themselves in prison for it then they will support them, pay their fines, provide lawyers and so on. Others may have the Pentonville Dockers struggle of 1972 in mind, when five pickets were set to prison for disobeying an injunction. A series of unofficial walk outs across the country and an emerging strike wave pushed the TUC into calling a general strike, which prompted the government to order the release of the strikers. Certainly similar action today would be a huge breakthrough in terms of the working class standing up for itself, but given the historically low levels of industrial action today it would represent an unheard of turn around in workplace militancy to achieve a Similar movement today. There is a real danger though that some assume that there will be spontaneous defiance. Perhaps - or perhaps not. In many countries there are very severe limitations on trade union rights which limits the ability of people to organise and can mean some of your most active people are doing regular prison time. If trade unions weren't willing to defy the previous set of laws there is no guarantee that this new anti-trade union legislation will be defied. So trade unionists and campaigners need to be building up networks now to prepare for a fight to undermine the new laws from day one. We have to make the laws unworkable. What comes next? Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell spoke to a public meeting in Parliament as the bill had its second reading. He explained how the bill is simply the opening salvo to a much wider attack on human rights and civil liberties. After all, if they get this bill passed then not only will the Labour party be financially devastated it will make most forms of trade union resistance impossible. In war you attack your enemies ability to organise before you strike at their heart. Putting the Trade Union Bill in the context of the wider attacks is crucial. After all, trade union rights are human rights, if they come for the trade unionists and win then they will come for everyone else next. Right to Strike is campaigning to co-ordinate branches across the country to take action against the bill and be prepared to take action if it becomes law. If you haven't passed the resolution in your branch yet then do so as soon as you can. There is a national meeting coming up in the autumn to plan further action. Time is running out. Doug Thorpe
Britain's current housing crisis is not an inevitable consequence of the post 2007 global recession. Rather it arises from a combination of factors; including government ideology, the structure of land ownership in Britain, and the British state's response to globalisation. Since the end of the long post-war economic boom at the end of the 70s, there has been a near cessation of public housing production. What council housing there was, has been eroded through estate transfer and the Right to Buy. These policies were a conscious choice by the Thatcher and subsequent Tory governments to alter the balance between public and private housing provision - in particular to encourage a state sponsored and debt financed expansion of private home ownership. The proportion of housing tenure that is Social Housing has fallen from 33% in 1980, to 17.6% in 2012. In this period, personal incomes failed to grow as fast as production of commodities or as fast as consumption; with the shortfall covered by credit. The most significant form of credit for many was a mortgage. Home ownership became the main strategy for family saving. There was an assumption that if people downsized after children left home or if property was
13 sold after elderly relatives died this would provide a significant lump sum for other family members All subsequent governments have feared the electoral consequences of bringing down house prices; and these policies have continued regardless of the effect they were having on the supply of housing. Buy to let soars With housing prices moving out of the reach of first time buyers, and a scarcity of social housing (compared to earlier generations), more and more people have been forced to rely on the the private rented sector. This combined with removal of rent controls by the 1980 Housing Act made the private letting sector increasingly attractive to investors. The state and banking sector encouraged this through tax incentives and indiscriminate offer of mortgages. In the 1970s private renting was a relatively small proportion of tenure, mainly in cities. But by 2012 it had overtaken Social Housing, and is continuing to increase Low interest rates, poor pensions, indiscriminate lending, and tax incentives have led people with any surplus money, to invest in buy-to-let rather than other forms of saving. In the last 10 years buy-to-let mortgages have risen from 7.5% of
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14 HOUSING FOR NEED NOT GREED mortgages to 15% On average, families now spend about 50% of income on rent (over 70% in London). Wages flow, via rent, into the pockets of established property owners. This is a key component of widening inequality in society. There is also an inter-generational divide, with younger people losing out. In Britain, in response to globalisation, investment has moved away from manufacturing into financial services and property; with the UK having the highest proportion internationally of property owned by investors. But even with property being so profitable, the market and technological advances have not led to more houses being built at cheaper prices, failing to mirror the production of cars, washing There is no absolute shortage of land for Less than 10% of the land in Britain is developed. That includes gardens, roads, commercial property etc. Only 1.3% of land is used for domestic housing. But there has never been complete land reform in Britain. There remains a residue of feudal relations in land ownership - 189,000 families own 2/3 of all land in UK - the top 40,000 families own nearly 50% - and it is very difficult to find out who owns what. Even where land is available to buy, developers do not build on all the land they are holding, or for which they have planning permission. They only build the number of houses that will keep the price high, and maximise their profits. These factors, together with a planning system that protects existing property owners, combine to constrict the production of housing to meet need. There can be no solution to the housing shortage that does not tackle the ownership and distribution of land, through appropriation (or, more generously, The shortage of housebuilding and rising rents create a part of the population the market does not provide housing for because their income is too low. This has led to a massive increase in Housing Benefit which is effectively a subsidy not only to landlords, but also to employers who pay low wages. Instead of any serious plan to tackle this subsidy to capital, we see the scapegoating of benefits claimants, and also migrants (with plans to get landlords to carry out immigration checks). But it is no longer only the income from rent and benefit subsidies that is attracting investors to the housing market. In Britain between 1970 - 2013 house prices have grown nearly 3.5% per year more than the Consumer Price Index (compared to 1.25% in the US, and a fall in Germany. In the 1950s, an average house cost 4 times the average annual salary - by 2008 this was Speculators began to gamble on prices continuing to rise steeply (especially in areas like London). So, to add to buy-to save, and buy-to-let, we get buy-to-speculate - treating housing entirely as a tradeable commodity, divorced from its use value or production cost. Most existing housing stock was paid for long ago. But it changes hands as assets at prices which bear no relation to the original costs of building it, or its costs of replacement. New building is increasingly for profit not need. The housing crisis has reached a scale where it cannot be hidden or avoided as a political issue. There is general agreement across the political spectrum that more housing needs to be built, but the visions of how to do this vary (with much the same effect). The responses of all the major political parties so far have made the situation worse. The Tories, holding to free market ideology, see the solution as freeing up land by demolishing 'inefficient council housing to allow private developers to build, with deregulation; including loosening planning controls, and reducing room space standards. There has recently been a nod to 'affordability' mainly through minimally subsidised pricing, part ownership schemes etc. But, these continue to promote only private ownership, and do nothing for lower income earners. What the market provides is increasingly densely packed buildings, with the smallest room sizes in Europe. These are at prices existing communities cannot afford; leading to population dispersal or "social cleansing". This will be made even worse by the Tory proposal to extend right to buy to Housing Association tenants, further depleting the stock of Labour backs gentrification Labour takes much the same tack, through the policies led by Livingston, Richard Rogers and Lord Adonis. The policy of "Brownfield first" (development of redundant developed sites) looks initially unobjectionable, but with the classification of council estates as "Brownfield sites" has become increasingly toxic. Labour authorities put their faith in in extracting agreements or levies for proportions of "affordable" rented housing. But these affordable rents are still unaffordable, up to 80% of market rates, again leading to dispersal of working class and poor Since the 1960's there has been a continual process of gentrification of inner city working class areas. But this was a gradual process driven by individual house buying. What is now happening is different. It is a planned, state sponsored, mass dispersal or social cleansing of inner city The main thing holding back this planned clearance of council estates is the difficulty of finding partners under those terms Housing Associations are now wary of building new properties with the threat of "right to buy" and having to sell them off at less than the building cost. Perfectly inhabitable estates like the Carpenters Estate in Newham lie empty for years for lack of a development partner. Where these schemes do occur it is general at the cost of ratcheting down the number of "Affordable" rented units through the use of viability reports. This is now causing Labour Councils to consider setting up their own 'Private Development Vehicles' (private companies), which they will lease their estates to for private renting and development. Effectively a type of PFI for housing Even the Greens, who share a lot of this analysis, overemphasise figures showing that there is underused housing; claiming existing housing stock could house the homeless without increased development. Again this is unobjectionable where this spare capacity is absent landlords, or unused buildings. But these are only small part of the calculated empty rooms. Most of the so-called spare space is spare bedrooms. In reality this cannot be redistributed without coercion of tenants to move to smaller properties, or to take lodgers. This leads to the same logic as the hated Bedroom Tax, but dressed up in sustainability arguments. It is unworkable; and in any case why shouldn't working class families be able to have a spare room? Solutions for all? The obvious solution is a massive building programme of publicly owned social rented housing (alongside alternatives such as self-build and housing co-ops). There is general agreement on this in the grass roots housing movement. But there are differences on the contentious issue of building on undeveloped land and, greenfield sites, and in particular the "greenbelt" around existing
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SOCIAL HOUSING CLEANSING cities. Environmental protection is an essential consideration. But much greenbelt land is tied up in private property, golf-courses and other forms of privately owned land, that neither afford a public amenity, environmental resource, or sustainable agricultural production. Where the alternative currently proposed is demolition of council estates and building ever upwards (a proposal on the new Tottenham Hotspur development site is for a 33 storey housing block) this issue will need to be debated and resolved within the movement. We also need to learn from the lessons of previous Council Housing, and improve democratic involvement in design, provision of infrastructure, environmental sustainability, and flexibility of use. Different people, young, older, disabled, in families with children, or not, have different housing needs. We need a mix of housing types and the ability to move between them as need change. Tenants must be involved in design and control of their homes and communities, to address the issues of poor service and alienation that led many former Council tenants to buy their homes. Even with a mass social housebuilding programme, in the medium term there will still be a need for private rented housing to SOCIAL fill the gap. The focus of much of the Left's campaigning on housing has understandably been focussed on the strategic aim of defending existing Council Housing, renovating it, and building more. But existing Council tenants although threatened with demolitions are still among the more secure tenants. Those at the sharpest end are those who are homeless, in temporary accommodation (those who in the past would have got council housing), or private tenants renting insecure, substandard and overpriced private spaces. We need to raise the priority of demands to control private renting (rent controls, security of tenure and quality controls) and stop evictions. We need support the moves of private tenants to self-organise and explore the possibilities of a private tenants' union, and rent strikes. There is an increasingly militant grass-roots housing movement composed of myriad campaigns on issues of tenure, and benefit provision. Efforts need to be made to link these campaigns across tenancy types, and locality, sharing experiences and supporting each other, making the links between the erosion of Council Housing, the exploitation of private renting, and rocketing house prices; demonstrating a commonality of interests of all those who use their housing
15 *Britain as homes not investments. Lobbying politicians to adopt progressive policies, and mobilising to support those such as Jeremy Corbyn who do, is essential. But it is not counterposed to mass demonstrations and community direct action, as some would have us believe. Indeed the marches for homes and occupations in early 2015 increased the pressure on the Labour Party to add a 6th (albeit inadequate) priority of Housing to its original 5 priorities. The continuing movement against evictions, the bedroom tax, and social cleansing is the same movement that in part has propelled Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the Labour Party. But it is not dependent on the Labour Party. The next election is nearly 5 years off. If we wait for that, there will be very little social housing left, and the inner cities will already have been cleansed of low and average income residents. The priorities now are to build actions and campaigns in every area, to stop the extension of right to buy, defend existing council housing from sell-off and demolition, occupy empty properties, and oppose unrestricted rents and evictions; linking all these up to build an irresistible movement to fight for for homes for people, not property for