Housing: Irresponsibility becomes reality

Housing: Irresponsibility becomes reality

‘Councils will be ordered to build thousands more homes’ is the message. I immediately thought I’d missed the election of a Corbyn-led government that was implementing a basic socialist policy. No. It came from Sajid David, one of the more myopic ministers in a government whose eyes are fixed rigidly on the bottom line and whose hostility to council housing is only exceeded by hostility to trade unions.

I recall the denunciation of the Liverpool 47 in the 1980s: building council houses is ‘irresponsible’ screamed the media; ‘Impossibilism’ thundered Baron Kinnock, as he grovelled before Murdoch and Maxwell. These were just a couple of the epithets which were hurled at Liverpool’s socialist council in response to our proud programme of, in our short period in office, building 5,000 houses and flats, plus converting a further 2,000 uninhabitable flats into beautiful apartments.

However, not surprisingly, there is no information on how cash-strapped councils would get the finance to translate Sajid’s fine words into reality. In short it’s yet another empty promise from a government committed to enriching its rich friends. If every council would have emulated the example of the Liverpool 47 today’s housing crisis would not exist.

Tony Mulhearn, former president of Liverpool district Labour Party, and Liverpool 47