by Sam Smithson, Waltham Forest Socialist Party
Working-class people in Waltham Forest are in desperate need of change. The previous Labour council made millions of pounds of cuts to public services and was punished for it at the elections. Now the Greens have gone from having no councillors to 31, a majority on the council! But the question of what they will do with it still hangs in the balance.
Waltham Forest Socialist Party has a long record of campaigning on the issue of housing in the borough and have met many working-class people being forced to move out of their homes due to rising rents.
So we sent a letter to every Green councillor laying out the devastating effect the housing crisis is having, and putting forward a programme of how the council could bring in rent controls to cut rents for thousands of tenants and also freeze all rents on council homes too.
We set out how a fighting council could introduce a compulsory register for private landlords, with affordable rents and well-maintained properties as a requirement of registration. Rental rates could be set in consultation with tenants’ organisations and trade unions. We put forward the pressing need for a mass council house building programme, which would alleviate the crisis faced by thousands of people who currently reside in temporary accommodation. This must be done without the involvement of private developers, who only use the development of social housing to boost their own profits. All these demands could be enacted by the new Green council.
At the first council meeting of the new administration on 21 May, we greeted Green councillors at a lobby outside. We pointed out that at the meeting they would be asked to vote to ratify the minutes of the previous meeting which included Labour’s budget, and suggested they refuse. It could have been used as a key moment to make an anti-austerity stand.
Many of the Green councillors listened to our arguments, some said they had taken the case to council officials and came back out repeating the counterarguments they had been told. In the end there was no contest on the floor of the town hall.
Stand up to Labour cuts
The Greens now lead 18 councils nationally and have significant power in many others. They could join together in a real fight and spearhead a national campaign that implements rent controls and restores public services. In order to do that, they must be prepared to stand up to the Labour government, and be prepared to argue back to council officials, Labour councillors, the establishment media, and all those who will tell them nothing can be done except to carry out cuts.
Some responses to our letter from individual councillors have been promising, but we are currently awaiting an ‘official’ response from the local Green Party leader. We hope that it is one of a bold fighting programme that could make a real difference for the working class in Waltham Forest.