We tackled Rachmanism through legislation, housing finance and building more local authority housing.
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Rachmanism is back – if it ever went away – and the government's refusal to regulate the sector is a recipe for disaster.
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The new word "Rachmanism" (after Peter Rachman, a property owner who was alleged to be responsible for many of these cruel activities) was introduced into the language.
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It certainly appears to follow in the radical tradition of the association that was born in the 60s in the wake of mass immigration, Rachmanism and TV drama, Cathy Come Home.
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And don't even start me on buy-to-let, which, along with the sale of council houses, has contributed to the return of Rachmanism, as well as a dearth of good social housing.
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Rachman would later give his name to Rachmanism when the press exposed him as the worst of London's exploitative landlords, but at that time he was just one of Simon's many mysterious business colleagues.
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As full details of his criminal activities were revealed, there was a call for new legislation to prevent such practices, led by Ben Parkin, MP for Paddington North, who coined the term "Rachmanism". The Rent Act 1965 gave security of tenure to tenants in privately rented properties.
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Perec "Peter" Rachman (16 August 1919 – 29 November 1962) was a Polish-born landlord who operated in Notting Hill, London, England in the 1950s and early 1960s. He became notorious for his exploitation of his tenants, with the word "Rachmanism" entering the Oxford English Dictionary as a synonym for the exploitation and intimidation of tenants.
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284 and 305–06 After his death in 1966, Cliveden was sold. It became first the property of Stanford University, and later a luxury hotel. Rachman, who had first come to public notice as a sometime- boyfriend of both Keeler and Rice-Davies, was revealed as an unscrupulous slum landlord; the word "Rachmanism" entered English dictionaries as the standard term for landlords who exploit or intimidate their tenants.Davenport-Hines, pp.
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He was a socialist, becoming a shop steward for the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers. He found himself working in a reserved occupation during the Second World War. He was elected to St Pancras Council in 1953. Along with other councillors from St Pancras led by John Lawrence, he was expelled from the Labour Party for flying the red flag from the town hall on May Day 1958, in protest at the exacerbation of endemic Rachmanism by the relaxation of rent controls under the Rent Acts in the post-war years.
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Much of this area, south of Westbourne Park Road, having become derelict, was compulsorily purchased by Westminster City Council in the late 1960s and was demolished in 1973–74 to make way for the Wessex Gardens estate.British History Online – Paddington & Westbourne GreenFlickr photo-set illustrating aftermath of Rachmanism in Westbourne Park area of London According to his biographer, Shirley Green, Rachman moved the protected tenants into a smaller concentration of properties or bought them out to minimise the number of tenancies with statutory rent controls. Houses were also subdivided into a number of flats to increase the number of tenancies without rent controls.Green, Rachman, pp. 56–69.
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