Tenants' fight betrayed 'gesture of defiance' ...retreat

petitions and lobbies to 'Kill the Bill'. The strategy was to make the legislation 'inoperative' through the non-cooperation of Labour councils.

Attempts to unite tenants with trade unionists in powerful movement to bring down the source of the rent doubling operation-the Tory government — were dutifully Means-test report shows fair fraud THE FAIRNESS' of the means test in the Tories 'fair rents' Act has been exposed as a fraud by London sociologist Della Nevitt.

Generally speaking, she says, Britain's means-tested aid system is not solving the problem of family poverty because the amount of benefit from such schemes is not related to family size or needs.

Miss Nevitt, reader in social administration at the London School of Economics, adds:

"The effect of the present benefits is so minimal that there is a very samll difference between the net disposable income of large and small households.' In her report, 'Hidden Equalities and Family Incomes', she LATEST POCKET LIBRARY CONTAINERIZATION He sellin The case for nationalization of the docks and transport industry SEA/LLAND SEA JIGLAND SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE POCKET By Stephen Johns and lan Yoats Prico: Thirty pence PHILIP attacked by the Stalinists.

All this, of course, had no effect whatsoever on the Tory government. The Bill became an Act and the first £l increases are due on Monday week.

The Tories understood points out that single man earning £30 gross a week has £16.99 to spend on food, clothes, etc., while a man with three children, after all taxes and means-tested benefits, has £22.17 —leaving only £5.18 to feed and clothe an additional four people.

If we assume that the family must pay a higher rent than the single person-say a single person pays t5 a week and a five.

person family £10 a week-then the difference between what the is only f2.5g and the single man family has to spend on food, The report examines the economic effects of benefits under income tax, national insurance contributions, family income supplement, rent rebates under the new 'fair' re nts law and free school meals.

PAMPHLEI JUST OUT!

Johns' and lan

timely articles on now put together in a useful pamphlet which makes vital reading for dockers and all workers fighting for the right to work. Available as below 30p 'There is treat when to retreat,' opposition' of the Labour councils was a mere token gesture. They were right. One by one the 380 Labour councils capitulated and decided to implement the In London the retreat has has been virtually complete. Only Camden-and they appear to be having second thoughts — are refusing to implement out of a total of 21 Labour-controlled inner London councils. Nationally only about 40 councils are still defiant.

The Stalinists have refused to fight this collaboration • by the Labour councils. At no time have they called for the expulsion of the right-wing in the town halls.

Now they have come forward in Tower Hamlets, East London, to attempt further to divert tenants away from the main Tory enemy and the Labour bureaucracy which carries out its directives.

At a meeting on Thursday meht ocal Staliant leaderation the local called for the withholding of the £1 increases as a 'gesture defiance'.

Ex-CP councillor Solly Kaye removed last year when the Local Bengali workers voted Labour in opposition to the CP's line on Bangladesh—made it quite clear that only a protest would do now.

always a time to reyou are are forced said Kaye.

He then explained how, when the bailiff eventually arrived at the tenants' doors, he would be told the arrears would be repaid at so much a week. So no one would get hurt.

Unfortunate'

It was not going to be a rent strike as such, he said, because of 'certain unfortunate events of 1968'. No doubt he was referring to the isolated rent strike by Greater London Council tenants which the Stalinists isolated and led to defeat.

Apart from gestures of defiance, Kaye and the other Stalinist speaker, Max Levitas, had nothing but words of despair for the tenants. It was little wonder that most of the 100 people at the meeting drifted off before the close.

Having driven tenants into blind-alleys, the Stalinists are now trying to demoralize them with hopeless gestures. With only a week to go before the increases, the urgent question becomes the construction of Councils of Action in all the areas.

This is the only way in which the millions of tenants and trade unionists - betrayed by their leaderships-can be mobilized in a compaign to force the Tories to resign and elect a Labour government pledged to repeal the Act and carry out socialist policies of nationalization under workers' control and without compensaAnd it is in this fight that the Stalinists like Kaye and Levitas, who spend their time propping up the Tory government by preventing the working class getting to grips with it, Will be defeated and a new principled, revolutionary leadership built.