We didn’t vote Labour for council housing sell-offs

Published: 5 August, 2010

• WE didn’t vote Labour in the local elections for them to go on selling off council housing – but to stop it.

But now, Holly Lodge appears to be the beginning of the reinstatement of the housing policy of the coalition that lost the election.

Even the least that is proposed for the Holly Lodge Estate – licence letting – still takes flats from the housing stock, and allows rich tenants to jump the waiting list.

Other proposals, like a sell-off, simply add to the housing crisis of overpriced accommodation and under-paid workers.

And there is little more that is relevant to the economic climate of our times than the housing crisis.

Despite attempts by the government to induce mass amnesia most people remember the sub-prime mortgage swindle, the detonator that blew apart the global financial system, that led to the bail-outs, which in turn led to the deficit that became the pretext for the cuts.

And the cuts – the most thorough destruction and looting of public wealth ever planned – should get every Labour Party member reaching for the red flag, that they so disgracefully let slip and allowed to fall in recent years.

The party should also be defending council housing.

R WARREN
Broadfield Lane, NW1