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H O U S I N G - is still - T H E B I G I S S U E !

Kai Andersen | 11.03.2005 11:09 | Analysis | Repression | Social Struggles | Liverpool | World

On Saturday 5th of March I found the following news item on TELETEXT ITV in the North West and it’s reproduced as I type copied it. I didn’t read about it in the local right wing rag the Liverpool Echo. (Liberal-Democrat controlled) Liverpool City Council is to spend £7,200,000 on private housing, £6000 on each, according to this news report, while it's own rent paying council tenants go without any improvements and backlog of repairs going back for years.

TELETEXT ITV Mar 05

ESTATE IN HERITAGE STATUS BID

One of the country's largest Victorian
housing estates, in Liverpool, is
bidding for heritage status, the city
council has announced.

Kensington Fields has suffered from
high levels of crime, low educational
achievement and poor health.

The council is to spend £6,000 on each
of the 1,200 privately-owned properties
to help spruce up the area for its bid.

COMMENT:
As a long term housing campaigner here in Liverpool I've been documenting photographically and in writing the destruction of council housing. Our family home of over twenty years was demolished and our community broken up, friends and neighbours moved all over Liverpool and out of Liverpool this was as part of the Norris Green Boot (built by Henry Boot Company Ltd - still in existence) Estate scandal-betrayal-sell out-land deal… etc Whenever I put it forward as either a fellow council tenant and housing activist or later as an SLP candidate in local elections that “Liverpool City Council has the money” available to actually upgrade and refurbish our housing I was shouted down, verbally abused, excluded, censored, threatened with violence or harassed by Merseyside Police under orders from the local right wing (still Labour Party member and friend of BNP’s Joey Owen) houseowner Jack Mahon who originally called for demolition in 1998 without ever consulting with us tenants. I was also called an out and out liar to my face and over the phone. Well as many will know Liverpool is awash with regeneration money, ever since European Union Objective One Status was granted in early 1993 and the poorest and most needy simply haven’t benefited from it and that won’t change until there is a political change in the city council.

The above news item along with many others in local press and media quite clearly prove what happens when an openly anti-working class party runs a council and/or a government, our priorities (and the working class are the majority) become bottom of the list behind out of town students, foreign tourists, visiting shoppers and corporate big business - out to exploit and massively profit from the local workforce. It has never been about lack of resources or money here in Liverpool it’s entirely been down to the ‘LACK OF POLITICAL WILL’. There’s always money for middle class flights of fancy and big business feather nesting projects, however anything that would directly benefit the working class and the wider public here has had or is currently having its funding cut, slashed or completely withdrawn.

With housing we’re talking about denying the most basic of human needs ‘affordable and adequate’ housing and those who have been and continue to make the decisions are out of touch and totally unaffected by their housing policies and decision making and all those pleading (Defend Council Housing – the fourth option) with those who’ve brought about this shocking destruction of publicly owned housing need to get a total reality check.

How clearer does it have to be for the remaining council tenants with ever dwindling ‘SECURE TENANCIES’? Today council tenants here in Liverpool and elsewhere are overwhelmingly working class, mostly surviving on benefits and/or low waged, temporary or short term employment and we’ve been constantly bombarded with propaganda via the right wing media and press that ‘council doesn’t have the money’ to improve it’s tenants housing. YET THIS LIE IS INCREASINGLY BEING EXPOSED… It’s increasingly exposed as a lie because tens of thousands of council tenants here in Liverpool were sold this lie to dupe them into voting away our legally binding ‘SECURE TENANCIES’ and giving ‘our’ publicly owned housing and public land to private sector, profit making housing companies/associations/ trusts/charities etc. Now council tenants no longer have any collective power, or organised threat of such, here in Liverpool and the housing based trade unions have been totally defeated, demoralised and all their jobs privatised the lies can be seen clearly for what they always were.

I quote from the above:
“The council is to spend £6,000 on each of the 1,200 privately-owned properties to help spruce up the area for its bid.”

So let me underline this, Liverpool City Council (Liberal Democrat) who can’t even fit low cost PVC double glazing to all it's housing in the past seven years, can’t do essential repairs, has contracted out and sub-contracted out it’s repair services has stated and continues to state to its own council tenants that: “council doesn’t have the money” to improve it’s housing stock. Even housing staff perpetuated that propaganda lie on the doorstep without even thinking it over during the Stock Transfer battle against COBALT/LHT in the North of Liverpool in 2002.

So our public money is being spent on privately owned housing, what is that figure? It comes to £7,200,000, I’ll write that in English SEVEN MILLION – TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS… Wherever this money has come from and whatever council budget it is contained within, why can’t this same creative accounting be done for the ever dwindling numbers of council tenants homes, which is actually the property of the City Council???

I’ve long been one of the housing activists opposing housing privatisation since at least 1992, under a Tory government with a moderate Labour council we’ve faced the rundown of council housing here in Liverpool, under a Labour government and just one year of the same moderate Labour council nothing improved at all and now with seven years of a Liberal- Democrat council under eight years of a Labour Government we’ve seen more council housing abolished, privatised and demolished in eight years than ever happened through of eighteen years of Tory government.

I have a couple of other articles in connection with housing, community destruction, so called 'HOUSING MARKET RENEWAL INITIATIVE' and New Heartlands project in preparation and will post within days.

Kai Andersen
- e-mail: aokai@tiscali.co.uk
- Homepage: http://groups.msn.com/SocialistLabourPartyLiverpool

Comments

Hide the following 3 comments

class analysis

11.03.2005 18:13

the council was voted in by working-class voters who +believe+ in the middle-class agenda and who aspire to be middle-class. some hard work, a bit of luck and we can have the nice house, the nice car, the new sofa. although liverpool is a Labour voting city nationally and a LibDem / Labour voting city locally (less Labour because of Militant history), many working-class scousers show all the Thatcherite tendencies of the Thatcher years. they just don't vote tory because other parties - especially the Labour party - are doing the same job. you say the "working class are … bottom of the list behind out of town students, foreign tourists, visiting shoppers and corporate big business" but fail to mention the most destructive force around, namely the wealthy parasites who are buying expensive apartments, driving new mercs and shopping in the boutiques. this, ironically, is what many working-class people aspire to be. dreamers but dreamers happy to see the destruction of the common good.

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Things are getting bad!

13.03.2005 22:25

You are right, there are 2,200 houses in Kensington Fields and Kensington Fields is part of the £62m New Deal for Communities area. Just like in Norris Green there are self serving homeowners in this area who will do anything to increase the price of their houses. Most of these homeowners vote Labour and are activists within the community. What you must understand is over half of the houses in this area are private landlord and RSL housing, RSL being the largest. The main RSL in this area is Community 7, which is a subsidiary of the growing Riverside Housing empire. Community 7 control the 15 or so community wardens who are now being called C7’s private army. These wardens are constantly seen in C7’s office on Prescott giving information about what is going on in the community to C7 housing officers. Community 7 have just taken their first tenant to court under the anti social laws and had an ASBO or something similar imposed onto him. C7 staff claimed he came into their office swearing and threatening them. You don’t after do much now to get an anti-social order served on you. It will get to the stage that these housing officers, who are always trying to portray themselves as the victims of us tenants, will take tenant activists to court if we even look at them the wrong way. This situation of the abuse of the harassment laws by service providers in a very serious issue and as activists we must campaign aganist this misuse of the harassment laws.

Only a couple of weeks ago in Manchester the City Council threatened tomtake a former SLP member and now a member of the new Communist Party of Great Britain to court because he was posting bring the troops home from Iraqi leaflets into his council house community.

Mike Lane
mail e-mail: mickjlane@btinternet.com


same old

18.03.2005 19:36

Same old Mike, making baseless accusations against Labour. Stick to the issue here rather than trying to make out there is some Labour conspiracy in Kensington Fields. Is it any wonder people don't see past what may be valid arguments because you continually have to try and smear people - even though you never name names.

sam