The Socialist 24 March 2010

Strikers can beat BA bosses

BA cabin crew can win

Message of support for striking BA workers from Socialist Party MEP Joe Higgins:

Striking British Airways cabin crew pickets speak to The Socialist

Support trade union and socialist alternative: Workers reject main parties

Trade unionist and Socialist Coalition

Salford: The growth of 'Hazel Must Go!'

Woolwich and Greenwich: For a workers' MP on a worker's wage

Stoke Central: Fighting for the millions not the millionaires

Trade unionist and Socialist Coalition general election launch rally

'MPs for hire' scandal

Hewitt's big business alliance

New workers' party needed

MPs: in it for the money

Far-right EDL outnumbered in Bolton, police try to even the odds!

EDL attend anti-racist meeting

Nottingham anti-EDL anti-BNP conference

Sussex: Students gain a victory - but fight must go on!

Cuts to higher education announced: Students fight back

Socialist Party youth meeting

On the march against cuts

March 1990 anti-poll tax demonstration

Massive rejection of Sarkozy's policies presages a 'third round on the streets'

Obama's neutered health bill limps through

Nottingham council targets the vulnerable

Dickens is back: Implications of poverty revealed in London

Barking council: Late developers

Battling against school academies in Hastings

HP workers take further action

Rail safety disputes

Previous issues, etc

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Barking council: late developers

THE LABOUR-run council in the east London borough of Barking and Dagenham has - after more than 25 years - commissioned the building of 63 new council properties for rent. These council homes will be built by private contractors.

However, with 9,000 (December 2008) people on the council's housing waiting list these new houses represent 'a drop in the ocean'.

The lack of social housing in the borough and elsewhere has been used by the racist BNP to win support among local residents, by falsely blaming Labour for giving housing priority to immigrant families.

In fact, the shortage of social housing, as well as being due to few new schemes being built, is also caused by the 'right to buy' legislation introduced by Margaret Thatcher's Tory government 30 years ago. This allowed council houses to be bought by the tenants at a discount. Proceeds from the sale of council properties had to clear councils' housing debts rather than for building more homes.

Since the 1980 Housing Act, Barking and Dagenham borough's housing stock of 40,000 properties has been reduced to 18,000. After the 1983 general election the Labour Party dropped its opposition to the right to buy legislation.

In contrast to most Labour councils at that time, the Militant (forerunner of the Socialist Party) led Labour council in Liverpool embarked on a needs-based urban regeneration programme which resulted in the building of 5,000 new council homes.

In this issue

Strikers can beat BA bosses