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Defeating the Giant of Squalor

Defeating the Giant of Squalor. Denny High History Department. Labours election propaganda of 1945 campaign placed a great emphasis on housing. Post-war Britain there was a chronic housing shortage because of the destruction of 700,000 homes in WWII. Shortages of builders and raw materials.

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Defeating the Giant of Squalor

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  1. Defeating the Giant of Squalor Denny High History Department

  2. Labours election propaganda of 1945 campaign placed a great emphasis on housing. • Post-war Britain there was a chronic housing shortage because of the destruction of 700,000 homes in WWII. • Shortages of builders and raw materials. • Slums that were barely cleared in the 1930’s. • Nye Bevan’s task was certainly enormous. BACKGROUND

  3. ½ million houses had been destroyed/made uninhabitable. As many as one third of all houses in Britain were in need of serious repair. Post-war years saw an unprecedented number of marriages and births. Increase in people seeking houses. Greater competition for building materials that were in acutely short supply. BACKGROUND

  4. The Labour Government was successful to an extent in dealing with the giant of Squalor in that, it came close to its goal of providing quality and affordable working class homes, yet homelessness and poor housing remained a problem by 1951. POINT

  5. The Labour government tackled the Giant of Squalor by initiating a housing programme to tackle the chronic housing shortage. The government aimed to build around 200,000 new homes each year. EVIDENCE

  6. To further meet the housing crisis, the government both oversaw the continued production of prefabricated houses, and passed the New Towns Act 1946, which tried to solve the overcrowding and housing shortage in British cities. EVIDENCE

  7. Between 1949 and 1951, an average of 196,300 houses were built per year, and overall about 1 million houses were built by Labour between 1945 – 1951. • Morrison argues that given the scale of the social and economic problems facing the government in 1945, historians tended to judge Labour less harshly than the voters did in 1951. + ANALYSIS

  8. The council houses which were built were to an extremely high standard with an average floor width of 1,000 square feet. • 14 new towns were built be the Labour government by 1951 alleviating the housing problem partially. + ANALYSIS

  9. The 1951 census revealed that there were 750,000 fewer houses than there were households in Britain. This was roughly the same level of homelessness as in 1931. Also the post war baby boom meant that by 1946 many desperate families were out of sheer frustration, squatting on disused army camps. - ANALYSIS

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