Landlord and tenant in urban Britain: the politics of housing reform, 1838-1924

Abstract

This thesis is divided into three sections. The first surveys the relationship of landlord and tenant in its legal, economic and political aspects. It shows how inadequate powers of eviction combined with rising rates provided a continuing impulse towards organisation on the part of nineteenth century property owners. It also seeks to account for the failure of organised landlords either to broaden the bases of local taxation so as to embrace non-residential forms of property, or to gain a more summary means of redress against contumacious tenants. The second part shows that attempts at organisation, on the part of working class tenants were more frequent than has hitherto been suspected. It examines the causes of unrest amongst tenants and shows how the unresolved tensions between landlord and tenant in Edwardian Britain influenced the genesis of rent control. The final section is concerned to examine the-wartime rents agitation in relation to the adoption of socialised housing in Britain. It shows how the continued-unrest amongst working class tenants, following the passage of the Rent Act, 1915, frustrated the re-establishment of housing upon an economic footing and thereby brought about a widening of the limited degree of state intervention in housing than had originally been contemplated by the proponents of Reconstruction