The Irony and Failures of the Right to Buy Scheme
When Margaret Thatcher unveiled the Right to Buy scheme in the 1980s, my mother took it as an opportunity to purchase the council flat she had been born and brought up in on behalf of my grandma who still lived in it. The three-bedroom maisonette in an enclave of looming council flats off the Caledonian road was purchased for a whopping sum of £18,000: a bargain by anyone’s standards.
This, the opportunity for council house tenants to purchase their homes at a large discount, was seen as a victory for Britain’s workers and working poor. My grandma, who eloped to London with £3,000, was finally able to own the home she had lived in for years and raised four children in, bringing security and dignity to her home, and when she passed it would become a source of income for my mother.
Now...