South London housing demo, January 2016

South London housing demo, January 2016   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Angry south Londoners march against the housing bill

James Ivens, Lambeth Socialist Party

“David Cameron, hear us shout! We know what you’re all about: evictions, home losses, mansions for the bosses!”

Over 1,000 angry south Londoners marched on Downing Street on 30 January against the Tory housing bill. Social tenants and part-owners spoke against the bill’s attacks on them. But there were also many young, private renters, crammed into human filing cabinets at huge cost, there to fight.

  (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Lambeth, the march’s starting point, has suffered a lot under the right-wing Labour council. It tried – and failed – to clear the Cressingham Gardens estate, next to the hilly meadows of Brockwell Park. Green space and clean air are too good for ordinary people. Better to ‘redevelop’ for the market. And residents at the Guinness Trust and many other estates have been victims of Labour’s bailiffs.

So it was galling to see Lib Peck, the Blairite council leader, dare to show her face. One of the Socialist Party’s two speakers exposed her real role, to fervent applause from the crowd.

The protest grew as it passed by estates and transport hubs. Two marchers laughed as the wind forced them nearly horizontal, battling their banner across Westminster Bridge.

Protesters were keen to carry Socialist Party placards demanding rent control, council homes and taking the wealth off the 1%. And there was a serious attitude to taking on the right – both the Tories and the Blairites – and our proposals for no-cuts council budgets.