Michael Cotter on the housing opportunities for the builders in Stevenage

Transcript:

Interviewer: This is very early you knew about this

Michael: Yes well obviously if you are active in politics you know what is happening, what government is doing, whatever party you are in you should do. I said can you find out for me what the situation is. So one evening in 1951 he knocked the door, it was late night time I think I had been out electioneering anyway as was my wont and he left a message with my wife “tell Mike that they are recruiting building workers in Stevenage and that if you are successful and you got a job you’d, your eligible for a house”. Now the firm I’d been working for, I’d been with them for nearly six years which was a quite long period of time at that time in the civil engineering industry, well anyway I said to the chap in charge the following Saturday, I’m not in tomorrow I’m going to Stevenage to find out about getting a job. He said you don’t want to leave us. I said it’s not a case of wanting to leave you but having to leave you. If I get a job down there, there’s a house to be obtained at the end of it and I’m going to get that house.

Cotter 1986