rebel notes
June 16, 2017 June 16, 2017 / davesrebellion	/ Leave a comment
When Jeremy Corbyn visited the community around Grenfell Tower and comforted survivors of what his fellow Labour MP David Lammy has called "corporate manslaughter", he said, "Kensington is a tale of two cities – it is among the wealthiest parts of this country but the ward where this took place is one of the poorest… residents must be rehoused, using requisition of empty properties if necessary in the community they love."
There is a history of demands to requisition empty properties in this locality and use them to address housing injustice and housing needs that goes back to 1946.
At the end of July that year, a squatting campaign by homeless and inadequately housed people began in several locations. At first they took over disused army camps but soon empty flats and houses were entered.
In London, hundreds of homeless people, organised through the Communist Party (CP), temporarily took occupation of empty residential flats owned by the wealthy, and this took place particularly in Kensington and Marylebone in estates such as that owned by the Duchess of Bedford.
A year after the war ended, 3.5 million soldiers had been demobbed and absorbed into industry but wages were declining, there were 300,000 unemployed, and a housing crisis. in 1946, the number of families needing homes exceeded the number of suitable dwellings by 9 per cent nationally. In London, a city that had endured the Blitz, that figure was up to 21 per cent.
The Labour government set about a crash programme of temporary housing such as prefabs. They concentrated new-build in local authority hands by increasing subsidies for local authority housing. They also extended the powers to requisition properties for war purposes, to peacetime purposes, so there would be more properties available for those who were inadequately housed.
But some local authorities reacted slowly to this urgent need. In the Westminster district of Marylebone there were 3,360 people on the housing waiting list but they had rehoused only a handful of families. In Kensington, the local council returned properties requisitioned in wartime to their wealthy private owners, who would attempt to re-let them at steep rents.
The Communist Party in London held an internal meeting on 6th September, a Friday night. The next day CP members got in touch with people they knew living in bad conditions, who were mainly non-Party members, and told them to meet at agreed spots on Sunday afternoon and bring whatever bedding they had with them.
Moving on to the Dutchess of Bedford estate
On the Sunday night the CP held a meeting at the Palace Theatre, central London where their London District secretary, Ted Bramley, read out a BBC report:
"Between 2 and 3 o'clock, about 100 London people occupied three blocks of luxury flats and a number of houses in Kensington and adjacent areas"
Over a period of 24 hours they contacted families from several boroughs, and got around 400 families involved. Communist Party spokespersons described it as a "shock for the government, landlords, private exploiters and their profits", and a shock too "for their dear, objective, impartial friends in press."
It was a powerful piece of direct action, though they knew they would not be able to hold out long. Within a few days writs and possession orders were issued and police arrested the party ringleaders, such as Ted Bramley, who had organised the actions. The state disinterred the Common Law offence of Conspiracy. There was discussion within the Party and among the squatters about how to respond. Some wanted a forcible stand against ejection; many others felt that given the number of young children among the squatters that would be a very risky course of action for the families involved. They had made their point very effectively and this would affect the national debate and public policy.
In contrast to Corbyn today, Labour ministers then did not display much human sympathy for those involved, but nevertheless promised there would be no further action against squatters who left peacefully, and reassured them that none of them would lose their existing place in the housing queue.
The squatters left with their dignity intact. They marched out holding banners aloft and with bands playing music. They issued a public statement that said:
"We came in here not for ourselves alone but for the hundreds and thousands of others in a similar plight… Our residents include a large proportion of ex-servicemen who, after years of service for their country, are homeless… We came in together and we have decided to go out together, confident that we have achieved our purpose. Those who were ignorant of our plight now know, and those who knew and ignored, are now shamed into a sense of urgency that London's homeless shall be housed. When we march out … we expect the authorities to show us that human consideration that should be shown to all the homeless and ill-housed. We ask that a rest centre be put at the disposal of the vast majority who have nowhere to go; that our cases be investigated and that we take our place with the other Londoners fighting for a decent home. We will continue to fight… for all local authorities to bring a fresh urgency to the problem, never resting until property interests and the black market have been completely prevented from standing in the way of decent homes for London's people."
Many of the squatters went to halfway houses and all were eventually rehoused. In the aftermath, there was much more movement by local authorities to house homeless families in requisitioned properties.
Those who were prosecuted for leading the action gave a very good account of themselves in court. They were convicted but merely bound over to keep the peace for two years to a sum of £5 – a token gesture. Hopefully those deemed responsible by the Public Inquiry for the appalling outcome at Grenfell Tower will have the law falling upon them much, much more heavily.
Reasons to be Cheerful: part 3
June 11, 2017 June 12, 2017 / davesrebellion	/ 2 Comments
Back in 1997 when Labour swept to power in a tidal wave of sentiment against Thatcher, its theme song was D: Ream's "Things can only get better". Of course they did, temporarily, and then Blair and his New Labour cronies took us steadily rightward, took the country into unjust and unnecessary wars, ignored the desire in the country for real and radical change, and, over time, threw away the several millions of votes Labour had gained.
After last Thursday's election, the song in my head is classic Ian Dury: "Reasons to be Cheerful: Part 3." May said Corbyn would take us back to the 1970s. The song was released in 1979. Parts 1 and 2 were clearly the two leadership elections Corbyn had to fight to establish himself as leader, and Part 3 was this incredible General Election we have just experienced. While the most ostrich-like commentators will try to pretend that Labour lost the election, they know the truth only too well.
This election was called opportunistically by a Tory PM who believed the lazy propaganda of the media commentariat (with the honorable exceptions of the Daily Mirror and the Morning Star) that there was a strong likelihood of a Tory-landslide that would humiliate Jeremy Corbyn and destroy the Labour Party; that May was a "credible leader" and Corbyn wasn't; that the Conservatives were poised take seats where they hadn't before in traditional Labour strongholds such as Wales.
The result was a net loss of 13 Tory seats, which meant they had completely squandered their parliamentary majority, and net gains by Labour of 30 seats, gaining in seats in Wales and also including several that would have simply been described as "impossible" never mind unlikely (think Kensington or Warwick Leamington). Labour gained 3 million more votes than its last effort just two years ago, and Jeremy Corbyn's personal ratings have been shooting up. He calmly brushed aside every ridiculous smear that the Tories, the Blairite remnants, and the compliant media tried to throw at him, and they will have none left to offer next time around. Far from being humiliated, Corbyn is now secure and admired by a much wider spectrum of people. It is May who looks isolated, friendless and demoralised.
In the weeks leading up to Polling Day, I had the occasional wobble, including on election day itself, when I woke up and asked myself, "What if they are right? What if I am living in a left bubble?". But despite everything I had read in mainstream media outlets, from Jonathan Freedland, Andrew Rawnsley, to Paul Dacre, during the campaign, a couple of weeks ago I was confident enough that they had so seriously misjudged the real picture, that I put my money where my mouth is and placed a bet at 11/1 odds on a hung parliament. Labour under Corbyn and McDonnell are driven by a redistributive principle, and even before they have taken office it seems they have already helped me to redistribute some of William Hill's excessive profiits.
The Tories are in crisis, with Theresa May just about clinging on. Back in 2010, Cameron could be a bit more choosy and take in Lib-Dems as his dupes to prop up his coalition. May has been forced to be less choosy. Her only option left was to call on the swivel-eyed loons (climate change-deniers, homophobes, creationists, fellow-travellers of Loyalist terrorism) of the DUP, for Christ's sake, for a "confidence and supply" deal. The DUP will surely try to extract a price that will be unpalatable for significant numbers of Tories. Then what?
Boris Johnson claims he is 100% behind Theresa May. I'm sure he is (with a 6-inch steel bladed knife). Another possible replacement, Amber Rudd, is effectively out of the contest after her own majority in her constituency was reduced from several thousands to a few hundred. Rudd only just survived this election – she knows she won't survive the next. And while they are tearing bits out of each other, the clock is ticking for their EU negotiations. It's not pretty. There are no strong and stable leaders in sight among the Tory ranks.
Labour, meanwhile, is bouyant. It has instantly gone up five points in polls taken since the election, while the Tories have dropped five, and the leaderless UKIP have enjoyed a slight recovery. The feelgood factor across the Labour Party is palpable. Labour has already recruited an astonishing 150,000 new members since the polls closed, and if it was people-power and the ability to mobilise armies of activists for canvassing in marginal areas that was so crucial to the result, Labour will have already enhanced its capacity to do that next time with even greater impact. All those young people who registered before the deadline, are now registered for the next election, which surely will not be more than six months to one year away. The party has an exciting new, popular, coherent and costed manifesto, which fundamentally breaks with the failed Blair agenda. It will not need much tweaking before the next election. And finally the simple figures in the results themselves reveal where the Tories' most marginal constituencies are and where canvassing, public meetings and events should continue now. Just a very small swing will bring another 20 seats and Labour would have high hopes of gaining in several others.
Make no mistake. This is a crisis, and a nightmare, not just for the Tories, but also for the Labour Right. More right-wing Labour MPs may have been elected, but they owe their majorities to Corbyn's campaign, and the centre of gravity among the Party membership has shifted leftwards. Any actions of sabotage and serial disloyalty to the leadership this time round will surely merit re-selection procedures. They will have no desire to risk that when the Party is poised for power. Meanwhile Several centre-Left Labour MPs who had opposed Corbyn in the last two years are now openly and honestly acknowledging his achievements in this election, which further isolates the right. The old Chinese curse of living in interesting times is surely upon us. Theresa May and Tony Blair are running into the obscure wheat field of history, and we really do have many reasons to be cheerful.