Occupy for the right to social housing

An interesting new wave of activism around housing has been springing up of late with the latest being on the Guinness Trust estate in South London. This follows closey on the heels of the occupation on the Aylesbury estate the other week. Occupations and direct action are becoming tactics with a target once again. Once again direct action can get the good's. Yesterday, an empty flat in Elveden House on the Guinness Trust estate in Brixton was occupied by local residents and supporters protesting at the threatened eviction of dozens of Guinness tenants from the estate. More people have joined the action today and they plan to keep the occupation running until Guinness agree to halt all evictions and rehouse all the tenants in local social housing. A protest is planned outside the Guinness estate office tomorrow morning Monday 16 January at 9am. The first eviction is due to take place on Thursday 19 February and protesters have vowed to resist any attempt by bailiffs to remove the family from their home. The tenants facing eviction are ‘shorthold’ tenants – but many have been there for ten years and longer. The evictions will make way for Guinness to demolish the blocks and build luxury apartments which will go on sale at full market rate. Of course none of the tenants being evicted can afford to buy the new flats and are facing leaving London, jobs, schools, friends and their community to find somewhere affordable to live. But many residents are saying no and refusing to go. The occupation is part of the campaign to support those residents who are demanding from Guinness Trust: NO EVICTIONS REHOUSE ALL ‘SHORTHOLD’ TENANTS IN SECURE LOCAL SOCIAL HOUSING For more information or to speak to one of the tenants facing eviction, email lambethhousingactivists [at] gmail [dot] com or call 07538 316548 http://en.squat.net/2015/02/15/london-guiness-estate-occupation/ Over at Johnny Void he perfectly sums up the growing mood of anger rising from below which has so far not been fully co opted by the left sects who will use it for their own ends if they could to recruit and steer any campaign down a dead end much like the Socialsit party are trying to do with the Focus E15 mums who are being invited to every event put on by TUSC and the SP they can do. Our strength is with ourselves not a party of self appointed revolutionaries. "As glass and concrete spindles made of luxury flats climb into the clouds above London below them lives a generation of children who will never be able to afford to live here when they are grown up. Across the capital families and communities are being fractured as rents soar beyond poverty wages and benefit caps mean eviction and forced relocation for those who fall on hard times. In central London at night huddled bodies in sleeping bags fill the shop doorways whilst camps of homeless migrants hide beneath bridges and in tunnels after finding out the city’s streets were actually paved with shit. Social housing estates are being slowly run down, decanted and demolished to make way for the rich and a handful of so-called affordable properties that nobody local can afford. Gentrification forces up rents and closes down well loved local pubs and markets to be replaced by hipster twats selling over-priced cupcakes or bowls of fucking Coco Pops to each other. The rich should not just be unwelcome in this environmnent, they should be despised. None of this has happened by accident. As property prices rocket out of reach every last fucking brick has become an investment opportunity. London does not have a housing problem, some of the most expensive properties in the city are empty and unused. London has a rich people problem. Yet as the social and cultural heart of the capital is ripped apart, a spectre is haunting London. A spectre of toff-hating fucking rage. Recently up to four thousand people marched on City Hall demanding homes, whilst a breakaway groups took to the roads and occupied empty flats on the Aylesbury Estate. Abandoned properties have been occupied throughout the capital from Stratford to Mayfair. Shadowy American property developers Westbrook Partners were chased out of their ownership of the New Era Estate after threatening to hike rents. Local groups who face losing their homes have brought construction sites to a standstill with blockades. Last week bailiffs, the attack dogs of the rich, were pelted with paint bombs at their glitzy annual award ceremony. And the boisterous Poor Doors demonstrations are back after pampered property developer Taylor McWilliams declared there was nothing he could be arsed to do to end social segregation in the building his company owns. It is little wonder that the rich want us out of their playground. Property developers now boast in adverts that there will be no social housing tenants in their luxury new flats. Poor doors force low income tenants to use a different entrance to their homes than the rich who live in the same buildings. Even gardens that were promised to low income residents are now to be fenced off and made available for posh cunts only. David Cameron has threatened a policy which will socially cleanse the poor from the entire South East of England within a week of any Tory election victory. But we are not fucking going anywhere. At the recent housing march it was declared that the growing movement for homes is the beginning of the end of London’s housing crisis. Escalation is now vital on every front. It’s time to make the rich feel unwelcome. To let them know that if they leave their luxury buildings empty they will be occupied. If they force us to use poor doors we will mob their buildings and spoil their dinners. That from the trust fund Tarquins destroying local communities to the plutocrats, bankers and global super-rich buying houses to keep empty as investments, we will hunt them down and make their lives as uncomfortable as they want to make ours. There are fucking loads more of us than them. The rich are here by our consent. It’s time to tell them to fuck off. Next Thursday (19th February) the Poor Doors demo will start at 6pm sharp, 1 Commercial Street, E1 and march to the site of the stolen garden at Tower Bridge SE1. Then on Monday 23rd February Boris Johnson will be the target as housing campaigners flock to City Hall to block his budget. If you have kids growing up in this city or plan to grow old here then you should be there, at both if you can. This is our London, not theirs and we need to take it back." Please help spread the word about both events, for more info on the Poor Doors protest visit Class War’s website and join/share the facebook event page for Block the Budget. https://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2015/02/16/this-is-our-city-not-theirs-its-time-to-tell-the-rich-to-fuck-off/

Kill the bedroom tax , defend all at risk, cant pay wont pay !

As we edge towards April when the much disputed bedroom tax will come into force protests are growing by the week with many protests happening in towns and cities up and down the land. I would like to add that many of these protests were hijacked by the labour party to sit itself as against this tax despite being for a similar tax in 2008 in fact. Could this be what tuition fees were to the lib dems for labour? Time will tell of course. David Cameron and his multi-millionaire family have four homes, mansions in reality. Tory welfare minister David Freud, who is bringing in this law, owns an eight-bedroom mansion and a £1.9 million London home. These well-housed millionaires want council house and housing association tenants to lose 14% of their housing benefit if they're deemed to have one spare room, 25% if they have two. There are things councils can do. There's a huge pot of money from the sale of council houses. Ring-fenced, because of legislation brought in by Margaret Thatcher and not repealed during three terms of a Labour government. And nationalising the banking system under democratic workers' control would free up more resources. This will hit 660,000 households including many disabled people and low-paid workers. Tenants are faced with an impossible choice of moving from their family homes or being left with a much smaller income. This situation will only get worse in October when benefit caps are introduced under 'universal credit'. In Scotland working class people are already getting organised On 13 March over 100 people packed into a Glasgow public meeting to build for the 30 March demonstration against the hated bedroom tax. The meeting, bringing together people from across the West of Scotland, agreed to launch a West Scotland Federation of Anti -Bedroom Tax campaigns. Well-known socialist campaigner Tommy Sheridan gave a rousing accounts of his experience of how millions of working class people "melted the iron lady", Margaret Thatcher, by defeating the poll tax through mass non-payment. The lessons of that struggle, Tommy said, can play a vital role in mobilising resistance, and winning the struggle against the bedroom tax today. Socialist Party member and Unison activist Nicola Crawford outlined her experience of building a campaign in Shawlands and Pollokshaws in Glasgow. After a successful public meeting, street meetings of tenants increased the spread of the campaign and gave confidence to more benefit claimants to get involved. Nicola called for a national campaign to build mass resistance to evictions and raised the demand for a council house-building programme. The meeting agreed a resolution calling for the scrapping of the bedroom tax and for a massive programme of council house-building to provide affordable homes for all. The campaign's demands include: • Scrap the bedroom tax • Support those who cannot and will not pay this austerity tax • No evictions for rent arrears. Build an army of anti-eviction campaigners to stop evictions • Councils should rule out eviction for bedroom tax and fight the cuts • Write off all debt due to the bedroom tax. Demand compensation to councils and housing associations as part of a mass campaign to win back the money stolen from public services by the Con-Dems • For a major programme of council house-building to provide affordable homes for all The pressure being put on the government and local councils is starting to tell we may have to prepare ourselves to defend those being evicted from their homes at this point labour party members and officials will leave the campaign and stick to empty rhetoric. They could pledge to reverse this tax if elected yet no such pledge looks likely. So it’s left to us the organised labour movement and the socialists to get organised and raise the ideas of mass resistance. It will be tricky as those affected are more in some areas than others no doubt quite deliberately thought out by the Tories but we must link up where a common issue arrises. This can be defeated and we must link it to the need to fight all cuts and raise the need for a working class political alternative which could mean supporting or standing for TUSC this may in the local county council elections TUSC is looking to contest.