Social landlords are deviating from their intended purpose

Mikes 100% spot on - and the issue is - who is fighting for us working class? - Here in Kirkby an Orwellian camapign was used to sell off housing - in a few years there will be NO social housing - only Barrets and the ilk - parasites sucking us dry.

How the fuck can an area like Liverpool have all these regeneration experts meddling in oue lives?

The left wing in Liverpool ought to examine carefully its tactics - if its left to the likes to Mike Lane to deliver leaflets and raise this issue - its a disgrace. Mikes not flavour of the month in his community amongst the 'experts' and middle class pen pushers and the working class sell outs. I know the feeling.

As editor of Kirkby Times, just as a fellow scouser - I'm prepared to give Mike an hand delivering these leaflets he plans to give out - I personally think he should stand for Council and that we need a group like the IWCA to unite those of us who see the issues that matter regarding the Working Class in Liverpool. Even if this means clearing out some pensioners garden - its a start - we have to be there on the estates - in Huyton, Fazackerly, Walton, Kirkby etc. I have NEVER seen apolitical group outside of the mainstream leaflet my area. The people who leafletted against the BNP last year helped one of Kirkbys worse Councillors, a man who earns over 20K a year (plus his pension) BNP lost - but they will be back this year. If anyone thinks supporting Labour over the BNP is a valid tactic i think your barking mad.

On that note i will post up an advert for an IWCA meeting in Liverpool soon, i'll be involved and i hope people can forget all the bullshit which has formerly passed for politics on Merseyside. Handing out leaflets in the City centre or petitions never changed nothing. We need to control the Council chambers, never mind standing outside shouting at them.

I'd be happy if Mike Lane was to join the IWCA, i feel his obvious skills have been wasted and that a lack of unity in Liverpool has led to a political scene which is all Central in 'Town' - fuck all happens in Kirkby etc - unless you count Kirkby Unemployed Centres alleged socialism at work. So socialist they are that they 'critically support' the New deal for unemployed. Corruption in Kirkby is something the left wing know all about - few of them alert Kirkby Times, indeed, some have threatened me because i expose blatent corruption.

Will the real left wing, please stand up?



 http://iwca.info

This is not a new phenomenon. All the PFI 'partnerships, ALMOs etc. are all stealth privatisation. Most of the so called 'social landlords' were and are Middle England property speculators using the now very common 'doing stuff for charity / helping the poor' disguise. They can also draw a big fat wage for this and pretend tto be doing 'good'.One particular very high up social service manager based in London, for example, has close relations property speculating, and ripping off the tax payer by providing poor quality short life housing. A cursory glance at the pretty crap 'Inside Housing' ( Housing advisors journal ) will show what happens when councils flog off their stock. Rents rise and the greedy line their pockets. Check also the governments wonderful ghettoisation plan tio bring properties in line with market prices. Do not forget, market prices are the result of greedy property speculators, multinations,and the big sell off. Sub contracting has always costed councils more than doing it in house. Check Haringey Council's bill to the employment agencies who supply a lot of their staff for instance or the charges builders present to councils while not doing their jobs ( they often 'go for tools' for instance and go off to another job while billing the council who they always overcharge anyway. Why does Dame Jane of Camden send the riot squad in to evict the community advice centre and then try and get the cops to move in to the now vacant offices.

This iwca sounds like a good idea. I read in the Weekly Worker:

"After much deliberation, I've decided to join the Independent Working Class Association, who seem much more realistically placed to further the interests of my class. They won't satisfy the needs of the Marxist intellectuals and armchair ideologues, but they'll certainly please those who want to make a difference to the lives and consciousness of people in working class communities."

When's the meeting?

Nothing new and here's some examples from one housing association, Pavilion, that operates in Farnborough and Aldershot and is currently empire building across southern England, including speculative property development and the building of student accommodation on Surrey University campus and in parts of Farnborough.

In 1974, Pavilion took over what was Rushmoor council housing stock, estates in Farnborough and Aldershot. Since then Pavilion has gone on an empire building spending spree, acquiring housing stock across the country, building student accommodation on campus at Surrey University, although its core estates still remain Aldershot and Farnborough. The tenants have seen deteriorating property, repairs going undone and rising rents........

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/01/284142.html

IWCA from Kirkby says... "Who is fighting for us working class?"

We the working class can only fight for ourselves! The reality is that the Labour Party was never a party for the working class or socialism. In its hundred years it has always been a faithful servant of capitalism. Labour MPs cheered when James Connolly was hanged after the Easter rising in Ireland. In 1926 when the working class led by the Miners had the country out on general strike, the TUC and Labour Party lost it's bottle with the TUC ordering the workers back to work, that's how long ago we could have had a socialist society in Britain. Take 1984/85 Kinnock 'old' Labour turned its back on the Miners and the Liverpool City Council in 1985. The Labour Party failed to lead the opposition to the Poll Tax, former 'Labour Party' National Union of Students President Steven Twigg, Lorna Fitzsimmons and Jim Murphy will have voted as new Labor MPs to bring in tuition fees and abolish grants, sealing the door on working class access finally after ten years of excluding us step by step. It seems that the working class collectively have finally realised that the Labour Party doesn't have our interest uppermost, that's why in 1998 the working class of Liverpool stayed at home and didn't vote Labour because the right wing labour throughout the 1990's told us it was the Tories in government who were to blame for things going wrong here in Liverpool so when Labour became the government just a year earlier nothing changed but in fact got worse and Labour in the council had no one to blame but themselves. The middle class didn't stop voting and the Lib-Dems got in because the demoralised Labour voters stayed at home.

I don't know when Knowsley Housing Trust got the Kirkby/Huyton council housing. But I'm a housing/community based activist in the SLP here in Liverpool, currently living in Croxteth. I actually find a great deal of what the IWCA does to be worthwhile, I'm also impressed with what Stuart Craft has been doing as the first IWCA councillor elected in 2002. What the IWCA is doing is the direction I've been going in since I joined the SLP back in 1997 politically based community activism and I'm in close contact with others of a similar perspective. I was also involved in student activism (at FE college *not a Uni*) community, housing and anti-poverty activism between 88-95, basically I'm one of the few people in the SLP here on Merseyside who came from a community activist background rather than a party or trade union background.

As Mike knows it was i who first raised the issue of council housing within the SLP on Merseyside back in 1998. I put a lot of personal time and effort into supporting the tenants opposing Stock Transfer in Pinehurst, Anfield and elsewhere, I was blocked and undermined by the traitorous egos in the SLP here in Liverpool, constantly harrassed and undermined, but I stood my ground and those who undermined me later ended up undermining the party, chasing out good people and blocking other people from joining the party, they've faded into the background and many of their ilk have moved on. It's those people who put off good working class people like myself and others from being involved in politics, they do for the capitalist system in socialist and left parties what the police do on the streets, ie keep us divided, oppressed and disempowered.

I was told by someone in P'n'P that they didn't think anyone in the 'left' was active in the communities. Well it seems that on housing I've been one of the most active in opposing stock transfer, which is essentially a working class issue, I had a couple of SWP people help me leaflet but also attempt to demoralise and tell me I'm doing it wrong. But where were the trade unions in 2002? We the SLP in Liverpool West Derby, spent just £70 on our campaign and we got a 34% of the people to vote NO, we delivered close to 10,000 leaflets over many months right across the North East of Liverpool, had A3 B&W posters fly postered, many of which are still up. Unison spent I was told £10,000 on over wordy posters on the back of buses, on DCH leaflets and posters, but they didn't commit to 'real' campaigning, in the two other areas (Dovecot/Deysbrook taken over by Berrybrige Housing Co.Ltd ie Riverside and Netherly/Lee Park some housing trust set up) the NO vote wasn't anywhere near the 34% we achieved which was what we achieved in Pinehurst in 1998, those two areas were open to the unions, Liverpool Tenant Fed' and the left to campaign in, but they did ZERO work in those areas... So the accusation by the Tenants' Fed' that SLP loses Stock Transfer votes has been proven a lie, we gain a great vote NO percentage in real terms.

In a recent informal chat with a fellow and trusted SLPer, I was talking about what we do to make a breakthrough, the SLP doesn't have a councillor elected. We came to the opinion that the working class of Liverpool are defeated, after nearly two decades of grinding down. But I believe we've got to commit to solid working class communities, we have to build a base in them support them all year round not just at election time, we've got to build trust between our activists and local people.

Here in Liverpool over 80% of the people ain't voting for any party. After the 2002 stock transfer ballot we stood two candidates in local wards and we got a low vote, I had also stood twice in 1998 and 1999 on the issue of housing in Clubmoor which is the ward covering the Boot estate, I put out a leaflet called "Stock Transfer is Housing Privatisation". What do you have to do gain people's trust? I don't know, because I've had a long record of work in Norris Green benefitting my community, better than the councillors elected in the wards there.

Kirkby has a history of working class fight back, I think of the AC Delco plant that was stopped from leaving the community a few years ago. I recently heard about the 'Sonae' plant and got involved in the play that was based at the Unemployment Centre to find out more, though in the end I didn't see the play because I wasn't told about the dates. But I know that a local priest is involved in the Kirkby Against Toxic Sonae, which I pointed out to a member will end up with him blocking any radical action to get the place closed, with which she agreed. Certainly places like Kirkby and St.Helens should be natural ground for a true working class socialist party like the SLP. I know the organisational reasons why we've not got an active base of support in Kirkby and in St.Helens, I've recently been passed contacts for a people interested in the SLP in both those towns and hope we start building a base in those towns.

I've kinda decided that our Constituency SLPs should adopt a local neighbourhood/ community and along with fellow SLP activists, commit to, aid and support, outside of elections. You can't work in a community divided against itself, which is what I tried to do in Norris Green (my childhood community) the Boot Estate demolition is the result of a community divided against itself.

I'm volunteering as a CAB worker in either Bootle or Kirkby to aid working class people like myself. I learnt a tremendous amount from my involvement in anti-Stock Transfer, I got a load of support for setting up a campaign alongside threatened Pinehurst tenants who were facing demolition, one mother of a tenant rang me up to tell me she used to work for a local housing association and the unwritten agenda throughout the 1990's was on of 'depoliticisation of housing', for that read loss of public ownership, control and accountability, which is the unspoken outcome of stock transfer. It is the loss of that long held and cherished aim of organised working class of ownership of the "means of production", etc ie "public ownership". We're losing any kind of control over any aspect of our lives right across the board from the craddle to the grave.

I won't be joining the IWCA. I believe in commitment and loyality to my organisation and too many socialists and the 'left' jump in and out of this or that party or bandwagon, the Respect Unity Coalition is the latest example of a bandwagon that won't benefit the working class. There's potential in the SLP to be a mass party of and for the working class, most of the party wreckers, dead weight, free loaders, career councillors have left or have been seen as time wasters now. I sincerely hope they don't jump into the IWCA and sink your boat, they've got the RUC bandwagon to jump aboard for a year or two.

Kai Andersen -  http://groups.msn.com/SocialistLabourPartyLiverpool

Kai, don't kid yourself that the SLP has any potential to become a mass party. It HAD plenty of potential when it created in 1996, but it soon became the Arthur Scargill Stalin-a-like Show. The SLP is dead. The Socialist Alliance is dead. The official Left is dead - and the Respect Coalition will soon follow.