Adam Gillman, Reading Socialist Party
After 14 years of rotten Tory rule, we have austerity, war, and poverty. Working-class people find it hard to pay their energy bills, and our rivers are polluted – we need to nationalise the energy and water companies.
And then there’s the housing crisis. The number of young adults living with their parents is increasing – now 4.9 million.
House prices have skyrocketed, greedy landlords raise rents, and private companies build ‘luxury’ overpriced low-quality housing.
Local authorities have barely built any new council homes – less than 10,000 in the whole country last year. Over 3,000 families are on the council house waiting list in Reading alone!
Many homes are vacant, while homelessness has never been higher.
Councils need to introduce rent control, and build high-quality affordable council housing, so everyone who needs a home has one. This is what the socialist council in Liverpool did in the 1980s, influenced by the Socialist Party’s predecessor Militant. When Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government tried to take the council’s funding, we mobilised trade unionists and the community in a mass movement, and won.
This is why I’m standing in Reading Central. I’m an anti-war, anti-cuts candidate in the general election, standing for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC).
In Reading, alongside other Socialist Party and trade union activists, I have helped organise protests against the Tories’ anti-union minimum service legislation, and against the local Labour council passing on Tory budget cuts.
Devastating cuts and privatisation of public services has enabled Tory central government to steal millions of pounds off councils. We need to fight for this money to be returned, so services are fully funded, and no one goes cold, hungry, or homeless.
With the war on Gaza, both major parties support the absolute atrocities the Israeli state is committing, tens of thousands brutally murdered.
Socialist demands to fight for high-quality, affordable housing:
- A mass council house building programme to end homelessness and provide genuinely affordable homes for all
- Rent control now! Take on dodgy landlords, and end slum HMOs (house of multiple occupancy)
Adam Gillman is the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) candidate in Reading Central
