CHAUCER HOUSE AND THE HOPELESS LIBERALS

Now the rave reviews have subsided it is time to take a more objective look at the BBC documentary "The Block' transmitted last Tuesday night.

It was a riveting hour-long feature on the conditions at a halfway-house for temporarily homeless families in the London borough of Southwark.

Producer Paul Watson spent three months 'on locality' gathering his film and commentary. In this respect the film had much to commend it. The technique is 'observatory participation'-where the filmmaker or journalist lives the role' of his subject material.

Chaucer House, the name of the place, is one of the grimmest examples of capitalism's treatment of poor working-class families. When Workers Press reporter Sarah Hannigan visited the building in June this year she wrote: 'Conditions in the block defy description. It seemed at the time that this statement revealed a journalistic inadequacy.

But having visited the accommodation through the eyes of Mr Watson's cameras, one can understand how she came to this abrupt concluShaucer House, or the eci describe as it is known, one needs to be a Dickens or a Dostoievsky.

The documentary roves from one family to the next piecing together the desperate state of their lives. Inter-cut are interviews with local housing officials from the Labour-controlled Southwark Council.

After three-quarters of an hour of vivid description, one began to wait for the punchline. What would Mr Watson make of this wretched and cruel existence?

One got a nod that he was going to drift into the worst sort of liberalism when onto the screen appeared a woman answering a telephone from someone who had been spied on by agents of the Department of Health and Social The phone conversation was the first piece of obvious reconstruction. We can't believe that Mr Watson was in the office when suddenly the phone rang!

Then there was a passing reference to the courageous work of the Claimants' Union and in a wink the film had collapsed into a mish-mash of sentimental rubbish about those below the 'poverty line' and the hard-faced bureaucracy who didn't understand.

The guests were John Riches, former leader of the tenants' association at "The Block', Frank Field, the director of the Child Poverty Action Group, Cyril Mercer, the Southwark housing manager and Alderman Sawyer, chairman of the housing committee.

Mr Riches, who had figured prominently in the film, has now got alternative accommodation. We also learnt that he is into just about every committee in the business.

He is on the 'early-warning committee'-no, it's nothing to do with the weather, it's to do with getting the authorities to pre-empt housing difficulties by offering assistance before rioting starts -tenants' groups, claimants bodies, etc., etc.

He even vouchsafed that he now tours the country giving lectures to trainee social Then Mr Field, whose liberal sentiments are of legendary embarrassment, called for government action to help out.

No one stated the obvious that homelessness and poverty are an inevitable product of capitalism. To talk of 'pressuring' the Tory government into 'solving' the problem is a ludicrous suggestion. They won't and they can't!