This blog cannot and does not speak for the myriad autonomous anti-bedroom tax groups across merseyside and the UK.

Friday 15 February 2013

Labour Party astroturfs the tenants revolt




As tenant resistance to the bedroom tax gains momentum, it seems the Labour Party have woken from their slumber and a cadre of members have decided to make a callout to the affected. How very kind of them.

A series of nationwide protests have been called in all the major cities to fight the bedroom tax on the 16th of March. This callout popped up on social media, instigated by Eoin Clark, founder of Labour Left.

Problem is, they’ve completely bypassed any tenant involvement by simply announcing that you should turn up to a demo. Job done, happy days.

NO! Not job done, not happy days. This callout emanates from the arse of a party who introduced size criteria, aka the bedroom tax, in 2008 and then planned to extend it to the social housing sector in 2010. To add insult to injury, these haughty plebs also supported unpaid work, workfare, manifesting itself in the current Labour policy of the ‘Real Jobs Guarantee’, which lays out a similar sanction regime to the current government.

So, when they decide to jump on the bedroom tax campaign in a blatant top down opportunist move, we suggest that they shove their callout up their ballot box.

People in Liverpool, and across the country, are organizing against the bedroom tax. To suddenly expect tenants to sign up to Labour Party diktats is fucking insulting. Rather than shout from the clouds at tenants, the Labour Party should’ve been standing in solidarity with tenants years ago. They didn’t, a stance that is regurgitated by local councillors over and over again.

Tenants have reached the point now were they are swerving the disempowering and ‘traditional’ methods of protest. And we don’t need Labour stooges calling us to action. We’ll do that ourselves.

combatbedroomtax@gmail.com

2 comments:

  1. I feel really sorry for those affected by the #BedroomTax as I read this. Is it really the case that people wish to argue among themselves over the #BedroomTax? @LabourLeft Liverpool has organised NHS Protests and Wonga Protests in Liverpool before and I venture to say that the meek & oppressed will not object to them protesting in their defence again.

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  2. 'meek & oppressed'? I would love you to come to some of the Combat the Bedroom Tax meetings and meet the 'meek & oppressed' tenants of Liverpool. Ha! People are justifiably angry and feel that all political groups have left supporting tenants to the very last minute and are motivated by a self interested wish to manage tenants growing campaigns to defend themselves and brand them as the work of some political group or another.

    That's the point though, you didn't come to any meetings. You decided to mount a campaign without trying to build on the work that had already been done for months in communities throughout Liverpool. While tenants are organising, researching, leafleting, demonstrating and supporting each other you have ridden in on your white charger and painted yourselves their saviours.

    If you don't get why this has not been welcomed then my explaining wont help you understand.

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