In the late 1960s and early 1970s the crisis of slum housing was a dominant factor in the social landscape of Britain. The war had left the country impoverished, and in every large city there were areas already declared unfit for human habitation before 1939. Local authorities struggled with a huge residue of poorly built and badly maintained Victorian terraces and tenements, while an inadequate supply of housing encouraged rapacious landlords who preyed on everyone at the fringes: the elderly, newly arrived immigrant communities, the unemployed, the poor. Every British city had a tight inner knot of decaying, mismanaged, desolate slums, and generations of children grew up amid that desolation and demolition.

Hedges worked in Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and Newcastle. Strong working-class community cultures were breaking down as regular employment became less certain, families were dispersed and old certainties vanished; under the stress of bad housing and an uncertain future it was remarkable how families survived. The pictures were made for Shelter and were instrumental in changing both public and official attitudes to a housing crisis that shamed one of the richest nations in the world.