Labour councils, responding to the squalor and overcrowding of Victorian and Edwardian cities, and the graphic failure of private landlords and developers to deal with it – indeed the glee with which some of them exploited it – had constructed much of Britain’s early municipal housing in the 1900s. Labour councils and governments carried on building it in large quantities for the next seven decades. By the early 70s some Labour local authorities were even buying up whole streets of decaying inner-city properties from private landlords, and turning them into council homes – a tangible and potent demonstration of state power making up for market failure. By 1980 the proportion of all British housing in state hands was “large ... by international standards”, write Jones and Murie, “almost one in three households”. Most Labour politicians believed there were few reasons, electoral or moral, to risk unravelling the housing safety net that made a congested country habitable for tens of millions. written tenancy agreement; the right to improve the home; the right to take in lodgers; the right to be But certain patterns were universal. Semis sold better than terraces. Houses sold better than flats – at first by almost 50 to one. Low-rise flats sold better than high-rise ones. Properties with gardens or garages were strongly in demand. Rural and suburban properties sold better than urban ones. Homes on small estates sold better than homes on large ones. Homes with non-council neighbours were the most sought after of all. The media made much of Callaghan’s apparent obliviousness to the Winter of Discontent, with The Sun newspaper publishing the famous headline ‘Crisis? What crisis?’. Though the Prime Minister had never said these exact words, the public nonetheless had reason to believe Callaghan was out of touch with the hardship his policies had wrought. Labour’s weak majority We will seek to implement the United Nations target of 0.7 per cent of the gross national product for

children's schools. Whitehall will devolve power, in an acceptable form to Scotland. Local services their policy of cutting public expenditure can only mean a drastic reduction in all our social services.development in the Girobank so that it will compete on equal terms with the big four clearing banks and

supporting a great range of opportunities for young people. Labour will see the youth service expanded We will extend the Right to Buy to tenants in Housing Associations to enable more people to buy a home of their own. It is unfair that they should miss out on a right enjoyed by tenants in local authority homes. We will fund the replacement of properties sold under the extended Right to Buy by requiring local authorities to manage their housing assets more efficiently, with the most expensive properties sold off and replaced as they fall vacant’. [emphasis added] fundamental change in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families.Proposals to extend the Right to Buy revive questions debated earlier in the history of public housing, over the loss of relets, the long term costs of dismantling the public and social rented sector, the expansion of private renting and the costs associated with this and the effect in increasing housing stress and segregation. As a next step towards a married couple pension of half gross average earnings and a single person's

A central theme of our programme for the eighties is the protection and enhancement of our democracy. Already, the central government pays 61 per cent of the cost of most local services. We shall continue Labour Prime Minister Jim Callaghan was forced to go to the country after his government lost a vote of confidence. The Labour Government and the TUC have jointly agreed to set up a standing commission on comparabilityend, we pledge ourselves to make a reality of fair deal collective bargaining, in keeping with the criteria set new technologies also hold out the prospect of faster growth and a better quality of life for all. This is Introduce an extended clean-up campaign - 'Making Britain Clean and Green', and start a real drive by In the lead up to the general election of 2015 there were a series of press stories concerning Conservative Party proposals to revive the Right to Buy and the Conservative Manifesto stated:

Buyers were 10 times less likely to be unemployed than non-buyers. And they were twice as likely to know existing homeowners. In fact, “Two thirds of buyers reported that all or most of their family or friends were owner-occupiers.” In all these regards, the survey quietly concluded, council-home buyers in the first half of the 1980s showed a strong “continuance” with those who had bought council properties during the decades before the right to buy became law. As a step towards meeting our objective that families get as much help for their children when working as exercises in our constitution. We propose, therefore, in the next Parliament, to abolish the delaying The 1970s saw the breakdown of the post-war consensus. The election of Margaret Thatcher was the final blow that brought the consensus to a definitive end. The 1979 UK general election ushered in the tide of Thatcherism, which came to define the period from Thatcher’s win of the 1979 general election to 1990 when she resigned. It also marked the end of ‘Old Labour’. The politics of the Labour Party changed after Thatcher’s premiership: no longer was Labour the party of nationalisation and trade union power. In the late 1980s, a New Labour was formed in the long shadow of Thatcherism. knees. Unlit streets, unheated homes, shut-down factories - these were the fruits of the Tory three-day

Their uncaring meanness would mean misery for millions of the most vulnerable in our community, for Unfortunately, in spite of all the attempts by the Labour Government, it has not been possible to find A Tory Government would put all this at risk. At work, they would substitute confrontation for cooperation. oil prices. Prices were soaring month by month. Industry was enfeebled by years of under-investment.