Lesson of rent strike is that we must defend basic rights

Published: 14 October, 2010

• YOUR article about the 1960 St Pancras rent strike (At 6.45am the bailiffs came... then police stormed the flat, October 7) was a powerful reminder of how poor communities have traditionally united to fight against attacks on their basic rights and services.

And it was timely, coming in the week when the National Housing Federation calculated that 114,000 households in London – no doubt large numbers of them in Camden – would find their rent unaffordable if cuts to housing benefit announced by the Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition are implemented.

There’s going to be a risk in the coming months as the depth of the cuts emerge that there will be attempts to play off one interest group against another, to try to get people saying “cut them, not us”.

What we need to do is unite to fight against the direction that British society is taking.

The national deficit is a problem, but slicing our society to ribbons is not a solution.

As Green MEP Jean Lambert said last weekend: “A strong social security system is an essential foundation for a strong economy.”

NAOMI APTOWITZER
Green Party candidate, Kentish Town