THE WORKING-CLASS OWNER-OCCUPIED HOUSE OF THE 1930s

Summary

Without the strengths and flexibility of the building societies the housing boom could not have been sustained at full strength in the mid-1930s. Even though there was 'the tendency of a few building societies to overtrade even to the extent of lending on mortgage funds raised by bank overdrafts', rising wages and inflation kept down the level of defaults (87). The building societies developed public confidence, amended their lending criteria and at the same time turned a blind eye to some of their rules covering the amount of deposit required by a purchaser. The builders 'pool', which in the 1920s had been frowned upon by the societies, was adopted in the 1930s as a method whereby they could lend effectively the full cost of the house. They willingly undertook the financing of what was to be the partial rehousing of the English people, especially the working-classes. The view was also expressed that the 'societies have perhaps been the instrument whereby an enormous volume of middle class savings has been...transferred into the pockets of speculative builders' (88).

Sir Enoch Hill stated very clearly how he saw the future when he said that 'After spending a lifetime in close contact with borrowers in every station of life I am bound to say that the working-classes are second to none in their willingness to fulfil their contractual obligations'. In the same article he condemned the idea 'That house purchase by people of small incomes and people of uncertain employment was financially unsound...House purchase for the working man was as easy as the purchase of a piano or a vacuum cleaner' (89). So it was to be the working classes, including people on very small incomes and uncertain employment, who bought their homes.

(87) From a speech made to the Young Conservatives October 1957 by A.Woolnoughton, former General Manager of the Anglian Building Society. From his private papers a copy of which was sent to the writer. 1936 was the first year that Barclays Bank show a separate division of loans in their returns to head office that being 'Loans to Building Societies'. From the archives of the Bank, Returns from Branches (1936) Vol. 1.
(88) PRO,T161/946/44939/11 Sir.J.Fox to Sir R. Hopkins 9 May 1938.
(89) Illustrated Carpenter and Builder (31 May 1935), p. 1262.