by Dara Fitzgerald, West London Socialist Party
Housing is a key part of the cost-of-living crisis. So our West London Socialist Party meeting titled “Urban planning and privatisation: Who owns all the land?” was timely.
The discussion was introduced by Socialist Party member Bill Reed, who has experience of working in town planning. Bill outlined the centralisation of land assets into a small number of hands. 1% of the people own 50% of the land.
Materials only contribute to 10% of housing costs. The other 90% is the land.

Photo: Paul Mattsson
Over £400 billion worth of land assets have been sold off over the last few decades, which have been bought up by large real estate developers and other investors. They see land as a way to generate profits, which leads to higher and higher rents for us.
This generated a great discussion, and some incisive questions, with people speaking about what a socialist town could look like, the collapse of funding for local community support, and the political decisions around the creation of a housing market, and some of its policies, like ‘right to buy’.
14 people attended in-person, and two more online. One member showed up for her first meeting, and another person attending for the first time joined the Socialist Party on the night.
Various discussions took place informally after the meeting, such as on Trump (when is there not?), cost of living, early Labour failures in having a coherent programme, and book recommendations, rounded out another step forward for West London Socialist Party.
We decided on a packed campaign schedule for the week, including two Socialist Party stalls on Saturday, where we raised £59 for the Socialist Party.
Our next meeting is about ‘British capitalism and the economy’. So we are reading the Socialist Party’s ‘British perspectives’ document, which we will discuss in full at our national congress in March.