Section:GDN 1N PaGe:31 Edition Date:190731 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 29/7/2019 18:07 cYanmaGentaYellowb
Wednesday 31 July 2019 The Guardian •31Opinion
John BoughtonSocial housing ideals of
a hundred years ago
are as relevant as ever
W
hen the Liberal politician
Christopher Addison introduced his
fl agship housing bill in April 1919,
he spoke of its “utmost importance,
from the point of view not only of
the physical wellbeing of our people,
but of our social stability and industrial content”. As
we celebrate the centenary of council housing, this
sentiment is not lost in today’s housing crisis. From the
rise in expensive, precarious and poor-quality private
renting to the dwindling dream of homeownership , it is
fuelling discontent.
The fi rst council-built housing was actually in
Liverpool in 1869. The 1890 Housing Act established
the legislative powers and machinery of state. But
only around 24,000 council homes
were built nationally before 1914. In
contrast, the 1919 Addison Act was a
revolution. It required not only that
all local authorities conduct a survey
of housing needs but that they
actively prepare plans to meet them.
Beyond what could be raised locally
by a penny on the rates, the cost of
building these new homes was to be
met entirely by the Treasury. The act
also insisted on high-quality housing .
Unfortunately, his programme fell victim to public
spending cuts. Just 176,000 homes had been built in
England and Wales of the 500,000 Lloyd George had
promised. Addison resigned from both the government
and the Liberal party in protest. Later housing acts, in
the 1920s, revived council-built housing. Legislation in
the 1930s targeting slum clearance and introducing rent
rebates addressed one serious defi ciency in Addison’s
reforms – that their relatively high rents excluded the
slum population most in need of rehousing.
It took a second world war and another great
reforming minister , Nye Bevan, to revive the idealism
of the 1919 act. One common factor underlay both eras
of reform – a broad cross-party consensus that accepted
the necessity of state intervention to build the homes
the country needed. That is required now to provide the
homes people desperately need.
The housing crisis is a reminder that the lessons of the
Addison Act are not merely historical: its ideals, objectives
and means remain as relevant today as ever.John Boughton is the author of Municipal Dreams: The
Rise and Fall of Council HousingToday’s housing crisis
is a reminder that the
lessons of the 1919
Addison Act are not
merely historicalsponsored by former students and
supporters, that means if a family or
school can pay half the fee then the
trust will match it. The camps’ ethos
is to be accessible to all children ,
whether fi nancially privileged,
at-risk or with special educational
needs. “We’re not about siloing poor
kids away,” says Mac artney. ATE’s
mission statement says: “When
children are surrounded by the
pressures of a hectic world, ATE
believes that a period ‘away from it
all’, doing simple, fun activities in
a tucked away, countryside setting
with others from all over Britain and
beyond can be of immense value.”
One notable thing about the week
I’m on is that nobody’s cool – and I
mean that with the greatest respect.
There are no phones, no selfi es, no
makeup, Emma Williams explains.
She is one of the camp “monitors”,
or helpers – volunteers who have
gone through a stringent training
process and are often former
attendees. She says: “It’s one of the
reasons we don’t play things like
football or rounders. None of the
kids knows the games so everyone
has a fair crack.” Instead, most
games are made up by volunteers or
tried and tested over the years.
There is also no timetable,
something that might strike fear
into the heart of a helicopter parent.
“We decide what we’re going to do
that morning, depending on mood,
how the group’s feeling and what’s
happened before,” says Macartney.That’s not to say there isn’t any
organisation. “There’s just a lot of
fl exibility, which is crucial to what
we do.” Similarly, every single
activity is something the children
can do at home. There is no fancy
kit, no special outfi ts. Games range
from wearing your pants on your
head at dinner through making a
bracelet out of safety pins to welly
wanging (throwing) outside – and
much more in between.
Clare Wood, from Chesterfi eld, is- She’s on her 19th superweek, fi rst
coming when she was seven. Both
older sisters are monitors. “I love
meeting new people and making
friends. I’ve got friends that I’ve met
on previous weeks. It’s not about the
individual things we do, it’s about
the whole feeling. I just love it.”
Lewis Davis, 12, from London,
has now been on fi ve camps, funded
by his local authority’s children’s
services after the school noticed the
▼ There is no fancy kit required to
join in a ‘superweek’. Every activity is
something children can do at home
PHOTOGRAPH: ACTIVE TRAINING AND EDUCATIONClare in the community Harry Venning
‘ A nominal fee for
a subsidised place
is small enough for
people to aff ord.
We’re not about
siloing poor kids ’Liz Macartney
ATE programme directorpositive impact it was having. “It
was the fi rst time I’d spent a week
away from my parents and I was a bit
scared, but I loved it,” he says. “Each
camp is diff erent because there are
diff erent people and I do things
like chocolate making and I make
new friends.”
Despite the boost to confi dence,
social skills, wellbeing and
happiness that parents and teachers
say is evident after children have
attended a summer camp, fewer
than 2% of children in the UK go to
one each year, compared with nearly
10% in the US.
Chris Green is coordinator of the
Summer Camps Trust, a recently
established charity (of which ATE is
a member), which wants 1 million
children participating in summer
camps in Britain by 2040. “A week
or so a year in a well-run residential
camp, right away from phones,
laptops and the pressures of the
outside world, with the opportunity
to play and share a laugh with others
their own age from all over Britain,
gives children a taste of what life in
a happy community can be like,”
he says. “Most children in the US,
Canada, France and Italy think of
their annual week at camp as the
best fun of the year.”
Green adds: “By giving children
back some ‘real childhood’, so
they spen d more time playing in
green fi elds, listening to stories
and exercising their imagination,
and less time posting messages
on social media or sweating over
quadratic equations, we might see
fewer reports and articles on how
miserable our children are.” He
would even like a week on a summer
camp to be compulsory in the UK to
improve children’s mental health.
In the meantime, the trust will be
promoting a programme to try out
summer camps in August at a low
cost, which aims to recruit 500 nine-
to 15-year-olds who have never yet
tried a residential camp.
“Short periods spent in truly
happy and relaxed communities
can do wonders for young people’s
personal development,” says Green.
“There has never been a time in
our history when British children
needed it more.”To book or donate to an ATE
superweek visit: superweeks.co.uk/
adventure-appeal/
More details of the Summer Camps
Trust “try out” programme at
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