NATIONAL DEMONSTRATION
Scotland's for Council Housing: Invest in Public Housing. Invest in Hamiltonhill
THURS, 24th Sept, 11AM,
Assemble: Granite House
(Trongate, Glasgow)
In a recent Glasgow Housing Association (GHA) press release, the stock transfer landlord noted that up to a 75% drop in housebreakings has been achieved in areas fitted with "secured by design" doors. Hamiltonhill has been scheduled for demolition since 2008. Tenants in the area have been left in limbo, however, since the massive crash in land values and financial crisis made the planned speculative developments (for which the centrally located neighbourhood was to be demolished to make way for) no longer viable, the area's future has been left in doubt.
In the meantime tenants have seen no significant investment. Streets have been left boarded up, but many still live in the area. There is constant speculation about what's happening to the scheme.
In recent months however tenants have started to come together on the estate to fight for investment and to demand that tenants are treated with respect. A poster campaign was followed with a community survey. The survey group asked their neighbours their priorities for change in the area. From this a programme has emerged for the new Hamiltonhill Action Group.
The group’s first action was to survey the close doors in the neighbourhood. With nearly half of all close doors found by the group to be broken or vandalised tenants wrote to the GHA to demand immediate action. 17 repairs were understood to have been carried out. Many have since been broken once more, so tenants are demanding that steel "secured by design"
doors are fitted on the estate.
In a letter to the Chief Executive of the GHA the action group demand a timetable for the doors to be fitted by the end of August.
Embattled tenants have told the Angel that they will “draw steel from Granite” (a reference to the headquarters of the GHA, the city’s giant landlord). Unless the Group’s demands are met by the end of the month campaign organizers for
the Group will take their campaign to the Scottish Tenants Organisation. The Angel understands that plans for a “very robust response” are now being put into motion. “They will rue the day they ignored Hamiltonhill!” The Action Group states, summarising their position.
Link to ISSUE 14: https://publish.indymedia.org.uk/img/extlink.gif http://burghangel.wordpress.com/2009/08/19/angel-14-out-now/microsoft-word-issue14-doc/ Hamiltonhill Action
https://publish.indymedia.org.uk/img/mail_small.gif e-mail: hamiltonhillaction[AT]googlemail.com (
[email protected])
https://publish.indymedia.org.uk/img/link_small.gif Homepage: http://www.news.scottishtenants.org.uk (http://www.news.scottishtenants.org.uk/)
https://publish.indymedia.org.uk/images/2009/09/438042.jpg (http://www.news.scottishtenants.org.uk/)
The Glasgow Residents Network, Burgh Angel, and Scottish Tenants Organisation, together with local tenants groups and campaigners across Scotland have launched a tenants offensive.
The first major event of the campaign is to begin with the demonstration on Thursday the 24th of September (a week on Tuesday) at 11AM. This is to take place at the headquarters of stock transfer landlord (bloated, publicly-funded, white elephant quango), the GHA, and will be backing up the demand of local tenants group Hamilton
Action Group for steel security doors, as part of the wider push for investment in public sector housing with the campaign "Scotland's for Council Housing".
Myself and a few others from the Burgh Angel, and from the tenants action group, who live on the Hamiltonhill Scheme at the centre of events are involved in organising the demonstration as part of our goal of building up local confidence and self-organisation into a flourishing tenants organisation here that is truly representative of our community.
We have been publicising the demonstration in a variety of ways. I would like to talk a little bit about what we are trying to do with publicity, because I was hoping others may have some ideas on how best we can really build for the demonstration.
The GHA has just yesterday given us the knockback from our demand.
Disgraced Chief Executive Taroub Zahran (the highest paid public official in Scotland, who leaves this month after boardroom scandal forced her to resign) wrote back to us yesterday:-
"We will continue to monitor the situation but at this time there are no plans to to replace the current doors with steel doors."
We really need to ensure this meets with a bloody nose for GHA, who have drawn a line in the sand. If this offensive is to have any clout at all we just have to show that we mean business.
We must accept nothing less than total victory.
To date we have been attempting to publicise the demonstration through our weekly protest stalls at the GHA HQ. We mean to try and appear on the radio again. We are distributing fliers about the demonstration within the Burgh Angel. We have featured in the Burgh Angel itself twice now, and the demonstration notice is on the front page. We have been hitting the following sources of news to alert the left and labour movement to the event.
Mention on:-
Indymedia Scotland
Indymedia
SSP Discuss Forum
Anarchistblackcat
Libcom
Anarkismo
Glasgow Guide
Attempt to mention through commens on Evening Times articles
Attempt to get in the Morning Star
Get in Freedom (and distribute fliers in Freedom)
[and now Revleft]
Does anyone have any pointers on how we can help to build the momentum? Any thoughts or ideas comrades had would be appreciated.
Also it would be greatly appreciated if folks reading our threads
* http://anarchistblackcat.org/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=4895
* http://anarchistblackcat.org/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=5025
* http://libcom.org/news/stand-public-sector-tenants-stand-hamiltonhill-14092009
* http://www.indymediascotland.org/node/16711
* http://indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/09/437990.html?c=on#c232431
Stopped by to make a comment. I will post up links to Glasgow Guide threads and stuff when we get more stuff up there, but please stop to make a comment. The more internet threads generate comments, the more they tend to get read. This is only one part of our strategy for building awareness of the demonstration and getting folk along, but it's an easy way you can help us 'feed the horde' and publicise the
demonstration to more people in the meantime.
Let's take the offensive.
Dundee United
* A WEEK ON THURSDAY *
^ Is the day of the demonstration ^
THURS, 24th Sept, 11AM,
Assemble: Granite House
(Trongate, Glasgow)
https://publish.indymedia.org.uk/images/2009/09/438041.jpghttps://publish.indymedia.org.uk/images/2009/09/438044.jpghttps://publish.indymedia.org.uk/images/2009/09/438045.jpg
Letter to Weekly Worker:-
It's time that we took the offensive in our communities
Dear editor,
As comrades and friends of the left will be acutely aware, the present crisis has sent the British Government into the red by £1.63 trillion: the equivalent of 12 annual NHS budgets, or of funding the armed forces for 24 years. That's a significant bit of dosh. And with the revelations that the government plans to buy back even more gilts as a confident trick to international money markets, it looks set to rise much further still. This stuff has to get paid for, and we can bet that current plans from any of the bourgeois parties do not include taxing the rich, capital controls, or ditching the British state's overweening reliance on the finance sector. So massive massive cuts are on the horizon. 10-12% (at least 13% in real terms) is due to be cut from the public purse, every year, for five years, from 2011.
That's a government commitment, and the Tories think this is not enough of a cut.
So on the left we face two very particular challenges. The first is to recognise the problem - in just over five years we face the complete destruction of the welfare state; a settlement that took decades of struggle to force from the ruling class. The second is given the stakes, what can we do to improve our chances of not getting completely shafted as a class.
I think we need a two pronged approach.
1. As a materialist I think the power that we can wield as a class is best represented by the institutions we build to reflect our class interests. These institutions are sources of campaigning experience, organised solidarity, finance, training, communication, mobilised bias, economic power, and moral support. Clearly when our institutions are strong and healthy and growing we stand a better chance of winning the battles and skirmishes over jobs, pay and conditions, service provisions, and housing and community health, than when our organisations are weak.
We need to ensure that our institutions are healthy. Particularly at the coal face of where social contestations are going to take place. The public sector, social services, housing, health and education. At present, while we have an increasing break with social partnership represented by the best of the labour movement (as fractured as it is at present), with the PCS, RMT, CWU etc., we can conclusively say that on the ground in terms of community organisation we have been on the retreat now for many decades. Most towns and cities now do not even have a federation of tenants and residents associations, or other co-ordinational civic bodies. I know from bitter experience on tenants issues and fights against council cuts in Glasgow precisely how weak and out-on-a-limb this leaves most communities when struggles to preserve what we have arise. So we need to have institutions in place in our communities and workplaces that are controlled by us, reflect our interests, and fight like tigers in defence of our basic class interests.
2. Very often on the left - because we are mostly (rightly) trying to stand by our brothers and sisters in struggle, we find ourselves moving from crisis to crisis, defending against cuts to this, arguing against job losses or closures to that. We can show people we're there beside them all the way when we do this. And that's important. But it's defensive. When we defend, and we stand to lose everything, mostly we will lose something. And we will call that loss a victory. And sometimes it will build our institutions along the way.
But when are we ever offensive? We have Defend Council Housing, Keep Our NHS Public, Anti-Academies Campaigns, hundreds of local affiliates and local anti-cuts campaigns. But these are all about preserving the status quo. We keep fighting for hamburgers. When are we going to fight for steak?
When we go on the offensive, most of the time we won't win. We won't get everything we wanted. But most of the time we will make some progress. So right now, in the face of a wave of cuts, why wait? Why don't we start as we mean to continue? Let's go on the attack. Let's demand council houses. Let's demand an end to PFI. Let's call for more public sector jobs. Why don't we make our pensions more generous? When asked to pay for, we should say it's about bloody time we had some fairness. Let's go on the offensive!
I'd like to draw comrades attention to a campaign gotten up by the national tenants body in Scotland, the Scottish Tenants Organisation, supported by the STUC; Scotland's for Council Housing is calling for investment in public sector housing. Debt write-off, a level playing field, and serious investment in the numbers, quality and infrastructure of our homes. My local tenants group, which is linked in to the STO, has launched a campaign to demand investment in our homes, calling for new security doors. This in an area that the neo-liberal privatisers at the city council and the stock transfer landlord, the Glasgow Housing Association, would like to see demolished to make way for private housing.
Let's say it loud and clear: the organised working class are not going to be kicked into the dustbin of history. We are going to fight, and we are going to win. We are going to win investment in our homes and public services. We are going to force capital and the state to rethink their plans to shaft us, and come up with other ways to pay for their crisis. But we will only do that when we grasp the strategic challenge. So comrades, how about it? Why don't we build some permanent working class organisation, and go right on the attack.
Why don't we keep hitting these bastards again and again and again.
Let's move fast and hit them first.
Scotland's for Council Housing. | http://www.news.scottishtenants.org.uk (http://www.news.scottishtenants.org.uk/) | National Demonstration for investment in our homes and communities - Assemble Granite House, Trongate, Glasgow, 11AM, Thurs 24th Sept.
Let's hit first. Hard.
Solidarity,
Dundee_United