Cutteslowe Walls Being Demolished
The Council now decided to try to invoke the Public Works Facilities Act, 1930 which was intended to allow for public works to contribute to the relief of unemployment. This Act provided for compulsory purchase but this had to be shown to be also covered by previous legislation and for this purpose the Council relied on the provision in Section 154 of the Public Health Act 1875 which stated:
'Any urban authority may purchase any premises for the purpose of widening opening enlarging or otherwise improving any street, or (with the sanction of the Local Government Board) for the purpose of making any new street.'
The Council was informed in October 1935 that the Minister of Transport was prepared to consider a compulsory purchase. It submitted its plan which was publicized as required by the Act. The Company duly lodged an objection and the Minister arranged for a public inquiry to be held in the Town Hall in July 1936. The Minister sent an engineer, Mr W C Clemens, to conduct the inquiry, and each of the two parties appointed a barrister to represent it, Mr Erskine Simes for the Company, and Mr S P Hayward for the Corporation.
Erskine Simes argued that the purposes of this particular compulsory purchase order were not contained in the Act. Mr Hayward pointed out the the walls were not shown on the plan attached to the conveyance and claimed that it was obvious from this plan that the roads were intended to run straight through without any obstruction. Mr Simes stated that the old right of way cross Summertown had been brought to an end by the Corporation itself without any alternative provision being made. He also noted that the Company had reserved in the conveyance a right of way over the parts of Carlton and Wentworth Roads which had been retained by the Corporation, although the Corporation had made no such reservation in respect of the Company's roads.
The inquiry was not authorised to decide any point of law so each side merely stated briefly its legal position and the issues were not argued in any detail. Mr Sims indicated that the Company would challenge the compulsory purchase order in the courts if it were confirmed by the Minister of Transport.
The Corporation contended that since the two estates had been planned as one unit their division by the walls caused inconvenience in the provision of police, fire, post and other services. The Chief Constable and the City Engineer gave evidence concerning this.
The Chief Constable pointed out that police supervision would be easier if the constable in charge of Summertown did not have to make the detour enforced by the walls. He also pointed out the possibility that, in an emergency, fire-engines and ambulances might find themselves on the wrong side of the walls by mistake .
The City Engineer presented some calculations which estimated that the detour required by the walls had increased the annual cost of the City's refuse collection by £16 6s. The staff of the road-sweeping service had had to be increased by one man and this man spent an estimated 156 hours in the year just walking from one estate to the other rather than sweeping. Similar evidence was given in relation to other services. No one seems to have noticed that this was putting a case for the walls themselves contributing to the relief of unemployment in Oxford.
Mr Simes for the Urban Housing Company suggested that most of the extra costs and difficulties could be met if the routes of various Corportation employees were adjusted to take account of the walls. He pointed out that when the Company informed the Corporation that it intended to keep its roads private it had offered to negotiate for the cleaning of streets and other municipal services. He stated that the walls would not be a danger to the emergency services if the drivers were properly trained. Finally, he equated the roads on the Urban Housing Estate with other culs-de-sac in the area.
The Corporation also maintained that the walls were an inconvenience. Cutteslowe people had to walk an extra 663 yards to reach the Banbury Road - this was the distance from the road in Wolsey Road round North Way to the western end of Carlton Road. Since the main places of work, schools, shopping and entertainment were all in this direction this was a considerable inconvenience. Also the buses that came into the Cutteslowe Estate were less frequent than those on the Banbury Road. One witness claimed that some women had been molested while walking along North Way at night.
The Corporation also claimed that the removal of the walls would benefit the Urban Housing residents as they would then have access to a new pub which had been built on the Cutteslowe side, to the river with its pleasant walks and ultimately to a proposed bathing-place the Corporation intended to build.
In reply, Mr Simes ridiculed the idea that the removal of the walls would benefit the Urban Housing residents and said that the police should ensure that women were not molested on North Way. In regard to the extra distance that Cutteslowe people and specifically schoolchildren had to walk the Company offered to:
'give a strip of land in order that access might be obtained from the southern portion of Aldrich Road to Hernes Road by means of a footpath.'
although this was qualified later in the speech by the phrase, 'in so far as they are able to give it.'
However, the fundamental issue between the two sides was the social differences between the people on the two estates. The Corporation put forward the fact that the walls prevented neighbourly relations from being established between the estates. It complained that Cutteslowe residents were deeply hurt and humiliated by the walls. As one tenant from the Cutteslowe Estate put it:
The Urban Housing tenants were also offended. The only one to give evidence, a Mr Rook, who was an undergraduate, felt that the walls should remain. He said that he had taken his house because he wanted peace and quiet for his studies. He had been round the Cutteslowe Estate and seen children and dogs everywhere. Trees had been damaged and drawings in chalk had been made on the walls. If the walls were removed, he would have to move elsewhere.
The Company expressed no opinion on the Cutteslowe residents although Mr Saxton, its principal witness, did complain that thefts and damage had occurred during the building odf the Urban Housing Estate and the implication was that the council tenants were responsible. Apart from this, the Company kept its argument purely financial. It claimed that the tenants on its estate did not want tp have the roads opened and if they were they would probably move away, with consequent financial loss to the Company. As evidence Saxton claimed that the number of applications for houses which the Company received always fell at times when the controversy figured prominently in local affairs and there were fears that the roads might be removed.The Company also claimed that tenants on the Urban Housing Estate felt very strongly about slium preople and were inclined to keep as far away from them as possible. As Mr Saxton put it,
The Corporation pointed out that only 28 of the 298 houses on the estate had been used to rehouse people from slum-clearance areas and all the evidence indicated that these people were perfectly proper and respectable and no different fom the rest of the peopl eon the estate. Sir trustram Eve, a surveyor, had been employed by the Council to advise it on matters of compensation. He had made a special point ofr visiting the tenants who had come from slum clearance areas and had found them to be decent, respectable people. They were not really slum people at all, he said but
Saxton claimed that before advising his Company to buy the land he had been given a clear and unambiguoius statement that no people from slum clearance areas would be housed on the Cutteslowe Estate. If this assurance had not been given, he would not have advised his Company to buy the land. The assurance was in the nature of a gentleman's agreement and was unsupported by any written guarantee. When asked why he had not sought a more formal guarantee Saxton replied that he had trusted the representatives of the Corporation and thought that it would be difficult for the Corporation formally to undertake not to house people from the slums on its own estate. In order to protect his Company's interests he had retained in the conveyance the right to keep the roads on the Urban Housing Estate private should he wish to do so. This had actually been suggested to him, he said, by the representatives of the Corporation.
Slum Clearance had become a national issue with the introduction of the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act of 1933. In a circular issued to housing authorities on 6th April 1933, the Minister of Health required them to submit their slum clearance programmes to him before September 30th, 1933. These programmes were to include provision for clearing all slums by 1938. In the course of explaining the campaign and raising support for it politicians, journalists, housing reforemrs and others gave vivid accounts of the conditions endured by people living in slums and of the effects which these conditions had on health and morals. One result of this was to impress on the public mind more clearly the extent of Britain's slums and the horror and degredation suffered by the people living in them.
An important aspect of the discussion concerned the nature and character of slum dwellers themselves. In a speech delivered to the Association of Municipal Corporations in May 1933, the Prince of Wales asked:
He expressed the view that slum tenants, given good conditions and enlighhtened management, would 'rise to their opportunities'. Sir William Wray, M.P. , speaking in Oxford disagreed. He said that many people lived in the slums because they preferred to do so or because it was their natural habitat.
Dr G C Williams, Oxford's Medical Officer, speaking in 1933 said:
A letter published in the Oxford Mail on 8th May 1933 claimed that tenants on the City's Hinksey Estate were creating slums although this was later reported to be untrue.
On 7th January 1933, the Oxford Mail published a letter from the chairman of the City's Housing Sub-committee in which he stated:
Mr Saxton claimed that he had been given assurances that slum dwellers would not be hrehoused in Cutteslowe No 2 Estate by a number of people and on more than one occassion. He mentioned in particular a meeting held just before he signed the contract on 2nd June 1933. Aldermen Axtell and Pipkin and Mr Hurcombe the City Estates Surveyor represented the Corporation at this meeting. Mr Hurcombe gave evidence at the inquiry and was questioned abou tthe meeting. In reply to questions from Erskine Simes he said that he could not remember if an assurance about slum clearance people had been given although, 'it might have been stated that the houses were being built under the 1924 Act.' He was quite sure thst it had not been suggested to Saxton that the roads could be closed and kept privately. Aldermen Axtell and Pipkin did not give evidence because the Corporations representatives had apparently been unable to contact them.
Axtell and Pipkin both denied subsequently in public statements and in affadavits that this assurance had been given to Saxton. The date on which they were alleged to have given the assurance came only a few days after the Council had accepted a report recommending that slum clearance people should be housed at Cutteslowe.When the Council's Parliamentary Committee sent its chairman to the Company in October 1935 to ask if the Company's objections would be met if all the slum-clearance tenants were removed from the Cutteslowe Estate he was told that the Company was not prepared to consider this suggestion.
The public inquiry was completed in a few hours and afterwards Mr Clemens was driven to Summertown to study the situation on the spot. He then went to the Town Hall until it was time to catch his train to London. He asked City officials to provide him with maps and other material relating to the inquiry. Saxton, whose office was close by, became curious when he noticed the official car parked outside the Town Hall. He went to investigate and found Clemens privately closeted with City officials, apparently studying the problem of the walls. He protested that no representative of the Company was present at this meeting and sent a formal prtotest to the Minister the following day.
Several months passed while Mr Clemens composed his report and while Mr Hore-Belisha, the Minister of Transport, studied it and decided what to do. Meanwhile, at about 11pm on 2nd August 1936 a motorist drove into the wall in Carlton Rd. The motorist sustained minor injuries and the wall was demolished. The secretary of the Cutteslowe tenants organization, quoted in the Oxford Mail of 5th August 1936, drew the attention of the public to this danger for motorists and urged it as another reason for the removal of the walls. But this incident attracted little attention and the wall was rebuilt immediately.
The Minister wrote to the Corporation in November 1936 informing it that he had decided not to confirm the compulsory purchase order. In his letter the Minister drew attention to the Company's offer to provide land for a footpath between Aldrich and Islip Roads and expressed the view that such a footpath would meet many of the Corporation's difficulties.