Increasingly unlike his descendants, my Great Grandfather
was a wealthy chap. Major Albert Owen was what you might call a classic,
old-school patrician Tory: he bought a new Rolls Royce every year, spend much
of his life executing wildlife and thought French people should be flogged on
sight. But ask him whether he thought his valet should be housed in a proper,
three bed semi with a garden and that the state should pay for it if necessary –
and if the state didn’t pay, then he would: he would have thundered “GOOD GOD
MAN OF COURSE, HE DESERVES A DECENT HOUSE… QUICK! THERE GOES A FRENCHIE”.
And in fact he built a row of houses in Hackney for just
that purpose: social housing (although they weren’t all for his valets), whilst
maintaining what would politely be called “massively right wing views”. And he
was symptomatic of his time. After the Second World War there was a sense that
everyone in this country deserved a home, and this view was held by – as far as
we can tell – pretty much everyone in the land. This social environment led to
the Beveridge Report in the 1940s – which essentially said just that: everyone in
the country deserves a home, and this formed the basis of government policies
for generations. Furthermore, if necessary the government would
provide those houses, as otherwise it was agreed that we won’t get rid of the
five great evils: squalor, ignorance, want, idleness, and the damned Frenchies
(I think those were the five anyway, my great-grandfather first explained it to
me).
If you are going to use government money to provide houses
to people – whole, actual houses, with windows and everything – then that is
what you need: complete, social solidarity. You need the whole country agreeing,
or mostly, anyway. It’s no good me or your saying, correctly: “…but it’s a
great idea! It’ll be so much better, and even cheaper, in the long run if we
provide decent housing all round etc etc” if even a sizable minority are
against it, it just doesn’t work, as it’s such a big thing for the state to do.
And flip to today: if you asked the question, “should a
Romanian who has just arrived in Dover be provided with a decent, comfortable,
free house when they set foot in this country?” After all, they are now as full a member of our country as anyone else. But how many people do you think
would agree with that? I agree they should – if people are living in
this country legally and want to be British, they should be housed properly as
everyone in the country should be, otherwise we will end up with slums
everywhere (we are there already, basically). But lots of people will say NO.
And as a result Social Housing is dead, or at least the flights to Dignitas are booked – you can’t just house some Brits and deny
any migrants the same rights, as otherwise….I mean the whole thing becomes
nuts. You have some people with the right to live and work here and claim benefits
(Brits), and some people with the right to live and work here and not even vote
(damned Fren…sorry, I mean other EU citizens). How is that sustainable?
Quick non sequitur: as a side question, have we ever before had
millions of people living in this country, contributing, working and not able
to vote in a general election, the position EU citizens are in currently? Oh - YES CHR**T
WOMEN UNTIL 1928 YOU IDIOT I hear you scream…anyway.
That’s partly why I’m thinking of voting to leave the EU,
even if it does cause short term economic chaos: it has destroyed our sense of
social solidarity, and killed social housing, by giving a lot of frankly nasty interests
a convenient scapegoat, and allowing rich people to get poor Brits to blame
poor foreigners for their problems, rather than the rich Brits that caused
them.
But I’m not decided – although, just wondering: but should
we have anything to do with the way, say, Italy or Portugal govern themselves? I have
lived in Italy, and Portugal, and I don’t think my Latin friends would mind me
saying that it’s absolute f****ng chaos.
Anyway, if we are going to actually leave, we should do it
properly: sever the landmass from the underlying continental shelf, muster a
few thousand tug boats, attach the outlying islands using bungees and tow
ourselves somewhere sunny. And away from those damned Fre…oh, nothing.
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