AMINATA Sellu, Workers Revolutionary Party candidate for Camberwell and Peckham, received a warm reception and enthusiastic applause when she spoke at a hustings meeting at the Methodist Centre in Camberwell last Wednesday evening organised by the Southwark Group of Tenants Organisations.
Housing was the burning issue facing the one hundred-strong audience. In her opening contribution, Aminata said she knew what people were suffering, as she herself was a council tenant in Southwark, and had been illegally evicted, forcibly removed by bailiffs and police and subjected to unnecessary violence.
Both the Tory candidates from the two boroughs in Southwark, the sitting Labour Party MP Harriet Harman, the Lib Dems and the UKIP candidate were shouted down on several occasions, for defending the policy of demolition and privatisation of estates, and for promoting investment banks in building so-called ‘affordable homes’.
Aminata said: ‘When it comes to the youth, part of the issue is lack of housing and facilities for them.’ She said: ‘Whosoever wins the election they have to build more homes. You cannot be selling homes in right-to-buy. If you sell homes, then you have to build more council homes for people to live in.’
Defending young people, whom a number of the candidates depicted as prone to be in gangs, take drugs and lead a life of crime, Aminata said: ‘Youth have no future with zero-hours contracts. They cannot afford university fees, and they are living in overcrowded housing conditions.
‘Young people are frustrated at being blamed for the conditions that are in fact being imposed on them by capitalism.’
The audience was not passive and made its feelings felt with the Labour MP being booed as well as the others. When the candidates couldn’t or wouldn’t answer questions they were heckled with some determination. Harman who politically attacked Jeremy Corbyn earlier in the election campaign, left the meeting early under a barrage of hostile questioning.
• The campaign to elect Jonty Leff, the Workers Revolutionary Party candidate for Hackney South and Shoreditch is going from strength to strength with a lively team out yesterday morning canvassing the Pembury estate in Lower Clapton E5.
University student Cheila Ferreira joined the campaign. She said: ‘Today I am doing my exams for my law degree at London Metropolitan University on Holloway Road, north London. I stopped my revision to join the campaign to elect Jonty Leff. I read the leaflet and agree with all the demands.
‘The fees I pay now are a lot of money and the NHS cuts do not make sense at all. We need to get rid of this government to have a better chance for everyone. This system has a very small group of rich people which is sometimes called the “1%”. This system is obviously unfair. They are bloody rich and everyone else is struggling. Now we are struggling even more because of the cuts.
‘We need to fight back. We need to gain revolutionary knowledge and we need a leadership that will take action. We do not want leaders who just talk and pretend to care.’