These are the British

by Drew Middleton

Definition of the new class from either a geographic or an economic point of view is difficult. In the 1930's there was an extensive redistribution of the British working population. Industries, heavy and light, began to spring up in places like Oxford and in the heart of hitherto largely rural counties like Berkshire and Northamptonshire. Tens of thousands of workers left their homes in slum areas or drab working-class neighborhoods and moved to new jobs in new industries. In the six years before the start of World War II more than 2,000,000 new houses were built in Britain. This was important in the resettlement of the industrial population. Equally important was the fact that over 500,000 of them were built and let by local government authorities who in turn were helped by the central government.

Subsidized housing had come to stay. In the decade since the war more than 2,000,000 new houses have been built. Of these about 1,600,000 are owned by local governments, which let them at low rents made possible by government subsidies.

Another development that benefited the new class was the advent of the New Towns. These are self-contained communities outside the great centers of population, complete with industries, schools, churches, hospitals, and public services. They are intended to draw people from the cities and conurbations, already too large, and establish them in the countryside.

The idea is old. Ebenezer Howard proposed it in 1898 and the proposal was promptly attacked as the spawn of the devil and his socialist friends. It was not until 1903 that Letchworth, the first of the New Towns, was established. But World War II impressed on both Socialist and Tory the wisdom of dispersing the industrial population, and in 1946 the House of Commons approved the New Towns Act. Today there are fourteen New Towns in Britain, eleven of them in England. None is complete, although workers are moving into them by the thousand.

Harlow, which occupies ten square miles of Essex, is the most advanced of the New Towns. Its present population is about 30,000. The target is around 80,000. The cost of this vast resettlement scheme is high. Thus far it has been about £112,000,000, approximately $313,600,000. Estimates indicate that more than double that sum will be needed to complete the New Towns.

The New Towns are by all odds one of the most interesting and imaginative developments in modern Britain. Their social and political consequences are almost incalculable. For the New Towns will continue to grow and to house a new class whose political and economic power will be a dominant factor in British society.

They will not be completed overnight. In most cases the rate of growth depends on the willingness of industry to build in the New Towns. Exceptions are towns like Newton Aycliffe and Peterlee in the North of England which have been built to house miners and their families. On the whole, however, industrial support has been encouraging. With the establishment of a new industry in a New Town more houses are built and schools, churches, shops, and parks constructed.

In the process hundreds of thousands of people are leaving the working-class sections of the Clyde or South Wales or London, trading tiny, old-fashioned flats or houses for well-designed houses. The children are going to schools that are new and not over-crowded. They are playing in fields rather than city streets.

But the New Towns are not the only factor in the emergence of the new class. In addition, there has been a steady increase in the construction of low-rent housing estates by local authorities. Incidentally, the people of the New Towns are sharply critical of ignoramuses who confuse them with the people of the housing estates. The housing estates are most often built on the fringes of big cities; the tall—for Britain—apartment houses rising in Wimbledon, outside London, are an example.