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Let’s shake the housing bill at its foundations

Tory plans could throw millions more into penury just for trying to keep a roof over their heads – but we can fight back, writes GLYN ROBBINS

ON MARCH 13, 10,000 people marched through central London to protest against the Housing Bill. On April 16, many more will take to the streets demanding “health, homes, jobs and education” on the People’s Assembly’s End Austerity Now demonstration. As the Tories flounder, now is the time for key campaigns to join forces and pile on the pressure.

Resistance to the Housing Bill is still in its early stages, but has already seen vibrant local campaigns take off in several London boroughs and other parts of the country including Harlow, Nottingham, Derby, Sheffield and Leeds.

A broad alliance of tenants (council, housing association and private), trade unionists, councillors and housing activists is organising leafleting, stalls, local meetings and demonstrations. Once people learn about the massive threat posed by the Bill — which aims to destroy council housing and will make the housing crisis worse — they want to get involved.

On April 15, the Kill the Bill campaign is calling for a national sleep-out protest outside local council offices to draw attention to one of the inevitable consequences if the Bill is implemented — a rise in homelessness.

The Bill is still in the House of Lords and there are strong signs the government will have to back down on some of its plans, as it did on disability payments. But dilution won’t make the poison safe.

The Tories are attacking key principles of hard-won housing rights. Introducing means-testing and ending secure tenancies are policies deliberately calculated to push even more people into the avaricious grasp of private landlords.

Selling off council homes as they become empty will leave more families suffering on the waiting list.

Redefining council estates as brownfield sites is designed to clear working-class communities from the path of property speculators, while removing a symbol of successful public investment.

We need to make the links between what’s happening with housing and the Tories’ wider assault on our living standards and the welfare state. The chronic shortage of genuinely affordable homes is now a huge concern for workers having to stretch stagnating pay to meet rising housing costs, often on top of long commutes and exorbitant fares to privatised transport companies. Even people on relatively good salaries are struggling to find a home they can afford and many of those who aren’t are worrying about where their children will live.

Among those most affected by the housing crisis are public-sector workers providing vital services. The Tories hope grinding down their pay and conditions while they spend half their income on rent, or take hours getting to and from work, will produce a tired, demoralised workforce less ready to resist the onslaught of privatisation.

That’s why the junior doctors’ dispute is so important. At stake is not just the sacrosanct principle that contracts are negotiated with unions, not imposed by bosses, but the ability of workers to defend the services they work in and care about.

Following the government’s announcement that it wants to turn all our schools into academies, similar issues are confronting teachers. Research by the NUT has found that many of its members are considering leaving the job, partly because of the housing crisis and the effect it’s having on their working and personal lives. Teachers, particularly newly qualified ones, face an almost impossible task finding and keeping a decent affordable home which also allows them to be part of the community they work in.

At the same time they are denigrated by politicians and privateers eager to smash teachers’ unions and carve up our education system for profit. Experience in the US reveals a very similar pattern and one that again links back to housing. In places like New Orleans and Chicago the privatisation of public schools has gone hand in hand with the privatisation of public housing.

These issues all raise the role of government in building the type of society we want to live in, a question also posed by the latest Tory mess — the future of the steel industry. The prospect of thousands of jobs being lost and communities destroyed proves once again the folly of trusting our economy to the short-term commercial interests of global capitalism. Some of the steel Tata doesn’t want could be used to help build the homes we need. The Labour opposition is quite rightly calling for renationalisation, while the Tories cling to the same neoliberal ideology that caused the housing crisis.

Only a unified, national campaign will win us the health, homes, jobs and education we need and deserve. The People’s Assembly demonstration on April 16 is a great chance to link different campaigns fighting a common enemy. There will be a significant housing block on the protest, behind a banner reading “Kill the Housing Bill — secure homes and rent control for all.”

Our broken housing system is only one aspect of the damage this government is doing to our country. But George Osborne’s bungled Budget exposed once again Tory divisions that will only get deeper as we approach the EU referendum.

The possibility of co-ordinated strike action by junior doctors and teachers — and the widespread public support they have — will put David Cameron, already a lame-duck leader, further on the defensive. This is a critical period in our history. Our public services were only won by the struggles of previous generations. We must struggle again to save them for the next.

  • The People’s Assembly march takes place on Saturday April 16. Assemble 1pm, Gower Street, London NW1 for a march to Trafalgar Square. A protest lobby at Parliament will take place on May 11, 12-2pm at Old Palace Yard. MPs will be lobbied from 3-7pm. A second national demonstration will take place on June 18.

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