ABSTRACT
Mounting discontent with housing conditions and the growing strength of left-wing opinion combined in the late-Victorian period to produce the first specifically working-class housing reform movement. The role of the Workmen's National Housing Council as a coordinating body was reflected in the composition of its executive committee. Perhaps the greatest contribution of the Workmen's National Housing Council to housing reform was to help keep it in the forefront of municipal politics at a time when other socialist groups tended to lose sight of the subject within their more comprehensive programmes of social readjustment. The legislative reaction to overcrowding between 1890 and 1914 was somewhat halting and lacking in direction. A growing awareness of the 'residuum' and its needs and of increasing rents and overcrowding within central districts was also evidenced during the debates. The measure which the liberals introduced in 1908 was very detailed and complicated, and took a year of heated debate to pass into law.
