The right to buy and the race for space

Back in 1970, there was a General Election which resulted in something of a surprise victory for the Conservatives, with Edward Heath up against Labour’s Harold Wilson. The Liberals had a torrid time and lost half their seats. Most opinion polls prior to the election had indicated a comfortable Labour victory but a swing on election day itself gave the election victory to the Tories.
All of which sounds rather familiar.

It was also round about this time, that the concept of “Right to Buy” – that is, that tenants could buy the houses they were living in from their respective councils, something much beloved of our current Prime Minister,  – started to take off.

In the Watford Observer of July 3, 1970 – less than a month after the Tories’ victory – the paper’s “Topic of the Week” column went out to talk to Watford citizens about the Right to Buy idea and what it meant to them.

Here’s what they thought.

“One of the first actions of the newly-elected Tory government was to announce that anyone who wished to could buy his council house fron the council.

“The action was met with acclaim from many quarters but, according to local people in council houses, its only benefit will be to young tenants.

“Master painter and decorator Mr. T. Higgins, who lives on the South Oxhey estate, is 56 years old and says the opportunity to buy his house means nothing to him.

“‘If they had asked me 20 years ago it would have been a different story,’ he said. ‘Now I am too old and would probably never pay it off.

“‘But it is really worthwhile for young couples,’ Mr Higgins added. ‘They only pay in mortgage what they would otherwise pay in rent and at the end of 20 years or so they own the house.’

“Mr Higgins has been in the building trade since he was 14 years old and says council houses are generally very good value from the buyer’s point of view.

“‘The total cost of most council houses is only £4,000 or so,’ he said. ‘For that money you can only get rubbish on the private market.

“‘And most of the council houses were very well built,’ Mr Higgins concluded.

“Mrs Victoria Garlick, who also lives on the Oxhey estate, agreed council houses are a ‘good buy’ and is, in fact, buying the house in which she now lives.

“‘We’ve worked out we will be paying only the same amount for the mortgage as we pay at present in rent,’ Mrs Garlick pointed out. ‘For us this makes buying a house a good investment.

“‘We really welcome the opportunity to buy it,’ she added.

“Her daughter, Miss Carol Garlick, agreed that it was a good idea for younger people to buy council houses rather than rent them.

“‘If I live in a council house when I’m married,’ she said, ‘I shall certainly want to buy it.’

“On the other side of the coin, however, several people, including young ones, said a council house was not worth buying.

“‘We’re still better off renting ours,’ said Mrs Wyatt. ‘If we bought it, we would have to pay the mortgage, interest, maintenance repairs and rates. Now the council takes care of these.

“‘We worked it out and found the interest alone would amount to almost as much as the rent we are now paying,’ she said.

“‘If you are young and manage to get a good council house, it might be worthwhile,’ Mrs Wyatt added. ‘Otherwise, it is definitely not.’

“Are prospective buyers worried that the council house they buy will look exactly the same as the dozens around them?

“Mrs Garlick had the answer: ‘It doesn’t worry me at all,’ she said. ‘It’s the life you make inside the house that matters, not what it looks like from the outside.’”

But Right to Buy wasn’t the only excitement at that time. Two weeks later the subject of Topic of the Week was British Standard Time.

“British what?” I hear you ask. Well, these days, of course, we have GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) in the winter and then put the clocks forward an hour in March for BST (British Summer Time) and back again in October for GMT again.  

Well in October 1968, for a trial period, they changed all that and introduced British Standard Time which had Britain one hour ahead of GMT all year round.

It was a three-year trial and by July 1970, we were more than halfway through. So what did the great folk of Watford think? Was British Standard Time something they hoped would continue once the trial was over? Or did they want to return to the old “one hour forward, one hour back” system which had been the norm for many years.

Well, the people of the town gave the new idea a firm thumbs down.

“No one interviewed in the High Street by this reporter could think of a reason why British Standard Time should be kept,” the Watford Observer noted in its paper of July 17, 1970. “As Mr J.W. Allen, of North Harrow, in Watford with his wife to shop, said: ‘British Standard Time is bad for farmers, for milkmen and for children going to school in the dark.

“‘Having dark winter mornings creates additional danger for all those, such as milkmen, postmen and farmers who must make early starts, and travelling to work in the dark, especially on snowy mornings, adds danger to the roads.

“‘We should go back to how it was when we set the clocks forward in summer and back again in winter,’ Mr Allen added.

“‘They call British Standard Time progress but it’s not.’

“For highways inspector Mr H. Dilks, of Evans Avenue, Watford, it makes little difference which we operate. Much of his work is done during darkness hours regardless.

“Mr Dilks spends all his working hours on the roads and he says there is little more danger to children walking to school in the dark.

“‘You have to drive more carefully when it is dark,’ he said, ‘and for this reason you are far less likely to hit a child. It’s really all the same to me,’ he said. ‘Just as long as they leave 24 hours in the day, that is.’”

These were clearly views shared across the country because the experiment was scrapped on October 31, 1971, and despite occasional calls for it to be reinstated, we’ve kept the old way ever since.

A year earlier, the Space Age began in earnest when, on July 20, the first men landed on the moon.

One of the places which was particularly delighted was the Batchworth Arms in Rickmansworth, a pub situated at 58 Church Street which existed from 1866 until it closed in 1994.

Originally known as The Railway Arms, it was built shortly after the opening of the Rickmansworth (Church Street) station opposite. The station closed in 1952 so the pub changed its name, and remained the Batchworth Arms until they demolished it.

But back in 1969, it was thriving and clearly enjoying the moon mission.

The Watford Observer of July 25, 1969 (the Apollo 11 astronauts had successfully returned to Earth the previous day) reported that “Monday lunchtime’s menu at the Batchworth Arms, Rickmansworth, this week included such space age delights as Mystery Lunar Soup, Buzz Aldrin Steak and Kidney Pie with Weightless Pastry, Armstrong Turkey Breasts with OK Sauce and Moonwalk Veal, with Green Cheese.

“But then their food always was out of this world...”

As a footnote the article reports that Watford firm, H.R. Napp Ltd, “manufactures and distributes the antiseptic germicide with which the astronauts were washed and the spacecraft was sprayed to remove germ bugs.” So now you know!

Finally, staying in 1969, and going back to council rents. It seems the Greater London Council was having trouble collecting a rent increase which it had imposed some 12 months before.

“Pay Up or Get Out! is the tough line now being taken by the Greater London Council with tenants who have defied paying the extra 7s 6d per week increase introduced nearly a year ago,” wrote the Watford Observer of July 25.

It continued: “Some 6,000 rent rebels exist within the many estates owned by the GLC.

“South Oxhey tenants have for years been fighting increases on the grounds of deteriorating maintenance of their estate and last year withheld rent increases in protest.

“Tenants in GLC houses claim they are paying much higher rents than they would in many private rent-controlled houses, but the average council rent charged over the whole of the GLC area is about £2 14s per week.

“However, in some dwellings on the South Oxhey estate, rent and rates combined cost anything up to £8 per week.”