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The Practice of Racial Dispersal in Birmingham, 1969–1975*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

Hazel Flett ,
Jeff Henderson  and
Bill Brown
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Abstract

The possibility of using public sector housing to disperse black people across our cities in the interest of racial integration is again attracting attention. Based on an analysis of housing department records, this article examines the effects on Birmingham's black settlers of the operation of one particular policy of racial dispersal. Having described the events leading to the introduction and ultimately the termination of the policy, the article proceeds to investigate the locations in which Asian, West Indian and native white tenants were housed, their area preferences, and the housing categories from which their allocations were made, as well as their ‘points’ levels on allocation. The article concludes by arguing that, on these dimensions, the consequences of the policy for black people were almost entirely negative.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , July 1979 , pp. 289 - 309
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

1 Rex, J. and Moore, R., Race, , Community and Conflict, Institute of Race Relations and Oxford University Press, London, 1967.Google Scholar

2 Throughout this paper the term ‘black’ will be applied to peoples both of West Indian and of Asian origin.

3 The residence qualification has subsequently been reduced to two years.

4 ‘Race and Council-Housing Allocation’, funded by the Department of the Environment and based at the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, University of Birmingham.

5 General Purposes Committee, Report on immigration, Birmingham City Council, 1968Google Scholar. There was only a passing reference to the contribution being made to local authority services by black residents.

6 Henderson, J., Flett, H. and Brown, B., ‘Racial Dispersal as Ideological Practice’, forthcoming.Google Scholar

7 Old Houses into New Homes, Ministry of Housing and Local Government, Cmnd 3602, HMSO, London, 1968.Google Scholar

8 Flett, H., Black Council Tenants in Birmingham, Research Unit on Ethnic Relations Working Papers, University of Bristol, forthcoming, 1970.Google Scholar

9 The Birmingham Post, 15 July 1968.Google Scholar

10 The Birmingham Evening Mail, 14 February 1969.Google Scholar

11 See Rose, E. J. B., in association with Deakin, N., Abrams, M., Jackson, V., Peston, M., Vanags, A. H., Cohen, B., Gaitskell, J. and Ward, P., Colour and Citizenship, Institute of Race Relations and Oxford University Press, London, 1969Google Scholar; Council Housing: Purposes, Procedures and Priorities (Cullingworth Report), Ministry of Housing and Local Government, HMSO, London, 1969Google Scholar; and Report of the Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration: Housing, HMSO, London, 1971.Google Scholar

12 The only personal contact which most prospective tenants have with the housing department before allocation is their interview with the housing visitor. As this takes place at home during working and school hours, the wife is frequently the only person present. Hence, in this case it was easily understandable that the family was categorized as white rather than black, which is the department's normal practice with ‘mixed’ marriages.

13 See The Birmingham Evening Mail, 6 January 1976.Google Scholar

14 We had hoped to study allocations for a year prior to the introduction of dispersal in 1969, but all the housing department's registers for lettings prior to 1971 had been destroyed, though a list of lettings to black tenants had been kept since 1968. In the event, 1971 proved to be the first year in which comparative white and black samples could be generated. This did not, however, constitute a major problem for our analysis, since, by 1971, dispersal had hardly begun to bite.

15 It might have been possible that the fall in the proportion of blacks housed in the outer ring in 1976 resulted not from the abandonment of dispersal policy, but from an increase in the availability of properties in the inner city. This, however, was not the case. Analysis of our total samples suggests that there was no significant change in the proportion of available properties in the inner city between 1974 and 1976. Inner-city lettings were to 15 per cent of available properties in 1974 and to 16 per cent in 1976.

16 This practice was formally abandoned by the housing department in 1975.

17 Since the number of the homeless in our 1976 sample was small, we checked the allocations to all black homeless people (94), and to one in five of all white homeless people (a sample of 147 whites). We found that 62 per cent of the blacks and 67 per cent of the whites had been housed in the outer ring. Since 1976, with the decline of clearance and a smaller total allocation programme, homelessness has come to represent a larger proportion of total allocations. In 1978, for instance, allocations to the homeless represented 22 per cent of those to incoming tenants. As blacks tend to opt for housing in inner-city areas (see the following section of the article), homeless policy in Birmingham has operated as a dispersal mechanism. This contrasts with the situation in London, where the homeless have tended to be housed in the inner city – see Parker, J. and Dugmore, K., Colour and the Allocation of GLC Housing: The Report of the GLC Letting Survey, 1974–75. Research Report 21, Greater London Council, 1976.Google Scholar

18 Our analysis is of applicants' area preferences initially recorded on their application forms and subsequently amended or supplemented after an interview with a housing visitor. After discussion with a housing visitor, some applicants alter their preferences in order to secure an early offer. Under such circumstances, it is likely that a proportion of the recorded preferences bear little relation to the areas in which applicants would actually prefer to live. This fact would appear to enhance our argument in the present section of the article.

19 Approximately 25 per cent of allocations went to homeless families. The proportions for 1971 and 1976 are 6 per cent and 15 per cent respectively.

20 This assumes that neither group is concentrated in highly popular property. The validity of this assumption for our sample is demonstrated elsewhere – see Flett, H., ‘Disadvantage and Dispersal’, Research Unit on Ethnic Relations, University of Bristol, forthcoming, 1979.Google Scholar

21 See Flett, , Black Council Tenants in Birmingham.Google Scholar

22 The cells are too small to prove the point statistically, but for black applicants in 1974 median points were higher for the inner ring than for the outer ring for both the main (two- and three-) bedroom queues (and no applicants were housed from the one- or four- bed queues into inner-ring properties). This was not the case for the whites, or for either sample in 1971.

23 Some small part of the black-white disparity here is explained by the bedroom queue. As a guide to the significance of these points disparities, thirty-six points can be taken as roughly equivalent to an extra two years on the waiting list, and fifty-five points as roughly equivalent to an extra three years on the waiting list. This is not to say that blacks actually spent these longer periods on the waiting list; their waiting time and waiting points in fact were close to those of the whites. Rather the disparity stems mainly from the greater housing need that blacks were in relative to whites, and hence the higher housing-need points they were allotted.

24 See Flett, , Black Council Tenants in Birmingham.Google Scholar

25 The evidence is from Greater London – see Runnymede Trust, Race and Council Housing in London, London, 1975Google Scholar; and Parker and Dugmore, op. cit. – from Islington – see Directorate of Housing, Allocation of Islington Housing to Ethnic Minorities, Research Report no. 12, London Borough of Islington, 1977Google Scholar – and from a survey of seven unnamed cities in England and Wales – see Smith, D. and Whalley, A., Racial Minorities and Public Housing, Political and Economic Planning, London, 1975.Google Scholar

26 What is more, analysis of the preferences of black transfer applicants who were originally allocated suburban housing in 1974 indicates their marked desire to return to the inner city – see Flett, , Black Council Tenants in Birmingham.Google Scholar

27 Although dispersal was a policy that specifically affected black people, it must be remembered that the department's policies with regard to homelessness and housekeeping standards discriminated against people, both black and white, on grounds of class. Such policies adversely affected (and in the case of policy for the homeless still affect) the so-called ‘disreputable poor’ – see Matza, D., ‘The Disreputable Poor’, in R. Bendix and S. M. Lipset, Class, Status and Power, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1967Google Scholar; Valentine, C., Culture and Poverty, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1968Google Scholar; and Means, R., Social Work and the ‘Undeserving’ Poor, Occasional Paper no. 37, Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, University of Birmingham, 1977Google Scholar. The existence of such policies is but one indication that ultimately the connection between race and housing policy can only be fully understood when it is theorized in terms of the dialectical interface between race and class.

28 Although the then chairperson of the city's housing committee had indicated as early as November 1970 that a dispersal policy was in operation – see The Birmingham Evening Moil, 23 November 1970Google Scholar – its existence was not widely known – and certainly not to tenants and prospective tenants – until the results of the Race Relations Board's investigation began to emerge in 1975.