Panel 5: “Before” (1879-1912) Shena Potter and Social Reform

In 1924 Shena was elected as a Liberal councillor for Chorlton-cum-Hardy and joined the Council’s Education Committee marking the beginning of her service on the committee for over four decades. Shena’s fi rst years were marked by several fi erce campaigns on the Council. The most notable of which was her role in 1928 in ending the Council’s discriminatory practice of forcing women teachers to resign if they married. Following the purchase by the council of Wythenshawe, Shena was appointed to Manchester City Council’s Wythenshawe Estate Special Committee to supervise the development of housing there. Led by William Turner Jackson, the committee chose to employ the services of the leading garden city architect Barry Parker, who had helped to design Letchworth, to draw up a plan for the estate.

(Right) Source: Shena Simon Papers, Manchester Archives+. (Right) Letter from Barry Parker to Shena. Source: Shena Simon Papers, Manchester Archives+.

“Wythenshawe is not only in the line of direct descent from Ebenezer Howard’s original conception, but is still more closely bound up with Letchworth. The fi rst step taken by the Corporation after it had purchased the Tatton Estate was to engage Mr. Barry Parker of Letchworth to prepare the Town Plan for the three parishes”. Extract from chapter by Shena Simon in Dugald Macfadyen, Ebenezer Howard and the Town Planning Movement (1930).

Parker created a broad plan for the whole of Wythenshawe which divided the land into separate areas for specifi c purposes. In Parker’s eyes this would ensure that residential areas would be kept separate from industry. Further, houses would be built at no more than twelve to an acre in marked contrast to typical densities of forty to fi fty homes per acre in inner Manchester. A thousand acres of agricultural land was designated as a green belt for Wythenshawe to ensure its rural surroundings. The large estate would be formed of ten small neighbourhoods which would be based around a primary school and shopping parade. Neighbourhoods would be composed of clusters of houses around small greens and in geometrical patterns of cul-de-sacs. Parker was particularly interested in hexagonal layouts to achieve maximal effi ciency in terms of road space. In reality, however, only a few of these were built in Wythenshawe. The planning took account of existing local place names and country lanes. Many of the ponds and spinneys were retained too. The design of early houses drew on aspects of the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement and each family home was designed so as to have open space at the front and a substantial back garden.

Aerial photo from 1931 showing the completion of Princess Parkway as far as Altrincham Road. Source: Historic England, Britain from Above, ref. EPW036814.

Parker planned Wythenshawe so that it could safely facilitate the rise of car ownership. Main roads would not go through housing estates and schools would be built away from traffi c. Parker planned the main road to Manchester, the Princess Parkway, so that houses would be set well back from the road with parallel parkland paths. The parkway was designed to keep vehicle traffi c fl owing and curved in response to natural topography. It was innovative in the use of clover-leaf intersections and roundabouts rather than traffi c-light junctions.

(Above) The planting plan for the verges of Princess Parkway (1932). Source: © Garden City Collection (Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation), ref. Plan702.2.

(Right) Undated portrait of Barry Parker by unknown artist. Source: © Garden City Collection (Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation), ref. LBM4520.

Shena was enthralled by the plan and in a 1930 BBC Radio broadcast she laid out her vision of a utopian city based on Parker’s plan of Wythenshawe. Like Ebenezer Howard, Shena believed that Wythenshawe as a garden city would end the division between the urban and the rural.

“Slums and overcrowding will be regarded by the citizen of the future as something which they can barely imagine. Above all, the houses will be beautiful outside as well as convenient inside. I am afraid that some of our housing estates have not added to the beauty of the country in which they have been placed, but this will not happen in Utopia. I think each house will have a separate garden.” Excerpt from Shena’s broadcasted talk ‘Cities of the Future’ 4th March 1930. Source: The Listener, 9th April 1930. The years following the First World War were tumultuous ones for Britain. The decline of Britain’s staple industries resulted in a sharp rise in unemployment and wage reductions. This led to years of labour disputes which culminated in the General Strike in 1926. The poor state of Britain’s economy and levels of inequality in society seriously concerned Ernest and motivated his desire to venture into national politics. Ernest was dismayed, however, by the paucity of fresh thinking by his party, the Liberals, to meet the challenges facing Britain. The utter lack on the part of the Liberal Party, & the M/C [middle-class] candidates in particular of any knowledge of or interest in industrial problems, & the great question of equality between the two nations of England, is most striking.

Ernest Simon’s diary, 15th December 1918

Source: Ernest Simon Papers, Manchester Archives+

(Left) Ernest campaigning in the 1922 General Election. Source: Manchester Evening News 10th November 1922. Source: Shena Simon Papers, Manchester Archives+. Ernest relaxing in 1927. Source: Shena Simon Papers, Manchester Archives+.

Ernest assembled a group of leading Manchester Liberals to press the party into adopting new policies. This group which included Ramsay Muir, professor of History at the University of Manchester, moulded into a national organisation and Ernest was soon working with leading fi gures such as former Prime Minister David Lloyd George and famous economist John Maynard Keynes to formulate new ideas. In 1928 they published Britain’s Industrial Future. A key part of the book was Ernest and Muir’s chapter on industrial relations. They called for higher wages, workers to be consulted, and for greater government intervention in industrial relations. These proposals whilst never implemented by the Liberals in the 1920s anticipated the post-war settlement between capital and labour which afforded workingpeople an unprecedented increase in the standard of living.

Ernest’s involvement in national politics was not just limited to policy formulation, but saw him become an MP for Withington twice in 1923-4 and 1929-31. Unsurprisingly Ernest’s maiden speech focused on the issue of public housing.

I want to deal with the matter particularly from the point of view of the policy of the Government as regards the housing of the working classes. For the last four years I have been chairman of the Manchester Housing Committee, and my whole job has been to try to get houses built. It has been a very diffi cult task. House of Commons Debate, 18 January 1924, c433; Debate on King’s Speech.

His brief tenure in Parliament was not without success, however. Ernest became the Liberal Party’s chief spokesman on housing and his Prevention of Eviction bill became law in 1924 which stopped tenants from being evicted if they were unemployed. Similarly, in his second stint he worked with Eleanor Rathbone in securing for local authorities the ability to provide rental allowances for poorer tenants in council housing. In 1931 Ernest became a housing minister, but due to ill health and his failure to be reelected, his tenure in government only lasted a few weeks.

Besides his major contributions to local and then national politics in the 1920s, Ernest was responsible for running two large engineering companies. They enjoyed considerable success under his direction and a new of purpose-built factory and headquarters complex was opened in 1926 between Stockport and Wythenshawe.

Ernest and Shena also suffered personal tragedy with the long illness and eventual death of their beloved daughter in 1929.

(Above) Source: Manchester Guardian, 9th September 1929.

(Left) Source: Shena Simon Papers, Manchester Archives+.