THE NEW TOWNS

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let, sites cleared, services provided, and factories built to provide work for
the newcomers. Now, however, the New Towns have settled into their stride;
they are probably building as fast as is desirable—a larger annual intake
would be more difficult to assimilate, physically and socially—and the present
prospect is that they will be all but completed within ten to twelve years.
By that time, about 490,000 men, women and children—or just under one
per cent. of the whole population of Great Britain—will have been resettled
in New Towns. Given the comparatively limited resources devoted to this
project, this achievement is a measure of the way in which the problem of
urban squalor and congestion could be tackled bv a Socialist administration.

Industrial Growth

The fundamental difference between New Towns and other forms of
housing development is the direct link between industry and housing. Until
the recent introduction of the Industrial Selection Scheme—which permits
workers on the housing lists of local authorities in London to apply for jobs
in New Town factories—the allocation of New Town houses was restricted
to building workers, to employees of the firms which erected or leased
premises in New Towns, and to utility employees, teachers and other professional
 workers who moved there to serve the needs of the new communities.
Though modified, such remains the basic principle of this planned migration.
It has meant, despite certain transitional difficulties of keeping housing
and factory construction in step, that the New Towns have a definite character,
a social focus; they are places in which to live and work, a modern realisalion
 of William Morris's conception of the ideal factory, in which work,
home and leisure are no longer divided into arbitrary geographical categories,
 but are interwoven into a unified fabric of life. I am not arguing that
this conception has been perfectly realised; I am suggesting that the New
Towns are a considerable step towards it, and that, where they fall short of
it—and some of the problems of social and industrial balance are discussed
below—it is not yet too late to carry them further towards this goal.
By December, 1954, in the fourteen New Towns, 140 factories had
been completed, with a total area of 4,680,015 square feet, and capital
expenditure on factories of over seven million pounds had been completed
or approved. Another 78 factories were under construction. Already more
than 21,000 workers had been found employment in the New Towns. For
these, moreover, the conditions of work are among the best in the country;
the buildings are new, the plants are new; the amenities within the factories
conform to the highest modern standards. The industrial districts are well
laid out, pleasant to look at, and are gasy to reach from the workers’ homes,
without tiring or unpleasant travel; the abolition of long, expensive or
nervously exacting journeys is a great social advance. All these have an
important effect on industrial morale and personal health, and. experience
shows, on production.
Some of these factories have been built by the Corporations and leased
to the firms that occupy them, especially small firms without the resources
to build themselves. Others have been designed and financed by the industrial