The Socialist 18 August 2010

Action now to defeat cuts!

Action now to defeat cuts!

Pakistan: Workers' solidarity urgently needed

Floods in Pakistan bring devastation - poor suffer most

Youth must fight for a future!

Student demo should be start of the fightback

No to advice service cuts

Decent pay for interns

Uni bosses say cuts will cause closures

Forecasts of fragile economic growth

Cameron sticks the boot into our council housing

Private-profit company granted 'snoopers' charter'

Private Finance Initiative: A licence to print money

Coventry Against the Cuts challenge councillors' 'legal obligation'

Northern Ireland: Belfast Stop the Cuts Alliance established

Bromley care workers fight privatisation and job cuts

Defend Our Community Services launched in Bracknell

Cuts devastate mental health services

The legacy of Leon Trotsky

Kirklees Unison strike ballot launched

CWU members accept BT pay deal

Debate how to fight back at Socialism 2010

Tube staff vote for action against cuts

Jobs under threat at Ministry of Justice

Airport workers win improved offer from BAA

Workplace news in brief

Socialist Party summer camp - book now!

Russia's raging wildfires - a crisis of government policies

Bradford must organise against the EDL

Birmingham: Community says 'No' to racist spy cameras

Previous issues, etc

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Cameron sticks the boot into our council housing

THE CON-DEM government is determined to use the excuse of a financial crisis to justify its aim to finish what Thatcher started - and Blair and Brown, in effect, continued - the comprehensive dismantling of the welfare state.

Louise Cuffaro

The housing benefits cuts already announced, together with Cameron's speech that 'no one should be entitled to a council home for life', herald the most vicious attack so far on public housing.

The current shortage of decent homes at reasonable rents is being used as a justification to discuss changing secure tenancies to make it possible to repossess social (both council and housing association) homes from those who are deemed no longer in need to temporarily house those in most need!

This is a proposal to steal from one group of working class people in need of housing to give to another group of working class people in need of housing.

It would mean councils could forcibly repossess 'under-occupied' social homes and re-house, if deemed 'necessary', tenants whose families have grown up and left.

It would also mean councils could means test tenants and evict them and repossess their homes if they are judged able to afford to buy or rent in the private sector.

We must not allow the capitalists to divide those who are already tenants and those on council waiting lists waiting to be housed, both now and in the future. The shortage is not of our making and their 'solution' will only increase the misery and insecurity of inadequate and bad housing for the most vulnerable in our society.

Council housing was not given to the working class, it was a reform fought for and won through the struggles of ordinary working people. This government wants to condemn us to a return to past times when most people not only queued for jobs but constantly moved to find temporary accommodation depending on where they could afford to live.

Already too many people are exploited by unscrupulous landlords and suffer overcrowding and bad health as a result. We must fight to reverse these conditions and to protect and extend the gains made by the working class in the past.

Tenants and trade unions must unite to fight to defend existing council/social tenants and their homes, but also, all those other people who need to be housed now and in the future. We must demand that the government embarks on a national housebuilding programme to provide publically owned decent homes at reasonable rents with secure tenancies (in urban and rural areas). This would create jobs and solve the housing crisis.

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Action now to defeat cuts!