A Conservative heritage of house-building
“Housing is the first of the social services. It is also one of the keys to increased productivity. Work, family life, health and education are all undermined by overcrowded homes… Our target remains 300,000 houses a year."
Election Manifesto of Winston Churchill, 1951
Throughout modern British history, the Conservative Party has been the party of capital. Regardless of the party’s governing ideology, house-building and ownership has been championed by and has sat at the heart of the conservative vision of Britain. Beginning with Benjamin Disraeli, One Nation Conservatism has continuously been a major school of thought in the Conservative Party and throughout the British Right, flowering frequently and luminously through the last 150 years, most recently with the premierships of Lord Cameron and Boris Johnson. Stanley Baldwin, arguably the man who coined the phrase ‘One Nation Conservative’, was among its greatest proponents.
There was a pronounced need for new housing in 1919 for various reasons. The majority of the existing housing stock, especially in the big cities, was old, with much of it in a poor state of repair. This was not only due to age, but was also a result of rent control, which had limited the supply of income available to landlords with which to carry out repairs. This state of affairs was to change rapidly. In 1929, at the end of a five-year term as Prime Minister, Baldwin would state that the 930,000 houses built during it “constitutes a record in the history of the world.” Large swathes of slum housing were cleared, and some three million new homes in total were built while he was in Number 10.
Lord Cameron and Boris Johnson make up the latest generation of One Nation Conservatives. Boris Johnson’s rhetoric of levelling up Britain’s left behind regions is a rebranding of Disraeli’s ideas, defining the two nations of Disraeli’s Sybil along more geographical lines. Given the decline since the 19th century of the formerly industrial North and Midlands, and London’s association today with wealth and elitism, rather than Dickensian slums and poverty, this feels an appropriate modern adaptation. Michael Gove’s plans for house-building encompassed the whole of the UK, with 20 cities selected for inner-city development including Leeds, Barrow, Manchester, and, most famously, Cambridge.
Following a postwar era characterised by geopolitical decline and high inflation, culminating in the infamous Winter of Discontent, the government of Margaret Thatcher burst onto the scene as the British New Right. They pitted their monetarist neoclassical economics against the dominant Keynesianism and, as they saw it, its complicit bed fellow: One Nationism. Despite this great upheaval within the party, housing remained at the heart of the Conservative vision. The Right to Buy was a revolution; as Lord Heseltine noted, "no single piece of legislation has enabled the transfer of so much capital wealth from the state to the people". It was an astonishing deal; people were able to buy homes at enormous discounts and they did so in enormous numbers. By 1997, 1.7 million people had bought their home through the scheme at an average discount of 44%. There are a great many critics of the Right to Buy scheme, though none have been able to scratch the merit of Thatcher’s vision of a home-owning populace. It is true that house-building slowed under Thatcher. However, this slowdown began about a decade before her term, and continued long after its conclusion, making it attributable more to the times generally than any specific figure. The right to buy scheme, it must be remembered, was launched during the only period in Britain’s history of a social housing surplus.
Fundamentally, the Conservative Party is the party of Capital and those who own it. Homeownership encourages the self-reliance, responsibility, and independence which make up the core of Conservative values. The existence of property rights themselves created the stability and confidence which enabled the enterprise and the investment which birthed the industrial revolution on these very Isles. As Churchill stated in his 1951 Election Manifesto; “In a property-owning democracy, the more people who own their homes, the better”.
“London's first blocks of leasehold flats have been built only quite recently. But this trend is not of any great consequence, on the whole it appears to be a temporary phenomenon or a product of special circumstances. Should the custom become more widespread, however which at the moment seems unlikely - this could only be a sign of economic recession and, even worse, would spell the demise of one of the best aspects of the English heritage.”
The English House, Hermann Muthesius, 1904
There is this prevalent stereotype of a Conservative voter as a rural octogenarian whose sole joy in life is to prevent every home ever from being built, and while these people do exist and exist in great numbers, they’re not people the Conservative Party can (nor does it appear will) listen to very closely. It’s often acknowledged that as people grow old, they grow more conservative. I would argue that we ought not take this phenomenon for granted. In the last 30 years, the percentage of 25-34 year olds who own their own home has dropped nearly 30% from the high 60s to the very low 40s; quite a concerning statistic for the party reliant on a propertied electorate. The maintenance of a home-owning electorate in a growing population requires the building of new houses. Thus, as well as satisfying core conservative values and making good financial sense, house-building for the Tory party is a necessary act of electoral self-preservation.
Unlocking Cambridge's potential
We now turn to Michael Gove’s now infamous plan, and the case for housing in Cambridge more generally. The academic Golden Triangle made up of Cambridge, Oxford, and London is a truly unique phenomenon and one which helps make the United Kingdom immensely competitive. In very few countries in the world is there such a concentration of wealth, talent, and cutting edge facilities, especially one located outside the nation’s capital. This is not, however, something to be taken for granted. As of 2022, Boston, Massachusetts had 62 million square feet of lab space under construction in order to sate the rampant demand. Across Cambridge, Oxford, and London where demand is just as fierce, we are building only 5 million square feet as I write this. The Global Innovation Index names Cambridge as the highest intensity science and technology cluster in the world, though it is utterly plain to see that we risk falling behind. We as a nation are already suffering from brain drain to the United States, and a failure to realise Cambridge’s immense economic and academic potential would only worsen this.
Michael Gove’s plan is now unlikely to be realised, with an abundance of empty rural constituencies nearby, teeming with constituents which the new government has neither incentive nor interest in appeasing. So be it! Pave right over their picturesque fields and hedgerows. We on the right, at least we students, hope to see the true potential of this unique city and University unlocked. The construction of the Varsity Line, linking Cambridge and Oxford, does a great deal to achieve this, encouraging collaboration and allowing the resources of each to bounce off the other and multiply. A freely expanding Cambridge and Oxford, linked efficiently by rail with each other and with London, would truly constitute one of the greatest areas in the world for research and development, and see done some incredibly groundbreaking and lucrative work - a British Silicon Valley.
Pragmatic Semiconductor, a computer chip manufacturer, is on course to becoming the UK’s biggest semiconductor supplier by volume, headquartered in Cambridge and with a factory in Durham in the North of England. For any who bought into at least the idea of levelling up, Cambridge is the place to begin. The activity generated through expansive construction here, of homes and University infrastructure - both highly necessary - will filter throughout the UK to make us a truly world-beating nation. The Conservatives know this, and fingers crossed Labour do too. Let it be a rare spot of common ground between us… the battles can rage elsewhere.
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