[speaker001:] Shall we start from the beginning?
[speaker002:] Yes
[speaker001:] Right, mm, completely fresh start?
[speaker002:] Yes please.
[speaker001:] I was born in Wapping in the year nineteen hundred and six, my father was a docker, one of my earliest recollections is of the dock strike of nineteen hundred and eleven, in which I played a part lining up at the soup kitchens to get soup for the family. My father died when I was quite young and at ten years of age I went into a poor old orphanage where I stayed four years. I came out of the orphanage to go and live with my mother and I found myself one of the family of six living in one room, the house was a four roomed house plus a scullery. Each room was occupied by a separate family, there was one cold water tap for the whole of the four families and one outside toilet. Conditions such as those were quite common to many thousands of people and I think it was those conditions which helped to formulate and develop my political thinking. When I was eighteen I came in contact with the Catholic Crusade which was a rather left wing Christian Socialist Organization and I found that their attitude to problems contained the answers for which I had been searching for a good many years... tell me when you want me to raise something.
[speaker002:] Yeah, I'd like you to tell me about erm, what the house was that you left before you came to Harlow and why you came to Harlow?
[speaker001:] Yes, [cough] if we skip all the intermediate years with, after the war I came back from the army to find we'd been bombed out and were living in requisition accommodation, after a time, the, we were moved into a new flat over some shops. My wife was working for Cossors the electronic company and they moved to Harlow and er, it, in order for her to retain her job, we had to move to Harlow as well. This proved very difficult because, between the time of the decision being taken to move Cossors to Harlow and the time that my wife, my wife's department actually went, the Development Corporation had changed their policy and would not have married women as tenants. This resulted in a great deal of correspondence between myself and the Development Corporation and at the end of it I told my wife the best thing to do was to hand her notice in as there was no chance of us ever getting a house in Harlow, fortunately her services were much more seriously in demand then we imagined and the company nominated us for one, a house which is allocated to one of their executives, the house that we're living in now and have lived in ever since nineteen sixty three. The vast difference between Stroud Green Road, Islington and Harlow. For one thing Harlow is the sort of town which I'd been agitating for both before and after the war... whenever I was speaking on behalf of the Labour Party both at street corners and at public meetings on the type of life we vis envisaged for a normal person in the land. To leave Islington, to leave Stroud Green Road, to leave a flat which was over a shop overlooking a main shopping centre, overlooking a completely noisy main through road to come to Harlow was a difference between chalk and cheese. The accommodation differed in, in one respect and that, that was that in the flat we were on one floor, we had one bedroom, we moved into a house with two toilets separate bathroom and three bedrooms, which enabled us to spread our furniture around, enabled us to have visitors to receive members of the family. I think this is one of the essentials in Harlow and something that people should not forget, that is that, although there is a great deal of criticism possibly of the standard of building that went on over the years of the Development Corporation, compared with what most people came from, there was a very great elevation both in quality and in ideas. Perhaps today the general public take too much for granted, the, as a local Councillor I have to interview many people who come to me with housing problems, to be as patient as one can is essential as a politician, but after the complainant has gone, one is very conscious of the fact that their problem is so minute it is hardly worth mentioning. But nevertheless that's human nature and perhaps it's also a reason why life should not stand still, whatever progress we make both in housing and in quality of housing and the quality of life, once people are used to that, to that they expect more and this is what progress, what forward thinking is all about.
[speaker002:] Could you tell me about the house, of which you were bombed out? Was it, were you married at the time?
[speaker001:] Yes... I think that over the course of our married life we had a number of moves for various reasons, generally to improve the accommodation, erm as standard of life increased so the desire to have a better house to live in or rather in those days a house was out of the question, we generally had rooms in a house, erm, they, the flat for instance that we were bombed out from was a basement flat, erm according to the estate agents it was a garden flat, erm and it meant that you had access to the front garden and the back garden, but as for being a garden flat it was below the level of the garden in the front and at the back it was on the level with the erm green grass at the back of the house, it was also along side of the trolley bus depot, so there it was considerably noisy, nevertheless it was a self contained flat, the first one we'd had, no the second one we'd had and we were perfectly happy there although of course it did have minor difficulties, the fact that you used the front door with people who had flats on the other remaining three floors, but nevertheless it did involve you in a certain amount of community living, you were aware of your neighbours, you had to be very conscious of them and they were very conscious of you. That I think perhaps is one of the striking differences between that and living in a house in Harlow, where you may or may not know your immediate neighbours. Perhaps you know them over the garden wall to speak to you, you might even know their children by name and you know their christian name, but beyond that I think it's true to say, even making allowance of generation gaps that you don't know your neighbours in the same way that you knew your neighbours in London.
[speaker002:] Whereabouts was the basement flat, was it in Islington
[speaker001:] No, that was in Islington but it was in the district called Holloway
[speaker002:] Oh yes I know it well
[speaker001:] Mm Penventon Gardens
[speaker002:] Penventon Gardens, is the hou oh of course it's not there
[speaker001:] It's not there, mm, yeah
[speaker002:] if it was bombed out yes
[speaker004:] You were in the army weren't you?
[speaker001:] Oh I was yes, I was
[speaker004:] Army
[speaker001:] I was enjoying life in the army while my wife was enjoying the bombing. [LAUGHTER] She was actually in the house when the bomb dropped on the other side of the road and she was flung down two flights of stairs and the piano on the other side of the room here bears the scars of the bombing.
[speaker004:] And that curtain went from the window right across the room and pinned itself into the piano, pinned the curtains into the piano. [LAUGHTER]
[speaker001:] And it also managed to chip some of the woodwork, curious to think that I was offered as war damage compensation five pounds to re-case the piano, you couldn't of had it repolished for five pounds, but thinking was working class people shouldn't have pianos, I'm certain that was at the back of, of the gentleman whose job it was to evaluate war damage, he certainly raised his eyebrows every time we told him, what either a piece of furniture or crockery or cutlery which had been destroyed had cost and he was so foolish after er the house had been almost flattened as de demand bills as proof of evidence that your figures were correct...
[speaker002:] Mm, so when you left your, when you came back you said that you went into a requisition property
[speaker001:] Yes, erm, we found ourselves in, rather to go back. After the bombing my wife was housed with an with another family
[speaker004:] Who had been bombed
[speaker001:] in the top flat, they, they were rehoused in a flat in a block of mansion flats and when I came out of the army this was the accommodation I found available, er for me and I objected strongly and after a great deal of fuss erm the Islington Borough Council's Housing Department found us rooms on the first floor in a Victoria Victorian villa in Penventon Gardens, which erm, were comfortable
[speaker004:] Not Penventon Gardens
[speaker001:] Er not erm
[speaker004:] was that
[speaker001:] Sunnyside Road
[speaker004:] Sunnyside Road
[speaker001:] Sunnyside Road Sunnyside Road, and erm, it were... it was good accommodation we had our own bathroom and toilet er but again accommodation was cramped, we had no spare room
[speaker004:] And we weren't proud, there was people came
[speaker001:] and er the people in the flat above us had to pass our door to get to them in the same way that we had to pass the people, tenants below doors to get to their accommodation. Erm from there we went into this purpose built flat above a grocers shop, it was meant for the manager of the grocers shop, but he had better sense and so the flat became available for letting to the Borough Council who at the insistence of the owners of the house we were in, erm, were anxious to get their property back and so we found ourselves in a brand new flat, the first tenants, although this was not very highly to be recommended, you approached your flat up er stone staircase, er from the outside so you exposed to the elements er you then walked across the roof, flat roof over the shops until you came to your flat door, erm, Islington at that time was just beginning the, to see the influx of immigrants from the colonies as they were in those days and er, they in turn created much heavier demand on what little vacant property there was, so that the district rapidly deteriorated and... for many people who were not in the fortunate position that we were found it necessary or desirable to leave because they were sharing rooms or sharing houses with people whose ways of life were different from theirs and this is something I think that housing authorities learnt to appreciate over the years that the differences between people's ways of life are one of the major causes of social distress.
[speaker002:] What year was that when you moved into erm Sunnyside Road?
[speaker001:] We moved into Sunnyside Road in nineteen forty five and we moved into erm Stroud Green Road
[speaker004:] Fifty three
[speaker001:] somewhere about nineteen fifty three, yes
[speaker004:] in our town house
[speaker001:] and we left Sunnyside Road in sixty three to come to Harlow.
[speaker002:] So you've only been in Harlow since nineteen sixty three?
[speaker001:] Twenty years yes
[speaker004:] Yes
[speaker001:] it'll be twenty years next March
[speaker002:] Mhm. Could you explain to me a little bit more when you said that erm a married woman couldn't be a tenant.
[speaker001:] Yes, erm, when Harlow was designed, it was appreciated that its, the, its purpose was to house workers in the factories and the offices and also to act as an overspill from London, and in nineteen sixty when Cossors were bringing their workers by the hundreds
[speaker004:] Fifty eight
[speaker001:] Fifty eight was it? When, in nineteen fifty eight when Co Cossors were bringing, started bringing their workers here the Development Corporation were very anxious to let houses and, so that it, it didn't matter whether the worker was male or female, he or she was accepted as a tenant, by the time we came to move in Harlow in nineteen sixty three the Development Corporation reneged on its promise to house my wife. At that time erm, I was a commercial traveller and Harlow was part of my district and they reluctantly accepted the fact that because I was a commercial traveller working in Harlow that I actually did work in Harlow which was stretching a point, but I really think that the Development Corporation's officials were getting a little tired of my being able to talk their own language and to write letters in the same vein as they could write, they weren't used to this, and, at any rate, as I said earlier we got here.
[speaker004:] We were offered some awful things though, in the first place
[speaker001:] Erm, I've always been interested in housing and it did appear to me that however delightful Harlow may be, when the architects were designing properties, they designed a property without any consideration for the people who were to live in them. We were offered a flat, which would of mea if we'd of accepted it would of meant we would have to of sold every stick of furniture because the rooms were not large enough
[speaker002:] Can you tell me the name of the block of flats or the address of it?
[speaker001:] That was er a flat in Plumtree, we were offered a flat on the first floor and when we examined the kitchen it was extremely obvious to me that our gas cooker wouldn't fit in the, the place where it was designed to fit, when I asked where do we put the washing machine I was informed that most tenants kept the washing machine on the balcony, when I said well where do we put the refrigerator, well most people keep the refrigerator either in the hall or, or rather not a hall it was a passageway, in the passageway or in the living room, now it does seem to me with hindsight that if that's planning I, to use an old fashion London phrase, I'm a Dutchman.
[speaker002:] Was the living room a com a com combined sitting and dining room?
[speaker001:] Combined everything except bedroom, there was one separate bedroom
[speaker002:] Only one bedroom?
[speaker001:] Yes... erm, it was very obvious from the word go that they didn't want us.
[speaker004:] It was for a single person really wasn't it there?
[speaker001:] Well I would of thought so, although today it must be admitted that single people, don't get offered one bedroom flats, but then in those days there wasn't the shortage of accommodation that there is today...
[speaker004:] Next question
[speaker002:] Erm, could you tell me erm something about how you felt about the change of coming to this house, you know whether you enjoyed it?
[speaker001:] Well I suppose at the, one of the best things, best examples of the difference was that my wife when she saw this house, knew that it was a house in which she could be happy, in which her tastes and, could spread themselves, erm rather than her tastes having to be curtailed by lack of space and lack of accommodation, erm, the fact that I had a garage which was essential er next to my house instead of some er quarter or twenty minutes' walk away from where I lived as happened in London also made a terrific difference to comfort, erm the fact that there was a garden instead of a few windowboxes and a couple of tubs, all these things I think made one appreciate the fact that you'd come, not only into a new town, but into a new way of life... probably the fact that we had a staircase inside the house, which was the first time that we'd had a staircase between our bedrooms and our living rooms
[speaker002:] Mm
[speaker001:] so in all purp in, in always, the fact that you'd come into this house made one realize that there'd been a distinct change in one's circumstances.
[speaker002:] And did you feel that it affected your lifestyle? That you could do, you mention that you could now entertain
[speaker001:] Erm
[speaker002:] your friends
[speaker001:] well we always had entertained friends but we'd never been in a position to put them up so that erm... most of our friendly visits were from people who didn't live very far from us, it meant that families, nieces, nephews etcetera were difficult to accommodate because they had to sleep on a couch or a settee in the living room with all its diff difficulties, especially when it meant in the morning for breakfast you had to get them up and dressed before you could start thinking about breakfast, and I think that those sort of things are things that er people ought to take into consideration when thinking about new housing. One of the beefs I have about accommodation for elderly people is the fact that by, that the purpose built, very excellent, bungalows and flats for elderly citizens are restricted to one bedroom which, to which but is by government decree to keep the cost down, but it does seem to me to be very heartless because elderly people's children are unable to come and stay with them except to the great deal of discomfort and perhaps as society grows a little more considerate for the fact that the percentage of elderly people will get even greater as the years go on, then they should make allowance and provide them for the facilities to enable them to be visited by their children and grandchildren.
[speaker002:] Did you erm leave family behind when you came away from London?
[speaker001:] No we never had a family so we were entirely foot free and foot loose.
[speaker002:] But apart from children I meant sisters or brothers
[speaker001:] Oh yes
[speaker002:] or parents or
[speaker001:] yes, erm my wife came from the Midlands, from Coventry and... her family roots were in Coventry at the Midlands, in fact there she still has numerous nieces and nephews and great nephews and great nieces there to this day, my with the exception of a sister who moved, who, to Basildon, erm I have two brothers and er they still live in London, still live in East Ham, er the distance is not too great erm and, but obviously as we get older the amount of visiting we do will be constricted by the difficulties of getting from Harlow to East Ham especially when one is compelled to stop driving a motor car...
[speaker002:] Did you bring furniture with you when like when you moved into Harlow?
[speaker001:] Oh yes, yes, we, the... we had an extremely large rooms, I don't know went, what, what, what went wrong the architect but we had two enormous rooms which could of been quite easily divided into three, but we could of had two bedrooms instead of one and the conse
[speaker004:] Er, sorry to interrupt you are you speaking about this house?
[speaker001:] No, the flat
[speaker004:] The flat, right
[speaker001:] the flat in, in London, the flat we came from and so we had accumulated a little more furniture than one would usually have in two rooms and the kitchen and we got here and were allowed to spread ourselves, if there's one criticism that one could say about this house, is that the... size of the rooms... confines you to what you put in them, they're square, that the, the division between the living room and the dining room is through a pair of glass doors, where perhaps that could of been arranged with either sliding doors or some other feature so as not to separate it yet again into two square boxes... and erm...
[speaker002:] Are you in favour of open plan?
[speaker001:] er, it depends on one's own tastes, I personally don't like the open planned that I've seen in very modern houses where, erm I, I don't quite know how to express it but it does seem to me odd to be on one floor level and then two feet up you're on another level and er, that's one aspect of the open plan that doesn't appeal to me and I don't quite understand why it's necessary to have everything that's going on in one room with pieces of furniture designed to act as barriers between the different functions or purposes for which you give parts of the room.
[speaker002:] So how do you [cough] how do you see the ideal way of arranging a room?
[speaker001:] The ideal way, way of arranging a room as I see it would be that you could have your separate rooms but have sliding doors, after all there's nothing new in sliding doors, er, but doors opening and closing erm are restrictive, that's only my own personal view, my wife doesn't necessarily, necessarily share that view... ideally if I was planning a house, the main room the main living room would be much larger than the one we live in, it would certainly be a different shape, erm when we had our golden wedding erm our visitors were so numerous that they were standing shoulder to shoulder in these two rooms and the kitchen whereas if it had been a reasonably designed house maybe we could of spread them around a little more, but they're minor, minor defects that are not really serious. I think today that if someone was designing a house one would incorporate all the modern additions which have suddenly become fashionable such as double porches, doubleglazing and er patio windows, I think that these things are perhaps a development from, in the same way as this house is a development from the rooms and the flats we lived in in London so that the modern conceptions of the things I've mentioned could be incorporated as normal in the house certainly would be cheaper to incorporate them when building the house than adding them on.
[speaker002:] When was this house built?
[speaker001:] Well I don't know the exact date but I believe this house is some thirty years old, so it was built about nineteen fifty three, fifty two, fifty three
[speaker002:] Does it have central heating? Does it have central heating?
[speaker001:] No it has central heating now, but it didn't when we moved in.
[speaker002:] Did you own the house?
[speaker001:] No...
[speaker002:] Erm, did the Council put the central heating in?
[speaker001:] Council put the central heating in when we got... advanced in years and when it became necessary in the doctor's opinion for me to have central heating because I had a heart complaint.
[speaker002:] So it's, the, the Council doesn't install central heating as a matter of course only if it's a special case?
[speaker001:] The Council has a policy now of bringing all its properties up to date, but priority because they're, bringing the houses up to date will take some eight years, priority is given to elderly citizens and people with medical needs.
[speaker002:] Do you like the orientation of the house? Do you feel that it's pointing the right way, bringing the sun in through the right windows at the right time of day?...
[speaker001:] That's a little difficult to answer, if you're watching television, the sun can be a nuisance
[speaker002:] Yes of course
[speaker001:] when it comes in, pours in those, the house faces west er consequently although it's very pleasant in the afternoon and evenings when you're not watching television erm, it has its drawbacks on the other hand the garden is most unfortunately orientated... alright? I think that's a minor problem but perhaps architects now pay a little more attention to and that is that, in the afternoon when you like to sit in the evening when you like to sit in the garden in the sunshine you are sitting in the shadow because the house er is between the sun and the garden...
[speaker002:] I can't think of any more questions for the moment
[speaker001:] Alright...
[speaker002:] So do you think I could ask you something about what you please tell
[speaker001:] No we're alright
[speaker002:] please tell me when you want me to go because
[speaker001:] Yeah
[speaker002:] if I over st don't let me over stay
[speaker001:] No, no, no, no.
[speaker002:] Er I liked to ask you erm about if you, if you think that Harlow lives up to the ideal of the New Town?...
[speaker001:] It could be asked what is disappointing about Harlow, and I suppose that the first thing that strikes one is the design fault so far is the road work, the road network is concerned and er, and the inadequacy of the road, for roads for modern traffic. Very obviously when this town was designed and laid out and nobody foresaw the growth of the private motor car, er today private motor car is accepted, but in a town which was built perhaps the idea that one in twenty would own a motor car and we're now faced with the probably... one in three have a motor car, we're now faced with a problem which can only detract from life in the town, also the fact that huge lorries are passing through what were envisaged as quiet residential neighbourhoods with a consequent breaking of curbs and of paving stones where the lorries are compelled to mount the pavings in order to get round parked cars and things of that nature it detracts from the life in Harlow I do, I think a considerable extent, erm, the other factor is that there's become a lack of pride in the town by the people who live in it, this is seen from the amount of rubbish, and refuse that is dropped from the minor vandalism that goes on the graffiti, er particularly in underpasses where people are walking to the town centre and that, those are the things where the town has lost its way, when we first came here you never saw bits of paper and packages from sweets and cigarettes and things, perhaps maybe because the package industry has developed over the years and that er... whereas whenever we had responsibility for taking a small child out, if it had sweets it was encouraged to put the wrappings in its pocket until it got home, now of course it's encouraged to drop it just where it wants to and er this not only applies to children, some of the worst culprits are the adults who leave the, leave the public houses with a can of beer to drink on the way home and drop it just when they've finished the last drop of beer or the fish and chip paper's just dropped. I think this is detracting, I think it's inconsiderate, it certainly shows a lack of respect for one's neighbours or indeed for the town one lives in and yet very often I'm fully aware of the fact that the people who do the dropping are the first to complain that the Council doesn't keep the town clean.
[speaker002:] What, do you think that there's any connection between what you mentioned before about when you claimed for er bomb damage erm that working class people about being, supposed to have a piano, do you think there's a connection between that sort of idea and the idea of people that lived in Harlow in Council houses shouldn't have cars?
[speaker001:] No, I don't think that had a great deal to do with it, erm it was question that when the town was designed... the, there hadn't been this sudden burst in living standards. If you compare when we first came to Harlow, which is only twenty years ago, the possession of a television set, erm was only just becoming the normal thing
[speaker002:] Mm
[speaker001:] the possession of the motor car was just becoming the norm, but the town had been designed fifteen years earlier...
[speaker002:] And what do you think of the idea of ways that the, that the way the house types were graded, the fact that some of them were in fact meant to be executive or managerial classes and others were meant to be for people with less income, do you think that this is again recreating this sort of class system within the planning of the town?
[speaker001:] I think that what we've got is the acceptance by the designers and the planners of the class system that they knew
[speaker002:] Mm
[speaker001:] they had no vision of a classless society, erm, personally while I've no desire to see uniformity, I see no earthly reason why some people because they have a lower income should be compelled to live in inferior and perhaps crowded conditions, whereas the man with five or six or seven times their income can choose a larger house in a much more delightful district and I think it is things like that that make the difference between what I as a young socialist agitator was advocating and what we find today. I find too that circumstances compel a socialist Council like Harlow to be constrained and constricted when building, there are too many laws and regulations which are based on the fact that, for instance, today's government thinks that people who rent houses are second class citizens.
[speaker002:] Can you give an example... when you say that the law is designed?
[speaker001:] Yes, erm, let us take one little factor, this question of the agitating the media and the, today, and that is the reduction in interest charges. Now when interest charges fall, the person who is buying the house benefits from the reduction in interest charges, but the person who is renting a house in local authority and then in this case nobody, nobody else in Harlow to rent it from, is faced with, not with a decreased monthly rental, but with an ever increasing one because as more and more Council houses are sold the cost of maintaining that there, the superstructure of the town, the cost of maintaining Council houses goes on increasing and so the burden is laid on the tenants and the tenant can find, will find himself that pound for pound increasing his rent while the house owner is decreasing his mortgage charges and at the end of the day the tenant is paying increased rent, increased rate and with nothing to show for it, erm, I've always been in favour of a sale, of, of property er owner occupiers, but not at the expense of the people who cannot afford to be owner occupiers, ah, to my mind, the present housing system is designed to maintain the existing class structure because even with the large discounts that one gets and nobody's ever yet convinced me that why you should get a discount because you buy a Council house, but if you buy one privately owned you can't get a discount and it, there's, this, this is so utter nonsense, but it is throwing a much heavier burden every time a house is sold on the remaining houses which are for rent, and so you that, although the idea is to make it a classless this society with more and more people owning their own properties the mo the mere fact that the majority of people in the town cannot afford to buy even the reduced priced Council house, is an example that the, the system, the class system a division by income still exists.
[speaker002:] Yeah... may I ask Mrs some more questions? Would you mind answering some questions?
[speaker001:] Well she's a bit shy, but I'll help her.
[speaker002:] I wanted to ask you about the furniture. Can you hold it, if you just hold it about, like that, yes. Erm, do you mind answering some questions about your furniture?
[speaker004:] Oh, well, what do you want to know? [LAUGHTER]
[speaker002:] Erm, you seem to like modern furniture
[speaker004:] Yes, yes
[speaker002:] Why did you choose modern furniture?
[speaker004:] Well