Angry Tenants Demonstrate Against St Pancras Rent Scheme

HUNDREDS of angry tenants demonstrated outside St Pancras Town Hall on Monday, as members of the Housing Management Committee met to discuss the new rent scheme.

Time after time the crowd chanted: 'We want Prior' but Mr Prior, the leader of the Tory council group remained inside the meeting along with the rest of his supporters. One person who did leave was quickly surrounded by police and escorted to the Kings' Cross Tube Station where police sealed off an entrance to let him get away.

As the crowd surged forward against the entrance they were pushed and jostled by the police. Later two demonstrators were arrested.

A delegation was finally admitted into the meeting and they reported that a special sub-committee was being set up to consider the scheme. Many tenants consider this an attempt by the Tories to ride the storm.

'They hope that will satisfy us and kid us into believing they intend to do something. The only way to make sure we don't pay the increases is to force the Tories out of office' said one woman from the Cannon's Way Estate.

Very few tenants seem impressed by the proposal to form a sub-committee. Most of them recognize that the tremendous resistance to the increases has shaken the Tories and that they are now playing for time.

On Monday October 1, the Central Committee of the St Pancras Tenants' associations is organizing a march on to the Tory Central Office at Smith Square. Don Cook, the Committee's secretary, says that they are calling on all London tenants' organizations to support this demonstration.