Waveney tenants reject sell-off
Nick Bird, Waveney Defend Council Housing
Council tenants in Waveney have decisively rejected the sell-off of their
homes to a housing association. The result of the ballot, released on 3 April,
showed that 68% of tenants voted NO to the stock transfer that had been
vigorously pushed by Waveney District Council for more than a year. The
turnout was high at 79%, leaving no room for doubt about the veracity of the
result.
In the last few months, the ruling Tory group on the council had thrown
everything at trying to get a yes vote. Glossy leaflets, DVDs, travelling
roadshows and a four-page wrap-round in the local paper attempted to convince
tenants to support the sell-off of nearly 5,000 council properties for less
than £5,000 apiece. The money spent on using council employees to visit
tenants in their homes to promote stock transfer is difficult to quantify.
They set up a ‘shadow board’ for the proposed new housing association,
containing ‘tenants reps’ that nobody had ever heard of. The total amount of
council tax payers’ money wasted in this enterprise is well over £500,000 and
probably nearer £1 million.
The local campaign against the sell-off was launched at the very beginning of
the process. It began slowly, gathering information about the proposals and
pulling together a few activists who could get things moving. Waveney TUC, of
which I am currently the president, offered its services as a co-ordinating
body in the early stages. We arranged a meeting to hear the experience of
activists from Cambridge and Colchester who had been involved in previous
Defend Council Housing campaigns.
A key turning point was the decision of the local Labour councillors and the
Labour MP Bob Blizzard to oppose the sell-off. I think the Tory council had
probably assumed that – as it was basically implementing Government policy –
it would not meet opposition from the local Labour Party. Instead, it found
itself isolated as the coalition around Waveney DCH extended to include
Labour, Green and SWP members, independent councillors, tenants association
reps and trade union activists, a real united front against the privatisation
of council housing. The Liberal Democrats sadly seemed to have no clear view
on the situation, and indeed in one early procedural vote their three
councillors divided one for, one against and one abstention.
We identified at the start the problems we would face. The council had a great
deal of money and we had very little. We felt that tenants would back the NO
campaign if they heard the arguments, but feared that they would vote only on
the basis of the council’s propaganda or even not vote at all. So we decided
on a long term strategy that would see every council home receive our basic
leaflet and a series of meetings that would take the campaign message within
earshot of every estate. I should also say we had an excellent press officer
who kept us periodically in the local paper throughout the whole year.
We held three public meetings in different parts of Lowestoft, which contains
the majority of council homes, and two of these were packed to overflowing. We
also held meetings in Beccles, Bungay, Halesworth and Reydon, where smaller
pockets of housing exist. Bob Blizzard spoke at most of these meetings, giving
them a higher profile than might otherwise have been the case and the regional
secretary of the builders’ union UCATT also spoke on several occasions. All
these meetings were valuable and I feel certain that those who attended would
have multiplied the message amongst their friends and neighbours.
The council was not best pleased by our grassroots campaign, denouncing our
leaflets for supposed “misleading inaccuracies” in a front page advert in the
Waveney Advertiser, and holding up one of our circulars in a full council
meeting to bemoan its “falsehoods”. Of course we fought back, pointing out
that most of our claims were either legal facts or were featured in the House
of Commons report on council housing. I regret to say that on one occasion
three of us were ejected from the council chamber for challenging a Tory
councillor’s gibberish rather too loudly from the public gallery.
But as the campaign neared its end, it became clear the council was on the
defensive. It had to issue statements denying that the money from the sell-off
would be used to build a new town hall. Canvassing in the ballot period,
activists reported that very few people would admit to voting for the stock
transfer. And so it proved. A clear victory on a large turnout, 3050 to 1458.
Some DCH activists had not dared hope we would win, doubting we could overcome
the council’s influence and resources. I guess it was a timely reminder, amid
all the press exposure of multi-million pound loans and donations, that money
cannot buy votes or silence dissent. We won!
April 2006
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