NINO STAFFA Office) in an attempt to dispel and pre-empt alternative forms of organisation and protest amongst the black population. The Home Office recognises, therefore, that direct use of police violence and repression is only a short term solution and that in the long term the « black community » has to be « helped » to produce good law-abiding citizens. The « problem » has been « controlled » further by the State's insistence that its failure to deal with poverty is an administrative and technical problem .. Great emphasis has been placed on management techniques with many proposals throughout the late sixties and early seventies for « area management», « community development », « coordinated social pian», and most recently, « an urban deprivation plan ». « THE PROBLEM » IN PERSPECTIVE The inner-city « problem » attracts a great dea! of attention from many quarters, not surprisingly. Both Conservative and Labour governments proclaim that the inner city and its problems will be amongst their highest priorities for action, and then proceed to devise schemes in which a smaller overall proportion of public expenditure is directed towards geographically isolated areas. These schemes are usually token gestures, which after years of « effort » produce yet more reports for the « deprivation experts » to argue over. The left is also greatly attached to the inner city « problem ». The inhabitants of the inner-city are, after all, the closest modem-day equivalent to the industria! proletariat of the 19thC as described by Marx and Engels. They also see the increasingly difficult living conditions of the urban poor as incontrovertible evidence which blatantly shows that the final crisis of capitalism is just around the corner. The right-wing, on the other hand, seC::sthe inner-city « problem » as incontrovertible evidence of their claim that coloured immigrants and socialist policies are to blame for all the ills of the nation. Ample evidence exists to suggest that the housing conditions of the population as a whole have improved significantly. In the 20 years between 1951 and 1971 the proportion of households unsatisfactorily housed decreased from 69% in 1951 to 24% in 1971. The following table (Table 1) gives a more detailed breakdown of the numerica! changes that have occurred in the various categories of unsatisfactorily housed households in England and Wales. 20
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