Page 34 - History 2020

Industry and residences were kept separate; the journey to work was walkable. A
trust would own the freeholds and keep rents low. Ground rents would pay off the
purchase of the land and be invested in the community. It was not to be council or
state run. Howard believed in private enterprise not socialism. He wanted a civic
culture of pluralism. Garden Cities were not communes. Property was privately
owned, but regulated by Howard’s blueprint. Crucially, it must not expand into the
countryside; this would destroy the delicate rural-urban balance. Instead, new
Garden Cities must be established, in time forming clusters of them around a larger

hub. Each was a self-sustaining community, not a dormitory town, definitely not a
suburb, but a Garden city, with its own city ethos, economy and governance.

The Times was sceptical about Howards’ utopia; the difficulty, as always, would be to
create it. But Howard ploughed forward. In 1899 he founded the Garden City
Association. They found backers. They raised capital. But for Garden Cities to
succeed, they would have to drain the life and wealth out of places like London,

including the very City of London and its bankers who Howard was now courting. His
backers therefore inevitably stressed the potential for profit more than Howard’s
ideals. These harsh realities “slowly strangled the initial idealism. Ebenezer Howard
himself was marginalised as his occasional outbursts about remaking the human
spirit tended to frighten the financial horses.” Howard became disillusioned.

Letchworth, a rural Hertfordshire hamlet, was selected. Raymond Unwin, a disciple of
Ruskin and Morris, was engaged as architect. But despite Unwin’s attractive Arts and

Crafts houses, compromises began to kill the Howard spirit. The railway, supposed to
circle round the outskirts, cut right through the middle. Industry, supposed to be
separate from the from the residential zone was plonked bang in the middle of the
houses to the north. The William Morris-style houses were deemed too expensive.
Unwin quit and left. Yet Letchworth took off; people and light industries arrived
(including Spirella corsets) ; so did the Edwardian avante gard, veggies, fans of

Esperanto, H.G Wells and folk dancing. In the tee-total pub you couldn’t buy alcohol
but you could hear talks by George Bernard Shaw and Bertrand Russell. To the
dismay of the backers, the popular press ridiculed residents as knickerbocker-and-
sandal-wearing vegan cranks. In 1907, Lenin came to stay; the Russia Social
Democratic Party was holding its conference in London.
Letchworth nearly worked; but nearly wasn’t enough. As in its twin, Welwyn Garden
City, the essence of Howardism was missing. Both are pleasantly green and slightly
quirky suburban-style dormitory towns. They lack the genuine civic spirit and self-
sufficiency that Howard needed to refashion the human spirit. hoped to create.

Richard Unwin went to help build Hampstead Garden Suburb, a pale shadow of the