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This article focuses on an incident, a series of events in the political life of an English city. The case in question deals with a proposal to demolish over 50 houses in the Grand Union Housing Action Area in Leicester, in 1983. The demolition plan represented a desire on the part of officers and councillors of the City Council to increase the rate of replacement of the housing stock and to break away from a policy which relied almost exclusively on improvement and repair. The plan met considerable resistance from local residents, who were predominantly Asian owner-occupiers. It split the local Labour party and was eventually abandoned.
Having described the case the paper seeks to extract from it a number of general political relationships and policy considerations. The technique of using a study of the actions of individuals and groups within a particular situation to exhibit the nature of the broader social or political structure has been widely and successfully used in social anthropology (Gluckman, 1940; Epstein, 1967). While obviously limited by its particular focus, it provides a convenient and interesting way of raising important issues and opening up areas of debate.