Selling the Problem

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The council was forced tenants have been pressur to rehouse more and more ised into accepting whatever Then, a year ago, the was "offered" to them council changed tack and Kernaghan (convenor ol announced it would be the Council's Housing Com clearing the area complete- mittee) told us that they ly. had the power to evict For the last 12 months people and that they would ployment is very high in downhill. It is about time Bingham and most tenants the Council woke up. We are will not be able to buy the fed up with being ignored."

This will probably mean tenants said is true of every a shift down the road... to housing scheme in Edinanother "unlettable" council burgh. We are now triply flat, with all the removal Tory-controlled - nationdome of Cracow Cathedral of magnesium and calcium small. Anselm Samuel, black ILEA (Inner London Education Authority) youth worker, is fighting to get his job back.

The Further and Higher Education Committee of ILEA sacked him at the end of July.

It was only thanks to the virtually unprecedented move of requisitioning a full ILEA meeting by Hackney GLC Councillor John Carr that Anselm Samuel was reprieved from dismissal. He is now suspended without pay and with no job offer until the ILEA meets on 14 September.

The Greater London Labour Party Regional Executive Committee at its meeting on Monday 26 July, passed an emergency resolution proposed by Ken Livingstone and seconded by Vidya Anand, supporting Anselm.

The run-up to the sacking included disputes Over Anselm Samuel going from a 15-hour a week job to 20 hours, and then getting a full time lecturer job. But the immediate pretext was a Most people thought that that was the end of the matter and that no legal proceedings were to be taken by anyone. However, ten days later the young man who had assaulted Anselm Samuel brought charges.

Anselm Samuel and his passenger brought countercharges of an assault as a consequence. It was understood that the young man was pressured by the ILEA officers into taking out legal proceedings.

Eventually Anselm Samuel was found guilty and fined £350. Anselm Samuel told us:

"NATFHE (the lecturers' union) has refused to act. It has also prevented NALGO from negotiating claiming that they have got the right to negotiate with employers for teaching staff.

ILEA have broken 'all their staff code practices to implement their decisions. The members of the Further and Higher Education Subcommittee are being controlled by the officers. Who is running the ILEA? "PRIVATE housing in the Gorbals - that's the ultimate insult." This is how Bill Sharkey, vice-president of the Gorbals Anti-Dampness Campaign (GADC) summed up local reaction to the announcement that the Labour-controlled Glasgow District Council plans to sell off to private builders the housing scheme in the Hutchesonton 'E' area of the Gorbals. This scheme, built at a cost of £7.5 million, was opened almost exactly • ten years ago. Right from the outset, tenants were plagued by the problem of dampness.

At first the council fobbed off complaints by claiming that a bit of dampness was only natural in new houses and that it would soon disappear.

It didn't. On the contrary it got worse, and by the mid-seventies the GADC was well under way.

Its methods of struggle ranged from petitions and letter writing to court actions, rate appeals, demonstrations and rent strikes. of the tenants. accommodation." (Unemproperty they live in).

expenses. and the cost of -1 11decorating a "new" flat.

Opposition to the sales is growing. Bingham and Broomhouse Tenants Associations sent a deputation to the District Council on August 5, with the Labour MP for Edinburgh East (which encompasses Bingham), Gavin Strang.

The Bingham deputation told the Council, "Homesteading is no solution to the area's problems. The way to improve Bingham is to spend some money on doing up the houses. dome of Cracow Cathedral · 11 alternative accommoatior "The whole place is going What the Bingham ally, Regionally and in the District.

The same week heard a deputation to the Regional Council from the Niddrie House/Greendykes Tenants Association complaining against the decision taken recently to abolish free school milk in the schools.

The tenants associations in Edinburgh will have to begin campaigning in the housing schemes to build up organisation, so that the cutters in the District and the Region can be stopped.

RICKY HOUSTON of magnesium an do so if necessary.

"A taxi would arrive to take tenants to see another place, then they would be whipped into the housing office. People never had a chance to have a proper look at what they were being offered, they ended up just signing," explained Willie McLean, secretary of the GADC.

Out of the 759 houses in Hutchesonton 'E' only nine are still occupied.

With the scheme now virtually uninhabited, the council seems to think that the time is now right to make its announcement about hiving off the property.

Future The announcement was made last Thursday (12th) - the very same day on which District Council officials were informing members of the GADC that the decision on the future of the scheme was at least two or three months away.

The Tory Group on the council, needless to say, are fully in favour of the proposals.

The Housing Committee argues that because the counci cannot afford to refurbish the damp-ridden small.

tak houses, it will sell them of and use the £2 million profi made in the deal to fund : sheltered housing project ir nearby Govan Hill.

Presumably the Counci will present the plan as : way of improving the hous ing stock and play off the Govan Hill tenants associa tion against those in the Gorbals.

The Council's plan te hive off council housing • tc private profiteers must be opposed by the labour move. ment throughout Glasgow.

The time is long overdue for Kernaghan and his fellow travellers in the Labour Group to be kicked out once and for all.

It is a tragedy that councillors like Pat Keegan who fight the councils's cuts soul be kept out of the Labour Group, while Kernaghan and Co. continue Tory-style administration of the city.

Full support must be given to the GADC's campaign against the council's sell-out on the housing scheme. Labour Party branches and GCs must force Labour councillors to opt the decision reversed, and call to VAN IN GU6 IIW account Kernaghan and the other councillors who support this shameful proposal.