In December 1967, the Tory Greater London Council announced a special treat for their 23,000 tenants: a 70% rent increase which was to be spread over a period of four years in which a tenant's rent would rise at an average of 7/6d a week each year. The first increase was to be effective from October 1968. For those who could not afford an increase, the GLC announced a highly conditional and humiliating rebate scheme. There were also to be large cuts in maintenance staff, and services.
Why these vast rent increases? Because municipal housing has become geared to profit. Profit not so much for the GLC, or local autonly, for the landowners and moneylenders. In Tower Hamlets land costs between £100,000 and £200,000 an acre. Of 134,000,000 paid in rent by GLC tenants each year, £30,000,000 was paid in interest charges on these interest charges.
The mass media have perpetuated an image of the council tenant as á privileged citizen, car that of all GLC tenants, 2/3 get less than average male earnings, nearly half get less than £15 a week, and a quarter are living on private tenants, council tenants (who constitute 27% of the population) have neither rent control nor security of tenure to fall back on.
Given these conditions, it is outrageous to expect a family that at present may be paying f4 a week rent to be paying £6-16-0d in four vears time. This is why, throughout the spring and summer of 1968, tens of thousands of GLC withhold this rent increase.
Remember St. Pancras, 1961. Up went Eviction. Blood. Demonstration. Arrests. Enter brothers. Just return Labour to the Council and we'll see you well!" Labour returned. "So sorry Elect a Labour Government, and then we'Il see you well!" Labour Government elected. What happened? St. Pancras rents were not reduced from the Tory Council level they were INCREASED! And this infamous Labour Council kept the Tories humiliating. rebate scheme. The lesson? Never trust the politicians.
They 'll cripple and bureaucratise any grass Where this social club was a creation of the tenants as opposed to the GLC - they easily withholding the rent increase. Self-mobilisation, mobilised into the political action of which has been a major characteristic of the GLC tenants' struggle, is of key importance at a time supposedly working-class organisations -mneBOs are becoming progressively less TROT C bureaucratised, turning into mere negotiators WUEKCES regained a sense of true political identity.
The co-ordination of the various Tenants'
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housing loans. In the year 1968/9, 16/5d out of every pound paid by a GLC tenant will go on
and TV oriented, who could easily afford to pay twice as much rent as he does. This is not the case. Prices and Incomes Board figures show
brothers. Rent remains at Tory level. We are powerless while the Tories are at Westminster.
form. On other estates a Tenants* Association already existed in the form of a social club.