Orders of the Day — Economic Affairs

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 7 July 1970.

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Photo of Gerald Kaufman Gerald Kaufman , Manchester Ardwick 12:00, 7 July 1970

It is with singular trepidation that I ask the indulgence of the House this evening because for the past five-and-a-half years it has been my lot to earn my livelihood in this Palace and I am particularly conscious of the high standards expected of an hon. Member. Like the hon. Member for Lancaster (Mrs. Kellett), the compassion and eloquence of whose speech I greatly admired and envied, I have sought election to this House for many years. Therefore the fact that I have now achieved it is for me a signal and great honour.

It will be understood when I say that that great honour conferred on me also involved for me a sense of loss because, since 1964, I have worked in this building in the Press Gallery premises which enabled me to share a friendship and camaraderie unique in journalism. In experiencing that loss I have a consciousness of having gained something through fellowship and friendship of people whose services to this House and services to Parliament are as great as those of anyone else who works in this building.

I come here as the representative of the Ardwick Division and I succeed in that representation Alderman Leslie Lever, who gave the citizens of Ardwick fine service in this House for 20 years. In the House of Commons Leslie Lever was a familiar character, greeted with affection on both sides of the House. That was in this House, but in Manchester Leslie Lever is something very much more. In Manchester, and particularly in Ardwick, he is a legend. Go down any street in the Ardwick constituency and one will hear a dozen affectionate stories of the way in which he discharged his political duties. Go down any street in the Ardwick division and one will hear about other activities given less publicity, activities on behalf of the very many people who came to him with their problems, people to whom he gave very great service. Few hon. Members, I think it true to say, have been so deeply loved in their constituencies as Leslie Lever has been. He no longer has a place in this House, but he has a permanent place in the hearts of those he served for 20 years.

The Ardwick division which I come here to represent is in my view one of the most interesting constituencies in Britain. It is a hard-working constituency. Historically it has been a railway constituency and today it is intersected and bisected from one end to the other by inter-city railway lines. Perhaps hon. Members may not know that it is a constituency of considerable architectural distinction. It is very richly endowed with places of worship for many denominations and people of many religions. The places of worship range from the elegance of the early Victorian Anglican Church of Holy Trinity, Platt Lane—one of only three churches in this country built of terra cotta—to the modern Roman Catholic St. Roberts, Longsight, which has just been opened by the Bishop of Salford, which is striking in its modernity but very moving in its religious atmosphere.

Ardwick provides not only spiritual sustenance but bodily sustenance to those who visit and live in it. It has a number of restaurants of national standard. Among those is an oriental restaurant, the Manzil, described in the Good Food Guide as the best in the provinces. It contains Belle Vue, the most popular amusement centre in the north of England. It contains Manchester Grammar School. But the constituency also has some of the worst housing conditions in the whole country. I am sorry to say that if there were a Top Twenty list of constituencies of England with housing most unfit to live in, Ardwick would qualify in that top twenty.

The 1966 census showed that in Ardwick 21 per cent. of the homes had no hot water tap, 31 per cent. had no fixed bath and 46 per cent. had only an outside water closet, while only 41 per cent. had exclusive use of a water tap, a fixed bath and an outside water closet. These are cold statistics. For the human reality behind them I shall describe what life is like there today, 7th July, 1970, for one family in Great Nelson Street, West Gorton, Manchester. This family's home consists downstairs of a front room and kitchenette, and upstairs of two bedrooms. It has an outside lavatory in a tumbledown decrepit backyard and, almost needless to say, it has no bathroom.

In the back bedroom sleep the householder and his wife. In the front bedroom in six narrow beds seven children sleep, six boys and a girl, whose ages range from 14 to 2½. Also in that bedroom sleeps those children's grandmother who lives in another part of Great Nelson Street in a house which is unfit to sleep in. Downstairs in the front room there is a bed settee used for sleeping in by the householder's sister-in-law and her husband who also live in another part of Great Nelson Street and whose home is unfit to sleep in. This house provides daytime accommodation for nine people and sleeping accommodation for 12. But overcrowding is only one of the problems of this house in Great Nelson Street. It is not simply damp, but so riddled with water that it is sodden. One of the ceilings sags alarmingly and paper hangs in strips from the walls and peels from the ceilings of the various rooms.

The housewife is a house-proud woman. Not long ago she spent £30 on buying a new carpet and that carpet is already ruined. Last year she went to some expense decorating the front bedroom. It is impossible to believe that it was done this century. The colour scheme now consists of huge, livid, virulent blotches on the walls and it looks like a room in a plague house. In a sense it is a plague house for it has suffered in recent weeks from infestations of rats and cockroaches. In the narrow back alley behind the house are piled quantities of garbage. When the local authority sent dustmen to see whether this could be taken away, its appearance and nature turned their stomachs.

In 1870 such living conditions would have been unacceptable; in 1970 they are an abomination. Yet the lady who lives in this house has no idea when she will be rehoused. I have been in touch with Manchester Corporation and have asked when it hopes to rehouse her, but I have had no reply at all. I regret to say that under its present control Manchester's rehousing programme has been painfully slow and inadequate. There is little prospect of many thousands of my constituents having a decent home for a long time to come. In the first five months of this year in the great city of Manchester only 344 new homes were completed. We note with great attention and concern the passage in the Gracious Speech which says My Ministers will pursue a vigorous housing policy with the principal aim of improving the position of the homeless and the badly housed. We trust that this will compel Manchester Corporation greatly to improve its performance and to provide decent homes for my constituents, but we also wait with apprehension the effect of another passage in the Gracious Speech: housing subsidies will be refashioned so as to give more help to those in greatest need. In Manchester those who have been lucky enough to be rehoused are having to pay rents which are already far too high and which many of them cannot afford. A further increase is already scheduled for this autumn. It was postponed from earlier this year, for reasons which it would be inappropriate to mention in a maiden speech.

Earlier today the Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke about the need to con- tain price rises. I suggest to him that there are two ways in which he can deal with a particular price rise. The first is by taking his hands right off the housing subsidies, because the record Labour housing subsidies have still not stopped Manchester Corporation and other corporations from increasing their rents. The second is by continuing the legislation regarding the control of increases in rent which the Labour Government brought in and which is now under threat.

The Ardwick constituency has many other problems and many other interests in addition to those to which I have referred. There is the wider question of amenity to which the Rusholme and Fallowfield Civic Society has directed its attention. There is the grave menace of strife in Ireland, which is of the greatest concern to many thousands of my constituents who were either born in Ireland or who have relatives in Ireland. In future debates I hope to have an opportunity of discussing these other important matters.

But today, on the first occasion on which I have the honour of addressing the House, I thought it right to address myself to the problem which has overriding importance in the minds of thousands of those who sent me here to represent them—the problem of how to live decent lives in decent homes in decent conditions for themselves and their families.