turned out to be a tenants' nightmare.
Perhaps as many as three-quarters of the women who live on the estate have been driven to dependence on "tranquiliser" drugs.
And it's no wonder. Having to spend their days among the vermin, disrepair and poor social facilties of these concrete bug huts", as one Moss Side Neighbourhood Council placard describes them, would be enough to drive anyone to despair.
Perhaps that's the reason why Cor poration officials can't believe that these people have any fight left in them, and why the old cry of 'outside agitators' was raised when Moss Side tenants started to fight back.
Certainly, the Corporation didn't hesitate to resort to the classic trick of "blaming the victim'. According to the Housing Manager, the plazue MOSS SIDE is a brand new housing estate in Manchester. When it was built three years ago it was supposed to be a 'planners dream". But instead it has Local residents have a nick name for one of the blocks of flats that pretty much sums up how they feel about the place. They call it "Alcatraz'.
of bugs on the estate has nothing to do with the construction of the houses, but is caused by the purchase of second-hand furniture- and thus entirely the fault of the tenants them selves! Similarly, if one of the local Labour councillors is to be believed, it is not the houses themselves that are a fire-risk (even though two lorry. loads of straw were taken from the walls of a house which an official Corporation report admitted had but the polystyrene that is used in modern furniture.
When these "subtle methods of trying to prevent any organised re sistance by the tenants to bad housing fail, the authorities have no qualms about falling back on open Ps0s E and clear: "We want rehousing now'.
Moss Side flats are dangerous (a fire prolection officer has described them as a 'fire hazard'), vermin-infested (Padgett admitted that flats usually had to be fumigated two or three times in fact one woman has had her flat sprayed 12 times!), and unhealthy (tenants described how flooding in one flat seeped down through the walls and light sockets through all the flats below, right down to the ground floor).
evidence, councillor Padgett confessed: "The flats on the whole are not suitable, due to their construcbeen 80% gutted in just seven minutes) tion, for a family. (In other words, 95% of Moss Side's tenants are inadequately housed-single people, presumably, being fireproof, waterproof, immune to vermin.)
But the councillors refused to support the demand for immedi ate rehousing The best they could offer was that they would think about it.in four years' time!
By this time the tenants were fed up to the teeth, and the following resolution was adopted:
'If the clected representatives of the Moss Side councillors do not support the demand, and press for immediate rehousing for the Moss Side tenants, then in the next council elections the tenants will not vote for the Labour councillors but will, instead, stand their own candidates."
They also resolved to fight any attempts at victimisations (through arrests or attempts at eviction] and to step up the fight until victory is Some support has already been forthcoming from outside the estate especially from local students, who have also been engaged in strugeles over accommodation.
contact with other tenants and residents groups. There is a precedent for this.
Finance Act, when the Labour-controlled Corporation showed great responsibility and capitulated to the Tory law, the Greater Manchester Tenants' Federation came into being and extensive rent strikes tonk riace throughout the city.
The capitalist system is unable to meet the simplest needs of working people. Instead it is creating 'Mos Sides" and 'Lower Broughtons from one end of the country to the other.
discontented tenants and workers who, if they stand up and stand united, can forcibly wring their rights out of the capitalists pockets, repression. The latest case was when a peaceful "pramcade' of women and The Neightbourhood Council then Side's tenants and their 'representatwho speit out their message loud and The tenants told them that the Faced with such overwhelming Islington and Clay Cross are both Labour controlled councils. The Islington councillors were so devoted to capitalism that they decided to implement the Tories' Housing Finance Act. Now they are dumping the burdens of London's housing crisis onto the backs of the workers and tenants. Clay Cross Council, in contrast, was devoted to the working people who elected it. They have have earned the hatred of every capitalist, every ruling class hack, and every traitor to the workers" movement for their courageous stand. As the social problems thrown up by the capitalist crisis mount higher and higher this is the choice that every elected representative of the worker's movement will face: to follow the road of Clay Cross or the road of Islington. Istington has more homeless people than