The National Community Development Projects in the United Kingdom, 1969-78

Mathilde Bertrand (1)

1 CLIMAS - Cultures et Littératures des Mondes Anglophones

In 1969, Harold Wilson's Labour government announced the launch of the National Community Development Projects (CDPs), a pilot programme of research and social action implemented across twelve local councils in Britain. The CDP programme was the " largest ever government-funded social action experiment " 1 inspired by American President Johnson's social welfare legislation in the 1960s, known as the " War on Poverty ". Incentives for the British programme also derived from the " rediscovery of poverty " , an expression used from the second half of the1960s to refer to the convergence of sociological investigations which pointed to the persistence of deep inequalities and high levels of poverty in Britain at the time. 2 In contrast to the notion of a widely shared prosperity heralded by Harold Macmillan's Conservative government (1957-1963), such research came as a sobering reminder that the supposed postwar affluence had not reached all sectors of the population nor was it homogeneously spread across the country 3. In parallel, the figure of the " affluent worker " , assumed to be partaking in the country's economic growth in the late 1950s, was debunked and proved to be largely mythical. 4 As part of efforts from different government departments to reduce social inequalities, 5 plans to set up the National Community Development Projects were conceived by the Home Office, then headed by James Callaghan, in the same move which gave rise to the Urban Programme. Urban Aid, its main component, consisted in allocating grants to local authorities in order to support organisations involved in education, housing, social care, legal advice or immigrants' rights. 6 " Inner cities " in particular, with their associations with urban deprivation, derelict housing, unemployment, educational and social inequalities, were considered as areas afflicted by several forms of social deprivation, requiring specific forms of public intervention.

Domaines: Art et histoire de l'art; Histoire

Mathilde Bertrand. The National Community Development Projects in the United Kingdom, 1969-78. 1970-79: Community in the UK. Intercalaires: Agrégation d'anglais, 1, pp.11 - 31, 2017. ⟨hal-01714925⟩