On the 9th July, the Sunday Times posted an article in their Style section. Here’s how it was headlined in its online edition:
It wasn’t principally the headline’s horrible typography or spelling mistake that jarred but its unconscious – perhaps even conscious – prejudice; a prejudice that not only stigmatised council housing but dishonoured and dismissed the experience of millions of British people.
I posted a fairly innocuous tweet and a screenshot:
I expected some response but nothing like the outpouring of resentment that ensued. As I write, that initial tweet has been viewed over 998,000 times and received 10,200 likes. Some of this was political and for good reason given the current marginalisation of social housing – needed more than ever and in greater numbers in the current housing crisis – but much of it was far more personal.
For so many people, moving into a council house was life-changing and it provided the secure base that enabled them to live their best lives, offering security, not ‘dependency’ as the New Right alleged in the 1980s.
Many spoke of the quality of their council homes.
There was anger that later generations are denied the housing opportunities enjoyed by parents and grandparents.
And, fundamentally, of course, as that comment makes clear and so many others testified, they were ‘joyful family homes’ (even if you weren’t a Liverpool supporter).
Some people offered particular memories. Debbie Cameron also shared some wonderful family photographs (the captions are hers) and detail.
Debbie adds:
Both my parents were from very poor families in London. After living in two cramped rooms in South London, they moved into a brand new council house in Essex with me and my sister aged 8 months, in November 1953. They absolutely loved the house. There was even a back AND a front garden! The council gave out prizes every year for the best tended front garden – a prize regularly won by my proud dad! The back garden was like an extension to the house –hence these photos. My dad died aged 96 and my mum aged 90. They lived in the house for over 50 years. It wasn’t a council ‘house’ … it was a wonderful, joyful home. A palace would not have made us happier.
My thanks too to Liz Ixer who posted this photograph of herself as a three- or four-year old in the late 1960s on Ipswich’s Whitehouse Estate.
The council house belonged to my grandparents who moved in after the war and stayed there all their lives with the same neighbours. Because of my Mum’s health I stayed with them without Mum for long stretches so it was a second home to me and a place of great freedom as it was car-less and everyone knew me so I roamed freely around our bit of the estate (under the watchful eye of the neighbours I now realise ). My grandparents were of the generation that left kids pretty much to their own devices and, as they both worked, I was often left under the not so watchful eye of my great grandmother who was even more benignly neglectful, ha ha. Happy times. And a safe haven always.
Some of this must have got through to the people who run the Sunday Times website. Some hours later the headline was amended:
That I guess was a victory, a small one in the struggle to honour our past and rebuild our future.
Note
My thanks to everyone who responded to my tweet and all those that regularly respond with their own personal knowledge and experience. Especial thanks to Debbie Cameron and Liz Ixer for allowing me to share their own memories and photographs. I will always be pleased to hear and learn more from others. Feel free to leave a comment.
