LONDON'S SLUMS

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 78, 29 September 1934, Page 14

LONDON'S SLUMS

THEIR OCCUPANTS

CLEARANCE PLANS

'•The slums of London are the worst in England," Mr. J. B. Priestley told a meeting in Friends' House, Euston Road, recently, states the "Manchester Guardian." "During my English journey I saw a good many slums, but none worse than those that exist within a inilo or two of this beautiful building. The actual conditions arc worse, and most of the rents paid for these miserable hovels are far greater than anywhere else. It is not a question of people paying •'< shilling or so a week for some miserable- shelter, but of people paying a reasonable rent for very unreasonable quarters." IN KENTISH TOWN. Mr. Priestley's subject was slum clearance in Kentish Town, a district to which the North St. Pancras Housing Improvement Society has extended the work that Father Jellicoe is carrying on in St. Pancras. The North St. Pancras group, he said, had its own surveyors who examined housing conditions in the neighbourhood. The worst slums were acquired by the group, who pulled them down and rehoused the people in clean, comfortable flats/where they felt as if they had been transferred to an earthly paradise.: "It is the pathos of our position that we can only go slowly," he said; "and day after day we get the most pathetic letters from the parents of largo families begging to be put oil our list and- taken out of their verminous houses. When blocks of flats like, ours are built in Moscow or Vienna our newspapers publish ' photographs of them and say, 'Why don't we do this in England?' We have been doing it, and by voluntary effort." "It would-bo almost obscene," continued Mr. Priestley, "to describe in detail the condition of the houses w have pulled down; many of them insanitary and verminous, beyond any power of reclamation. The tenants are not tramps, ne'er-do-wells, or members of the criminal class. Most of them are ordinary decent folk, and we- have proved that oneo you put them into decent homes they never let you down." MEAN, MISERABLE LIE! There was indignation in Mr. Priestley's voice when ho said: "I want, once and for all, to stamp on. the • mean, miserable lie that these people like such conditions. They do not like them any more than wo should. They are the same people as we are. They keep their flats clean, and are as proud and pleased as if they had been given a palace. It is incredible that with all the social service we have today we can allow our fellow-citizens to live in these places. A farmer would not be allowed to keep pigs or other animals in tho places where families are housed within two miles of this hall. "Some of the children have won scholarships and every.day they go back from school to live six' or eight in a room. It cannot go on. It is a blot on our civilisation.' London is the richest city in the world. It is unthinkable that its citizens should be obliged to bring up their children in such surroundings." Mr. Priestley said he wished someone, would publish a list of all the people who owned slum houses'and who from these ramshackle buildings drew rents that sometimes amounted to 10s a room. He would like the list put up prominently in public places so that everyone- could see who was getting the money. The North St. Pancras group was replacing slums with new dwellings as quickly as it could afford to do. It wanted funds, and he pointed out that as 80 per cent, of the money spent went in wages, it was providing.a good deal of work. ■ He believed that money spent j in such schemes produced more happiness than anything elso could do. j DON'T TAKE THEM FAR IWTO COUNTRY! "I am dead against all new schemes! for taking people to live oa housing estates outside the towns, wiles away from their work, "he said. "The fares add to the cost of living, the old Eng-1 lish countryside is being destroyed, and instead of replacing slums with new! decent dwellings, the dirty, messy part of tho old town, remains." In answer to numerous questions from the audience, Lady Stewart, secretary of this housing scheme, said that in the new dwellings the average weekly rent was 4s a. room, inclusive of rates, but the kitchen, bathroom,' and sanitary accommodation were- not reckoned in the rent, and a subsidy granted under .tho 1930 Act was used as a pool for reducing the rents of necessitous families. The rents were lower than the borough council or the London County Council had as yet been able to' charge for their flats.