ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the explanation of this vast metamorphosis in the system of housing provision constitutes a substantial part of later. The role of the state in the field of mortgage finance primarily consisted in setting the legal framework within which the building societies operated. Council housing already had a long history and in the half-century preceding 1914 had provided about 24,000 dwellings, of which about 90 per cent had been built after the 1890 Housing of the Working Classes Act. Construction had been carried out both in relation to slum clearance and for general needs purposes. The reversal of the 1918 commitments in July 1921 was not accompanied by any conviction that housing subsidies could be completely abandoned. Indeed the view was strongly pressed in the government and civil service that, for a few years at least, subsidies were a necessary evil if housebuilding for the respectable working class was to go forward on a substantial scale.
