ABSTRACT
The policy which people are considering is that of the British state, more specifically those policies which, in the final analysis, are formulated and implemented by the legislative and executive institutions of government. It is not possible, then, to theorise about housing policy without at the same time incorporating the contours of a theory of the state. The dominant class comes to perceive this and therefore embarks on the reconstruction of the existing institutions and powers of the state in order to seek to resolve these contradictions. The last hundred years in Britain have witnessed the rise of the organised trade union movement and, since the turn of the century, the development of a party which purported to be ‘the party of the working man’. For the majority Parliament and government were a path whereby both to pursue their own ambitions and to secure substantial material advances for their class.
