For council house kids of the 1980s like me, Our House by Madness was an anthem and an affirmation. The Conservative government was flogging off social housing and celebrating ownership – slowly, paying rent to the local authority became something to be embarrassed about. A perception of estates as crime-ridden slums occupied by broken families seemed to grow in that decade.
When I saw Suggs on Top of the Pops singing: “Our house it has a crowd, there’s always something happening and it’s usually quite loud” I felt seen. Social housing was about community, fun, love and all of those things that didn’t seem quite so prevalent in tidier suburban streets occupied by the curtain-twitching middle classes.
“I’ve never been ashamed of growing up in council flats, I couldn’t be prouder,” says Suggs today. “Those homes gave me and my mum security and love. I don’t know what we would have done without them.”
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Now, Suggs has teamed up with Shelter on the Made in Social Housing campaign, which looks to flip the negative stereotypes and highlight the need for more investment. With characteristic passion and poetry, he told Big Issue why a childhood in social housing was so important to him.
BIG ISSUE: Why did you get involved in Shelter’s Made in Social Housing Campaign?
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SUGGS: Well, they wanted to tell positive stories about people who grew up in these places and went on to try and make something of themselves. And I’m one of them! Ha!
I’m still uncomfortable about describing myself as anyone special. I just went to the American Embassy to get a visa and on the application I was described as an ‘exceptional talent’. I couldn’t stop laughing.
Do you think there is anything exceptional about social housing kids?
I mean, growing up, everyone was from a council flat. Those were the only people I knew, it was normal. I don’t know when or why people switched to calling it social housing by the way. There’s nothing wrong with the word ‘council,’ is there? The Style Council, they were good. “My old man’s a dustman… and he lives in a council flat.” And then there’s those Ian Dury lyrics [from Plaistow Patricia], “A lawless brat from a council flat.” I love that word.
I lived in a couple of different places. My first was in Clerkenwell, in a place called Cavendish Mansions. The name was very grand but the flats themselves weren’t much. Ours had a sink and a toilet. I slept in a bedroom, my mum slept in the living room. We’d have to go down to the local baths to get six inches of water which we could wash ourselves or our clothes in. I remember I’d call my mate posh because he lived in a flat that had its own bathtub – which they could also use as a table when they put a board on top.
Where did you move from there?
When I was a bit older my mum got us a move to a much nicer place on the corner of Tottenham Court Road. It was a new block built above Maples, a carpet shop. Back then, private developments had to have some social housing built with them. So we had one of those – a lovely newly built place with two bedrooms, a bathroom and a fridge. I was right in the heart of the West End and walking distance from Camden Town.
So many of your songs are about the fun of living among a mix of different people. Did your childhood influence that?
Yes, of course. Remember that line: “Our house… in the middle of our street.” The fact that you felt in the middle of things was great. The hustle and the bustle. The other kids, the different sorts of people from different races and backgrounds. It made for a brilliant atmosphere, not the miserable one that some people seem to associate with council housing. My memories of those days are just running about all day until the sun went down with loads of other young people. Playing and laughing. Women hanging their washing out of their windows. Mums calling you in for your dinner. It was full of happiness and love.
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Suggs with his Madness bandmates during the filming of Our House. Image: Clare Muller/Redferns
So they had an influence on wider society too?
Yeah. Estates brought people together. Everyone mucked in, 2 Tone music was born out of those sorts of environments, where black and white people lived together and all the kids didn’t know any different.
So why do they build less of them today?
Well, it didn’t help that Thatcher decided to start selling them all off and not reinvesting the money into building more of them. We’ve slowly been running out. And it’s such a shame because they paid for themselves: the rent we paid the council was enough to cover the maintenance and upkeep. So they didn’t really cost the public anything.
Do you think Thatcher attached a stigma to them?
I think that Britain became more and more obsessed with owning property. In other countries I’ve visited there is more of a renting culture.
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I hear people refer to council houses sometimes in a negative way these days. But that’s mad. I’m proud of the fact I grew up in these amazing communities.
How important was the stability?
Well, we knew that our flat was a permanent home. We didn’t live with that insecurity that so many people without much money have. I felt part of a community. I had room to manoeuvre. With the safety and security of a home I could focus on following other ambitions like music. And there were generations of families living in the same places.
Nowadays, most people can’t afford to live in the area they grew up in, which is a shame. I grew up in Camden, Clerkenwell and Islington. Those areas are unaffordable for ordinary people now. Even I’ve had to move out east towards Leyton. Mind you, I’m not switching to Leyton Orient and definitely not West Ham, you must be joking [Suggs is a Chelsea fan].
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