Journal of Co-operative Studies 55(1), 49-53

Government policy and social housing. Dangers and opportunities in the Bill. 

R. Johnston Birchall

Journal of Co-operative Studies 55(1), 49-53

Orginally published in Society for Co-operative Studies Bulletin 62, May 1988, 42-47

https://doi.org/10.61869/KNFM1967

How to cite this paper: Birchall, R.J. (2022).  Government policy and social housing. Dangers and opportunities in the Bill. Journal of Co-operative Studies, 55(1), 49-53. https://doi.org/10.61869/KNFM1967 (Original work published 1988).

Abstract

The debate about current housing policy tends, like so much else in British politics, to be dominated by arguments from two opposing forces: free market individualism on the right, and state socialism on the left. The co-operative voice is caught in the middle, and for the most part is continually drowned out. This is not because it is the voice of ‘centre party politics’ (though the centre parties have been sympathetic to it); when taken seriously, the co-operative philosophy is simply too radical to be contained in any conventional continuum between right and left. It has been drowned out partly because the left in Britain, unlike that of many other countries, has been incorrigibly statist and unsympathetic to co-operative socialism, and partly because the right, sensing this weakness in the philosophy of the left, continually tries to assimilate the co‑operative belief in mutual aid to the rhetoric of market-based ‘self-help’. This paper reviews the implications on the Housing Bill 1988.