Building a Property-Owning Democracy, 1945–1970

The chapter explains the emerging concept of a property-owning democracy. Encouraging home ownership, Conservatives argued, increased ‘independence of character, self-reliance, initiative, and the habit of saving and the acceptance of responsibility’. The Conservative government of 1951 granted local authorities powers to sell council houses to their tenants. Conservatives portrayed the Labour Party as hostile to home ownership. However, Labour revisionists encouraged colleagues to take the concept of a property-owning democracy seriously as part of a strategy to refresh their egalitarian agenda. In similar vein, Anthony Crosland argued that the concept was a ‘socialist rather than a conservative ideal’ as long as property was ‘well distributed’. Thus, as Britain became more affluent, the central debate on housing shifted from one centred on which government built the most houses to which party would offer homeowners the best deal, with a focus on the terms of mortgage lending.