The view from the train

by thenewenglishlandscape

 

Balcony horticulture, 2023

The social and political after-effects of the catastrophe of the First World War included recognising that many who had sacrificed their lives had done so with little if any stake in the nation’s future. Of those who had survived – a lot of whom had come from conditions of brutal poverty – found themselves returning to the same conditions, seemingly unrewarded. Not surprisingly, political consequences followed. ‘Homes fit for heroes’ was an early demand, soon to be accompanied by the less anticipated call of ‘gardens for all’.

The radical demand for the right to a garden as part of the post-war covenant is much less well-known. Thanks to Behind the Privet Hedge, Michael Gilson’s newly history of the enthusiastic gardening movement that accompanied the public housing movement between the wars, that lack has now been remedied. Many of those involved in jump-starting the gardening movement – including Richard Sudell, its unofficial guru and hero of Gilson’s study – came from the same religious and political background as other social pioneers of that period. Sudell started out as a young, largely self-educated Quaker, fervently committed to a national programme of social transformation. To this end he was prepared to go to prison during the war for his beliefs, and did so as a CO (Conscientious Objector).

As Gilson remarks, ‘pacifism and horticulture are common threads weaving a whole network of progressives into this story.’ The more we learn about this tumultuous time, the more the combination of working-class radicalism with religious non-conformism – complemented by a powerful Anglo-Catholic radical movement during the same period – created a powerful movement for social change. They were aided by people such as Joseph Fels, a wealthy American soap manufacturer who came to Britain, fell under the spell of George Lansbury and the back-to-the-land movement in Britain – itself inspired by Henry George’s advocacy of public land ownership – and helped set up the Vacant Land Cultivation Society to support Sudell’s endeavours. In time he was joined by two other heroic figures in support of his campaigns, Clifford Allen, a former CO who had been treated abominably in prison, though later given a peerage in 1932, and his wife, Lady Allen of Hurtwood, who became a tireless advocate of children’s play for many decades in the UK and across Europe.

Land ownership, land management and the cultivation of the gardenesque city – famously advocated by Alfred & Ada Salter in their municipal ‘Beautification’ projects in Bermondsey – became a focus of interest in local government and town planning circles after WW1. This concern for a creative mix of decent housing with gardens and landscaped settings has since almost evaporated. The relentless reduction in the supply of social housing has resulted in the rise of highly-profitable volume house-builders in the private housing market, the latterappearing to have little regard for the quality of the garden and landscape elements in their schemes.

One reason for the insufficient interest is that in some circles, ‘labour’ issues such as full employment, along with wages and conditions (with male workers historically in the vanguard of the struggle), took priority over the provision of housing, schools, parks and public amenities for the wider family. Yet if you ask social policy commentators what would be the most important factor in helping more people live more fulfilled lives, some would say that affordable housing, good schools and neighbourhood amenities should have been greater priority. Of course, one ought not have to choose, but maximalist programmes to solve all social ills in one go – with the possible exception of the achievements of social democratic governments in the Nordic countries for a while – are rare. Even Nye Bevan came to realise that ‘socialism is the language of priorities’.

At long last UK political parties have conceded that the UK is experiencing a major housing crisis: home-ownership is in decline, rents now take a far higher proportion of people’s earnings than ever before, and land-banking and speculative development are now shaping the physical and social infrastructure of cities faster than any other economic or social factors. In her new study of international land speculation, The Long Land War: The Global Struggle for Occupancy Rights, Jo Guldi, an American historian on British land issues, writes that: ‘Neoliberal ideas about the ability of the market to coordinate resources, and housing in particular, made their way into British politics in the1970s, producing one of the most dramatic political realignments of the century. In the bizarre reversals that followed, Britain – the home of J.S.Mill, the author of the first modern rent control and land reform laws – became one of the first nations to privatize its public housing.’

Sadly, as both the books cited here note, it is only after a war or a similar catastrophe, that government promises of better housing and full employment are made, and briefly kept. One of the joys of travelling by train are the views of people’s back gardens. The sheer prolixity of interests, enthusiasms and lifestyles given full rein – which I have seen over many decades of arriving into Liverpool Street Station from suburban and coastal Essex – were the result of an energetic house-building programme after the last war. It was in the back gardens that people stamped their identities on the land, when given enough room for a vegetable patch, or a mowed lawn with floral borders, along with a shed, trampoline or swing, and possibly a chicken shed or workshop. ‘Live/work’ conditions, currently fashionable amongst urbanists, were often created informally by people through their own initiative. Today land prices no longer allow any such ‘luxuries’ or flexibility of life opportunities in the domestic sphere.

Behind the Privet Hedge is a very good book, already given a glowing review on the Municipal Dreams website, where it is noted that throughout the 20th century the pendulum has swung between favouring high-density urbanism and lower density suburban settlement. The jury is still out, but the fact is that both can be done badly and both can be done well, principally constrained by corporate land banking, which today largely determines the whole town planning agenda.

K.W.

Michael Gilson, Behind the Privet Hedge: Richard Sudell, the Suburban Garden and the Beautification of Britain, Reaktion Books, 2024.

Jo Guldi, The Long Land War: The Global Struggle for Occupancy Rights, Yale, 2024.

Municipal Dreams: Michael Gilson, Behind the Privet Hedge: Richard Sudell, the Suburban Garden and the Beautification of Britain, 18 June 2024.