ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the limited itself to partial analyses of specific dimensions of the British system of owner-occupation in the 1970s. The most ominous statistic of this twelve-year period was the rate of growth in unemployment which was associated with the increasing size of the available labour force and an astonishing decline in British capital's ability to compete in international markets. The necessity for such a shift arose from the continuing decline in the supply of privately rented accommodation, the secular increase in headship rates and the consequential expansion of what elsewhere the 'housing minorities'. The chapter argues that the removal of the government's corset controls over bank lending in June 1980 was quickly followed by them launching new deposit instruments in an attempt to claw back some of the business in personal savings lost to the societies since the early 1950s.
