MANCHESTER: TENANTS TORIES

Last week Mrs Chadwick came out of Manchester town hall and started to cry. Her purse was empty and she had to get back home to Moston on the northern edge of the city. At 71 she is too old to walk.

The sudden and desperate shortage of cash was caused by the new Tory rent increases.

Mrs Chadwick is one of the many Manchester old-aged pensioners penalized because of delays in the benefit which are meant to make up for the rent increase.

She had to pay the increase. And that took her money for and food. Many people in Manchester live on a boiled egg a day and the line between survival and starvation is wafer thin.

Mrs Chadwick is a victim. There are many more, living in the 93,000 dwellings owned by the corporation, fortunately not half so helpless as The Manchester working class has begun to fight back. The city has become the centre of the rents revolt and the estates echo with the familiar call: 'Hey, Hey we won't pay!' The windows dislay the little yellow sign 'No Rent Increase Here' and many a frustrated collector has left his beat after meeting tenants' commando squad, there to make sure no one is harassed into paying increase.

The resistance spreads from the forboding barrack-like schemes in the centre, to the sprawling overspill estates built where greater Manchester meets the flat Cheshire countryside.

Everywhere tenants are united by a sense of outrage at a government that has pushed them beyond the limits of patience.

But the rents are not an issue in themselves. They have become a focus for the general hatred working-class people in Manchester feel for the Tory government. Even the title "tenant' is misleading. The tenant, after all, is the young housewife faced with rising prices, the worker whose wages are continually under attack, the low paid who must subject themselves to a humiliating means test before they escape the £1 increase and, of course, the old who have been discarded by the employers as useless after a life of exploitaThe size of the revolt is subject to much speculation. Joe Dean, Labour chairman of Manchester's housing committee, told me on the sixth day OGRAPHS BY P. J. ARKELL of the increase that 3 per cent to 34 per cent of tenants were withholding the increase imposed by his council.

I would certainly dispute these figures on the basis of personal experience on many estates in greater Manchester.

In Ardwick, Beswick, Collyhurst, Miles Plating and Hulme, the figure I would estimate is nearer 50 per cent. In many outlying districts it may drop-but not in all. One of the fiercest battles is beins fought on estates around Altrincham, in Cheshire.

Here, save for the rather standardized buildings, one could be in the businessman's belt, but opposition to the increase has been put as high as 75 per cent-certainly it one street I investigated, two out of three people said they were not paying the fl.

Resistance and struggle brings with it political experience. One of the biggest eyeOpeners has been the behaviour the controlling Labour groups throughout the Manchester area.

Once there was a solid wall of resistance, Salford, Stockport, Oldham, Ashton and Manchester corporation themselves all spat in defiance at the Tory legislation. But one by one they have crumbled to the rule of law-even if it is unjust Tory law.

Only Eccles stands unmoved, protecting the 5,600 council homes from the increase. The councillors have two weeks to fall into line. If they do not the Tory housing chief Peter Walker will put in his commissioner.

So far there are no cracks in the Eccles resistance and housing chairman David Lancaster says he is prepared to break the law.

The Housing Finance Act went through most councils because enough Labour renegades voted with the minority Conservative or Liberal group to ensure safe passage for the Tory legislation.

This has provoked a bitterness on the estates that the councillors find difficult, if not impossible, to comprehend They generally dismiss the activists as irresponsible, subversive or politically motivated.

Their reasons for their betrayal are basically quite crude. They amount to. defence of career, capital or political reputation, plus a fear of jail.

An incident on Salford council—which meekly climbed down last week and reversed its decision not to implement the Act—is characteristic:

Councillor Ivor Zott, chairman of the Labour-controlled housing committee is urging implementation (Mr Zott has been known to describe himself as a Marxist!).

•"I am very anxious about this. You can bring this city to a halt and make yourself bankrupt corporation. • "This council meeting is the Last Supper as far as the Labour Party is concerned. The question of rent and the council tenants does not apply now. You are really faced with self-preservation • in the interests of socialism, and with making sure you are not barred from public office for five years for refusing to implem think you should now be bold enough to say: 'We have had second thoughts about the Act and we will agree to implement it.' It is a pitiful situation." 'Cllr H. Williams asked if Cllr Zott was asking the council to change its mind. If so he should say so clearly.

'Cllr Zott: "I do say so. I am trying to protect my career, among other things"' (Extracts from the "Salford City Reporter', October 6, 1972.)

The cry among Manchester councillors is the same. The Manchester Trades Council met the controlling Labour Group on the corporation and promised them full backing if the government victimized councillors (the powerful Manchester AUEW district committee has also gone on record for industrial action if councillors are penalized).

But Joe. Dean, the Labour chairman of the housing committee, was not impressed. 'I don't think the backing was there quite frankly, he told me. 'When we met the Trades Council one councillor asked if the help they offered would cover in full any financial indemnity he would suffer. They said no. Now I don't want anyone cheering me into jail. I might lose my house and I don't want to-I want to know if they are going to make up that loss.' Mr Dean-a member of the AUEW and a shop floor worker at AEI's giant Trafford Park works, also doubts if a call to action would get any support from the rank and file in the unions.

Colin Davies, secretary of Manchester Trades Council, is vehemently opposed to these views. He says the councillors have cut themselves adrift from the feeling in the wider labour movement. "The Labour councillors, I believe, are out of step with the tenants and even the rank and file in their own Party,' he told me. "They simply don't realize the biterness their back tracking has caused on this issue. It is really a historic collapse. They have shown no faith in the tenants or their supporters in the labour movement to resist this increase.

'We would not have the situation today where many tenants are left to take a stand alone if they had put fight as they promised. really a serious question.' On this issue Mr Davies is undoubtedly correct. What fears Manchester tenants do have for resisting the Act are inspired by a feeling of isolation. The usual question is 'what happens when they come round to evict me?' Labour councillors in every ward of the city were in a position to go out onto the estates (where people faithfully return them to office each year) and explain that their council was asking them to resist, that they had the whole strength of the Labour Party behind them and that they would not be alone in the struggle against the Tories. In these circumstances the resistance would have been near 100 per cent—you don't come across any tenants who actually support the Act! Instead Labour councillors have abandoned their resistance in order to keep their positions in local government. This, they say, is protecting socialism on local councils. Just how socialism can be defended by abandoning basic rights won by the working class—like council housing they do not explain.

So the tenants are left alone to face any penalities imposed for resisting the 92p increase.

Joe Dean doubts the •sa, Labour-controlled council would initiate any eviction proceedings. But he does point out that the public auditor can begin his own proceedings through the city treasurer independent of council instrucThis would lead to an action in a civil court where the tenant-for what it is worth— would have the right to representation.

The struggle in Manchester so far has been largely confined to street action designed to encourage the biggest possible response to the rent increase strike. This has successtully spread the resistance, but in itself it is inadequate.

The Housing Finance Act is not just a rent increase. Its root aim is to destroy public housing. Already Manchester -perhaps the biggest housing authority in England and Wales - finds the cost of schemes border on the ceiling fixed by central government.

The government allows the cost of each project to exceed a set maximum by 10 per cent. But future projects in Manchester will run 20 per cent above the maximum because of land prices and interests charges. • With increase in rents, this cost escalation threatens the city's council dwelling programme - which stretches to 1976—with destruction. Joe Dean does not think this will happen in Manchester. He believes the new Tory gimmick-of subsidies for areas of special need-—will apply in the city. But almost every Labour housing chief thinks the same and the Tories have given no evidence of their love for massive council house building programmes.

What is at stake in Manchester, therefore, is not just another Tory attack on living standards, but a bid to deprive the whole working class of a basic right. As such the challenge can only be taken up by the whole working class. Many tenant activists, particularly those influenced by the Communist Party and International Socialist factions in the Manchester fight, maintain that the struggle must be kept to rents only.

The logic of this position, of course, is that the lory government can be 'persuaded' or 'forced' to abandon its Pans to destray council housThis is an illusion. The parallel with the Industrial Relations Act immediately springs to mind. The massive resistance against this legislation has not forced the Tories to abandon the court-on the contrary it is now recognized by the entire trade unior. leadership.

Within the resistance to rent increases and the Housing Finance Act there is a big political question. It is as well tenants recognize this. Either this government is forced from office by the united action of all sections of the working class, or the tenants will lose their basic right of cheap council housing.

The tenants must urgently pursue this perspective. It demands a unity in action with trade unions fighting similar struggles and a firm recognition that their struggle is political.

Tuesday: The tenants' struggle is discussed by their leader, Labour councillors and trade unionists.

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Saturday 'Parliamentary reform' and the working workil class, by Jane E