Social Engineering

I managed to catch a repeat of the only episode of 'The Secret History of our Streets' that I missed first time round last night - the one about Camberwell Grove. It was a good one, more nuanced than some of the others. This time the narration hedged its bets on the gentrification that had generally been derided in other episodes, accepting that without it and without the very middle class campaigning that it engendered, the beautiful Georgian terraces of Camberwell Grove would probably have gone.

But while the architects and TV producers got a reprieve on this occasion, there was still one target that never moved out of the crosshairs: the 1960s 'social engineers', working in London councils, who were responsible for the housing estates that subsequently blighted many communities.

I hold no brief for them. Plenty of mistakes were made; plenty of communities were destroyed.

But this is an example of the kind of documentary making that Alan Bennett references in his 2012 diary in the London Review of Books - one where the director formulates a theory and then fits the facts accordingly.

If you're presenting social history - which this programme unashamedly is - you have to play by the rules, even in a 'popular' medium. Using hindsight is a cardinal sin.

There's a romanticism to the idea that every post-war working class community in London was happy in its dilapidated housing stock, sustained by little more than community spirit. The majority of those behind the housing projetcts of the 50s and 60s genuinely thought that they were providing better living conditions for people. And plenty of those moving into the new flats thought that as well.  Read Danny Baker's account of his family moving into their new flat on a council estate in Deptford in 'Going to Sea in a Sieve' - they were bloody delighted. No nostalgia for the lost world of living in one room in a shared house; and no loss of community either.

The restoration of old houses, the preservation of original features, is a pursuit of money and leisure. When put up against a new kitchen, an indoor bathroom and central heating ideas of conservation came a poor second.

This idea of preserving the past is a comparatively modern one. Before it took hold the idea of preserving and restoring rather than devoting time and resources into building something new would have been thought of as madness. Those 60s planners were only following this trend. They may have made some bad calls but the knee-jerk demonisation of their work is unjust.