London Housing Cuts

Socialist Press no. 28, 25 February 1976 · scan p. 8 · about 378 words

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The London Borough of Islington has been told that it cannot continue its programme of rehabilitating dum housing beyond April Ist.

As part of the Government's ocial spending cuts, the amount of money available for councils to chabilitate both their own decrepit ousing, and that acquired from rivate landlords, has been slasned.

This means that tenants still iving in these conditions now have no hopes of getting bathrooms or aside lavatories, nor of having their ling cellings and damp wall epaired. And since Islington in articular relies on rehabilitation to movide a substantial proportion of housing, 1,600 families pecting to be rehoused this year, Hill now be homeless. : At a meeting called jointly by ae Trades Council, the Federation • Tenants Associations, and abour Councillors, a packed hall, ad overflow meeting heard the hairman of the Housing ommittee, Margaret Watson, say e hoped that by the simple *pedient of inviting the housing mister to see some of the worst wins, the government could be resuaded to provide at least some more cash for rehabilitation.

The Secretary of the Tenants Associations and the Secretary of the Trades Council, both members of the Communist Party, elt that the answer to the cuts lay in the sending of delegations, one to the Department of the Environment, and one to Len Murray.

All these suggestions, especially the last, were received sceptically by the working class audience. A WSL member speaking on behalf of the Islington Campaign Against the Cuts stressed that opposition to the cuts lay in a mass mobilisation of the workers of Islington, not in sending delegations to lobby trade union bureaucrats, civil servants and MPs.

If the Councillors' opposition to the cuts was serious they would start by voting against the proposed budget at the meetings of the Labour Group and the full Council meeting.

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