SLUMS- BUT LABOUR 'LEFTS' LACK THE SOLUTION

SMOKE People living Eccles, Salford, : Swinton and Urmston are disturbed about a sulphuricacid plant which is being built in Trafford Park, Manchester. The new factory is being built by Leather's Chemical Co Ltd, of Bradford.

A letter to the Department of the Environment from the Eccles Town Council has suggested additional conditions to the planning permission, concerning the amount of sulphuric acid to be produced daily and the amount of dioxide and trioxide to be discharged from the chimney.

The council also wants arrangements for immediate notification by telephone to Eccles, Urmston and Salford Councils and Hope and Ladywell Hospitals of any breakdown or malfunction in the plant which could lead to an additional discharge of any compound of sulphur.

Both Eccles and Salford Councils had objected to the factory on the grounds of possible hazard to public health.

Reginald Martin, chief public health inspector of Eccles, has said that his department believed the factory chimney should be higher because of high-rise flats in the area.

Aubrey Ward, the town's smoke-control officer, says that the ideal speed for smoke to leave a chimney in that area is 50 feet per second, but the speed planned for the acid works chimney was only 30 feet per second. This, he said, was 'a bit dodgy'.

HIGHER AND HIGH In October the Retail Price Index rose to 168.7 compared with 166.4 in September (January 1962=100). The new figure is 7.9 per cent above that of October 1971. Part of the rise was due to higher Retail PI Index 1971 October 156.4 November 157.3 December 158.1 1972 January 159.0 February 159.8 March 160.3 April 161.8 May 162.6 June 163.7 July 164.7 August 165.5 September 166.4 October 168.7 Labour Research Department BALLOT McGovern A late result in the presidential elections has shown possibilities yet for the humiliated McGovern camp.

The result came from an island called Little Diomede in the Bering Strait, just two miles off the Soviet-owned Big Diomede Island.

When the count was completed it was a landslide victory for McGovern. He got 21 votes and Nixon only five.

Actually the result was a little early in any case. Sometimes it doesn't come through until January, two months after the elections.

By that time the water around the island freezes hard enough for an airplane to land and pick up the ballots delivered earlier by parachute.

rents for council homes under the Housing Finance Act. There were also higher charges for many other goods and services. Price increases are now accelerating once again, as can be seen from the table below.

Per cent increase Retail Price over corresponding month a corresponding month BOOK REVIEW PLACE LIKE HOME' compiled by Frank Allaun, MP.

The Tory government says it is near to 'solving' the housing problem. There are as many dwel lings as tamilies, about 18 million each, they claim.

It is true physically there are just about enough places to live. But that's only the surface of the story.

There are nearly 11 million men, women and children living in houses which do not have a bath, hot water system or inside lavatory. More than 5 million of them living in dwellings held to be unfit for human habitation.

Millions more live in overcrowded conditions and, of course, over 5 million council tenants are now saddled with £1 rent increases as the Tories step up their plans to destroy the basis of municipal housing.

Frank Allaun, Labour MP for Salford East for the last 17 years, has compiled 50 interviews by workers living in squalid conditions up and down Britain.

'No Place Like Home' gives a vivid and often startling account of what it means to live in slums, with walls fallno downe damp and rubble, through mouths of the tenants themselves.

Take Gladys Edmonton, who lives in a four-storey tenement over 100 years old. The houses in the street are all owned by two landlords who are estimated to be making £7,500 a year, clear, out of the properties.

The dwellings contain almost every housing defect: damp, vermin, overcrowding, lack of lavatories and bathrooms, rotting walls and ceilings, faulty drains.

'I've got five children, a tenmonth-old baby, five-year-old twins, a 14-year-old boy and 16-year-old girl, says Mrs Edmonton.

A part-time cleaner, she sits in the living-cum-bedroom, which is hopelessly jammed with good furniture.

'The baby's got a cot in the corner and we've got a double bed in the centre. The twins have got bunk beds. As regards the older ones, the girl sleeps at the top of a putyou-up settee, while the boy sleeps at the bottom.

'We've no bath. We've only got cold water. Then there's getting the hot water. I must use 3 or 4s worth of gas on pots and kettles, just to bath them alone. I have to carry the water down the stairs to empty it and up again with clean water.

'We've been down to the council a few times about the overcrowding and they say they can't put us any further forward on the list than they have done.' Bessie Reid lives Gorbals, I'm 20 this Frank Allaun, Labour MP for Salfond house. I've five children in here. My husband is dead. We've two bedrooms and a kitchen. The rats are terrible. I could show you woollen jumpers that have been ate away with them. The kids are afraid to go to sleep at night because of them and you have to keep the light on.

'My name was down on the council waiting list first 19 years ago. Now I'm going into a four-room apartment.' Meanwhile, outside are the communal toilets, each serving three families. There is gas lighting on the landing.

Thousands of farmworkers like Joe live in tied cottages which go with their jobs.

'If you lose your job you lose your home too. We had a dispute when we were in one house. I wouldn't do something so they gave me a fortnight's notice and took back the house.

'We had two sons by then, a baby and one nearly three. That was in 1 November. In that village the farmer had put the pressure on to prevent anyone giving me a job.

'From time to time he'd come down the hill and say: "Bramley you'll have to get out of this house, you know" I was out of work from November to February.

'The union is against tied cottages for two reasons: It holds down wages, and it causes fear and anxiety.' As useful as this collection of interviews is in illustrating the depth of the housing crisis, the conclusions at the end of the book also expose the last 17 years Allaun's complete political bankruptcy.

The 'left' MP, who spoke for the national executive at the Labour Party conference this year against those refusing to implement the Tories' 'fair rents' Act calls for: 500,000 new houses each year, a target which is "chiefly a matter of will'; improvement for old houses, the nationalization of land and help for the private landlord's tenant.

On the question of financing these projects, Allaun can only offer the usual hash of Fabian solutions.

'An expansionist economic policy; an annual wealth tax and a cut in military expenditure, ; are his 'answers'.

But as long as there is capitalism there will be a housing crisis. The system cannot deliver the goods on housing or anything else for that matter because it is based on profit.

No amount of tinkering with the system will change that.

To resolve the housing crisis means firstly attacking the basis of the private ownership of the means of production, something which Allaun is not prepared to fight for.

But the next Labour government must be made to nationalize under workers' control and without compensation not only the land, but the banks, building societies and the entire building industry together with private landlord property.

Unless that is done there can never be the resources for a crash housing programme.