Vote out landlord parties - call a housing protest before budget

Tathony House tenant and Rebel Telly regular James O’Toole has been fighting eviction from the Dublin 8 apartment block for 18 months, he calls for a vote against the landlord parties and for a mass housing protest before the Budget.

I know the stress of eviction all too well - we’ve been fighting our eviction since October 2022. 19,000 notices have been served across Ireland in the last year and now there are 14,000 in emergency accommodation.

Just after Christmas the head of homeless services in Dublin City Council, Mary Hayes, told the Dail that twice as many are entering emergency accommodation as those leaving.

The housing crisis is a manufactured social catastrophe. 40 years of running down public housing stock to force us into the arms of private landlords has brought us here.

The humiliation of a population leads to frustration and resentment- the perfect cocktail of emotions for establishment politicians and their far right assistants to divide and conquer by stoking racism.

But the soft left bears a responsibility for the humiliation people feel. If the Irish Congress of Trade Unions called a major serious campaign of housing mobilisation there would be no opening for those who want to divide ordinary people.

Any serious working class mass movement would expose the far right as groups made up of human dust - small business owners, drug dealers and landlords.

But the moralistic left, sitting on the sidelines moaning on social media about rising racism, doesn’t help us either. If you want people to listen to you get out and fight for their needs.

There is no need greater than the roof over your head. And there is no stress greater than losing it.

We need a water charges style movement on housing before the next Budget to signal the working class demands a historic social housing build.

If the union leaders continue to suffocate struggle, feelings of powerlessness and humiliation will increase and racism will fester. ICTU - you bear responsibility for this!

But so do the terminally online culture war left shouting from the sidelines and adding nothing to the struggle of our working class communities.

On June 7th, vote out the landlord parties of the establishment, the junior landlord parties of the far right and vote for working class socialists with a record of struggle for our class.

Then we need to take the battle into our unions to demand a major campaign of mobilisation on housing.

This is why I’m a member of the Red Network in People Before Profit - we fight for a working class left that stands up for our class and calls out those who are damaging our cause.