Labour councils have completely failed to resist this assault on the working class. Rather than fight swingeing central government funding cuts, they have meekly set ‘legal’ budgets, slashed essential services and laid off thousands of people, while at the same time pursuing evictions, prosecuting the low paid for failure to pay council tax and dumping homeless families in far-flung boroughs. The single worst example in the country is the 100% Labour-run council of Newham in east London, whose ‘left Labour’ Mayor Rohksana Fiaz was swept into office in 2018 on the back of promises to tackle homelessness and poverty.
Even before the coronavirus, Newham had:
- the highest number of children in the country living in poverty – 39,638, or 52%. Only neighbouring Tower Hamlets (also Labour controlled) has a higher rate, at 55%;
- the highest level of homelessness, at one out of every 24 people;
- the worst level of air pollution in the whole of Britain;
- the worst overcrowding, at 25% of dwellings.
Newham has 4,500 households in temporary accommodation – the highest number in the country – and 27,635 households on its housing waiting list, more than any other London council. These conditions created a perfect storm when the pandemic hit, leaving Newham with the second-worst Covid-19 death rate in the country by June 2020.
The Labour council promises much but delivers little. Of the 291 much-vaunted homes – of 1,000 promised – delivered by Newham’s semi-private housing company Red Door Ventures, only 38% are at so-called ‘affordable’ sub-market rents. The immediate effect of Fiaz’s promise to revamp allocation criteria for its dwindling stock of council housing will be to kick 8,000 households off the waiting list.
But there is resistance. Housing campaigns like the Focus E15 campaign continue to challenge the council over the 400 homes that still lie empty on the Carpenters’ Estate in Stratford, which could be used to rehouse homeless families – such as those living in squalid conditions in nearby Brimstone House, a council-run hostel, where there are families with children crammed into tiny, badly ventilated rooms. Focus E15 has organised demonstrations against the council in support of Rukaya and her two children, who have been there for over 18 months, despite having been told it would be short-term emergency accommodation. The baby shares her bed and the toddler has to sleep on the sofa. Another Brimstone House mother was informed by a council worker that she has to leave in the next 28 days as she has made herself ‘intentionally homeless’. This is despite government guidelines stating there should be no evictions over the Christmas period. This is where the fightback is happening.
Hannah Caller
