Politics and Planning in Residential Leeds, 1954-1979
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1 “Bogged down in housing”: Politics and Planning in Residential Leeds, 1954-1979 Ben Philliskirk Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of History December 2016 2 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. © 2016 The University of Leeds and Ben Philliskirk 3 Acknowledgements One of the advantages of studying a long-term part-time thesis has been that I have benefitted from the input of three different supervisors. First I would like to thank Richard Whiting, who has been there for the whole process and extended his supervisory role into his retirement. In addition, Moritz Foellmer and Mark Smith both provided valuable insights before their departure from Leeds to pastures anew. Moritz and Mark’s organisation of several urban history workshops at Leeds also provided a significant source of intellectual stimulation. For her constant encouragement and interest in my work I would also like to give many thanks to Linda. 4 Abstract This thesis addresses several themes relating to politics and planning processes and their effect on residential areas of post-war Leeds. As such, it examines the extent to which Leeds’ political leadership and council bureaucracy were pursuing a ‘modernisation project’ in the post-war period, asks if policy changed from an ambitious attempt to reshape Leeds’ residential environment to the aim of managing selected ‘problem’ areas, and questions whether popular organisations were concerned mainly with defending ‘traditional’ communities and ways of life, or if they had a more positive aim of achieving greater control over the built environment. In relation to this, it considers how much the council bureaucrats, local politicians and community groups were constrained by political, economic, organisational and technical issues. Ultimately, one of the central features of this thesis is how housing issues in Leeds went from a relatively consensual political approach with extensive technocratic guidance and little popular involvement, to a situation by the end of the 1970s where numerous grass-roots organisations were demanding a say in housing policy, party-political divisions were an increased feature and the council had become more exasperated at the resources, guidance and management it was receiving from central government. This is linked to concepts of ‘collective consumption’ and the relationships between citizens and the state, producing conclusions that suggest that an inability to achieve broader political influence over changes to the residential environment effectively encouraged a retreat to the pursuit of more individual solutions and the frustration of collective aims. 5 Contents Abstract 4 Contents 5 List of Photographs 6 Abbreviations 7 Maps 8 Introduction 10 Chapter One: The Role of Planning, 1945-1979 40 Chapter Two: Leeds—Post War Context 51 Chapter Three: Clearance and Improvement, 1954-1970 61 Chapter Four: Rehabilitation or Redevelopment? 1971-1979 84 Chapter Five: Housing: Construction and Production, 1954-1968 121 Chapter Six: Housing: Construction and Production, 1969-1979 146 Chapter Seven: Residential Land: Acquisition, Designation and Disposal 171 Chapter Eight: Public Facilities in Residential Leeds: Shopping, Roads and Industry 194 Conclusion 227 Bibliography 245 6 List of Photographs Cambridge Road, Woodhouse (1970s) 10 Lincoln Field Grove, Burmantofts (1958) 51 Back to Backs, Harehills (1953) 61 Castleton Terrace, Armley (1964) 72 Louis Street, Chapeltown (06/06/1950) 75 Marian Terrace, Woodhouse (15/07/1975) 84 York Road and Ebor Gardens Estate (1963) 121 Quarry Hill Flats (July 1951) 127 Pottery Vale, Leek Street Flats (1973) 146 Quarry Hill Flats (June 1967) 167 Seacroft Town Centre (c.1967) 194 Seacroft Civic Centre (1967) 198 Inner Ring Road Construction, Woodhouse Lane (22/11/1965) 221 Pottery Vale, Leek Street Flats (1983) 227 7 Abbreviations CHWP Community Housing Working Party CPO Compulsory Purchase Order CSHAG Cross Streets Housing Action Group DOE Department of the Environment GIA General Improvement Area HAA Housing Action Area LCC Leeds City Council MHLG Ministry of Housing and Local Government MoH Medical Officer of Health PLI Public Local Inquiry WYAS West Yorkshire Archive Service YDG Yorkshire Development Group YEN Yorkshire Evening News YEP Yorkshire Evening Post YP Yorkshire Post 8 9 10 “Bogged down in housing”: Politics and Planning in Residential Leeds, 1954-1979. Introduction Cambridge Road, Woodhouse, 1970s. (Leeds Library and Information Service, www.leodis.net) In 1965, when discussing planning policy at a Development Plan meeting, one Leeds councillor declared that “(we) must not let every subject get bogged down in housing.”1 This was a rather telling statement. For all local authorities, and especially a leading one like Leeds, housing was undoubtedly the greatest priority. In the immediate period following World War Two, amid the shortages, rationing and state direction of policy that ensued, councils were given the major role in the provision of housing. They were operating under conditions laid down by central government and the various financial and policy constraints that stemmed from this, but nevertheless, it was councils that organised the building of masses of houses and the development and redevelopment of residential areas. The role of councils was to change in the mid-1950s when many of the restrictions on private builders and landlords were lifted, but the job local authorities were given of clearing the slums and providing modern housing was a massive one, and one which was to cause some controversy later in the period. 1 Leeds, WYAS. Sub-Town Planning and Improvements Development Review Committee 1965- 69. LLD1/2/834518 (Meeting of 29/10/1965) 11 When examining the politics and planning of Leeds’ housing in the post-war era there are a number of themes and questions that need to be investigated and which seem of the greatest importance. The first is that of civic pride and local identity. In his 2004 book on the Victorian city, Building Jerusalem, Tristram Hunt asked rhetorically ‘After seventy years of near total decline, after decades of sustained depopulation, suburbanisation, industrial depression, cultural collapse, and political castration, could it really be that British cities are starting to revive their long-lost Victorian ethic?’2 Another impression of long periods of the post- war era would be utterly at odds with that of Hunt, who may be indulging in a degree of romanticisation and focusing on rather narrow aspects of urban governance and legislative fiat. Urban economic, social and cultural elites may be less in evidence and local responsibility for gas, electric and water was lost, but cities gained the tasks of spending vast resources on housing and education, providing modern dwellings and schools, and the significant obligation to plan for the development of the entire urban area. A quote from Anthony Clavane’s Promised Land, a clever and entertaining intertwining of the fortunes of the city of Leeds, Leeds United football club and Leeds’ Jews, suggests an alternative point of view. ‘The city’s changing skyline reflected its new civic pride. The back-to-backs and factories were flattened to make way for the M1, an inner ring road and brutalist buildings like the Yorkshire Post complex and John Poulsen’s International Pool.’3 He adds that the past was seen as something to escape from, as ‘From the opening of City Square in the 1890s to the great slum clearances of the early sixties, civic visionaries tried -and mostly failed- to reverse the image of a grimy, industrial mill town, the eternal Victorian city.’4 Clavane acknowledges later in the book that the promise of the sixties was to be disappointed, and images of 1970s Leeds have subsequently been dominated by the dismal atmosphere of Jimmy Savile, the Yorkshire Ripper and David Peace’s Red Riding saga of novels, but this should not obscure the hopes and achievements of the city’s attempts at transformation in the post-war 2 Tristram Hunt, Building Jerusalem-The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City (London, Phoenix, 2004) 3 Anthony Clavane, Promised Land: A Northern Love Story (London, Yellow Jersey, 2011) p.48 4 Ibid, p.35 12 period. Residential Leeds was an integral part of this process, and the demolition and construction of thousands of dwellings sat side-by-side with the building of motorways, schools, offices, shopping centres, university and hospitals. This could almost attain an atmosphere of religious revival, and Conservative candidates at the 1972 municipal elections were proud to hail ‘slum property being demolished at an almost unbelievable rate, and new housing rising on the barren soil.’5 The flowering of civic pride was firmly connected to the modernisation drive of post-war Britain and, as the above quotes from Clavane suggest, transformation of the built environment was a central part of this process. ‘Modernisation’ as a concept was thus closely connected to ‘modernism’ in architecture and planning. John Gold has said that ‘The social consensus heavily backed the principle of progress through technology and supported the idea that architecture could contribute decisively to solving pervasive urban problems. The traditional built environment could not stand in the way, because its present sorry state represented the embodiment of past failures and short-sightedness: its intractable problems positively demanded radical solutions.’6 Despite the growing breadth and depth of social and infrastructural provision in post-1945 Britain, there were fears of decline both locally and nationally. Governments were concerned about Britain’s economic performance compared to its major rivals, and were also acutely aware of the country’s diminishing position internationally when up against the Cold War ‘superpowers’.