Housing follies
Tony Craig
A strong case can be argued, at a time of cheaper mortgages and falling interest rates, for freezing council rents. The corollary is higher government grants (and, inter alia, higher taxes), less spending or higher rates. But this doesn't suit Labour Party activists in London. The annual conference of the party's Greater London Regional Council has demanded an end to rent increases, service charge increases and increases in domestic rates. And far from suggesting cuts in expenditure it is demanding a massive extension — an immediate building programme to provide an 'initial' 500,000 houses for 'accommodation for all', municipalisation of all rentable housing stock, and local authority requisitioning of properties empty for more than six months.
Since the intelligentsia — even of Labour's immoderate left — admit that the piper has somehow to be paid, the same long composite resolution calls for nationalisation of the banks, insurance companies and building societies 'to provide interest-free loans to local authorities'. Compensation would be paid only on the basis of proven need. To make sure nothing escaped, the demands also included an end to the sale of council housing, no eviction of squatters unless satisfactory rehousing was offered (which would be the finest incentive to squat), an end to the use of private security firms to guard empty property to make sure the squatters had no difficulty gaining entry in the first place), the removal of upper limits on local authority housing expenditure, and nationalisation under workers' control and management of the building and building supply companies.
It would be a programme worthy of the Socialist Worker Party, though Mr David Nicholas, chairman of the regional executive's local government committee, told the conference that this was a 'modest' resolution. The capitalist system has failed, yet we continue to pay out very high interest charges to try and build houses for people with need,' he said, adding (giving the Nelson touch to such irritating diversions as income tax, War Loan and the like): 'How is it there are no debt charges when we build a bomber?'
Whether or not the London Labour Party's policies would find favour even with any substantial majority of party activists is open to doubt, although the motion was carried so clearly by conference that calls for a card vote were rejected by the plat form. And yet the six million members which the party claims nationally would have some doubts about the wisdom of this programme, and I have no doubt at all that the average Labour Party voter would be horrified if these policies were ever adopted. Which, needless to say, they will not be. What, for instance, would the average trade unionist think of the prospect of his pension fund investments being used to provide interest-free loans?
In essence, such a motion was an exercise in polemic by a conference with neither power nor, apparently, responsibility. The 'demands' will be quietly forgotten, to be resuscitated only by the lunatic fringe at next year's meeting. There are real dangers, however, when a group without responsibility attempts to exercise real power. It was the question of council rents, for example, which recently threatened to destroy the Labour Party in the London borough of Camden. For the manifesto forrn the borough elections is drawn up not by the existing Labour group on the council, nor by the prospective candidates, but by a borough local government committee comprising delegates from the three constituency parties. Normally the arrangement works smoothly enough. On this occasion, however, the committee voted to include in the manifesto a firm pledge that rents would be frozen this year.
Most London boroughs have their annual rent review in April, so the existing councillors could take a decision and face the consequences. Camden does not alter rents until October, and a final decision would have to be taken by the new council. There is indeed a strong case for freezing rents this year, but at the time the committee discussed the issue Camden faced losing a 13 million government high cost housing subsidy unless it put up the rents by an average 60p a week. And legal advice suggested that councillors who voted for a freeze could find themselves both faced with disqualification from public office and with having to pay a £3 million surcharge.
As a prospective Labour candidate, I could vote for the freeze pledge in the manifesto knowing I had also to be accountable for my decision. Many candidates, not on the committee, were not, however, pre pared to have such a possible millstone hung round their necks — without their having been even consulted. It is very easy to call for a rent freeze and then to leave your poor councillor to pay the bill — personally.
Credit is due at least to Hampstead's prospective parliamentary candidate, Ken Livingstone, a leading left-winger on the Greater London Council, who initially proposed the rent freeze pledge, for putting his own money on the line. Livingstone is currently a member of Lambeth Council, where members faced a possible £2.2 million surcharge after freezing rents there. In May, having moved to Hampstead, he is likely to be elected to Camden Council, and would certainly have voted for his principles and accepted any consequences cheerfully. But no credit is due to those members of the committee so vocal in their outrage at the 'saboteur' candidates, and happy to dismiss any question of a surcharge being imposed. That the surcharge threat was not entirely
a figment of the imagination of the right (as the hardliners would have had us believe) was made clear by Peter Shore when he pulled Camden's coals out of the fire by announcing in Parliament that he had decided 'to revoke the rent condition attached to the high costs element of subsidy'. It had never been intended, he said, that there should be any legal compulsion on local authorities to raise their rents, adding: 'I understand that some authorities have now obtained legal advice to the effect that, in certain circumstances, it might be held that they were under a legal obligation to raise their rents by an amount sufficient to qualify for the high costs subsidy. This advice has been substantially confirmed by further legal advice given by the Department.'
Peter Shore, under pressure, played fairY godfather to Camden, together with Lambeth and the other London boroughs, which had stood out and resisted what they, in turn, considered to be government blackmail. But if the regional conference's decision had any binding power on government not even the men from the IMF could have saved Labour.
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