labour lost control of the St. Pancras Council in the borough elections of May 1959. In October Lena Jeger lost to Johnson-Smith in the Holborn and St. Pancras (south) constituency. For people to whom St. Pancras is something of a Socialist ikon the defeats were shattering, perhaps the final nail in the coffin of British Socialism. To rub in the salt came the housing crisis and the introduction of a particularly reactionary rents policy by the Tory Council. But St. Pancras seemed to revive again: tenants’ associations, demonstrations, barricades. The militancy of the borough Socialists was traditional—but this switch from retreat to advance, from administrative anarchy to direct action, was perplexing. Exactly what type of borough was this? Granted that a rents policy based on differentials and geared to the government’s campaign against council houses was unpopular—but why, of the 16 Metropolitan boroughs operating such schemes, should St. Pancras blow up?
The reasons lie partly in the borough’s political history, in the nature of this particular housing scheme, and in the social conditions of St. Pancras. Housing in the borough is as old as 1904 and as new as 1960. A large percentage of council houses were bought from private owners, some in areas marked for slum clearance, some as formally requisitioned properties. Out of over 7,500 council tenants, 4,800 live in estates built by the council, while there are over 6,000 people on the Council waiting list. In addition, while some Councils almost ceased to build houses after the Government stopped subsidies (other than for slum clearance) in 1956, St. Pancras continued its flat-building programme (one of the largest in London), put a ceiling on all rents, and fought to maintain the rates at a steady 17/4d. in the £. The problem of continuing with a Socialist housing policy in defiance of Tory controls underlines the real issue in St. Pancras: the rents struggle indicated the strong support for Socialist housing that had been built up through the years, and showed the unscrupulousness of Conservative housing policy.
But St. Pancras has been for decades the centre of left revolt. Most of the major left-wing organisations have either directly originated in the borough or have had strong affiliations with it. Marx worked in Kentish town, is buried in Highgate. During the 30s St. Pancras was the pivot of the popular front movement, and the Communists have always played an important part in local politics. The fact that most left groups have had major figures in the borough has proved to be of disadvantage to the development of a consistent Labour policy. As my local ward secretary said to me, learning of my New Left connections, “That makes one more group. You see, we have Communists, Trotskyists, Fabians, the Movement for Colonial Freedom, several leading Trade Unionists and prominent Labour figures, the Irish Socialists, Eoka, and many more. It’s fun, but it makes it difficult to run a Labour Party under the circumstances. We hope the New Left can provide us with party workers.” Any assessment of the rents crisis cannot fail to take account of the existence of so many groups in one area. During 1958 the borough Labour Party suffered a severe division when John Lawrence and five other Councillors were driven out of the party because of Stalinist policies that had taken five years to be made public.