St Pancras Tenants Threaten Rent Strike

Delegates representing 35 St. Pancras tenants' associations voted last Sunday to withhold all rent increases due on January 4.

The resolution, carried with 154 votes for, with nine against and two abstentions, reaffirms the tenants' complete rejection of the Tory Council's means test. Council tenants are faced with increases averaging 25s. a week. In some cases rents will be actually doubled.

The tenants' decision to fight the increases is a serious one. They can expect a tough and determined resistance from the Tories.

The new rents policy if implemented will mean a saving on rates for owners of office-blocks, factories and multiple stores of around four pounds a week.

The real reason for the high rents is of course the interest rates plundered by the money-lenders. In the last eight years the St Pancras Borough Council has paid out over £1,750,000 in interest on housing loans.

Naturally, the financiers, property owners and their Tory Council will fight tooth-and-nail to defeat the tenants. High rents for tenants is a profitable business for them.

The Tory government, as the agency for big business, aims to protect profits, interest charges and ground rents at the expense of working class living standards. Ever since November 1956 when they ended all subsidies to local authorities—except for slum clearance and one-bedroomed flats—their strategy has been to force up rents.

How to defeat the Tories

The St Pancras Tories know full well that they have the full support and backing of the government.

But the Tories can be defeated. First of all the St Pancras tenants have shown that they want to fight. Don Cook, secretary of the Tenants' Central Committee says that 4,350 tenants have not returned the means test forms sent out by the council.

Of the 2819 which were returned, 1300 were spoiled and 552 were from old age pensioners. The call made in September by the Central Committee to tenants not to co-operate with the council by filling in the forms, obviously has the support of the great majority of tenants.

The urgent task now is to ensure that the St Pancras tenants are not left to fight alone. The Central Committee should take every step to mobilize the support of the entire London Labour movement behind the St Pancras tenants.

What the Tories want to do is to fight the tenants in different boroughs one at a time. Labour must make sure this does not happen.

Without delay the St Pancras Tenants' Central Committee should convene an all-London Conference to which they should invite all tenants' organizations, shop stewards' committees, trade union branches and local Labour Parties.

Crawley New Town too

Tenants in Crawley New Town are faced with rent increases on November 30 averaging 6s. 6d. a week. A special invitation should be sent to the Crawley tenants asking them to participate in the Conference.

The Conference should aim at organizing mass pickets to resist evictions. It should also try and get jobs and factories etc to pledge industrial action if the Tories try evictions or insist on going ahead with their scheme to increase rents.

This weekend in the St Pancras Town Hall, delegates from union branches, factory committees, Labour Parties and tenants' associations will be meeting at the National Assembly of Labour organized by the Socialist Labour League and The Newsletter. One of the main items for discussion will be the fight against rent increases and we extend a special invitation to the St Pancras tenants and their associations to attend that conference.