There’s an old football chant that goes: “And if, you know, your history, it’s enough to make your heart go woooooaahh…..”

For people who work in housing I think it’s always rewarding to look back at the historical record and to remind ourselves of the awful living conditions that people endured in the not so distant past. At a time when the social housing sector is under attack it is also helpful to reflect upon the immense improvements that social housing providers have made to the lives of millions of people.

I wrote about Charles Dickens last week, and came across this extraordinary letter sent to the editor of The Times newspaper. It was signed by 54 people living in a slum in St Giles, London, on the site where Centre Point now stands.

Amazingly, The Times published the letter on July 5th 1849 under the headline “A Sanitary Remonstrance”. The spelling is as in the original.

THE EDITUR OF THE TIMES PAPER

Sur, — May we beg and beseech your proteckshion and power. We are Sur, as it may be, livin in a Wilderniss, so far as the rest of London knows anything of us, or as the rich and great people care about. We live in muck and filth. We aint got no priviz, no dust bins, no drains, no water-splies, and no drain or suer in the hole place. The Suer Company, in Greek St., Soho Square, all great, rich and powerfool men, take no notice watsomdever of our complaints. The Stenche of a Gully-hole is disgustin. We all of us suffer, and numbers are ill, and if the Colera comes Lord help us.

Some gentlemans comed yesterday, and we thought they was comishioners from the Suer Company, but they was complaining of the noosance and stenche our lanes and corts was to them in New Oxforde Strect. They was much surprized to see the seller in No. 12, Carrier St., in our lane, where a child was dyin from fever, and would not believe that Sixty persons sleep in it every night. This here seller you couldent swing a cat in, and the rent is five shillings a week; but theare are greate many sich deare sellars. Sur, we hope you will let us have our complaints put into your hinfluenshall paper, and make these landlords of our houses and these comishioners (the friends we spose of the landlords) make our houses decent for Christions to live in. Preaye Sir com and see us, for we are living like piggs, and it aint faire we shoulde be so ill treted.

We are your respeckfull servents in Church Lane, Carrier St., and the other corts. Teusday, Juley 3, 1849.

Signed by John Scott, Emen Scott, Joseph Crosbie, Hanna Crosbie, Edward Copeman, Richard Harmer, John Barnes, and 47 others

I don’t think I need to add anything to that. It speaks for itself. What became of these “corts” and their residents I do not know.

(First published at Inside Housing 13th February 2012)

William Barnes was Director of Housing when I joined Camden as a fresh-faced housing management trainee over thirty years’ ago. From his sixth floor office in Bidborough Street, just south of St Pancras Station, he managed an empire of 40,000 homes. Four floors below, the Chairman of Housing, a councillor called Ken Livingstone, had his own office in the department (a rather radical notion at that time) and was often to be seen eating alone in the staff canteen wearing his trademark safari jacket.

To most of his staff, Barnes seemed a rather remote and patrician figure, but I’ve just read his obituary in The Times (he died in July aged 92) and it reveals that he was a truly radical and visionary Director, who made a lasting contribution to London’s housing. He arrived at Camden in 1970 when waiting lists were growing and realised that the Borough had to take a comprehensive view of housing that embraced all of Camden’s population, not just the service provided to council tenants. He developed one of the best housing aid centres in London and led a massive programme of municipalisation, buying up whole streets of Victorian terraces and converting them into flats, often using compulsory purchase powers. Many General Improvement Areas and Housing Action Areas were created, where enforcement action against poor private sector landlords was taken and environmental improvements carried out. He also ran a huge building programme of 3,000 homes a year, delivered by the Council’s own architects’ department.

Barnes also felt passionately about training and staff development. He recruited many bright graduates – many of them now senior figures in the housing world – and set up a housing trainee scheme.

William Barnes was the son of the Bishop of Birmingham and educated at Westminster School and Trinity College Cambridge where he took a First in classics. A lifelong Quaker, he was a wartime conscientious objector and served with the Friends Ambulance Unit. After the war he became a civil servant and was involved in setting up the London Business School. He had a passionate belief in mixed communities and Camden had a policy of buying sites in the richer parts of the Borough, such as Hampstead and parts of Holborn, to build award-winning estates, often to the chagrin of local wealthy residents who found themselves living next door to people they saw as undesirables. But take a walk around many parts of Camden today and you will see the legacy of this vision – well- kept and well-designed council blocks jeek by jowl with private mansion blocks and expensive Victorian houses. It is not surprising that a Camden address is one of the most sought-after in London.

The remarkable thing is that he did all this during the seventies – a decade of recession and political instability, much like our current decade. He built new homes on a scale that is almost unimaginable today and provided a comprehensive housing service that is a foundation stone of our present approach. It is quite a legacy. Now, with little to distinguish between Labour and Conservative housing policy it makes me wonder if we have any comparable visionary figures in our sector?

(First published at Inside Housing 7th November 2011)