Glenn Voris (North West TUC Executive, in a personal capacity)
Socialist Outlook supporters initiated a local fightback against St.Helens Council plans to privatise 800 council houses in July. The campaign has rattled the council, who are now worried that they may lose the vote to transfer the estate to a Housing Association.
The transfer of housing stock involves giving away over 800 houses tar free to Maritime Housing association.
To promote privatisation the government has given the council a £5.5m grant as a sweetener which would then be given to the Housing Association if tenants vote ‘yes’ to the transfer .
The government has allocated £l.2m of this to be used by the council and Maritime to print leaflets to sell their line to the tenants. This also covers employing ‘advisors’ to harass tenants by constantly knocking at their doors. With this high level propaganda machine the privatisers thought the vote would be cut and dried.
The ‘vote No’ campaign quickly gained the support of the local Direct Works Joint Stewards Committee as their jobs were directly threatened. The Council plans to privatise a further 2,000 homes next year. Since July the campaign has produced 6 leaflets explaining why tenants should ‘vote No’, combined with public meetings, mobile loudhailers and local media coverage.
Our first protest was linked to the People’s March 98 marching through the estate, cheered by 80 tenants outside Maritime’s Show House. This display of support by tenants showed that the ‘vote No’ campaign was gaining ground.
A further protest on October 5 saw 40 tenants burning glossy pro-privatisation leaflets in a brazier outside the Show House. This was to coincide with the tenants receiving their ballot papers to vote on the transfer. A hardcore of 25 tenants from the estate now attend weekly ‘vote No’ meetings
If the campaign is successful it will only be the tenth victory out 62 national transfer votes. The result of the ballot will be announced at the beginning of November.
St.Helens council’s attack is part of a national plan by New Labour to eradicate public housing. Councils including Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester and many others are attempting to off load their entire housing stock.
There are three main reasons for this:
Councils were starved of cash to upgrade council houses under the Tories leading to massive disrepair.
The Tories would not allow Local Authorities to re-invest money raised through the right to buy.
Around £8 billion has been raised, but Labour has only released £3.5 billion, well short of what is required.
Labour has continued with Tory spending plans, linked to Blair’s wish to meet the criteria for the Single Currency. This requires slashing public sector borrowing – including money for upgrading council houses.
Blair wants to privatise council houses so that borrowing can be drastically cut. Public housing must be off-loaded to the private sector. Housing Associations are seen as a soft option, as the government argues they are part of the public sector.
To fight off the whole scale privatisation of social housing a national campaign must be waged uniting tenants and council workers. An important step has been taken as a motion from Merseyside TGWU has called for the setting up of a regional committee to fight privatisation of council houses. This call is likely to get the backing of the North West Regional TUC.
A success in St Helen’s will hopefully be a first step in building a national campaign against this attack on public housing.