Scheming: A Social History of Glasgow Council Housing, 1919-1956

When the Corporation of Glasgow undertook a massive programme of council house construction to replace the city’s notorious slums after the First World War, they wound up reproducing a Victorian class structure. How did this occur? Scheming traces the issue to class-based paternalism that caused the reification of the local class structure in the bricks and mortar of the new council housing estates.

Seán Damer provides a sustained critique of the Corporation of Glasgow’s council housing policy and argues that it had the unintended consequence of amplifying social segregation and ghettoisation in the city. By combining archival research of city records with oral histories, this book lets the locals have their say about their experience as Glasgow council house tenants for the first time.