Decent housing is a right
Labour, Tory and Liberal councils and the Labour government have has allowed our estates to be run down. Years of disgraceful underfunding has gone alongside continued attempts to bring in the private sector and sell off estates so that rich companies can make a fast buck, instead of real, public investment to improve our homes.
There is a housing crisis – waiting lists across the London boroughs are vast. In Lambeth alone 16,000 are on the housing list. We are forced back to renting off private landlords.
Three decades of spiralling house prices mean ordinary young people can’t even afford to get onto the “property ladder”.
Only massive investment in a million new homes can solve the housing crisis.
- Build a million new council houses
- A national repair and improve programme – according to local, democratically agreed plans
- Reduce and freeze rents and service charges – rent strike against rent hikes!
- ALMOs, TMOs, etc. to be taken back into council ownership and control
- Scrap council tax – for a local wealth tax
- Cancel mortgage interest for working people
- No evictions, no repossessions
- Public housing to be managed by tenants.
Tough on the real causes of crime – for social solidarity, not repression
Crime is caused by poverty and desperation. It blights our working class communities – it just doesn’t affect the areas where the rich live in the same way.
The crimes the rich commit, like tax evasion, corporate manslaughter and fraud, are barely investigated let alone punished by the state. But our communities are flooded with police officers in the name of “law and order”.
This compounds the problem and makes its much worse.
Young people, who would never even think of doing a wrong to their neighbours, suffer racism and intimidation by the police – they are labelled criminals just because of their age and the colour of their skin.
Policing just isn’t the answer to crime – social solidarity is. When young and old, black and white, working people all unite to fight to improve our communities, crime will always go down. It’s only when we’re atomised and divided that some desperate individuals in our communities turn to drugs and crime.
Of course, sometimes, criminal behaviour needs to be treated with more than just strong language! But why should that job be in the hands of racist police who don’t live in our communities and who are controlled by unelected officers and a command structure under the control of the rich and powerful?
Instead Anticapitalists campaign for community self-defence under the control of working class people ourselves.
To free our communities from the blight of crime:
- Jobs for all, funded by taxing the rich and taking over the banks
- Free leisure and youth centres
- Benefits to be at level of minimum wage
- Break the hold of drug gangs by legalisation
- Fully funded treatment for addicts
- For a massive programme of improvement of our estates
- Community self-defence against anti-social crime and violence.
Reclaim our environment – tackle climate change
The global economic crisis means the bosses and their governments are doing nothing to stop the terrible impact capitalist development has had on our environment.
All the serious scientists agree that burning fossil fuels is putting the planet at risk and undermining the chances of survival for future generations. Unless something is done to stop climate change, the system will be denying a future to our grandchildren and their children.
It’s possible to stop pumping out the waste that is damaging the planet – but it would hit the bosses’ profits. So it’s not happening.
Workers’ control of the economy would enable us to make planned changes to energy and transport, shifting us away from reliance on burning fossil fuels. We could put the unemployed back to work cleaning up the environment – and we could make the areas working class people live in much more beautiful while we’re at it!
- Tackle climate change – for sharp cuts in fossil fuel emissions
- For a planned shift away from fossil fuel burning, through a planned economy
- Clamp down on pollution: investment in electric cars and alternatives to coal and gas burning power
- Trams and hydrogen buses to clean up the air
- Nationalise the energy and transport companies
- Jail the corporate polluters
- Build parks, plant trees and gardens
- Beautify our estates and public areas through massive public spending.
Public transport is a right - for re-nationalisation and free travel
Access to public transport is essential for getting away from the grind of everyday life, to meet new people and have new experiences. For millions of us, it is a slow, dirty and expensive way to get to work.
Decent transport can’t just be the preserve of the rich – we all have a right to travel.
Labour promised to renationalise the railways after the disaster of Tory privatisation.
But instead they have continued to subsidise the profits of the privately owned bus and rail companies. They have even introduced privatisation on the tube in London to disastrous affect. When they were forced to bail out Railtrack, now Network Rail, capitalist managers continued to cut jobs, jeopardise safety and provoke strikes.
At the same time we have seen rail and tube fares go through the roof. It’s ridiculous, given climate change, that it’s often cheaper to fly from London to Manchester than to get the train!
Free and publicly funded transport – with massive investment, paid for by nationalising the banks and taxing the rich - is essential to the fight against climate change. And it would be good for working class people and our families too.
Freedom Passes are already getting people out of their cars – just think how effective it would be to extend this system to everyone in London.
- Extend the Freedom Pass to people on incapacity benefit and JSA
- Stop fare rises – slash bus and tube prices – make it free by taxing the rich
- No cuts in public transport
- Back union health and safety demands
- Nationalise the rail, bus and transport companies under workers’ control
- Develop and build high-speed rail, greener buses, bicycle and tram routes – make transport environmentally friendly.