ABSTRACT
The second part of this book is concerned with how council housing operated in practice, given the strange mixture of the utopian and the expedient in its origins. How far did it achieve its primary purposes, the elimination of poverty and the improvement of working-class living patterns and culture, and what sorts of settlement did it create? From the beginning there was no suggestion that such a long expected and costly social experiment should be monitored or assessed in any formal way. The premature ending of Addison’s programme would have pre-empted this at the time, but it is unlikely that the idea would have occurred to anyone. Those responsible for policy were always confident of the outcomes, although in the nature of things these could only begin to appear after long periods of time and social change.
