Lambeth still to decide: Council of Action to lobby

THE HATED Housing Finance 'fair rents' Bill is now an Act. The Tories' plans mean that millions of council tenants face another £l a week on their rents from this October.

Rents will go on increasing —if the Tories have their way —until they more or less double. Subsidies to local councils for building flats and houses will gradually be phased out.

For the first time since the 1930s, the notorious means test will be introduced on a massive and universal scale for those forced to apply for rebates.

Yet although hundreds of thousands of tenants organized around their own associations have put up a hard. fight against the Bill, they have been brutally betrayed by the Labour leadership, both nationally and locally.

Few Labour councils have said they won't implement the Tory Act, designed to destroy the whole basis of municipal housing. Picket rent collectors call STOCKPORT council tenants may picket rent collectors to force a 'confrontation' over the Tory government's Housing Finance Act. Local firms could also be hit by sympathy walkouts, a tenants' leader has warned.

Proposing the picket move, Ron Williams, chairman of Thornley Lane Tenants' Association, said:

'The first weapon to be used against the government's Rent Act would be the picketing of any government agent appointed to be the landlord council tenants in Stockport. This should be followed by picket lines, in the hope that rent collectors, who are trade unionists, will not Subscribe!

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Days required MONDAY (Please tick) TUESDAY Or Full subscript •days) for AMI DDI Amount enclosed £ would like information abou THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE Fill in the form below and send to NATIONAL SECRETARY, SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE, 186A CLAPHAM HIGH ST, LONDON, SW4 7UG. Name Address out a subscription One of the councils which hasn't made up its mind yet is Labour-controlled Lambeth south London. The only agreement the councillors have reached so far is to do nothing.

Tomorrow they meet for the final time before the summer recess. The Lambeth Council of Action has called for a lobby and demonstration at the council meeting.

The demands are for non-implementation of the Act, the expulsion from the Labour Party of all those who carry out Tory policies, the resignation of the Tory government and the return of a Labour government pledged to carry out socialist policies.

I spoke to Graham Nicholson, chairman of the Lambeth Borough Estates Group, which cross the lines to collect rent.' In this way a 'confrontation' could be achieved, if the collectors who failed to cross the picket lines reported back to their superiors.

Some tenants, however, have criticized the picket protest plan. Secretary of the Lancashire Hill Tenants' Association cutting off Morris, said it was their noses to spite their faces' She added: 'If they withhold their rent, they are doing the stupidest thing. There will be massive evictions, and they will have to pay what they have been withholding. I wouldn't have anybody dictating to me how I should pay my rent. It is no way to win a fight against the Rent Act.' dally or that Is the I agaln Tories.

Clapham THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY month incorporates about 20 tenants' associations affiliated to the Association of London Housing Estates. His group is supporting the lobby and demanding action from the Labourites.

'We began fighting the "fair rents" policy as long ago as July 1971 when the White Paper "Fair Deal in Housing" came out.

"The council has known about it all this time-but the members have been split down the middle as to what to do. They have claimed they couldn't do much because there was no one to back them up.

But the only security we could offer them is fighting with them. It's an effort to get people going, but we will do it.

'Yet the councillors have themselves forward an especially themse ves Tor ware when you consider it is a Labour council. They have let us down disgustingly. Instead of giving a lead over this complex issue they have done nothing.' Mr Nicholson, a member of the Post Office Engineering Union, lives on the 15th floor of one of Lambeth's enormous tower blocks. For a magnificent view of industrial south London he pays nearly f10 a week in rent and rates. Confrontation due at Southampton ship builders w1 12.htt-ite-ilmdl THE SHIPBUILDING firm of Vosper Thorneycrofts based at Woolston, Southampton, seem determined on a major confrontation with their 2,000-strong workforce.

Two separate disputes have been affecting the yard for several weeks. One concerns a pay claim by 400 technical and supervisory staff members of various grades who want parity with skilled manual workers and with equivalent grades in other shipbuilding yards.

Management responded to an overtime ban and work-to-rule with the sacking of 21 TASS members. Last Why had Labour councils up and down the country refused to give a lead to the thousands of tenants who always turn out and vote Labour? 'I blame the National Executive of the Labour Party for that. All along they refused to give a lead, saying it was up to the individual boroughs to made up their own minds. 'When there were no guidelines from the top, the individual councillor thought about the possible £400 surcharge and took fright. 'The trade union leadership has also let us down badly on the Housing Finance Bill. We sent them telegram after telegram, but none were ever read out at their meetings. And many times we have tried unsuccessfully to get one of them to speak at our meeting. *This government talks about inflation, yet this is one of the most inflationary pieces of legislation ever. Rents will soar and so will rates. And on top of that tenants can go through the 44th available means test. "The fight against the Act can't help being political, that's true. The Tories sat on this Act for a long time. Now it comes with the Common Market and Monday a mass meeting voted unanimously for all-out strike action until the men were reinstated and the pay claim settled.

Subsequently 19 shipwrights were laid off because they refused to work with non-union inspectors who had replaced TASS men on strike.

The second dispute concerns Boilermakers' Society members. The management claims that under the existing agreement they have the right to conduct a time-and-motion survey. This is refuted by the men.

As a result, however, boilermakers who have refused to be timed have been laid ofi. They have been clocking-on for the past three weeks, but have been offered no work.

Last Friday, the 61 boilermakers joined the TASS members on the picket lines.

Vosper have threatened that unless there is a full resumption of work this week by all sections they will begin mass lay-offs. The first of these are expected to be some of the ancillary • workers today and tomorrow. By the end of the week possibly hundreds of craftsmen will also be laid off.

According to an electhe Industrial Relations Act.

'Those who cannot afford the rent will have to move out into inferior accommodation. Ghettos will be formed when all housing should be a social need.

'Tenants were slow on the uptake, but now they're waking up. The fight is not finished—it's only just started. There will be an enormous reaction when the rent increases start hitting people?

The Association of London Housing Estates are hoping for support from the local government workers' union, NALGO. Many branches of the union have pledged not to do the administrative work concerned with the Act.

'We support the Council of Action as far as opposing the Act is concerned and for the voting out of those councillors who refuse to fight.

Although I personally support the campaign to make the Tories resign, we can't commit the association to a political line like that. I know it's a contradictory position, because it is a political issue we're taking on. But that's the position of tenants' associations at the moment—nonpolitical, said Mr Nicholson.

trical trades union member the confrontation could be to force liew agreements on bonus schemes and shiftwork under conditions of lay-offs and threats of redundancies.

• MEANWHILE at the International Synthetic Rubber Company workers have voted unanimously to continue their five-weekold strike. Trouble broke out at the plant when management sent home men who were banning overtime because of the firm's refusal to negotiate on a new grading scheme.

Below: ISR workers picket a supply lorry. 20111 130!

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