Welcome To Our Weekly Digest Edition

Please feel free to use this material provided the New Worker is informed and credited.

Lead

WE NEED MORE COUNCIL HOUSES

by Daphne Liddle

PRIME Minister Gordon Brown has at last realised that this country has a housing crisis. But the proposals he outlined last Wednesday in his draft legislative programme will do little or nothing to resolve the problem. But they do contain measures that will make it easy for multinational companies to build major structures – whether the local population wants them or not.

As ever Brown cannot resist some sleight of hand to make people think they are getting what they want and need while in reality only the wealthy will benefit.

Brown told the House of Commons that he intends to put “affordable housing within the reach of not just the few but the many” and spoke of plans to increase the rate of house-building.

He spoke of “building over a quarter of a million homes more than previously planned, a total by 2020 of three million new homes for families across the country”.

He will raise the annual house-building target for 2016 from 200,000 to 240,000 a year.

So for all the fuss and fanfare we have got to wait 11 years for a meagrely increase of 40,000 homes per year on what was previously planned.

Furthermore these homes will not be council homes. As an afterthought he spoke of supporting and encouraging “local authorities and other authorities” to come up with initiatives. This is a long way from a commitment to build new council housing.

Currently there is a serious crisis among home buyers struggling to keep up with rising mortgage rates. Around 18 million are estimated to have real problems, with those in arrears expected to double from 36,000 to 77,000 within the next year.

This may result in a drop in housing prices but that drop is unlikely to be big enough to allow the millions of workers in Britain on the minimum wage or just above to even dream of owning their own home.

never afford

Perhaps Brown thinks no one else can do the arithmetics. If people are earning less than £200-a-week and the average price of a home is more than 1,000 times that sum and interest rates are rising, they can never, never afford to buy.

So what will happen? The higher earners will scrape together what they can – with two partners working full out, perhaps with two jobs apiece, they will work themselves to death to provide a roof over the heads of children they will rarely get to spend any time with.

But with the decline in industry the proportion of high earners compared to minimum wage earners is falling. The low earners will either have to shack-up with their parents or in-laws or rent. With no increase in the number of local authority places to rent and housing associations falling prey to speculators, huge numbers will have to rent from private landlords at rising rents.

The result will be a trend towards overcrowding that was last seen in Victorian times – and was the reason for the introduction of council housing.

Private landlordism has been growing steadily for the last decade and will eventually become the predominant form of housing provision.

The only way to solve the crisis is to instruct local authorities to get building more council houses, providing genuinely affordable housing for all workers who need it with secure tenancies.

Brown also spoke of the new Planning Bill as part of the measures to address the housing crisis. This will cut the rights of local authorities to refuse planning permission to major infrastructures and projects “that Britain needs to facilitate economic and housing growth, and to speed up planning generally”.

It is a bill more in line with the demands of global capitalism and will mean that if Coca Cola or BP or any other multinational wants to plonk a great big plant or refinery in the middle of your local beauty spot, or next door to a primary school, there will be very little you can do about it. It will also make it easier to knock up new nuclear power stations more quickly.

Very generously Brown spoke of giving over a total of 550 sites now owned by central government for housing development.

In other words there are going to be a lot more cuts in Government services and those that are left will have to operate out of expensive rented buildings.

The Government is going to make an urgent review of surplus land owned by the NHS to explore its transfer to provide more homes.

In other words, when the Government closes your local hospital, the land will be converted into homes you cannot afford before you can bat an eyelid.

So, as usual, the first reports of Brown’s intentions seemed good, but when examined properly they continue the ruling class attack on the working class as before.

*************
Editorial

Crocodile tears

FORMER Tory leader Ian Duncan Smith has suddenly discovered that there are poor people in Glasgow, people who live in appalling conditions in run-down council estates, who have no jobs and are dependent on welfare benefits; people with low morale, poor health and a tendency to become addicted.

He declared: “There are some postal districts in Glasgow where the average life expectancy is 55, which is lower than the bloody Gaza Strip for God’s sake. How can we have this in Britain?”

He has produced a report on his findings on broken families, drug abuse, alcoholism and many other problems, which will be one of six reports that will be the basis of the Tories next election manifesto.

The Tories have concluded that all the problems stem from what they call “broken families”, the decline of the institution of marriage in modern society and giving too many benefits to single parents.

They want to change the tax system to benefit married couples over single parents and to compel single parents to find jobs as soon as their children reach school age; “living on benefit should not be a way of life,” they declare.

They blame the most vulnerable members of society for the effects of closing down the mines, shipyards and factories and leaving the working class with significantly reduced job prospects. They blame single mothers for the effects of selling off council housing and banning local authorities from building new homes or even repairing and restoring the old. And they blame their victims for the effects of relentless cuts in the social wage – not just health and education provision but all those public employees who used to make a real difference: youth workers, park keepers, bus conductors.

Instead of admitting that it was Tory policies that broke this society and destroyed its economic and social structure, they blame the safety net of welfare benefits that keeps the victims from actually starving on the streets.

Single parents do not regard their situation as a career or lifestyle choice. Usually they end up looking after children on their own as a result of accidents, lack of contraception or, more often, because they have been abandoned by the other parent. Tax penalties will not change this. They are actually undertaking a difficult and responsible task in rearing the next generation.

Single parents who work currently get more benefits than couples because couples can usually arrange childcare between them and support each other while single parents have no choice but to pay for childcare services that are still too rare and expensive.

The Tories are not proposing investment in jobs, in better housing, health, education or childcare. They are not even recommending investment in treatment and rehabilitation services for people who are addicted to alcohol or other substances.

They are advocating polices like those in some parts of America that will force single parents to leave their children uncared for outside school hours while they work.

Police, magistrates and probation officers all assert that crime in all of Britain’s major cities could be reduced to a fraction of current levels if drug and alcohol treatment were available for all who need it and want it. There would be no crisis of overflowing jails and it would take enormous pressure off the health system. It would also prolong lives and reduce misery.

Ten years of Labour rule have done little or nothing to roll back the attack made on working class society by the Tory government of the 80s and early 90s.

But the sudden outbreak of apparent compassion for the poor coming from Duncan Smith and his leader David Cameron is an awful warning of further attacks to come if the Tories were ever to be re-elected. They plan to withdraw the lifeline from the drowning victims of their policies in the hope they will just disappear. It is hardly surprising that even after Tony Blair; the Tories still have so little support in Scotland.

Back to index

To the New Communist Party Page