Housing pledges held until the postwar boom collapsed and labor weakened

Evidence

However, until that autumn the government’s commitment to the “Land Fit for Heroes” prerogative remained intact. Treasury cavils were rejected on the grounds that the government could not aff ord to break its pledges on housing. Not until 1921, with the collapse of the postwar boom and the weakening of labor’s power, were the political conditions ripe for the government to surrender to the Treasury’s demands for economy. 53 In March 1921 the government transferred Christopher Addison from the Ministry of Health to the anomalous post of minister without portfolio. Aft er he resigned, Addison wrote a fi erce pamphlet, Th e Betrayal of the Slums (1922), to denounce the government’s austerity moves. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1694

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader pattern of austerity arriving only when working-class power is broken, which runs throughout Mattei’s interwar Britain/Italy chapters. — connects to: Postwar housing shortage and popular pressure drove Britain’s ambitious Housing Acts — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 437; Postwar British MPs from all parties pledged massive state housing — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 290
• ADDENDUM: The breaking of housing pledges as labor power weakens resonates with the class-weapon thesis the reader is tracing across this book.