The opportunity and desire to buy: owner-occupation in Scotland’s new towns, c. 1950-80

ABSTRACT

This article explores the role of the post-war new towns in Scotland in providing people with the opportunity to own their own homes. Most importantly, it traces the development of this policy prior to the ‘Right to Buy’ of the early 1980s when tenants were offered substantial discounts by local authorities, housing associations and crucially, new town development corporations. The article challenges the dominance of rented tenure in existing accounts of Scottish housing, showing that there was demand for ownership in Scotland in the decades before the introduction of incentives. This article takes a ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ approach to understand a period of expanding opportunity for some, though not all, of those relocating and starting new lives in East Kilbride, Glenrothes and Cumbernauld. Archive evidence exploring policy and the response of the new town development corporations is complemented by analysis of life narratives provided by those that moved to the new towns and their children. In doing so, this article contributes to a growing scholarship that challenges stereotypical perceptions of class and identity in the immediate post-war decades whilst also revealing new insights into the post-war state as an enabler of opportunity for some.

KEYWORDS:

• Owner occupation
• housing
• new towns
• Scotland
• post-war

In autumn 1970, a heated debate burst forth in the local newspapers in the Scottish new town of East Kilbride.¹ Its focus was the sale of housing built by East Kilbride Development Corporation, originally for rent, but which the development corporation—the unelected body responsible for planning and building the new town—was now offering for sale. This policy was publicly opposed by the (elected) Burgh Council, which called for an end to what it called ‘random’ sales. The Corporation held firm, referring to ‘a cardinal and important point of policy’.² It was not the first time that its housing policy had provoked an angry response. From a different perspective, owners on an estate built for sale in the town had, four years earlier, picketed the show flat when it transpired that the development corporation planned to let any houses which remained unsold.³

The vast majority of new dwellings in the thirty-two new towns ‘designated’ across the United Kingdom between 1946 and 1973 were initially rented from their respective development corporations. This housing has rightly been emphasised in the existing literature on the new towns, reflecting not only its dominance in these places but also the way in which the construction of subsidised rented housing formed the cornerstone of mass housing policy in England, Wales and especially Scotland between the 1920s and the early 1980s.⁴ However, the example from East Kilbride with which this article opens suggests an alternative perspective. There is a different history of housing in the Scottish new towns, and Scotland more generally, one which involved the promotion of home ownership alongside provision for renting, and which also, importantly, reflected demand. This history begins well before the ‘Right to Buy’ of 1980 allowed the tenants of rented public-sector housing nationwide to buy their home at substantial discounts. It is a story which foregrounds aspirational working-class and middle-class residents, in which a focus on the family and individual opportunity co-existed with wider ideas of community and citizenship.

In exploring owner-occupation in the Scottish new towns before 1980, we recognise that owner-occupation and the role of the private sector in providing housing for purchase have not been ignored by historians. Within a Scottish context, Annette O’Carroll has considered housing in twentieth-century Edinburgh (where the local authority actively subsidised owner-occupation during the interwar years), Yvonne McFadden has investigated owner-occupation in suburban Glasgow, and Miles Glendinning and Diane Watters have produced a detailed history of one of the country’s largest housebuilders, Mactaggart and Mickel.⁵ There is also an established literature on owner-occupation in a British (and particularly English) context. That literature arose partly from the need to understand the impact on the housing supply of economic and legislative change in the 1970s and early 1980s, the magnitude of which, however, means that Merrett and Gray’s pioneering study of 1982 includes only three chapters on the period preceding the ‘Right to Buy’.⁶ More detailed analysis and a sense of people’s motivations in wanting to own their own homes, in an earlier period, is evident in Scott’s study of English suburban housing in the interwar years.⁷ For the post-war period, the work of Mark Clapson on the suburbs and the new towns is key, exploring the relationship between home ownership, class and identity.⁸ In particular, Clapson’s social history of Milton Keynes, focusing on the 1970s and 1980s, usefully highlights the ways in which new town development corporations built houses for sale to satisfy residents’ aspirations.⁹ The present article adds to this literature whilst also offering a significant departure in concentrating on the immediate post-war decades, and the experience of Scotland.

Beyond Clapson’s work, discussions of owner-occupation in the new towns remain relatively marginal, despite the fact that forms of tenure other than renting—especially owner-occupation—loomed increasingly large in policy and practice.¹⁰ In particular, the new towns that were designated across Britain in the late 1960s were planned to include more properties for sale than those begun in the 1940s and 1950s; in parallel, house sales in those earlier new towns were facilitated during the 1960s and 1970s.¹¹ The policy of encouraging owner-occupation in the new towns applied across England, Wales and Scotland, though the target set for owner-occupation was lower in Scotland. The difference can be explained partly by the way in which Scottish housing policy was devolved to the Scottish Office in Edinburgh, whose decision to set a lower target in turn reflected the dominance in Scotland of renting. For much of the twentieth century, Scotland’s owner-occupation rate was much lower than England’s, for various reasons. A pattern of private-sector renting in all social classes was displaced in many areas of Scotland after 1918 by a strong commitment to public-sector, subsidised rented housing and an equally strong anti-landlordism (which was shared by left-wing Scottish politicians and working-class tenants, and which underpinned rent controls from 1915 to 1957).¹² Although the landscape of interwar housing varied across Scotland, many local authorities, and especially Glasgow, built up large stocks of municipal housing after 1920. The spaciousness and sound construction of this housing, coupled with low rents and the practice (until 1957) of charging domestic rates to property owners rather than occupiers made public-sector renting attractive across the social spectrum in Scotland. As a result, there was not the same growth in upper working-class and middle-class owner-occupation that was seen in interwar England.¹³ From the late 1930s, rented public-sector housing was also constructed by the Scottish Special Housing Association (SSHA), which was essentially an agency of the Scottish Office. The marginalisation of private-sector rented housing (and, to some extent, owner-occupation) continued after 1945, now amplified by the public-sector rented housing being built in the new towns, as well as continuing high levels of municipal building; both effectively ‘othered’ private-sector renting, which could be associated primarily with older, poor-quality property. As Figure 1 shows, while public-sector construction fluctuated according to government policy from 1945 to 1970, private-sector construction (and thus ownership) represented a relatively small fraction of new housing completions.

Figure 1. Scottish House Production by year, 1945–1970 based on figures cited in T. Begg, Housing Policy in Scotland.¹⁴.

Scotland’s first new town, East Kilbride was begun in 1947. Glenrothes followed in 1948, intended to serve a new coalfield in Fife which never came to full fruition. It was followed in 1955 by Cumbernauld. There were three further new town designations in Scotland: Livingston (1962), Irvine (1966), and Stonehouse (1973, de-designated in 1976).¹⁵ Like new towns elsewhere in Britain (and beyond), they were conceived in ‘decentralist’ terms, namely as places which would receive what was termed ‘overspill’ population (especially from Glasgow, parts of which were then severely overcrowded and dominated by poor-quality housing). They would also promote the redistribution of industry away from existing centres. A rhetoric of ‘modernisation’ surrounded the Scottish new towns, which were increasingly viewed by policymakers and planners as places which could attract new industries, boosting and reshaping the economy (especially of Clydeside, hitherto dependent on heavy industry).¹⁶ They would offer a new image of Scotland and would transform the outlook, health and lives of their residents.¹⁷ Notably, and in direct contrast to the way that local authorities such as Glasgow built large peripheral housing estates on the edge of settlements, the new towns were physically discrete settlements which were holistically planned to be self-sufficient, offering jobs, shopping and leisure facilities alongside a diverse range of housing styles and sizes. They therefore provided a distinctive opportunity to create ‘balanced communities’ with greater social diversity than contemporaneous and interwar housing estates elsewhere. This agenda was a direct response to sociological concerns relating to class segregation in urban spaces and the perceived need for the middle classes to act as civic leaders to the working classes.¹⁸ It also reflected the Scottish Office’s negative view of many local-authority estates.¹⁹ The new towns would provide an example to be followed in other major developments, in their planning and design—and also in their rent levels, which were set higher than those in local-authority developments as a direct challenge to the tradition of low municipal rents.

Although in their central-government origins the new towns embodied ‘top-down’ planning, they also reveal ‘bottom-up’ demand and the agency enjoyed by some individuals and families. The new towns typically did not rehouse those who lived in the poorest conditions. Those choosing to relocate in the early years first had to secure employment before being allocated a house. Elevated rent levels meant that those moving to the first new towns of the 1940s—the towns known as the ‘mark 1’ generation—were often drawn from the skilled working-classes and middle classes. These were aspirational people who responded to the opportunity to start new lives with new jobs, in high-quality new houses: indeed, the specific opportunity of a house, with its own front and back door, and a garden, was a particular attraction for those moving from Glasgow tenement flats, with their shared access stairs and back courts.²⁰ Despite the Scottish tradition of renting, it is therefore not surprising to find that, by the late 1960s, some of these people wished to buy their home.

New town residents’ desire to ‘get on’ was reflective of changing social identities and a demand for a better quality of life. Alistair Kefford has argued that from the late 1950s the government positioned ‘the recipient of housing policy as a consuming individual’.²¹ In the context of the Parker Morris committee’s report on housing standards in England and Wales, published in 1961, Kefford argues that ‘by promoting individual consumer choice, as a guarantee of healthy subjectivity, the committee implicitly challenged the very bases of universal forms of social provision’.²² The example of the new towns bears out the same idea. For those ‘consuming individuals’ able and willing to move, these places offered attractive opportunities, ultimately including but not limited to home ownership, suggesting that the ‘consumer-citizen’ existed well before Parker Morris. Such an interpretation of post-war policy—as the provider of selective opportunity and facilitator of individuals’ agency, rather than something universal—might be thought to suggest the tenuousness of the social-democratic settlement, perhaps also implying long roots for the market liberalism of the 1980s, the period in which ‘Right to Buy’ was implemented. Yet, it is hardly accurate to interpret the Welfare State as incubating, parasite-like, the seeds of its demise. As Guy Ortolano has argued, it is more productive to understand the post-war decades in terms of the evolution of a dynamic social democracy.²³ This dynamism, and the ideological adaptability which underpinned it, is particularly evident in the built environment. Britain’s urban centres were remodelled by a coalition of public- and private-sector bodies to accommodate perceived consumer and business needs, while housing design was informed by expectations relating to such things as privacy.²⁴ In this respect, Kefford’s emphasis on the ‘consuming individual’ as the basis of modern citizenship is important in that it recognises the agency possessed by individuals and the ways in which this agency was facilitated by the state. The normalisation of home ownership by government policy by the mid 1960s even where, as in Scotland, it remained the minority tenure, provided a chance for those consuming individuals who wanted to buy their homes.

In supporting individual ambition with respect to housing tenure, the encouragement of ownership potentially contributed incrementally to what Robinson et al. describe as ‘the rise of popular individualism’, whereby it is argued that individuals of all political persuasions increasingly desired more self-determination in their lives, especially in the 1970s in the face of growing economic and social uncertainty.²⁵ An aspirational form of individualism was certainly encouraged by government policy makers and new town development corporations in enabling and encouraging home ownership, and arguably greater personal autonomy, from the late 1950s onwards. Yet, the individual aspiration which resulted in home ownership did not necessarily result in disengagement from the community. As Lawrence has recently argued, understandings of ‘community’ were complicated and evolving in the light of growing affluence after 1945. Individual social aspirations for improved standards of living continued to coexist with the continuity of a more traditional collectivist sense of obligations.²⁶ In the new towns, new communities were formed in which more traditional values and forms of community could survive alongside more aspirational desires, which in turn cut across and complicated class identity.²⁷ Consideration of owner occupation in the new towns before 1980 therefore sheds light on class identity, especially in a Scottish context where upwardly mobile working-class and middle class values and identities are largely absent in the twentieth-century historiography.

Ultimately, this article contributes directly to an emerging history of post-war Britain in which the themes of class, community and identity are taking centre stage, not least in terms of their relationships with the built environment. Historians are rethinking the chronology, trajectory and influence of social democracy and neoliberalism on everyday lives and the agency of citizens in responding to government policy in a range of areas. Here, we explore what it meant for the government to encourage home ownership in the immediate post-war decades, at the height of the social democratic settlement and a time of substantial state investment in rental housing. This article also considers what, albeit limited, early home ownership may highlight about changing class identity and aspiration in the years before the supposed neoliberal moment of the 1980s and the ‘Right to Buy’. In both cases, the Scottish context illuminates the totality of the British experience. It complicates simplistic narratives of Scottish exceptionalism and difference, but also foregrounds the diverse experiences of Scots in discussions of everyday life in Scotland and Britain, allowing us to present an account of post-war housing and life in Scotland that complements existing discussions of municipal provision and experience.

The rest of this article is in two parts, ranging across architectural, urban and social history and focusing on East Kilbride, Glenrothes, and Cumbernauld. The first part explores policy discussions to highlight how and why home ownership was encouraged in the 1960s and 1970s. The second part considers first the response of the development corporations and then the lived experience of those who bought. This analysis utilises archival evidence, including early social scientists’ findings, as well as more recent oral history interviews with twenty-six residents of the early new towns, including ‘pioneers’ who moved to these towns between the 1950s to early 1970s and the generation who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s. This intergenerational approach allows for an exploration of continuity and change in the experiences and perceptions of home ownership in this period. Each interview took a life-history narrative approach designed to encourage individuals to reflect on how the new town context shaped the decisions taken throughout their lives as well as the opportunities it offered them. Most importantly, this methodology centres the experiences of those who moved to and grew up in the early new towns and highlights their agency in their own lives and in the history of the new towns.

Policy and the supply of housing

In November 1965, the Minister for Housing and Local Government at Westminster, Richard Crossman, met with Britain’s building societies.²⁸ Crossman reported that he was keen to encourage the construction of housing for sale, seeing it as an essential component of the drive to build substantial amounts of housing across England and Wales (for which he had ministerial responsibility). He had the new towns in his sights as places with particular potential in this respect. His aim, he suggested, was to move the English new towns from some 80% rented housing and 20% owner occupation to a more even split. Crossman subsequently formalised his proposals, seeing them as part of a broader political shift: ‘I am also on the way to changing the Labour Party’s attitude to owner occupation’, he wrote in 1965.²⁹ A Ministry paper of March 1967 proposed that the new towns designated after 1961 should plan for 50% owner-occupation, and that an increase should also be sought in the earlier new towns.³⁰ A circular followed, suggesting that private enterprise should build two-thirds of owner-occupied houses.³¹

While Crossman did not have ministerial responsibility for Scotland, his proposals were echoed by Willie Ross, then Secretary of State for Scotland, who proposed an increase to 25% ownership in the Scottish new towns.³² This divergence, as we have already noted, reflected the lower proportion of owner-occupation in Scotland generally: the 50% figure applied in England was based on the then level of private ownership there (c. 47%).³³ The Scottish figure was adopted after some debate. It was suggested that the higher rents which existed in the Scottish new towns, relative to other public-sector housing, implied the potential for higher levels of owner-occupation.³⁴ However, the Scottish development corporations pointed out the practical difficulties of increasing levels of owner-occupation, especially in the case of East Kilbride, which was understood to be nearing completion (in terms of its original population targets).³⁵ The intention that the most recently designated new towns, Cumbernauld and Livingston, would accommodate Glasgow overspill was also noted; it was seemingly expected that incoming Glaswegians would not be able to afford to buy. It was also suggested that, Scotland-wide, there had been limited take-up of what housing had already been built for sale in the new towns.³⁶ New town rented housing was of high quality; renting as a form of tenure was also well-established generally, as we have noted.

The interest of policymakers in housing provision and tenure was not new. The nationwide rise after 1918 of council housing is well documented, and, as has been noted, had fundamental effects on the landscape of west-central Scotland in particular, with private-sector renting being deliberately marginalised as a matter of policy and owner-occupation growing at a slower rate than in England.³⁷ However, owner-occupation was nonetheless of interest to policymakers. During the Second World War, for example, the Scottish Housing Advisory Committee advocated an increase in the number of houses built for sale, noting that Scotland ‘lagged very far behind England’ and arguing that ownership represented ‘an expression of […] individual aspirations’ as well as promoting sound citizenship, greater responsibility, and civic stability.³⁸ The recommendations of the Reith committee, which underpinned the New Towns Act of 1946, and applied to Scotland as well as England and Wales, called for owner-occupation as well as the provision of rented housing, not least in the interests of a socially balanced community.³⁹ In the event, controls on building (not least difficulty in obtaining building licences for housing for sale) meant that rented housing dominated the ‘mark 1’ new towns of the late 1940s and early 1950s.⁴⁰ The provision of rented housing by the development corporations responsible for each new town nonetheless had practical advantages, ensuring compliance with the masterplan and the high design standards that were often prized. It also formed a way to make sure that housing was allocated to those who worked in the town, a key consideration given the conception of the ‘mark 1’ new towns in terms of self-containment and a corresponding desire to avoid them becoming commuter dormitories.

In England and Wales, the construction of housing for sale was encouraged by the Conservative government after 1954, and by the 1960s formed a key plank of the rhetoric around housing ‘numbers’ in which both major parties in London sought to promise ever-greater numbers of new homes. However, as had been the case in the 1920s and 1930s, new housing in Scotland during the 1950s and 1960s continued to be dominated by the activities of the public sector (Figure 1). That said, this sector was not homogenous in its outlook and approach. The SSHA was treated sceptically by some local authorities, which saw its centralised operation as a ‘trojan horse’ intruding into their domain.⁴¹ Like the new towns, the SSHA’s estates served as a critique by the Scottish Office of municipal design and planning, and rent levels.⁴² In this context, the promotion of owner-occupation by Ross and others might also be considered as a further attack on municipalism. (In addition, the dominance in the new towns of terraced houses rather than the flats hitherto typical of urban Scotland was also significant, being potentially an attempt to re-form the country’s housing on what might be considered ‘English’ lines—echoing the way that the 1917 Ballantyne report on Scottish housing had advocated the construction of garden-city inspired cottages in place of tenements.)

Ownership was also associated with responsible citizenship. The notion of a ‘property-owning democracy’ was increasingly articulated from the 1950s. In 1967, for example, a study of development corporations across Scotland, England and Wales reported their frequent belief that increased owner-occupation would prompt greater ‘civic interest and responsibility’.⁴³ It was suggested that ‘one might expect the leaders … to come from the owner-occupier because of the greater powers of leadership derived through strength of character, education, wealth or other factors’.⁴⁴ Indeed, in 1966 Glenrothes Development Corporation considered it ‘essential for the well-being of the town, that every effort be made to retain such families in residence within the town’ as ‘success in this direction would instil considerable confidence in the working population’.⁴⁵ Meanwhile, the ‘Official Guide’ to East Kilbride in 1972 saw benefits on both sides: ownership would ‘give the citizen a bigger stake in the town, at a cost which gives him a sound investment’.⁴⁶

Sales were also linked with the ideal of a balanced community, drawn from across the social classes—the principle which had fundamentally informed the Reith committee’s initial conception of the post-war new towns. Reference was made in East Kilbride in 1959 to the need to attract ‘managerial’ residents, whether as owners or tenants, while in 1962 it was reported that corporation policy was to increase the number of homes for sale in order to achieve improved social balance.⁴⁷ There was some concern that these residents would otherwise leave East Kilbride, because it was assumed that ownership was their eventual goal, even if they rented initially.⁴⁸ Reference was made in 1965 to the need to ‘stem the flow of highly desirable citizens’, presumably to the suburbs of south Glasgow and east Renfrewshire, because they were unable to buy in the new town. The notion of middle-class professionals as respectable civic leaders is perhaps implicit in the mention of ‘highly desirable citizens’.⁴⁹ In 1969, of the 885 households which left the new town, 242 became owner-occupiers in nearby areas.⁵⁰ Similarly in 1967 Glenrothes Development Corporation described the ‘five o’clock executive exit’ as one of the town’s ‘most intransigent problems’. It was found that the new town was competing with the attractions of nearby cosy villages and seaports in the County of Fife, which appeal to ‘many executives who have come to work in the town’. ‘Socially’, there was ‘a need to encourage such people and their families to live within its boundaries’.⁵¹ Meanwhile, in 1978 Cumbernauld Development Corporation actively sought to present the town as a place where executives and their families would thrive both at work and play in their advertising publication ‘The Businessman’s Tour of Cumbernauld’.⁵² Notably, the variety of housing types was emphasised including ‘houses for sale and houses for rent’.⁵³

There were also more tangible motivations. The ‘Guide’ to East Kilbride reported that housing sales would also reduce the development corporation’s housing deficit.⁵⁴ In this respect, the financial advantages of owner-occupation appealed. In December 1965, James Callaghan, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, drew Crossman’s attention to the rapidly increasing cost of the new towns programme, predicting annual expenditure of some £200 million by the mid 1970s and proposing that private developers’ contributions would have to increase if this level was to be supported.⁵⁵ The issue would be compounded by the way that the new town designations of the late 1960s envisaged places of a significantly larger size than those begun in the 1940s, in part in response to a belief that the population was increasing rapidly. Furthermore, Parker Morris space standards—as documented in the 1961 report Homes for Today and Tomorrow – became mandatory in the English and Welsh new towns from 1967,⁵⁶ and were echoed in Scotland. Their generosity, coupled with the high design and landscaping standards encouraged by the development corporations, added to the expense of the new towns. Given what was described as ‘the mounting scale of public investment’, and with monetary challenges looming which ultimately led to devaluation, an internal minute of July 1967 referred to the Treasury’s wish to ‘move forward quickly to more effective expenditure control’ in the face of ‘rapid growth in past and prospective New Towns expenditure’.⁵⁷

In response, there were proposals for organisational innovation. In 1967, it was suggested that some new towns could be built by a new kind of public-private partnership, in place of the usual development corporation.⁵⁸ Developing this line of thinking, Stonehouse new town was conceived in 1971 with a development corporation that would co-ordinate ‘different design agencies’, potentially giving much more scope to the private sector, rather than taking an all-encompassing role.⁵⁹ In addition, the substitution of private-sector loans for Treasury subsidies could be understood as ‘part of the wider needed to divert a substantial proportion of building society funds into relieving public sector expenditure’.⁶⁰ With few development corporations generating a surplus on their housing accounts, land sales might produce a profit, while residents who left rented houses would be releasing their previous home, effectively reducing the number of new rented houses necessary.⁶¹ Furthermore, it was hoped that competition between builders might lower costs.⁶² One wonders if it was also hoped that this same competition might also push up land values (and, potentially, rateable values), with the resulting return to the Treasury being especially welcome in the light of devaluation and the ensuing squeeze on expenditure.

Policymakers also had growing evidence that owner-occupation was sought by two key groups: first, those who might invest in the new towns; and second, those who lived there (or might live there). As far as the first was concerned, a particular concern, especially in Scotland, was a sense that widespread provision of rented housing could compromise the role which was increasingly ascribed to the new towns, namely economic growth and the attraction of new (perhaps international) employers. The Toothill report of 1961 promoted the idea of ‘economic growth points’, and while this idea waxed and waned in official thinking, it remained important, with the Scottish new towns being seen as motors of economic change.⁶³ The West Central Scotland Plan of 1974, for example, emphasised the value of the new towns within the country’s continued economic modernisation.⁶⁴ However, within the Scottish Office, it was felt at the start of the 1970s that the dominance of public-sector rented housing in many areas was holding back the country’s economic potential:

There is no logical reason for maintaining the divergence or indeed for continuing to pursue policies which positively encourage public sector building at the expense of the private sector, and we think some stimulus to owner-occupation is required if the tenure differences between Scotland and the rest of Britain are not to continue to grow. We did not debate at length the effect of a low level of owner-occupation upon the Scottish economy, but it is generally thought to be a disincentive to potential in-coming employees.⁶⁵

In this respect, questions of tenure were bound up with wider questions of the image of central Scotland: ‘the businessman sees many of the built-up parts of the region as unpleasant places to which to move his family’.⁶⁶ Despite the high standards often achieved by the development corporations in their rented housing, civil servants and development corporation officials alike sometimes noted the difficulty in finding purchasers for the kind of contemporary designs favoured in the public sector, such as ‘Radburn’ layouts in which roads were pushed to the rear of properties. Purchasers wanted ‘non-Radburn houses or any accommodation which looks different from standard [development corporation] houses’.⁶⁷ Terraces—often valued by new town planners for their ‘urban’ quality and used extensively in rented areas—were thought especially unlikely to sell, and in addition, it was noted in 1968 that building societies were often reluctant to lend on ‘unorthodox designs’ featuring such things as flat roofs.⁶⁸ development corporation officials sometimes engaged in subterfuge when showing prospective employers around, in one case presenting nearby middle-class owner-occupied suburban areas as part of their realm. East Kilbride’s George Young recalled that ‘we would […] bring [executives] out from the airport via Newton Mearns and Clarkston and so on, which they all thought was part of East Kilbride’.⁶⁹

In addition, there was also evidence that owner-occupation was, at least in theory, increasingly attractive to new town residents. In February 1966, the housing policy researchers J.B. (Barry) Cullingworth and Valerie Karn were commissioned by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, in consort with the Scottish Office, to produce a study of housing tenure and management in the new towns across Britain; East Kilbride formed one of their case studies.⁷⁰ Although the study was not initially concerned with owner-occupation, the researchers found that residents had strong views on the subject.⁷¹ In England, there was ‘considerable support for the extension of owner occupation in the new towns’, especially among younger and more affluent tenants.⁷² Support was admittedly lower in Scotland but remained significant.⁷³ Cullingworth and Karn concluded that ‘if action is to be based on what people want, the policy should be to increase owner occupation and thereby reduce the size of the public sector’.⁷⁴ While such a move was understood as a way to make the new towns more ‘normal’ tenure wise (their term—and one which confirms the Anglocentric basis of the policy vis-à-vis Scotland), the recommendation was clearly one of providing opportunities and responding to demand: the most desirable model of new town tenure would offer the ‘widest range of choice to the consumer; meets needs of all groups in community; least charge on public funds but also assists those who cannot afford housing of the standard determined politically as being acceptable’.⁷⁵ Yet, as Cullingworth and Karn noted, the actual cost of purchase was beyond the means of many.⁷⁶ In Scotland, low public-sector rents had historically made renting attractive, but despite the deliberate increase in rents from the mid-1960s and the abolition of the practice of levying domestic rates on owners alone, there was no corresponding increase in owner-occupation; indeed, the proportion fell on account of the continued large-scale programmes of comprehensive redevelopment and new town construction.⁷⁷ Rising incomes after 1969 and revised affordability tests suggested that the situation might change in the 1970s, and a working group was set up ‘to investigate ways of assisting people to become owner-occupiers in Scotland’.⁷⁸

A particular problem within a Scottish context was a lack of affordable existing housing for purchase in the lower-medium price range, the consequence in part of low levels of private-sector house-building since 1918.⁷⁹ In tackling this issue, the new towns would have a particular role. First, as we have noted, the construction of housing for sale within the new towns assumed increasing prominence in planning documents and policymakers’ discussions in Scotland as also across England and Wales. Yet, actually delivering this policy was challenging, as was recognised as early as 1968. One difficulty comprised the design standards often expected by development corporations: by the end of the 1960s, this meant the generous provisions set out by Parker Morris. Corporations were often reluctant to allow provision below that found in their own rented housing, but this stipulation made housing expensive, perhaps too expensive to attract buyers, as housebuilders complained to government.⁸⁰ Builders also reiterated that buyers wanted housing distinct in style and layout from that provided by the development corporations.⁸¹ Indeed, in England at least, the Ministry criticised ‘undue insistence on full Parker Morris standards’ as well as strict aesthetic controls, suggesting that private housing might add ‘variety and interest’.⁸² By October 1968, a compromise had been proposed, involving the preparation of planning briefs rather than detailed specifications.⁸³ Development corporations were to encourage the ‘highest possible standards of layout and house type consistent with the price level aimed at’ [emphasis original].⁸⁴ The onus was shifted to purchasers, who were to be presented with a choice: either a well-specified rented house, or the purchase of a house which was less well specified but to which they could potentially add features in the future, such as central heating, a garage, or an extension.⁸⁵ In essence, standards would be lowered to make housing and thus home ownership affordable in the new towns.

The construction of estates of new housing for sale was, however, not the only route to increased owner-occupation. Two other options were available. The first, more marginal though nonetheless significant throughout the period under consideration, was to sell plots for the construction of one-off designs, typically by better-off residents. This practice, which will be discussed in more detail shortly, enabled middle-class professionals such as architects, engineers and civil servants to live in homes they had often designed themselves, an opportunity they may not have had elsewhere. It reflected the arguably utopian and artistic vision of the new towns in encouraging choice and opportunity as well as the development corporations’ aim to ensure a social mix in the new towns.

There was also a further option, especially in the ‘mark 1’ towns where reduced levels of future building were expected. According to the Ministry’s 1967 circular, ‘one obvious way of increasing owner-occupation would be by the sale of existing rented houses to sitting or other tenants’.⁸⁶ The Scottish Office echoed this line of thinking, seeing new town housing (and council housing, and housing by the SSHA) as having the potential to plug the deficiency of recent middle-income, ‘second-hand’ housing for sale: ‘the supply of houses for owner-occupation in the middle price range can be increased […] draw upon the stock of existing, currently rented local authority and New Town houses of suitable quality and make them available for sale’.⁸⁷ New Town housing was considered as something distinct from local authority provision, and thus could legitimately be sold. The latter was presented (not least by Crossman) as comprising housing at moderate rents for those who needed it, and which should therefore remain in public ownership; council tenants who wished to buy in ‘established’ towns could buy from an ample supply in a way that was not the case in new towns.⁸⁸ (This line of thought evokes the evolving ‘residualisation’ of council housing, which, as John Boughton has argued, developed from the 1950s and came to be particularly associated with the 1980s.⁸⁹) In the early 1970s, with rents increasing in response to the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act of 1972,⁹⁰ it was suggested that higher-income households, in particular, would feel incentivised to buy, though there was already concern to avoid a sense that tenants were being ‘blackmailed’ into purchasing.⁹¹ Sales would thus answer the perceived desire for owner-occupation, uncovered by Cullingworth, and would potentially halt the drift of those who wanted to buy outside of the new towns. Selling hitherto rented houses was financially advantageous—at least for central government. New town development corporations typically received an Exchequer subsidy for each rented house, a flow of money which would stop upon sale; however, the capital invested in the house would be recovered.⁹² Only if a subsidy or development corporation loan was provided to the purchaser would public funds continue to be involved, but even then, there could be a saving, as the Scottish Association of Registered Housebuilders argued:

The total [rent] subsidy per dwelling coming into occupation at the present time, from local rates and from grants from Central Government, is in the order of £300 per annum in Scotland. This goes in year after year for sixty years, i.e. £18,000. A once only cash subsidy with suitable safeguards of say £500 would bridge the cash-on-entry gap and would be a tremendous saving to both the tax and the rate-payer.⁹³

Such a perspective was unsurprising, in view of the interests of the Association, but civil servants came to similar conclusions. Despite the loss of rents and the impact on Exchequer of second mortgage tax relief, ‘we found that in every case there is a net benefit to the public sector from the sale of a rented house’.⁹⁴

The sale of new town housing would thus provide a pool of well-designed, recently built family housing which might underpin Scotland’s continued economic development as well as the social diversity of the new towns. Sales were key to the image, and perhaps the reality, of a modern Scotland, and were understood in terms of providing new choices to residents as well as satisfying their ambitions. Although there might be a case for keeping the new towns distinctive, essentially conceiving tenants’ choice of tenure at a regional level (i.e. rent in a new town, or buy elsewhere), sales were presented as a way to ‘normalise’ the new towns.⁹⁵

In reality, sales were slow. It also appeared that all but a minority of tenants lost their enthusiasm for buying when confronted with the high sale prices that were associated with the high standards in recent rented housing.⁹⁶ There was continued evidence of the desire of potential buyers to purchase housing which looked different from their existing rented home. A survey in East Kilbride in 1970 revealed that only 20.7% of tenants would buy their current house if given the chance, whereas 60.7% expressed interest in housing built by private-sector developers.⁹⁷ Nonetheless—as the next section of this article will discuss—sales did take place, and in increasing numbers.

Implementation and demand

Interest in owner-occupation began early in the life of the new towns, stepping up from the mid-1950s as post-war austerity eased and changes to the Scottish domestic rates system made ownership less financially disadvantageous. East Kilbride’s 1956 Annual Report noted that 500 sites had been reserved ‘for those who prefer to own their own homes’, with fifty applications being received.⁹⁸ Private development was slower in Glenrothes.⁹⁹ Nevertheless by 1958 ‘a small site’ in Alburne Park was being prepared for private construction and ‘other private parties had reserved sites in this locality’ as there appeared to be ‘demand for better class houses, either for sale or for rental’.¹⁰⁰ Cumbernauld Development Corporation considered provision for owner occupation from 1962 and four years later increased the housing allocated in the town for owner occupation from 5% to 17%.¹⁰¹ It briefly considered participation in an experiment proposed by University of Edinburgh researchers, in which three identical clusters of housing would be built: one for rent, one for sale, and one for management by a housing co-operative.¹⁰² The goal was to test and compare these different forms of tenure. (In the event, only the housing for rent was built.)

The sale of plots for one-off designs was a constant in all of the towns. In East Kilbride land was allocated on various sites, but particularly in Thorntonhall, where an estate of large, bespoke houses created in essence a new village a short distance from the town. Within East Kilbride itself, the St Leonards neighbourhood was conceived as a higher standard residential area. In 1966, 161 plots were laid out there, along with thirty-seven plots in the Westwood area, all for houses in the £5000–6000 range.¹⁰³ In addition, the development corporations also built housing for sale. In East Kilbride, they included some 200 houses in the Westwood area, for which 700 enquiries were received; 100% mortgages were available.¹⁰⁴ Attractive sites for private houses were also located in several areas of Glenrothes with the corporation also building 72 houses for sale in 1968 ‘to meet the rising demand’,¹⁰⁵ while sites were made available in the Park area of Cumbernauld.¹⁰⁶

Builders also constructed estates of houses for sale from the late 1950s. In East Kilbride, Wimpey—a firm whose work also included estates of housing for public-sector clients—was active at Calderwood in the late 1950s and thereafter turned its attention to Birniehill,¹⁰⁷ while Laidlaw built 75 houses with a stylish open-plan hall at Hairmyres in 1966.¹⁰⁸ However, relations between development corporations and builders were not always smooth. East Kilbride Development Corporation’s insistence on a certain standard of design did not always find a favourable response from builders, who feared that the additional expense might make the cost of the completed houses commercially unviable.¹⁰⁹ In Glenrothes, private developments were more modest in size, with the development corporation approving an estate of twenty houses at Braid Drive in 1966, although it was expected that ‘from enquiries received’ demand for land for private housing would increase considerably.¹¹⁰ In Cumbernauld private builders were involved at Abronhill and Condorrat in the 1960s.¹¹¹

The sale of rented housing was also discussed on numerous occasions. In East Kilbride, ‘a major campaign to promote the sale of existing houses to tenants’ was mooted in 1966.¹¹² The development corporation noted that ‘there can be no doubt that it is in the long term financial interests of most families with good incomes to own their own houses and the increased proportion of private capital in housing will tend to accelerate the elimination of the Corporation’s deficit and release capital for other purposes’.¹¹³ However, take-up was initially low. In 1964, only around sixty tenants (out of 9000) were reported to be interested in buying their home.¹¹⁴ The issue—anticipating the findings of later surveys—was that tenants were less keen on buying their existing home; they preferred to buy elsewhere. Thus, despite their enthusiasm (‘Buy your Houses, E.K. tells tenants’, ran one 1966 headline),¹¹⁵ the development corporation resolved to concentrate on building new houses specifically for sale.¹¹⁶ With increased targets for owner-occupation being cited in 1967, attention returned to the question of sales. The corporation reiterated its offer to sell any house to sitting tenants, and by 1968 a scheme was in operation in which the corporation undertook to buy back the house within two years.¹¹⁷ By this date, some areas were also designated as priority areas for sales.¹¹⁸ Any house which fell vacant in these areas would be sold. This policy was controversial, with some residents feeling that they were being encouraged to ‘buy or quit’.¹¹⁹ As a result, a degree of neutrality was adopted in the tenth development at Calderwood, which the Corporation hoped would become 100% owner-occupied: ‘In communications to tenants and others which mentioned house purchase, the Corporation would not appear to persuade people to buy, and statements which might give rise to recrimination later would be avoided’.¹²⁰

By 1968, Cumbernauld Development Corporation had also began selling its housing, notably at the Park 1 development, a desirable area of the town populated by professionals, where 22 of the 39 rented cedar-clad bungalows had been sold.¹²¹ East Kilbride Development Corporation in 1970 — echoing the increased (though still modest) level of interest in owner-occupation revealed by Cullingworth—was able to refer to ‘strong and expanding demand’.¹²² That year, 61 tenants bought their homes; 47 bought other (previously rented) houses elsewhere in the town with vacant possession.¹²³ In Glenrothes, by comparison, the number of privately owned houses was again more modest at only 261, with only 8 sold to sitting tenants and 25 sold with vacant possession during the year.¹²⁴ The focus in Glenrothes remained on selling land to private developers to build housing for sale, both in medium and higher price ranges. Meanwhile, Cumbernauld Development Corporation had adopted a similar policy to that in East Kilbride and five specific areas of the town were identified as being suitable for the sale of houses to sitting tenants or on the open market after vacation by tenants. In 1970 it was judged that this approach was progressing well.¹²⁵ By 1972, this scheme was deemed to be successful with ‘a constant flow of enquiries and over 90 houses sold in these areas so far’. Over 200 houses had been sold in total with ‘some 1,750 houses available to sitting tenants’.¹²⁶

Mortgages of up to 100% continued to be made available in East Kilbride at fixed interest rates.¹²⁷ Further publicity was issued, coinciding with the economic boom of the early 1970s, and by 1973 annual sales had almost doubled with the level of owner occupation increasing (see Table 1).¹²⁸ In 1972 Glenrothes Development Corporation also issued a ‘newsletter’ promoting sale of houses and received over 400 enquiries.¹²⁹ In the following year 367 tenants bought their homes, resulting in an increase in owner occupation in the town with a total of 687 privately owned houses. In 1974, a further 229 corporation houses were sold, and it was anticipated that the figure would have been higher if more houses had been available with sales restricted to sitting tenants only. Yet, home ownership remained lower than in the other two towns. In Cumbernauld the ‘Corporation House Sales Scheme’ was ‘well established’ by 1973 with 707 houses being sold.¹³⁰ It was found that ‘the Building Societies were initially reluctant to make adequate advances to purchasers’ as ‘many of the houses sold were in areas in which there were few owner-occupied houses’.¹³¹ As a result, the corporation supplied many of the mortgages required with an average of 96% of the value.¹³² The same was true in Glenrothes in 1974 when the corporation provided an average mortgage of 95% to those sitting tenants borrowing to buy their homes.¹³³ In this sense, the development corporations in both Glenrothes and Cumbernauld also became ‘lenders of last resort’ in order to encourage sales.¹³⁴

Table 1. Proportion of home ownership by year in East Kilbride, Glenrothes and Cumbernauld. Source Development Corporation Annual Reports (1972–1982)¹³⁵].

Year	East Kilbride	Glenrothes	Cumbernauld
1972	8.8%	n/a	10.6%
1973	13.3%	n/a	15.2%
1974	16%	11.35%	15.1%
1975	17%	12.1%	15.1%
1976	17%	13.2%	17%
1977	17.4%	13.62%	18%
1978	17.6%	14.78%	20.4%
1979	18.4%	15.5%	24%
1980	21.4%	20.2%	28%
1981	24%	21.6%	29.9%
1982	28%	23.4%	33%

In both East Kilbride and Glenrothes, the economic slowdown of the mid-1970s led to a reduction in sales. Glenrothes Development Corporation noted in 1977 that the level of owner occupation would not reach the target 25% until they were allowed to sell houses to sitting tenants at a discount on the market value.¹³⁶ This was felt to be of particular importance for ‘tenants of long standing’ with ‘probably fewer working years to pay off a mortgage’.¹³⁷ Only in Cumbernauld did the proportion of owner occupation rise substantially in the late 1970s ‘despite high interest rates and the effects of the 3-day week’.¹³⁸ After controls on sales were lifted (and discounts introduced) following the introduction of the ‘Right to Buy’ in 1980 the proportion of owner occupation increased again in East Kilbride.¹³⁹ That said, while Glenrothes experienced ‘an avalanche of enquiries’, owner occupation remained below the 25% target.¹⁴⁰

Analysis of oral history life narratives of ‘pioneer’ buyers in the early new towns allows further insight into the demand for home ownership in these years. Moreover, narratives from the second generation, their children, who grew up in these homes provides an indication of the social implications of ownership in terms of class identity. Motivations and desires for ownership are less clearly articulated by those buying their homes in the 1960s and 1970s than those guiding policy at a national level or those implementing it. For example, Alexander was born in 1926 in Leith, a working-class area of Edinburgh. After war service and establishing himself as a chartered accountant, he applied to join the finance department at Glenrothes Development Corporation and moved to the town in 1959 with his wife and young son. The couple had bought a house in 1954 in Kingsknowe, an Edinburgh suburb, as it was ‘ten years to get a council house’. However, they wanted a newly built house; this was the ‘big attraction of East Kilbride and Glenrothes’, even though the housing was rented.¹⁴¹ Soon he also wanted to be a homeowner again:

This was the first private development [in Glenrothes], so when I heard [about] it, when I saw they wanted to develop one, we went down to Kirkcaldy and had a look at the houses they built there, and said ‘this is the house’. My wife thought I was … not daft but a bit over the top. A smaller house would do, but I said ‘no this is the best type and we’re having it’.¹⁴²

They bought their house in Glenrothes in 1964. Alexander was just the sort of professional that the development corporation wanted to live in the town. When asked why he wanted to buy, if this was because they had owned their house in Edinburgh, he simply replied ‘yes’ and moved the conversation on.

Alexander’s story demonstrates the way that, in a Scottish context, we know little about people’s motivations for buying their homes in the immediate post-war decades. People find it difficult to articulate why they wanted or decided to buy a house.¹⁴³ Such aspirations, while not abnormal, were not the mass experience in Scotland prior to the 1980s and thus do not easily fit with stereotypical representations of the urban experience in this period. The popular or collective memory of urban Scotland in the 1960s focuses on overcrowded housing conditions, often in tenements with shared back courts and communal toilets, and the resulting slum clearance programmes. There is little opportunity for individuals to complicate this by articulating memories of social mobility. Yet, as Lynn Abrams et al. have argued, in the new towns people were able to ‘remake themselves’ and realise their ambitions free of the prescriptive belonging of their former communities.¹⁴⁴ The elective belonging of the new communities in the new towns enabled people to create new norms of behaviour where aspiration was embraced.¹⁴⁵ Lawrence suggests, with reference to contemporary social surveys of new and expanding communities in England, that in the 1950s and 1960s people felt it was acceptable to be doing well for themselves as there was a sense of collective progress. He finds the ‘reconcilliation of personal ambition with collective progress’ to be ‘the most striking feature’ of testimonies from late 1950s Stevenage.¹⁴⁶ That people wanted to do well but were happy for others to ‘share the rewards of post-war affluence’.¹⁴⁷ Inherent here is perhaps a feeling that everyone shared the opportunity to be doing well and thus individuals did not have to feel any guilt at their comparable ‘success’ in life.¹⁴⁸

While individuals are capable of discussing the details of their housing journey, like Alexander they tended not to dwell on their reasons for buying their own homes. Jim, for example, briefly provides a practical reason for buying a house in the 1970s. He moved to Glenrothes in 1955 when he was thirteen years old. Jim, a chartered accountant eventually with his own company in the town, decided to buy a house in 1973. His family were living in a development corporation house and ’then I thought the way things are going, I was quite happy cause I didn’t have the money to rent the place and then I thought, you know, the more things are going on more, you know, I should buy a house’.¹⁴⁹ Essentially, he felt that rent was increasing at such a rate that it would be practical to buy a house. Jim decided to ‘put his name down’ for a house in an area of the town that was built by a private housing developer. He did not consider buying the house that the family was renting. After viewing it, he decided to buy the house that had ‘a space at the side if I wanted to extend’. The house was smaller than he knew he needed in the long term, but he could afford it and later extend it. Again, as was the case for Alexander, these decisions were presented in the oral history narrative as unremarkable. As professional men in the town, members of the middle class, theirs were entirely normal decisions to make, not requiring further explanation. Many of their peers may also have been buying homes, potentially in areas of private suburban developments or commuter villages where owner occupation was a more normal tenure type.¹⁵⁰ Privacy was already available in some of the designs of homes in the early new towns, notably the courtyard houses of Cumbernauld.¹⁵¹ Moreover corporation tenancies, like council house tenancies elsewhere, allowed a degree of control and freedom in terms of the home being yours to decorate as you liked. Nevertheless, ownership allowed the freedom to extend and modify homes. Ownership was also a signifier of social mobility yet this is not mentioned in these or any of the other narratives of early buyers. Probably as a result of the fact that all of these people had already attained a degree of middle class status through their professional lives. There is an undercurrent in these narratives that people felt that they were perhaps moving to more desirable areas of the new towns but this was never made explicit either because they thought it was obvious and did not require explanation or because they did not want to be seen to be passing judgement on other areas of the town. In any case, it is also possible that it is difficult for people to reflect on their decision to buy a house when this is now so common.¹⁵²

As discussed earlier, in all three of the early new towns in Scotland plots were made available to those who wished to build their own homes. While such people were even more of a minority of homeowners in Scotland in this period, the freedom this approach allowed individuals to realise their aspirations was significant, especially in enabling individuals to express their desires for the home that they wanted. Andy moved to Cumbernauld with his family in 1966. His parents were both civil servants relocated from London. Both were also active members of the Communist Party. Yet, their political beliefs did not prevent them from designing and building their own house. Initially, they had rented a flat from the development corporation in the relatively new area of Abronhill for a year or so. As Andy suggests:

Cumbernauld was an exciting place at that time, in the sense that there were a lot of really interesting and skilled people in Cumbernauld, that were really committed to Cumbernauld. And so, part of that was also building houses, and people wanted their own unique houses and, you know, they had friends that were designers and architects and this, that and the other.¹⁵³

While building your own house was not exactly ordinary, in Cumbernauld with its artistic scene and forward-thinking progressive architects,¹⁵⁴ it was not necessarily extraordinary either. The proportionately small middle-class professional and artistic community seem to have supported each other in building their own unique houses. Andy suggests that the design of the house reflected the historical moment ‘in the sense that the house they designed actually had one door for the adults and a side door at the back for the children’. In his house, ‘the children were in one part of the house and the adults were in the other, which would be an anathema now […] it was a different ethos then’.¹⁵⁵ Making such experimental designs a reality was possible in the context of middle-class Cumbernauld in the 1960s. Moreover, Andy’s parents were putting down roots in the town, as he states ‘there was never any question of moving. I mean, they were staying in Cumbernauld and this is … they were invested in staying in Cumbernauld, this is where we wanted to live’. Building their house arguably increased their stake in the town, or perhaps more accurately confirmed their commitment to the town.

Sarah’s parents had moved to Cumbernauld in the early 1960s. They had moved from another new town, Harlow in Essex, where her father had worked for the development corporation as a civil engineer. Initially, the family lived in East Kilbride before staff houses were completed in Cumbernauld. Her parents rented in Park Way (in Park 1), but bought a plot of land ‘like quite a lot of the others there’.¹⁵⁶ Sarah’s dad designed the house himself with help from colleagues: ‘they crossed over’ and shared expertise. Their house was one of the first built on a street that went on to have ten individually commissioned houses. Her dad liked the courtyard houses built in the town by the development corporation for rent, but their plot was not wide enough ‘so he had to adjust it’.¹⁵⁷ In the end, he designed a bungalow and crucially ‘he just built it to suit the family really’. Sarah’s mum still lives in the house. In order to buy, and in this case build, individuals were willing to live in houses with arguably lower space standards than those built by the development corporations. Ownership was the key desire and the development corporations provided this opportunity to ensure that the middle classes and professionals remained within the town rather than relocating, living outside the town and commuting.

However, in the new towns there was some evidence of consequences of the expansion of home ownership in the 1960s and 1970s. Sarah was not aware of there being class differences when she was at primary school stating ‘I think as kids you just band together’ and ‘you think, we’re all the same, you know’.¹⁵⁸ However when she went to secondary school in the mid 1970s she can ‘remember getting a bit of hassle and getting really shocked when people would pick on us a bit, because they’d call it spam valley or something’. She recalls ‘people shouting’ and not understanding why until ‘gradually, as you sort of got older, it meant, oh because you’re in a private house’. Similarly, Alexander’s son Fraser remembers that he ‘wasn’t aware of it being different but of course you’re made aware of it quite soon, but where I grew up it was called “Snobhill”’.¹⁵⁹ He suggests that in Glenrothes ‘I’ve not got a typical experience’ as he ‘didn’t grow up in a council house’. He felt there was a sense of ‘we’re all in it together except those people in the private’ in the town. The balanced community which the development corporations sought to create inevitably would contain such tensions. Initially, in the early years of the new towns people of different socio-economic backgrounds lived in the same few areas of the towns. However, as the towns grew and expanded distinctions were created with certain areas containing higher amenity rental housing for management or ‘executives’ and eventually privately built housing, corporation housing for sale, or plots for one-off designs as discussed. Some areas were considered ‘better’ than others as a result. A level of spatial segregation by class was increasingly evident in the early new towns. In this respect, the new towns were becoming more like other towns and cities, where the area in which people lived became a marker of their socio-economic status.

The increase in ownership in the early new towns in Scotland in the 1960s, but especially 1970s, coincided with growing societal inequality. Some of those who were doing well financially were now able to buy property, but others in the towns were struggling as evidenced by mounting rent arrears.¹⁶⁰ There are parallels here with Lawrence’s argument that the belief in collective progress for all was increasingly challenged in the 1970s in England as it became clear that not everyone was benefitting from ‘“progress” as an anonymous social force lifting everybody equally’.¹⁶¹ It was no longer easy for people to explain their aspirational choices as a collective experience when evidence of inequality became more obvious at a societal level. Echoing Lawrence’s argument, this did not entirely result in ‘the triumph of individualism’ and an abandonment of community.¹⁶² Nevertheless, the facilitation of owner occupation in the early new towns in Scotland made class differences more obvious spatially by the late 1970s than they had been initially, and this arguably could lead to tensions within the community as described by Fraser and Sarah.

Such tensions were also highlighted by the fact that not everyone was able to achieve all of their aspirations by moving to the new town. Phyllis’s mum had grown up in Liverpool. She had moved to Scotland in the early 1950s after meeting Phyllis’s dad while on holiday in Ireland. Moving to a cramped tenement flat in Partick in Glasgow was a shock when she had grown up in a large terraced house. When asked if her parents moved to Cumbernauld because they wanted to live in a house Phyllis responded ‘I think probably, you know, that would have been their aspirations, probably they thought, they certainly weren’t in the income bracket that we could have afforded to buy, ever. My dad obviously worked hard, but he had five mouths to feed’.¹⁶³ Phyllis’s father was a skilled sheet metal worker in the shipyards on the Clyde, starting his apprenticeship in Fairfields in Govan and later becoming the first Catholic shop steward at Yarrows in Scotstoun. He continued to commute to work in Glasgow after moving to Cumbernauld, which was common among skilled workers. Her mum, who had originally trained and worked as a touch typist before her marriage, also worked in part time jobs when Phyllis’s younger siblings went to school. She never returned to her original career, which was common for women of her generation, and instead worked in retail and later as a ‘home help’ as home care workers were known in the west of Scotland. Phyllis suggests that her parents saw moving to Cumbernauld in 1966 as ‘a chance of improving their lot’ and ‘probably they thought it was a better quality of life’. She suggests that they would have liked to own their own home, but this was not a possibility until much later in their lives after the ‘Right to Buy’ enabled them to buy their home at a discount.

Conclusion

Although renting would remain the principal form of tenure in Scotland’s new towns until the 1990s, reflecting the dominance of renting in twentieth-century Scotland more generally, this article has shown that policymakers and some new town residents embraced the idea of home ownership well before the ‘Right to Buy’ of 1980. It has shown how policy was enacted in the new towns, and, crucially, has considered the ways in which these changes were navigated by individuals and families. In so doing, the post-war state, as mediated via the new town development corporations, emerges as an enabler for individuals’ agency: offering opportunities in terms of housing, jobs and indeed a particular lifestyle. This is not a story of equality for all as part of a universal social welfare settlement, but rather instead opportunity for those that were able to take it. For the government, encouraging home ownership in the new towns ‘normalised’ housing tenure in these communities, bringing them more into line with other urban and rural communities, perhaps even introducing ‘English’ models of tenure to Scotland. The sale of new town corporation housing also had the added bonus of potentially reducing the housing deficits in each of the towns as well as ongoing maintenance costs, while the funds raised could be used to support new construction at a time when the expense incurred by the new towns aroused concerns. The development corporations implemented these policies, recording varying degrees of success in promoting ownership to reduce ‘executive drift’ and provide a greater sense of belonging to, or stake in, the ‘balanced community’.

The new towns, as we have seen, attracted aspirational people on the basis of attractive new housing and the potential for a better job. The oral history evidence highlights that individuals saw buying a home, and even commissioning a home to a one-off design, as ‘normal’ in the context of the Scottish new towns. Short and practical reasons were given for wanting to become homeowners: this was seen as an ordinary desire, even in a period when they would have been in the minority. In particular, this emphasises the significance of the early new towns in providing individuals with the opportunity to commission their own house design in an urban context. Yet, as discussed, for the children of those relocating to the new towns and choosing to become homeowners, the development corporations’ efforts to ensure their parents did not leave the town to buy, to preserve the socio-economically balanced community, could lead to tensions. Housing provision in the towns, and especially housing for sale, certainly created a hierarchy of neighbourhood desirability which had initially been absent in the new towns.

Our focus on the new towns as places of opportunity and aspiration (for some) does not challenge existing perspectives which critique the Scottish new towns programme for heightening disadvantage among those not able to relocate.¹⁶⁴ The 1960s were not universally a time of ‘never had it so good’, as the ‘rediscovery of poverty’ in the emerging social sciences demonstrated. Yet, in order to understand the inequalities of the immediate post-war decades, historians also need to focus on those who benefitted from the opportunities offered by the new towns—a focus which also problematises ‘decline’ as a meta-narrative for the 1970s. While some people experienced job losses and the impact of increasing costs of living at this time, there was certainly growth and opportunity for others, sometimes in the same new town.¹⁶⁵ The two went hand-in-hand.

The value of the long historical perspective presented in this article is in tracking the impact of encouraging owner-occupation prior to the ‘Right to Buy’. While the public sector was not moribund after 1980, with, indeed, some innovative public-sector housing continuing to be built in Scotland’s new towns (not least Irvine) during the 1980s and 1990s and refurbishment work occupying an important place in development corporation activity, the disinvestment of the post-1979 governments in providing new general-needs housing for rent to the previous extent has had profound consequences. The fragmentation of new town tenure which resulted from the ‘Right to Buy’, the purchase of new town housing by a revived private rented sector, and the challenges of an ageing housing stock faced by post-development corporation administrations (be those the local authorities or housing associations) have all been significant issues. Yet, the earlier encouragement of home ownership through government policy highlights that the roots of this crisis were longer. The experimentation encouraged in the new towns in the 1960s and 1970s perhaps provided a warning of what would follow: not just in social terms but in the denudation of planned design. There are therefore lessons to be learnt from the discussions of policy makers, the implementation of policy by development corporations, and the lived experience of residents, in a period when the supply and demand of private housing was more carefully managed and debated, crucially alongside the provision of good quality housing for rent.

Acknowledgments

This article is one of the outputs from the Leverhulme Trust-funded project ‘Building a Modern Scotland: The New Towns, 1947-2017’ (ref. RPG-2020-904). This project gained ethical approval for collection of oral history life narratives from the College of Arts Research Ethics at the University of Glasgow on 10 August 2021 (application number 100200185). The authors would like to thank Lynn Abrams and Miles Glendinning for advice on the draft text and points of detail, and Contemporary British History’s anonymous readers for their helpful suggestions and comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Leverhulme Trust [RPG-2020-904].

Notes

1. “No sale” Plea after Corporation Houses Shock’, East Kilbride News, 6 November 1970.

2. East Kilbride Development Corporation (EKDC), Minutes, 22 August 1967. South Lanarkshire Archives, East Kilbride.

3. “Picketing of Show Flat Continues,” East Kilbride News, 2 December 1966.

4. E.g. Ortolano, Thatcher’s Progress; Boughton, Municipal Dreams; and Glendinning and Muthesius, Tower Block.

5. O’Carroll, “Tenements to Bungalows,” 221–41; McFadden, Creating a Modern Home; and Glendinning and Watters (eds) Home Builders.

6. Merrett with Gray, Owner Occupation in Britain.

7. Scott, The Making of the Modern British Home, 233–246. For an earlier study of suburban development or the fear of urban sprawl around London see Jackson, Semi-Detached London.

8. Clapson, Invincible Green Suburbs, Brave New Towns.

9. Clapson, A Social History of Milton Keynes, 59–60 and 154.

10. Boughton, Municipal Dreams, 212–31.

11. Cullingworth and Karn, The Ownership and Management of Housing.

12. Glendinning, “Ballantyne Report”; Begg, 50 Special Years, 13–14; and Hansard, HC Deb 11 May 1950 vol 475 c. 595.

13. Begg, 50 Special Years, 13–14.

14. Begg, Housing Policy in Scotland, 108, 119, and 146.

15. For Stonehouse, see Fair, “Stonehouse: Scotland’s Last New Town”.

16. E.g. Department of Health for Scotland, New Town at East Kilbride, 12.

17. E.g. J.M. Ross memo, 20 February 1974. National Records of Scotland [NRS], SEP15/574.

18. Fair, “Community Centre.”

19. For design: J.H. McGuinness to H.T. MacCalman, 16 November 1946. NRS, SEP15/75, and DHS, New Town at East Kilbride, 12.

20. Abrams et al., “Aspiration, Agency and the Production of New Selves”; and Abrams and Fleming, “Long Term Experiences of Tenants in Social Housing in East Kilbride.”

21. Kefford, “Housing the Citizen-Consumer,” 228.

22. Ibid., 247.

23. Ortolano, Thatcher’s Progress, 21.

24. E.g. Saumarez Smith, Boom Cities; Kefford, “Housing the Consumer-Citizen”; and Fair, “Privacy”.

25. Robinson et al., “Telling Stories about Post-War Britain,” 302.

26. Lawrence, Me, Me, Me, 230–36.

27. See Abrams et al., “Aspiration, Agency and the Production of New Selves”; also Phillips et al., Deindustrialisation and the Moral Economy in Scotland Since 1955, 155–56.

28. Crossman, The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, 376.

29. Ibid., 377.

30. Cullingworth, New Towns Policy, 429.

31. Ibid., 430–33.

32. “Crossman Plan Aims to Make Home Owning Easier,” Times, 25 November 1965.

33. H.F.G. Kelly to P. Cousins, 16 February 1967. The National Archives, Kew [TNA], T224/1841.

34. P. Cousins to S. Scott Whyte, [2 March 1967]. TNA, T224/1841.

35. S. Scott Whyte to P. Cousins, 10 March 1967. TNA, T224/1841.

36. Ibid.

37. For council housing: Boughton, Municipal Dreams; Dunleavy, Politics of Mass Housing; and Glendinning and Muthesius, Tower Block.

38. “Remits for Sub-Committees.” NRS, DD6/221; First Draft Report [May 1945]. NRS, DD6/230.

39. Ministry of Town and Country Planning/DHS, Final Report of the New Towns Committee, 9–11.

40. Cullingworth and Karn, The Ownership and Management of Housing in the New Towns, 16–17.

41. Begg, 50 Special Years, 163.

42. Ibid., 181–88.

43. “Interim Summary Report.” TNA, HLG115/798.

44. Ibid.

45. Glenrothes Development Corporation [GDC], Annual Report, 1966.

46. East Kilbride Development Corporation [EKDC], ‘Official Guide to East Kilbride’ [1972]. East Kilbride Central Library, uncat.

47. EKDC, Annual Reports, 1959 and 1962.

48. EKDC, Minutes, 12 January 1962. East Kilbride Central Library, uncat.

49. EKDC, Annual Report, 1965.

50. EKDC, Annual Report, 1969.

51. GDC, Annual Report, 1967.

52. Cumbernauld Development Corporation [CDC], Annual Report, 1978.

53. CDC, A Businessman’s Tour of Cumbernauld Edinburgh: CDC, 1978, 10.

54. EKDC, “Official Guide.”

55. “Owner-Occupation and the Role of Private Enterprise.” 14 March 1967. TNA, HLG116/323. Also Cullingworth, New Towns Policy, 432.

56. Harwood, Space Hope and Brutalism, 54.

57. Draft circular: “Private Enterprise in New Towns.” TNA, HLG116/554; P. Cousins to A. Sylvester-Evans, 13 July 1967. TNA, T224/1841.

58. Note on Cost [Llantrisant, c. 1967]. TNA, T341/597.

59. Derek Lyddon memo, 7 July 1971. NRS, SEP15/733; also Fair, “Stonehouse.”

60. Minutes of 23 July 1969. TNA, HLG116/552.

61. E. Thompson to M. Stevenson, 1 January 1970. TNA, HLG116/552.

62. Draft Circular: “Private Enterprise Housing in New Towns.” TNA, HLG116/554.

63. Scottish Development Department, Central Scotland: A Programme for Development and Growth.

64. West Central Scotland Plan Team, West Central Scotland Plan, 120.

65. Draft Report. NRS, DD64/2382.

66. West Central Scotland Plan Team, West Central Scotland Plan, 9 and 19.

67. Interim Summary Report 2 [November 1967], 58. TNA, HLG115/798.

68. Briefing Note for Lord Hughes, November 1968. NRS, DD6/4486.

69. Interview with George Young, New Towns Record [Planning Exchange CD-ROM, 1996].

70. Cullingworth and Karn, Ownership and Management, iii.

71. Ibid., 153.

72. Ibid., 67 and 131.

73. Ibid., 66.

74. Ibid., 154.

75. Ibid., 153.

76. Ibid., 131 and 140.

77. “The Market for Private Housing in Scotland” [October 1971]. NRS, DD6/2382.

78. Working Group Introductory Paper. NRS, DD6/2382.

79. 1st Draft Report. NRS, DD6/2382.

80. Draft Circular: “Private Enterprise Housing in New Towns.” TNA, HLG116/554.

81. Meeting with Scottish Association of Registered Housebuilders, 8 October 1970. NRS, DD6/4487.

82. Draft Circular: “Private Enterprise Housing in New Towns.” TNA, HLG116/554.

83. Cullingworth, New Towns Policy, 444.

84. Revised Draft Circular: “Private Enterprise Housing in New Towns.” TNA, HLG116/554.

85. Ibid.

86. New Town Circular 43: “Owner Occupation in the New Towns,” 1967. TNA, HLG116/552.

87. First Draft Report; Second Draft Report. NRS, DD6/2382.

88. New Town Circular 43: “Owner Occupation in the New Towns,” 1967. TNA, HLG116/552.

89. Boughton, Municipal Dreams, 144; See also Forrest and Murie, “Residualisation and Council Housing”; and Murie, “Divisions of Home Ownership.”

90. In 1972, in England and Wales, the Housing Finance Act effectively resulted in rent increases as council housing subsidies were reduced and replaced by controlled rents with ‘fair’ rents. In Scotland, the 1972 Housing (Financial Provisions) Act resulted in rent increases for some local authority tenants but with a system of rent rebates and allowances. See Hansard HC Deb 24 March 1975 vol 889 cc 35–172 for further details.

91. Minutes of 23 July 1969. TNA, HLG116/552.

92. Note of meeting with Building Societies, 24 July 1969. TNA, HLG116/552.

93. “Subsidies for Owner Occupiers,” 21 January 1971. NRS, DD6/2383.

94. “Study of Financial Benefits.” TNA, HLG116/552.

95. Cullingworth, New Towns Policy, 441.

96. E. Thompson to M. Stevenson, 1 January 1970; TNA, HLG116/552.

97. “The East Kilbride Survey 1970.” East Kilbride Central Library, uncat.

98. EKDC, Annual Report, 1956.

99. It was suggested that the ‘high level of valuation’ in the town deterred construction firms. GDC, Annual Report, 1954.

100. GDC, Annual Report, 1958, 1959. The Department of Health for Scotland approved their proposals for the sale of houses in 1960. GDC, Annual Report, 1960.

101. CDC, Annual Report, 1962 and 1966.

102. Fair, “Privacy.”

103. EKDC, Annual Report, 1966.

104. “700 Inquiries for 200 Homes,” Scotsman, 28 August 1964.

105. GDC, Annual Report, 1968.

106. By 1968 all of the 30 plots set aside in the Park area for owner-occupation had been sold, and over half of the houses were built or under construction. CDC, Annual Report, 1968.

107. EKDC, Annual Report, 1959.

108. Glasgow Herald, 9 May 1966.

109. EKDC, Minutes, 26 June 1958 and 26 September 1958.

110. GDC, Annual Report, 1966.

111. CDC, Annual Report, 1968.

112. EKDC, Annual Report, 1966.

113. Ibid.

114. EKDC, Annual Report, 1964.

115. “Buy Your Houses, E.K. Tells Tenants,” Glasgow Evening Times, 7 September 1966.

116. Ibid.

117. EKDC, Annual Report, 1968.

118. EKDC, Annual Report, 1967.

119. EKDC, Minutes, 20 September 1966 and 11 October 1966.

120. EKDC, Minutes, 11 October 1966.

121. CDC, Annual Report, 1968.

122. EKDC, Annual Report, 1970.

123. Ibid.

124. GDC, Annual Report, 1970.

125. CDC, Annual Report, 1970 (and also 1971).

126. CDC, Annual Reports, 1972.

127. EKDC, 1970 Residents’ Handbook.

128. EKDC, Annual Report, 1973.

129. GDC, Annual Report, 1972.

130. CDC, Annual Report, 1973.

131. Ibid.

132. Ibid.

133. GDC, Annual Report, 1974.

134. Phrase first used in GDC, Annual Report, 1975 and CDC, Annual Report, 1976.

135. EKDC, GDC and CDC, Annual Reports 1972–82.

136. GDC, Annual Report, 1977, point reiterated in 1978.

137. GDC, Annual Report, 1979.

138. CDC, Annual Report, 1980.

139. EKDC, Annual Report, 1982.

140. GDC, Annual Report, 1980.

141. Alexander, Interview with Valerie Wright (VW), Glenrothes, 9 November 2021.

142. Alexander, Interview with VW, Glenrothes, 9 November 2021.

143. See also McFadden, Creating a modern home.

144. Abrams et al., “Aspiration, Agency and the Production of New Selves,” 600.

145. Savage, “The Politics of Elective Belonging.”

146. Lawrence, Me, Me, Me, 102.

147. Ibid.

148. Although as Lawrence argues this ‘vulnerable equilibrium’ becomes increasingly strained or complicated by social and cultural changes during the 1960s. See Lawrence, Me, Me, Me, 103–63.

149. Jim B, Interview with VW, Glenrothes, 4 November 2021.

150. See Glendinning and Watters, Home Builders, esp. 285–86.

151. Fair, Privacy, 336–42.

152. As at 31st March 2020 the Scottish Government estimate 58% of dwellings are owner occupied, https://www.gov.scot/publications/housing-statistics-2020–2021-key-trends-summary/pages/6/ [accessed 19 January 2023].

153. Andy, Interview with VW, Cumbernauld, 31 May 2022.

154. Glendinning and Watters, “Cumbernauld,” 232–62.

155. Andy, Interview with VW, Cumbernauld, 31 May 2022.

156. Sarah, Interview with VW, Cumbernauld, 19 July 2022.

157. See more on courtyard houses in Cumbernauld see Fair, “Privacy.”

158. Sarah, Interview with VW, Cumbernauld, 19 July 2022.

159. Fraser, Interview with VW, Edinburgh, 7 December 2021.

160. For example all three development corporations had implemented graduated rent schemes in the 1960s which meant supplementing those families with lower incomes. CDC, Annual report, 1963; EKDC, 1965; GDC, 1967. This was later replaced by the government’s national policy of paying rents directly for those in receipt of social security benefits through the DHSS. Nevertheless rent arrears mounted and by 1982 a fifth of tenants in Glenrothes were ‘seriously behind’ with their rent owing between £100 and £500. Arrears were less in East Kilbride but had increased by 0.25% in 1982. GDC, 1982, EKDC, 1982. Cumbernauld Development Corporation did not report arrears in its annual reports.

161. Lawrence, Me, Me, Me, 163 and 193.

162. Lawrence, Me, Me, Me, 194 and 233–6.

163. Phyllis, Interview with VW, by phone 30 May 2022.

164. Collins and Levitt, “The ‘modernisation’ of Scotland.”

165. Black et al., Reassessing 1970s Britain. For another alternative perspective see Tomlinson, “De-Industrialization Not Decline.”