Civic leadership and education for democracy: The Simons and the Wythenshawe estate

Abstract

Manchester Corporation's Wythenshawe estate was famous in the 1930s, and its fame was largely due to the efforts of Sir Ernest Simon, a prominent Liberal businessman. This article examines how his developing ideas of leadership and civic responsibility in a democracy shaped his judgement of Wythenshawe. In the 1920s, he regarded Wythenshawe as a triumph of imaginative municipal leadership in the face of the indifference of central government. By the 1930s, however, he saw Wythenshawe as, potentially, a danger to democracy. The estate was a one-class area of people with no spontaneous commitment to democracy. They were, in fact, vulnerable to the mass appeal of fascism. This had to be guarded against by the promotion of education in citizenship in schools and community centres. As a consequence, Simon's assessment of Wythenshawe's success or failure was determined as much by the ideological conviction, common in his class, that the working class were not fit citizens, as by the quality of life made possible by the estate.