LETTER: Unions must fight with tenants

THE NEED to involve the trade union movement in the rent struggle was emphasized on the demonstration. I took part in the rent strike campaign in Liverpool in 1968 which was isolated to the tenants.

We fought on the principle of making the 'left' MPs in the Labour Party fight. We demanded that the Labour government should nationalize the land and the building societies and cut out the property speculators.

Today we are fighting the same battle, only this time we are hell-bent on a masting organized faced labour as unemployment grows and workers are pushed into the They must do this to preserve their system. In the factory where I work, the company is moving its computers into Europe and all the big orders are going to the factories in Europe, and the workers in our factory are going to • have to face up to redundancies. When capital is moved into Europe, whole sections of workers will be thrown on the dole.

The north west has already suffered. Whole communities dependent on shipbuilding, steel and cotton are being dissolved into long-stretching dole queues. The Tories use the dole as a rod to beat the workers, together with the r: Industrial Relations Act, which legally ties the unions to the state.

We look to our leaders inside the labour movement and what do we find? Vic Feather runs down to Chequers for a cosy chit-chat with Heath, while other leaders say Ignore the Act'. How can we : ignore a carefully thought-out piece of vicious legislation like this? The Tory government is determined to smash A DEMONSTRATION of 800 people demanded action against the Tory Rent Act in Kirkby, near Liverpool, last Sunday. A resolution was passed calling for a total rent strike and for industrial action if any councillor or tenant who refused to implement the Act was threatened. Tenants from Northwood, Southdene, Westvale, Towerhill, Bootle and Fazakerley also condemned those Labour councillors on Merseyside who voted for the implementation of the Act and called for their expulsion from the Labour Party.

In this letter to Workers Press, the Southdene Action Group and of mittee, explains the background to the trade union movement and turn the clock back 100 years.

On all the major issues the Labour Party leaders prop up the system they are supposedly against.

Now they are in opposition they say they'll throw out these unfair Acts when they return to power. I can't believe this. They ought to throw out Jenkins and the others who kept the Tories in power when they voted with them on the Common Market.

When Kirkby's Labour-controlled council voted 10 to 9 to implement the Tory Housing Finance Act, there were many excuses. There was talk of going to jail or even being surcharged. They were not alone-Liverpool Council also voted for implementation. I condemn all the councillors who voted for implementation.

Our local action groups, through our co-ordinating committee, are calling for the expulsion of these traitors from the Labour Party.

When a councillor is elected he ceases to be an individual; he represents tenants, owneroccupiers, workers and unemployed alike.

The tenants should not fight alone on this issue. It should be taken into the workplaces and there should be immediate action if any tenant is threatened or evicted, if any 'attachment of Mike Downes, a member of the local Co-ordinating Comthe demonstration.

earnings' is slapped on anyone or if any councillor is threatened for refusing to collaborate with At our meeting the call was to unite tenants, workers and unemployed to defeat the Act and bring down the Tory governEddie Loyden, who heads Liverpool Trades Council and councillor who voted against implementing the Act, said:

'There is a crisis of leadership inside the labour movement. What we should be working for is the mobilization of the working class to kick the Tories out.' Housewives also spoke of unemployment, of inflation, of the struggle to make ends meet and also of the need for the unions and tenants to take up the fight for the old age pensioners.

I believe a fair rent for an old-age pensioner is no rent.

But what I think was missed was the role of the TUC. On the rents issue alone they should be mobilizing the trade union movement to bring down this lory government. Big trade unions have already backed the tenants in words, but this is not enough.

They must force the Tories out and a Labour government in, pledged to nationalize, without compensation, the building industry, land and the building societies.

Pri