Tenants' anger at Banbury rent rise

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Despite the cold weather, over: 300 angry tenants turned up on December 1 bringing petitions, spontaneously gathered, with over 1500 signatures, to lobby councillors against the proposed £3 rent increase in Banbury.

They picketed Banbury Town Hall as the councillors arrived for the Housing Services Committee meeting:

• Own ideas Although Committee chairperson Cil. Doreen Smith agreed to accept the petitions before the meeting, the council refused to admit all the tenants to the meeting, claiming there was not sufficient room for more than 20.

However, the lobby had its own ideas on how to change their minds.

They marched around to the other side of the building, and shouted their indignation outside the committee room window.

The meeting then had to be adjourned to a larger hall upstairs to accommodate everyone.

Once inside, the tenants waited patiently throughout the meeting, hoping for the rent increases to be discussed.

When finally it became obvious that it was not going to be discussed, the meeting erupted, disrupting the committee for 15 minutes.

After the meeting I interviewed the ex-Mayor of Banbury, Labour Councillor Colin Taylor, and Tenants Action Committee Secretary Dave Ramsay.

DJ: Can you explain simply how this rent increase has come about?

Colin Taylor: According to the Chief Executive, there are three main components. First, an initial deficit of £75,000 caused by accounting errors.

Second, a massive leap in the number and cost of repairs being carried out.

This problem is essentially due to the use of outside contractors, over whom the council no control.

They don't know what repairs have been done, nor what they should cost.

Finally, the Treasurer expected the interest rates to drop lo long before they did.

DJ: What should the council have done in your opinion? CI: Mismanagement of the account goes back a long way. At every election the Tories crow about having kept down rents and rates, instead of letting them rise gradually with inflation. Then suddenly there has to be an almighty bump up. DJ: What did you think of the turnout?

Dave Ramsey: I thought it was very good considering the weather.

DJ: What were your objectives for the lobby?

DR: Originally to make our presence felt by the numbers. sitting facing them. This must be the first time in years that anything's happened in Banbury -the Tories must have had quite a surprise.

Secondly, we wanted to hand in the petitions which had been gathered from all over the area. ' When we presented them to Doreen Smith (the chairperson of the Housing Services Committee-DJ) she promised to "give them the consideration they deserve" adding "considering that they come from such a wide area."

DJ: What do you hope to achieve with the petition? DR: Well, we want to the Housing Services Committee to think again on these swingeing incieases, especially with the impending increases from central government.

DJ: What further action do you have planned?

DR: If it comes to it, we are all prepared to withhold the increases. However, we nope that it won't come to this. DJ: Is there anything you'd like to say in conclusion?

DR: In the short time we've been going, we've laid down solid foundations, and received lots of spontaneous support.

Rent payers should not have to bear the total cost of the Council's mistakes.

We're not going to be scapegoats, and be punished for someone else's stupidity.

We tenants did not get the estimates wrong, nor were we the ones who failed to check them at the proper time, and we have no intention of paying for their mistakes.

*Messages of support, donations and details of similar experiences to Tenants Action Group, 253 Bretch Hill, Banbury.

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out flopped The majority of Labour MPs have nothing but contempt for the wishes and views of the rank and file Party members who put them in office.

This was confirmed once again last week as a slate of wretched right wingers took eight of the top twelve places in the elections for Foot's Shadow Cabinet.

Also elected were three of the most right wing members of the Tribune: Group (leadership contestants Peter Shore and John Silkin, and former Ireland torture chief Stan Orme) as well as that aspiring 'left' man-on-the -make Neil Kinnock.

Kinnock alone out of the top twelve has sufficient popularity among rank and file party members to secure a place on Labour's National Executive Committee, Foot will now choose his shadow ministers from as sleazy a bunch of reactionaries as you could wish to meet.

Barbaric policies

They include Roy "Butcher" Mason, whose barbaric policies in Ireland have provoked the current hunger-strike by republican prisoners in Long Kesh; William "Nukes" Rodgers, the spokesman for the Gang of Three who, almost alone in the labour movement • openly tavours the continued imperialist weapons build-up; and Merlyn "Southall" Rees who as Home Secretary fostered the police SPG and supervised their brutal and murderous attacks on anti-fascists and on Grunwick pickets.

There is every indication that Foot, with his right hand man Dennis Healey, is well pleased with this result.

Foot will be better able to exploit the remnants of his former left' image if he is able to shelter behind a hefty right wing majority on the Shadow Cabinet.

Real leader

Effectively Healey thus becomes the real leader of the Party, while Foot will emerge from time to time to give a rousing speech that may persuade some party militants that left wing poljcies might eventually prevail.

In this context Eric Heffer's public statement declining in advance any moves by Foot to co-opt him onto the Shadow Cabinet must be welcomed by Labour activists.

Heffer has correctly pointed to the political complexion of the Shadow Cabinet majority, and declined to be bound by their policy decisions.

Tony Benn-whose failure by two votes to reach the top 12 was partly the result of his own absence in the USAmust be called upon to take a similar stance.

"Nukes" Rodgers Benn has already gone too far down the road towards collaboration with Foot, declaring in advance of the January Special Conference that he will not stand against Foot for the Party leadership, no matter what 'electoral college' system is adopted.

And by putting himself forward for election to the Shadow Cabinet, Benn (as did Heffer) certainly helped foster illusions that the Foot leadership is somehow likely to be more left wing than the Callaghan clique -of which Foot was a crucial part!

The fact is that right wing Labour MPs, and growing numbers of right wing union bureaucrats, now see in Foot the possibility of confusing and defusing sections of the leftand thus reversing the steps towards Party democracy that were taken in the Blackpool conference in October.

"Compromise"

Block votes are being lined up to back a ludicrous «compromise" formula on the electoral college that would give át least 50% of the votes to the reactionaries of the PLP. The AUEW leadership last week even called for MPs to have 75% of the votes.

And in the constituencies, union leaders are manoeuvring to sabotage the new procedures for reselection of MPs by "packing" those GMCs where right wingers are likely to be ousted.

The EEPTU has recently amended its rules to allow the union bureaucracy to appoint "delegates" to GMCs without reference to their local branches.

Already the secretary of Bermondsey GMC has written to complain of the appearance of such EETPU delgates sent in -despite objections by local EETPU members-to prevent a left wing successor being selected after the retirement of Bob Mellish MP.

GMWU officials are apparently engaged in similar moves to crush the new democratic procedures by sending platoons of hand-picked right Bates goons into CMCs as "dele0A10 Such brazen right wing "entryism" can scarcely be expected to attract the kind of publicity attached to • Lord Tainabill! natasinma Triitnh hunting report on the Militant group, though its practical effect on Labour Party policy. is likely to be infinitely greater than the opportunist propaganda peddled by Militant supporters.

But it is increasingly clear that the Blackpool conference decisions represented far from a decisive victory for Labour left wingers: the January Conference seems set to produce major setbacks in the fight for democracy.

The battleground in the fight for socialist policies is thus far wider than the restructured arena of the Labour Party: it must embrace the trade unions as well as the tens of thousands of unorganised women workers, youth and others now seeking a way forward 1 against the Tories.

That is why a revolutionary leadership must be built with urgency if the bureaucrats are to be confronted and defeated.

The press has been under scrutiny this week. The footloose gangs who harass and chase have been reprimanded.

The victim wasn't the NUPE steward at Great Ormond Street Hospital.

In: fact it was the woman suspected of being added to the royal gravy train who has been followed by a drooling press corps for weeks.

Her defender was no less than the Queen of Englandwho decided that the Sunday 'Mirror had gone too far. The sound of editors tugging forlocks drowned out the Sunday Mirror's own defiance.

Harassment will continue, but Charles' maybe future wife has been declared ' out • of bounds.

As one victim escaped under royal protection, a former Fleet Street hero headed for his coffin. • The death of Sir Oswald Mosley brought a string of platitudinous editorials saying what a pity that a brilliant man should be taintéd by fascism.

They didn't always think so. The Daily Mail campaigned for Mosley under the headline 'Hurrah for the Blackshirts' until Mosley demonstrated he was a dwindling force in politics, having been met with physical opposition from the working class.

"Clarity"

Things don't change much. Enoch Powell for years has exercised the same pull of fascination on the press as Mosley once did.

Behind a shield of tolerant disapproval the press commends his "brilliant mind". , his patriotism and his "clarity"-thus bolstering his racism.

Since leaving the Tory Party Powell has ruled out serious support for himself and ha! come out with demands increas ingly embarrassing for the bour geoisie.

His hatred for the a Pope is case in point.

The Daily Mail, forced to defend the Pope's visit (after all is not the Pope a foremost weapon against the Provisionals?) proves that a reborn Mosley would still find his supporters amongst the bourgeoisie.

"The great sadness about Enoch Powell is that so brilliant a political thinker should constantly detract from his own influence-which is, or should be, very salutory on many matters-by a quite extraordinary lack of realism and proportion."

Now if Powell had only married royalty he might have got somewhere.