Thatcher's dream becomes a nightmare for a jilted generation | Andrew Rawnsley | Comment is free | The Observer

Thatcher's dream becomes a nightmare for a jilted generation | Andrew Rawnsley | Comment is free | The Observer

Contrary to popular myth, it was not Margaret Thatcher who coined the phrase "property-owning democracy". She made it central to her creed, she sold more than a million council houses to their tenants, and since then politicians of many stripes have agreed that owning your home is a good thing. But the copyright on the concept belongs to a much less famous Tory called Noel Skelton, an MP in the 1920s and 1930s. It was his idea – novel for the time – that extending property ownership beyond the rich would encourage a sense of independence, pride and responsibility among the masses. An implication, which influenced Harold Macmillan's house-building programme in the 1950s as well as Mrs Thatcher in the 1980s, was that the working classes would turn away from socialism as property ownership infused them with conservative values.