I think Damon really outlined extremely well kind of all the you know exactly
what the housing crisis is today and exactly what it looks like today and
exactly kind of just the depth of how exists across society and how you know
all of all the symptoms of it at the moment and I think what I want to talk
about today is how bad the situation we're in is not an accident it's not
it's not the result of you know bad policy decisions it's not the result of
it's not the result of kind of policies going wrong well I want to you know this
is the result of 40 years of economic and social policy that has deliberately
empowered the wealthy and Society at the expense of working people and you know
this this you know this goes back to the Thatcher government it actually goes back
much further than that in terms of the ideas and where it came from and I want
to talk a bit about that tonight in a bit kind of trying to understand where
this came from and how we got to where we're at and this idea is and then I
want to talk about you know the moment were in now what's happening in the
Labour Party. Corbyn, Momentum I'm an I'm part
Manchester Momentum and yeah I've been you know involved in the in both
leadership elections and for Corbyn and and why that's so important but also
because I'm involved in Greater Manchester Housing Action as well I want to talk a
bit about the role of kind of groups outside the Labour Party and how they can
you know how important they are as well to what it's going to be in a massive
struggle in the in the years to come so to start off like what why is this idea
of neoliberalism so neoliberalism kind of kind of came out of a set of thinkers
just after the Second World War and it kind of... the ideas were around this
idea of free markets this idea that the problems of society or the best way to
run a society would be to leave everything to the to markets to sort out
and it was also about kind of individualism so it was about kind of
you know the best kind of person in society is an entrepreneur the best kind
of person a society is a individual who kind of navigate society and tries to
make money, and that if we can just maximise society in their interests
that will make a better society and you get this idea called trickle-down
and how you know if we if we have if we create lots of wealth that will trickle
down to lots of people and what what this really kind of led to and what this
actually look like was basically the state was was really built basically in
the interests of the wealthy and this was quite a deliberate
a deliberate move basically so after the Second World War after the
construction of the welfare state strong trade unions you get you basically
this is not to the interest of people who hold a lot of wealth because workers
start to demand better conditions, better pay, this cuts into their wealth
but also high taxation, a decent welfare state cuts into the wealth of
the very wealthiest and what they plan basically in the aftermath of
the war is a fight back. Is a sense that they need to,
they've lost out in society towards
trying to, their interests have basically been defeated by
welfare state by strong trade unions and what they plan is basically how to
shift everything back in their direction and what they do is they start
to create lots of ideas and they start to create lots of policies and they start to
build networks and they start to create think tanks and groups like these in the
aftermath of the Second World War and what they're doing is they're waiting
for a moment where they can kind of move and they can kind of suddenly take
control and kind of get their ideas out there and start to shift the common
sense of how to run a society and this kind of opportunity arises in the
nineteen seventies where you whether a kind of various economic crises and what
you see is these these these groups these near liberals start to basically
say our ideas of the solution to the crisis and you see you know the
Conservative Party is taken over by kind of hard-right faction within the Party which is
led by Thatcher which kind of is actually in opposition to traditional
elements and the Party and basically you see them take advantage of the situation
and then the eighties you get basically the Thatcher government in the UK but
all around the world you start to see these kind of governments and what they
start to do is they start pass policies that basically
attack trade unions of the miners strike in the UK.
Restrictive trade union laws in the early 80s is
paralleled around the world in the US
trade unions come under attack and that these are attacked because they're the
kind of main political and social opposition to their policies but also
they start to pass more policies to kind of deregulate the economy to privatize
public services and in housing especially you can look at things like
Right to Buy which is you know three million council homes were passed from
public ownership into private hands this is a real example of how you know what
these people did when they got into power was they use the state power to
basically privatize and enrich the wealthy who you know and then you see
housing become deregulated you see in the mid eighties they passed laws around
making it easier to get Buy to Let mortgage, making the
minimum tenancy on a private rented home shorter to six months which is the
shortest in Europe in the UK so a minimum renting period is six months
which makes it very easy for a landlord to kick someone out and raise the rent
so it makes it a lot more flexible for landlords it makes it easier to
basically make a profit out of housing you also see deregulation of mortgage
market so it's much easier to get a mortgage so basically that's this
housing market bubble that you get from the 90s onwards a lot of credit gets
pumped into the economy through mortgages which basically turns housing
into like an asset that's kind of traded and basically enriches
certain people in society but makes it more difficult to get home if you actually
really need it so housing becomes much more of an asset something that's traded
something that's bought rather than a basic social good
which is kind of what council housing was that anyone
should be able to be homed, that's the sign of a decent society.
These kind of ideas this kind
of way of running society that
private is good, public is bad
you should kind of
deregulate you should allow private businesses to trade to have
free trade these ideas basically become a common sense from the 80s onwards,
and New Labour kind of basically continues this kind of
work and Thatcher herself said that you know what happened in the Labour Party
in the the kind of phenomenon New Labour was her greatest achievement because
basically New Labour were no longer up for offering you know Labour was no
longer offering any alternative to what the Tories have done in the Eighties and
in many ways was kind of continuing some of the same policies so things like PFI
is a really good example of how private markets is a private solution to
public services which seems like the way forward. PFI obviously when you're
building a PFI hospital rather than building it in-house you kind of get you
get the credit on the private market you pay interest in the long run it ends up
being a lot more expensive for the state in the short run it looks cheaper but
basically it creates these kind of cash cows for private capital at the expense
of the public person the expense the taxpayer.
You see these ideas. This idea that like it's a private
sector solution is kind of carried on throughout the naughties.
In housing as well so Labour in the early naughties, under Blair and Brown
do a lot of stock transfers of council housing into
Housing Association which Damien talked about. This is an arm's
length thing you don't actually have the democratic control.
So it becomes housing associations as opposed to council housing and this is all the
kind of continuation of these policies that this and this way of running
society that dates back all the way to what I said earlier about this kind of
post-war attempt to shift back on like the welfare state so you know that's why
this moment wearing is really interesting and that's why this moment
one is really important because what's happened over the last two years is that
the leadership of the Labour Party is actually broken with this kind of model
of thinking in this way of running societies and then the leadership the
Labour Party has become left-wing again and this is like a hugely
you know this hasn't happened arguably since the beginning of the Labour Party,
certainly not since Michael Foot in the 80s and it marks a real break and I
think it's really clear now that there are two very different kind of policy
platforms and ways of running society and political philosophies on offer to
people and because of Corbyn, because of what's happened in the Labor Party because
of what's happened in the trade unions have moved left since the kind of mid
naughties and because of wider society moving left as well.
you know we have a massive up opportunity and a massive point of
opportunity in terms of trying to roll back trying to move beyond and the the
kind of policy framework that we've seen over the last 40 years which has
resulted in the crisis we now see but you know what what I think is really
important to stress is this is not gonna be an easy fight and and if we think
back to where the last 40 years have come from and kind of interests that
have profited out of this so if you look at inequality today it's higher than it
ever has been in the UK I found a spat earlier about the top 10% of the UK
holds 45% of all wealth in the country and globally the situation is even worse
you know there's a lot of there's a lot of powerful interests at stake in
maintaining the status quo in not only maintaining it makes elevating it so I
think what we need to be really aware of is that you know we all were almost just
at the beginning so we've had that break with the kind of the neoliberal
ideologies of policy you know the Labour leadership now in the common and
MacDonald is offering a real alternative a real break with the status quo with
with neoliberalism you know it wants to bring you know services back in-house it
wants to expand the public sector it wants to radically change ownership
in this country and this is all massively welcomed but I think mmm you
know this is not going to be an easy fight winning the election when it does
come is almost going to be the beginning and I think this is where kind of what I
wanted to talk about the role of housing movements specifically and I think
housing move we'll sit alongside you no trade unions
will sit alongside you no other you know progressive think tanks progressive
media organizations we need a whole ecology a whole kind of network of
progressive groups of left-wing groups that are aligning with the Labour Party
leadership strategy which are willing to criticize it as Damian said like that's
really important willing to push it to move further left but ultimately wanting
to strategically support it because this is this is a massive opportunity this is
a massive moment of a radical shift and I think if we need to realise wisdom we
need to realize you know I'm I kind of like almost see this because I'm
involved in housing stuff that is outside labor and then I'm involved in
momentum inside labour but I can really see you know in Manchester what's been
happening in Manchester's a really great example it's actually really worked when
you've got these great alliances between people working in labour and people who
are working out of labour and and these people sometimes speak to different
audiences and these people you know in a media context sometimes gmh a will be
asked for a comment whereas they'd never go to like a an
internal labor PI activist so if you have all these different groups kind of
on the same page speaking the same language it presented it creates a lot
of power for our movement and it creates a lot of up you know it creates a broad
form and that's exactly what we need because if you look at what happened in
the 70s with neoliberalism is that it wasn't just Margaret Thatcher leading
the conservative PI there was a whole network of think types of media people
of column colonists in the times of kind of people you know cultural figures who
were all kind of saying the same kind of thing who would creating this sense of a
common sense that you know what factor was doing were right
and I think that's exactly what we need now only the other side so that's kind
of just why I wanted to say is the housing movement really need to fit in
with the labor labor party they need to see that the Labor Party and the Labour
leadership of Corbin and McDonnell is an ally that they need to see themselves as
part of this broader movement and I think one really good example maybe of
housing policy that's been pushed by housing movements labor housing policies
from pushes around section 21 so section 21 is the clause of the Housing Act like
nineteen eighty six or something in 1988 yeah which basically means landlords can
evict a tenant in their property without any real reason and this you know this
really wasn't particularly on the agenda until this summer where it was kind of
being pushed by basically a coalition of housing groups around which was like
generation when acorn the New Economics Foundation and London renters union they
were basically pushing that this you know we need to abolish section 21
that's a real key demand and then conference this year you see John Healy
has announced that part of Labour's policy now will be to abolish section 21
so I think this is a really good example of how movements applying pressure and
people within the left of the party pipe pressure on the leadership can push the
direction in a much more progressive kind of direction and it works both ways
so another thing that John Healy announced was that they'll create this
pot of funding for renters unions which i think is a really really important
thing moving for because that then empowers kind of a social force within
society around private renting to be more powerful to have have greater power
in society to push labor but also to kind of act as I was saying is this kind
of broader movement for a more progressive and more equal society so I
hadn't really wanted to leave it there obviously GM h a's have doing a lot of
work in Manchester and Salford and then in the new year we've got we want to be
basically porting and broadening our networks across Greater Manchester
so and we working stop pouring Boleyn and probably maybe in Oldham so I can
talk much more about life if people have questions but that was kind of the plan
to make that you know we're a very very special time we're very a time of great
opportunity we're a time with kind of a lot of hard work and electing labor is
going to be basically just the beginning and after that we really need to be
thinking if you're inside the pie how are we talking to people outside the pie
how we kind of all on the same page how are we at the end kind of working on the
same working for the same goal which is basically to address inequality
inequality in this country and create a fairer society so thank you very much
before we go on to to the admin can you just tell us just some of the things
that Great Manchester Housing action does what what activities what campaigns
you have and if there's any way for people to get involved well to find out
more how can how can we do so yeah definitely
so our kind of work is around three main areas so we want to educate people and
the housing crisis and its causes and I think what I think that is really
important is to kind of why I was saying that the housing crisis is the product
of a structural problem is the system in crisis causing the housing crisis it's
not necessarily you know about policy and I think that's kind of one of the
things that were really keen on another thing is kind of networking so there's
loads of you know when G major was formed there were different housing
campaigns in the sea since then it's kind of grown even more
and I think one of our what we want to do is basically anyone who's working in
housing you're interested in housing trying to pull them all together so that
basically people aren't repeating themselves but also so everyone kind of
knows what everyone else is doing because we're kind of stronger if we're
networked and part of that role we've seen is basically been trying to create
you know one of the things we've been doing in Manchester Labour's is
supporting activists with in labor with like
policies and arguments and ideas which then they can take to like their brunch
bunches and kind of use against Kathy and not against councils but they used
to question councillors to question policy to be more informed and that kind
of role of kind of connecting you know connecting you academic you might have
you know all these great ideas with your your labor PI branch member with you
with you kind of homeless activist basically pulling people together
because we're stronger if we're sharing knowledge and sharing skills and also
just aware of what everyone's doing and the final thing is trying to create
platforms where ordinary people can basically issue demands and and share
their grievances to powerful sort of to the powerful to might local government
basically so we've been organizing and on that we've been organizing this thing
called a renters forum where we've got private renters to kind of issue demands
and talk about issues in the private rented sector and kind of issue a set of
demands to Manchester City Council and any kind of then have a dialogue with
them so basically to try and organize you know power with citizens basically
and then just generally campaigning supporting allies within labor outside
of labor using our social media platform to kind of show all the good work we can
do thank you
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