,797 houses. 896 Star 1/3/1971 Sheffield 1966-1979 206
Lambert’s response to the report was to introduce a managerial reorganisation, and to appoint a public relations officer.897 But this was not enough to secure his objectives. Thus, the Council resorted to threats; in late November 1972 the Town Clerk’s department wrote to residents who had turned down one offer of accommodation: I understand that the housing manager will make a further offer of alternative accommodation to you and I would urge you to accept the further offer in your own interest. I should mention that where offers of alternative accommodation are refused, the Corporation have power to issue their warrant to the Sheriff to deliver possession of the premises to them. The Corporation would prefer to avoid having to use this power in the present case and I hope that, with your cooperation, it will be possible for them to do so.898 After fierce protests, the Town Clerk amended the letter - with the addition of the words: Will you please note that offers of housing accommodation are made by the Housing Manager and not by me. Consequently all inquiries about offers of accommodation should be made direct to the Housing Manager and any correspondence should be addressed to him.899 No other concessions were made. Matters were made much worse by the acceleration of the clearance programme, and by the failure of building to keep pace with it.900 For the first time, as clearance extended into areas where there was substantial owner-occupation, public resistance to demolitions started to mount.901 Action groups sprang up across the city to try to alter the course of the council’s demolition programme and, in particular, to persuade it to consult residents before taking action that would affect them.902 Lambert (writing the in the newsletter of the community groups) tried to plead for flexibility on the part of those who were to be displaced: Prior to 1959 freedom of choice was limited... [but] conditions were such that the heart-burning one experiences today in slum clearance was less onerous... The areas of unfit property were large and capable of taking large contracts for new dwellings. A large proportion of building was taking place near the city centre and the choice of families was restricted... It is a simple statement of fact that freedom of choice is a problem for us but it mainly concerns a minority of families, and if people who are living in districts where their dwelling is urgently required would accept what we
897 Star 1/3/1971 898 Sh.Telegraph 28/11/1972 899 Sh.Telegraph 28/11/1972 900 See page 173 ff. 901 Larry Bennett, Neighborhood Politics : Chicago and Sheffield, (New York ; London, 1997) p.4-5. 902 Geoffrey Green, 'Sheffield's Grassroots (Mimeo),' (Sheffield, 1970). – a mimeographed ‘magazine’ - contains reports from action groups in six distinct areas of the city, with an introduction by William Hampton calling for new forms of public participation. Sheffield 1966-1979 207
could, at the time, offer, we have said that we would place them in the area of their choice as soon as possible and pay their removal expenses.903 But ‘as soon as possible’ could be a long time to wait. Lambert repeatedly announced ambitious building targets, which the city then failed to meet. The three-year housing programme announced in early 1972 envisaged the construction of 10,000 new homes; by the autumn, it was clear that this could not be achieved.904 Despite this, a few months later, Lambert promised a target of over 2,400 new buildings every year.905 This was entirely unrealistic; a report by the city architect in July 1973 showed that the existing building programme of 2,000 homes a year was ‘seriously behind’ schedule; prices quoted by contractors for new schemes were coming in at 100% over the cost-yardstick.906 In September, the Council suspended all new house building contracts. This led Coun. Peter Price (a rising figure amongst the new left-wing activists) to call for nationalisation of the building industry: What more proof do we need that capitalism is a failure when it fails to look after the working people?907 Only 1,000 houses were built in 1974.908 In August, the Council needed an emergency grant from the national Government to rescue it from a deficit on its Housing Revenue Account.909 Attention again turned on all sides to the possibility of using prefabrication. Harold Lambert910 visited a new factory at Milton Keynes. Hope vanquishing experience, he said: A weather-proof shell with a timber frame can be erected in a matter of hours. This can then be externally clad...and internal fittings added,.. this sort of building ....industrialised building is a possibility we could look at from an experimental point of view.911 Fortunately, little came of it. Other emergency measures were contemplated, but also came to nothing; in December 1975, the council (briefly) obtained permission to abandon Parker Morris standards, but the Government then changed its mind, and refused further permissions.912
903 Harold Lambert, 'A Review of Sheffield's Housing Policy,' in Sheffield's Grassroots (Mimeo), ed. Geoffrey Green and Colin Fudge (Sheffield, 1971), p.1-2. 904 Sh.Telegraph 19/12/1972 905 Sh.Telegraph 3/5/1973 906 Star 20/8/1973 907 Star 5/7/1973 908 Star 22/1/1974 909 Star 20/8/1974 910 In his new role as Chairman of the Council’s Works department 911 Star 22/5/1974 912 Star 23/12/1975, Sh.Telegraph 27/7/1976, 25/1/1977 Sheffield 1966-1979 208
The creation of Sheffield Metropolitan District Council doubled the size of the city from 45,000 to 90,000 acres, but increased the population by only 10% or so.913 Sheffield’s ambitions need no longer be constrained by a shortage of available land within its boundaries. But it no longer had the resources with which to build. By 1975, it was evident that things could not go on as they were. A new Housing chairman, opposed to demolition, took over. The council declared its first Housing Action Area (aiming at renovation, not demolition).914 In January 1977, the housing director announced that the long slum-clearance programme would at last be ‘finalised’ when a final batch of 2,300 houses had been razed.915 The Council also sought to reform the management of public housing;916 it created ten small tenant- councillor consultative committees.917 Families with children were moved out of high-rise schemes and into houses. 918 The old model of provision had run into the sand. The end of optimism The failure of Sheffield’s leaders to meet their ambitious housing targets after 1965 should not obscure their achievements. Major physical problems, which had characterized Sheffield’s housing stock in 1951, had been reduced to negligible proportions by 1981.
913 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' p.154. 914 Star 19/2/1975 915 Sh.Telegraph 25/1/1977 916 Star 22/3/1976 917 Star 22/3/1976 918 Star 22/7/1977 Sheffield 1966-1979 209
Figure 9.1 Housing Conditions in Sheffield, 1951-1981919
Housing conditions in Sheffield 1951-1981
60% 0.8
50% 0.75
40% 0.7
30% 0.65
20% 0.6 per room Persons Percentage of householdsPercentage
10% 0.55
0% 0.5 1951 1961 1971 1981 excluding Source: Crook 1993 pp98-99, calculations absent households
Households in shared dwellings as % of all households Households without exclusive use of bath % Average number of persons per room
There is great danger in applying hindsight. The tenurial structure of the 1950s, combined with rent control, meant that any local council seeking to deal with poor housing conditions had to deal with privately-rented housing, which was bound to be in very poor condition. It would have required enormous optimism to think that theses houses were better renovated than demolished (and anyone advocating such a course of action would have widely been regarded as eccentric). But the solutions that were adopted – especially, large-scale public construction - brought problems of their own. The problems – although expressed in a series of practical failures – were, at their core, political. The old model had been based on the assumption that there were no major conflicts of interest between working people, and that city fathers could be trusted to plan a better future, using reason to overcome the pettiness of competition, and to allocate houses fairly to the people of the city. Practical experience of collective provision challenged those assumptions; conflict between the interests of different working-class groups became increasingly important, and the groupthink of city fathers caused them to stick to failing policies and building forms. A central problem was the absence of any feed-back mechanism to force leaders quickly to adjust to (or even, to notice) policy failures. An even more fundamental challenge to Labour ideology, however, came from the contradictions which were exposed as Sheffield’s leaders faced increasingly militant trades unions representing their own staff.
919 Crook, 'Needs, Standards and Affordability,' p.99, Table 9: author’s calculations. Sheffield 1966-1979 210
Workers’ struggle n 1973-1974, the average wage settlement for industrial workers in the UK was 29%, retail prices had risen by 19%, and industrial production had fallen by 3%; by the middle Iof 1975, wages were rising at an annual rate of 33%. The Labour government which was elected in 1974 imposed a cap on wage settlements and, in 1975, cash limits to all public expenditure. By 1976, it was forced to adopt a programme of major public expenditure cuts. Although inflation fell to around 10%, unemployment rose to over 1.5 million.920 In Sheffield, these events created a conflict of interest between the manual working unions (who, broadly, controlled the council, but often worked in the still almost-prosperous steel and engineering industry) and the non-manual unions, whose members worked for the council. White-collar council employees tried to keep up with the wage settlements in industry. In February 1974, they took industrial action which left 600 manual workers (employed by the council) with unpaid wages.921 In May, 26 supervisors in the Sheffield cleansing department came out on strike – but they picketed depots, so other workers refused to cross the picket lines,922 and by the end of the month only 20 out of 110 dust carts were operating.923 Thus in early June, police were called to break up a mini-riot on the Town Hall steps as crowds of people scrambled for plastic refuse sacks being distributed by council officials.924 By the end of the dispute, Sheffield ‘resembled a huge rubbish dump’ and 15,000 tons of rubbish had piled up in the streets.925 Later that month, it was reported that housing visitors were also contemplating strike action (in order to get parity with education visitors);926 simultaneously, NALGO launched a campaign for a 20% increase in local government workers’ pay.927 Over the next two years, strikes and unrest continued.928 As spending cuts intensified, and cash limits started to loom, NALGO refused to co-operate with staff redeployment.929
920 Cosgrave, The Strange Death of Socialist Britain p.166-75. 921 Star 16/2/1974 Sh.Telegraph 19/2/1974 922 Sh.Telegraph 1/5/1974 923 Sh.Telegraph 30/5/1974 924 Sh.Telegraph 8/6/1974 925 Goodman, Sheffield in the Seventies pp.66, 74-76. 926 Sh.Telegraph 15/6/1974 Star 5/6/1974 927 6/7/1974 Star. 928 ShLSL.NALGO.1975#1 National figures from Cosgrave, The Strange Death of Socialist Britain p.166. 929 Sh.Telegraph 12/3/1976 Sheffield 1966-1979 211
By October 1974, open warfare had broken out between the council and NALGO. NALGO accused Communist activist George Caborn, local leader of the Engineering Union, and close ally of some of Sheffield’s senior Labour figures, of acting like the worst sort of employer: [NALGO leader Norman Cole] claims that ‘slanderous’ allegations from his personal record have been leaked to outside interests.... Nalgo asked the city’s Trades Council … to intervene in a dispute ... Mr. Cole says that some of the arguments against him appeared to come from the Town Hall personnel records. The arguments - put forward by the city’s engineering workers’ union leader Mr. George Caborn - concerned Mr. Cole’s work and attendance performance at the Town Hall...... But Mr. Caborn...denied he had been given any information from council files. ‘I have never seen these records in all my life,’ he said.930 However, Norman Cole was a member of the Executive of the 1975-6 Trades Council, 931 and NALGO was (from the mid 1970s) a much larger contributor to the funds of the Trades Council than the Engineering Union, and normally a larger contributor even than the TGWU. The local government manual workers’ union – NUPE – although often at loggerheads with NALGO, was a similarly important contributor to Trades Council funds. This was a marked change from 1968, when NALGO’s contribution had been only 60 per cent as high as that of the Engineers. 932 Matters were complicated by a bitter national struggle within NALGO, which pitted Trotskyite groups against the Broad Left:933 In mid-August 1974, five Yorkshire members of the NALGO national executive sent a letter to all branches, warning that the union was being ‘infiltrated by …dedicated extreme left-wing socialists … whose ultimate aim is revolution.’934 Cole denied this claim. Later, nine shop stewards in the Family and Community Services Department resigned, making similar assertions; Cole retorted that an internal battle for control of the union was indeed taking place - against the Communist Party.935 In June 1976, a retiring NALGO Yorkshire executive member circulated a letter saying that Cole - a ‘political animal’ and a ‘confirmed confrontationist’ - should be voted out of NALGO’s national executive.936
Star 1/4/1977, 8/10/1977 930 Sh.Telegraph 2/10/1974 931 by then, formally separate from the local Labour Party 932 ShLSL.331.88.S (Trades Council Annual Year Books, 1975-81, Trades and Labour Council Annual Year Books, 1968-9) 933 Mike Ironside and Roger V. Seifert, Facing up to Thatcherism : The History of Nalgo 1979-1093 (Oxford, 2000) p.60. The Broad Left was an alliance between Labour Party members and non-Trotskyite Leftist groups outside the Labour Party (mainly, the Communists). 934 Star 16/8/1974 935 ShLSL.NALGO.1976#2 A members’ ballot then supported Mr Cole’s critics. 936 Sh.Telegraph 6/6/1976 Sheffield 1966-1979 212
In Sheffield, NALGO members sometimes rebelled against the extremism of local leaders, especially when larger numbers could be persuaded to attend meetings.937 Individual members started to protest about the ‘dictatorial’ attitude of local NALGO leaders; six members at the Myers Grove School office threatened to resign, writing in a union newsletter that: there are very many worried faces amongst the rank and file of union members today, because of the arrogance of union leaders who presume to tell their members, ‘Do or I say or else.’938 Sheffield’s council leaders were, however, faced with a dilemma; how to handle strikes by their own employees, while remaining true to trades union principles. In January 1976, five white collar workers in Town Hall refused to join NALGO because they alleged that it was under the control of extremists - yet under the closed-shop agreement the only permitted exception to obligatory membership was on religious grounds; the five workers thus faced the sack.939 In April 1977, Stanley Battye (chief revenue officer of the city, but also a NALGO shop steward), resigned from the union after a decision by the branch executive to send a ‘message of support’ to Post Office workers who were (illegally) refusing to deliver mail to a London firm whose workers were on strike.940 Since there was a closed shop in Sheffield, his resignation from the union meant that he too risked losing his job. In November, a members’ ballot supported him, and repudiated (by 2,300 votes to 251) the actions of the NALGO executive;941 but members’ activism of this kind was not guaranteed. The problem for the council was that although NALGO members quite often overturned the more extreme decisions of their leaders, internal union discipline (and the risk that decisions would not be overturned) made dissent potentially highly costly for individual employees. Disciplinary action by the union could result in employees losing their jobs because of closed- shop agreements, while the council would not dismiss an employee for taking strike action. At each stage, therefore, NALGO’s leaders could control the course of events. The strong trades- union basis of Labour’s control in Sheffield made it very hard for the leaders of the council to formulate a coherent response to these challenges from another part of the trades union movement. Cleavages of interest between workers had no place in analysis rooted in their core mythology, the concept of unified class struggle.
937 Star 12/7/1974 938 ShLSL.NALGO.1974#3 (Star) 939 Star 2/1/1976 940 The Gunwick dispute related to trades union recognition, and became a cause célèbre of the left. 941 Star 1/4/1977 Sh.Telegraph 9/11/1977 Sheffield 1966-1979 213
The Rise of the New Left n this unhappy, uncertain and divided context, the intellectual project of the post-war Labour leaders of Sheffield – rationalist, optimistic, incremental, constitutional - ceased to Iresonate. 942 Some local parties were moribund. In Walkley ward, a party member wrote in a local newsletter: The Labour candidate… polled almost 3,000 votes and won a handsome victory in the May 13 council elections. The Walkley Ward Labour Party, however, is defunct. Card-carrying members living within its boundaries can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Mrs. Hardstaff [the councillor] herself was drafted in from a nearby ward... and such help as she had was drafted in from outside parts of the city...943 The Trades and Labour Council started to publish – in its monthly newspaper – articles increasingly critical of the Wilson government, especially in relation to support for the American intervention in Vietnam, British defence spending, the Prices and Incomes Policy, and trades union reform.944 Matters were made worse by economic crises, as the Labour government first struggled to maintain an overvalued pound, and then (in November 1967) was forced into a humiliating devaluation. The overall sense of confrontation between unions and government was heightened by the total of 3,021 strikes (and 6,772,000 days lost due to strikes) in 1969.945 Nationally, the Communist Party capitalised on this disarray, following a new strategy it had adopted in 1961:946 [It] moved towards supporting left Labour candidates for electoral positions within the unions and away from standing open [CP] candidates….947 Although tiny numerically, the Party received subsidies in cash of up to £100,000 per year from the Soviet Embassy from 1957 onwards, as well as raising money regionally to support full-time trades union organisers.948 By the late 1960s, it was influential in several unions,
942 Marquand, The Progressive Dilemma p.253. comments: ‘Labourism could still flourish in opposition, when its built-in tensions could be disguised with the rhetoric of unity. In government, it either had to avoid hard choices or risk self-destruction.’ 943 Peter Hildrew, 'Labour's Withering Grassroots,' in Sheffield's Grassroots (Mimeo), ed. Geoffrey Green and Colin Fudge (Sheffield, 1971), pp.7-9. 944 ShLSL.331.88.SF(d) Article by ‘John Ball’ 945 Cosgrave, The Strange Death of Socialist Britain p.123. 946 Sh.Telegraph 18/1/1968 947 James Eaden and David Renton, The Communist Party of Great Britain since 1920 (Basingstoke, 2002) pp.131, 50. 948 Beckett, Enemy Within pp.147, 52, 219. The existence of these subsidies was officially confirmed by the Communist Party in 1992. The relative impact of this subsidy can be estimated by comparing it with the annual salary of the Secretary of the Sheffield Trades and Labour Council in 1968, which (after a period of inflation) was £1,192/18s/1d. - ShLSL.331.88.S, 1968. Sheffield 1966-1979 214 including the Engineers and the Transport and General Workers’ Union.949 In the Engineering Union, by 1972 the left had 4 out of 7 seats on the national executive, the presidency, both the assistant secretaries, and an estimated 62 of the 180 full-time posts.950 In Sheffield, the Left (dominated by the Communist Party) had majority control of the District Committee of the Engineering Union from at least 1958, and was ‘dominant’ in shop stewards’ meetings. This provoked running battles with the National Executive, so long as the right remained in control of that body; for example, George Caborn was suspended by the National Executive from his union activities for twelve months in 1959-1960, but won the District Presidency of the union in his own region while still officially suspended.951 After the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia the Communists nationally started to split between what were later to become the Eurocommunists (associated with Martin Jacques), and the more pro-Soviet ‘tankies,’ who were mainly located in the industrial wing of the Party. This split became increasingly bitter.952 Yorkshire was strongly associated with the industrial wing of the Communist Party.953 The Sheffield Trades and Labour Council arranged exchange visits with Donetsk Area Trades Council in the Soviet Union; cash flows relating to these visits accounted for just under 13% of its ‘industrial’ (i.e. ‘non-political’) expenditure in 1971.954 George Caborn played a leading role in the Anglo-Bulgarian Friendship Society.955 The Engineering Union in Sheffield continued to argue that Eastern Europe had a superior model for the management of industrial relations. In 1974, a union delegation visited Bulgaria, and (in an article in the Morning Telegraph) Caborn reported on its visit: The role of a British trade union is that of a defensive mechanism, to protect our workers against the actions of management,… The role of the Bulgarian Trade Union is a positive one, to have the major control on how its factory output will be met, and what incentives will be paid...the National Plan which started at Government level is got right down to the factory floor, and a method has been devised which encourages the full participation of the whole of the working population to discuss how the plan will be carried out...This is real democracy in action...In a fortnight, we could only see a
Similar subsidies were provided covertly by the KGB to most western European Communist parties, and to the U.S. Communist Party, until at least the 1970s – see Christopher M. Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive : The KGB in Europe and the West (London, 2000) pp.360-99. 949 Beckett, Enemy Within pp.160-62, 75. This view is confirmed by John Callaghan, 'Industrial Militancy, 1945–79: The Failure of the British Road to Socialism?,' Twentieth Century British History 15, no. 4 (2004). 950 Eaden and Renton, The Communist Party pp.131-2. 951 Bond, 'New Frontiers - Old Horizons', pp.161-65. 952 Beckett, Enemy Within pp.168, 75-78. 953 Michael Crick, Scargill and the Miners (Harmondsworth, 1985) pp.20-23. 954 ShLSL.331.88.S Trades and Labour Council Annual Year Book, 1972-3, p.9. 955 Dr Michael Fitzpatrick, Spiked Online, 30/7/2002, (http://www.spikedonline.co.uk/Articles/00000006D9B0.htm) Sheffield 1966-1979 215
little of Bulgaria, but what we did see was good. This is not to say that we found utopia. We are fully aware of the revelations of the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, the uprising in Czechoslovakia, and how the publication of the Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn. (sic) ....No system on this planet is perfect, facts have proved, but some are a lot better than others. We bring this message back from Bulgaria. We have seen Socialism. And it works.956 A similar visit was carried out by AUEW members in October 1980, and concluded that ‘the socialist system in Bulgaria seems to be developing very successfully.’957 Allender has argued that, in Sheffield, the Communist Party was a force for industrial discipline,958 and George Caborn (widely respected as a hard but realistic negotiator) reflected this approach when he said,: There are hard liners in management and in the unions, and leaders who don't understand the name of the game. … these people are brought back into line after they’ve dropped a clanger and created a confrontation which ought to have been avoided by negotiation. I have always believed that militancy without responsibility equals anarchy.959 But leading successful strikes was also the key means the Communist Party pursued to increase its influence.960 At Shardlow’s engineering plant, for example, ‘where the Communist Party claim that one in 18 of the shop-floor workers is a party member,’961 the union launched protests and strikes against the national government’s pay freeze,962 while, in 1969, it prepared to go on ‘indefinite’ strike for pay.963 The growth in importance of the shop stewards movement helped the Party to build credibility in Sheffield, though it was often hard to persuade workers to support issues beyond those relating to pay and conditions.964 The Wilson Government’s attempt to introduce trades-union reform, (and to curb the growing shop-stewards’ movement, which was strongest in the Engineering Union) placed the Sheffield Labour Party at odds with its national leaders;965 in the spring of 1969, the Trades
956 George Caborn, writing in Sh.Telegraph, 5/7/1974. This article provoked an angry response in a latter from Labour Councillor Jack Green (Sh.Telegraph9/7/1974). Green was deselected as a Labour councillor the following year (Star 25/10/1975), and in 1976 resigned from the Labour Party in protest at what he described as a Marxist take-over (Star 11/3/1976). 957 ShLSL.331.88.SF(j) 958 Allender, What's Wrong with Labour? p.70. 959 ShLSL.380.SQ Interview with George Caborn, 1981. 960 Nick Howard, 'The Rise and Fall of Socialism in One City,' International Socialism Journal, no. 69 (1995): pp.9-12. 961 ShLSL.AUEW.1966#3 962 Bond, 'New Frontiers - Old Horizons', p.176. 963 Star 22/8/1968 964 Bond, 'New Frontiers - Old Horizons', p.155-7, 409-10. 965 ShLSL.Labour.1968#2 Sheffield 1966-1979 216 and Labour Council endorsed by a majority of 36 votes to 18 a motion rejecting Labour’s White Paper In Place of Strife.966 After Labour lost power in 1970, the Conservative Industrial Relations Act of 1971 created a cause around which Labour and the Trades Unions could unite; but it also drove the Labour Party sharply to the left. The Communist Party's national industrial organizer, Bert Ramelson, became a key figure in pressing unions not to register under the Act. He said that the Communist Party only had to: float an idea early in the year and it will be official Labour Party policy by the autumn967 In the first quarter of 1971, days lost in strikes quadrupled;968 in September the TUC instructed its member-unions not to register under Act. In April 1972, the new Industrial Relations Court fined the Transport Workers and the Engineering Union for failure to register;969 in July, it sent 5 shop-stewards in the Port of London to gaol.970 In this climate, local militancy increased. In January 1971 there was a strike by ‘thousands’ of Sheffield workers in protest against the Industrial Relations Bill; 971 in October, George Caborn and seven other AUEW officials were summoned appear in court following disturbances during a mass picket. Two days before they were due in court, the entire union in Sheffield decided to strike, in protest about another large fine levied on the national union.972 Further pressure to defy the law came from the 1972 Housing Finance Act. This sought to compel councils to charge ‘fair’ rents; to shift public subsidy away from buildings and towards needy families; and to prevent general support for rents from local taxation.973 As had happened under Sheffield’s own attempt to introduce a rent-rebate scheme, better-off tenants were faced with sharply increased costs, and lower subsidies.974 This posed a threat to Labour’s more affluent supporters.975 In Clay Cross (a small town few miles from Sheffield), councillors refused to implement the charges; their cause became a national emblem.976 In August 1972 George Caborn (although himself still a member of the Communist Party) wrote
966 ShLSL.TLC.1969#1 967 Beckett, Enemy Within p.174. 968 Goodman, Sheffield in the Seventies p.66. 969 Cosgrave, The Strange Death of Socialist Britain p.143. 970 ibid. pp.145-50. 971 Goodman, Sheffield in the Seventies p.66. 972 Star 3/10/1973 973 Hayes, 'The Association of London Housing Estates and the 'Fair Rent' Issue,' p.59. 974 The only subsidy the corporation would receive would be a ‘loss subsidy’ whereby the government would fix rents at what they call a ‘fair’ level, and any local authority still showing a loss – at that level of that rent - would receive a subsidy. 975 Sh.Telegraph 5/2/1971 976 Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left p.34. Sheffield 1966-1979 217 to his union’s sponsored (Labour) members of the City Council, threatening them with loss of support unless they voted not to implement the Act.977 The loss of the union’s sponsorship was important not simply in financial terms but also in terms of councillors’ chances of re-selection. Many of the sponsored councillors were prominent in the life of Sheffield; they included Alderman Sir Ron Ironmonger (leader), Roy Thwaites (chief whip & transport spokesman),978 Alderman John Sturrock (recreation committee), George Machin (deputy chairman of Public Works), Arnold Wood (deputy Chairman of Engineering Services), and Alderman Ernest Bingham. The engineering union also sponsored at least five other councillors – including three rising young stars, later to be closely associated with David Blunkett’s leadership, Roger Barton, Bill Michie and Sam Wall.979 Alderman John Pate was one the Labour members threatened with loss of sponsorship. He said: A vote against implementing this Act is a dangerous one. It means breaking the law, and that I don’t agree with. I believe in a democracy where laws are made by a Parliament democratically elected by the people. For councils or anyone else to choose to obey certain laws and disobey others will lead to anarchy and dictatorship.980 But he was in a minority in the Party; Labour Group policy was not to implement the Act. Members were given a free vote and eventually (with Conservative support) the council agreed to implement the Act.981 For the Engineers this constituted a betrayal; George Caborn pressed for the Labour Party in Sheffield to take disciplinary action against those who had failed to follow the local (Labour) Party line.982 The Trades and Labour Council Local discontent about national events after 1965 – coupled with fierce anger due to the rent rebate issue983 - brought about a fundamental change in the Sheffield Labour Party. The process was gradual, and there was no coup of the kind seen in Southwark. But the effect was as far-reaching. The first stirrings of unhappiness came in the Trades and Labour Council. In 1967, that body still backed the local and national Labour hierarchy. It confirmed a (controversial) invitation of Prime Minister Harold Wilson to a reception in the city, to celebrate 40 years of Labour rule. 70-year-old Mr. Blakey reflected the majority opinion:
977 ShLSL.Housing.1972#13 978 Ald. Ironmonger and Coun. Thwaites had been among the original sponsors of George Caborn when he sought office in the Engineering Union – see Page 181 (above). 979 Sh.Telegraph 23/8/1972. 980 Sh.Telegraph 23/8/1972 981 Star 24/1/1973 982 Star 24/1/1973 983 See page 208ff. (above). Sheffield 1966-1979 218
I thank the Lord I've been able to play a part. I feel I'm going to leave the world better than it was when I came into it. I'm proud to be a Socialist. I'm proud to have walked the streets with the unemployed. I'm proud to have knocked on doors to ask people to be members of the Labour Party.984 Yet even he warned that ‘We've not made much progress to put new fire into the movement,’ and expressed concern that the party was not capturing the imaginations of young people. The loyalists’ bewilderment is perhaps best summed up by reaction to the dinner itself. The Star reported Brightside M.P. Richard Winterbottom’s speech in these terms: He said it was not always possible for the critics, and particularly for those inside the party, to see where it was going. But the way ahead was very clear and emphatic to the leaders. It was difficult to explain, and perhaps also difficult to understand, but those who had faith that believed that to be so. It was the faith which reflected itself in the ballot boxes that was so essential to the party's future.985 This plea for justification-by-faith - in the absence of satisfactory justification by works - showed the depths of despair to which local (and national) events had driven party members. Others were not prepared to give the Labour leadership the benefit of the doubt. Leftist groups represented in the Trades Council were prominent in the opposition to the council’s rent-rebate scheme.986 The council’s policy of wage restraint provoked a clash between Alderman Dyson (who defended its actions), and Martin Flannery (a Hillsborough Constituency Party delegate, later to be a New Left M.P.).987 At a 1967 Trades Council meeting, Thomas Robinson of Park Ward accused ‘many Sheffield city councillors’ of ‘carpet bagging’ and ‘furthering their own interests:’ You can count on the fingers of one hand the councillors who are friends of the working class….We have got nothing to celebrate in Sheffield. The good done over 40 years has been ruined by the means test of last year … [Harold Wilson is] the biggest traitor the working class has ever known.988 George Caborn remained a Communist Party member; however, from the late 1960s he pursued a policy of strong support for the Labour Party, while campaigning to ensure that Labour adopted leftist policies.989 The policy was actively supported by his son, Richard
984 ShLSL.Labour.1965#19 985 Star 3/11/1967 986 Sh.Telegraph 25/2/1968. Also, see above. 987 Sh.Telegraph October 26th 1966 (date very faint; might be 28th October). Trades and Labour Council microfiche. Mr. Flannery made his initial Labour Party career by opposing the rent rises of the 1960s, and supporting the manual unions in their struggle against the council. He became MP for Sheffield Hillborough in 1979, making this the second parliamentary seat to be taken over by the hard left, and was subsequently (with Joan Maynard) a close supporter of Tony Benn. His wife was an active member of the Communist Party. - Star 24/1/1983, Guardian 6/1/1981. 988 ShLSL.Labour.1967#3 989 Sh.Telegraph 18/1/1968. Sheffield 1966-1979 219
Caborn990 - the secretary of the Engineering shop-stewards at the Firth Brown plant, a Labour Party activist, and (coincidentally) a close childhood friend of Arthur Scargill who was later to become leader of the Miners’ Union.991 He said: We want more activity from the lads on the shop floor. We want to select our candidates for municipal and parliamentary elections - not just endorse people carrying the Labour Party tag. Now there is new leadership we feel there is a chance of more Socialist, left wing policies.992 In June 1968, the Morning Telegraph reported that the Engineering Union was seeking a meeting with the city’s Labour MPs ‘to make their presence more felt in the Labour Party’. George Caborn said: We hope to play a more prominent part within the [Labour] Party in Sheffield, and we hope that trades unions generally will do the same.993 By July 1968 the Sheffield Trade and Labour council’s draft resolution for the Labour party conference blamed ‘consensus politics’ within the parliamentary party for the decline in political support. It deplored the falling away of the party’s electoral support and the contraction of the party membership, to the point where a whole generation is missing from its ranks994 The Trades and Labour Council went through a period of major generational change. In 1968 eight ‘seasoned principals’ retired. The senior leadership was initially unchanged - Councillor Bill Owen (an official of the T.G.W.U., and former member of the I.L.P.) remained as President.995 However in 1971 both sitting vice-presidents lost their posts, and were replaced by Martin Flannery (who had close ties to the Communist Party, via his wife), and Councillor George Machin, of the Engineering Union.996
Star 9/1/1968, 20/8/1968 For example, in the Brightside by-election in 1968, the Engineers backed the Labour victor, with the active support of the Communist committee members - Sh.Telegraph 18/1/1968 990 Later Member of the European Parliament for Sheffield (1979-1984); House of Commons from 1983; Minister for Trade at the Department for Trade and Industry (1999-2001); Minister of State for the Regions, Regeneration and Planning at the Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (1997-1999); Privy Councillor, 1999; Minister for Sport, June 2001. 991 ‘A boyhood friend of Arthur Scargill, the pair shared a bed during sleepovers at the Caborns’ … home. It was a memory rekindled when they were forced to share a bed on a trade mission when a hotel was overbooked.’ Star 21/6/2001 Firth Brown was one of the largest of the non-nationalised steel producers. ShLSL.332.6.SQ, p8. 992 Sh.Telegraph18/1/1968 993 Sh.Telegraph 24/6/1970 994 Sh.Telegraph 22/7/1968. 995 ShLSL.TLC.1968#2 996 ShLSL.331.88.S Trades and Labour Council, Annual Year Book, 1971-72 ShLSL.TLC.1971#3 Sheffield 1966-1979 220
The Engineering Union also used its financial muscle as one means to change the constitution of the Trades and Labour Council. It aimed to allow Communist delegates to become formally involved in its policy-making processes, and thus in the formation of Labour Party policy:997 Out of a possible income of nearly £1,000 from the city’s 41 branches of the engineering section of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering and Foundry Workers, Sheffield Trades and Labour Council received £86 17s. in 1967. Of about 20,000 Sheffield members of the engineering section, only about 1,900 individuals are affiliated to the Council. ‘The District Committee have said that when the Council lift its ban on Communist delegates they will reconsider their recommendation…’ said the [Trades] Council secretary, Mr. Vernon Thornes…998 In February 1968, the Trades and Labour Council itself decided to cut the amount of money it made available to constituency Labour Parties - a move described by Alderman Sidney Dyson as ‘a crippling blow.’999 By June 1969, Vernon Thornes had explicitly added his weight to the campaign to abolish the ban on Communists.1000 When the change was eventually approved, by 94 votes to 15, Richard Caborn said: There is tremendous unity now being formed on the shop floor and Communists are working alongside Labour party members and non-political workers.1001 Eight new branches of the A.U.E.W. affiliated to the Labour Party in 1970, a further twenty in 1971, and nine more in 1972. From being a small contributor to the political funds of the Trades and Labour Council in the late 1960s, the AUEW became by far the largest donor in 1972, contributing almost twice as much as the next largest union (the Transport and General Workers),(Figure 9.2).1002 They continued to be the largest contributor to Labour’s funds until 1980, even after the Party and the Trades Council were formally split into two separate organisations.1003
see page 222 above (footnote), for a description of Mr Flannery’s subsequent career. 997 Star 16/1/1968 998 Star 16/1/1968 999 Sh.Telegraph 25/2/1968 1000 Star 17/6/1969 1001 ShLSL.TLC.1970#4 1002 ShLSL.331.88.S Trades Council, Annual Year Book 1968 to 1972. By 1972, the Engineers were the Trades and Labour Council’s largest supporter, accounting for around 18% of its overall income for political and trades union activity. But 77% of the Engineers’ contribution was earmarked for the political fund, so its contribution to supporting the non-political activities of the Trades Council was much less than that of the T.G.W.U. 1003 ShLSL.331.88.S Trades Council, Annual Year Book 1975 to 1981. In 1981, the T.G.W.U. (just) overtook the Engineers as the largest contributor to the District Labour Party. Sheffield 1966-1979 221
Figure 9.2 Contributions to political funds of Sheffield Trades and Labour Council by Trades Unions giving more than £35 in any one year, 1968-19721004
Unions contributing more than £35 to the Sheffield Trades and Labour Council political funds in any year between 1968 and 1972.
700 Engineers
Transport & 600 General
General & 500 Municipal
Electricians &
400 Plumbers
Iron & Steel Trades 300 Association Shop Workers
200 Annual Contribution Annual in £ National Union Public Empl.
100 Railwaymen
0 Mineworkers 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 Year
Co-operation between Communist activists in the factories and Labour politicians on the Council was not seen as contentious. In February 1971, the Morning Telegraph reported (approvingly) that in Sheffield: There is no doubt that the relationship between the Labour group, the borough Labour Party and the trades unions [Communists are now admitted to the trades council meetings, to make them fully representative] has been successful and productive over the past three years.1005
1004 ShLSL.331.88.S Trades Council, Annual Year Book, 1968 to 1972. The General and Municipal Union contribution for 1970 is an estimate, since its contribution is omitted in the annual report for that year (though it remains listed in the members’ directory). The estimate is an average of the GMWU contributions in 1969 and 1971. 1005 ShLSL.Labour.1971#4 (Sh.Telegraph) Sheffield 1966-1979 222
In November 1973 Richard Caborn moved a resolution in the Trades and Labour Council condemning Reg Prentice (Shadow Minister of Labour) for his claim that the left wing of the Labour Party, and some trade unions, were under the influence of Communists.1006 In that same year, Labour’s National Executive Committee itself abolished the national list of proscribed organisations.1007 The growing co-operation between the Communist Party and the Labour left was not accompanied by an upsurge in popular support for the political (rather than the industrial) activities of the Party; C.P. membership fell in Sheffield, and sales of the Communist newspaper, The Morning Star, only exceeded the registered Party membership of 700 by a total of three copies.1008 But in a Labour party dominated by trades unions rather than by a mass-membership, and with power concentrated at the apex of the structure, popular support was less important than institutional influence. Equally, turnout in Engineering Union ballots was typically in the range of six per cent of the total membership eligible to vote, so well- organised groups could have an influence disproportionate to their size.1009 The institutional influence of the new coalition in Sheffield was threatened by national Labour Party proposals to place delegates from constituency Labour parties in control of the Party in the city. In December 1971, Sheffield Trades and Labour Council declared its opposition to these measures, while Richard Caborn went further still, and said that his union was unlikely to stay affiliated to the Labour Party in Sheffield if the re-organization went through.1010 Eventually, change was imposed. But neither the Labour Party nor the Trades Council believed that they had the resources to operate independently of each other;1011 they immediately explored ways of re-uniting themselves.1012 Despite formal separation, close cooperation continued for many years –to the extent of publishing a joint Annual Report and Accounts, and employing jointly-funded staff.1013 The Left rapidly seized control of the newly-
1006 Star 28/11/1973 1007 Ivor Crewe and Anthony Stephen King, SDP : The Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic Party (Oxford, 1995) p.16. 1008 Eaden and Renton, The Communist Party pp.160-61. 1009 Star23/9/1966 1010 Star 1/12/1971 1011 ShLSL.Labour.1972#5 The author comments: ‘traditionally the borough party has been the major force in Sheffield Labour politics, with support and representation not only from the city's six constituencies, but also from trade union branches [250 of them], the Cooperative Party, Labour Women's Council, Fabians, Socialist Educational Association, and so on. Now the Labour Party nationally is proposing a new organization under which the borough party would disappear, and most of the burden would be thrown on voluntary officials in the constituencies. In place of the borough party would be a "liaison committee " covering the city and surrounding areas in the new Metropolitan District. But the trade unions-the major source of funds for local labour movements-would have no direct place on the committee. They would have to work through constituency parties instead, and its odds on that their involvement-and with it their cash contributions-would dwindle.’ 1012 Sh.Telegraph 10/12/1975 1013 Sh.Telegraph 28/1/1976 Sheffield 1966-1979 223 created District Labour Party, mainly by affiliating unions to Constituency Parties (thus gaining large numbers of seats on constituency General Management Committees), and was able to use this as a power base to influence the selection of Council candidates.1014 Taking control By the early 1970s, the Left dominated the machinery of the Labour Party in Sheffield. But it did not yet have a comparable control over elected representatives in the city. This relationship had once been highly deferential. In 1970, Hampton reported: The involvement of the Sheffield Members of Parliament in local constituency or city affairs varied enormously: two were obviously ‘local M.P.s’; two more did their constituency work with a certain amount of enthusiasm; but the other two spent little time in their constituency, and had no particular interest in Sheffield as a city….The demands made upon the Member of Parliament by his constituency party in Sheffield are slight, and unlikely to offend his conscience. Loyalty is given to the man and there are very few attempts to influence the policy he will follow. …One Sheffield M.P. told me that he never attended party meetings in his constituency, four others did so occasionally, and only one attended regularly…. …In one constituency a motion to support the local M.P. in his views on a certain issue was actually divided …into two separate motions: one to express confidence in the M.P. and the other to condemn the policy he was supporting. Delegates explained that they did not wish their vote on a policy issue to be interpreted as an attack upon the right of their M.P. to form his own opinion…1015 Over the next four years this value system underwent a fundamental change. The process started in the Brightside constituency party; many of the new generation of leaders came from there (indeed, they came later to be called the ‘Brightside Mafia’). David Blunkett, Peter Price, Joan and Roger Barton, Helen Jackson, Sam Wall, Mike Bower and Clive Betts were close friends as well as colleagues. They shared a common approach to many major political issues.1016 They were often engaged in non-manual jobs - Blunkett was a lecturer, Betts a Cambridge graduate working for the County Council, Price a technician at the university, Billings a vicar, Michie a laboratory assistant with British Steel.1017 Many of them later moved to positions of national significance. Sheffield had acted as an occasional launch-pad for
Allender, What's Wrong with Labour? p.69. ShLSL.331.88.S Trades Council and Labour Party Annual Year Book, 1975-1981 1014 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' p.158. 1015 Hampton, Democracy and Community pp.80-87. 1016 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' p.158. Pollard, David Blunkett. pp.116-122. 1017 Star 26/4/1978 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' p.157. Though he is described as ‘a skilled engineer’ and shop-steward, by Seyd. Sheffield 1966-1979 224 national politicians before,1018 but this concentration of councillors with a distinct policy programme, and a disciplined campaign to gain influence in the local party, was unprecedented.
Figure 9.3 Some key members of the new left1019
Their first major move was the de-selection of Eddie Griffiths M.P. in the Brightside parliamentary constituency. Griffiths, a ‘Welsh Christian socialist,’ was charged with speaking rarely in the House, not living in the constituency and being an enthusiastic pro- European; he had a record of support for incomes policies, was unsympathetic to extra- parliamentary action in defiance of the law, and (as a worker-director of British Steel) had not supported the workers’ occupation of the (local) River Don steelworks when it was threatened with closure. He was de-selected in a ‘coup’ a few weeks before the (second) General Election of 1974, despite securing a majority of 20,567 at the first election of that year. After he left the Commons, Griffiths returned to work in the steel industry in Sheffield; he then retired to his home in North Wales, and concentrated on local preaching.1020 His replacement, Joan Maynard (who came later to be known as ‘Stalin’s granny’), represented a markedly different set of political values. A Marxist, she ..was prepared to put her name to causes that MPs at the time would rather have nothing to do with, such as the campaign for withdrawal from Northern Ireland... She once said: ‘What counts is who owns the means
1018 For example, Roy Hattersley, who had left to become a Birmingham MP in 1964. 1019 Blunkett and MacCormick, On a Clear Day. 1020 Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left p.59. Howard, 'The Rise and Fall of Socialism in One City.' Times 20/10/1995 Sheffield 1966-1979 225
of production...’ [A]t the Labour Party conference in 1982 she received a standing ovation… after she made an impassioned speech on class war…1021 The de-selection of Griffiths caused a spate of minor hostilities in the local party. Six rebel members (including two councillors) were expelled for supporting him when he ran as an independent. But old habits of discipline died hard; Councillor Hickin – one of those expelled - said he was ‘delighted’ with the decision only to exclude him for six months.1022 Local government reorganisation also created opportunities for leftist gains. The late autumn of 1972 saw leading figures engaged in a scramble to secure nomination for seats on the City Council, in response to local government reorganisation which created a city-wide election and abolished the post of Alderman, just at the time that the Trades and Labour Council was under pressure to move to the left (and just as George Caborn was threatening to withdraw his union’s sponsorship from councillors who refused to defy the new Housing Finance Act).1023 Several existing councillors chose to step down.1024 The new County Council (where Labour won 82% of the seats) was oriented firmly towards the Left: To start with, there are the miners: 12 working and 5 retired. …The newer breed of trade union militant, particularly in the engineering industry, will be well represented...particularly among Sheffield area councillors. There will be the new generation of environmentalists … and the rapidly-growing lobby of teachers and lecturers, many of whom have been excluded from local government until now.... Councillors from Sheffield … are bound… to have a major influence...1025 The move by the recently-knighted Sir Ron Ironmonger to become leader of the new County left a gap in the City leadership.1026 There was no purge. Many old-guard figures were selected as candidates for the City Council in 1973 – including senior right-wingers such as Sidney Dyson, and Malcolm Leary;1027 indeed, Lambert himself remained on the council, as its longest-serving councillor, until his death in 1989.1028 But at a lower level the removal of Labour politicians gathered pace: often, the newcomers were activists from the tenants’ movement of 1968, from the Engineering Union, or from the ‘Brightside Mafia’.1029
1021 The Scotsman 30/3/1998 1022 ShLSL.Labour.1975#6 1023 Star 17/11/1972, 6/4/1973 1024 Sh.Telegraph 17/11/1972 1025 ShLSL.Elections.1973#1 1026 Sh.Telegraph 12/5/1973 1027 Star 11/3/1976 - remarks by Bill Michie 1028 Star 10/11/1989 1029 Sh.Telegraph 20/11/72, 22/11/72, 16/12/1972. Sheffield 1966-1979 226
There was no single event, as in Southwark, that eclipsed the old guard. 1030 Seyd (in the 1993 History of the city) wrote of: an evolutionary handover of power rather than...a bloody palace coup.1031 But this was a matter of degree. The process seemed bloody to some of its victims, and even to some of the victors. One of the key left wing activists, Martin Flannery, remarked in 1981: the city has moved very much more towards a socialist direction… what most people don't understand is that it did so in struggle. There was no gradualism about it.1032 As the decade progressed, the progress of the left was marked by acrimony around de- selections of sitting councillors, and frequent accusations of procedural irregularity. Firth Park was a ward in the Brightside parliamentary constituency; in October 1975 its sitting councillor, Mrs. Valerie Potts, was de-selected and replaced as a candidate by Clive Betts.1033 His initial but unsuccessful attempt to win an inner city ward from a Liberal community politician had been had been marred by accusations that there was ‘a campaign of intimidation’ against those putting up Liberal posters; Betts questioned whether incidents had taken place, and denied that (if they had) his supporters had been involved.1034 His successful selection in Firth Park also generated controversy; Potts said that there had been an organised campaign to take over the ward party, with many new left-wing members joining before the selection meeting, and one of her own supporters being denied membership. Betts – and Councillor Peter Price (chairman of the constituency party) - rejected these accusations.1035
1030 Lansley, Goss, and Wolmar, Councils in Conflict p.13. quotes Hilary Wainwright, Labour : A Tale of Two Parties (London, 1987). as evidence of Sheffield’s gradualism, and asserts that ‘there was no lost generation of the 1960s and 1970s, repelled by the Labour Party of Harold Wilson.’ However, the evidence presented in this chapter throws doubt onto that assertion. Pollard, David Blunkett. pp119-120 also supports this view, though he describes the (strongly contested) de-selection of Eddie Griffiths MP as a ‘pivotal moment’ in the development of the city’s politics, and writes that ‘Those behind it became the dominant group in the party… and over the next few years Blunkett emerged as their leader.’ 1031 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' p.157. As a former politics tutor of David Blunkett at Sheffield University, and a local party activist, Seyd had special insights into the inner workings of the Sheffield party. He was personally engaged in many of the events he has described. He was associated with the movement for greater activist-based democracy in the Labour Party (and co-author of a 1980 pamphlet issued by the Institute for Workers’ Control calling for change). In 1980 he called for the adoption of the Left’s programme, of state control of one large company in each sector of the economy and planning agreements for the remainder, and opposed the stationing of Cruise missiles on British soil. Blunkett has characterised him as: ‘heavily committed to Labour and particularly illuminating on the Party’s role in modern British politics.’ Blunkett and MacCormick, On a Clear Day p.113. ShLSL.331.88.SF(f) Sheffield Forward, article by Patrick Seyd. 1032 The Guardian [London] 6/1/1981 1033 Later to become Labour’s leader in Sheffield, and a Labour MP for the city. 1034 ShLSL.Elections.1970#2 1035 ShLSL.Labour.1975#7 Sheffield 1966-1979 227
However, John Maling – a British Steel shop steward (and former leader of the tenant’s movement, who in 1967 had protested at the attempted take-over of that movement by Communist Party activists)1036 - supported her complaints: he resigned from the Labour Party, saying that Brightside had been taken over by: a group of neo-Marxists, careerists, and their relations and friends…Though the public may not be aware of it the Brightside Party has ceased to be the responsible democratic party of the past. 1037 The left, he later claimed, was refusing membership to those it disagreed with; furthermore, some members of the Constituency Party Executive were openly sympathetic to the armed struggle of the IRA.1038 Northern Ireland remained an issue which divided the Sheffield Party for the next six years. 1039 At the same time as Potts was being challenged, both of the leading members of the pro- Common Market group in the Sheffield Labour Party (Councillors Len Cope and Jack Green) were also de-selected. They later resigned from the Party, claiming to be the victims of a left- wing plot.1040 Green specifically challenged official Labour policy over the next year's planned exhibition in Sheffield's Russian twin-town: If the Council are going to spend £10,000 of ratepayers' money simply to demonstrate the ruling party's affinity to the Communist friends, then I object and I hope the rate payers will make their objections known in no uncertain manner.1041 He alleged the party was being taken over by Marxists.1042 The Star agreed: we've reached the stage where we must accept there is justification for claiming that, behind all this manoeuvring, there really is a small but significant extremist minority.1043 As usual, the leaders of the local Party denied that there was any organised campaign;1044 the Labour Group’s secretary, Bill Michie, said that wards had a right to choose the councillors
1036 See page 208. 1037 Star 31/3/1976 1038 Times 13/4/1976. Joan Maynard, the newly-selected MP for the seat, was also strongly committed to the Republican cause. 1039 http://www.llb.labournet.org.uk/1998/may/news10.html (obituary) Sh.Telegraph 23/9/1981. 1040 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' p.155. ShLSL.Labour.1975#8 Star 10/12/1975 1041 Star 10/12/1975 1042 Star 31/10/1975, 4/11/1975 1043 Star 23/10/1975 1044 Star 11/3/1976 Sheffield 1966-1979 228 they liked.1045 But the removal of right-wing figures continued. The battle for nomination to one ward, between the former election-agent of the ousted MP Eddie Griffiths and the election-agent of Joan Maynard MP (who had ousted him), provoked an especially vicious dispute. There were accusations of forged letters; a councillor ended up in hospital with a heart attack; and his wife (the membership secretary) resigned from the Party.1046 Bert Morris (the right-winger) won the selection and Roger Barton (the left-winger, husband of another key New Left figure) lost; but Morris’s victory was then overturned by the left-controlled District Labour Party Executive. Morris said that extreme left-wingers were determined to invalidate his nomination …so that one of their own kind can be pushed into his place.1047 The letters of complaint, on the basis of which Morris’s nomination was overturned, were sent to the District Labour Party under mysterious circumstances; two of the alleged complainants denied ever having sent them. One of the alleged complainants (a 79-year old lady), however, recalled being approached by Clive Betts, Joan Barton and another councillor ‘about her subscriptions’ to the Party.1048 Bitterness continued, with insults, writs and apologies punctuating election campaigns.1049 Gradually, old stalwarts of the council were moved sideways into new roles; Harold Lambert became (appropriately) charged with ‘city promotion’.1050 Until 1980, newcomers were balanced on the council by figures from the previous era - such as Len Cope, Sydney Dyson and Isidore Lewis. But when the old guard left, the newcomers were left holding the reins of power.1051 From 1970 to 1979, 78 new Labour councillors had been elected to the City Council; by 1980 62% of the Labour group, and 69% of the Labour group executive, had been elected in the previous ten years.1052 The advance of the new activists within the ranks of the party was unusually fast. In a party many of whose leaders were becoming elderly, the newcomers represented a reservoir of talent and energy, quite independently of their position on large-scale political issues. In 1976, Blunkett became chairman of the family and community services committee after only 6 years
1045 Later to become a Member of Parliament for the city, and a key member of the left-wing Campaign Group. 1046 Star 12/1/1976 1047 ShLSL.Labour.1976#9 1048 ShLSL.Labour.1976#9 Coun. Bill Eddison and his wife, Joan, the Membership Secretary said that ‘all 50-odd eligible Party members’ were told of the meeting; one of the four alleged complainants had not paid subscriptions, one had not transferred to the ward Party, one had been told verbally, and one old lady had asked not to receive invitations to meetings since she belonged to the party for social functions only. ShLSL.Labour.1976#10. 1049 Star 29/4/1978 1050 Star 5/5/1978 1051 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' p.158. 1052 Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left p.144. Sheffield 1966-1979 229 on the council.1053 Even more dramatically, in that same year The Revd. Alan Billings, who had been a member of the Council for only 12 months, became chairman of the General Purposes Committee.1054 By 1978, Michie was chairman of the Planning Department. In 1979, the process of change-over in the leadership of Sheffield’s Labour Group was accelerated (as so often in the past) by boundary changes in the city. Sitting members had to re-apply for their old seats; the process was targeted at the longer-established councillors: All Sheffield Labour councillors who been on the City Council for more than 10 years of being vetted to see whether they should be allowed to continue as members. 1055 Crucially, decisions about who should stay and who should be removed were placed in the hands of the executive of the District Labour Party, core stronghold of the New Left.1056 The basis of the power of the older councillors had been the Labour Group on the Council; but now, membership of the Labour Group was to depend on the decisions of the newcomers. The Star explained: The vetting is a reminder that it is the district Labour Party and not the City council's Labour group that is the supreme political body in Sheffield. Even major local political figures such as Council leader Coun. George Wilson and Education Committee chairman Coun. Peter Horton are being interviewed by the executive of about 20 members. Usually all sitting councillors automatically stay on the panel from which Ward Parties can select candidates. Now, after the interviews, recommendations will be made to the DLP is as to which names should remain on the panel. … In a few cases it may lead to Labour members being asked to step down.1057 The candidates who were advanced by the District Labour Party for the city-wide election of May 1980 completed the leftward shift of the local party. Within three years there was an almost complete turnover of the most important chairmanships on the city council. At times, the policy proposals advanced by these young men in a hurry moved ahead of what established local leaders thought wise; in November 1977, for example, Councillor Peter Horton (education Chairman from 1967 to 1983) told the Labour manifesto working party that it was making promises it could not keep. A constant concern of the old leaders was that the rate burden would rise too fast, while newcomers argued that high rates were a price worth paying.1058 By November 1979, Labour leaders forecast ‘a rate increase next year of anything up to 60 per cent’ (though in fact the rise which was implemented was only 40%).1059
1053 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' p.164. 1054 Sh.Telegraph 11/5/1976. 1055 Star 1/11/1979 1056 Star 1/11/1979 1057 Star 1/11/1979 1058 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' p.163. 1059 Star 27/11/1979 Sheffield 1966-1979 230
The rise of the left in Sheffield was met by the almost simultaneous triumph of the right in Westminster. On 28th March 1979 the Conservatives succeeded in carrying in the House of Commons a censure motion on the Labour government; a General Election was called; and the stage was set for the showpiece confrontations which were to dominate the 1980s. Sheffield 1980-1986 231
10. 1980-1986: The New Left in Power
By 1981, the Left had complete control of Sheffield; but it had problems using its new-found power. It could not find a positive project around which to unite its members and supporters. Its agenda was nationally-focused, based on a desire to replace capitalism; when it failed, failure left a hole in its heart. Locally, the council sought to humanise and improve the delivery of services by its own staff (but ran into bitter opposition from their union); increasingly, it became involved in an attempt to salvage something from the wreckage of its industrial and economic base. By 1986, all it offered the city was the prospect of good management, tinged by compassion. It fixed on spectacular projects of regeneration; the failure of these projects in the early 1990s (discussed in the next chapter) fatally damaged even the claim to competence.
Entrenching control in the Party n the wider region, an organised campaign continued to advance the position of the Left.1060 In nearby Barnsley, in February 1980, the constituency Labour Party was taken over by Arthur Scargill (leader of the Yorkshire miners);1061 the objective was to force the I 1062 de-selection of an old-fashioned social democratic Labour Member of Parliament. A new national Left grouping met regularly in the County Hotel in Sheffield, and united Communist and non-Communist delegates.1063 In Sheffield, the Engineering Union continued to encourage involvement in the Labour Party. The creation of the District Labour Party had transferred power to constituency Labour Parties; the Engineers thus encouraged the formation of workplace-based branches, to become component parts of these constituencies, as well as encouraging Trades Unions to affiliate directly to them.1064 Every local shop steward was urged to join. 1065 Richard Caborn (by now, Sheffield’s Labour M.E.P.) strongly supported this drive. Much of the work that has to be done to carry out the manifesto and conference decisions depends on it. Both… Labour governments .. Wilson's
1060 Crick, Scargill and the Miners pp.14-23. 1061 ibid. p.33. 1062 The Economist 8/3/1980 1063 Crick, Scargill and the Miners p 40-42., citing V. L. Allen, The Militancy of British Miners (Shipley, 1981). Allen was Professor of the Sociology of Industrial Society at Leeds University, acted as an adviser for the Left throughout most of this period, and was himself a member of the Communist Party. 1064 ShLSL.Labour.1980#11 Sh.Telegraph 17/11/1980 1065 ShLSL.Labour.1980#11 Sheffield 1980-1986 232
… and Callaghan's [fell] because they were divorced from the thinking on the shop floor.1066 Caborn denied that this represented an attempt by the Engineering Union to take over the Party1067 - but the leading role taken by the Engineers made them highly influential. The next few months saw a very substantial increase in Party membership - largely union delegates, rather than individuals.1068 Sheffield Attercliffe saw a 20% membership increase from September 1980 to February 1981; more trade unions have been affiliating to the constituency Labour Party, and many long affiliated unions have begun sending delegates to meetings after years of absenteeism….routine meetings have been drawing high attendances.1069 By May 1982, an additional 600 members had been recruited in the city.1070 The drive to increase Labour membership was George Caborn’s swan song; in 1981, he retired, widely liked and respected even by the city’s leading employers.1071 He was awarded the Freedom of the City,1072 and (after his death in 1982) a street was named after him in Sheffield, while in Bulgaria it was announced that: at the Bolshevik engineering works in Gabrovo, a work brigade has taken the name of the George Caborn Brigade, the first time such an honour has been paid to a British trade unionist.1073 The newspaper of the Trade Council commented: Among his achievements is the development of the close relations that exists in Sheffield between different sections of the movement. As one of his colleagues …commented ‘the unique relationship between the trade union movement and local councillors owes much to the undying work of George Caborn.’1074 But his retirement made little short-term difference to the political views of the Engineers, since his successor, Derek Simpson was a fellow-member of the Communist Party;1075 under
1066 Star 15/11/1980 1067 Star 15/11/1980 1068 Sh.Telegraph 26/2/1981, ShLSL.Labour.1982#12 1069 Sh.Telegraph 26/2/1981 1070 ShLSL.Labour.1982#12 1071 ShLSL.380.SQ.b George Caborn, obituary. 1072 ShLSL.042.S.9 Ceremonial programme. 1073 ShLSL.Misc.3333M 1074 ShLSL.331.88.SF(l) 1075 Dr. Michael Fitzpatrick, 30/7/2002, ‘Spiked Online’ (http://www.spikedonline.co.uk/Articles/00000006D9B0.htm): Allender, What's Wrong with Labour? p.70. Sheffield 1980-1986 233
Simpson’s leadership in Sheffield, for example, the AUEW still sought to promote ties with the central committee of Soviet trades unions.1076 As older councillors retired or were de-selected, new councillors had to be approved by the left-controlled District Labour Party. There were (the by now, not uncommon) accusations of procedural irregularities at selection meetings.1077 Within three years there was an almost complete turnover of the most important chairmanships on the City Council. George Wilson (Leader since 1974) resigned on the eve of the 1980 council elections; David Blunkett was elected in his place.1078 Clive Betts became Chair of Housing, Alan Billings of the Budget sub-committee, and Bill Michie of the Employment Committee.1079 In 1982, Peter Horton (who had run the Education Department for 14 years) said he intended to retire; Joan Barton displaced long-standing councillor Reg Munn as Labour Group Chair, Dr Peter Jones (former Housing Chair) was moved into a ceremonial role, and Harold Lambert was replaced - on the Party Executive - by Helen Jackson.1080 Within three years David Skinner had taken over environment and planning, Alan Wigfield family and community services, and Peter Price education.1081 By then, only two minor committees were not chaired by the New Left.1082 Even well-established figures such as Trades Council President Bill Owen came under threat. In 1980, he had stepped down after twenty years as President of the City Labour Party (in
Derek Simpson was to become, by the end of the century, the head of the AUEW’s successor-union, AMICUS. 1076 Star 16/2/1982 1077 Star 17/11/1980, 29/11/1980, 10/12/1980, 26/5/1982, 10/10/1982 Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left p.158. 1078 Guardian 6/1/1981, Star 17/11/1980 Seyd ascribes Wilson’s departure substantially to personal factors – ‘One senior officer in the authority at the time of his leadership described him as ‘the Kruschev of Sheffield politics - authoritarian and unpredictable’. ibid. p.158, fn. 18 p206.. The Star, writing in 1982, agreed: ‘It was only because right-wingers had become disaffected with George that [the Left] had won at all. In the late '70s a handful of committee chairman had ruled… It fed resentment. Clive Betts…remembers that Mr.. Wilson did not speak to him until he had been on the Council for more than a year.’ (Star 26/5/1982) However, since Wilson later became Leader of the S.D.P. in Sheffield, protesting at Labour’s move to the left, it seems likely that there were substantial political factors involved in his decision. 1079 ibid. p.158., Page 206 fn. 18 ShLSL.Labour.1982#12 1080 ShLSL.Labour.1982#12 Helen Jackson (born in Leeds) was a special needs teacher and a modern history graduate of St Hilda’s College, Oxford. She was first elected to the council in 1980. She was later to become one of the city’s Members of Parliament. 1081 Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left p.158. 1082 ibid. p.206, fn. 20. Sheffield 1980-1986 234 order to become Mayor, a ceremonial role), and was replaced by Richard Caborn.1083 Two years later, he came under threat as leader of the Trades Council; as always, sources stressed that this was ‘not a left-right issue,’1084 but Blanche Flannery (Martin Flannery’s wife, and a member of the Communist Party) emerged as the leading contender for his role.1085 One month later, the challengers backed down - but as part of the deal, Owen agreed to step down in the following year.1086 Issues of peace and disarmament became prominent in local Labour politics, even being the subject of a three-hour City Council debate in the autumn of 1980. Bill Michie, Chief Whip of the Labour Group, attacked the opposition (who wanted to discuss local issues) for: Wanting to discuss parish pump politics when the future of the world is at stake.1087 Ties with the Soviet block were strengthened; Soviet Weekly bought an entire page of space in the Trades Council newspaper to put forward the Soviet ‘Proposals to strengthen peace,’ while that newspaper pointed out that: Sheffield’s labour movement has for some years now enjoyed an unofficial twinning with Bulgaria. Many of the shop stewards committees in the city have twin factories in Bulgaria… There are now hundreds of Sheffield trade unionists who have visited Bulgaria and have some fond tales to tell of the country’s hospitality, or the high esteem in which trade unionists are held by the people. As one is often told, ‘nothing is too good for the workers in Bulgaria.’1088 At County level the Left entrenched its position; in 1981, almost one-half of the Labour bench was filled with newcomers.1089 They arrived in a fleet of limousines that stood outside Barnsley’s County Hall gleaming in the sun. Inside, the Lord Mayor of Sheffield and the Mayors of Barnsley and Rotherham were staggering beneath hundredweights of gold chain. The public gallery groaned with union leaders and shop stewards. The only non-member of the Labour establishment was the High Sheriff, Joye Pownett-Smith, who must have felt like the Czar of Russia at a party to celebrate the revolution.1090 The most important centre of power that remained outside the control of the left in Sheffield was parliamentary representation. Labour normally secured only just over half the popular
1083 ShLSL.331.88.SF(e) Sheffield Forward, February 1980 1084 Sh.Telegraph 27/10/1982 1085 Star 24/1/1983 1086 Star 23/2/1983 1087 ShLSL.331.88.SF(j) The issue continued to be very prominent in the Trades Council newspaper thereafter. 1088 ShLSL.331.88.SF(k) 1089 Sh.Telegraph 8/5/1981 1090 Star 11/5/1981 Sheffield 1980-1986 235 vote in the city, but its MPs were unchallengeable in five out of the six constituencies.1091 The issue of who within the Labour Party should represent these seats became increasingly important, because of the strongly national agenda of the new leaders in the City. Throughout the 1970s, the left in the Labour party had pursued a three-pronged agenda - compulsory re-selection of Members of Parliament in between every election, control of the Labour manifesto by the National Executive of the Party, and election of the Leader by a forum at the Party Conference. 1979-1981 marked the high point of this movement. In April 1981, a Special Conference at Wembley passed a motion which incorporated the major demands of the left about leadership selection; the leader was in future to be chosen by an electoral college giving 40% of the vote to the block votes of Trades Unions, 30% to constituency party activists, and only 30% to Members of Parliament. In Sheffield, Patrick Seyd, reflecting the view of the local left, wrote (in his regular column in the Trades Council newspaper): The Labour Left made the most significant advance at this Conference in the post-war history of the Labour Party. Rather than this being the threat to political liberties suggested by many journalists, it is the first faltering step towards a democratic socialist programme.1092 Denis Healey had been elected unopposed as deputy-leader of the party; Tony Benn (nominated by Flannery and Maynard) announced that he intended to challenge him. This generated a sharp conflict between party activists and the other local Members of Parliament; Of the 16 local Labour Party branches in the region, 12 - or 75 per cent - want Mr.. Benn...But only five of the areas 15 Labour MPs are known to share that view.1093 In the subsequent poll, Healey beat Benn by a paper-thin margin, on the basis of his support amongst MPs (several of whom then defected to the new Social Democratic Party). The left sought to remove those who had voted against its champion.1094 In Sheffield, Richard Caborn (Sheffield’s MEP) defeated Fred Mulley, and Bill Michie defeated Frank Hooley.1095 The last
1091 Almost all feasible re-combination of wards into six constituencies would still have given Labour four or five seats. R.J. Johnston and D.J. Rossiter, 'Geography Is the Clue to Election Victories,' Geographical Magazine (1980). 1092 ShLSL.331.88.SF(i) 1093 Labour Party microfiche, source and date unclear: from internal evidence, one week before the Party Conference. Seyd strongly supported Benn’s challenge. ShLSL.331.88.SF(k), article by Patrick Seyd. 1094 Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left pp.130-36. 1095 Mulley’s failure to support Tony Benn in the deputy leadership contest was a significant factor in causing his defeat. But he was also exactly the sort of individual that the new left detested; a prominent Labour pro-European; president of Western European Union from 1980 to 1983; holder of a First in P.P.E. from Christ Church, Oxford and a studentship at Nuffield College; a sometime research fellow in economics at Cambridge; and an ex-Secretary of State for Defence.( Sh.Telegraph 1/2/1982, Star 25/3/1982, Times16/3/1995, ShLSL.Labour.1982#12, D. J. Alflat, letter to Independent 25/3/1995.) Sheffield 1980-1986 236 of the City’s Old Labour MPs - Pat Duffy - also found his position under threat; unusually, he survived, though on humiliating terms.1096 Politics were conceived of in terms of a struggle in which there could be no neutral observers. After the 1983 General Election campaign, all four Labour leadership contenders came to address the Sheffield party. The Party decided to ban all media representatives from the meeting; only BBC Radio Sheffield would allowed in, and only then if it made one-hour long, uncut, broadcasts of the speeches of each of the candidates. The decision was reversed, after a press uproar; but it became increasingly evident that the Party was only really interested in internal debate.1097 Nationally, the onward march of the Left was checked as faction-fighting broke out in its ranks. The battle was initially about the treatment of Militant; it then became part of a broader struggle for power between the parliamentary leaders of the Labour Party (Michael Foot, then Neil Kinnock) and the (mainly) extra-parliamentary supporters of the Tony Benn. In June 1982 the Labour Party published a report which said the Militant Tendency was: a well organised caucus centrally controlled operating in the Labour Party...It has a hard core of supporters …who form an organisation with its own programme and policy for distinctive and separate propaganda which is determined outside the structure of the Labour Party.1098 Labour’s new national General Secretary, Jim Mortimer, was placed in charge of Labour’s response.1099 Denis Healey later commented: [Mortimer] had impressed everyone with a reasoned and powerful attack on the Militant Tendency at our Conference… Few in his audience realized that he objected to them primarily because they were neo-Trotskyists, while he represented an older Marxist tradition.1100 In Sheffield, however, despite traditional hostility to Trotskyites, the move against Militant found few supporters. This was not because Militant was powerful in the city, but because it was irrelevant. Despite the fact that Liverpool’s Militant leader, Derek Hatton, had been employed as a community worker by Sheffield Council in the mid-1970s,1101 Militant had little influence, except in one constituency party.
In 1984, Leftist stalwart Bob Cryer (ousted from his Commons seat in the 1983 election) followed Richard Caborn as member of the European Parliament for Sheffield (Tam Dalyell, Independent, 13/4/1994) 1096 Sh.Telegraph 1/2/1982 1097 Sh.Telegraph 5/7/1983 Star 15/7/1983 1098 Militant Tendency Report, Labour Party National Executive Committee, 19th June 1982 1099 Mortimer was a former union official in the draughtsmen's union, TASS, and had close ties with leading British Communists. Beckett, Enemy Within p.184. 1100 ibid. p.187. 1101 Times 27/10/1990 Sheffield 1980-1986 237
One local Militant supporter says: ‘We're put in a different position here. In other parts of the country we stand out as an opposition…’1102 Acting against Militant (on the grounds that it was an organised faction with its own programme and organisation) had the potential to jeopardise the co-operation that had grown up between left-wing activists inside and outside the Labour Party in Sheffield. The Guardian commented that (nationally): there was a worry that the ejection of Militant could encourage the Labour Right to launch a vendetta against other parts of the Left.1103 Thus: The City Council Labour group decided by a vast majority to convey its disgust in a letter to Labour's National Executive Committee.... Bill Michie said Labour in Sheffield was opposed to all purges aimed at isolating sections of the party membership. …Although he disagreed with [Militant’s] policies, there was nothing to suggest they lay outside the scope of the Labour party.1104 Nationally, in the four years after 1981, a major regrouping took place amongst the forces of the Left. The Communist Party became preoccupied with its own civil war;1105 after 1985, it was further split by recriminations caused by the collapse of the Miners’ Strike. Some of its former luminaries became close to the Labour leadership, and influential in the creation of ‘New’ Labour, while others moved into outright opposition. Simultaneously, the Bennite left acted as the focus for a regrouping of forces which included some Trotskyites, some former Communists, and many Labour activists. In this process, Sheffield found itself uneasily torn - with some (such as Joan Maynard and Bill Michie) consistently opposing expulsions,1106 and others (such as David Blunkett, and Richard Caborn) eventually supporting the Labour leadership. This new configuration of forces took time to emerge. In 1983, Maynard and Blunkett, from their seats on the Party’s national Executive, both continued to argue against expulsions.1107 In October 1985, Blunkett was elected at the top of the poll for the constituency section of Labour’s National Executive, overtaking even Tony Benn;1108 he sought at first to be a peacemaker between the leadership
1102 Star 6/11/1982 1103 Guardian 23/11/1985 1104 Sh.Telegraph 22/6/1982 1105 Beckett, Enemy Within p.192. 1106 Sh.Telegraph 21/7/1982 'The Campaign Guide 1983,' (London, 1983), p.463. Tribune, 3/12/1982 1107 Star 5/10/1983 Times 28/11/1985, 19/12/1985 1108 Guardian 23/11/1985 Sheffield 1980-1986 238 and the Bennite left. However, when his attempts to negotiate a compromise with Liverpool’s leaders failed, he swung decisively away from Benn.1109
Controlling the City As the Left consolidated its control over the Sheffield Party, the Party sought to consolidate its own control over the machinery of government. Later, Blunkett wrote: I was very tough on what I wanted to do … I made it transparently clear that I would not accept incompetence and that I expected chief officers to run their departments with the utmost efficiency. … I did feel that in some quarters around the country the old-fashioned paternalism, … was being replaced by something even worse - a seeming indifference to the needs, and aspirations of the very people we were employed to serve.1110 At national and local levels, it was argued, betrayals of socialism had stemmed from deference to the views of civil servants and local government officers. To correct this: An active, creative district Labour Party should itself produce and continuously review a local manifesto, and the Labour Group on the Council should be accountable to it. Council departments should… be geared towards its implementation...1111 In June 1982, the Party introduced the practice of formally adopting its entire local-election manifesto as a Council policy document; local government officers were (at least in principle) now obliged to implement it, rather than adopting their traditional, politically-neutral, role.1112 The party should also, it was argued, appoint local government officers: …committed to a new type of politics. They are not expected to be members of the Labour Party, but they should have a commitment … to the community itself. These workers should be able to see that they are part [of] political education.... Then… the local state [can be] used as an example of what we could do as a socialist government at national level. Commitment to the broad aims of a socialist council should extend up to the top of the officer hierarchy....1113 These policies were put into effect in two key areas – housing policy and employment. Clive Betts (at Housing) replaced the retiring Housing Director with Ray Gridley – a manager with ‘a reputation for innovation and management’ from the Manchester Housing Department.1114
1109 Guardian 23/11/1985 1110 Blunkett and MacCormick, On a Clear Day p.146. 1111 David Blunkett and Geoff Green, Building from the Bottom: The Sheffield Experience (London, 1983) p.26. 1112 Sh.Telegraph 26/6/1982 1113 Blunkett and Green, Building from the Bottom p.26. 1114 Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left p.163. Ironically, Gridley was later to be fiercely attacked for his authoritarian management of the Housing Department staff, and it was claimed that that his time in Manchester was ‘an unprecedented period of strained industrial relations.’ (ShLSL.Housing.1984#14). Sheffield 1980-1986 239
The Employment Department (headed politically by Bill Michie) appointed as its chief officer John Bennington, ‘a radical, socialist economist, recruited from a Coventry community development project’; many other staff in the department were associated with Economy and Society, ‘a predominantly Marxist journal.’1115 Politicisation of the Town Hall government machinery led, on occasion, to accusations of impropriety.1116 In November 1981 - in what came to be called the ‘Town Hall Politburo’ affair - the Liberal Party discovered a group of officials in the Town Hall, reporting directly to David Blunkett, whose apparent role was to help the Labour Party in the run-up to the 1982 council elections. The head of the department agreed that her staff members had been appointed because of their political sympathies, but denied an active role in election planning.1117 In another incident, it was alleged that confidential information from Council tenants was being passed on to Labour candidates (in an area where Blunkett’s then wife, Ruth, was a candidate); Blunkett described the allegation as ‘farcical;’ the city council's chief executive investigated the claim and found it ‘groundless;’ but the Liberal councillor who made the complaint continued to claim that he had knowledge of written instructions for information to be passed on.1118 In May 1982, a local newspaper suggested that one effect of the new regime was that tenants' and community groups had become more political, and many had been led into the feeling that if they wanted influence, they would have to join the Labour party.1119
Defiance Raising consciousness oliticisation of day to day life was consistent with Blunkett’s political philosophy. What councils could do was circumscribed by the nature of capitalism.1120 The battle to P overthrow capitalism – and to demonstrate its failings to the Sheffield electorate - was therefore seen as crucial. Propaganda was as important as pragmatism. Sheffield was to be:
His managerial competence was later cast into question by his role in the World Student Games -see page 283. 1115 ibid. pp.160-61., Page 207 fn. 30 Allender, What's Wrong with Labour? p.67. Star 24/1/1983 1116 ShLSL.Labour.1982#12 1117 Star 10/11/1981, 11/11/1981, 3/12/1981 1118 Star 11/11/1981, 1/12/1981 1119 ShLSL.Labour.1982#12 1120 Blunkett and Green, Building from the Bottom p.9. Sheffield 1980-1986 240
the focus for socialist resistance and advance on the political wing of the movement, mirroring trade union resistance on the industrial wing, [and] an example of what we could do as a socialist government at national level.1121 ….The slogan ‘from each according to their means, to each according to their needs’ should not mean handing out the surplus to those who cannot afford to live in a market economy. It means a reordered society; it means the restructuring of our economy and the use of our resources for the benefit of all. ...[These ideas] stretch back to Marx's distinction between use and exchange value, and have formed an essential plank in many socialist programmes since.. allocation according to social priority must ultimately depend upon collective ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange1122 In the run-up to the 1980 elections the council developed a strategy, used repeatedly over the next five years; to announce ambitious targets and goals, and then to say that these goals were not being achieved because of central government parsimony.1123 The demands of the housing programme provided an ideal showcase for this approach, since decay was evident, and the requirements of the programme could be expanded almost limitlessly. Clive Betts submitted a £35 million housing programme to the government for 1981-2;1124 in November 1983, the Council said that it needed at least £98 million;1125 in 1984, £120 million;1126 by 1985, £149 million for immediate needs1127 (coupled with an estimate that £500m was the ‘very minimum’ needed to maintain the 92,000 Sheffield council houses in reasonable condition).1128 Finally, in 1987 the council estimated that £780 million was needed.1129 This tactic (employed by many local authorities in the early 1980s) enabled local leaders – such as Michie and Caborn - to employ a rhetoric of confrontation, which sat easily with the struggles being played out on the industrial and economic sphere.1130
1121 Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left pp.158-60. quoting Blunkett and Green, Building from the Bottom. 1122 Blunkett and Green, Building from the Bottom pp.5-8. 1123 Sh.Telegraph 28/3/1980 1124 Sh.Telegraph 22/7/1980 1125 Sh.Telegraph 4/11/1983, 21/12/1984. 1126 Star 4/3/1985. It received approval for £21 million. 1127 Sh.Telegraph 17/8/1985 1128 Star 22/7/1985 Crook, 'Needs, Standards and Affordability,' p.88. Overall, the 1985 survey of the council’s housing stock had suggested that 75,000 of the total 86,000 dwellings were ‘unsatisfactory.’ 1129 ibid. 1130 Sh.Telegraph 28/3/1980 Yorkshire Post 29/3/1984 Sheffield 1980-1986 241
Table10.1 Estimated cost of repair of Sheffield housing, 19851131
Minimum Total Sites Problems Costs per unit No of Units estimated cost TOWER BLOCKS Stannington/Jordanthorpe Wall ties failure, defective roofs, inadequate heating £ 750,000 6 £ 4,500,000 Gleadless Valley Spalling concrete, decaying windows, defective roofs £ 500,000 27 £ 13,500,000 Norfolk Park Spalling concrete, inadequate heating, decaying windows £ 500,000 2 £ 1,000,000 Chapeltown Major structural faults (three blocks) £ 4,000,000 1 £ 4,000,000 Andover Street Major structural faults (four blocks) £ 4,000,000 1 £ 4,000,000 High Green Spalling concrete, decaying windows, reporting (pointing?) £ 500,000 1 £ 500,000 MAISONETS (sic) AND FLATS Wall tie failure, cracked brickwork, defective balconies in Gleadless/Parsons Cross around 250 maisonettes £ 10,000 250 £ 2,500,000
Busk Meadows Gleadles and More than 700 homes with defective asphalt, roofs, Lowedges decaying windows, spalling concrete £ 8,000 750 £ 6,000,000 More than 400 maisonettes with spalling concrete and Woodside and Stannington decaying windows £ 8,750 400 £ 3,500,000
Burngreave Spalling concrete in more than 650 maisonettes £ 9,231 650 £ 6,000,000 More than 2,000 flats and maisonettes with spalling Nethrthorpe area concrete and defective parapet walls uncosted 2,000 uncosted
Base Green, Lowedges 23 blocks in very poor condition uncosted 23 uncosted
Badger Estate Urgent strucral repairs needed not stated not stated £ 3,000,000 MISCELLANEOUS Parsons Cross,Arberthorne etc 24,000 inter war houses in need of improvement £ 10,000 24,000 £ 240,000,000
Non traditional type housing with various tyoes of Citywide structural problems uncosted not stated uncosted
The 1983 local council election manifesto was based around the pledge to resist cuts, and to protect local decisions against national pressure.1132 Calls for local autonomy could reach surprising extremes; in late May 1983, Blunkett said: If the Tories are elected, the question of separating ourselves would have to be taken seriously.... The consent that the Tory government has would be so eroded in the North, Wales and Scotland, that the question would be considered very seriously.1133 Acts of political theatre became an important tactic. In December 1981, Blunkett and Peter Price supported a half-day ‘strike’ by their own staff against rate-capping legislation;1134 in February there was a cheap fares protest march through the city centre, and a rally addressed by Blunkett and Tony Benn;1135 in March there was a rally by the Yorkshire miners. In May 1983, there was a near-riot when Margaret Thatcher was guest of honour at the traditional Cutlers’ Feast.1136 The peak of this demonstrative activity came during the national miners’ strike, which started in March 1984. There were no pits in the city boundary, but in 1983 the National Union of Mineworkers (aided by a large grant from the Council) had moved its headquarters to
1131 Star 22/7/1985 (re-tabulated and some calculations by author) 1132 Star 17/4/1983 1133 Star 28/5/1983 1134 Sh.Telegraph 9/12/1981 1135 Star 12/2/1982 1136 Allender, What's Wrong with Labour? p.77. Sheffield 1980-1986 242
Sheffield, and the city was ringed by coalfields.1137 The strike - called without a ballot - pitched the union directly against the government. Miners went hungry, and faced increasingly determined action by the police. Sheffield's council did as much as it could to support them; it donated £100,000 to the welfare of striking miners’ families, and negotiated with Town Hall unions to enable employees to have weekly donations to the miners deducted from their pay.1138 The City Council removed from its list of approved contractors any companies alleged by the NUM to have crossed picket lines.1139 The violent confrontation between police and pickets at the village of Orgreave took place a few hundred yards outside the Sheffield city boundary. The Morning Telegraph reported: The worst violence yet in and around the coking plant saw repeated horse and baton charges by police, including several repulsed by brick and bottle- throwing pickets. ... Derelict cars were set ablaze, walls and fences destroyed to make barricades, and lamp-posts demolished... both police and pickets resorted to indiscriminate violence…..All the time the police were under bombardment. When the police …crossed the line, they returned some of the violence, lashing out with shields and truncheons at anyone who happened to be in the way... [In the middle of the melée ice-cream man John Shepherd continued to sell ices from his van.] ‘It’s good business,’ he said.1140 Politically, the impact of the ‘Battle of Orgreve’ was further to entrench the opinions of those who felt that the British state was not neutral1141 - an opinion strengthened when the trial of miners who had been charged with offences relating to the riot collapsed, due to internally contradictory and apparently false police evidence.1142 NALGO and the council (in a rare moment of mutual accord) arranged for videos – ‘vetted by the NUM, and featuring Arthur Scargill, Tony Benn and Dennis Skinner’ - to be shown in Sheffield Town Hall ‘when the rates hall was at its busiest,’ as hundreds queued to pay their rent and rates.1143 Despite being subjected to these videos, an opinion survey suggested the Sheffield electorate broadly supported the miners.1144 The eventual collapse of the strike, early in 1985, had a psychological impact even greater than its economic effect; so much energy, enthusiasm and hope had been thrown into the struggle that its collapse generated a tidal wave of mutual blame.1145 Even the Communist
1137 Star 14/1/1983, 19/10/1983 1138 Star 9/6/1984 1139 Sh.Telegraph 17/7/1984 Star 2/8/1984 1140 Sh.Telegraph 19/6/1984 1141 Star 23/7/1984 1142 Bernard Jackson and Tony Wardle, The Battle for Orgreave (Brighton, Undated) p.21, and passim. 1143 Star 22/8/1984 1144 Star 1/8/1984 1145 FT 4/3/1985 Sheffield 1980-1986 243
Party was split, with the Eurocommunist wing seeking to distance itself from Scargill (and becoming increasingly supportive of Neil Kinnock).1146 There was no longer unanimity (even on the left) about wisdom of a strategy of defiance. The financial crisis Confrontation over the Miner’s Strike had been intense, but did not involve the Council directly. Confrontation over funding was immediate. Lower government grants in the early years of the Thatcher government, combined with Council spending programmes which increased gently in real terms until 1986, generated a financial crisis. The Council’s most painless response was a resort to financial engineering.1147 In January 1981, it avoided a £1 million penalty for over spending, without making any real cuts.1148 This was the start of a constant dance with central government; in June 1984, for example, it tried to impose a £5 per week rent rise, but only on the poorest of its tenants (who would be fully reimbursed by government, via housing benefit);1149 in July, the Secretary of State announced a clamp-down on the use of past capital receipts to fund spending, but Sheffield managed to approve a large list of projects just before the ban came into effect.1150 From 1985 Sheffield’s ‘housing investment programme’ (partly funded by council house sales) included major repairs; government caught up with the practice in 1990, and banned it. Tenants were encouraged to apply for improvement grants on their (council-owned) homes.1151 The Council’s house-purchase loan book was sold off for £12 million to the National Home Loans Corporation; the sale proceeds were counted as a capital receipt, and used to fund housing expenditure.1152 Similar measures were used (with considerable success) by Labour councils throughout Britain.1153 But creative accounting had its limits: by 1987/8, the council faced a budget gap between cash flow and expenditure of £71 million, and had to borrow from a French bank to cover the deficit. For the first time, Sheffield was forced not only to impose a hiring freeze, but to accept that employment by the council (which had been steadily rising) might have to fall.1154
1146 Beckett, Enemy Within pp.205-07. 1147 David Blunkett and Keith Jackson, Democracy in Crisis: The Town Halls Respond (London, 1987) pp.155-57. 1148 Guardian 6/1/1981 1149 Sh.Telegraph 6/6/1984 1150 Star 19/7/1984 1151 Crook, 'Needs, Standards and Affordability,' p.87-8. 1152 Sh.Telegraph 11/1/1986 1153 Lansley, Goss, and Wolmar, Councils in Conflict p.42. 1154 FT 24/2/1987 Sheffield 1980-1986 244
Figure 10.1 Sheffield: Gross expenditure and rate and grant income 1974-19901155
Sheffield: Gross Expenditure and Rate and Grant Income, deflated by Retail Price Index (headline rate).
£ 140.00
£ 120.00
£ 100.00
£ 80.00 Total government grants Rate income Gross expenditure £ 60.00 Constant 1974 £millionConstant 1974
£ 40.00
£ 20.00
Source: The History of the City of Sheffield edited by £ 0.00 Clyde Binfield et al., 1987-8 1986-7 1989-90 1978-9 1981-2 1988-9 1980-1 1983-4 1975-6 1982-3 1985-6 1974-5 1977-8 1984-5 1976-7 1979-80 Sheffield, 1993: Volume 1 (Politics): ‘The political management of decline’ by Patrick Seyd, p166: Office of Year National Statistics UK: author's calculations. Some expedients were, in any case, less successful. In 1986, the council entered a partnership with the United Kingdom Housing Trust; the trust raised private capital to build homes designed by the council’s architects; at the same time, the Council guaranteed payment of rent.1156 This was building council housing, in all but name.1157 But by 1990, costs were starting seriously to over-run.1158 In June 1992, the scheme collapsed; but the council had guaranteed the repayments on the loan. Borrowing on the first phase amounted to £84m; the District Auditors ruled that the second phase (involving a further £102m) would be illegal.1159
1155 Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left p.166., author’s calculations 1156 Crook, 'Needs, Standards and Affordability,' p.88. 1157 Yorkshire Post 9/7/1987 Of the syndicate of seven banks lending money to the scheme, all but one was foreign (Star 15/8/1987). For banks seeking to acquire assets quickly, this sort of large-scale and quasi- governmental debt offered a painless means of expansion. 1158 Star 7/3/1990 1159 Sheffield Weekly Gazette 4/6/1992 Star 19/5/1992 Sheffield 1980-1986 245
A more controversial way of solving the growing crisis was to put up local property taxes. The Party did not believe that annual increases of around 40% were unpopular. Richard Caborn said that protests against the increase had come solely from industry: Many employers are on a tax fiddle. They don’t like rates because they cannot offset them against tax. … But ordinary people are saying they are getting value for money …1160 Labour easily won the 1981 local elections, and David Blunkett argued that this was an ‘acid test’ of popular support for the policy; in 1982, the Party contemplated a further 45% increase.1161 From 1981-2 to 1986-7, domestic rates rose from £1.35 to £3.23 per pound of rateable value. The Financial Times commented: for the many Sheffield people too poor to pay rates, the ‘sacrifice’ is an easy one. The business community is not so supportive, with talk of the city having become an economic ‘no go’ zone. 1162 In December 1982, the Engineering Employers’ Sheffield Federation warned that rates rises were forcing companies to consider leaving Sheffield.1163 The following April, even Sheffield’s newly-built Trades and Labour Club faced the threat of closure because it owed £5,000 in back-rates.1164 Central government determined to limit the ability of local authorities to increase rates (thus, making them perpetual claimants on central funding, a process which had been started by the financing reforms of 1945).1165 Blunkett had earlier argued that while ‘many of us would be delighted actually to be sent to gaol for our principles,’ there was a risk that martyrdom would lead to marginalisation: ‘the complexity of the Government's proposals make simple stands extremely difficult.'1166 However, as the Government contemplated rate-capping, the attraction of defiance increased. In February 1982, David Blunkett said: The law is being used in politics as a substitute for the ballot box… It is being used to make sure Tory politics are legal and socialist politics are illegal.1167
Sh.Telegraph 22/5/1992. 1160 Sh.Telegraph 28/3/1980 1161 Guardian 6/1/1981 1162 FT 24/2/1987 1163 Sh.Telegraph 8/12/1982 1164 Sh.Telegraph 14/4/1983 1165 Crouch, 'Local Government,' pp.254-58, 43-44. 1166 Lansley, Goss, and Wolmar, Councils in Conflict pp.31-32. 1167 Sh.Telegraph 12/2/1982 Sheffield 1980-1986 246
The council could not now – it was argued - even carry out its statutory obligations.1168 In May 1984, Sheffield District Labour Party passed a motion of ‘full support’ for the (Militant- controlled) Liverpool Council;1169 in June, Blunkett was elected as a vice-chairmen of the Association of Metropolitan Authorities (placing him in the forefront of those opposing rate- capping nationally);1170 in July, Sheffield was rate-capped.1171 For another ten months, it adopted a strategy of bluster and defiance. A meeting of Labour-controlled councils - held in Sheffield in February 1985 - agreed that all would refuse to set a rate.1172 Sheffield NALGO called for a two-hour stoppage by all 7,000 members, to coincide with the budget meeting (and pressed for a change in the union rules, to allow it to disregard the law, and to allow it to block the supply of information to central government).1173 Labour’s own leaders in the city called for thousands of workers to join a demonstration, to end in a ‘mass escort’ for councillors to the Town Hall, where they would vote on the issue.1174 By the start of March, however, the solidarity of the rate-capped authorities had broken, following the decision of the Greater London Council to pass a legal budget1175 (and following the psychological blow caused by the collapse of the Miners’ Strike).1176 David Blunkett attacked London's Labour left for failing to support the decision of the Leader, Ken Livingston, to set a rate.1177 Lansley et al. comment that: Key leaders such as Sheffield's David Blunkett and Islington's Margaret Hodge knew that the line could never be held but went along with it because they could not be seen to lead a retreat.1178 In May, Sheffield followed London’s example.1179 Seyd summarises the process which led to that decision: …a group of Labour councillors was unwilling to break the law...At a meeting of the District Labour Party, a week before the city council’s budget meeting, both David Blunkett and Clive Betts argued for a policy of setting the maximum legal rate and combining this with a deficit budget; they hoped that, some time late in the financial year when the city council’s revenue and
1168 Sh.Telegraph 18/4/1984 1169 Star 10/5/1984 1170 FT 22/6/1984 1171 Housing Review, Vol. 33, No 5 Sept-Oct. 1984 1172 Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left pp.167-8. 1173 Sh.Telegraph 23/3/1985 1174 Sh.Telegraph 27/2/1985. This may also have been designed to put pressure on wavering councillors. 1175 Guardian 12/3/1985 1176 Blunkett and Jackson, Democracy in Crisis p.175. 1177 Guardian 12/3/1985 1178 Lansley, Goss, and Wolmar, Councils in Conflict p.38. 1179 Blunkett and Jackson, Democracy in Crisis p.181. Sheffield 1980-1986 247
expenditure did not balance, central government would be forced into making more money available. However, the District Labour Party rejected their advice and reaffirmed a policy of setting no rate by 81 votes to 49. But in the council budget meeting [on May 7th] 20 Labour councillors abandoned this party position and joined with the Conservative and Liberal councillors to agree, by 46 votes to 38, a legal maximum rate. After adjourning the council meeting for a short period the Labour group then decided by 29 votes to 27 to amend the city council’s decision and add a deficit financing commitment, but this was defeated in council after 22 Labour councillors, implacably opposed to the decision to set a rate, refused to abide by their colleagues’ decision.1180 The pressure to break the law had posed an acute personal dilemma for local politicians. Alan Wigfield said I was a whip at the time - I remember the discussions - people being advised - well if you’ve got a house you could lose it.....Council after council began to set a rate under pressure of being surcharged.....[in Sheffield] It split the Labour Group not exactly down the middle - but about twenty of the beggars went off to the side and voted with the Tories to set a rate. They were stripped of their chairs of committees and things but it was clear it was gona happen....It split three ways in the end. And I joined that middle group ‘cos at that stage we were making bloody gestures.1181
Local conflict he twin failure of the rate-capping challenge and of the miners’ strike marked the end of Tthe core political strategy of the New Left. They had gambled on the collapse of the Thatcher government. They had no alternative to offer when the mirage faded. But their position was further undermined by the disappearance of the economic and political order which had propelled them to power, and by their fratricidal battles with the Town-Hall unions. The end of the old order Chapter Seven (above) has set out the scale of the decline in the traditional economic base of the city. The collapse coincided with the rule of the New Left, and was especially sharp in the first three years of its rule. From 1981 to 1984, one third of all metal-based manufacturing jobs in the city vanished.
1180 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' pp.167-68. 1181 Allender, What's Wrong with Labour? p.91. Sheffield 1980-1986 248
Table 10.2 Sheffield employment by SIC code, 1981 and 19841182
Changes in employment by sector, Sheffield Travel to Work Area, 1981-4 Change 1981-4 - absolute Sector (1980 SIC) 1981 1984 1981 1984 value 0 Agric, forestry, fishing 687 658 0% 0% -4% 1 Energy, water supply 9836 9262 4% 4% -6% 2 Extraction/Manuf: Min/metals 28732 18529 11% 8% -36% 3 Metal goods/vehicle ind. 46201 30554 18% 13% -34% 4 Other manufacturing 17357 14901 7% 6% -14% 5 Construction 13021 11776 5% 5% -10% 6 Distribution/hotels/catering; repairs 47215 47152 18% 20% 0% 7 Transport/communications 14040 15618 5% 7% 11% 8 Banking, Fin., Ins., Leasing etc 16212 16091 6% 7% -1% 9 Other services 66685 70494 26% 30% 6% TOTAL 259986 235035 100% 100% -10% Source: Census of employment 1981, 1984 It took time for local activists to adjust. In 1980, there was a large-scale steel industry strike. The strike spread to private steel plants; there were major confrontations with the police; the National Union of Railwaymen and ASLEF blocked movement of steel by rail. But the strike ended with a defeat for the unions.1183 In 1981, the steel industry again went on strike, and again the unions lost.1184 Engineering did not have the cushion of nationalisation which protected steel from market pressure, but militancy increased in the 1970s, partly encouraged by political activists fighting the pay restraint imposed by the Wilson and Callaghan governments. After the Conservative election victory of 1979, George Caborn said: We shall not allow the Conservative Government to dictate … our industrial strategy...1185 In July, a series of one-day strikes, and a national overtime ban, were announced.1186 The costs of the action were hard for already-fragile firms to bear.1187 The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry described the unions as ‘leading their members down a cliff,’1188 and the national employers’ organisation warned that the engineering strike would lead to permanent plant closures.1189 The chairman of one of the most successful local engineering firms made a direct appeal to his staff:
1182 Gibbon, Recession, Restructuring and 'Regeneration' p.6. 1183 Allender, What's Wrong with Labour? pp.79-80. 1184 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' p.151. 1185 Star 26/5/1979 1186 Star 11/7/1979 1187 Star 3/9/1979 Sh.Telegraph 25/7/1979, 8/8/1979, 31/8/1979, 14/8/1979 1188 Sh.Telegraph 31/8/1979 1189 Sh.Telegraph 4/9/1979 Sheffield 1980-1986 249
Once closed, there [is] a very real danger that companies [will] not re-open, or at least not re-open for long. ...The men should go back to work, as many of them clearly want to do….1190 But to the Engineering Union it looked as if the employers were running scared. Six days later, local AUEW shop stewards voted unanimously for ‘a national all-out strike.’1191 Gradually, it became clear (even to the union) that jobs were at risk;1192 some 1,500 workers at Sheffield Ridgway went back to work in defiance of the union.1193 The Star printed, on its front page, a letter from a striking engineer in the EEPTU asking for a national strike ballot: many engineering firms [are] in the doldrums, some on their beam-ends, ,… Only in small pockets here and there [is] there any sign of prosperity.....Our members are of the opinion that with the voting being so tight and our leaders knowing the state of the industry, they ought first to have consulted them by holding a national ballot … they are loath to secure a shorter working week, more holidays etc. at the cost of their mates’ job, which is what is going to happen....1194 Eventually, a national settlement was agreed , against the wishes of Sheffield’s Engineering Union leaders).1195 However, many firms had already been damaged,1196 and demand continued to weaken. The following year it was reported that there had been over 9,000 engineering redundancies in 18 months, in 80 or more firms, and the pace of closure continued to accelerate thereafter.1197 In this new climate, the appeal of militancy declined. By July 1982 pay settlements were running at about 3.5%.1198 In 1984, the number of working days lost through industrial disputes in Sheffield was down by 30%. Only two of the twenty strikes involving member companies of the Employers’ Association lasted for more than four working days.1199 There were occasional flare-ups;1200 but they was a last-gasp of the old pattern of confrontation. The collapse in manufacturing employment altered the correlation of forces within the Trades Council. As early as December 1980, Trades Council secretary Vernon Thornes commented:
1190 Sh.Telegraph 5/9/1979 1191 Star 11/9/1979 1192 Sh.Telegraph 2/10/1979 1193 Sh.Telegraph 3/10/1979 1194 Star 3/10/1979 1195 Sh.Telegraph 10/10/1979 1196 Sh.Telegraph 31/10/1979 The largest initial job losses were at two firms which – desperate to avoid a strike - had settled early with the unions. 1197 Sh.Telegraph 4/10/1980 1198 Sh.Telegraph 6/7/1982 1199 Sh.Telegraph 7/1/1985 1200 Sh.Telegraph 19/5/1984, 17/5/1984, 21/5/1984 Sheffield 1980-1986 250
a number of unions are saying that they are losing members....The steel, engineering and construction industries are among the worst hit.1201 In October 1982, both the Trades Council and the Labour Party were overdrawn.1202 Richard Caborn said there had been much criticism of the way the organisation had been run.1203 The social basis of the movement wilted. On August 1st 1981 the new Sheffield Trades and Labour Club (which cost £500,000 and had 1,750 members) opened for trading. Within 21 months, it faced a financial crisis: it owed £5,000 in rates, had borrowed from the brewery in order to pay them, and it was seeking further loans from the Co-operative Bank.1204 In March 1982, a controversial report argued that trades unions in Sheffield were facing their greatest crisis since the 1930s. The leading role of the skilled engineer in the local labour movement was being undermined by redundancies, structural decline, and new technologies. The old ways of doing things, the shop floor strength based on piece-work bargaining, left the unions in Sheffield ill-equipped for the recession, and for a changed international business environment. There was a ‘dangerous gulf’ between the concerns of the employed and unemployed on the one hand, and long-term plans promoted by the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party on the other. To imagine…that an upturn in the economy will somehow reabsorb much of the displaced labour - the unemployed of Sheffield - is a fallacy. 1205 The title of the report - ‘Sheffield: the Second Slump’ - recalled that of Trotskyite economist Ernest Mandel, and was critical of several orthodoxies of the Broad Left (notably, of import controls, and of the merits of the Labour ‘Alternative Economic Strategy’).1206 It was not well received by traditional union leaders in the city; Derek Simpson said he had not been consulted by the research group, and he doubted its conclusions.1207 A Trades Council spokesman said the substance of the report had not been discussed by the council. In January 1983, the report’s co-author John Hesketh left to return to adult education lecturing.1208 None the less, its conclusions delineated the threat that now existed to the traditional foundations of political power in the city.
1201 Star 29/12/1980 1202 Sh.Telegraph 27/10/1982 1203 Star 27/10/1982 1204 Star 1/8/1981 Sh.Telegraph 14/4/1983 1205 ShLSL.332.6.SQ Sheffield – the Second Slump (mimeo) pp.2,6 Sh.Telegraph 29/3/1982, 8/4/1982 1206 Ernest Mandel, The Second Slump : A Marxist Analysis of Recession in the Seventies (London, 1980). 1207 Star 30/3/1982 However the report included, on page 32, verbatim extracts from an interview with Mr Simpson carried out in November 1981. 1208 Star 24/1/1983 Sheffield 1980-1986 251
Fratricide Matters were made much worse by the battle between the Council and its own white-collar staff. The Council had assumed that its workers would share its values and would wish to co- operate with improvements; it soon discovered that it was seriously mistaken. In terms of national pay demands, Sheffield NALGO did not pursue an especially aggressive policy.1209 But on local issues, it was intransigent. Some problems occurred because reforms were poorly thought-through. The Council continued to run efficiently on a day-to-day basis and was praised by John Banham, Controller of the Audit Commission, even in 1985 as the rate-capping struggle dominated local politics.1210 But the unchallengeable political control of the New Left (and its determination to push through manifesto commitments) made its leaders impervious to feedback when reforms started to go wrong. This became evident in the first major confrontation between the Council and its staff. Clive Betts, the new Housing chair, wanted to break away from Sheffield’s authoritarian and inflexible record in administering its council housing; a new administrative structure was proposed:1211 however, the policy of ‘area based management’ was rejected by staff, by a large majority.1212 The core of their objections was that this represented an attack on their terms of employment: many members will lose cash because pay scales are being regraded and allowances dropped and… contracts of employment, which give precise job descriptions, are being rewritten.1213 Other concerns related to the scheme itself. NALGO described the new proposals as poorly thought-through;1214 The Star pointed out that the new area offices might be no more convenient for people to get to;1215 even the Sheffield tenants’ association came out against them, on cost grounds – estimating that the cost would be almost eight times more than Betts had claimed. Some councillors questioned the wisdom of pressing ahead.1216 The leadership was undaunted, but outcomes justified the fears of the pessimists. In October, an internal memo by senior Sheffield housing management officers was leaked: area based management, which is already costing the city council nearly £400,000, has seriously damaged the service to tenants....If the authority is unable to fund the additional staffing resources proposed in this report, it
1209 Star 25/5/1983, 30/8/1984 1210 Lansley, Goss, and Wolmar, Councils in Conflict p.98. 1211 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' p.163. 1212 Star 27/1/1983 1213 Star 27/1/1983 1214 Sh.Telegraph 7/2/1983 1215 Star 8/4/1983 1216 Sh.Telegraph 7/2/1983 Sheffield 1980-1986 252
will be necessary to accept that the inadequate service currently provided by the housing department will be the norm.1217 Clerical support to the area teams was ‘totally inadequate;’ resources for departments dealing with urgent rehousing applications were ‘inadequate to provide anything approaching a reasonable level of service’ officers covered large ‘patches’ of more than 900 houses - much bigger than in most other authorities – and were spending about 70% of their time on door-to- door rent collection; letters and enquiries often took a month to answer; re-housing enquiries took even longer.1218 It estimated that shifting Town Hall officers into a network of local offices as planned for the following year could add £700,000 to costs. However, the Council voted-down a Liberal censure motion, and David Blunkett dismissed the critics, stating the discussion had been distorted by documents of minor importance which had been leaked to the Morning Telegraph.1219 Matters were made worse by a simultaneous strike by Housing Department staff. This was provoked by a central government decision to make payment of rent rebates the responsibility of council housing departments.1220 The first month was marked by recriminations;1221 talks broke down when (to the fury of Clive Betts) union officials ‘packed up and went home for the weekend.’1222 NALGO said If councillors would just keep out of the way, everybody would be happy.1223 After two months, a settlement was reached;1224 however, the backlog of claims was so large that staff were instructed not to handle any outside telephone calls – first, on one day per week; later, on four days out of five.1225 A new computer system was installed at the end of the month, and the Housing Director, Bett’s new appointee Ray Gridley, said that it would help clear the backlog; this proved an over-optimistic view.1226 In May 1984, a tenant described the situation in which he found himself: I am allowed a rent rebate… However, in January my rent was increased by £2 per week for no apparent reason. I rang the housing department about
1217 Sh.Telegraph 20/10/1983 1218 Sh.Telegraph 20/10/1983 1219 Sh.Telegraph 3/11/1983 1220 Star 24/3/1983, 30/3/1983 1221 Star 2/4/1983, Sh.Telegraph 7/4/1983,14/4/1983 1222 Sh.Telegraph 23/4/1983 1223 Sh.Telegraph 26/4/1983 1224 Sh.Telegraph 23/6/1983 1225 Star 20/9/1983, 26/9/1983, 21/10/1983 Sh.Telegraph 26/9/1983 1226 Star 28/10/1983 Sheffield 1980-1986 253
this and was told my records had been lost and I was sent a form to re-apply. I reapplied in February and since then I have heard nothing. I again rang the department and was told to carry on paying my old rent and all would be sorted out. When the new rent cards were issued last month the rent I was required to pay, according to the card was nil. I once again rang the department and was told to pay the rent I thought was right until everything was sorted out. … I am only one of thousands who appear to be doing this…1227 It was not only the Housing Department that suffered from poor industrial relations. In September 1982, NALGO members in homes for the old, disabled, and children started industrial action.1228 That December, the County Council advertised for clerical assistants in its motor cycle training scheme; NALGO instructed other clerical staff not to co-operate with anyone who was appointed, while the closed-shop agreement meant that anyone who was appointed would have to be instantly dismissed again.1229 In 1983, despite appeals from David Blunkett, NALGO members refused to use their own cars on council business.1230 In August, NALGO staff in the planning department stopped all mail entering and leaving the department because they refused to cover the post of assistant director, which had been vacant since the chief planner resigned three months earlier;1231 the next day, trainees on the Youth Training Scheme were refused permission by the union to work in the department.1232 Disputes in the Planning Department continued for a whole year. The Council tried to merge the estates department and the planning department; the union banned overtime, refused to cooperate with councillors, and instructed some members to work to rule. Planning committee chairman David Skinner said: We have assured the union that staff are protected and we want to make the changes we have a right to make as elected councillors.1233 In July 1984 the Council sent recorded delivery letters to about 200 NALGO white-collar staff, warning their pay would be stopped unless they gave individual undertakings to ‘work normally;’ NALGO (employing the worst insult in the local lexicon) accused the council of using tactics similar to those employed by the National Coal Board against the striking miners.1234 A major cause of NALGO resentment was the attempt by the council, in line with its overall philosophy, to introduce ‘single status’ for all staff. Michael Horn, union area organiser for Sheffield, said:
1227 Star 31/5/1984 1228 Star 10/9/1983 1229 Star 7/12/1982 1230 Star 18/2/1983, 15/3/1983 1231 Star 5/8/1983 1232 Sh.Telegraph 6/8/1983 1233 Sh.Telegraph 24/7/1984 1234 Sh.Telegraph 24/7/1984 Sheffield 1980-1986 254
What concerns me is this attempt to denigrate white-collar workers. There is this arrogant attitude that they are highly-paid loafers.1235 Councillors denied any prejudice against NALGO in favour of manual unions. Both sides recognised (in principle) the need to be united.1236 But, in practice, the cleavages of interest were too great to be paved over.1237 The Council was caught by its own good intentions. In March 1983, it was sued by NALGO for failing to abide by its ‘no-redundancy’ guarantees. The former deputy director of works had lost his job in a departmental reshuffle in 1980. He was paid a salary for an entire year while he attended London University in 1981, and for a further eight months while he sat at home; in June 1982 he had (finally) been dismissed.1238 NALGO argued that he should have had a job for life. These conflicts paled into insignificance, compared to those around attempts to introduce new technology. The Council had negotiated an agreement with NALGO, which promised that new technology would be introduced only with union agreement.1239 The union interpreted this to mean that the council could make no changes at all to its staffing structure, or work patterns, without its consent. In 1984 the Housing Department introduced a new code of practice, Responding to Change. It argued that it was committed to keeping people employed, but that it could not possibly be expected to guarantee that they would always be able to continue to do exactly the same job in the same way. The new document allowed the council to dismiss anyone who ‘unreasonably refuses an alternative job.’1240 The New Left leadership of the Council was determined to push the changes through. David Blunkett claimed Sheffield was ‘one of the best employers in the country.’1241 In a letter to Housing Department employees Clive Betts explained: The council is democratically elected and we cannot accept that any trade union has a right to perpetual veto over changes.1242 Sam Wall, chairman of personnel, said: It is intolerable that we should be stuck with the technology of the 1980s into the 1990s. Some of the equipment has been left packed in cardboard boxes for so long that the warranties have run out.1243 Alan Billings pointed out that:
1235 Times11/10/1984 1236 Sh.Telegraph 27/9/1984 1237 Star 27/1/1987 1238 Star 1/3/1983 1239 Sh.Telegraph 8/9/1984 1240 Sh.Telegraph 6/9/1984 1241 Star 6/9/1984 1242 Sh.Telegraph 8/9/1984 1243 Sh.Telegraph 14/9/1984 Sheffield 1980-1986 255
The new agreement has been accepted by all manual worker unions, who regard it as a model agreement of its kind...If you talk to people in private industry they say they would bite the hands of an employer who offered an agreement like this. We are offering them no redundancies, no compulsory redeployment and the closed shop. ... We have given anything any reasonable work-force trade union would want…1244 In September, a strike started.1245 NALGO focused strikes where the withdrawal of small numbers of staff could paralyse council activity; ad hominem, it also banned the processing of councillors’ expenses allowances.1246 Occasional truces were arranged to meet emergencies; but so great was the mistrust that shop stewards were detailed to keep watch over staff while they worked.1247 Late in October, committee clerks (crucial to the administration of council meetings) stopped work.1248 The Trades Council and the District Labour Party were divided; the Trades Council (by now, in post-industrial Sheffield, dominated by NALGO) condemned the council, despite pleas from the Engineering Union; the District Labour Party supported an immediate return to work.1249 The strike spread to yet more departments.1250 When the interests of their core supporters in the manual-working unions were threatened, the New Left leaders found themselves having to violate their own core principle, trades-union solidarity. NALGO refused to make up wages for manual workers - a move described as ‘provocative and deplorable’ by Council leaders;1251 the Council called in a private security firm to do so. A Housing Department shop steward commented: We do not question David Blunkett’s integrity. But some of his colleagues in the Labour group intend to smash the union organization.1252 Ten days later, 15,000 manual workers’ wages again went unpaid. Blunkett described this action as ‘deplorable.’ It is an unfortunate twist in the term ‘solidarity’ to actually ensure that your fellow workers are not paid their wages…1253
1244 ShLSL.NALGO.1984#4 (Sh.Telegraph) 1245 Star 10/9/1984 Sh.Telegraph 14/9/1984 Star 17/9/1984 1246 Star 6/10/1984, 1/10/1984, 2/10/1984, Sh.Telegraph 18/10/1984, 29/9/1984, 2/10/1984 1247 ShLSL.NALGO.1984#5 1248 Sh.Telegraph 27/10/1984 1249 ShLSL.NALGO.1984#5 Sh.Telegraph 27/9/1984, 10/10/1984 1250 Sh.Telegraph 27/10/1984, 5/11/1984 1251 Star 2/10/1984 1252 Times11/10/1984 1253 Sh.Telegraph 24/10/1984 Sheffield 1980-1986 256
A truce was arranged on this issue; but in mid-November, it broke down.1254 Some manual- worker unions then sought (in violation of TUC rules) to encourage NALGO members to leave that union, and to join them instead.1255 NALGO targeted manual workers’ ability to earn the bonuses that were a key part of their pay. As October ended, 3,000 housing department manual workers had (according to Clive Betts) virtually no work to do. The Council set up a system of reporting housing complaints through works depots, bypassing the paperwork normally handled by NALGO members in the Town Hall.1256 The Morning Telegraph reported: The row... has put the spotlight on the 3,000-strong [manual workers’] works union. ... One shop steward said: ‘If all NALGO members were out, then it would be a completely different ball game. Our lads are not happy about doing work blacked by NALGO, because we respect picket lines. But how can we convince them NALGO’s requests should be obeyed when they are losing bonus money because of the disruption and then watching NALGO members working’... NALGO members on strike, fewer than 1,000 out of about 7,000 Town Hall members, are paid about 60 pc of their wages by the national union.... 1257 Mediation came to nothing, amid recriminations and ill-will.1258 An article published in early November summed up the divisions: NALGO has made political capital out of this seeming encouragement of strike breaking by a council proud of its socialist standing and run by trades unionists. Some councillors, on the other hand, feel one of the motives behind the dispute is to publicise Sheffield’s divergence from the socialist line NALGO thinks it ought to follow.... The blue-collar and works unions in the authority …are reluctant to criticise NALGO publicly, but there is tacit support among them for the authority’s line. …NALGO’s bitter disagreement with the council and its divergence from other unions is possibly a reflection of its position in the city’s Labour movement, which has traditionally created the impression of running the city as a seamless entity. In a world of dwindling union membership, NALGO is big, influential and, more importantly, active...1259 In November, as settlement came closer, personal relations worsened. NALGO walked out of negotiations, accusing council negotiators of ‘backtracking’ whenever Blunkett was absent - there was ‘no hope of resolving the dispute without him.’1260 At the start of December, striking
1254 Sh.Telegraph 14/11/1984 1255 Star 23/11/1984 1256 Star 30/10/1984 1257 Sh.Telegraph5/11/1984 1258 Star 19/9/1984 Sh.Telegraph 21/9/1984, 29/9/1984, 11/10/1984, 5/11/1984, 10/11/1984, 23/10/1984 1259 Sh.Telegraph 5/11/1984 1260 Star 16/11/1984, 27/11/1984 Sh.Telegraph 14/11/1984, 15/11/1984 Sheffield 1980-1986 257
NALGO members staged a sit-in in the council chamber, and refused (for several hours) to let the Council approve payment of – and then present to the visiting Ethiopian Ambassador – a cheque for famine relief.1261 When settlement was agreed, it was against the wishes of local NALGO leaders; a mass-meeting of 1,700 members decided to return to work, after a warning from the national leadership of the union - with whom David Blunkett was in constant contact - that their 60% strike pay would be removed if they did not settle.1262 The aftermath of the strike lasted for months, and there was a backlog of 48,000 new applications for housing benefit, which only ran down slowly.1263 In April 1985, the housing department’s offices had yet to reopen to the public.1264 Even by November 1985, the dispute still rumbled on; NALGO negotiators still refused to agree to refer future technology disputes to conciliation, saying they ‘had no mandate to make binding commitments.’1265 The savage disputes between the council and its own staff provided an added incentive for NALGO and other public-service unions to seek to influence the Labour Party. Mirroring the actions of the Engineering Union over the previous ten years, in March 1983 NALGO urged its members to become actively involved in the process of re-selection of Labour candidates.1266 By 1986, a high proportion of Labour Party activists in Sheffield worked for local government (or, to a lesser extent for trades unions).1267 In this context, only very tightly focused mechanisms of party discipline would enable the existing leadership to retain control.
Managing the city he divisions and conflicts which split the city’s traditional leaders made it hard for the Council to respond to its growing practical problems. By 1980, there were three major Tareas which required attention; education, the economy, and – as always – housing. Education remained uncontroversial, and was an area in which Sheffield failed to make major changes. The city had introduced comprehensives in the 1960s. Peter Horton (the leading campaigner for them) remained as Education Committee chairman until 1983.1268 The broad view of educators in Sheffield was that the city was outstandingly successful; its history was seen in terms of smooth progress and improvement:
1261 Sh.Telegraph 6/12/1984 1262 Sh.Telegraph 7/12/1984 Star 10/12/1984 1263 Star 10/12/1984, 19/12/1984, 21/12/1984 Sh.Telegraph 14/2/1985 1264 Star 4/4/1985 1265 Sh.Telegraph 17/11/1985 1266 Star 22/3/1983 1267 See Figure 7.14, page 144. 1268 ShLSL.Labour.1982#12 Sheffield 1980-1986 258
[If] Sheffield could justly be said to have started the twenty years from 1965 with all the advantages, it could equally justly be said to have seized all the opportunities. The two decades were years of constant movement and innovation, but it was not change for change’s sake. ...The essence of the times was that the provisions of the great 1944 Education Act were coming to be realized. Public education was coming at last to the edge of maturity. Sheffield’s vision on how to achieve it was clearer than most.1269 Sheffield education officials were personally successful in national terms, becoming heads of education departments elsewhere, school inspectors, and presidents of national educational bodies.1270 However, there was continuing hostility between political leaders and education professionals - which Seyd has ascribed to ‘delaying tactics of education officials and teachers’1271 - even in such apparently non-contentious areas as the activities of the ‘joint working party on non-attendance.’ Disputes about education revolved largely around symbolic issue, such as the pledge to abolish school uniform and corporal punishment in schools, included in the 1982 manifesto, and carried into practice after that election despite widespread opposition from school governors and the Council’s own Education Committee.1272 In an echo of 1927, the 1983 manifesto described the introduction of peace studies into the curriculum as ‘an urgent priority.’1273 Surprisingly, there was, Seyd says, little focus on: pupils’ performance in schools and, in particular, [on] their differential attainment rates.1274 The Council did, however, seek to address the high proportion of children in the poorer parts of the city who still chose to leave school at 16. Rather than seeking to boost staying-on rates in conventional, academically-oriented, schools, it tried to close all academic sixth-forms in order to replace them (by 1989) with unified academic, technical and vocational education. It also launched the ‘Sheffield Curriculum Initiative’, aimed at ‘the causes of alienation and reluctance for formal education felt by many pupils who found the traditional curriculum irrelevant and boring’ – seconding 180 secondary school teachers and 30 primary school teachers to work on ‘curriculum development relevant to the needs of their schools within the context of [the Local Education Authority’s] priorities.’ This initiative achieved little, and was superseded by the introduction of the National Curriculum. 1275
1269 Harrison, 'Twenty Years of Public Education,' pp.327-8. 1270 Ian Birch, 'Sheffield Schools since 1985,' idem., p.331. 1271 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' p.165. 1272Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left p.155. 1273 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' pp.164-5. 1274 ibid., p.164. 1275The Conservative government excluded the five successful secondary schools in the middle-class south west of the city – where staying-on rates were already high - from this reorganisation. Harrison, 'Twenty Years of Public Education,' pp.327-8. Sheffield 1980-1986 259
Employment The new Employment Department, although central to the political vision of the new Council, had a similar lack of impact. It had ambitious goals: to prevent further loss of jobs, to alleviate the worst effects of unemployment, to encourage effective training, to stimulate new investment, to create new kinds of employment, to diversify job opportunities, to explore new forms of industrial democracy, and to undertake research.1276 The 1982 Manifesto included proposals to draw on pension funds to back employment schemes, to build a Sheffield exhibition centre, and to set up a local enterprise board.1277 The Budget, which was a million pounds in the first year of operation, and only £18 million in total over the first seven years of the Department’s life, was disproportionate to these challenges.1278 Much of this money went on merely prolonging the death of local firms.1279 Some outside employers were persuaded to move to the city – notably, the headquarters of the National Union of Mineworkers and that of the Manpower Services Commission (a public body);1280 but many more left, or closed down altogether. As the economic crisis facing the city became more apparent, and after the Labour Party’s catastrophic defeat in the 1983 General Election, the emphasis of the Employment Department changed. Michie was elected to Parliament: Helen Jackson, who replaced him, adopted policies that were more small-scale. Some of the projects which the Department supported were concerned to promote equal opportunities: women’s carpentry, a women’s joinery workshop, a women’s plastering training project, an Asian training project, several Afro- Caribbean enterprise centres, and a Pakistan Muslim centre.1281 The impact of these projects on the mainstream economy of the city was marginal – there were relatively few immigrants, and even fewer women carpenters. But even if it had been gifted with the foresight of Merlin, (and a larger budget) the Department could have had little direct impact in pursuit of its original goals; it was conceived as part of an overall challenge to capitalism, to demonstrate the possibility of other forms of economic organisation, while Labour nationally advanced a radical agenda for socialist transformation. After 1983, it was a fish out of water. In 1984 the Department stated that ‘the local authority aims for a constructive partnership with the private sector.’1282 Local legend attributes its changing attitudes to personal contacts
Ian Birch, 'Sheffield Schools since 1985,' in The History of the City of Sheffield, 1843-1993:Volume II: Society, ed. Clyde Binfield (Sheffield, 1993), p.333. 1276 Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left p.161. 1277 Star 4/4/1982 1278 Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left p.161. Gordon Dabinett, Local Economic Development Strategies in Sheffield During the 1980's, Working Paper No. 10 (Sheffield, 1990) pp.10-12. 1279 Interview with Bill Michie, Allender, What's Wrong with Labour? p.84. 1280 Sh.Telegraph 27/2/1980 1281 Allender, What's Wrong with Labour? p.85. 1282 ibid. p.87. Sheffield 1980-1986 260 between local politicians and business leaders on a trip to China.1283 The local businessmen who became involved with the Council were mainly business executives not in the large engineering or steel firms but in local firms whose future ...depended upon a vibrant local economy.1284 - though despite their enthusiasm and skills, their field of expertise did not always match the very wide range of issues on which their advice was sought.1285 In 1985, the ‘radical, socialist’ officer heading the Department (John Bennington) left, and was replaced by a prominent member of Sheffield’s political establishment - Dan Sequerra (a union official, and former Chair of the District Labour Party). Sequerra was a left-winger, but also a pragmatist, who had been heavily involved in the council’s struggles against its own unions in 1984.1286 By the spring of 1986, the Financial Times was reporting ‘an age of détente’ in the cold war between Sheffield and its business leaders,1287 and the Sheffield Economic Regeneration Committee was established, to provide a formal link between business and the Council.1288 In January 1987 the council formally opened a development office in the city centre, staffed by council secondees, seeking to attract outside investors and providing a showcase for local firms.1289 There was little remaining trace of the radicalism which had inspired the creation of the Department only seven years earlier. Similar shifts occurred at the same time in other cities, such as Manchester.1290 In the field of planning, where the Council could in principle steer investment by others, Sheffield had little freedom of action. Unlike Southwark, there was relatively little demand for development land in the City, so there was no-one to be steered. At the peak of its enthusiasm for demonstrating socialist alternatives, the Council recommended the establishment of an ‘Employment Zone’ in which public sector initiatives, such as city council supported co- operatives and enterprise workshops, would predominate.1291 But this was clearly unrealistic, given the Council’s funding crisis. By 1984, policy had moved away from this emphasis on public sector provision and (in a reversal of fifty years of thinking) started to call for the re-introduction of housing into parts of the valley, and into the
1283 Field, Betts, and Green, 'Inner City Reconstruction - Sheffield: A Case Study,' pp.344-45. 1284 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' p.169, and Page 207 fn47. 1285 See page 280 1286 ShLSL.Labour.1982#12 Sh.Telegraph 27/9/1984 FT 13/3/1987. 1287 FT 10/4/1986 1288 Field, Betts, and Green, 'Inner City Reconstruction - Sheffield: A Case Study,' pp.344-45. 1289 FT 13/3/1987 1290 Alan Harding, 'Regime Formation in Manchester and Edinburgh,' in The New Politics of British Local Governance, ed. Gerry Stoker (Basingstoke, 2000), p.64. 1291 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' p.170. Sheffield 1980-1986 261 city centre, to assist in regeneration. 1292 Major environmental improvements were believed to be essential in order to stimulate regeneration.1293 Increasingly, it sought investment where it could get it: In a reversal of its previous hostility...[it] approved [in 1986] the redevelopment of a derelict steelworks site as a major shopping complex at Meadowhall. Furthermore, a city council officer working party produced a report recommending ‘the need to consider diversification of the city’s economic base’ and suggesting leisure, tourism and new technologies.1294 The Council concluded that it could not by itself assemble the resources it needed in order to redevelop the Lower Don Valley.1295 By 1988 it was prepared (though protesting) to co- operate with the creation of the independent Sheffield Development Corporation.1296 Housing By 1982, the physical and social problems in council housing had reached such major proportions that they undermined the case for further construction (even if funding had been available), and cast into question the achievements of the past thirty years. There was a major flight from the sector; those who could, moved out or bought the better-quality houses from the council. What was left was a concentration of economically (and sometimes socially) marginal families, in dwellings subject to increasing physical decay. In November 1982 The Star reported: Lethal lumps of concrete are starting to flake off high-rise flats all over Sheffield. Recently housing chiefs had to step in fast at Brunswick Road, Burngreave, to spend £600,000 to save residents from the threat of jagged chunks falling on their heads. But Burngreave is only the beginning of a housing disaster which could reveal that every tower-block in Sheffield is potentially dangerous.… [Also] there are around 5,000 houses built using the Vic Hallam system which are also threatening to fall apart… Says housing chairman Clive Betts: ‘Sending out surveyors these days is like stepping on quicksand.’1297 A survey revealed major problems both in post-war buildings and in more than one third of the 24,000 pre-war council houses. The latter had been built using black ash mortar—an abundant by-product of the pre-war steel furnaces—but it promoted rusting in the wall ties and there was a danger that they would fall down in high winds.1298
1292 A reversal made possible by the success of earlier efforts to control pollution, and by industrial collapse. For much of the post-war era all new housing had to be built several hundred feet above the valley floor, to escape the smoke. 1293 Marshall, 'Town Planning in Sheffield,' p.30. 1294 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' p.170. 1295 ibid. 1296 ibid., p.172. 1297 Star 12/11/1982 1298 Yorkshire Post 29/3/1984 Sheffield 1980-1986 262
As usual, the council sought to blame the national government - ‘they gave the go-ahead for the sixties spree.’1299 Wherever the blame lay, the Council could not meet the costs of repair. The £40 million capital programme announced by the Council in March 1984 (itself substantially above the centrally-authorised Housing Investment Programme of £21.5 million) was not enough to start making serious inroads on these problems.1300,1301 The Council’s funds could only come from rents, or from borrowing, or from taxation; but it remained strongly committed to keeping rents low;1302 it could not borrow without government sanction; and it was already raising local taxes sharply, and facing rate-capping. Solving the funding problem would demand co-operation with national government; yet the predisposition of the council’s leaders was to confront government, not to seek its help.1303 At the same time, social problems grew. The Council was praised by Shelter as one of the best authorities in the country at handling rent arrears1304 -but as employment in the city collapsed, and as the Housing Department’s administrative systems descended into chaos during protracted strikes, arrears reached alarming levels.1305 The Council tried to improve day-to-day management of its estates. In June 1983, Hyde Park, Manor and Burngreave/Woodside were selected as test-beds for action; tenants’ organisations were given much more control over repair policies, responses to vandalism and general environmental improvements.1306 But self-management remained more a matter of aspiration than practice, and was also hampered the Housing Department’s internal conflicts. Problems of nuisance and disorder (and the consequent emergence of hard-to-let properties) were increasingly apparent.1307 A Liberal community-politician, Francis Butler, called for the council to get tough: New plans to make problem estates better places to live in would only work if housing staff were given power to punish anti-social tenants.1308 However, in 1983 such plans to use the law against anti-social behaviour were roundly rejected by key New Left councillors;1309 their analysis of problems was based on a paradigm
1299 Star 12/11/1982 (Clive Betts) 1300 Sh.Telegraph 21/12/1984 1301 Star 1/3/1984 1302 Sh.Telegraph 25/5/1984, 6/6/1984 1303 Sh.Telegraph 28/4/1983 1304 Sh.Telegraph 25/5/1984 1305 Star 22/8/1989 1306 Sh.Telegraph 25/6/1983 1307 Star 10/6/1980 [date very faint] 1308 Sh.Telegraph 25/6/1983 1309 Ironically, the use of ‘anti-social behaviour orders’ against disruptive tenants was later to become a major tool employed by David Blunkett’s Home Office. Sheffield 1980-1986 263 in which resource deprivation and class-struggle were the only important causes of social malaise. Councillor Helen Jackson said: problem estates in Sheffield were often places where eight out of ten people were without a job while Councillor Peter Wood said the council would never prosecute people on a private estate and it was unfair to treat council tenants differently1310 After a spate of violent incidents in 1987, security staff were brought in to protect housing department staff (and a security screen was put up round the enquiry desk).1311 In that year, David Blunkett himself published a pamphlet focusing on the growing problems of incivility; the cause, he argued, was capitalism. it is in the interests of international capital to turn as many human activities as possible into a commodity which can be bought and sold...(p.1) Rapid change often creates a feeling of insecurity and a loss of direction. People not only fear financial insecurity...but also feel threatened by changing standards of behaviour, of culture and of individual as well as collective status and role ...In such circumstances, benchmarks for what is acceptable in social relationships fade, moral codes tend to be undermined, and uncertainty about the future leads to immediate self-interest overriding cooperative ways of living….(p.4) Civil disorder is the symptom rather than the cause of our insecure and divided society. (p.33)1312 Central government developed the Priority Estates Programme, to provide extra finance. This enabled Sheffield to ask for extra funding in 1984-1985, and the City duly designated three estates.1313 But the problems were massively greater than could be tackled with the resources available. For example, Kelvin was declared a Priority Estate in July 1985; it housed about 2,500 people in 945 flats, in a quarter-mile long concrete slab; 75% of households received some form of State benefit (compared with a city-wide average of 64%); it contained double the average number of children under five years old, and four times the average number of one-parent families compared with other council estates; there were high levels of ill-health and mental illness. Dwellings were insecure, and walkways threatening; burglaries and muggings were ‘commonplace’. There was inadequate heating, and poor insulation; the flats suffered from constant noise (since many bedrooms were directly below walkways); and there were the usual physical problems of crumbling concrete. The Council set aside £50,000 to establish a management scheme for the estate, and to manage the process of applying for grants; 1314 when grants came, they were still relatively meagre – under half a million pounds
1310 Sh.Telegraph 25/6/1983 1311 Star 14/10/1987 1312 Blunkett and Jackson, Democracy in Crisis. 1313 Housing Review, Vol. 33, No 5 Sept-Oct. 1984 1314 Sh.Telegraph 20/7/1985 Sheffield 1980-1986 264 in 1987, for example, spread between Kelvin and another similar estate.1315 The Tenants’ Federation secretary commented: You are not going to solve [the local housing crisis] by declaring the odd priority estate, because just about every estate in the city is becoming a priority now.... If money is not urgently made available by Government, we shall have to face a massive slum clearance in the near future. This would mean uprooting whole communities on a scale not seen since the Second World War and huge parts of the city could have to be rebuilt yet again.1316
Tightening control n the wake of the collapse of its strategy of defiance, the Council sought to work within the constraints of the rate-capping regime.1317 The leadership was left without an agenda, Iapart from compassionate management of the city, and its own survival. The local Party was now divided broadly into four groups - rightists (who were purged of their remaining influence), leftists (who were without an agenda), David Blunkett (who defied categorisation), and pragmatists (ex-leftists determined to make the best of things).1318 Despite the fact that the Council (as a whole) now accepted the rate-capping regime, pressure grew in the local party for disciplinary action against the councillors who had voted in favour of implementing it. David Blunkett said that he was ‘totally against’ their expulsion from the Party, and that he would ‘fight personally’ against it.1319 However, the disciplinary process which was followed obliterated their remaining influence; the twenty rebels who voted to set a rate were barred from committee chairmanships. Clive Betts said that the executive decision had been taken in an ‘amicable spirit’ and was ‘not intended to be punitive’.1320 Failing to appreciate the ‘amicable’ nature of the process by which they had been removed, in July 1985, two councillors resigned their seats in order to provoke by-elections.1321 In November 1985, the purge continued; three more councillors were de-selected, and former Lord Mayor Roy Munn (another rate rebel) declared his intention to retire.1322 The outgoing chairmen were
1315 Star 23/11/1987 1316 Sh.Telegraph 20/7/1985 1317 ShLSL.Labour.1985#13 1318 Sheffield Labour Activist in 1986 described the factions as ‘hard left’; ‘right wing’ based on the union delegations of GMBATU and the EEPTU; and an un-named group ‘based in the local struggle of the sixties and seventies… culminating in David Blunkett’s election as leader of the City Council in 1980.’ - ShLSL.924.74.SQ, November 1986 1319 Star 9/5/1985 1320 ShLSL.Labour.1985#14 1321 Star 27/7/1985 1322 Star 21/11/1985 ShLSL.Labour.1982#12 Sheffield 1980-1986 265 replaced by figures who had not rebelled - such as Richard Caborn’s 1983 election agent, Viv Nicholson.1323 The marginalisation of the remains of the old right was reluctantly followed by the expulsion of some members of the far left. These expulsions were the product of national decisions; the local party moved slowly. In July 1985, Councillor Paul Green was expelled from Attercliffe Constituency Party;1324 but his ward Party allowed him (and three other ‘expelled’ members) to continue to participate in its activities,1325 and condemned the expulsions;1326 the Labour Group Secretary praised Green’s record as a councillor, saying there was ‘no question’ of the immediate withdrawal of the whip.1327 Nethrthorpe Ward Party also protested about expulsions, and maintained close ties with the Troops Out movement.1328 The attitude of Sheffield’s leaders to the hard left became markedly less tolerant as the decade progressed but, in 1986, solidarity still seemed more important than factional struggle. David Blunkett moved away from Sheffield politics, though he remained rooted in its traditions. His broad policy stance remained unchanged.1329 Many found him inspiring: The reason for this popularity lies in his ability as one of the few genuine orators in contemporary British politics. … He preaches a message that people need each other and need to share in the decisions which shape each other's lives. … socialism cannot be imposed from the top down through bureaucracies and nationalised conglomerates. Instead a Labour government can only act by providing the freedom and resources for local communities to control their own destiny. Even when it is less than clear how he would make this work, it is hard to leave a hall after a Blunkett speech, without feeling how marvellous life would be if it did. 1330 In 1985, when Joan Maynard announced her decision to retire from the Brightside Parliamentary seat, key members of the New Left establishment - David Blunkett, Clive Betts, Peter Price, Roger Barton and Roy Thwaites - competed to replace her;1331 Blunkett narrowly defeated Price in the final vote, by 33 votes to 25 and – in 1987 – was elected to Parliament.
1323 ShLSL.Labour.1982#15 (Star) Sh.Telegraph 8/6/1983 1324 Sh.Telegraph 26/7/1985 1325 Sh.Telegraph 8/8/1985 1326 ShLSL.Labour.1985#16 1327 ShLSL.Labour.1985#17 1328 ShLSL.924.74.SQ(b) ShLSL.924.74.SQ(c) ShLSL.924.74.SQ(d) 1329 Guardian 28/9/1992 1330 Guardian 23/11/1985 1331 ShLSL.Labour.1986#18 (Star) http://www.llb.labournet.org.uk/1998/may/news10.html Sheffield 1980-1986 266
The remaining members of the Brightside Mafia – the pragmatists - consolidated their hold on the local party. Their original objectives were far out of reach; they replaced them with the pursuit of large-scale and spectacular public regeneration projects, often in partnership with private developers (a tendency repeated in many other areas of Britain).1332 But pursuing partnership with private sector investors demanded an abandonment of many of the theoretical positions which they had held on their journey to power; the chief executive of the Sheffield Chamber of Commerce commented: If you don't understand the code, you can't understand what they are really talking about. The mistake that people made was to see the Labour group in Sheffield as one body. There have been subtle shifts in the balance of power that have changed the atmosphere considerably.1333 The leading Sheffield pragmatist (though he was not initially identified as distinct from others on the left) was Clive Betts, the Cambridge-educated former Housing Committee Chairman.1334 His unopposed election to the leadership of Sheffield in 1987 was a second-best option for him, after he failed to secure nomination to the Brightside parliamentary seat, or to Hillsborough (where he unsuccessfully challenged Martin Flannery - now aged 67 - in a re- selection battle).1335 It was under Betts that Sheffield carried out its two major regeneration projects of the late 1980s – the promotion of Sheffield as a centre of sporting excellence via its hosting of the World Student Games, and the construction of the Sheffield Supertram. Fortunately for him, he was able to secure election to Parliament in 1992 (along with his colleague Helen Jackson), before the full impact of these projects became evident to the local Party, or to the electorate.
1332 Jamie Gough and Aram Eisenschitz, 'The Construction of Mainstream Local Economic Initiatives: Mobility, Socialization, and Class Relations,' Economic Geography 72, no. 2 (1996): pp.179-80. 1333 FT 10/4/1986 1334 See pages 227, 230, 232, 255 (above). 1335 Guardian 8/6/1985 Sheffield after 1987 267
11. After 1987: Partnership and Regeneration?
The fundamental political problem facing Labour’s leaders after the collapse of the leftist programme was how to build support for collective action in a city which was increasingly geographically polarised, and in which the main beneficiaries of traditional forms of collective action (especially of council housing) were a residual minority, dependent on state income support as well as on state housing. The fundamental civic problem facing them was how to rebuild the economy (and self confidence) of a community that had just undergone massive economic and social change. The solution that they adopted was to pursue managerial efficiency, and to undertake spectacular projects, usually in partnership with the private sector, designed to regenerate Sheffield and to change its identity.
The triumph of managerialism live Betts re-positioned himself politically. Managerial efficiency became a key part of his image. Betts had been described in 1976 as part of ‘a group of neo-Marxists, Ccareerists, and their relations and friends’ attempting to take over the Party.1336 However, he had faced militant trades union opposition when he ran the Housing Department. In August 1987, The Star reported: Sheffield’s new council leader, Clive Betts, has laid down the law for Town Hall staff… managers are being told to shape up or ship out. … Coun. Betts has put his personal, tough stamp on the future of the local authority. ‘Efficiency should be our prime goal... jobs will simply not be retained inside the authority unless work is done efficiently ... Managers will be on the line and will have to co-operate with the work-force… [but] years of negotiations before change is implemented can no longer be allowed.’1337 The Labour manifesto for the city council elections, in May 1988, held out ‘the exciting prospect of partnership with the private sector’ at its centre. Peter Horton - former education chairman, and a Labour councillor for 31 years -remarked: Labour has its back to the wall. Partnership is always difficult, particularly with old enemies. But you have to compromise.1338 The City Council appointed a new Chief Executive, Mrs. Pamela Gordon, to carry through this vision. She had a history markedly different from that of the highly politicised officers appointed by the New Left in the early 1980s: [She] was head girl of Richmond Grammar School for Girls, Surrey, and [secured] an MA in modern history at Oxford. After passing the entry requirements for the London County Council, she began working her way up… she gained a breadth of experience and seniority as assistant director- general for housing, arts, recreation and public services and then deputy-
1336 Star 1/3/1976 1337 Star 27/8/1987 1338 Star 3/5/1988 Sheffield after 1987 268
director of industry and employment. . ... she became the first woman chief executive of Hackney. …She talks of 'rebuilding [that] authority' and 'turning it around.’ ...With her move in 1989 to Sheffield, Britain's fifth largest city, Mrs. Gordon became the first woman chief of a metropolitan council.1339 The city abandoned some tokens of its old radicalism; in 1989 the City Council cancelled its invitation to Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams to deliver the annual Karl Marx Memorial lecture.1340 By 1991, even the journal of the local Tribune Group concluded that: The only rational way forward is for the Labour Group, in conjunction with the District Labour Party and in consultation with in-house trade unions, to make the cuts in jobs and services needed to balance the books.1341 The constitutional changes of the 1970s had increased the importance of individual party activists who attended branch meetings. But by 1989 Party membership was less than half its level in 1964.1342 Roger Barton, secretary of the District Labour Party said that membership was: appalling, [at] an appallingly low level.1343 The 1988 Labour Group Executive was a roll-call of the leftist group which had taken over the party in the early 1980s;1344 its leaders knew from personal experience the power of small groups of determined activists in parties with few members. Although in the mid-1980s the most prominent figures in Sheffield politics had been hostile to ‘witch hunts,’ in the 1990s they took decisive action against the possibility of challenges, especially from the leftist ‘Socialist Organiser’ group (which was expanding its influence in the constituencies of Richard Caborn and David Blunkett).1345 In September 1992, the Sheffield Party launched ‘one of the biggest purges against left-wingers seen in the region in recent times.’1346 Some of those under investigation claimed that that these moves were motivated by a desire to quash criticism of the leadership’s record in managing the World Student Games (discussed below).1347 Leftists fought back. In October 1991, Alan Wigfield (Housing Chair), Pat Heath (recently resigned Chair of Social Services), Richard Eastall (an Education Vice-Chair) and John
1339 Times2/5/1996 1340 Star 11/8/1989 Ireland was an enduring theme. In 1987, the Marx Memorial lecture was on ‘Ireland – a historical, socialist perspective.’ ShLSL.924.74.SQ Netherthorpe Labour Party members’ newsletter. 1341 ShLSL.924.74.SQ Sheffield Labour Activist January 1991. 1342 Star 19/1/1989 1343 Star 19/1/1989 1344 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' p.208 fn. 62. 1345 Star 25/9/1990, 3/7/1991, 30/9/1991 1346 Star 14/9/1992 1347 Star 23/7/1991 Sheffield after 1987 269
Thorne all supported a campaign against expulsions;1348 Hillsborough, Hallam, and Heeley Constituency Parties joined their opposition.1349 In September 1992, Joan Maynard (by now, retired) joined Wigfield and Heath in founding a new leftist body in the city;1350 in the same month, Heath resigned as a councillor in Brightside ward (and in the consequent by-election, the Liberal Democrats took the seat, with a 20% swing).1351 There were allegations of ballot- tampering in favour of the leftist Campaign Group in elections for the Labour National Executive.1352 But the struggles of the left were not sufficient to stop the change of direction. By 1998, Wigfield (once Labour’s Chief Whip) had joined the Sheffield Socialist Party, which intended to run a candidate against council leader Mike Bower.1353 As well as left-right splits, Sheffield’s leaders had to cope with personal ill-will and thwarted ambition. Rivalry simmered between Mike Bower (the new Leader when Betts followed Blunkett into Parliament) and Howard Knight (an expert on local government finance, and an ally of Betts), who had decided not to run against him for the Leadership. Five months of semi-public disagreement about the gravity of the City council's budget crisis preceded Knight’s resignation, allegedly for family and health reasons, announced when his leader was out of the city on a family holiday.1354 The impact of budget cuts provoked conflicts between those representing different parts of the city. In June 1993, a dispute over the city council’s decision to close 12 schools caused veiled complaints about the influence of Councillors Knight, Barton and Price. Heeley Constituency Party withdrew its delegates to the District Labour Party, and froze its funding. A spokesman said : in …the Brightside-Concord Park area, there are 1165 surplus secondary places ... in four schools. None of these have been touched. Of course, it wouldn't be because it covers the wards of three leading councillors promoting the plan! Barton replied: the ... plan ... was put forward by the director of education…If these people are suggesting that she made her recommendations influenced by political pressure from individual members of the Council, then if I was her I would be tempted to sue them.1355
1348 Star 2/10/1991 1349 Star 2/10/1991 1350 Star 2/9/1992 1351 Sh.Telegraph16/10/92 Star 9/10/92 1352 Independent 4/10/1992 1353 Star 4/2/1998 1354 Sh.Telegraph11/9/1992 1355 Star 30/6/1993 Sh.Telegraph2/7/1993. Sheffield after 1987 270
In October, Bower called for a truce in the civil war in his own ranks.1356 But de-selections continued, and the party’s leaders tightened control over candidate selection.1357 In the following year, ten more councillors retired from the council - including such senior figures as Knight, Wigfield, and Howard Capelin.1358 The extent of Labour’s decline in the 1990s has been quantified in the first chapter of this case study. As Rallings and Thrasher point out, Labour performed much worse than would have been expected; by 1995, its share of the vote in Sheffield was close to its national average, while only eight years earlier it had done twenty percentage points better than that.
Table 11.1 Labour in Sheffield vs. National Trends, 1987-19951359
The poor showing at the 1994 election caused consternation in the Labour Group.1360 The response of the leadership was to turn inward, to the remaining pragmatist members of the Brightside mafia; Peter Price resumed the role of deputy leader, Joan Barton became deputy chairman, and Jean Cromer and Viv Nicholson were given major roles.1361 Rules over candidate selection were changed once again: sitting councillors seeking re-selection will from now on have to justify their record before being placed back onto the candidates’ panel by the District Labour Party : previously they were automatically included in the panel. 1362 The overt purpose of this was to improve the quality of councillors; inevitably, more de- selections followed.1363
1356 Star 26/10/1993 1357 Star 13/11/1987, 19/10/1990, 30/11/1990, 10/1/1991. 1358 Star 31/3/1994 1359 Reproduced from Rallings and Thrasher, Local Elections in Britain p.163. 1360 Star 6/5/1994 1361 Star 7/5/1994 1362 Sh.Telegraph 5/8/1994 1363 Sh.Telegraph 20/10/1994 Sheffield after 1987 271
Politics in the city became professionalised. By 1994, a majority of councillors were in-effect full time politicians.1364 But the need to devote so much time to politics, to take what was still an unpaid job, limited the pool of suitable candidates. Leader Mike Bower commented: the average calibre of election candidates is lower than it was 10 years ago.1365 Individual members of the original ‘Brightside Mafia’ continued to move from Sheffield into national political life. In 1989, leftist stalwart and former AEU shop steward Roger Barton (Joan Maynard’s election agent after the ‘coup’ of 1974, and Joan Barton’s husband) was elected to the European Parliament.1366 Helen Jackson was selected for the Sheffield Hillsborough parliamentary seat, which would become vacant on the retirement of Martin Flannery;1367 Clive Betts himself was selected as candidate for Sheffield Attercliffe (though he remained as Leader).1368 Nationally, the Party moved steadily to the right, but initially Sheffield MPs resisted this trend. In September 1989, David Blunkett led the opposition to Neil Kinnock’s attempt to abandon a unilateralist stance on nuclear weapons.1369 In 1990, Martin Flannery and Bill Michie defied front-bench policy and voted against military action to remove the Iraqi army from Kuwait. David Blunkett opposed Neil Kinnock by calling for Labour to cut defence spending.1370 In July 1992, Blunkett was elected to the Shadow Cabinet, but (as Bryan Gould’s campaign manager in the Labour leadership election) he was still not a key member of John Smith’s team.1371 After the election of Tony Blair as Labour’s Leader in July 1994, Sheffield politicians became closely associated with the new regime, even though Caborn had led John Prescott’s campaign against Blair.1372 After 1997, Blunkett became Secretary of State for Education and Employment, then Home Secretary; in both roles, his agenda was closely linked to the experience of his constituents in one of the toughest parts of Sheffield. Caborn became Minister of State in the Department of the Regions, Regeneration and Planning, working for Prescott (and later, Minister for Sport).1373 Other Sheffield MPs played lesser roles; Clive Betts became an assistant government Whip,1374 Helen Jackson a Parliamentary Private
1364 Independent 1/5/1994 1365 Independent 1/5/1994 1366 Times 20/6/1989 1367 Star 23/10/1989 1368 Star 18/9/1990 1369 Star 8/9/1989 1370 Star 1/10/1990 1371 Guardian 28/9/1992 1372 Independent 22/7/1994 1373 Glasgow Herald 13/6/1997 1374 He later was criticised by the Sun newspaper in March 2003 for employing his lover, Mr Jose Gasparo (a male escort agency worker) as his research assistant in the House of Commons. He was Sheffield after 1987 272
Secretary in the Northern Ireland office, and vice-chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party.1375 Bill Michie remained a rebel;1376 but his successor, Meg Munn, was a consistent Blair loyalist.1377 Even the Revd. Alan Billings (by the end of the century, far from Sheffield, the vicar of a parish church in the Lake District, and an academic) was appointed to the Home Office’s (national) Youth Justice Board, and (in March 2003) spoke on BBC television as one of the few Church of England leaders supportive of British military action in Iraq.1378
Grand projects he task faced by Sheffield’s new leaders was to rebuild enthusiasm for collective action (and thus for Labour) at a time when the old bases of Labour support – trades Tunionism, and council housing – had less and less resonance for the majority of the city’s inhabitants. Harold Lambert died in November 1989, six months before he was due to retire and after 43 years service on the council;1379 but in many ways, the projects pursued by Labour’s leaders in the 1990s were similar to his vision of spectacular transformation. They pursued a vision of civic regeneration, based on large-scale, spectacular, public expenditure. In 1987, the City Council and the Chamber of Commerce concluded that: one of the ways of achieving the economic regeneration of the city will be through the fostering of confidence and pride by local businesses in their city.1380 However, pride came before a fall. The regeneration projects were strongly supported by the élite of local businessmen and local churchmen, who came to see close co-operation with Labour’s leaders as essential to bring about civic renewal. But enthusiasm was not enough. Sheffield’s grand projects were often much less financially successful than had been hoped; cost-over runs and operating losses undermined the new leaders’ claims to managerial competence. Large projects were made more attractive because it was often possible to attract external resources to fund them – whether in the form of national or European grants, lottery money, or loans – while day-to-day spending by the Council was increasingly circumscribed. Often, it
recommended for suspension from the House for seven days because of irregularities in his application for Gasparo’s House of Commons pass. House of Commons Committee on Standards and Privileges, Complaints against Mr Clive Betts, 16 July 2003, HC 947. 1375 http://politics.guardian.co.uk/person/parliament/0,9307,-2671,00.html 1376 Mail 11/12/1997, 21/5/1999 Independent 29/6/1999. 1377 http://politics.guardian.co.uk/person/howtheyvoted/0,9310,-6458,00.html 1378 http://www.bbc.co.uk/videonation/articles/c/cumbria_christianminority.shtml 1379 Star 10/11/1989 1380 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' p.171. Sheffield after 1987 273 was hoped that the projects would be self-funding, or at least attract substantial infusions of private-sector capital. Except in the case of city-centre redevelopment, these external resources were not, however, enough to offset the losses that the schemes generated. Loans, in particular, had to be paid back (and generated debt-servicing costs, on the way). As in the 1950s, tight control over the local party ensured that these worries did not result in successful challenges to the power of the leadership. Rather, their failure provided a strong motive for leaders further to tighten their control over the Party, in order to beat-off any potential dissent. Culture The first – and least expensive – project was the designation of a ‘Cultural Industries Quarter’ in the city centre. In 1983, the Council had assisted with the foundation of Red Tape Studios - ‘a suite of music recording studios where local people could come and learn the techniques of recording.’1381 The Northern Media School got involved in the quarter and an art gallery, an independent cinema and various ‘cultural enterprises’ were all eventually located there. It is still evolving and developing and is now dominated by the huge and impressive buildings of the National Centre for Popular Music.1382 This generated considerable enthusiasm amongst commentators. Beatrix Campbell wrote in The Guardian: there's the cultural industries quarter, a unique web of open-access recording studios called Red Tape, … a photographic gallery and darkrooms, and an independent film studio - all sponsored by the council ....The council is also sponsoring the rescue of the old Lyceum Theatre which will supplement the city's flourishing arts. The Crucible Theatre, run by the iconoclastic Clare Venables, plays to average 80 per cent capacity. What was once only a city of work is now also a place of pleasure and culture.1383 But although individual projects may have been exciting, the overall impact of the Quarter was slight. A report published in 1993 (almost ten years after the start of the project) said that the independent sector of arts and cultural activity in the city was ‘seriously under resourced.’ With the exception of film, video and broadcasting, there were few strategies for the support and development of independent producers. Afro-Caribbean and Asian arts groups felt that they were ‘not listened to.’ The index of the Ruskin Craft Gallery (designed to lead customers to craftsmen) contained only eighty names. Sectoral studies of individual activities suggested that Sheffield did not have a nationally significant presence (except in recorded music). In this sector, there was:
1381 Allender, What's Wrong with Labour? p.85. 1382 ibid. 1383 Guardian 23/8/1989 Sheffield after 1987 274
…a mutually sustaining and growing network of recording studios, record labels, retail outlet clubs and other venues. Taken together, this web of activity has begun to acquire … critical mass…1384 Even the scope even of this success was, however, limited. The National Centre for Popular Music went spectacularly bankrupt (and was sold off, at a bargain price, to become the Sheffield Hallam University students’ union building).1385 The impact of popular music on the city, at least in employment terms, remained slight. Overall, the number of cultural and recreational jobs in the city declined in the 1990s, by almost 10%.1386 Sport More expensive than culture was the Council’s decision to sponsor the World Student Games – an event virtually unheard of outside the Eastern Block countries, though apparently highly regarded within them.1387 As with the Cultural Industries Quarter, many of the hoped-for benefits were intangible: Dr. Paul Foley, of Sheffield University's town and regional planning department, said the city was bedevilled by outdated images of soot and smoke. … profit-and-loss criticism was too simplistic… the games would create more than 11,000 jobs… at an average of £24,780 each, compared with £28,760 on development schemes elsewhere. Sheffield would benefit from the publicity and would be left with some of the finest sporting facilities in the country...'This will leave the city well placed for an Olympic bid, perhaps in tandem with Manchester or Birmingham…’1388 These were not self-evidently unrealistic hopes. Manchester’s (unsuccessful) Olympic bid acted as a catalyst for urban regeneration1389 - though Jessop remarks: if one accepts that the actual staging of the Games could prove costly, then the eventual failure to secure them could even be considered a success…1390 The Games were to be managed by an arm’s-length body. This had two subsidiaries: Universiade, which was intended to manage the event, and Sheffield for Health (which owned the sporting facilities).1391 This split represented an attempt to bring private sector skills to the
1384 Rosemary Betterton et al., Made in Sheffield : Towards a Cultural Plan for Sheffield in the 1990's (Sheffield, 1993) pp19-22, 33-40. 1385 Yorkshire Post 24/10/2002 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/3570533.stm 26/3/2004 1386 See Page 148 (above). 1387 FT 11/1/1989 Observer 16/12/1990 1388 Guardian 5/1/1991 1389 Harding, 'Regime Formation in Manchester and Edinburgh,' p.66. 1390 Bob Jessop, 'Governance Failure,' idem., p.29. 1391 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' p.176. Sheffield after 1987 275 management of a public sector project. Peter Price (the council's deputy leader) described the Games as ‘a lynchpin of co-operation’ between the council and Sheffield Chamber of Commerce; and Norman Adsetts, (chairman of a leading private firm, Sheffield Insulations) echoed this view.1392 Richard Field, chairman of local ceramics and refractories company J&J Dyson, and a leading light in the new business-council partnership, described them as ‘our greatest success to date’ in an address to the Royal Society for Arts in early 1990. He advanced a mixture of arguments for the project: It means: * A return of our belief in ourselves and pride in our city, perhaps the crucial first step in our regeneration. * A deadline for our numerous city wide projects – July 1991. * Sheffield, England’s fourth largest City, is back on the map. At the moment motorway service station maps do not show Sheffield – they will. * In 1991 Sheffield will be the centre for world sport. * Our sporting facilities will be transformed into some of the best in Europe. 1393 Some voices were heard pointing out that the project was like the Emperor’s new clothes. The Liberal Democrats opposed the Games from the start.1394 Helen Jackson (Employment Chair) ‘spoke passionately’ against them (but she was disciplined, and – about to be elected as one of the City’s MPs - agreed to make no further comments).1395 Alan Wigfield (Housing Chair) argued that the money would be better spent on housing (and pointedly listened to music on a Sony Walkman throughout a progress report on the Games).1396 But the consensus was hard to challenge. Peter Duff (a councillor who resigned in protest) said, in January 1990: at the moment we have politicians playing at being businessmen and businessmen playing at being politicians. The World Student Games sums it all up.1397 Initially, the council believed that it would be possible to contain the financial risks within prudent limits.1398 Many of the facilities which were constructed (including a £52 million
1392 Guardian 5/1/1991 1393 Field, Betts, and Green, 'Inner City Reconstruction - Sheffield: A Case Study,' pp.344-45. 1394 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' p.176. Times 7/12/1990 FT 9/2/1991 1395 FT 9/2/1991 1396 Allender, What's Wrong with Labour? pp.91,94. FT 9/2/1991 However, Wigfield was an increasingly marginal figure; in 1992, he dropped out of his major roles in Sheffield politics and by the mid 1990s he was in outright opposition. 1397 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' p.177. Sheffield after 1987 276 swimming complex) would later be available for the people of the city.1399 In 1989, The Guardian reported: Peter Price…claims the worst post-Games scenario would leave the city having to find £8 million a year from its global budget, and believes that the good the Games will do in regeneration and image-building more than offsets the risk.1400 However, the city started by over-spending on the bidding process. Nearly £300,000 was spent on staging the bid, ‘and any councillor who could find a suitcase went along’ to the presentation (though since Sheffield was the only city which made a bid to stage the Games, this was unnecessary).1401 When the Games were awarded to Sheffield, building costs spiralled out of control; at the end of December 1989 they were £29 million above the £111 million level quoted only four months earlier; while overall (over four years) the cost of the facilities rose from £25 million to £147 million.1402 Government support was not forthcoming for the refurbishment of the Hyde Park flats (to be used to house athletes), once it was realised that the Council intended to demolish them immediately after the games.1403 Operating costs – in the under-capitalised management company, Universiade – also over-ran;1404 the company spent £3.9 million in the 27 months to the end of 1989, against revenue from sponsors of only £700,000.1405 Matters were not helped by clashes between managers and councillors: An experienced and high-powered team led by Peter Burns, former chief executive of Crown Paints, was recruited, though its style jarred with the traditionalist Labour council from the outset. First-class travel and red spectacles were not the accepted style around Town Hall.1406 At the end of 1989, Burns was dismissed,1407 given two hours to clear his desk and to vacate a company flat. The Financial Times commented: It is clear the breakdown developed over a long period. There also developed a personality and political clash between Mr. Burns and his chairman, Mr. Price. Mr. Burns, a blunt Liverpudlian, was a main board director of Reed International for six years, where he had responsibility for 19 profit centres in a dozen companies. Mr. Price is a laboratory technician at Sheffield University and a committed socialist.1408
1398 ibid. 1399 FT 9/2/1991 1400 FT 8/9/1989 1401 FT 9/2/1991 1402 Times7/12/1990 1403 FT 1/2/1990 1404 PR Week 14/6/1990 1405 £1 million was spent on marketing, £750,000 on salaries, and £200,000 on interest charges. 1406 FT 9/2/1991 1407 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' p.176. 1408 FT 1/2/1990 Sheffield after 1987 277
In March 1990, the Government's Sheffield audit office was called in to investigate a claim (described by Peter Price as ‘completely untrue’) that a £1.5 million loan guarantee had been promised to the Games' organisers by the council without proper authorisation. However, whether a guarantee had been issued or not, Universiade simultaneously asked Sheffield to write off all its previous loans, and the financial guarantees it had made to the company’s bankers.1409 It then collapsed, with debts of between £3 million and £4 million. Peter Price said: Everything is on time apart from the income.1410 The council took over the direct running of the games. It placed in charge of the project the Director of Housing, Ray Gridley (who had originally applied for - but not won - the chief executive’s post at Universiade). Gridley had worked alongside Clive Betts in the housing department in the 1980s; however, he had no experience of running sporting events or of negotiating sponsorship.1411 The Financial Times reported: [He is] clearly having the time of his life. Cheerfully admitting to having no previous experience of running a major sporting event, he said: 'The right background for this sort of task is public administration. It's no accident that there isn't a single top executive from [Universiade] on my team.'1412 In an unanticipated blow, television coverage of the Games was then lost, when British Satellite Broadcasting merged with Rupert Murdoch’s Sky TV. In December 1990, the television series World in Action alleged a 'conspiracy of silence' by the council which, it was alleged, faced the prospect of having to underwrite very large losses.1413 Left-wing Labour councillors failed by 38 votes to 17 to persuade the Labour group to abandon the Games (though they won support from David Blunkett and Bill Michie).1414 Instead, Clive Betts appealed to Conservative Environment Secretary, Michael Heseltine, for help: this is the sort of project he will admire….Almost all the opposition to the Games has come from the hard left.1415 But no help were forthcoming, and little sponsorship was found.1416 By now, the losses were so large that it was clear they would have significant financial consequences for the Council in other aspects of its work:
1409 Guardian 2/3/1990 1410 PR Week 14/6/1990 1411 Observer16/12/1990 1412 The FT 9/2/1991 1413 Observer16/12/1990 1414 Independent 31/12/1990 1415 Independent 31/12/1990 1416 FT 9/2/1991 Sheffield after 1987 278
Services are being cut and 3,000 redundancies will be made in the coming year. Yet when the consortium of French and Australian banks that loaned the £152 million for WSG facilities begins to require repayments in 1992, the cost to the city will be nearly £10m a year for almost 20 years....1417 An inquiry concluded that Ray Gridley had been guilty of 'serious shortcomings relating to financial matters.' He was said by the council’s doctors to be ‘burnt out…[and]…never [likely to be able to] return to a top executive position,’ while his colleagues claimed he had been reduced to 'a trembling wreck'. Late in 1992, therefore, Gridley was given a £250,000 compensation payment by the council. Fortunately, he later made an unanticipated recovery, and (by the start of 1994) was heading a property company competing for contracts to manage council houses. His new employers commented: He is very well. He has a hectic lifestyle and is very enthusiastic. - while the new Labour leader of Sheffield council, Mike Bower said: Although it might surprise some people that he is working again, I am very happy for him.1418 The Games did not have unequivocally negative consequences. By 1993, Sheffield was celebrating its leading role in provision for a wide range of UK sports, and Peter Price was reflecting on the contribution the Games had made to its new status.1419 In 1998 (with the active support of David Blunkett, now in government) Sheffield became the home of the new United Kingdom Sports Institute.1420 In August 2004, it was announced that Peter Price was to be awarded the M.B.E. The website of the Sheffield Labour Party commented: Peter …has become known as Sheffield's Mr sport (sic). One of the main drivers behind the use of sport and culture as a regeneration tool, he over saw the building of the major sporting facilities in Sheffield in the 1980's and 90's. He is …still chair of Sport England in Yorkshire. Peter [is] a keen cyclist and …walker [and] has run the London Marathon 6 times and cycled across both Peru and Mexico for charity. Now at the tender age of 66 he is considering walking up Mount Kilimanjaro for charity!! The award of the M.B.E. is richly deserved for a man who has dedicated his life to Sheffield and its people. No doubt it will quite an occasion when this renowned left winger of the Labour Party goes to Buckingham Palace to receive his award from Her Majesty the Queen later this year!!1421 But this belated public recognition (of someone who had been a core member of the Brightside Mafia, as well as the major force behind Sheffield sport) came at a high price, both to the city, and to the local credibility and reputation of the Labour Party. The World Student Games had
1417 FT 9/2/1991 1418 Mail 27/3/1994 1419 Times3/3/1993 1420 Allender, What's Wrong with Labour? p.96. By July 2003, there were reports that the Sports Institute building itself was dangerously over budget, and was asking Sheffield Council to take over the management of the project. Star 3/7/2003 1421 http://www.sheffieldlabourparty.co.uk/latest/peter_price.htm Sheffield after 1987 279 greatly weakened the Party’s claim to effective management, just when its older claim – to lead a socialist challenge to the market society – had also ceased to resonate,. Investment As well as promoting culture and sport, the Council sought to secure investment in new infrastructure projects, and in city-centre renewal. While in 1960 modernity had been symbolised by the removal of Sheffield’s trams, in the 1990s it was symbolised by their reintroduction.1422 By late 1993, the centre of the city was enveloped in ‘traffic chaos’ as a result of a ‘three-year £1.6 billion works programme’ (including work to build the Sheffield Supertram).1423 This, and the perceived incompetence with which the project was managed, had a generally negative impact on residents’ perceptions of the project.1424 The first Supertram route to be opened linked the city centre to the new Meadowhall shopping centre and with the sports facilities built for the World Student Games.1425 The network sought to serve the needs of the poor (and Labour-voting) areas of the city.1426 The Observer commented: There is no track to the affluent suburbs, ruling out rich pickings from white- collar commuters. Half-empty trams run to the poorest parts, where unemployment is high and residents have less reason to travel to the centre. …Shortly after construction began, the council pulled down large tracts of housing in these areas, further reducing potential use….1427
1422 Graham Parkhurst and University of Oxford. Faculty of Anthropology and Geography., 'Changing Tracks : The Influence of a New Light Railway on Perceptions of Urban Space and Travel Decisions' (Thesis D Phil --University of Oxford 1997, 1997). Chapter 6. 1423 Guardian 15/12/1993 1424 Parkhurst and University of Oxford. Faculty of Anthropology and Geography., 'Changing Tracks'. Chapter 6. 1425 Allender, What's Wrong with Labour? p.95. 1426 Survey data revealed a widespread popular belief that the route had been extended to Mosborough mainly because the Leader of the council lived in that area. Taylor, Evans, and Fraser, A Tale of Two Cities p.94. 1427 Observer19/4/1998 Sheffield after 1987 280
Figure11.1 Route of Supertram, and Labour-voting city wards in 1991.
Seyd, writing in about 1992, argued that the electorate still remained attached to Labour, and were aware of its long record of good management of the city: Labour control is explained partly by … the public’s satisfaction with the quality of their local services.1428 But it was not clear that local people were satisfied with local services. Journalists universally reported popular anger at the way the council had been managed. Even eight years earlier, opinion poll evidence (cited by Seyd) suggested that as many Sheffield citizens were dissatisfied as were satisfied with the running of the City Council.1429 Indeed, speaking in a newspaper interview in October 1992, Seyd himself said: there was no doubt that Labour voters had been dismayed by the party’s performance over the previous few years.1430 The regenerative potential of the tram seemed less than had been anticipated; proximity to its route had little impact on property prices.1431 Sheffield was a large city, and getting from home to a tram stop could be as time consuming as travelling directly into the city centre. The Times commented:
1428 Though he advances little empirical evidence to support the claim of voter satisfaction, other than a reference to voting behaviour (effectively, a circular argument). Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' pp.155, 206 fn.8. 1429 Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left p.152. citing MORI. Public opinion in Sheffield, June 1984. 1430 Sh.Telegraph 16/10/92 1431 Henneberry, 'The Impact of the South Yorkshire Supertram,' pp.16-18. and passim Sheffield after 1987 281
Regarded in the 1980s as the jewel in the crown of Labour's northern municipal dominions, Sheffield was lauded as the finest example of radical but responsible socialism at work. That reputation has taken a battering in recent years. First came the 1991 World Student Games, a doomed £150 million venture that piled new borrowings on the council's mountain of debt. Next was the Supertram project,… Budget cuts running at more than £30 million a year for the past three years, resulting in the closure of schools, old people's homes, libraries and public lavatories, have left the council looking increasingly out of touch.1432 Even when the network was fully opened, in 1995, the Supertam continued to run at a loss. As was the case with much of the city-centre renewal, the tram changed the feel of the city. The clanging bells of the trams (an echo of the bells from San Francisco cable cars) and the snaking, silent trains were a constant reminder that things were improving. But this was not enough unequivocally to sway public opinion. The Supertam had received £233 million of government funds, and £7 million of private sector investment (mainly from the developers of the Meadowhall shopping centre).1433 Late in 1997 it was sold to Stagecoach (the private bus and train operator) for just over £1 million. In April that year, the council was forced to increase the cost of pensioners’ concessionary bus fares, partly to cover the debts of the scheme.1434 Physical reconstruction gathered pace after 1987. The first objective was to bring about regeneration in the areas of the city worst hit by industrial collapse. In March 1988, the Government announced the creation of the Sheffield Development Corporation, with an initial budget of £50 million (later raised to £70 million), and with powers to provide services and acquire, manage and dispose of land. This body was given control of 2,000 acres to the east of the city centre. The leaders of the council – rather than, as in the 1980s, aiming for confrontation – negotiated for its Board to include local business and civic leaders (including the ousted former MP, Fred Mulley).1435 The Board targetted the completion of the Meadowhall shopping centre in the Don Valley, the creation of facilities for 1991 World Student Games, the construction of a civic airport (a symbol of modernity sought by the city since at least the 1930s), and the creation of the Supertram.1436 But even here, success had bitter-sweet consequences: Where once there were steel mills, marshalling yards, and back-to-back houses, there is now a vast international stadium, an arena conference complex, and the Meadowhall shopping centre. Each has its own symbolic significance. The first was offered to, and refused by, each of the city's two main football clubs; the second was where Neil Kinnock at a mass rally
1432 Times3/5/1994. 1433 Russ Haywood and Jane Underwood, 'Sheffield Transport Policies and Investment,' (Sheffield, 1995), pp.5-7. 1434 Observer19/4/1998 1435 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' pp.172,74. Marshall, 'Town Planning in Sheffield,' p.31. 1436 Marshall, 'Town Planning in Sheffield,' p 31. Sheffield after 1987 282
snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in last year's general election; and the third has dealt a crippling body blow to city centre shops.1437 In the 1990s, regeneration came increasingly to be associated with the physical renewal of the city centre.1438 Economic revival - and the shift to a service-based economy – increased central property prices, and attracted developers.1439,1440 The Council developed a ‘Heart of the City’ strategy. Proposals emerged for the hideous 1960s ‘egg box’ extension to the Victorian Town Hall to be demolished; because of the growing value of the site, the council could even hope to make a profit on the demolition.1441 City centre redevelopment was – on the whole - visually beneficial for Sheffield. By the end of the century, many of the ugliest buildings had been demolished, and many redundant industrial buildings had been converted into smart apartments. There were floodlit fountains around the Town Hall, with plain white lights sprinkled tastefully around the branches of the trees. The spectacular Winter Gardens next to the Town Hall (built with Lottery money) were full of New Zealand tree ferns, and sheltered attractive coffee shops and craft retailers. The up-market shops of the city centre served the prosperous customers from Sheffield’s south and west. Cafés, restaurants and bars clustered around the central area. This was close to the goal that Sheffield’s city fathers had pursued in the 1950s and 1960s - the creation of a modern city, with a visual clear identity, and sense of place, distinct from the grime and squalor of the past. But for many potential Labour voters – trapped in decaying council estates which ringed the city - these changes in the centre were not enough.
Social Housing opular dissatisfaction with the Council stemmed not only from its management failures on regeneration projects, but also from its powerlessness to solve major issues. Social P housing, because it represented the major asset owned by the Council, lay at the heart of many of the dilemmas. While in the 1950s council housing had represented the greatest hope for the poorly-housed residents of the city, by the 1990s it was councillors’ greatest cause of despair. This came primarily from the size of the potential liabilities associated with it. Alan Wigfield, the Housing Chair, said: The crisis in Sheffield housing can be halted but only if we have a national government prepared to invest in what is a precious asset,1442 A survey in August 1993 showed the scale of the problem.1443 Surveys of need had often been used in the 1980s to score political points; but by the mid-1990s there was a new note of
1437 Guardian 15/12/1993 1438 Star 24/2/2004 1439 Marshall, 'Town Planning in Sheffield,' p 30. 1440 Star 27/7/1988 1441 Star 1/6/1993, 16/12/1994, 21/12/1994 Sh.Telegraph16/12/1994 1442 Star 1/3/1991 Sheffield after 1987 283 desperation (and of realism). The Housing Department’s principal development officer, Ray Andrews, said: We have spent more than half a billion pounds on housing investment over the past 10 years and still haven’t solved all the problems.1444 The £600 million which the Council now estimated it needed to spend amounted to only just over £8,000 per council-owned dwelling - roughly equivalent to a rent increase of £15 per dwelling per week.1445 If it had chosen to increase rents, for many tenants the cost would have been met by centrally-provided rent rebates. But rebates would not have been available to those who were not poor, and increases thus remained intensely controversial (as they had been in 1966); furthermore, from time to time (especially after 1997) central government limited the Council’s right to impose rent increases. In the absence of more resources from rent, the ability to improve social housing depended on central government funding. But this came with tight strings attached. Peter Price remarked: Our Soviet twin city of Donetsk in the Ukraine enjoys more freedom than we do to spend budgets.1446 Increasingly, recognising this reality, the Council sought to work within government policy. New streams of funding started to become available. At first, these consisted of small grants, focused on specific projects.1447 The Council raised its rents somewhat (despite protests in the District Labour Party),1448 and in 1991 and 1992 submitted bids for regeneration funding under the new ‘city challenge’ regime.1449 Later, government directed increasing amounts of money to non-profit housing associations; councils were given ‘nomination rights’ over tenancies in the new houses they built. Sheffield received increasing support - £24 million to build 500 new rented homes in 1992, for example; 1450 and a further £38 million of new money in 1994.1451 In the autumn of that year, the Council, in partnership with private sector bodies,
1443 Star 23/9/1993 1444 Star 23/8/1993 1445 calculated as an annuity to perpetuity at a 10% interest rate 1446 FT 8/9/1989 1447 For example, in the late autumn of 1987, the Department of the Environment (DoE) decided to permit the city council to spend £438,000 on improvements in living conditions at Sheffield’s Kelvin and Hyde Park estates, and made a £750,000 grant to improve run-down housing in the Woodland block at Stannington. Star 23/11/1987 1448 Star 10/1/1991 1449 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' p.171. 1450 Star 21/2/1992 Sh.Telegraph21/2/1992 1451 Star 10/2/1995 Sheffield after 1987 284 sought a further £42 million from the new Single Regeneration Budget.1452 In February 1995 The Star reported with satisfaction that, under the new funding regime, Sheffield has so far done the best of anywhere outside London.1453 Compared with these sums, the discretionary spending available to the Council was trivial.1454 Councils had always had to trim their sails to take account of the national grants regime and – apart from rhetorical flourishes in the early 1980s, when all co-operation with the Conservatives was seen as treachery – to do so posed no fundamental threat to their beliefs. The issue of whether they should own housing at all – which became increasingly pressing in the 1990s - posed a much more fundamental challenge. The creation and ownership of council housing had been central to the Labour Party’s mission in Sheffield since at least 1926; many of its core voters still lived in it; and there was a deep-rooted mistrust of non-council landlords (even non-profit bodies such as Housing Associations). On the other hand, the liabilities associated with maintaining the housing stock were considerable, and there seemed little prospect of securing external resources to meet them (though both the Conservative Government and its 1997 Labour successor were willing to offer significant financial help to new social-housing landlords). Initially, the council fiercely opposed any move to divest it of control over its housing stock. Alan Wigfield, the Chair of the Housing Committee, said in 1989: The real issue is going to be national or international companies trying to move in and trying to buy up the council estates,1455 By 1992 there was no sign of the threatened rush by international capitalism to invest in Sheffield’s council housing, but the council faced both escalating liabilities and the prospect of five more years of Conservative government. Wigfield dropped out of his role in mainstream Sheffield politics, increasingly disillusioned. His successors changed tack. The Housing Department published a document, Options for the Future, which proposed hiving off council houses to arm’s-length bodies.1456 In 1994 Department of the Environment commissioned a study, jointly with five Labour local authorities (including Sheffield), to examine the feasibility of transferring council homes, including inner-city tower blocks, to housing associations.1457 Even John Prescott, during his campaign for the Labour leadership in 1994, emphasised that private finance for public housing could overcome the funding problems faced by councils.1458
1452 Star 7/10/1994, 10/2/1995 1453 Star 10/2/1995 1454 Crook, 'Needs, Standards and Affordability,' p.88. Star 16/9/1993 1455 Star 16/11/1989 1456 Star 17/7/1992 1457 Independent 1/8/1994 1458 Independent 1/8/1994 Sheffield after 1987 285
However, while the Council found stock transfer increasingly attractive, its tenants did not. Tenants’ prime concern was that they might have lower levels of legal protection of their tenancy, at the same time as facing higher rents. Rents in housing association housing schemes were typically between 25% and 75% higher than those charged for modernised council houses, so that in 1996 a three bedroomed council house cost around £34 a week, while a similar housing association property had rent in the £55-£60 range. This created a poverty- trap for housing association tenants. The poorest tenants could afford the new homes, because their rent was met by housing benefits. But the withdrawal of benefit as incomes rose meant that they could not afford to get better paid (or, sometimes, any) jobs. In consequence, a 1996 study showed that (in the estates studied) 80% of recent lettings had gone to families with no adult in paid work, and 80% of tenants had small children.1459 An unstated hope of government policy was that the shift to other social landlords might break-up the monolithic deprivation of some council estates; but higher rents, combined with the availability of rent- rebates, actually increased the concentration of social deprivation, by effectively excluding those on middling incomes. Research highlighted the stigma attached to many estates; although homes were of better quality and often with gardens, they were still unpopular if the surrounding estate had a poor reputation.1460 The Council thus faced a dilemma. Given its funding constraints and potential liabilities, it needed to divest its housing stock. But it knew that to do so would risk substantial unpopularity (and that tenants might veto the proposals anyway, by voting against transfer in the mandatory ballots on each scheme). It was thus paralysed; for example, in the spring of 1997, the new Housing Chair condemned what he described as ‘forced privatisation:’ but at the same time accepted that 2,600 homes would have to be transferred in order to get £20 million regeneration grant.1461 The council wanted the money, but did not want the opprobrium which might flow from being seen as ‘against’ council-housing. Demand for social housing persisted (in 1997, there were 42,562 single people and families on the main waiting list).1462 But its likely occupants changed. Traditional allocation mechanisms broke down, as they had done in Southwark. Statutory homelessness became an increasingly important route of entry: ‘Most of those reporting to us are young, and many are single parent women,’ said a council spokesman. ‘This reflects a national trend.’1463 During the 1980s, recorded homelessness rose fivefold.1464 In early 1990, Sheffield was forced briefly to close the council’s homelessness section altogether, and then only to open in
1459 Star 27/11/1996. Report of research by Prof. Tony Crooke and Dr. Roy Darke, Sheffield University 1460 Star 27/11/1996. Report of research by Ian Cole, Sheffield Hallam University 1461 Sh.Telegraph14/3/1997 1462 Star 8/2/1997 1463 Star 15/2/1990 1464 Crook, 'Needs, Standards and Affordability,' p.90. Sheffield after 1987 286 the afternoons, in order to cope with the backlog. 1465 The following year, Sheffield Council allocated up to 23% of its vacant housing stock to met the needs of the homeless.1466 Faced with these pressures, the Council started to consider other ways to run the allocation system: At the moment people are putting their names down automatically at 16 as an insurance policy for the future... In future we want to take account of people who are living in sub-standard private rented accommodation, people in fear of domestic violence or harassment or young couples with families living in overcrowded houses.1467 In December 1990, the Council altered the rules for allocating housing, moving away from a purely date-of-application based system, and allowing newcomers to the city (and those in need) to jump the queue.1468 The new Housing Chair, Sandra Robinson, was ready to advocate a new basis for allocation - a mainly needs-based system.1469 The issue rumbled on into the new century.1470 By then, 60% of Sheffield’s householders were owner-occupiers; only 26.5% were direct tenants of the Council;1471 the nature and role of council housing in the life of the city had changed beyond recognition, as it became increasingly the preserve of the socially marginal. This was a fundamental change in the basis of Sheffield’s political economy. Politicians such as Roy Hattersley had fought fiercely any proposal to move away from first- come-first-served housing allocation, because they believed that public provision should be available to all citizens, and should bind them together. By 1997, it was acting as a driver of geographical segregation between the poor and other social groups. Because turnover in council housing stock rose, it became easier to place people quickly (despite the size of the waiting list). A survey in 1990 showed that almost 30% of applicants for dwellings were housed in less than a month, and almost 70% were placed within a year.1472 But the ability to get a home depended on where tenants were willing to live. Some estates were so unattractive that demolition seemed the only possible option. Management became increasingly difficult: …only 27 per cent of tenants give notice of quitting. Nine per cent abandon their properties which can take a couple of months to discover and seventeen per cent die in their homes, which we cannot plan for.1473 These dilemmas continued into the new century, and crossed party boundaries. The Liberal Democrat Council, elected in 1999, explored solutions very similar to those proposed by its
1465 Star 15/2/1990. 21/6/1990 1466 Star 1/3/1991 1467 Star 1/3/1991 1468 Star 1/12/1990 1469 Star 16/9/1993 1470 Star 11/2/2004 1471 Unit, 2001 Census Sheffield Profile. 1472 Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Paying for Britain’s Housing, (1990) quoted by Star 3/12/1990 1473 Star 1/3/1991 Sheffield after 1987 287
Labour predecessors. 1474 Demolition became the new orthodoxy amongst the city’s leaders, though Labour moved to oppose stock transfer (which remained unpopular with tenants).1475 Housing officials argued in 2001 that: there is now a large oversupply of unwanted council housing, and… what is needed is a diversification of tenure throughout the city. It is not just a local, but a national phenomenon that people no longer wish to live in council accommodation, but prefer to own. In Sheffield, the fact that large-scale demolition of council housing is underway, due to low demand and to parts of the stock being unsuitable, requires the authority to develop new ways of providing affordable housing…1476 In January 2002 (reflecting these pressures), the Liberal Democrat Council proposed to transfer all of Sheffield's 63,000 council houses into non profit making trusts by 2010, and advocated a programme of demolition of the worst (or most unpopular) building. But this policy (which would attract central government grants) was still rejected by some tenants; on some estates tenants were said to resist ‘the pulling down of a single brick.’1477 Stock-transfer was an easy stick with which opposition parties could attack city rulers; in Birmingham, where Labour was in power, the Liberal Democrats argued strongly against it, while in Sheffield, the political roles were reversed.1478 When Labour returned to power in Sheffield it first suspended the Liberal proposals; then re-introduced them (in all but name); then withdrew them again.1479 In February 2003, it reintroduced them – but based on area-based transfers (and votes) rather than a city-wide decision.1480 Results of the ballots, in October 2004, suggested strong tenant support for transfer to Labour’s preferred option – an ‘Arm’s Length Management Organisation,’ with the housing still ultimately owned by the council – rather than for outright transfer to housing associations; it was hoped that this would trigger the release of up to £1 billion of central government funding to regenerate the estates, tripling annual expenditure to between £200 and £300 million;1481 as part of the process, an extensive programme of demolitions was announced. However, although the programme was aimed to achieve the new national ‘housing decency’ standard for all council homes by 2010,1482 it was not clear that physical improvements to the houses (and demolition of the worst estates) would
1474 Star 30/1/2002 1475 Star 16/11/2000, 17/11/2000 1476 Boulter and Hughes, 'Mixed Estates,' p.27. 1477 Star 28/10/2000, 23/1/2002, 30/1/2002 1478 Yorkshire Post 27/4/2002 Times 9/4/2002. 1479 Yorkshire Post 29/10/2002 Star 1/8/2002, 13/9/2002, 20/9/2002, 2/11/2002, 20/2/2003, 17/9/2003. 1480 Yorkshire Post 24/6/2002, 12/8/2002 Star 8/8/2002, 20/2/2003, 17/9/2003. 1481 Star 19/10/2004 1482 see page 119 Sheffield after 1987 288 be sufficient to overcome the collapse in social order, and problems of blight and crime, which now characterised the worst council-housing estates.1483 The Park Hill Flats – symbol of Harold Lambert’s and Roy Hattersley’s housing crusade – were an exception to the programme of demolition. Listed Grade II* as of outstanding architectural merit, they faced a cost of £25 million ‘to tackle repairs and put in vital security improvements to keep muggers and drug pushers, who terrorise residents, at bay.’1484 As in the most desirable parts of Southwark, Labour’s solution in the new century was to remove existing tenants, renovate the buildings, and sell (or rent) the apartments to the affluent. SHEFFIELD'S gloomy Park Hill flats are set for a £40 million pound revamp which will turn them into stylish upmarket apartments. The ambitious scheme aims to transform the little-loved block of 1,000 council flats into a collection of plush apartments for sale, rented flats and small businesses. A huge internal refurbishment of the flats interiors would be accompanied by a major clean up of the exterior. Along with elaborate environmental improvements and public art, the scheme aims to create a unique and eyecatching gateway to the city from the M1 and the railway station. The flats are listed as being of national importance for their architectural merit and there are restrictions on external works which would alter original appearance. Already, major commitments have been made by the city council and various regeneration agencies, including the Government-backed English Partnerships, which is expected to announce a multi-million pound grant tomorrow. The massive project requires major private sector investment to succeed - but council leader Jan Wilson is ‘quietly confident’ a developer or a development consortium can be found….the key to success is Park Hill's uniqueness, location and affordability, said Coun Wilson. ‘It is a very unusual building on a hillside which is unique nationally. I think it will be visually stunning if it is upgraded….Apartments would be generous in size and buyers would get a lot for their money. It would help a lot of young couples get their first foot on the property ladder.’ If the scheme goes ahead the 1,500 people currently living in the flats will have to move, although most people there are short-term tenants. They will be given the £3,000 home movers allowance and 40 housing points to help them find a new home of their choice. ‘It would create great upheaval but a significant number of people living on the flats have said they want to move into new houses away from Park Hill,’ said Coun Wilson. ‘Nobody is being forced out at this early stage and people are to be interviewed over their wishes. There will be people who want to return and we will do our best to accommodate them but there can be no guarantees….’1485
1483 Star 2/11/2004 1484 Guardian 28/5/2001 1485 Star 25/9/2003 Sheffield after 1987 289
Geographical inequalities As in Southwark, social housing had a paradoxical impact in Sheffield; it was a lens which concentrated social deprivation in some parts of the city, but it also saved families from the worst consequences of poverty, by making sure that they had somewhere to live and to bring up their children. However, electoral support for Labour in Sheffield became concentrated in the city’s poorest neighbourhoods; as it did so, the Party found it increasingly vulnerable to challenges in wards outside that base.
Table 11.2 Income support in 1991, and Ward election results to 20021486
While in the 1940s and 1950s social problems had been wide-spread, they were now localised. Growing inequality between neighbourhoods increased the difficulty of achieving a sense of common purpose between them. By the turn of the century, the divisions of the city were such that a house which costs just £15,000 in Fir Vale can cost up to £70,000 just four miles away in Hunters Bar.14874
1486 Income support data from Betterton et al., Made in Sheffield. p.15, citing Poverty in Sheffield, City Council, August 1991. Source for election results: Sheffield Star, Sheffield Council 1487 Star 28/1/2000 Sheffield after 1987 290
Figure 11.2 Terraced houses: price changes by post code 1991-19991488
Terraced houses: Price changes by post code 1991/2 to 1998/9
£ 70,000 Postcode
£ 60,000 S11 S10 £ 50,000 S7 S8 S6 £ 40,000 S36 S20 S13
Current £ Current £ 30,000 S35 S12 S2 £ 20,000 S5 S9 £ 10,000 S14 S4
£ 0 1991/92 1998/99
Source: Halifax house price data (The Star 28/01/2000), author's calculations City centre developments of smart apartments attracted high prices1489 In the south west of the city, a national survey revealed that the Sheffield Hallam constituency was the ‘most affluent place in the country after London and the home Counties.’ It had a higher percentage of people earning more than £ 60,000 per year than traditionally wealthy areas such as Windsor or Tunbridge Wells…The area… was…one of the most professional constituencies in the country, with a high proportion of people with second degrees, notably professors at the Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam universities and employees of the medical trust….1490 On the other hand, The Star reported: more than 40 per cent of the city’s 221,000 homes are plummeting towards neglect and it’s not just council tenants in danger. Nearly 26,000 homeowners face being trapped in properties they are unable to sell or afford to maintain. …in the east of the city … property values … are at a standstill or falling.1491 Labour power depended on the votes of the poor; but the poor were increasingly concentrated in its electoral heartlands. It was not clear how the affluent areas of the city could be persuaded to marshal the resources (and political will) required to meet the needs of these marginalised districts. Spectacular regeneration projects were not – by themselves – enough
1488 Halifax House Price Index, quoted by Star 28/1/2000: author’s calculations. 1489 Star 29/5/2002 1490 FT 14/8/2002 1491 Star 29/5/2002 Sheffield after 1987 291 either to transform poor neighbourhoods, or (by acting as examples) to mobilise a new consensus for the merits of collective action. When regeneration projects failed, they undermined even the city’s prior reputation for managerial competence. National grants could not make up the difference: in December 1995, for example, the Government more than doubled the amount of regional aid allocated via the Single Regeneration Budget (successor of ‘city challenge’) from £125 million to £265 million. But this was for the whole country.1492 The new Labour Government launched a series of inner-city renewal projects after 1997, and Sheffield benefited from the majority of these; but even though they made a significance difference in inner-city areas where they were brought to bear (especially when several programmes were targeted at the same place), the scale of resources available nationally was small compared to the scope of the need (the New Deal for Communities programme in Sheffield, for example, proposed to invest only £50 million spread over ten years across the entire city).1493 There were also questions about the extent to which schemes would attract continuing revenue funding, once initiatives ended. Commenting on post-1997 regeneration projects in 12 inner- city neighbourhoods across England and Wales (including one in Sheffield), the Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion commented: our overall conclusion is that while many measures are pushing the most disadvantaged and declining areas in the direction of recovery, regeneration will truly take hold when people with higher incomes, needing affordable homes, choose these areas. This is dependent on physical regeneration of these areas, sustained by ongoing, intensive management, supervision and environmental maintenance.1494 But Sheffield also faced a breakdown of the shared values which had once helped people in these neighbourhoods to live together. In June 1999, residents of the Painted Fabrics estate in Norton asked the council to consider imposing a minimum age level on those allocated housing on the state, ‘to 'protect the peaceful local atmosphere,' after the flats (mainly occupied be elderly people) had been troubled by ‘a small minority of younger tenants playing loud music and keeping late hours.’ Assistant area manager Alison Wood said: The strength of feeling was quite clear and we are taking it seriously, although we have to balance the idea against the need to supply housing for all ages in all parts of the city so far as possible.1495 Increasingly, the Council made use of its powers to evict tenants, and to secure Anti Social Behaviour Orders – but these processes were time consuming, and could only deal with the
1492 FT 13/12/1995 1493 Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, 30th January 2005. http://www.renewal.net/England/YorksHumber/Regioninfo.asp#SYorks 1494 Paskell and Power, 'The Future's Changed,' p.50. 1495 Guardian 7/6/1999 Sheffield after 1987 292 worst offenders.1496 Prostitution (and the linked problems of AIDS and drug abuse) exemplified the problems of the decaying inner city areas. The council and the police wavered between repression and controlled tolerance. In July 1997, police and council jointly proposed the creation of what was - in effect - an area in which prostitution would be tolerated. To the alarm of the Chamber of Commerce, the council proposed a non-residential area in the city’s business district; residents of the suburb of Broomhall, on the other hand, where prostitution was currently centred, supported the scheme ‘as a 'worthwhile experiment'.1497 In 1999, the Liberals first advocated (and then backed away from) the registration of brothels and saunas.1498 In September 1999, newspapers reported the case of 12-year-old girl made pregnant by a 14- year-old boy, close to David Bunkett’s childhood home. Peter Price commented: There was a sense of community and responsibility that seems absent today. Everyone knew about sex and who was doing it, but not at 12. If a lad got a girl pregnant he would do the decent thing. Teenage pregnancies were not unheard of but unmarried mothers were a rarity.1499 A report prepared for the council in 2002 suggested that: the Manor area feels like a powder keg waiting to explode during the summer holiday. But it is not just the usual troublespots where youths are hanging on street corners - youngsters across the city seem intent on causing mayhem, taunting old folk and anyone who challenges them. ...Housing officers across the city … gave a depressing picture of youthful tension fuelled by boredom, alcohol and drugs.1500 In February 2002 bus services to several areas were cancelled after 9 pm, after a spate of attacks on buses and crews.1501 In July 2002, an off-duty policeman was stabbed in the back by a 14-year-old girl at a church fete in the Home Secretary's constituency. The parish priest said: this is the worst case I have ever heard of in the whole of my 30 years here. These gangs … cause nothing but trouble. People are scared to live round here now.1502 Perhaps reflecting this fear of disorder, in May 2003, although Labour won its usual large majority, the second-placed candidate in the Brightside ward in the city council elections was a candidate from the neo-fascist British National Party, who secured 18% of the votes.1503
1496 very frequent newspaper reports from 1997 onwards: for example, Star 24/4/1997, 31/1/1998, 3/7/1998, 3/5/1999, 30/6/2000, 6/7/2001. 1497 Mail 10/7/1997 1498 Guardian 7/3/2001 1499 Guardian 7/3/2001 1500 Star 10/6/2002 1501 Star 21/2/2002 1502 Star 8/7/2002 Sheffield after 1987 293
Labour movement conflicts The other traditional base of Labour support in Sheffield had been Trades Union activity. But the collapse of employment in manufacturing industry (and especially of industry concentrated in large plants) had, by 1987, fatally weakened the power of the old industrial trades unions. The only large employers left in the city were public sector bodies – such as the Council itself, the Health Service, the University, and the Manpower Services Commission.1504 This posed problems for the traditional balance of power within the District Labour Party.1505 It also posed problems for the management of the city, since the public sector now became the only part of Sheffield’s economy in which militant trades unionism had the opportunity to operate,1506 while the leaders of the Council sought both to change working practices, and (reluctantly) to restrain expenditure. Disputes with NALGO continued, as they had in the 1980s, and over similar issues - the use of computers, staffing levels, and the status of temporary workers.1507 Managers found staff performance hard to control, even over basic issues such as a failure to answer telephones.1508 Increasingly, (and unlike the early 1980s) disputes spread to the manual working unions which represented council employees, which could no longer be relied on to co-operate with council leaders.1509 Matters were made much worse by the needs to control expenditure. The city council had to make savings of £35 million on its revenue budget for 1991/1992; this resulted in making 3,500 people redundant - a major shift away from its previous ‘no compulsory redundancy’ policy.1510 Further cuts followed the financial losses of the World Student Games.1511 The Council had hoped than an incoming Labour government would provide financial assistance. After the election, a council official said:
1503 The full results were: Labour 1,859 votes: B.N.P. 587 votes: Liberal Democrats 373 votes: Conservatives 297 votes: Socialist Labour Party 109 votes. Source: Sheffield City Council. 1504 See page 143ff 1505 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' p.173. 1506 A similar pattern existed nationally; almost two-thirds of Labour members in a 1990 sample worked for public-sector employers, and 23% of all members belonged to either NALGO, the National Union of Public Employees, or the General and Municipal Workers’ Union. The same pattern of employment persisted in 1997, by which time two-thirds of Labour members were recruited from those classed on the Hope-Goldthorpe scale as the ‘salariat’. Seyd and Whiteley, Labour's Grass Roots pp.33,35. Seyd and Whiteley, New Labour's Grassroots pp.35,37. 1507 Star 23/3/1988, 6/4/1988, 11/7/1989, 25/8/1988 1508 Star 14/5/1988 1509 Star 7/12/1989, 1/5/1990. 16/5/1990, 12/2/1991 1510 Times7/12/1990 Seyd, 'The Political Management of Decline 1973-1993,' p.182. for previous policy. 1511 Times 18/4/1992. See page 279ff. Sheffield after 1987 294
The Tory election win upset the apple cart. Now we must claw back the £10 million in cuts this year and face a further £53 million next year. It will mean cuts the like of which have never been seen in this city.1512 The District Auditor reminded councillors that ‘the council must not live beyond its means’;1513 the City Hall (venue for major concerts), the Bishop House Museum and the Mappin Art Gallery were all threatened with closure.1514 By March 1994, the council was faced with having to make £38 million of cuts to council spending, and more job losses were threatened.1515 The city’s total debt burden of £730 million was more than the national debt of Burundi (though still lower than that of Southwark, which stood at £856 million).1516 In 1993, NALGO merged with the local authority manual workers’ union NUPE (and with the health-service union COHSE) to create Unison, a new union. NALGO had historically been hostile to the ruling group on the Council, while NUPE members had (on the whole) been more supportive. Unison 2 (formerly NALGO) had a slight majority of members in the new union in Sheffield;1517 ominously for the Council, the new Unison 2 Executive Officer and Branch Secretary were both members of the Trotskyite Socialist Workers’ Party.1518 Soon, however, struggles broke out within the newly merged union. In January 1994, about 80 Sheffield Town Hall workers defected from their union branch ‘amid growing concerns over its hard Left leadership,’1519 while the joint branch stewards committee of Unison’s (manual) 1 and 3 branches circulated a document criticising the actions of the (white-collar) Unison 2 branch.1520 Attempts by Unison 2 to persuade its new colleagues to adopt greater levels of militancy met with little success. In March, 1994 a ballot for a one-day strike by thousands of council workers in Sheffield was declared void because of irregularities in the membership lists. The strike amongst while-collar workers went ahead anyway: but the manual workers’ branches declined to participate.1521 Later that month, two union officials (from the old NUPE branch) walked out of a mass meeting of Sheffield council staff.1522 Unison 2 members continued to defect to Unison 3 ‘almost daily.’1523 This faction-fighting, while it helped the Council in its
1512 idem 1513 idem 1514 Mail 18/4/1992 1515 Star 1/3/1994 1516 Source: Debt figures from Department of Environment, 31/3/1993, quoted by Mail 14/4/1994 1517 Star 30/3/1994 1518 ShLSL.Unison.1993#1 1519 Star 26/1/1994 1520 Star 26/1/1994 1521 Star 1/3/1994, 11/3/1994 1522 Star 30/3/1994 1523 Star 2/4/1994 Sheffield after 1987 295 role as employer, meant that trades unionism – even public sector trades unionism – could no longer serve as a basis for unified Labour Party activity.
The Death of Labour Sheffield By the mid 1990s, the Labour leadership in Sheffield looked surprisingly similar to its 1960s predecessors - a long-established, tightly-knit, group; able to suppress internal challenges; impervious to criticism while it pursued ambitious projects of civic renewal; but resting on a shrinking base of members and activists, and unable to inspire new enthusiasm. By the end of the century conflicts of interest, and failures of policy, created tensions that grew beyond the capability of Party discipline to contain, and the Party lost control of the City. Councillors at first tried to blame policy failures on central government controls. In 1991, Veronica Hardstaff, Chair of District Labour Party (and later to become the City’s MEP), wrote: Local democracy has almost ceased to exist with the loss of councils’ freedom to raise taxation to meet local needs… the Conservative Government decided that Sheffield citizens should not be allowed to enjoy schools of high quality, excellent public transport, superb parks, fine libraries, museums, art galleries, and all the other excellent services Sheffielders used to take for granted.1524 She suggested that the council should suppress reports written by Council officers. She said that the public blamed Labour councillors for cuts in services, and advocated: political vetting of officers' reports, particularly on how cuts might affect services. Officers sometimes put forward ideas ... such as widespread library closures, in an attempt to scare councillors into putting more money into certain areas ... but this… created a public perception of incompetence and painted too dark a picture when the reports were used by the media.1525 The idea was firmly rejected by Clive Betts.1526 But the feeling of vulnerability amongst senior Party figures was plain. As the extent of the financial mismanagement of the Games became evident, and doubts rose about the wisdom of the Supertram, these complaints carried less resonance in Sheffield. A former Liverpool Labour councillor stood for election in Sheffield (and lost) - he commented: Blame the Games, and quote me on that.1527 Liberal Democrat Leader David Chadwick pointed out that Sheffield could not blame all its problems on national government: our neighbours have had their grants cut too and they are not imposing such severe measures. Why is it that Sheffield is suffering so much? In the
1524 Sh.Telegraph26/4/1991 1525 Star 9/5/1991 1526 Star 13/5/1991 1527 Star 3/5/1991 Sheffield after 1987 296
1980s…Sheffield’s Labour Party pursued an expansionist strategy on borrowed money. This spending has now to repaid at high rates of interest. Millions of pounds each year of debt repayment means millions of pounds less on services.... Labour has become arrogant and drunk with power…they have stopped listening to the views of the people they are meant to represent.1528 In the mid-1990s, although Labour’s share of the popular vote did not fall to unprecedented levels, the Party did face an unprecedented loss of Council seats (because of the collapse in Conservative support, and its transfer to the Liberal Democrats).1529 This started to cause panic. A document from senior Labour Councillor Alf Meade said that he (and a number of colleagues) believed that: Sheffield people … have no faith in Labour’s ability to run the city. 1530 The Sheffield Telegraph wrote: Sheffield city centre is a mess. Everybody knows that. Disadvantaged areas such as The Manor appear to be as disadvantaged as ever, a sad indictment when the people in control have always claimed to be first and foremost the champions of the underprivileged. Meanwhile the friends of big business have presided over a commercial and industrial slump the like of which occurs only once or twice in a lifetime. …As motorists puzzle over the maze of new ring road priorities and Supertram project diversions, there is a suspicion that the people at the Town Hall are not sure which turning to take either...1531 In 1994, The Times’ reporter in Sheffield observed a ‘profusion of gold [i.e. Liberal Democrat] posters in the windows of some of Sheffield's grimmest tower blocks,’ while an anonymous local academic was quoted as saying: I would have thought that no Labour seat is safe. They will get a clobbering.1532 The real battle ground remained those parts of the city which were poor, but not desperate - Labour only came under threat in one ward with a high dependence on state benefits (unusual both because it had a high student population, and because there had been attempted penetration by far-left elements). None the less, Labour lost eight seats;1533 the Liberal Democrats doubled their representation,; and the Conservatives lost everywhere.1534 Labour
1528 Sh.Telegraph26/4/1991 1529 see page 158 ff. 1530 Star 26/10/1993 1531 Sh.Telegraph3/9/1993 1532 Sh.Telegraph8/4/1994 1533 The council’s Labour finance chairman (Roy Darke) lost his seat, and Labour Leader Mike Bower held on only by a tiny margin. Star 6/5/1994 1534 Though because Sheffield only elected one-third of councillors each year, there was still Conservative representation on the council. Sheffield after 1987 297 felt intensely vulnerable, and in 1995, the campaign became vicious; the Labour leader issued writs for libel - nearly causing financial ruin to LibDem elder Peter Moore (himself ‘a chain- smoking former Labour activist’).1535 The Labour Party, buoyed by the election of Tony Blair as leader, had its best share of the national vote for nearly 30 years; locally, Labour’s share of the vote also climbed - to 49% (a 12% swing from Liberal Democrats); but despite this the Liberal Democrats gained three seats in the city, and Labour only two.1536 Sharp losses continued in 1996, primarily a result of Conservative collapse.1537 In 1998, the pattern changed, as the Liberal Democrats made inroads into formerly secure Labour areas.1538 The Labour Leader lost his seat, and was replaced by Jan Wilson (a model New Labour figure).1539 She said: The reason Labour lost is because Labour supporters didn't vote-they saw no purpose in doing so.1540 Tony Blair blamed Labour’s losses on ‘old Labour’ authorities.1541 But in Sheffield, exemplary New Labour leadership was not enough to revive the Party’s fortunes, while nationally activism (and members’ feelings of involvement with the Party) declined, as New Labour faced the problems of government. 1542 In 1999, the Labour Party nationally launched its Project 99 initiative, ‘masterminded’ by Clive Bett’s ‘right-hand man’ - former Sheffield councillor, Howard Knight. Any Party member could now apply to be a council candidate (previously, candidates had to be put forward by branches); but they would then face a test of their potential by a selection committee of the local party hierarchy - and so would sitting councillors who were seeking re- election. Potential candidates would have to answer questions, both oral and written, before they were placed on the approved list. Only people on the approved list could be chosen by local parties to stand as candidates. In effect, the new rules took a great deal of power away
1535 Star 5/5/1995, 24/4/1999 Times 3/5/1994 1536 Independent 3/5/1995 Star 5/5/1995 1537 See page 163 ff. 1538 Allender, What's Wrong with Labour? p.100. Average turnout was again very low - ranging from 14% in Park Ward to 41.6% in Dore. Star 6/5/1999 1539 Sh.Telegraph15/5/98. ShLSL.Elections.1999#3 1540 Star 12/5/1998 1541 Times 10/5/1998 1542 Sh.Telegraph12/2/1999 Star 27/1/1999. Seyd and Whiteley, New Labour's Grassroots pp.106-09. Sheffield after 1987 298 from established councillors and ward branches, and vested it in the District Party’s Executive. Opponents alleged that this was ‘a heavy handed attempt by New Labour to shed the Party of real socialists.’ But Knight said it was an agreed strategy for: improving the quality of candidates, and removing cartels….The real demand for this move has come from the membership. We want to see higher standards and a set of candidates we can be proud of to carry us into the future. This is a step forward, people are now looking forward to Project 2000. 1543 A string of Cabinet ministers and celebrities was sent by national Labour Party to bolster the Sheffield’s local election campaign in May 1999; the Party’s programme focused on concrete issues, and was a far cry from any manifesto which would have produced fifteen years before. 1544 But Labour lost eleven more seats and, with them, control of the city.1545 Even the Lord Mayor-elect lost her seat.1546 The Independent reported, in June 1999:Twenty-five years ago, this was where a socialist New Model Army was enlisted. Then, Brightside led a successful tenants' rent strike and ditched its right -wing Labour MP in an audacious coup. Today all three council seats are still held by Labour, but the Brightside ward party is a demoralised shell. … The enthusiasm felt in the 1970s - and again when Tony Blair came to power - has gone. ‘These days, if it wasn't for the three councillors, the leaflets wouldn't get delivered,’ said councillor Peter Price. ...Heeley returned Bill Michie as its Labour MP with 61 per cent of the 1997 general election vote. This year the constituency party failed to raise a quorum for an annual meeting.’ … ....Patrick Seyd, a politics professor at Sheffield University, suspects that demoralised party activists and supporters are a predictable but temporary feature. ‘There was a post-1997 election shift at the grass roots… Members actually came more into line because of their lust for power. … my hunch is that members cannot see redistribution of wealth and elimination of poverty being delivered. The Government spins everything for the Daily Mail. Why not have a few more businessmen moaning? … What is the motivation to belong? …1547 District Labour Party Chairman Paul Bloomfield wrote, in July: Everybody had a story to tell about council waste or poor performance. … the city council was a badly managed organization - and Labour tolerated it for too long. We were sucked into defending the Council, rather than taking the responsibility for sorting it out….1548
1543 Star 18/12/1998 1544 Star 7/4/1999 1545 The final tally of the council was Liberal Democrats, 47 seats; Labour, 39 seats; Conservatives, 1 seat. 1546 Yorkshire Post 7/5/1999 Star 7/5/1999 1547 Independent 27/6/1999 1548 Times 16/7/1999 Sheffield after 1987 299
The Party’s response was to turn inward, not now in an overtly ideological purge, but the reshape its councillors in the image of managerial efficiency. Old loyalists were shown the door. Sitting councillors Dot Walton, Jack Butler and Mike Smith were removed from the approved lists; Elsie Smith, a 69-year old defeated councillor in Birley, was denied the chance to stand again. Even Peter Price - a key figure in Sheffield politics since the rise of the New Left - faced a second interview to decide whether he could continue. Paul Blomfield, chairman of Sheffield District Labour Party said: this is a clear message of how Labour is changing in Sheffield. … a rigorous selection process… has produced a strong panel of excellent candidates. Every one of them understands how our previous of Labour councils lost touch with local people. All of these candidates are committed to carrying forward the changes that Labour is making in Sheffield under Jan Wilson's leadership.1549 But Bob Earp, a Labour Party colleague of Dot Walton, said: it's a despicable and disgraceful decision. If this is Blairism the Labour Party in Sheffield has had it. Dot has served the city so well for many years and now she has been thrown on the scrapheap. 1550 Early in November, after forty years as a councillor, Dot Walton joined the Liberal Democrats.1551 Coun. Walton, aged 80, who was close to tears as she voted for the first time as a Liberal Democrat, said she had crossed the floor with mixed feelings ... ‘I was eight when I first started going with my father to collect union dues and I’ve supported the Labour party all my life.’ But she said she was determined to continue representing the people in her ward. ‘I’m going to put up a fight.’ 1552 Dot’s husband - a Labour Party member for over 50 years - was expelled from the party for signing his wife’s nomination papers. He was aged 84. He said: They have said I can re-apply for membership in five years when I am 89. Well, they can stuff it.1553
1549 Star 21/10/1999, 30/3/2000 1550 Star 21/10/1999 1551 Star 12/11/1999 1552 Sh.Telegraph26/11/1999 1553 Sh.Telegraph14/04/2000 300
Conclusions The Stalled Phoenix 301
12. The stalled Phoenix
This study has focused on Southwark and Sheffield. The questions which it set out to answer, in relation to those two local authorities, were:
• How far (and why) did the attempt to improve social conditions, through fifty years of planned, socially-directed investment, succeed or fail?
• why did the continuous pursuit of social intervention not do more to build support for the Labour Party? This final chapter draws together my findings. But it also suggests general hypotheses about how problems of collective action can be solved, about the existence of limits to those solutions, and about the advantages and disadvantages of Old Labour's approach to urban regeneration. Testing the hypotheses will be the objective of a later phase of this research. It would be unwise to draw firm conclusions until that review is complete.
The fall of Old Labour In 1984, newspapers started to report that Sheffield's pre-war council houses were in danger of falling down. The black-ash mortar that bound them together - a by-product of Sheffield's confident, successful industrial base - had decayed to a point at which it could no longer hold them together. Faced with a high wind, or an external shock, they collapsed.1554 The fate of Old Labour, in both Sheffield and Southwark, mirrored that of those houses. The child of a self-confident, optimistic, homogeneous upper working-class, it slowly decayed over the twenty-five years after the War's end. By 1970 it was an empty shell, held together by habit (and by the formidable power of its political machine), but no longer able to tie together the disparate interests that made it up. When its weakened structure faced the gales of the 1970s, it started to fall apart.1555 Those who inherited (or seized) political power amid the ruins faced few internal challenges to their rule, but were unable to enthuse a new generation of political activists. Thus, the Party relied increasingly on middle-class professional politicians, sustained in internal power by fierce Party discipline, and dependent externally on the votes of the socially-excluded and welfare-dependent. As has been shown, Sheffield and Southwark started and ended this study as places which were markedly different:
• Sheffield was prosperous for thirty years after the end of the War; had a strong indigenous working-class leadership; managed to expand its borders to allow for growing owner-occupation; preserved political and institutional continuity even in the face of city expansion; and remained (even by 2000) a largely majority-ethnic city,
1554 See page 266. 1555 The crisis which faced Old Labour nationally between 1966 and 1979 - as its vision of planned economic renewal foundered - paralleled (and amplified) many of these local conflicts. See Anthony Seldon and Kevin Hickson, eds., New Labour, Old Labour (London, 2004). The Stalled Phoenix 302
except in a few inner city areas. It preserved a reputation as well-managed, experienced no major scandals, and acted as the launch pad for national politicians. In the late 1970s and the 1980s its leaders were seen as innovative and important figures, setting a new agenda for the British left. In the late 1980s and the 1990s it was a leading example of the new culture of partnership between public and private sector organisations in pursuit of economic regeneration.
• Southwark was economically integrated with the rest of London, though the borough was always an economically marginal area; lost many of its most skilled inhabitants and suffered from severe population decline; saw its identity change markedly with the merger of its three component boroughs; suffered sharp political discontinuity at the moment of leftist take-over in 1979; and became typical of the ethnically-mixed inner-city areas of late twentieth century Britain. It was widely seen by many as poorly managed until the late 1980s, and its politicians were repeatedly mired in scandals relating to personal and political behaviour. Its later attempt to spark market- led regeneration of the borough – though successful in attracting riverside development – was stigmatised as ‘social cleansing.’ Yet both were – in other ways – markedly similar. They were dominated by manual workers in 1950. Both were solidly controlled by the Labour Party for the whole of the half-century.1556 Both were committed to programmes of urban demolition and reconstruction. Both faced a crisis of collapsing support for their post-war leaders in the late 1960s. Both faced serious problems with public housing by at least the mid 1970s. Both experienced high unemployment as the British economy de-industrialised, and manual working jobs vanished. Both experienced increasing inequality between neighbourhoods by the end of the century, made worse by the overhang of repair obligations on the housing schemes of the 1960s. Both were plagued in some areas by gun-crime and drugs. Both were controlled, from the late 1980s, by Labour parties seeking to rebuild popular enthusiasm for social intervention by large-scale, showpiece projects (making use of architecture to bring about a change in self- image). Both cities – bastions of the old Labour England – faced, by the end of the century, the loss of Labour Party control, not to the old Conservative enemy, but to the renascent Liberal Democrats. In both cities, the corrosion which weakened the grip of Old Labour predated the economic and demographic changes which were to transform them by the end of the century. In 1970, Southwark and Sheffield were still solidly working-class boroughs (each with only a few prosperous middle-class wards). Although Southwark's traditional industries were starting to shrink, unemployment remained at only seven per cent, since by 1970 most people worked in services (and many worked outside the borough); Sheffield's occupational structure remained virtually unchanged, and its businesses prospered.1557 Immigrants from the New Commonwealth had started to arrive in Southwark - making up just over ten per cent of the
1556 with one brief break in Sheffield 1557 See Chapters 2 and 7. Male unemployment in Southwark in 1971 was reported at 7%. Census (Table 11) The Stalled Phoenix 303 population in four local authority wards - but they accounted for only just over six per cent of the total population by 1971,1558 and were still effectively excluded from Council housing. In most respects, these were still traditional, Old Labour heartland areas. The greatest difference between 1951 and 1971 was the impact that the clearance programme (and council house building) had made upon both the physical and the social character of the cities. By 1971, over 50% of Southwark residents and 39% of Sheffield residents were tenants of the Council; ten years earlier, the figures had been 33% and 30%; ten years before that, Crook has estimated the figure for Sheffield was only 23%. The impact of these changes was even greater in some inner-city wards, where the clearance programmes were concentrated. The need for collective action to provide housing stemmed from a particular set of problems which could only realistically be solved by collective means (given the existence of rent control, and the low feasibility of making private contracts for area-wide improvement). But the corrosion that eroded Old Labour's ties stemmed largely from its expansion of public provision. The council housing programme initially acted as a collective-purchasing club on behalf of the most respectable, prosperous and skilled members of the local working class; their membership of stable communities, capable of excluding from social benefits outsiders or those who sought to cheat the system, helped build support for collective provision. But the solutions generated by this consensus carried the seeds of their own destruction. They resulted in poor-quality townscapes which became increasingly ill-suited to meet changing needs, but which were implemented on a mass scale; by 1970, huge areas lay derelict, cleared or awaiting clearance; physical and social problems mounted in the new estates. Simultaneously, support for the housing programme amongst Labour's old core supporters collapsed, mainly because their chance of getting access to council houses became very slim, as the scale of the clearance programmes meant that most homes went to people moved from the slums. Partly because of this, and partly because affluence enabled them to do so, prosperous workers increasingly sought to buy their own homes; this reduced their attachment to the Labour Party, and often caused them to move out of the city (in Southwark, especially, population loss due to clearances and to emigration of the prosperous led to a major change in the nature of the local community). By 1967 in Sheffield, there were also major conflicts of interests between the Old Labour leadership and its prosperous supporters in the established council housing, and poorer families from the clearance areas, over the extent of cross-subsidy of rents from established to new council tenants. In the 1970s, in both cities, there were growing tensions between the managerial demands of Labour's leaders and the wishes of their own employees, and the adherence of leaders to 'trades union principles' - based on the idea that there were no real conflicts of interest within the working class - made it hard to deliver effective services to the public.1559 Leaders were deaf to protests, and blind to emerging failures; the structure of power in local Labour Parties - in Sheffield, based on the trades unions, and in newly-merged Southwark based on elderly ward parties with few members, and a habit of refusing membership to
1558 Census, 1971 Table 12. 1559 This situation was made much worse by repeated crises in national public finance, by inflation rates which on occasion hovered around 25% per year, and by government-imposed spending cuts. The Stalled Phoenix 304 newcomers - enabled them to ignore criticism with impunity. Both the institutional and the physical structures built in the 1950s and 1960s persisted; building programmes carried on under their own momentum, and political authority faced few external challenges. However, the practical failures of both local and national social democracy (combined with this exclusiveness) produced structures which were increasingly top-heavy, as activists drifted away (and sometimes despaired). Thus in a ten-year process of élite competition organised groups - in Sheffield, based primarily in the Engineering Union and with strong ties to the Communist Party, in Southwark in an uneasy alliance between the Council's manual-worker unions and middle class activists - found it possible to overcome institutional barriers and capture control from the elderly post-war leaders; there was no mass membership to stand in their way, and little popular interest in what happened to the party. But taking power was easier than using it, and once their theatrical challenge to the capitalist state failed, the New Left had no coherent programme. Their vision was still based around the myth of a united working-class interest, but (unlike their predecessors) they could not enforce conformity with their vision of what constituted that interest. It proved harder, not easier, to make policy choices, because a greater variety of factions had to be kept on-board, and dissidents had more power to challenge leaders (for example, in District Labour Parties). Attempts to circumvent official criteria for access to housing continued to grow. In Southwark, claims to new homes based on existing community membership could seem self- evidently just to established residents, but racist to newcomers or outside commentators. Most attempts at administrative reform, or to empower consumers of council services, became paralysed by conflicts of interest within the local working class (especially, conflicts between council employees and other workers). In both cities the persistence of highly-unionised public-sector work forces (the sole remaining element of organised labour) created tensions between councillors’ obligations to the public, and the newly-dominant public-sector unions; when employees resisted changed working arrangements, or abused power, it was unclear whether working-class solidarity demanded that they should be backed or sacked. Increasingly, they fell back on an assertion of managerial competence. But their inability to articulate a coherent municipal programme (as well as specific instances of mismanagement) undermined this claim.1560 In both cities, Labour turned to projects of regeneration – often, regeneration associated with spectacular architecture or symbolic gestures of renewal and modernisation – in order to try to build new coalitions willing to support collective action. But these projects were not enough to overcome the conflicting interests of different groups and different neighbourhoods, did not generate large enough inflows of resources to transform social conditions, and sometimes became mired in failure. Thus, in both cities, Labour’s leadership became increasingly dependent on the voting support of wards with high welfare dependence, and high levels of social housing (though in Southwark, there was a fracture between wards, based on ethnicity). However, those trapped in poor housing were now in a minority. There was thus a growing crisis for Labour Party, which found it increasingly hard
1560 Liberal Democrat leaders did no better once they were in power: they faced the same structural problems as their Labour predecessors, and their core belief - in community politics - had little to say about how issues should be resolved when the interests of communities came into conflict. The Stalled Phoenix 305 to attract votes outside its core wards. Because many collective goods (such as housing and education) had area-based mechanisms of delivery, it was hard to connect the interests of the areas which most needed help with the interests of other neighbourhoods. This crisis forced New Labour to adopt positions that were increasingly authoritarian and oriented to social control, in order to rebuild its support. The moral values embodied in the interventionist social programmes of the New Labour leaders recalled those of their post-war predecessors - hard work, the need to accept responsibility as well as to assert rights, and the values of community. They represented a marked shift from the anti-establishment values of the 1970s and 1980s. But it remained to be seen whether this attempt to re-assert social control would succeed, or would be enough to re-engage the demands of the prosperous with the needs of the poor.
Alternatives It is possible to imagine several alternative routes which post-war urban renewal could have taken, had circumstances been different. Most alternatives come close to one of three ideal types; a communitarian solution, based around smaller-scale projects, with funding provided to a variety of providers of social housing, developing smaller parcels of land, and respecting the values of existing communities; a more free-market solution, in which rent-control was lifted, in which individual houses were renovated by their landlords - forestalling the flight of the upwardly mobile - and in which (perhaps) income support was made available to the poor; and a redistributive solution, in which the interests of more prosperous neighbourhoods and of the suburbs were over-ridden, to allow expansion of homes with gardens, rather than the pursuit of high-density high-rise. But these solutions would have struggled for popular support; the first would have seemed chaotic and piecemeal given the pervasive post-war belief in the benefits of planning and of economies of scale, and the urgency of the need;1561 the second proved politically impossible when it was half-heartedly attempted by the Conservative government in the 1950s, because it provoked rent-rises and evictions;1562 the third (if associated with public housing) would have provoked a middle-class revolt, and (if associated with private development) would have led to the problems associated with urban sprawl, including middle-class flight from the cities;1563 it was in any case certainly not
1561 Ravetz comments: ' In the prevailing mood of neophilia it was sufficient for any objector to oppose change (which was invariably equated with progress) to be branded as reactionary, romantic or mischievous. Any public opposition to official proposals had to go against all recognised public consensus, besides criticising the established order.' - Alison Ravetz, Remaking Cities : Contradictions of the Recent Urban Environment (London, 1980) pp.103-4. 1562 See Page 169. 1563 Pietro S. Nivola, Laws of the Landscape: How Politics Shape Cities in Europe and America (Washington D.C., 1999) pp.12-14,22-24. James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape (New York, 1993). The Stalled Phoenix 306 feasible once the Conservative returned to power nationally in 1951, since it would have jeopardised the interests of existing suburban and rural communities. Thus, it is not clear that they would have been more successful than the approach which Old Labour actually followed. Nor is it clear that events would have turned out more happily had Old Labour's grip on power been less secure. If its control had been challenged earlier, once the failures of the housing programme became evident, the worst excesses of the demolition and construction programme in the 1970s might have been averted. However, the demolition programme would not have halted immediately; at best, four or five years would have been cut from its life. Struggles for access to the smaller number of dwellings would have intensified (perhaps intensifying racial divides in Southwark); tensions over cross-subsidy between new and old tenants would still have existed in Sheffield (so the rent strikes would still have happened); and housing- management staff would still have resisted attempts to introduce flexibility into administration. In education, it is doubtful whether Sheffield would have moved away from a culture of early-school-leaving until the disappearance of well-paid manual jobs removed the economic incentive to enter the world of work; while Southwark (not yet an education authority) would have continued to struggle with the problems of inner-city decay, helped or hindered by the (increasingly criticised) policies of the Inner London Education Authority.
Losing Control The relationship between the collapse of Old Labour's vision and Labour's eventual loss of control of municipal government in the two cities was lengthy and complex. The primary cause of Labour's long-term decline in electoral support was not local; nationally, over fifty years, there was a gradual fall the Labour vote, and a continuous (though unsteady) rise in Liberal support (Figure 12.1). The two cities were not immune from these national trends. We have seen, for example, in both Sheffield and Southwark, the effect on local elections of the problems of the Wilson administration.
Stephen Kennett and Peter Hall, 'The Inner City in Spatial Perspective,' in The Inner City in Context: The Final Report of the Social Science Research Council Inner Cities Working Party, ed. Peter Hall (London, 1981), pp.12-17. The Stalled Phoenix 307
Figure 12.1 Vote Shares of the Three Major Parties, United Kingdom, 1945-2005.
Despite these long-term trends, however, Labour's Parliamentary support remained strong in Southwark and Sheffield; in seven of their nine constituencies, Labour Members of Parliament won overwhelming majorities in 1997, 2001 and 2005.1564 Even in municipal elections (where Labour could lose) the party's popular vote did not collapse; in 2002 Labour secured 38% of the votes in Southwark (losing by one percentage point to the Liberals), and in 2003 it won 41% of the votes in Sheffield (winning by five percentage points). None the less, Labour's domination of the two cities was - by the turn of the century - no longer assured, as it had been for most of the preceding seventy-five years. Part of the reason for this was that it attracted a lower proportion of the vote in municipal than in national elections. At least four theories of voting behaviour (all linked to the decay of Old Labour's agenda) might explain this discrepancy.
1564 The General Election results were: in Sheffield (in both 1997 and 2001): 54% Labour, 25% Liberal Democrat: in Southwark (1997) 56% Labour, 24% Liberal Democrat: (2001) 50% Labour, 30% Liberal Democrat. Constituency and local authority boundaries do not coincide in Southwark. Source: Sheffield City Council, http://www.btinternet.com/~se16/labour/vote2002.htm ('news from Rotherhithe and Surrey Docks Labour Party'), http://newssearch.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/vote2001/results_constituencies: author's calcs. The Stalled Phoenix 308
• Valence-based analysis stresses leaders' perceived competence. As we have seen, local Labour leaders in the two cities were widely regarded as incompetent in the early 1990s, while Labour's national leadership was regarded as increasingly capable; Labour's perceived incompetence reflected, at its core, the collapse of the Old Labour vision, which left it floundering between incompatible policy goals.1565
• Public-choice analysis suggests that voters' behaviour is motivated by different objective interests. By the 1990s, because of the failure of council housing, many fewer local residents depended on the outputs of municipal government than had done twenty years earlier, while the majority of residents in Sheffield and Southwark depended on the national government for services, transfer payments and employment. There was thus more reason for residents to favour high-spending national government than to support generous local expenditure.1566
• Agentic analysis suggests that political leadership creates interests; they do not have to be regarded as 'given'. The need for councils to allocate scarce resources to some individuals rather than to others, and to mediate in clashes of interest between the public and its own employees, fostered division. Labour's leaders could not appeal to a wide public, once there was no longer an agreed standard of fairness by which conflicts could be resolved. National leaders were more successful in persuading voters that allocative mechanisms (for example, in the Health Service) were just.1567
1565 Harold D. Clarke, Political Choice in Britain (Oxford, 2004) p 47-48,65,315-28. Hilde T. Himmelweit, Patrick Humphreys, and Marianne Jaeger, How Voters Decide : A Model of Vote Choice Based on a Special Longitudinal Study Extending over Fifteen Years and the British Election Surveys of 1970-1983, Rev. and updated ed. (Milton Keynes, 1985) p 79,90-91,210. By contrast, the perceived competence of Labour nationally increased very sharply after 1992) - see Clarke, Political Choice in Britain p 63. Local data are not available, and it is unclear how voters make decisions in local rather than national elections. Thus, the results of national surveys should be interpreted with caution. 1566 See: Dennis C. Mueller, Public Choice III (Cambridge, 2003). Parts 3-4 : Gordon Tullock, The Vote Motive (London, 1976) p 14-25. Both Sheffield and Southwark were probably large net recipients of transfer payments and salaries from central government, compared to their contribution to the national economy, because of the high proportion of economically inactive inhabitants and (in Sheffield) because of employment in local government, the health service, and public education (including two universities). 1567 My own analysis follows Sue Goss in believing that conflicts of interest over access to socially- provided goods were a source of alienation from Old Labour (see page 87), but disagrees about the way in which this alienation affected behaviour. Goss bases her case on budgetary analysis of Southwark, where socially-provided housing rose considerably in importance after 1951; she argues that as the Council had to start rationing access, it became increasing unpopular. But in Sheffield, there was a very large (and exclusive) housing programme before the war, and housing was of central political importance; yet the Council did not become unpopular. What creates discontent is not the fact of exclusion, but a perception of unfairness. Excludability enhances support for collective The Stalled Phoenix 309
• Finally, local elections were marked by very low turnout. Those who chose to vote in local elections may have been atypical of those who voted in general elections, and the effect of local political campaigning may have been more important. Thus, the de-motivation of Labour activists may have played a key role, because they were less motivated to get voters to the polls than were their Liberal Democrat opponents.1568 Unfortunately, there is little research available into attitudes to local-government voting in the UK (and none into the perceptions and attitudes of local government electors in Sheffield and Southwark) so these questions are impossible to resolve; though based on the case studies it seems reasonable to speculate that all four factors played a part. However, the over- determined cause of differential voting does not need to be resolved in order to explain much of the difference in parliamentary and local results; it can be found in electoral geography. There is no simple relationship between the votes a party receives in municipal elections in a first-past-the-post voting system and the number of its councillors that are elected. The system rewards the concentration of majorities in small geographies, and penalises parties with widespread support.1569 Thus, at first, diminished popular support for Labour had no effect on its representation on the Councils. Between 1973 and 1991, Labour's share of the vote in Sheffield municipal elections normally fluctuated between 45% and 55%, but it held around 70% of all the seats on the Council; as its share of the vote went into sharp decline from 1990 to 1992 (falling from 57% to 38% - its lowest ever), its share of seats on the Council increased; while its increased share of the popular vote in 1996 was accompanied by a fall in its Council majority.1570 In Southwark, as has been shown, the SDP challenge in 1982-3
provision, provided the process of exclusion favours those providing the resources, provided they have certainty about future distribution policy, and provided those who are excluded either see the process as just, or have no political voice. In the 1960s, the direction of exclusion switched, to disfavour those who had previously been Labour’s bedrock supporters, but the old élites continued to dominate local Labour Parties. Party leaders failed to attract more people like themselves because Labour had less and less to offer the skilled or prosperous; but they did not change their values in ways which would have allowed them to recruit new leaders (and they did not, in any case, allow challenges to their hold on power). Sue Goss, Local Labour and Local Government: A Study of Changing Interests, Politics and Policy in Southwark from 1919 to 1982 (Edinburgh, 1988) p 170-76. 1568 for example, turnout was only ten to fifteen per cent in some solid Labour areas in Sheffield in 1966, and between twenty and thirty per cent in similar seats in 2003; Southwark local elections showed a similar picture. This was better than the ballots in the Engineering Union in Sheffield in the 1960s, when voter turnout was around six per cent (see Chapter Nine). The result in the Mosborough ward in Sheffield - where the winning candidate secured the votes of only twelve per cent of the total electorate in 2003 - was not atypical. Because (Liberal-voting) middle-class areas typically had almost double the turnout of (Labour- voting) welfare-dependent areas in local elections, but these differences in turnout were reduced in general elections, there was probably also an automatic boost to the Labour share of the total vote in General Elections - though its magnitude is impossible to quantify. 1569 For a theoretical description of spatial bias in the aggregation of votes, see A. Kirby, The Politics of Location : An Introduction (London, 1982) pp.84-87. 1570 Similar perverse results existed at the Parliamentary level. The Stalled Phoenix 310 resulted in a heavy fall of the Labour vote, but the SDP/Liberal Alliance (with 25% of the vote in each area) won no seats at all; the same thing happened in Sheffield, where the Conservatives and the Liberals were neck and neck.1571 This stalemate started to be broken once it was possible for Labour's opponents to start assembling local majorities on a ward-by-ward basis. This became easier when wards became internally more socially homogeneous, so that policies could be advanced that clearly reflected the needs of the great majority of local residents, and externally more heterogeneous. The policies of the 1960s and 1970s unintentionally reinforced the homogeneity of neighbourhoods in the two cities; especially important was the impact of social housing as a sorting mechanism, concentrating those dependent on state support into particular places.1572 This process was then reinforced by growing market-driven inequalities between neighbourhoods in the 1980s and 1990s. 1573 One consequence was that Labour piled-up large (though essentially useless) majorities in some of the poorest wards.1574 But growing homogeneity could also help its opponents, if they could differentiate 'their' target wards from Labour's. The most obvious way to do this was to claim that Labour was being unfair in its distribution of resources. Because there was no longer a widely-shared idea of how resources should be divided, and because the break-down of traditional communities had reduced trust in Labour's leaders, this was easy to do.1575 Labour thus became vulnerable to the Liberal tactic of 'community politics'. In Southwark, where the struggle for access to council housing remained acute, there was an additional source of grievance since working-class white neighbourhoods - previously the main beneficiaries of Labour rule - felt dispossessed by housing-allocation rules that stressed need and ignored claims based on long-residence. The fact that these rules were - in the main - imposed as a result of national laws, did nothing to reduce the feeling of alienation and injustice.
1571 Similar pressures from electoral geography affected electoral outcomes in other cities, over long periods of time. In Birmingham, for example, Thrasher estimated that since the Second World War the bias toward Labour in the electoral system had been 'extraordinary', and had at times been 'the crucial factor in determining control of the city's administration.' Michael Thrasher, 'Magnifying Voters' Preferences: Bias in Elections to Birmingham's City Council,' Journal of Interdisciplinary History 35, no. 1 (2004). 1572 In Southwark, denial of access to social housing in the 1960s and 1970s also started a self- reinforcing process of ethnic segregation. For a mathematical description of self-reinforcing segregation, see Thomas C. Schelling, Micromotives and Macrobehavior, The Fels Lectures on Public Policy Analysis (New York ; London, 1978) p 135-66. 1573Nationally, a similar pattern occurred: regional polarisation of politics from the mid-1960s to 1987 resulted in the number of marginal Labour/Conservative decreasing sharply, as each party piled up increasing majorities in its areas of geographical strength. From an average of around 160 marginals in the 1960s, by 1987 there were only 87. See Martin Harrop, 'Voting and the Electorate,' in Developments in British Politics - 2, ed. Henry Drucker, et al. (London, 1988), p 57. 1574 See, for example, Table 11.2 and Figures 2.13, 2.14, 2.15, 3.2, 7.20, 7.21, 7.29, 7.30 7.31, 7.34. 1575 Attempts by Labour leaders to resolve the problem by a rational programme of needs-assessment - which were undertaken in both cities - were not successful in rebuilding a consensus, partly because they were not widely understood, partly because they were impossible to implement whole-heartedly for fear of alienating electors in areas which were not poor, and partly because most poor areas felt they were in 'need', and there was no clear way to choose between needs. The Stalled Phoenix 311
The pressures created by residential sorting in Sheffield and Southwark differed because of the different geo-demographic characteristics of the two cities, because of tactical decisions by local politicians, and because of accidents of timing. They also took time to work their way through the system. The initial rise of the Liberal Democrats in both cities came not from an upsurge in that party's general support, but from its domination of specific wards, which created credibility.1576 But credibility was achieved for different reasons. In Sheffield, the Liberal Democrats replaced the Conservative Party in Conservative wards, as the Conservatives collapsed nationally after 1992, and then expanded from the bridgehead this created.1577 In Southwark - by contrast - they replaced Old Labour after 1982 (very unusually, their initial success there was in a Parliamentary election and not in local politics) and they were able only gradually to build upon the base that this created in order to create a presence on the Council.1578 What the two cities had in common were not the forces pushing the Liberals forward, but the forces which made it increasingly hard for Labour to construct a platform that was attractive to those outside its key wards; the interests and priorities of areas now diverged so sharply that it was hard to serve both masters. Electoral geography also helps explain the difference between Labour's parliamentary and municipal representation. Local authority wards were small enough that socially homogeneous
1576 National polling data from the 1970s onwards consistently suggested that a significant proportion of the electorate said it would be willing to vote for the Liberal Democrats if it looked as if that party could win. Credibility was thus probably also a major factor influencing voter's willingness to vote Liberal at a local level (though no specific data exist to demonstrate this at a local level). 1577 In Sheffield in 1994, careful targeting enabled the Liberals to build a nucleus of seats despite a fall in its share of the vote elsewhere in the city; they were able to further squeeze Conservative wards in subsequent elections. Finally, Labour started to lose more seats, when its opponents turned slightly less marginal areas into two-party rather than three-party battles. The eclipse of the Conservatives made the Liberals the only credible alternative to the Labour Party. See Figures 7.27-7.32. By the end of the century, national data suggested that the ability to motivate local activists to run effective campaigns was the single most important factor in determining whether tactical voting potential could be translated into votes on election day (at least, in General Elections). Thus, the de- motivation of activists described in earlier chapters of this study may have had an increasing impact on outcomes. See Clarke, Political Choice in Britain p 168-72. Data from national polls - presented by Clarke et al. - suggests an increasing regional effect on voting behaviour (over and above class-based differences) in the 1980s and 1990s. Sheffield was often portrayed as a victim of the policies of the era, because of the massive structural adjustment that its once-industrial economy went through. It is thus possible that the Conservative vote was softer in Sheffield than in some other parts of Britain, because of regional effects, and that it was thus easier for the Liberals to build on their initial success. However, in the absence of loal data, this is speculation. 1578 There were no Conservatives to squeeze in the area by the river where the Liberals had triumphed (the white working-class neighbourhood of Bermondsey and old-Southwark, core of the most socially conservative Old Labour elements in the borough - see page 85). Despite their success in Bermondsety and old-Southwark, they were unable to make inroads against the Conservatives in Dulwich (the place chosen by Margaret Thatcher for her retirement), or against Labour in the minority-ethnic wards in the centre of the borough (see Chapter Two). By 2002, they were able to expand their control to the new middle-class houses in Bermondsey which were built in the old, filled-in docks. But even then, they still came in third place - behind Labour - in the southern wards which continued to elect Conservative councillors. The Stalled Phoenix 312 middle-class areas could exist, and could elect non-Labour councillors. There were also 'mixed' wards, where Labour might lose, partly because of differential turn-out, partly because there were enough non-Labour voters to assemble local majorities, even if they were not overwhelming. But in a Parliamentary election, the piled-up Labour votes that were useless in a municipal election because they were 'trapped' in Labour wards could break-out, and march to the Party's rescue. Furthermore, at least in Sheffield, the geographical distribution of wards between constituencies continued to ensure considerable Labour over-representation - securing five out of six seats in 1997 and 2001, on the basis of only 54% of the popular vote.1579 Thus Labour triumphed in parliamentary elections, while facing the possibility of municipal defeat.
Collectivism and its limits Why was Old Labour so capable of carrying out large-scale collective action in the post-war era, while its Labour successors struggled to build support? The argument of this thesis has been that its temporary success depended on a unique, historically contingent combination of circumstances: first, a social structure that allowed communities to overcome barriers to collective action; secondly, a specific ideology which favoured large-scale social intervention but enabled its benefits to be restricted to existing community members; and thirdly, a centrally-provided flow of financial resources. These conditions lasted for at most twenty years after 1945: when they broke down, partly as a consequence of Labour's own programmes of social intervention, action became paralysed. That paralysis, in turn, contributed to a collapse in the power of the post-war Labour establishment, and to the emergence of internal challenges to its political agenda. Collective action is, in principle, hard to explain; rational actors who desire to bring about change find themselves trapped by uncertainty about how others will act, and about how the fruits of co-operation will be distributed. While all might benefit from co-operation, no individual can take the risk of self-sacrifice, in case others take advantage of her.1580 Three broad sets of solutions have been suggested to resolve this dilemma.
• The first stresses the emergence of generalised trust, to reduce uncertainty about others’ intentions in situations of contractual indeterminacy. If generalised trust arises, it can generate considerable welfare, by helping society to escape from prisoners’
1579 For a general mathematical description of the proceeses that could lead to these outcomes despite non-gerrymandering Boundary Commissioners see P. J. Taylor, and R. J. Johnston, Geography of Elections (Harmondsworth, 1979) pp.408-414. Johnston - cited on page 239 (above) - has demonstrated that in the late 1970s, when Labour received only just over half the popular vote in Sheffield, almost all feasible re-combination of local authority wards into six constituencies in that city would still have given Labour four or five out of the six seats. See R.J. Johnston and D.J. Rossiter, 'Geography Is the Clue to Election Victories,' Geographical Magazine (1980). 1580 R Axelrod, The Evolution of Co-Operation (Harmonsdworth, 1984). passim. The Stalled Phoenix 313
dilemmas and by reducing transaction costs.1581 But rational maximisation by individuals does not justify the risks involved in extending trust to strangers. Thus generalised trust depends on the existence of widely shared (but not necessarily coherent) values, which create clear divisions between categories, so that they become incommensurable, and one good cannot be sacrificed in order to achieve another. 1582
• Collective action dilemmas can also be resolved by the imposition of hierarchy, to constrain co-operation, enforce agreement and punish defectors (though this poses agency problems, and problems of information). Williamson has argued that indeterminacy sets limits to the feasible scope of contractual solutions; under high uncertainty, organisations will extend their boundaries to encompass a wider range of functions, because of the high transaction costs involved in specifying and enforcing formal agreements.1583 Similar pressures exist in the provision of public goods, whose provision is also often characterised by indeterminacy; hierarchical relationships help to resolve these dilemmas.
• A more limited range of collective-action problems can be solved by formal institutions, which can replace the ties created by community.1584 But while institutional guarantees can solve problems of contract-enforcement, many problems do not involve clear contracts: the more the relations between individuals are defined by abstract, legalistic and formal criteria (what Giddens calls ‘abstract system’), the less the public realm can be defined as a shared solidarity based on concrete ties of history, ideas, love, care, and friendship.1585
1581 Jane Mansbridge, 'Altruistic Trust,' in Democracy and Trust, ed. Mark E. Warren (Cambridge, 1999), p 297-302. 1582 George Ainslie, Picoeconomics : The Strategic Interaction of Successive Motivational States within the Person (Cambridge, 1992) p 240. Elinor Ostrom, 'A Behavioral Approach to the Rational Choice Theory of Collective Action,' American Political Science Review 92, no. 1 (1998). Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (1990) p 17. 1583 Oliver E. Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies: Analysis and Antitrust Implications : A Study in the Economics of Internal Organization (New York; London, 1975). passim. 1584 Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge, 1990). pp 103-108 1585 A. Seligman, The Problem of Trust (Princeton, N.J. ; Chichester, 2000). pp 119-120 The Stalled Phoenix 314
Equally, shared notions of justice in the form of specific ‘rights’ offer a poor basis for action, because they are hard to specify in practical terms;1586 many so-called basic rights are incommensurable,1587 and the 'rights' themselves are often essentially-contested concepts. In the post-war era, the solidly working-class élites which dominated the political life of Sheffield and Southwark met two of these conditions. First, there was a chance for trust to emerge; they were relatively stable, face-to-face communities so reputation could emerge as a result of repeated meetings between participants, and there was less temptation to take advantage of others than there would have been in a more fragmented society, since the probability of detecting ‘defection’ was high, creating the likelihood of swift retaliation.1588 Secondly, because power was hierarchically distributed, those who were in charge could exclude other groups from the assets which were being created – making the assets more like ‘club goods’ than ‘public goods’; this helped cement the possibility of investment – so long as the decision about who should be ‘excluded’ was in the hands of those crucial to the policy’s success.1589 When the social and economic base which created these stable communities dissolved, inter- personal trust, and the hierarchy which had created deference in the wider community to the choices of city fathers, went with it (though the hierarchy of an increasingly hollowed-out Labour Party, run by machine politicians who determinedly excluded any potential challengers, continued to exist).1590 What remained as a basis for collective action was the third principle; the idea of rights, and the existence of formal institutions. But this proved a much less reliable foundation, because formal rights were harder to specify unambiguously, and were not rooted in the un-articulated values of the community; thus, for example, there was no agreement on the status of immigrants, or the proper way to define housing need. This caused feelings of unfairness, and provoked - as has been shown - extensive attempts to circumvent the system. In a vicious spiral of decline, this cheating then undermined the credibility to the process, and further diminished faith in collective provision (thus legitimising yet further attempts to break the rules). However, while the existence of these conditions explains why post-war communities in Southwark and Sheffield were capable of action, and their disappearance explains why
1586 For example, the rights suggested by T. H. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class : And Other Essays (Cambridge, 1950). 1587 John Gray, Two Faces of Liberalism (Cambridge, 2000) p 69-104. 1588 Axelrod, The Evolution of Co-Operation. passim. 1589 Richard Cornes and Todd Sandler, The Theory of Externalities, Public Goods, and Club Goods (Cambridge Cambridgeshire ; New York, 1986) p 8,23. Strictly speaking, ‘club goods’ are collectively consumed, not (like housing) publicly-generated but privately consumed. For a discussion of the views of Sue Goss, which take an opposite view of the consequences of exclusion, see Page 87 and Page 314 (footnote). 1590 For a description of some of the ways in which challengers were excluded see Page 46, and Peter Tatchell, The Battle for Bermondsey (London, 1983). The Stalled Phoenix 315 support for collective action dissolved, neither their existence nor their disappearance explains why social provision took the shape that it did, or why the housing programme - rather than simply petering out - became a source of so many practical problems. To do this, we need to go beyond issues of social structure, and to understand the values of local leaders. Old Labour’s ideology favoured collective action in several ways, but it also shaped (and limited) the form that that action took.1591 It empowered senior councillors by creating a culture of deference, and deployed an effective mechanism for making and enforcing decisions. It valued education. By the stress that it placed on merit and respectability, it provided guidance for prioritising claims for access to public housing. It was determined to provide the ‘best,’ scientifically designed, houses for the working class; this made them expensive - and preferentially available to the respectable - without the appearance of unfairness. Precisely by virtue of its imprecision and its lack of over-arching theory, it allowed conflicts of interest and of values to be glossed over or ignored; this allowed action to take place, without encumbrance from theoretical discussions. Finally, it generated a noble, and largely unselfish, determination amongst activists to improve the lot of their fellow men; an optimism about the likely consequences of their actions; and a blindness to the possibility of failure. The tragedy that encompassed this generation of leaders – and the collapse of many of the solutions they advanced – grew directly out of these strengths. The power of senior councillors insulated them from pressures which might have led them to change course; bad news could be ignored, or sometimes suppressed. Their hierarchical view of educational ability, and their scepticism about the merits of book-learning, limited their educational ambitions. Their clear view of who merited access to housing initially provided a justification for ignoring the claims of those outside their moral compass, but they were unable to develop a new idea of fairness when faced with pressures (mainly from a national level) stressing need - not community membership - as the basis for public provision; there was a conflict between two incompatible concepts of the good. The ‘working class’ meant the people they knew – in their own neighbourhood, in the factory, in the union, in the Labour Club. Their hope that improved material conditions would bring about new moral values floundered, since a significant minority of rehoused slum-dwellers resisted well-meaning attempts to reform them; but they had no alternative framework to explain disorder and vandalism in the new estates, so were unable to start to tackle the problems which started to emerge. Their ideology did not accept the notion of scarcity; thus, they had no means to cope with the necessity of choice once government funding started to dry up. Their optimism and faith in planning led them to over-estimate the speed at which change could come about; thus they had no standpoint to explain or deal with twenty-year housing waiting lists, and resorted to denial, or increasingly unrealistic offers of 'jam tomorrow'. Their faith in the ‘rational’ design of houses and flats resulted in design faults - once they had been incorporated in one apparently successful project - being replicated on a vast scale. Their values were based on a very restricted view of human nature; they were unable to cope with social diversity, or individual aspiration. Because of their faith in trades-union principles, they often accepted uncritically the claims of organised
1591 See Pages 13ff, 48ff. and 180ff. The Stalled Phoenix 316 labour amongst their work-force, and failed to resolve conflicts of interest between their employees and the public. Rather than being a road-block on the narrow path to revolutionary consciousness, or on the broad way to a communitarian future, the Old Labour era should, therefore, be seen as a brief and unusual time in which large-scale collective action became possible. The features so deplored by its critics – its narrowness, its immobility, its inflexibility, its exclusiveness – were what enabled the cities to be rebuilt. It was precisely when Labour's leadership stopped being narrow and exclusive that large-scale collective action collapsed. Like the heroes of Greek trgedy, the vision which drove their achievements carried inside itself the fatal flaws that led to its own destruction; hubris and nemesis, back to back. Their experience suggests the existence of an intractable social dilemma facing those who wish to use collective action to increase social equality. Collective political action differs from individual action or private contracts because it involves higher levels of uncertainty about outcomes. The investment of time, effort and deferred satisfaction is made with only the hope that the benefits created will be distributed fairly and appropriately; there are no binding contracts. That hope is underpinned by trust - both in the system, and in the individuals who have leadership roles within it. Trust, in turn, is possible on the basis of an assumption of shared values, of fellowship, of community: 'fraternity'. But fraternity is underpinned by frequent contact, bounded communities, and the emergence of reputation; features which are most likely to emerge in closed groups. Those groups are likely to be hostile to outsiders, and resistant to challenges to their 'ownership' of the collectively-created goods. Thus while collective provision may be essential in order to overcome social injustices, the community which acts collectively will often be unwilling to share the benefits it creates. Writers have often spoken of the conflict between liberty and equality. But fraternity also can be the enemy, not the ally, of egalitarian social reform. Bibliography 317
Bibliography
Archival Sources: Maps
Ordnance Survey and Landmark Information Group (Exeter): Digitised Historical Maps 1949-1954 O/S Maps 1974-1976 O/S Maps 1993-1995 O/S Maps Electronic Sources
National Statistics: Neighbourhood Statistics Dataset. Indices of Deprivation for wards in England, 2000 (Index constructed by the Index Team at Oxford University for the Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions) NOMIS [http://www.nomisweb.co.uk/] Annual employment survey employee analysis 1991-1998 Census of Employment 1981-1991 Census of population data, 1991, 2001. www.lcssouthlondon.co.uk South London Press London Borough of Southwark (http://www.southwark.gov.uk) Unitary Development Plan – 1995 Press Release 21st December 2001 Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, 30th January 2005. http://www.renewal.net/England/YorksHumber/Regioninfo.asp#Syorks Newspaper archives via Lexis/Nexis
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Archival Sources: Southwark Local Studies Library
The Southwark Local Studies Library class number points only approximately to the location of the document in the archive. Documents are held loose, randomly ordered, within broad subject headings. Material is held either in filing cabinets or in box files (depending partly on size). References to newspaper clippings in the Local Studies Library archive are made in this dissertation by (a) the designation LSL (b) the subject category/call number of the document, and (c) a reference number (which exits only in this bibliography), preceded by #. Newspaper and magazine references relating to Southwark not preceded by the letters LSL are based on searches in electronic archives of newspaper stories since 1980, now held on disk by the author. Maps (PC912) Ward Map 1976 Ward Map 1998 Southwark-owned housing in 1975 LCC-owned housing in 1961 Video #1 Walkways in the Sky - Video commissioned by Southwark Borough Council (1985).
Printed and mimeographed material 301.53 #2 London Borough of Southwark: Southwark Housing: How to Get a Council Home April 1983 #3 The Mercury June 9th 1983 301.54 #4 Local Authority Official Survey: the housing problem in Southwark 1950 (photocopied article) #5 Quarterly Returns: Ministry of Housing and Local Government: Demolished Properties in Clearance Areas. Returns for Quarter Oct 1st. 1967 - Dec. 31st 1967 #6 Quarterly Returns: Ministry of Housing and Local Government: Demolished Properties in Clearance Areas. Returns for Quarter Jan t 1st. 1968 - Mar. 31st 1968’ : #7 London Borough of Southwark: Southwark Civic News No 19 - April 1972 #8 London Borough of Southwark: Notice to tenants by Charles Sawyer & John O’Grady, undated, ?1972 Bibliography 319
#9 London Borough of Southwark: Press Release: Rent Appeals in Southwark May 17th 1973 #10 Evening Standard June 30th 1974. #11 The Architect April 1975 p324 #12 London Borough of Southwark: Press Release, 25th September 1975 #13 London Borough of Southwark: Press Release 00776, February 6th 1976 #14 London Borough of Southwark: Press Release, 6th July 1976 #15 Building, 8th August 1977. #16 London Borough of Southwark: Transfer News April 1980 #18 South East London Mercury, 2nd April 1981 #19 Christian Woolmer ‘Down Your Way’ (photocopied article, not dated, from internal evidence 1981; source unclear) (interview with housing chairman) #20 The Mercury October 21st 1982 #21 Local Government Chronicle December 10th 1982 #22 Sunday People , September 3rd 1982 #23 South London Press, September 3rd 1982 #24 Municipal Review (June 1983), #25 House Builder , June 1983 #26 The Mercury June 30th 1983 #27 Southwark Council for Voluntary Service Housing Advice Resource Unit newsletter: (mimeo), 1984 #28 London Borough of Southwark: Southwark Housing: Facts and Figures - March 1984 #29 South London Press, August 10th 1984. #30 LBC News – Transcript of interview with Housing Chairman, 21st October 1985 #31 London Borough of Southwark: Southwark Housing: Facts and Figures -1986 #32 London Borough of Southwark: Getting a transfer in Southwark. (1985) #33 London Borough of Southwark: Whose Home? Housing strategy issues, the next five years. (1988) #34 Southwark Sparrow November 28th 1988. #35 South London Press January 10th 1989 #36 South London Press February 2nd 1990 #37 London Borough of Southwark: Southwark Housing News April 1990 #38 Southwark Sparrow July 6th 1990 Bibliography 320
#39 South London Press May 10th 1991 #40 London Borough of Southwark: Southwark Housing Department Typescript strategy document (June 1991?) #41 South London Press October 25th 1991. #42 South London Press, 12th November 1991 #42a Southwark Civic News No 19, April 1992 #43 South London Press July 24th 1992 #44 Southwark Sparrow December 23rd 1992. #45 Southwark Sparrow January 22nd 1993. #46 Southwark Sparrow March 5th 1993. #47 Southwark Borough Council Housing: The Southwark Strategy 1994-1997 (April 1993) #48 Docklands Forum: Race and Housing in London’s Docklands (photocopied report, 1993) #49 Southwark News 27th January 2000 #50 Inside Housing January 21st 2000 #50a Inside Housing February 4th 2000 #51 Southwark News February 3rd 2000 #52 Southwark News August 10th 2001 :
301.541 #53 Martin, T.R.J., and T.R.M. Wilson Housing and Community in Bermondsey, Bermondsey Parish Church, mimeo, (February 1974) 301.543 #54 Metropolitan Borough Of Southwark Housing: Borough of Southwark 1947 #55 Bermondsey Borough Council A report on the work of the Council in connection with the Improvement of Housing in Bermondsey 1949, (December?) . #57 'Local Authority Official Survey: the housing problem in Southwark 1950', Surveys: a building and engineering journal, 1, no. (obscured). (1950), pp. 95-111. #58 Mcintosh, N. Council housing in Southwark, Southwark CDP (1975) #59 Ramsden, N. 'Southwark - the battle against decay', The Old Lady: staff magazine of the Bank of England, June 18 1979, 261-66. 302.54 #59a Southwark News October 10th 1996 Bibliography 321
325.1 #60 Commission for Racial Equality, Housing Conditions in Southwark: A report based on the National Dwelling and Housing Survey, (Typescript, 1983) 329.con #61 Bermondsey and Rotherhithe News Vol. 1 No 6, 1st September 1937 329.Lab #62 West Bermondsey Labour Party Annual Report 1947-48 #63 Bermondsey Labour Party Annual Report 1953 #64 Bermondsey Labour Magazine November 1953 #65 Rotherhithe Labour News, 1937 #66 Bermondsey Labour Party Annual Report 1961. #67 Labour Party, Southwark Local Government Committee: Manifesto, Borough Council Elections 1986 (largely illegible)
331.8 #68 Southwark: Press release 04575, 29 July 1975
352.008 #69 Walworth Imprint May 19th 1982 #70 Walworth Imprint October 1982 #71 South London Press , February 26th 1982. #72 Local Government Review, August 14th 1982 #73 Southwark Sparrow October 1982 #74 Standard , November 29th, 1982 #75 Southwark Star May 12th 1984 #76 Daily Mail July 9th 1984: interview with Sue Goss #77 Mercury June 7th 1984 #78 The Mercury June 21st 1984 #79 Governing London 2nd February 1989 #80 South London Press 27th April 1989 #81 South London Press May 12th 1989 #82 Southwark Sparrow June 5th 1992. #83 South London Press July 3rd 1992 Bibliography 322
#84 South London Press July 10th 1992 #85 South London Press September 11th 1992: #86 South London Press November 27th 1992. #87 Southwark News February 11th 1993 #88 South London Press February 15th 1994, #89 South London Press June 6th 1994. #90 South London Press, November 25th, undated(probably 1994) #91 Southwark News June 29th 1995
711.3 #92 Interview with Alderman Styles, 1941 - source of clipping unclear #93 Itinerary for a visit by Vice President Humphrey of U.S.A., Typescript, 1967 #94 Local Government Chronicle 14th July 1972 #95 The Times 6th October 1978 #96 Southwark Council Planning News: Bermondsey and Rotherhithe (Oct 1988) #97 Southwark Press Office News Release 5 August 1994 #98 Southwark Borough Council Press Release December 17th 1998 : #99 Estates Gazette 6th March 1999, #100 Estates Gazette 13th March 1999 #100a Estates Gazette 14th September 1999 #101 ribajournal, January 2001 #102 Southwark News 17th July 2001
711.5 #103 Aylesbury Development in Use 1973, Southwark, London Borough of: Borough Development Department (May 1973)
Archival Sources: Sheffield Local Studies Library
If Sheffield newspaper stories in the archive are clearly dated and sourced, my citation simply states the name and date of the newspaper in question. However in some cases this information is not available. The Sheffield Local Studies Library filing system for newspaper cuttings is imprecise. Microfilmed material is first pasted onto Bibliography 323 card, then filmed. In order to physically to fit cuttings onto pages, material from different dates is sometimes combined onto one card; there is therefore no certainty (but some probability) that material in the archive is filmed in date-order. Sources and dates are usually included, but sometimes they are not. Documents are then filed by subject under broad headings (such as ‘Labour Party’ or ‘Housing’), but these categories change through time, and there is no master-index of categories. References to such newspaper articles in the Local Studies Library archive are thus made in this study by (a) the designation ShLSL (b) the subject category of the document, (c) an estimated date, and (d) a reference number (which exists simply to point unambiguously to specific citations and which exits only in this bibliography and in the footnoted citation), preceded by #. References are dated by the dates of the stories (of known date) closest to them in the file, or on the basis of internal evidence.
Video Fox Searchlight Pictures, The Full Monty, 1997, FI04806
Microfilm and Microfiche Housing microfiche ShLSL.Housing.1964#1 Sh.Telegraph: undated article and map by Peter Harvey, [from text, late 1964] ShLSL.Housing.1968#2 Sh.Telegraph: undated article, on the same page as the story from Star on March 28, 1968. ShLSL.Housing.1965#3 Star: date unclear but very late 1965. ShLSL.Housing.1963#4 Unsourced newspaper article: 6/4/1963 ShLSL.Housing.1964#5 Undated newspaper article by Peter Harvey, probably 1964 ShLSL.Housing.1966#6 Sh.Telegraph: probably April 25th 1966, but date illegible ShLSL.Housing.1964#7 Probably sometime in 1964. Article by Peter Harvey. Probably Sh.Telegraph ShLSL.Housing.1966#8 Undated and unsourced article. ShLSL.Housing.1966#9 Several undated/unsourced articles, probably from late in 1966 ShLSL.Housing.1967#10 Sh.Telegraph: article by Peter Harvey: undated, probably 1967 ShLSL.Housing.1964#11 Undated and unsourced article. From internal evidence, sometime before 1965. ShLSL.Housing.1967#12 Undated article, 1966 or 1967? ShLSL.Housing.1972#13 Unsourced and undated story, 1972. Bibliography 324
ShLSL.Housing.1984#14 Unsourced and undated story, on the same page as Star 1/10/1984 ShLSL.Housing.1965#15 Sh.Telegraph - undated article, probably 1965. ShLSL.Housing.1965#16 Star - undated article, but very late 1965. ShLSL.Housing.1964#17 Sh.Telegraph – precise date unclear, 1964.
Labour Party microfiche ShLSL.Labour.1975#1 Source and date unclear: maybe 1975? Reference to County makes a date in 1974 or 1975 probable. ShLSL.Labour.1968#2 Source unclear. About 1/9/1968. ShLSL.Labour.1967#3 Source and date unclear, 1967. ShLSL.Labour.1971#4 Sh.Telegraph, probably 5/2/1971. Date almost legible. ShLSL.Labour.1972#5 Unsourced, undated article by Robert Poulton. Probably Sh.Telegraph. ShLSL.Labour.1975#6 Unsourced, undated article. From internal evidence, late 1974/early 1975. ShLSL.Labour.1975#7 Star, date unclear. Probably October 1975. ShLSL.Labour.1975#8 Star, date unclear, late 1975. ShLSL.Labour.1976#9 Star (undated) article, on the same microfiche Star 12/1/1976. ShLSL.Labour.1976#10 Star - probably 16/2/1976 (date illegible) ShLSL.Labour.1980#11 article by Geoff Smith, industrial reporter: on same microfiche as Star 25/10/1980 ShLSL.Labour.1982#12 Unsourced, 26/5/1982 ShLSL.Labour.1985#13 Unsourced, 20/9/1985 ShLSL.Labour.1985#14 Unsourced, 10/5/1985 ShLSL.Labour.1982#15 Star 12/11/1982 (Certainly November: precise day almost illegible) ShLSL.Labour.1985#16 Unsourced, 5/9/1985 ShLSL.Labour.1985#17 Same page as Sh.Telegraph 26/7/1985 ShLSL.Labour.1986#18 Star: date faded on photocopy ShLSL.Labour.1965#19 Unsourced, mid-1960s. ShLSL.Labour.1964#20 Sh.Telegraph, date unclear, fiche for 1964.
Elections microfiche Bibliography 325
ShLSL.Elections.1973#1 Unsourced, undated article, early 1973. Author Nicholas Comfort. ShLSL.Elections.1970#2 Unsourced, undated article, probably between 1970 and 1972. ShLSL.Elections.1999#3 Not sourced, 30/4/1999.
Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers microfiche ShLSL.AUEW.1965#1 Sh.Telegraph. Undated newspaper article, probably autumn 1964 or 1965. ShLSL.AUEW.1969#2 Morning Telegraph 5/7/1974. Article by George Caborn. ShLSL.AUEW.1966#3 Undated, unsourced newspaper article, mid 1960s. ShLSL.AUEW.1965#4 Star, date illegible but possibly December 1965.
National Association of Local Government Officers microfiche ShLSL.NALGO.1975#1 Source unclear: 21/6/1975 ShLSL.NALGO.1976#2 Source and date unclear: 1976? ShLSL.NALGO.1974#3 Star: undated article on the same page as an article dated 12/7/74 ShLSL.NALGO.1984#4 Sh.Telegraph - probably 7/9/1984 ShLSL.NALGO.1984#5 probably Sh.Telegraph, 20/9/1984 (but date/source may refer to adjacent article)
Sheffield Trades and Labour Council microfiche ShLSL.TLC.1969#1 Unsourced. Dated from internal evidence 30/4/1969 ShLSL.TLC.1968#2 Interview with Bill Owen, then aged 52, probably early 1968: and local newspaper article by Michael McKay, ‘Labour correspondent.’ Source and date unclear. ShLSL.TLC.1971#3 Undated story by Michael Bower on the same fiche as Star 1/12/1971. ShLSL.TLC.1970#4 Unsourced, undated article. From internal evidence, probably 1970.
Unison microfiche ShLSL.Unison.1993#1 Same page of the Unison microfiche fiche as Star report for 2/7/1993, probably also from Star, and about July/Aug. 1993
Bibliography 326
Other printed and mimeographed material in Sheffield Local Studies Library Miscellaneous Papers ShLSL.Misc.3333M TU Link (newsletter of the British Bulgarian TU Association), No 8, 1982 ShLSL.042.S ShLSL.042.S.4 City of Sheffield Housing Deputation Multi-Storey Housing in Some European Countries, Sheffield, March 1955 [Local Pamphlets] ShLSL.042.S.9 City of Sheffield Honorary Freedom of the City: ceremony of admission of Mr George Caborn and Professor Ronald Stanley Illingworth, 27th January, 1982, Cllr. Mrs Enid Hattersley, Lord Mayor. ShLSL.924.74 ShLSL.924.74.SQ Labour in Netherthorpe, Newsletter of the Nethrthorpe Ward Labour Party ShLSL.924.74.SQ Sheffield Labour Activist, the journal of the Sheffield LCC- Tribune Group ShLSL.924.74.SQ(a) Netherthorpe Labour Party members’ newsletter, March/April 1987 ShLSL.924.74.SQ(b) Netherthorpe Labour Party members’ newsletter December 1986. ShLSL.924.74.SQ(c) Netherthorpe Labour Party members’ newsletter November 1986. ShLSL.924.74.SQ(d) Netherthorpe Labour Party members’ newsletter September 1986 ShLSL.924.74.SQ(e) Central Sheffield Rose, Heeley Rose, Attercliffe Rose, 2000-2001
ShLSL.331.88.SF ShLSL.331.88.SF(a) Sheffield Forward (Monthly newspaper of the Sheffield Trades and Labour Council), Vol. 262, No 5. January 1967. ShLSL.331.88.SF(b) Sheffield Forward (Monthly newspaper of the Sheffield Trades and Labour Council), Vol. 262, No 7. March 1967. Article by Alderman Ballard. ShLSL.331.88.SF(c) Sheffield Forward (Monthly newspaper of the Sheffield Trades and Labour Council), Vol. 262, No 8. April 1967. Article by Alderman Lambert. ShLSL.331.88.SF(d) Sheffield Forward (Monthly newspaper of the Sheffield Trades and Labour Council), Vol. 262, No 8. April 1967. Article by ‘John Ball.’ Bibliography 327
ShLSL.331.88.SF(e) Sheffield Forward (Monthly newspaper of the Sheffield Trades and Labour Council), Vol. 61, No 2. [note new volume numbering scheme] February 1980. ShLSL.331.88.SF(f) Sheffield Forward (Monthly newspaper of the Sheffield Trades and Labour Council), Vol. 61, No 6. Article by Patrick Seyd. July 1980 ShLSL.331.88.SF(g) Sheffield Forward (Monthly newspaper of the Sheffield Trades and Labour Council), Vol. 61, No 7. Article by Patrick Seyd. August 1980 ShLSL.331.88.SF(h) Sheffield Forward (Monthly newspaper of the Sheffield Trades and Labour Council), Vol. 61, No 9. News report, p2. October 1980. ShLSL.331.88.SF(i) Sheffield Forward (Monthly newspaper of the Sheffield Trades and Labour Council), Vol. 61, No 9. Article by Patrick Seyd. October 1980. ShLSL.331.88.SF(j) Sheffield Forward (Monthly newspaper of the Sheffield Trades and Labour Council), Vol. 61, No 10. News report. November/December 1980. ShLSL.331.88.SF(k) Sheffield Forward (Monthly newspaper of the Sheffield Trades and Labour Council), Vol. 62, No 4. Advertising Feature and News report. May 1981. ShLSL.331.88.SF(l) Sheffield Forward (Monthly newspaper of the Sheffield Trades and Labour Council), Vol. 62, No 5. News report. October 1981.
ShLSL.331.88.S ShLSL.331.88.S Trades and Labour Council (Sheffield) Annual Year Book, 1968/1969 to 1972/3, 1975/6 to 1981/2 , 1984/5
ShLSL.332.6.SQ ShLSL.332.6.SQ Sheffield Trades Council, Sheffield - the Second Slump : A Draft Report for Sheffield Trades Council, Sheffield, 1982 (mimeo)
ShLSL.335.4.S ShLSL.335.4.S Sheffield Workers’ Gazette, Communist Party, 1949 (mimeo), Issues 1-6
ShLSL.380.SQ Bibliography 328
ShLSL.380.SQ ‘George Caborn: life and times of a union man’ in Quality of Sheffield July/Aug 1981 Vol. 28 ShLSL.380.SQ.b George Caborn, Obituary, in Quality of Sheffield July/Aug 1981 Vol. 29
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