Why Enoch Powell’s words on housing are relevant today
IF the First Minister is genuinely serious about eradicating the curse of child poverty once and for all, he needs to address the basics.
Poor housing touches on many aspects of our national life: health threatened by overcrowded and insanitary homes; education retarded when children have no room in which to do homework, or arrive tired at school after sleeping in a room with several others; marriages broken up through the strain of making do in cramped and uncomfortable quarters. A home of the right size and in the right place and at the right rent is everybody’s first need. Less would need to be spent on the other social services if housing conditions were drastically improved.
Those are not my words. They are the words of Enoch Powell, written for the first One Nation Group publication in 1950. They could have been written yesterday.
Significantly, Powell does not conceive of housing as a right, but as a need. Perhaps if Holyrood’s politicians had wasted less time and money legislating for the rights of the few, they might have “relentlessly focused” their time and our money on the needs of the many.
From the all-too-empirical evidence of the last 10 years, it’s no surprise that between 58 and 62% of Scots have little to no confidence in the SNP to make the right decisions on the things that matter: the economy, health service, schools, police, and climate change.
But if they can manage only one thing it needs to be the building of more houses. Just build the bloody houses, John.
Graeme Arnott, Stewarton.