JUST hours after Tory leader Cameron announced that council houses were no longer going to be ‘homes for life’ – but were to be short-term lets, with no secure tenancies, and that a spare room in a council home would be enough reason for an eviction and downsizing – the Tory Kensington and Chelsea Council sprung into action.
The Cameron declaration was obviously just what it had been waiting for.
It immediately started putting the frighteners onto its council tenants. Some of them were ‘cold called’ and advised that if they had a spare room it would be best for them to move into a smaller council property, before Tory legislation forced them to do so.
Some of the tenants who were contacted in this way have told the media, that since they received the call they have suffered sleepless nights, and have had nightmares about being forced out of their homes, in which some of them have been living for twenty years or more.
The calls allegedly began the day after Cameron told the world that there would have to be a rethink of the idea that a council house is ‘yours forever’.
Downing Street was even briefing that there would be regular reviews of tenants to see if they needed less rooms, and an enforced property downsize, or, alternatively, had a big enough income to be forced to rent from the private sector.
Things allegedly went so far, so quickly, in Chelsea and Kensington, that council officials rang up spare room ‘criminals’ to tell them it would be better for them to move at once, for they would have an option about where they lived, rather than be forcibly moved later and be directed to a vacant downsized property.
The Department for Work and Pensions has confirmed that 456,000 households are ‘under-occupying’ their property, meaning that there are to be 456,000 evictions, once the coalition carries the legislation.
As is well known, it was Enoch Powell who revealed the Tory attitude to council housing. He declared it to be a ‘sin’.
Margaret Thatcher took up his cudgel and brought in legislation to allow tenants to purchase their council homes, and now Cameron wants to finish the job, so that the entire housing stock is handed over to a new generation of Rachman-type landlords.
It is to be a two-pronged or three-pronged attack. There are to be short-term tenancies, evictions for spare room criminals, and then a slashing of housing benefits to push up council housing rents.
The whole operation is calculated to destroy council housing and to restore the power of the private landlords.
There is no doubt that the required legislation will be forced through by the Tory-LibDem coalition, and in record time.
Tenants must respond immediately with action to defend their homes and their secure tenancies.
They must form councils of action involving the trade unions and all community organisations. These must pledge to mobilise vast masses of people to stop evictions and prevent new legislation against council tenants being implemented.
Attempts at evictions must be answered by mass mobilisations and by strike actions by all trade unions in an area.
The trade unions must lead the struggle to defend council housing.
This means that an emergency resolution must be put down for the TUC Congress in September, that if the Tory-LibDems legislate to end secure council house tenancies and bring in short term lets and mass evictions, the TUC will call a general strike to bring down the coalition and bring in a workers government.
This will nationalise the building land, the banks and the building industry to build the millions of council houses that are required to end the housing crisis in the UK, and put an end to the private landlords, and capitalists.