In early-1919 all aspects of Irish policy were being determined by the ideological divisions within the newly-elected Lloyd George Coalition Government. Home Rule was supported by Liberal ministers but was effectively stalled by influential Unionists inside the Cabinet, headed by the elder statesman of the Conservative Party, Sir Walter Long. The problems of the British Government were compounded by the fact that Sinn Fein won the vast majority of Irish seats in the General Election of December 1918, and duly proclaimed its own separatist republican parliament, the Dail Eireann. Meanwhile the policy for state housing in Ireland was still awaiting the outcome of the struggle between the English LGB and the Ministry of Reconstruction, over both the quality and quantity of the post-war campaign. It was the divisions in Westminster that were to ensure that the housing
initiative devised for Ireland in 1919 was unique compared to that for the rest of the United Kingdom. Two characteristics of the Irish campaign stand out. Firstly, the British
Government's use of housing policy for political purposes explains its determination to see the programme through, even when opposition in Ireland was clearly making progress impossible. Secondly, once the Treasury and the Cabinet had decided that a distinct subsidy system was necessary in Ireland, the greatest obstacle to success became an obsessive attempt to ensure comparability between Britain and Ireland, so that neither was seen to be treated advantageously compared to the other. This chapter will look at the way in which post-war Irish housing policy was drawn up in Westminster, and at the reactions in Ireland to the new 1919 Irish Housing Act. It will then examine the design standards that were introduced in the post-war period, before discussing the reasons why the actual housing campaign in Ireland proved to be so ill-fated. A distinct British initiative,
specifically to rehouse Irish ex-servicemen returning from the front, will form the subject of the next chapter.
6 .1 Initial British proposals for the Irish housing campaign
At the time of the Armistice the British Government's policy in Ireland was in disarray. The offer of self-government that Lloyd George had made earlier in 1918, which included a sweetener for Ireland of £2,000,000 a year towards state housing, was a dead letter. The Irish Convention had failed to achieve a settlement by consensus. Progress within the Cabinet Committee appointed to draft a new Home Rule Bill was being held up by opponents such as Sir Walter Long. The resultant stalemate had important political consequences for the British Government. It caused resentment in Irish communities
abroad, especially in the USA, and it actively contributed to the wave of industrial unrest that was sweeping post-war Great Britain and was threatening to shake the very
foundations of the state. "A satisfactory solution of the Irish question was most important from the point of view, not only as regards the industrial world, but also of our relations with the Dominions and the United States," the Prime Minister told the Cabinet. ^ The British Government thus realised that it had to portray itself as paying close attention to finding an Irish settlement, even if all it was actually doing in the meantime was to continue to administer as before. Hence in early-1919 the Cabinet proposed, as an alternative strategy, a reconstruction policy for Ireland that would enable it to govern in the interim while political differences in Britain could hopefully be overcome.
An important consequence was that, as the Castle Administration had long urged, the post war housing campaign in Ireland was now to be considered by the Cabinet alongside that for Britain. In December 1918 the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Austen Chamberlain, wrote to the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Edward Shortt, stating that he now "thought it clear that housing terms given to the United Kingdom would have to be extended to Ireland. "2 This decision coincided with a decisive change in the Government's attitude towards the housing campaign that has been comprehensively documented by Swenarton, and need only be summarised here.^ Towards the end of the First World War the question of housing had been reopened in Cabinet discussions, and during the post-war Election Lloyd George had made much of a crusade to build "homes fit for heroes". Cabinet concern was fuelled by the serious wave of industrial unrest and by the concomitant fear that 'bolshevism' might sweep the country and overthrow the state, just as it had done in Russia (and to a lesser extent, in post-war Germany). The fear, although it might seem unfounded now, was made very tangible at the time by the demobilisation of five million militarily-trained servicemen, and the release from duty of a similar number of munitions workers. The British Government now promoted better housing as the main means of appeasing labour demands and convincing the working class that there was no reason to overthrow the existing social order. A belief that housing could avert unrest and provide legitimation for the state was not confined to radicals in the Government, but was also shared by Conservatives such as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Austen Chamberlain. Consensus on issues like housing was essential to the post-war political coalition if it was to achieve a bourgeois realignment - a 'passive revolution' in Gramscian terms - based on a greater acceptance of state intervention, and thereby replacing a laissez-faire 'liberal
hegemony' that had collapsed due to the inroads made by working-class political organisation and the slow disintegration of the Imperial system.^
Thus by early-1919 housing had come to constitute, at least in the minds of the Cabinet, an "insurance against revolution". It was an alarmist view, but one that found ready
supported amongst all the political parties in Britain. However, what Swenarton has omitted from this account is the role of Ireland in shaping the Government's housing policy. The last chapter showed that during the war the Cabinet had authorised housing funds for Dublin to overcome political problems, and that Lloyd George had been prepared to offer generous state housing subsidy as part of a Home Rule settlement. Now after the Armistice, it was the example of land redistribution and subsidised labourers cottages in Ireland that the Prime Minister used to justify his belief that social reform would be a successful antidote to insurrection. In his famous speech to the Cabinet on 3 March 1919, demanding a substantial programme of land settlement and housing to avert 'bolshevism', Lloyd George began by declaring that:
"The policy here advocated was the same as that put into effect by Mr Balfour [Chief Secretary from 1887-1891] in Ireland, although it was on a larger scale. In Ireland, Mr Balfour had found a condition of social disorder, chronic trouble, poverty, and misery, which he desired to ameliorate, and he had developed a large scheme for settling labourers on the land. It was not an economic scheme. It involved considerable grants from the State, certainly up to the beginning of the war, if not since. There was no doubt that Ireland had benefitted thereby. It was true she was not contented, but what would have happened in Ireland during the last five years if the same conditions had prevailed as before the Balfour schemes were put into operation ? The same applied with regard to houses. About 50,000 had been built in Ireland, largely at the expense of the State. He had been told that they had transformed the whole country."^
Lloyd George's characterisation of subsidised Labourers Acts cottages as the product of Balfourist constructive Unionism' was not entirely historically accurate, but it served the purpose of reminding Tories within the post-war Cabinet of their party's role in the policies of Irish land and housing reform.
The results of the major shift in Cabinet thinking towards housing was signalled by a memorandum drawn up in December 1918 by the new President of the English LGB, Sir Auckland Geddes.^ This paper rejected the line previously taken by this department, and instead supported the call by the Minister of Reconstruction, Christopher Addison, for a more radical post-war housing programme. It was now generally realised that the state would have to meet a more substantial portion of high post-war building costs, because it would be politically necessary, to avoid inciting labour agitation, that legal controls on working-class rents be continued for some time after the war (the 1919 and 1920 Rent Control Acts permitted maximum increases over pre-war levels of 10% and 40% respectively).^ Geddes' central recommendation was for the financial proposition that Addison had put forward in March 1918, namely that the state should for a period of seven years meet the excess cost of housing schemes above the produce of a penny-rate levied by
the local authority. It constituted a great increase over the previous pledge by the English LGB to pay 75% of the annual loan charges, and it was also designed to ensure that the smaller or more reluctant municipalities would act, now that they had been given a fixed liability above which the Exchequer would meet all expenditure.
Various members of the Cabinet were again asked to comment on the latest proposal, and on 27 December 1918 Chief Secretary Shortt duly drew up a memorandum on Irish housing. The Chief Secretary was alarmed at the consequence of offering a subsidy with no upper limit on state contribution to Irish authorities that would undoubtedly be more than eager to build:
"I fear that none of the safeguards upon which Sir Auckland Geddes relies to secure the Exchequer against extravagance on the part of the local authorities would, in Ireland, offer adequate protection To fix a border-line of one penny in the pound above which the ratepayers are not to be affected by any increase in the cost of their housing schemes would open up infinite possibilities of extravagance in Ireland, in the way of purchase of sites and the making of contracts The views entertained by the rural district councils as to what should be regarded as "economic rents" for labourers cottages, according to our experience convinces me that if the Treasury, alone, had to bear the losses involved by reductions of the rent, when the limit of one penny was exceeded, there might be very soon a strike against all rents, save those which were merely nominal and it would be very hard to induce the urban councils to dispossess the occupiers declining to pay."
"The only safe policy for this country, I am convinced, is to give a government grant in the shape of a fixed percentage of the annual charge for principal and interest. The percentage should be sufficient to enable the councils, if due economy and forethought are exercised, to build houses without appreciable loss, so that, on the one hand, if councils mismanage their funds, reduce their rents and build unproductive and extravagant houses, the
ratepayers will share the burden with the Exchequer; while on the other hand, if they decline to continue building houses, owing to the losses involved in their schemes, the terms will be sufficiently liberal to enable the Local Government Board to appoint an officer to exercise all their powers under the Housing Acts without undue loss."^
The Chief Secretary was thus arguing for the retention of the subsidy system already devised by the English LGB, but mindful of the demand for greater state subsidy, he ventured that the fixed Exchequer contribution might be increased to 90% of the annual loan charges. In conclusion, Shortt declared that if the Cabinet were to insist that an identical penny-rate subsidy system be given to Ireland, then the responsibility for building must be taken away from local authorities and given to a special Housing Commission.
The Cabinet did not have to respond to the conservative views expressed by Shortt, for in January 1919 a new Chief Secretary was appointed. The new incumbent, Ian Macpherson, was a Liberal Home Ruler who believed that self-government could only be granted once law and order had been enforced, and Sinn Fein eradicated. In the interim he was
committed to a conciliatory policy to quell unrest and redress Irish grievances.^
Macpherson was a politically significant appointment, for he had been a member of Lloyd George's pre-war Land Enquiry Committee and was versed in the issues of land and housing reform. It was no surprise, therefore, that the new Chief Secretary saw a bold housing initiative as the central and most urgent part of the reconstruction programme. Hitherto the Cabinet had been wary about making decisions while the larger political issue of Home Rule lay unresolved, but in January 1919 the responsibility for Irish housing policy was handed over squarely to Macpherson. The Acting Cabinet Secretary ruled that it would "not be necessary to raise the subject at the War Cabinet except in the case of
disagreement" (even so, Lloyd George continued to monitor the discussions between the Chief Secretary and the T r e a s u r y ) .O n taking office, Macpherson told the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Austen Chamberlain:
"The situation in Ireland at the present time can hardly be exaggerated. Discontent is seething. Anything may happen at any moment, and both His Excellency [Lord Lieutenant French] and myself are strongly convinced that, while we must maintain law and order at all costs, we must at the same time meet the just demands of large public bodies like the Association of Municipal Authorities in Ireland who are clamouring for the fulfilment - long overdue - of a promise that a Scheme of Housing should be introduced and carried
through neither His Excellency or myself would seek to overstrain you at the present moment had it not been that our difficulties in Ireland are so stupendous."^ ^
The Chief Secretary intended to make housing the centrepiece of his speech on his first visit to Ireland in February 1919, and so before setting off he pleaded with the Treasury
Secretary, Stanley Baldwin:
"I need hardly tell you that in Ireland there is grave discontent because no announcement has been made with regard to this important problem, though in this country such an announcement has been made and a Bill even introduced. My predecessor drafted a Memorandum which was submitted in December to the War Cabinet, and about which I have been in communication with the Chancellor. In that Memorandum it is made quite clear that in the interests of the Imperial Exchequer it would not be advisable to have the penny rate I have to go to Ireland towards the end of next week to meet Deputations from Municipal Authorities upon this question, and I would beg of you to place me in the position of being able to make a definite announcement. I do not like having to press in this way, but my position is almost intolerable unless I can make it clear that the interests of the country, which, through no wish of mine, I had been asked to look after, are not lost sight ofi"12
As soon as Macpherson landed in Dublin, he was told by one Castle official:
"I see by to-days Times that you have arrived and will be speaking on Monday about the housing problem. I want you to think over what I said to you about touring the country and devoting a little imagination and enterprise to propaganda. It is easy enough to
organise opportunities for you to deliver speeches if you have in your mind a clear idea of a line of policy to counteract the Bolsheviks Set this country talking about you and your schemes for a change."
This was clearly the Chief Secretary's intention, for he immediately told a deputation from the Association of Municipal Authorities of Ireland that the issue "which had caused more uneasiness in the minds of the public generally had been undoubtedly the housing
problem The cry now was for a land for heroes to dwell in. There could not be a better cry, nor could any State carry out a wiser or a better policy." Over the next few months both Lord Lieutenant French and the Chief Secretary continued to use state housing as a propaganda tool, with for instance Macpherson stating at an official dinner in Belfast that it "was childish to talk of reform, of a betterment of the working classes if they did not, as a first measure in reform or reconstruction, provide the working classes of the people with better houses to live in. The home was the centre of all things." The new strand of Irish policy was also publicised in Britain. In April 1919 the Chief Secretary told Parliament of the paramount importance of the housing issue in Ireland:
"Indeed, it was the very first problem which occupied my thoughts when I took office in Ireland, and I set myself to see what could be done, and done quickly On the urban side, the problem is urgent, and more urgent in certain parts of Ireland than in any other part of the United Kingdom. Report after report has disclosed the appalling conditions which, in my judgement, are a disgrace to civilisation They are the allies of death and disease, of immorality and vice all over the world. But in Ireland they are that and something more. They are the allies of Bolshevism and Sinn Fein The problem of housing is largely a problem of health in the family and in the State. A good house, with all the associations of a home, is the most effective weapon, in my judgement, to secure the sanest outlook on life, and is the best guarantee for the moral and physical well-being as well as for self-government."
Yet the intention of the Castle Executive to use housing policy to fight against discontent and rebellion in Ireland - a threat far more real than any faced by the British Government at home - was compromised by the continuing determination of the Treasury to restrict Irish expenditure, and to ensure that British financial interests were paramount. In his initial pledges to Irish municipalities. Chief Secretary Macpherson had stressed that the housing