TENANTS AND POLITICS: THE TENANTS’ FEDERATION DURING AND AFTER THE FIRST WORLD WAR By DAVID ENGLANDER The Open University

Studies of housing policy typically note the working class presence without pausing to explore or evaluate the attitudes and activities of working people.1 The history of housing reform has been domin- ated by a de haut en bas perspective in which the primacy of pres- cient bureaucrats and pragmatic politicians has, until recently, been unquestioned.2 This approach gained an added plausibility from the fact that so much of the social history of labour has centred upon the worker as producer rather than consumer. There are signs that this is now beginning to change. Recent research suggests that not only is popular opinion not irrecoverable but that the interventions of organised tenants have been of greater signifi- cance in the formation of housing policy than was previously thought.3 This article is a modest contribution to the new revision- ism. Hitherto, historians of Birmingham have been more concerned with the form rather than the politics of municipal.housing.4 This essay, by contrast, will focus upon the various associations of work- ing class tenants that comprised the Birmingham and District Tenants’ Federation. Its objects are twofold: to explain their activities and assesstheir importance. Prior to the Great War the legal relation of landlord and tenant was non-problematical. The operation of the laws of supply and demand bolstered by extraordinary privileges for securing the rent (i.e., eviction and distress) defined a juridical framework that-was largely unchallenged by most housing reformers and, indeed, by most respectable tenants.5 The non-respectable elements (social- ists excluded) were, however, too poor to assent to this system and too weak to challenge it. Their aim was to survive. Tenants in Birmingham, as elsewhere, were unorganised and vulnerable. Until the turn of the century, however, property owners had themselves resisted attempts to combine in continuous organisation. One or two associations, formed in the mid-Victorian period, appear to have made little impression upon local administration.6 The formation of the Birmingham & District Traders’ and Property Owners’ Association late in 1901, though destined to mark a new departure, at first gave few signs of surviving its infancy. Its member- ship was small and unstable; finances were weak. The regulation of the local housing market through the registration of ‘bad’ tenants, the standard fantasy of most property owners’ associations, was scarcely worth contemplating7 To these constraints was added the TENANTS AND POLITICS: BIRMINGHAM TENANTS FEDERATION 125 handicap of inept leaders whose inability to distinguish social expenditure from socialism brought them into conflict with influen- tial figures such as Councillor Nettlefold, chairman of the housing committee, a man in the Chamberlain cast, who saw town planning as an alternative to more extensive forms of intervention, whereas the landlords saw red.8 It was Mr Lloyd George who came to their rescue. His Finance Act (1910), together with the chilling proudhonist sentiments which preceded the introduction of the ‘People’s Budget’, brought about a miraculous revival. The Welshman’s refusal to expunge clause 51 from his National Insurance Bill aided the recovery. This clause, which prevented the levying of distress during the occupant’s illness, was considered a monstrous interference with the rights of property. Property owners, aware of their exposed position, began to rally. On the eve of war the local association claimed to have upwards of 3,250 members with investments worth more than & 10% millions.g In Birmingham, where the slump in building appeared to coincide with the introduction of the Budget, proprietors were to blame Lloyd Georgian finance for the disasters that befell them.10 In this they were mistaken. Recovery was retarded by rising material and labour costs, industrial depression and by the export of capital on an unprecedented scale.11 Property owners in their more reflective moments recognised as much: competition for scarce capital under- lay their hostility towards the Tenants, a private experi- ment in planned housing development supported by Nettlefold and other progressives.12 But such hostility was as nothing compared with the fury aroused by rising rates and reduced compounding allowances (i.e., the commission paid to the landlord for the collection of rates on behalf of the local authority).13 The pips were beginning to squeak. The return of industrial prosperity in the last year of peace enabled landlords to begin to recoup their losses. In they encountered a novel form of working class protest and harbinger of things to come: the rent strike.14 They were not deterred. The secretary of the property owners’ association estimated that, by 19 14, only fifty per cent of properties in the city had recovered their 1900 position on rents.‘5 The attempt to make up the backlog ensured Birmingham a prominent position in the coming struggle for rent control. The outbreak of war transformed the situation. The introduction of rent control during -the First World War was not, of course, a peculiarly British phenomenon. All the principal belligerents were compelled to intervene in the management of the economy and, where necessary, to subordinate market forces to the efficient prosecution of the war. In each country, however, the specific form of rent control was determined by a unique conjuncture. In Britain, signs of widespread discontent were immediately apparent 126 MIDLAND HISTORY

as landlords and hire purchase firms competed for possession of working-class homes. The government, prompted by the labour movement, responded with the Courts (Emergency Powers) Act. This prohibited the levying of distress prior to a court appearance and gave magistrates discretionary powers to refuse orders for posses- sion in cases of hardship arising out of the war.16 Birmingham pmroprietors blanched but received the measure ‘with a true vision of the national patriotism’, a reception doubtlessly aided by the fact that, in practice, it was found to be most effective in securing the rent.17 But it failed to arrest the growing agitation for tougher controls. In Birmingham, as elsewhere, the outcry against profiteering landlords and the continued eviction of servicemen’s dependents fused ‘moral’ economic principles with patriotic senti- ment in an explosive compound. In the autumn of 1915 the agitation in Birmingham and other cities reached a climax. The outbreak of rent strikes, accompanied by demonstrations and the threat of industrial action, precipitated the introduction of rent control.l* The thrust of the 19 15 campaign was directed against profiteering in house rents. On this the Rent Act appeared to give satisfaction: rents of working class houses were frozen at pre-war levels. However, the failure to consider security of tenure and the absence of any penalty against improper charges gave cause for concern. A survey undertaken by Birmingham’s rating authorities disclosed a wide- spread determination to act in defiance of the law: rents had been raised on forty per cent of working class properties.19 Evictions, too, though not large relative to the size of the population, had not ceased.20 Nor had the agitation to which they had given rise. The Trades Council, worried by the extent of intimidation, encouraged members to press ahead with the formation of tenants’ defence associations.21 In May 19 16, a further step towards more systematic organisation was taken with the formation of the Birmingham & District Tenants’ Federation, a non-political body, representing some twelve districts in all, and comprising the various associations that had grown up spontaneously since the outbreak of war.22 In addition to legal defence work, the Federation saw itself as the nucleus of a burgeoning housing reform movement working in tan- dem with the labour movement.23 From the outset it looked to the Trades Council for support. The Trades Council had earlier determined to force a decision on the vexed and confusing question brought about by’the conflicting judgements concerning the tenants’ right to deduct excess charges on controlled rents. In the celebrated case of Sharp V. Chant, this right was upheld and reaffirmed on appeal to the Divisional Courts. Upon a further appeal by the landlords the,verdict was reversed and such deductions rendered illegal.24 The decision drove a coach-and-four through the Rent Act: TENANTS AND POLITICS: BIRMINGHAM TENANTS FEDERATION 127

landlords immediately set about recovering the deductions previously made.25 Tenants were livid. The Court of Appeal it seemed, had sanctioned profiteering.26 Similar complaints were voiced else- where.27 The agitation barely had time to gather momentum, however, before the Government, under pressure from the War Emergency Workers’ National Committee, intervened. Legislation was introduced which provided for the recovery of all extra rent paid since the introduction of the Rent Act.28 Birmingham tenants were not appeased. The very success of the campaign which had begun fourteen months earlier with Sharp v, Chant made the apparent simplicity of continued evictions all the more galling. The action of a local firm in seeking to eject several servicemen’s families in order to accommodate their own work- people - condemned by the secretary of the Trades Council as a form of ‘legal barbarity’ - led to demonstrations.29 The provocative claim to have alone obtained 3,000 eviction orders, recklessly bandied about by the secretary of the Property Owners’ Association, was one which infuriated tenants were not disposed to question; for it seemed consistent with their own experience.30 The thirty-six orders for ejectment (affecting 398 tenants) made during September 1917, heightened the demand for tighter controls. A similar agitation in Barrow had recently compelled ‘the Minister of Munitions to seek extraordinary powers under the Defence of the Realm Acts to pro- hibit the eviction of munition workers in districts scheduled ‘special areas’.31 A precedent had been established: Birmingham tenants demanded equal protection. Officials from the Ministry of Munitions arrived early in 19 18 to a city that was in a state of considerable ferment. Joseph Kesterton, the secretary of the Trades Council, when interviewed, was reported to have taken ‘a most violent attitude on this question and said that evictions must be stopped at all costs’. The demand for the suspen- sion of ejectments tout court was daily becoming more clamant, said a spokesman for the Tenants’ Federation. The men from the Ministry, however, were sceptical. And yet, having found ‘no great hardship prevailing over evictions’, the investigators concluded that, on balance, a case had been made for recommending that Birming- ham be declared a special area. The evidence, without doubt, was political rather than statistical: ‘the very strong agitation on the subject in Birmingham Labour circles’ was decisive. The Minister concurred.32 Even before the end of hostilities the Tenants’ Federation, with an estimated 12,000 members, had become a significant force.33 It continded to prosper in the post-war period. In the early 1920s a reconstructed Federation, energised by an infusion of enthusiastic women collectors who organised membership drives and cheerfully undertook house-to-house canvassing, was reported as still expanding in ‘various districts beyond the city boundaries’.34 Membership 128 MIDLAND HISTORY figures, though fragmentary, are not inconsistent with such a trend. The newly-formed association at , for example, comprised 200 members, half as many as its neighbour in Balsa11 Heath. & Tenants’ Association mustered 1,000 sub- scribers arid all seemed puny in comparison with the 7,000-strong , & District Tenants’. Association. This most active of affiliates had in fact been responsible for the formation of several of the aforementioned bodies. Its evangelical spirit also accounted for the foundation of similar associations at Erdington, , Harborne and Kidderminster.35 Nonetheless, the Federation had its ups and downs. Although the number of affili- ates appears to have declined, aggregate membership continued to expand so that, by the beginning of the 193Os, the Federation com- prised ‘something like 33,000 tenants’, though it had fallen by a third before the end of the decade.36 These members were overwhelmingly working class.37 Those who could not afford the half-a-crown entrance fee and 3d. per month subscription were not, however, denied assistance. On the contrary: the Federation went out of its way to help those most in need. A special arrangement with the Public Assistance Committee enabled its officers a limited participation in the administration of relief which helped mitigate some of the rigours of a harsh and impersonal bureaucracy.38 The varied work of the tenants’ associations was made possible only by the extraordinary devotion of their elected officials. These were often drawn from local worthies - councillors, guardians, members of assistance committees - people such as T. Foster Duggan, a Liberal luminary and prospective parliamentary candidate, who had been involved in the work of the Tenants’ Federation since its inception, or W.C. Woodward, secretary of the Tenants’ Association, who served for six years on the City Council, five of them as chairman of the sanitary committee, and was ‘acknowledged as the authority in the Midlands on tenants’ questions, being freely termed “The Rent Act Expert” ‘.39 Such expertise developed out of the policing of the rent acts. These complex pieces of legislation provided ample scope for abuse. Indeed, their very complexity constituted a form of intimidation. Tenants, fearful of involvement in a suspect legal process, were, in the absence of expert guidance, prone to sacrifice their rights. The provision of such advice formed the staple of all tenants’ associations. In conditions of acute housing shortage the temptation to evade rent restrictions frequently proved irresistible. The prevention of eviction was, not surprisingly, a major concern. Officers of the Federation dealt with at least sixty cases in the first year of the peace.4o Vigilance was vital. St Mary’s Ward Tenants’ Association, once alerted, managed to secure rent reductions in seventy-eight cases and, during the same twelve-month period, to recover some TENANTS AND POLITICS: BIRMINGHAM TENANTS’ FEDERATION 129

2140 17s. Od. of excess rent. East Birmingham Tenants’ Association was burdened with a heavier case-load; in one year alone it claimed to have dealt with two hundred cases. Sparkbrook, Sparkhill & Dis- trict Tenants’ Association had been of assistance to the ‘more than 4,000 persons’ who had consulted its officials during the same period. Property owners were not unimpressed with the efficiency and resolution of their opponents.41 ‘The reports of local tenants’ associations’, the Town Crier observed, ‘invariably record substan- tial sums reclaimed for their members from landlords who have been exacting more than they were entitled to.‘42 No less urgent was the vexation and discomfort due to negligence on the part of proprietors. Homes, though occupied and yielding a regular income, were too often unfit for human habitation. Here the tenants’ associations acted as intermediaries forwarding com- plaints to the local authority and thereby keeping ‘a whole army’ of sanitary inspectors in gainful employment.43 Throughout the 1970s the campaign against untenantable property was pursued with vigour. In the council chamber the property owners resisted the ‘paint and paper’ clauses of the Corporation Bill, 1922 with ‘an execrable exhibition of hooliganism’ and persisted with their opposition even after defeat at a ratepayers’ poll. The offending clauses, struck out by the hard-faced men who dominated the Local Legislation Committee at Westminster, were finally carried seven years later.44 A most important function concerned the collection of rates. Reviewing the decade’s work, the secretary of the Sparkbrook association, writing in 1929, recalled their remarkable success in this sphere: Most of our older members will well remember that in their efforts to smash our Societies the Property Ownersput the rates on our members, and how we approached the Rating Authorities and gained their permis- sion to collect these weekly if necessary,and when one takes this into consideration and realisesthat upwards of 225,000 (twenty-five thousand pounds) have been handled by us, and that without anything going wrong, and at a cost of less than 4 per cent for the total collection and manage- ment of the whole, it gives us some cause for satisfaction, and reflects great credit on the collectors and managementas a whole, and one could but wish that expenditure was as economic Nationally and Municipally.45 The division of rates as between owners and occupiers was, as the foregoing citation suggests, an issue bristling with all sorts of diffi- culties. The compounding of rates had in fact long been a source of endemic conflict between landlord and tenant. It formed the con- text of an intermittent agitation on the part of working-class tenants which had still to run its course when war intervened.46 The super- imposition of rent control thereafter merely provided additional complexity. 130 MIDLAND HISTORY We need not probe the arcana of rating and valuation too deeply to appreciate the issues at stake. The Rent Acts entitled the landlord to require his tenant to pay any increase in rates over the amount payable in 19 14 without indicating whether the increase should be the increase in the rates assessedon the house: or the increase in the net rates payable by the landlord after deduction of any compound- ing allowances. The sums involved were not inconsiderable ranging from 5d. to Is. per week. The tenants contested the landlords’ right to the disputed allowance. The resultant litigation lasted from the opening of 19 17 down to the summer of 192 1 when a final and favourable judgement was secured in the House of Lords.47 Member- ship soared thereafter. ‘I wellremember,’ wrote the secretary of the Sparkbrook Association, ‘that from July to December 1921, that is six months, we made something like 1,700 members, and for them and those that already belonged to us, must have recovered a sum exceeding &lO,OOO, during that period.‘48 But success is a wasting asset. The tenants’ movement henceforth was in danger of becoming little more than an efficient conduit for the convenience of the overseers. ‘There seems to be an impression abroad amongst some of our members,’ wrote one critic, ‘that the Society only existed to collect their rates, and that when this was. done there would be no more need for us.‘@ The danger here, however, was not that the meshing of the tenants’ movement with local administration would impair offensive activity, but that non- participation in its social life might starve the movement of 4 additional, funds and so limit the range of services the associations were able to provide; above all the apparent inertia of the members ,undermined the growth of that communal identity which its leaders were keen to cultivate. Attempts to popularise the social side of the movement through the organisation of whist drives, dances and similar activities appear to have met with a mixed response. The Sparkbrook Association, for example, catered for some five hundred children in the Christmas of 1923 but had to discontinue its loss- making dances a few years later for want of support.50 Disenchant- ment with the fruits- of such efforts, however, is not evidence of apathy or want of cohesion, but of an instrumental approach on the part of the subscribers which is, perhaps, less attractive but not less effective in the struggle for security of tenure. The uncertain status ‘of the tenants’ associations posed problems of. exceptional complexity in the definition of working-class politics. The emergence of a city-wide non-industrial, non-political working class .organisation had not been foreseen by the Trades Council’s founding fathers. Until the constitutional amendment of 1920, and four years after the first application had been received, such bodies were deemed ineligible for affiliation.51 The Tenants’ Federation, however, never ceased to regard the labour movement as anything other than the most progressive force in the locality. Officials TENANTS AND POLITICS: BIRMINGHAM TENANTS FEDERATION 131 readily acknowledged the invaluable assistance of the Labour Party in its formative period.52 Relations in the post-war years, though” cordial, were not always free of friction, however. Although willing to respect the wish for neutrality, the Labour movement found its position compromised by divisions amongst the tenants themselves. There was a strong body. of opinion, to be sure, which considered any political involvements fatal. ‘There are many ways,’ wrote one such advocate, ‘in which a non-political tenants’ association can be of great service to the Labour movement without having any political label.‘53 Some, such as the St Bartho- lemew’s Ward Labour Party Tenants’ Association, however, could obviously advance no such claims. And there were others who soon sought affiliation to the party of the workers. ‘It is the duty of all tenants who really want the associations to become1 something more than goose-clubs,’ wrote a member of the politically-active East Birmingham Association, ‘to attend their annual general meetings and see to it that all officers are in favour of linking up with other working class movements’54 The Labour Party, not wishing to disrupt the Tenants’ Federation, tried .to discourage these impolitic applications.55 However, the Trades Council, to whom they were referred, viewed the politicians’ restraint with some diffidence. Trade unionists were above all concerned ‘to prevent what was distinctly a working class move- ment’ from being exploited by Labour’s enemies.56 These fears were not entirely groundless. Suspicion had first been aroused by the successful attempt of a Liberal councillor to masquerade as an Independent tenants’ candidate. Anger was provoked by William Ellis, president of the Tenants’ Federation, whose intervention on behalf of the Unionist candidate in a close fought contest was thought to have tipped the balance against the Labour opponent, who also happened to be an executive member of the Federation! Ellis, who refused to enter into explanations or’ indulge in ‘contumacious controversy’, was censured by his executive and promptly resigned from the Federation.57 His extraordinarily inept conduct raised the problem of politics in acute form. ‘It is about time that members of the Tenants’ Association faced up to the fact that there is no hope for the tenants outside the Labour Party,’ declared the Town Crier: ‘No Politics’ label is alI very well for horticultural societies,soup kitchens, mothers’ meetings, pleasant Sunday afternoons, boxing clubs and other more or less harmlessinstitutions . . . The Tenants’ Associationsare at present being made to look ridiculous by their futile attempt to walk the political tight-rope. First they flop down into the Liberal camp; then they are head foremost into the Unionist camp; and both parties pick their pockets and chuckle at their discomforture.58 One delegate told the Trades Council that ‘his experience had 132 MIDLAND HISTORY convinced him that in too many cases “non-political” meant “anti- Labour” ’ . The cleavage. between tenants and trade unionists represented an additional impediment to Labour’s less-than-success- ful efforts to loosen the Unionist stranglehold on the popular vote. It was agreed that Labour members of the tenants’ associations should try to persuade tenants of the need for more definite links with the Labour movement.59 However, attempts to prise the Federation free of its non-party stance proved abortive and were soon abandoned. Tenants in turn abandoned independent electoral activity. Harmony was not restored immediately. The Federation seems to have reached a low point in the mid-twenties. These divisions contributed to the loss of vitality. The decision to seek affiliation to the Labour Party was, in the case of Tenants’ Associ- ation, a protest against an inert Federation which, it was claimed, was neither ‘alive [n] or progressive’.60 But before the end of the decade its star was again in the ascendant. Delegates to the annual general meeting of 1927 learned that, finances having been re- organised, the Federation was ‘now on a sound footing’.61 Its neutrality intact, the Federation set about mobilising influential non-political voluntary associations - such as religious and educational bodies, and the British Legion - in defence of tenants’ rights.62 The Rent Act, 1915 was not a tenants’ charter but an emergency measure due to expire on the morrow of victory. The failure to raise controls threatened the whole basis of the post-war housing programme. Neither Coalition nor Conservative governments regarded subsidies as a permanent feature of housing policy. State assistance was framed in terms of the return to normality: once the war-related deficit had been -made good, the state would with- draw from the housing field. Rent decontrol was vital to the success of this strategy. At the same time, the rents agitation precluded the simple restoration of the status quo ante. The old autocratic relationship of landlord and tenant was beyond repair. Legislation prepared within the Ministry of Reconstruction acknow- ledged the need of new machinery for the settlement of disputes between these fractious parties.63 Birmingham proprietors, who had spent more than 2400 in Sharp 11.Chant and were genuinely alarmed by the willingness of tenants to embark on rent strikes, prepared to compromise in order to forestall further state intervention in their affairs.64 Tenants were no less keen to avoid litigation. In July 19 18 both sides conferred. Tenants accepted the case for a reasonable. rise in rents but were apprehensive lest decontrol be accompanied by ‘vicious increases’ together with reprisals against those who had taken advantage of the emergency legislation. In addition to the demand for fair rents courts, they called for the cessation of harassment, abolition of key-money and a TENANTS AND POLITICS: BIRMINGHAM TENANTS’ FEDERATION 133 greater attentiveness to repairs.65 Proprietors were not, on the whole, well-disposed to any but the first of these points.@j Neverthe- less, a Joint Owners’ & Tenants’ Committee, which met weekly, was subsequently established and did something to reduce tension in the early twenties.67 But voluntarism soon ran its course. The determination of ministers to restore private enterprise entail- ed the abolition of rent controls and the rack-renting of council housing. This, as the Land Agents’ Record observed, was not a policy calculated to enhance the government’s popularity:

. . . it is only honest to admit that a period of suffering has got to be faced. Pressureon tenants may be applied gently and distributed over years, or it may be applied sharply and got over quick.ly.68

The unsettled state of the nation at the end of the war precluded the latter. But from the outset it was clear that even graduated decon- trol would be resisted. In the summer of 1919 & Handsworth Tenants’ Association petitioned the prime minister praying for the inclusion of house rent within the scope of the Profiteering Act.69 The forty per cent increase proposed by the Salisbury Committee and sanctioned by the Rent Act, 1920, provoked an outcry. Birmingham Town Hall was packed with irate tenants.70 Ex- servicemen, whose respect for the rights of property was thought to have been blunted by their years in the trenches, were ominously visible. The local branch of the National Union of Ex-Servicemen declared its ‘willingness to support the Tenants’ Federation in any action, however drastic, they may take in opposing this imposi- tion’.Tl Old soldiers were not the sole militants. At a mass rally in the Bull Ring ‘The advocacy of a rent strike met with warm approval from a considerable section of the crowd’.72 Birmingham tenants were not acting in isolation. Indeed, the Federation’s leaders had already been in communication with tenants’ associations elsewhere with a view to the formation of a national association.73 The prospects for a co-ordinated campaign did not seem unfavourable. ‘Delegates of tenants’ associations at Manchester, Newcastle, Hull and London . . . declared that feeling was running high in their cities.‘74 However, the trouble that was forecast failed to materialise following the collapse of the national rent strike launched by the Scottish labour movement.75 Never- theless. confidence in direct action, ,though shaken, was not undermined. The determination to minimise the deficits of state-assisted housing schemes meant that council rents were prohibitive. The returning heroes for whom they were intended were not at all pleased. In August 1920, the Corporation, in line with government policy, proposed to increase municipal rents. Ninety-five per cent of those who attended the demonstration organised by the East 134 MIDLAND HISTORY

Birmingham Tenants’ Association were ex-servicemen. Supported by the Town Crier, and acting in concert with the Labour Group, these council tenants resolved to withhold the new rents. Their protest proved effective. After nearly twelve months wrangling the independent rent tribunal, set up to arbitrate in disputes between central and local government, finally ordered a downward revision in the Ministry’s projected ‘rents.76 Pressure for further reductions became more intense as the depression began to bite with greater severity.77 ‘Not even a Corporation employee with three children could afford to pay the rents asked without depriving his family of necessities,’ said Councillor Cadbury, chairman of the estates committee.7* Such complaints were legion. High council rents and the uncertain future of rent control provided a continuous impulse towards organisation throughout the .inter-war years. The Federation was represented at the various official enquiries which preceded the periodic renew- al of restrictions. Time and again its officers, proposed remedies for the numerous abuses ‘which deprived tenants of the pro- tection of the law. Above all, it was concerned to arrest the policy of creeping decontrol initiated in the Rent Act, 1923: We have seen the terrible effects which have invariably followed de- control; increasedrent, the power of ejectment, the burden of all repairs, cleansing and decorating, key money and premiums, and restrictions of every kind are included in the terms of tenancy, clearly showing that if the ‘Rent Acts’ are allowed to expire, hundreds of thousands of law-abiding subjectswill be involved in like conditions.79 In its submission to the Ridley Committee of 1937, the Federation maintained that experience had shown that the weapon of decontrol has brought widespreadresentment against laidlords, a sullen resentment that is smouldering and longing to burst into fire but dare not becauseof the insecurity of their tenure is a great living reality which they dare not risk its plunging them and their families into the street or back into the irksome everyday quarrels of sub-let rooms.8o Besides its insistence upon tighter restrictions, the Federation cam- paigned throughout these years for the maintenance of rent restric- tions until the housing shortage had been overtaken.81 The integration of housing policy and rent control, together with the attempt to uphold and strengthen tenants’ rights, gained added piquancy from the fact that, for so much of the period, Neville Chamberlain was the Conservative party’s champion of social reform. His handling of housing and cognate matters was, therefore, a peculiarly sensitive issue. The housing question dominated local politics. The slums, said Austin Chamberlain, were ‘a breeding ground for dangerous ideas’.*2 TENANTS AND POLITICS: BIRMINGHAM TENANTS FEDERATION 135

The transformation of his once safe seat in West Birmingham into a marginal was, he thought, due to the propagation of socialism amongst embittered slum-dwelling constituents.83 His step-brother’s activities at the Ministry of Health appeared to aggravate the prob- lem. Business alone, it seemed, was the principal beneficiary of his reform of the rating system. Tenants of working-class houses feared that they were being compelled to subsidise the de-rating of business premises and were not mollified by the minister’s claim to the contrary.84 Substantial increases (as much as 9d. - 10d. per week in Birmingham), due to the general revaluation and reduction of compounding allowances necessitated by the Rating & Valuation Act, 1925, seemed destined to further alienate the working class tenant.85 To many such persons the upshot of Neville Chamberlain’s tenure at the Ministry of Health was that restrictions had been relaxed and evictions made easier, rates had risen but the slums remained. The Conservative-led Corporation was reluctant to intervene. In the early twenties it went to extraordinary lengths to minimise expenditure on council housing. Its outrageous gimcrack proposals even gave rise to a certain acrimony between the conscientious minister and his cheese-paring lieutenants.86 Property owners, too, found Neville Chamberlain’s solicitude for the poor’disturbing. His provision for the formation of reference courts in the Rent Bill, 1923, encountered fierce opposition from this quarter: If the first ConservativeGovernment we have had for a generation cannot put housing on a proper basis, and do justice to a classwhich it is usually admitted to have been shockingly treated, then there are many who will reconsidertheir allegianceto that political party.87 What made the condemnation all the more significant was that the spokesman was not only a prominent landlord but also the chairman of the West Birmingham Unionist Association. Proprietorial panic was, however, based on the erroneous belief that the new tribunals were a variant of the dreaded fair rents courts beloved of tenants’ spokesmen and other agitators instead of a short-lived experiment in decontrol by arbitration.88 In any case, it failed. Ineffective controls remained. Neither landlord nor tenant were satisfied. The struggle continued. Tenants’ associations not only contended that the relaxation of controls was disastrous but supported their claim with systematic evidence.89 In Birmingham, according to information supplied by the Tenants’ Federation, decontrolled rents compared with control- led rents had increased on average by 48 per cent.90 It was the outcry provoked by these and similar revelations which led to the appointment of the Inter-Departmental Committee on the Rent Acts in 1931.91 The problem could not be easily shelved, however; not, at any rate, in Birmingham whose expanding industries, boosted 136 MIDLAND HISTORY by rearmament, were having a magnetic effect on labour. In these circumstances, scarcity rents prevailed. The relaxation of restric- tions, it could no longer be denied, had been a ghastly mistake. Decontrolled rents had, in some cases, increased by as much as 147 per cent. Even*where proprietors had shown restraint, the average increase was between 80 and 100 per cent.92 In 1938 the Conserva- tive city council came out in favour of an extension of rent control in marked contrast to its ‘vigorous opposition’ of earlier years.93 The Tenants’ Federation had been vindicated. To conclude: the Birmingham and District Tenants’ Federation played an important role in local affairs. Its achievements, though not spectacular, were by no means negligible: harassment and intimidation were checked, wrongs redressed, law enforced. In the 1930s advisory services of this kind were exceptional.94 Notwith- standing its much proclaimed neutrality, the Federation developed a distinct list to the Left. Few of its affiliates, for example, disputed the need for municipal housing, and many were outright advocates.95 It is therefore not surprising that the Federation worked in alliance with the tenants’ associations thrown-up during the course of the municipal rent strike that preceded the outbreak of war.96 Similar- ly, in regard to the preservation and strengthening of restrictions, its attitudes were identical with those of an aroused labour move- ment.97 Even local Conservatives were not untouched. Above all, the Tenants’ Federation had upheld the (then novel) belief that, rent control or no rent control, tenants had rights that ought to be protected.

NOTES 1. See, for example, W. Ashworth, The Genesis of Modem British Town Planning (London, 1954); J. N. Tarn, Five Per Cent Philanthropy: An Account of Housing in Urban Areas between 1840 and 1914 (Cambridge, 1973); E. Gauldie,. &el Habitations: A History of Working Class Housing 1780-1918 (London, 1974). A.S. Wohl, The Eternal Slum: Housing and Social Policy in Victorian London (London, 1977) is a partial exception. 2. Such a perspective informs the work of, for example, M. Bowley, Housing and the State, 1919-1944 (London, 1944); P.B. Johnson, Land Fit for Heroes: The Planning of British Reconstruction 1916-1919 (Chicago, 1968); B. Gilbert, British Social Policy 1919-I 939 (London, 1970), and P. R. Wilding, ‘Government and Housing: A Study in the Development of Social Policy 1906-1939’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Manchester, 1970). 3. Studies which take account of tenants’ attitudes include Alison Ravetz, Model Estate: Planned Housing at Quarry Hill Leeds (London, 1974) and Jerry White, ‘Campbell Bunk: A Lumpen Community in London between the Wars’, Histor?, Workshop Journal, VIII (1979), l-49. The political significance of tenants’ agitations is examined in Bert Moorehouse TENANTS AND POLITICS: BIRMINGHAM TENANTS FEDERATION 137 et al., ‘Rent Strikes - Direct Action and the Working Class’in J. Saville and R. MiIIiband (eds.), The Socialist Register (London, 1972); S. Schifferes,‘Tenants’ Strugglesin the 1930s’ (unpublished M.A. dissertation, University of Warwick, 1975); J. Melling (ed.), Housing, Social Policy and the State (London, 1980). 4. Asa Briggs, Histoiy of Birmingham: Borough and City 1865-l 938 (Oxford, 1952), II, 226-36; A. Sutcliffe, ‘A Century of Flats in Birmingham 1875-l 973’, in A.R. Sutcliffe (ed.), Multi-Storey Living: The British Working C?assExperience (London, 1974). 5. International Iabour Office, European Housing Problems Since the War (Geneva,1924), 6-7. 6. For a glimpse of their activities, see Fourth ,Annual Report of the Birmingham Landlords ’ Association (Birmingham, 1859); and Birmingham Landlords’ & Ratepayers’ Mutual Protection Association, Speech by Henry Roberts Esq. and Annual Report and Proceedings of the Association (Birming- ham, 1878). 7. ‘The Birmingham Association’, Gazette of the National Federation of Property Owners h Ratepayers, Oct. 1931; Birmingham & District Traders’ & .3P’_4PgertyOwners’ Association,, Third Annual Report (Birmingham, 1904), 8. Birmingham & District Traders’ & Property Owners’ Association, Fifth Annual Report (Birmingham, 1906), 6; Birmingham & District Property Owners’ Association, Objections to the Housing & Town Planning Bill (Birmingham, 190&j, 2; J.S. Nettlefold, Practical Housing (Letchworth, 1908), 137 and passim. 9. Birmingham & District Traders’ & Property Owners’ Association, Tenth Annual Report (Birmingham, 1911), 11-16; Twelfth Annual Report (Birmingham, 1913), end covers. 10. Birmingham & District Property Owners’ Association, The Finance Act 1909-1910: Land Valuation, An Address by Samuel T. Talbot (Birming- ham, 1910); Albert J. Wilson to Minister of Reconstruction, 18 May 1918, P.R.O. Reco. 1/SOS; Birmingham Property Owners’Journal, Nov. 1921. 11. Briggs,History of Birmingham, 26. 12. Cf. A.J. Leeson, Garden Cities with particular Reference to Harborne Tenants (Birmingham, 1911); idem, Garden Cities with particular reference to Harborne Tenants: Press Correspondence and Other Matters (Birmingham, 1912). 13. Birmingham & District Traders’ & Property Owners’ Association, Eleventh AnnualReport (Birmingham, 1912), 14-17. 14. On this, see my unpublished doctoral thesis, ‘Landlord and Tenant in Urban Britain: The Politics of Housing Reform, 1838-1924’ (University of Warwick, 1979), 247-5 1. 15. Departmental Committee on the Operation of the Rent Restriction Acts: MS. Minutes of Evidence, 5 March 1920, pp. 15-16, Public Record Office, H.L.G. 41/4. 16. War Emergency Workers National Committee: Points on the Committee and its work, August 5th to November2nd 1914, by J.S. Middleton, WNCMSS., Labour Party Archives. 17. Quotation from Albert J. Wilson, War Tirne and Other Legislation affecting Property Owners (Birmingham, 191 Sj, 14. On the practical operation of the law, see letter of W.H. Whitelock, Registrar, Birmingham County Court, The Times, 21 May 1919. 18. On the local agitation, see Birmingham Gazette, X-11 September 138 MIDLAND HISTORY

1915 and 12-13 November 1915; Evening Dispatch 22 October and 1 Novem- ber 1915; Aston News, 9 and 16 November 1915; Handsworth Hera@ 30 .October and 13 November 1915; The Times, 16 November 1915; Minutes of Labour Representation Council, 27 October 1915, Birmingham Reference Library; Raising of Rent’, Memorandumby Joseph Kesteron, n.d., WNC MSS. .On industrial unrest, see‘Weekly Report of the Labour Department’, 23 October 1915, P.R.O. Mun. 2/27; letter of Frank Evans, District Secretary, AXE., Birmingham Daily Mail, 25 November 1915. On official response,see ‘Increase of Rents on Workmen’s Dwellings’, Memorandum by T. McKinnon Wood, 17 November 1915, P.R.O. Cab. 37/137/29; ‘Rent Raising’, Memorandum by H.W.. Law, 18 October 1915, Christopher Addison papers, Box 63, Bodleian Library, Oxford. 19. Local Government Journal, 28 April 1917. 20. Evictions in Birmingham 1915 1916 1917 No. of applications 866 714 411 Warrantsgranted 834 648 338 Warrantsissued 423 246 133 Warrantsexecuted 418 240 125 Source: Central Billeting Board, Report on Birmingham 28-29 January 1918, Mun. 5197. 21. Minutes of Birmingham Trades Council, 2 March 1916, Birmingham ReferenceLibrary. 22. Town Crier, 17 October 1919. 23. William Ellis, Secretaryof Birmingham & District Tenants’ Federation, to J.S. Middleton, 27 April 1918, WNC MSS; Minutes of Birmingham Trades Council, 21 February 1919. -24. See J.M. Winter, Socialism and the Challenge of War (London, 1974), 204-5; and appendices,War EmergencyWorkers’ National CommitteeMinutes, 9 November 1916 and 15 March 1917; also W.A. Dailey, An Historical Sketch OfBirmingham Trades Council (Birmingham, 1927), 28. 25. J. Kesterton to J.S. Middleton, 8 March 1917, WNCMSS. 26. W. Ellis to J.S. Middleton, 7 March 1917, WNCMSS. 27. See‘Memorandum on Amendmentsto the Courts (EmergencyPowers) Bill with the object of amending the Rent & Mortgage Interest (War Restric- tions) Act, 1915’, WNCMSS. 28. Appendix iii, War EmergencyWorkers’ National Committee Minutes, 5 July 1917. 29. Minutes of Birmingham Trades Council, 27 June 1917; Birmingham DaiZyPost, 26-28 June 1917. 30. Letter of Albert J. Wilson, Birmingham Daily Post, 29 June 1917. 31. On evictions in Birmingham, seeHistory of the Ministry of Munitions 12 vols. (London, 1920-24), V part 5, note 2, 30. On unrest in Barrow, see Englander,‘Landlord and Tenant in Urban Britain’, 381-90. ‘32. Central Billeting Board, Report on Birmingham, 28-29 January 1918, Mun. 5/97. 33. Central Billeting Board, Re ort on Birmingham, 28-29 January 1918, Mun. 5/97; Minutes of Birmingham Prades Council, 1 July 1918, 34. Town Crier, 2 January 1920. 35. Town Crier, 14 May 1920, 22 April 1921, 9 June 1922,9 February 1923 and 18 April 1924; Sparkbrook, Sparkbill and District Tenants’ Associ- ation, 13th Annual Report (Birmingham, 1929), n.p. 36. Inter-Departmental Committee on Rent Restrictions Act, 1930-31; TENANTS AND POLITICS: BIRMINGHAM TENANTS’ FEDERATION 139 MS Minutes of Evidence, 4.5962, H.L.G. 41/44; Rent Restrictions Acts Com- mittee: MS Minutes of Evidence,Q.2995, H.L.G. 41/64. 37. Rent Restrictions Act Committee: MS Minutes of Evidence, Q.2994, H.L.G. 41/64. 38. Inter-Departmental Committee on Rent Restrictions Act, 1930-31, MS Minutes of Evidence,QQ.6074-6075, H.L.G. 41/44. 39. ConstanceM. Hood, SecretaryBirmingham & District Tenants’ Federa- tion, to E.C.H. Salmon,Secretary to Rent Restrictions ActsCommittee, 7 March 1931,~. 832, H.L.G. 41/44. 40. Town CXer, 12 March 1920. 41. Town Crier, 15 February 1924, 17 December 1926, 1 April 1921; Tenants’ Association, Sixth Annual Report (Birmingham, 1926), n.p. 42. Town Oier, 23 May 1924. 43. Inter-Departmental Committee on Rent Restrictions Act, 1930-31: MS. Minutes of Evidence,Q.6735, H.L.G. 41/44. 44. Town Ckier, 20-27 January, 10 February and 14 April 1922; 6 Decem- ber 1929. 45. Sparkbrook, Sparkhill & District Tenants’ Association, 13th Annual Report (Birmingham, 1929), nq. 46. On this, see Englander, ‘IandIord and Tenant in Urban Britain’, Chs. Vi-ix. 47. Nicholson v. Jackson, Law Times Reports, CXXV (1921), 802-9; Town Gier, 15 July 1921. 48. Sparkbrook, Sparkhill & District Tenants’ Association, 13th Annual Report (Birmingham, 1929), n.p. 49. Sparkbrook, Sparkhill & District Tenants’ Association, 12th Annual Report (Birmingham, 1928), n.p. 50. Town Crier, 4 January 1924; Sparkbrook, Sparkhill & District Tenants’ Association, 12th Annual Report (Birmingham, 1928), n.p. 5 1. Town Ckier, 9 July 1920. 52. By special arrangementwith the editor, a column was reservedfor the conduct of Federation businesson condition that affiliates agreedto support the Town crier, the new Iabour weekly newspaper: Town tier, 3 October 1919. 53. Town tier, 25 May 1923. 54. Town Crier, 26 November 1920. Town Crier, 21 January 1921. fit Town Crier, 8 April 1921. 57: Seecorrespondence of William Ellis, Town Gier, 16 and 30 July 1920; and for Iiberal deceptions, Town crier, 31 October and 7 November 1919. 58. Town Crier, 2 July 1920. Town crier, 11 May 1923. 2’0: Town Crier, 25 January 1924. Town Crier, 25 February 1927. Birmingham & District Tenants’ Federation, Delegates’ Conference in Institute (Circular, July 1927), B.R.L. Pressmark520968. 63. P.R.O. Cab. 24176 GT 6836. 64. Birmingham Property Owners’ Association, Thirtkth Annual Report (Birmingham, 1931), 19; Birmingham & District Property Owners’ Association, The Housing Question: Remember Coventry, May 12 1917 (Birmingham, c. 1920), 9-l 1. 140 MIDLAND HISTORY

65. Birmingham & District Property Owners’ Association, Report of a Conference with Representatives of the Birmingham & District Tenants ’ Federa- tion (Birmingham, 1928) 2-5. 66. Birmingham & District Property Owners’ Association, Report to the Council of a Conference with Birmingham & District Tenants’ Federation (Birmingham, 1918) 2-4. 67. Birmingham & District Pro erty Owners’ Association, Twentieth Annual Report (Birmingham, 1921P , 114; Twenty-First Annual Report (Birmingham, 1922) 73; Inter-Departmental Committee on Rent Restriction Acts. 1930-31: MS. Minutes of Evidence.0.6001. H.L.G. 41/44. Land Agents’Record, 17 February1923 .’ 2;.Town Crier, 31 October 1919. 70: Town Crier, 21 May 1920. 71. Town Crier, 18 June 1920. 72. Town Crier, 30 July 1920. Town Crier, 9 January 1920. ;i: Town ‘Crier, 2 July 1920. 75. On this, see Iain Maclean,‘The Labour Movementin ClydesidePolitics, 1914-1922’ (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1970), ch. xiii. 76. Town Crier, 20, 27 August 1920, 8 July 1921, 14 October 1921; J.R. Jarmain,Housing Subsidies and Rents (London, 1948) 49-54. 77. On the activities of the Smethwick Municipal Tenants’ Association, see Town Crier, 14 July 1922, 11 August 1922; 12 January 1923 and 16 March 1923. 78. Town Crier, 12 January 1923. 79. Birmingham & District Tenants’ Federation, Delegates ’ Conference in Digbeth Institute (Circular, March 1928), B.R.L. Pressmark520968. 80. Rent Restrictions Acts Committee: MS. Minutes of Evidence, 411, H.L.G. 41/64. 81. Town Crier, 4 May 1928, 6 July 1928,3 June 1932,31 March 1935, 25 February 1938. 82. H.L.G. 48/43. 83. Charles Petrie, Life and Letters of Austin Chamberlain, 2 ~01s. (London, 1940), II, 208, 210, 369-70. On electoral considerationsin relation to council housing, see Memorandum on Deputation of Birmingham City Coun- cil to the Minister of Health, 16 March 1939, H.L.G. 46/48. 84. Town Crier, 22 March 1929. 85. ‘Rating & Valuation Act: Re-Assessmentof Birmingham’ Memorandum Intlld. R.B.C. [ross], 9 December1927, Rating & Valuation Bill Papers,1928, H.L.G. 29/l 54. 86. See H.L.G. 46/44. It was not until the mid-thirties that municipal house-building came to be regarded as a permanent duty, and even then, owner-occupiers,apprehensive lest the location of the new municipal dwellings ‘lower the tone of the neighbourhood’ with adverseeffects on property values, were never quite reconciled to council housing: see, for example, Sir Patrick Hannon M.P. to Walter Elliot, Minister of Health, 23 June 1938, H.L.G. 46/48. 87. Birmingham & District Property Owners’ Association, Twenty-Second Annual Report (Birmingham, 1923), 19-25; Birmingham Property Owners’ Journal, VII (June 1923). Quotation from Samuel T. Talbot, The Rent Bill, 1923: Observations (Birmingham, 1923) 14. 88. Memorandumby lord Onslow, n.d., Rent & MortgageInterest Restric- tions Bill Papers,1923, H.L.G. 29/128. I hope to deal with the politics of fair TENANTS AND POLITICS: BIRMINGHAM TENANTS’ FEDERATION 141 rents courts more fully in a forthcoming book. 89. See, for example, Sparkbrook, Sparkhill & Midland District Tenants’ Association, General Secretary’s Sixteenth Annual Report (1932), n.p. in Rent & Mortgage Interest Restrictions (Amendment) Bill Papers, 1933, H.L.G. 291197. 90. Rent & Mortgage Interest Restrictions (Amendment) Bill Papers,1933, H.L.G. 29/l 97. 91. Minute of H.H.G., June 1932,Ibid. 92. ‘Rent Restrictions Acts: Birmingham’, Unsigned memorandum, Increase of Rent & Mortgage Interest (Restrictions) Bill Papers,1938, H.L.G. 291248. 93. Briggs,History of Birmingham, 233. 94. ‘Rent Restrictions Acts: Existing Advisory Bodies’, Memorandum, n.d. but 1933, Rent Restrictions Acts Bill Papers,1933, H.L.G. 29/198. 95. See, for example, letter of G. Fowler, Secretary of BalsaU Heath Tenants’ Association, Town Crier, 28 October 1932. 96. Town Crier, 19 May 1939. On the municipal rent strike, see R.P. Hastings, ‘The Labour Movement in Birmin am, 1927-1945’ (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Birmingham, 1959r , 133-7; S. Schifferes, ‘Tenants’ Strugglesin the 1930s’ (unpublished M.A. dissertation, University of Warwick, 1975); also H.L.G. 48/46. 97. Tow2 Crier, 31 December 1937; Minutes of Birmingham Trades Council, 1 January 1938; Town Crier, 25 February 1938.