BBC: "A history of social housing"

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"From Lloyd George's promise of "homes fit for heroes" to Margaret Thatcher's dream of a property-owning democracy, housing has been at the centre of British politics for more than a century. Key pledges ahead of the 2015 general election show it's rarely mattered more. Here is why.

"Labour voters lived in council houses. Tories owned their own homes.

"That's the way it had always been.

"Yet for a young Labour MP, out canvassing in his constituency in the early 1980s, it still came as a shock to be told, by an old party stalwart, that there was no point knocking on doors on a private housing estate, as they all voted Tory.

"To Tony Blair, it was a sign of just how out of touch his party had become with ordinary working people."