Peter Shapely - Deprivation, State Interventions and Urban Communities in Britain, 1968–79

Deprivation, State Interventions and Urban Communities in Britain, 196879

Focusing on a series of policy initiatives from the late 1960s through to the end of the 1970s, this book looks at how successive governments tried to address growing concerns about urban deprivation across Britain. It provides unique insights into policy and governance and into the socio-economic and cultural causes and consequences of poverty.

Starting with the impact of redevelopment policies, immigration and the rise of the inner city, this book examines the pressures and challenges that explain the development of policy by successive Labour and Conservative governments. It looks at the effectiveness and limits of different community development approaches and at the inadequacies of policy in tackling urban deprivation. In doing so, the book highlights the restricted impact of pilot projects and reform of public services in resolving deprivation as well as the broader limits of social planning and state welfare. Crucially, it also plots the shift in policy from an emphasis on achieving statutory service efficiencies and rolling out social development programmes towards an ever-greater stress on regeneration and support for private capital as the solution to transforming the inner city.

Peter Shapely is a Reader in Modern and Contemporary History, Bangor University.

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Edited by Andrew Holt and Warren Dockter

Deprivation, State Interventions and Urban Communities in Britain, 196879

Peter Shapely

First published 2018

by Routledge

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and by Routledge

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2018 Peter Shapely

The right of Peter Shapely to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Names: Shapely, Peter, author.

Title: Deprivation, state interventions and urban communities

in Britain, 1968-79 / Peter Shapely.

Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2017. |

Series: Routledge studies in modern British history; 18 |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016057476| ISBN 9781409451624

(hardback: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315585529 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Community developmentGreat BritainHistory20th

century. | Urban poorGreat BritainSocial conditions20th century. |

Urban policyGreat BritainHistory20th century. | Urban renewalGreat

BritainHistory20th century.

Classification: LCC HN400.C6 S53 2017 | DDC 307.1/160941dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016057476

ISBN: 978-1-4094-5162-4 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-58552-9 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo

by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

Modern Britain has suffered from intermittent bouts of urban crises. Since their emergence in the early nineteenth century, poverty stricken areas, the slum or the more recent inner city, have been portrayed as dark and dangerous places, as pools of human degradation in need of social reform. Inner city slum dwellers were represented as a class apart, continually marginalised because of their socio-economic position, invariably reinforced by cultural depictions. Individual pathologies and sub-societal cultures have been blamed as much as economic circumstance. There has been an endless stream of individuals and institutions keen to investigate and highlight their condition and to suggest how it might be remedied. Investigations and policies aimed at solving urban crises were implemented from the early-Victorian period. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the influence of progressive politics together with fears about slum dwellers, led to renewed interest and, increasingly, local and central government action. Social problems persisted throughout the twentieth century. After 1945, there was an underlying assumption that the welfare state would finally solve the problem by slaying the giants of deprivation. However, by the mid-1960s, it was clear that problems remained, although concerns now had an increased sense of urgency because of the growing impact of immigration.

Looking at the changing effect of social, economic, political and cultural factors on some of Britains urban communities, this book considers attempts by successive Labour and Conservative governments both to increase understanding about deprivation and to find solutions to the challenges it presented through a series of action-research programmes and administrative reforms. Although it focuses on a small number of urban areas, many of the issues and underlying problems that came to characterise or unfairly stereotype these communities apply to many of the countrys poorest areas. It is a study of power relations, policy, society and culture in modern Britain. Focusing mainly on the period from the late-1960s through to the returning Conservative government in 1979, a pivotal period in the development of urban deprivation strategies, it looks at how policy-makers tried to find cost effective ways of developing vaguely defined notions of social stability and cohesion in the face of a complex myriad of inter-related problems, including housing redevelopment, planning blight, immigration, deindustrialisation and the persistence of poverty.