By Elliott West
“The lesson to be learnt for today is that where a council is prepared to stand up and fight and not roll over in the face of Tory bullying (of course, they cannot surcharge anymore), then you can get the support, people will back you. Workers came out and voted for us at record levels as new people came forward to replace those who had been removed”.
John Dunn, Clay Cross councillor.
Introduction
It was 51 years ago in the Summer of 1972 that twenty-one councillors from Clay Cross District Council in North Derbyshire decided to defy the Conservative Heath legislation, the Housing Finance Act or the Fair Rent Act as it became to be known. Until 1972 councils had been allowed their rent levels and Clay Cross Council was extremely proud of its housing record in the 1960s. A programme of slum clearance had seen all the terrace houses without inside toilets pulled down and replaced with brand-new council houses. A programme that if it had been repeated nationally would create an additional one million new council homes nationally every year.
The Labour-run council prided itself on keeping its rents low with subsidies from its rent account paying for the elderly in bungalows to have 24-hour warden support. Where houses were demolished, the council rehoused the tenants in the same communities with the same neighbours. Houses that were bright, modern, and high quality with gardens, green spaces and community gardens.
Fighting Back
Initially, there was a unified response by councils to fight the Housing Finance Act but as the implementation date drew closer, all bar Clay Cross fell into line. To punish these brave, rogue rebels, the Tories pressed the punishment button with the District Auditor in January 1973 ruling that eleven councillors be found guilty of negligence and misconduct. This also involved a collective surcharge of £6,350. Each councillor was liable for this fine and as it exceeded a £2,000 limit, all eleven were instantly disqualified from the council.
There was no way that ordinary working people would be able to pay this fine and so they lodged an appeal in the High Court but they went on to lose, incurring an additional £2,000 in costs. Lord Denning summing up the case stated:
“They are disqualified. They must stand down…I trust there are good men in Clay Cross ready to take over”.
Lord Denning
Clay Cross Labour decided to take Lord Denning at his own word and elected another eleven councillors with ten elected to replace the ten surcharged. This was done so the policies of their predecessors could be continued. However, this didn’t, unfortunately, work as a surcharge of £2,229 was issued, just enough to disqualify them from the council. The Conservative government also sent in a housing commissioner, Patrick Skillington, a retired civil servant from Henley on Thames to collect the rents. Such was the furore of this visit that Skillington had to abandon his planned press conference after just ten minutes.
The opposition continued with Patrick Skillington being denied an office in the council offices and having to set up an alternative one in the Chesterfield Hotel six miles away. Both sets of councillors adopted a policy of non-co-operation and tenants were asked to pay the rent set by the council. When Skillington left due to the Labour Party gaining power nationally in 1974, he hadn’t collected a single penny in rent. Unlike the other councillors, he wasn’t surcharged and was instead given several thousand pounds for his expenses.
Tragedy
Despite hopes that the Wilson and Callaghan-led governments would reverse these decisions, neither did, refusing to lift the surcharges. The effect was devastating for these eleven, unable to obtain credit, losing possessions to bailiffs and one of them, George Goodfellow, losing money to a booked holiday when the travel company went into liquidation, only to have the money seized by the receiver when he got refunded. Several also lost their cars but there was an olive branch gesture of their wives being given the option of being able to buy the cars back!
The second team of councillors were saved from bankruptcy by a fund of donations from the labour movement but remained barred from office. In 1974, a local government reorganisation meant that Clay Cross UDC was abolished and instead became part of the North East Derbyshire Council, led by Bob Cochrane. Bob couldn’t wait to collect the outstanding rents, even raising the rate on Clay Cross to collect a deficit. He went on to form the Social Democratic Alliance and split the Labour vote in 1983.
These 21 councillors were brave souls, paying a price but keeping a money-hungry Conservative government at bay for two years. This isn’t where it ends. In the Thatcher years, the council used the £25 a year chairman’s allowance spent on an armistice day wreath, increasing it to £300 to pay for free milk for schools that Margaret Thatcher had abolished. The £275 difference was just enough to pay for the milk. They also introduced free television licences for all OAPs. Prominent streets were also named after notable figures in the labour movement. These included Bevan Road, Brockway Close and Pankhurst Place.
