WE STAND

The tenants' movement in Manchester has split the Labour Party and the Labour movement down the middle. The bulk of the Labour group on the city corporation voted to implement the increase despite a mandate demanding resistance from the city Labour Party. Similar schisms have occurred in the surrounding towns. When the old guard in Stockport Labour Party voted with the Tories and let in the rents increases they were denounced as "traitors and rats' by councillors who stuck to the original policy of non-implementation.

It must be said, however, that even this group on the left still peddle the illusion that the Tories can be forced to retreat over the Housing Finance Act-a position supported from within the tenants' groups by many spokesmen from the Communist Party and the anti-communist revisionists of the International Socialists. Support from the well-organized trade unions in the city has been poor. The district committee of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers has gone on record threatening strikes if people are victimized. But there have been no stoppages in factories so far— unlike Liverpool where the dockers and the building workers came out in strength the day the rent increase came One of the main reasons for this apathy is that there is a political conspiracy within the tenants' movement to see the rents struggle as a protest campaign over one issue only. This divorces the rents fight from the battles within the unions over pay, jobs and the right to strike. Again this perspective flows from the reformist views of the Stalinists in the Communist Party and the IS. Here are three views on the rents struggle, one from a leading Manchester trade union official, one from a Labour councillor and one from a tenant who has organized her estate to refuse to pay the rent increase. VIEW Colin Davies is secretary of Manchester Trades Council. In the early stages of the campaign the trades council made contact with the tenants' associations, But support from the trade union side was not great. On October 29 another meeting is planned to consider further help.

I think it is a perfectly valid criticism of the trade union movement to say that we have tended to leave the tenants alone in this fight. 'Unions like NALGO have said they will support any ment the who increase and is member refuses to implepunished for this. You had some support in Liverpool. But as yet in Manchester there has been no real appeal to the factories. Whether this will come I don't know. 'What we are doing at the present time is trying to fix up meetings with Labour groups who are resisting. We are determined that they will not be the Aunt Sallys of the Tory government. But we would also like to know what happens when people get SO far in arrears. Will this mean eviction? We are being as conciliatory as we can because we need maximum help from the Labour groups should a situation like this ever come to pass.

The Manchester council would go along with our view that is not to carry out any evictions against the working-class population of this city. Salford we know will not consider eviction [this was before Salford decided to surrender and implement the Act]. 'The engineers district committee, of course, has gone on record for a strike if any victimization occurs. I think if people landed up in court to defying this Act there would be a situation similar to the confrontation that developec over the jailing of the five dockers. It is perhaps not a situation that is pleasant but it may be inevitable.' I asked Mr Davies what he thought of the performance of the Labour Party—nationally and in Manchester.

I think the Tories must be very pleased that the many councillors who were once breathing fire have collapsed SO miserably. am really amazed there has not been greater resistance. 'We met the Manchester Labour group of councillors. We wanted the tenants there as well but the council refused. We offered them full support of the trade union movement if they stood up to the government. We said we would back them but they didn't seem to believe us.

'They said by co-operating with the legislation the blow could be softened. Well the Manchester increase turns out to be 92 p instead of £1hardly a victory. "The thing that disappointed my trades council about this was that the collapse seemed to indicate an abandonment of the principle that housing is a social service for the people. 'Here was a Labour council getting enmeshed in Tory plans to make a profit out of council housing. The councillors say it was expedient-but how can you be expedient about such principles? All you can do is ight for them. 'Even now the Labour Party policy is ambiguous. They say they will establish a non-profit rent. But even with the 92p rents are still too low to cover expenditure on the housing revenue. Seven eighths of this is in interest for loans of course and this is the nub. So long as the building societies, the finance houses, remain in rIGt KENT I : *EAT TSA private hands-and the City of London exists we will have this "housing problem" "Truly I don't think these councillors realize how out of step they have become with the wider labour movement. They just don't realize the bitterness their back-tracking on this issue has caused. it is an historic collapse. They don't show much faith in the people who have consistently supported them.' I asked Mr Davies about the policy of the tenants' movement. There were those who argued that militant action would have to be forced out and that the tenants' struggle was part of this.

I think the second analysis is perfectly correct,' he said. •We have, after all, the example of the Industrial Relations Act. Heath is cling.

OL "tE What will the effect ot the lousing Finance Act be on Manchester's programme? applied rents 'On rents post-war houses on the end the increase which, spread over the We are hoping the rises that are sp minister now called fair will not 'My main worry 1s over the cost or bullaing council nouses and prices rocketing and course the debt burden ever more per cent margin which are to attract the essential work. You have to agree to them going behind your back and seeing the manager at your work. 'You sign away all your rights with this document. To ere ise with this the reet are taking you back to the means. test time of 30 or 40 years ago. You can imagine people filling in the wrong things and then getting penalized for it. You can imagine others who are too proud-it's the big ones again knocking around the working man 'Now I would like to know what Mr Barber earns, what his wife earns, what they have in the bank, how much they much they their savings banks. That would be very