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Originally Posted by Ignitionnet
Had that been the intention alone not preventing councils from replacing stock with the proceeds rather than causing a big crunch in housing supply that we're feeling the effects of even now, with the resultant prodigious debt hang-over, property-owing indeed, might have been a plan. Alongside some quite ill-advised privatisations, with some very sensible ones, there was tons of ideology at work, which is biting more and more.
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The two are flip-sides of the same coin. If you intend to create a society based on individual property ownership and the sense of personal responsibility that goes with it, you also want to block those with a contrary ideology from snookering your plan by building large numbers of "social" housing at impossibly low rents, subsidised by ratepayers in larger private houses. This is not ideologically-driven spite. It is logically consistent with the policy aims - as was the stipulation that councils had to provide mortgages for those that wished to buy.
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As it is taxpayers have to subsidise the 'property-owing' democracy to avoid banks going under and the housing benefit bill is through the roof due to a lack of affordable housing as Thatcher cut stock and destroyed ability to supply.
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"Ability to supply" is not determined by whether or not district councils are allowed to build houses. Ultimately, this is due to a failure to deal with the highly restrictive Town and Country Planning Act 1948, which has turned out to be a Nimby's charter when it comes to the large scale planning and building of new housing estates, coupled with a similarly long-term failure to recognise the dangers of centralising so much in the south east of England.
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If you do give the benefit of the doubt and say it was an unintentional consequence it was a pretty large one, with the added bonus we're now below the EU-27 average for home ownership rates, that includes those states that didn't gut social housing provision to foster home ownership. 
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As above. Deal with the planning constraints and the rest will follow. The market is failing at present, because it is distorted so that supply cannot match demand.
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it destroyed affordable housing availability and going forward wiped out councils' ability to build as they couldn't use proceeds of the sales to build more. How're the queues for social housing looking in your local area?
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Again, the graph doesn't support the spin you're putting on it. Council house building was in steep decline from about 1975. In fact, at the point when Right to Buy was having its biggest effects, in the early 1980s, the decline in council house building suddenly became far less pronounced. Unfortunately the rate of private house building, having enjoyed a brief renaissance in the first half of the 80s, soon went into reverse.
Anecdotally, I remember that period of time, as there was a lot of building on what was about to become green belt near where we were living. It was generally said that the splurge was taking place as developers tried to get in before the new green belt designations took effect.
Again, assuming that to be true, the issue is one of planning restrictions, not councils being banned from using one specific income stream to build new houses.