The right to buy: the housing crisis that Thatcher built

Now revived by David Cameron, the right to buy social housing was a key Conservative policy in the 80s: populist, profitable, and with its disastrous effects yet to come

In August 1980 Margaret Thatcher’s first government, barely a year old but already deeply unpopular and bogged down by problems, produced a Housing Act. Even more than most legislation it was prolix and repetitive, but its bold intention stood out: “to give ... the right to buy their homes ... to tenants of local authorities”. It envisaged a revolution in how a large minority of Britons lived.

That revolution – which David Cameron’s government controversially hopes to revive by extending the right to buy to housing association tenants – had been an awfully long time coming. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, cleverly sown by the Conservatives in 1980 and doggedly cultivated by rightwing Britain ever since, selling off council homes was not a sudden stroke of genius by the Thatcher government. The idea was as old as council housing itself.

Related: Tory right-to-buy plan threatens mass selloff of council homes

Related: Right to buy: how will it work?

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