Toxteth riots

The anti-police rioting of the spring and summer of 1981 led to methods of community policing becoming somewhat gentler, and methods of riot control becoming much more effective. Ultimately it led to the rise of "multicultural" policies to make different ethnic groups feel more accepted in British society - as a cheaper alternative to investment in job creation or urban renewal.

New homes

The immediate response to the wartime loss of housing stock was to put up "prefabs" (prefabricated buildings), such as these in Liverpool. Although intended as temporary solutions, some 1940s prefabs remained in use to the end of the 20th century, and perhaps even to this day.

The Labour government did build a million new homes to meet the accute shortage of housing, but this was far from sufficient, and the prohibition of private building projects did little to help. Slum clearance and the building of council flats continued well into the 1960s.

Before the war, the squalor of slums in the major cities of the British Isles had been legendary. One of the most notorious such slums was the Gorbals, in Glasgow, pictured here. Children had nowhere to play except the street, and access to running water and plumbing was shared with several dwellings. In the decades after the war, council flats were built inspired by the example of Le Corbusier, moving the social problems out of tenements, alleys and back yards and into the halls and stairwells of vertical blocks. The same pattern was to be found in almost every major city.
Not all council houses or council flats were anything like so monstrous, as the examples below (from Wolverhampton and London) indicate: