Council Tenants Are Treated Like Dirt - We Need To Fight Back!

It’s been the strategy of government after government to run down council housing so that they can push people out and into the hands of private landlords. They have slashed the level of state home building while intentionally running down existing council estates.

In the 1980s many council estates had live in caretakers. The government built 8,000 social homes a year at the start of that decade and only 800 by the end. This went hand in hand with demonising social housing tenants.

This is why people are living in mouldy damp conditions. This is why repairs don’t get done. This is why working class people are mistreated by the councils. It’s done on purpose.

They brought in an income threshold to deny most workers access to social housing and then make you struggle through poverty for years on housing lists to even get a place to live.

We need to see that the way we are being mistreated is connected to the logic of what’s called “neoliberalism” - what used to be called Thatcherism - the approach that says sell off everything public, run down public services, make the rich richer.

But council tenants have been getting organised and fighting back.

The national tenant’s union CATU have been organising in estates like Emmet Buildings, Pearse House and Cromcastle Court in Dublin. They’ve taken the fight to Dublin City Council and demanded that tenant’s voice be heard.

The union has called a National Housing Protest on Saturday July 5th leaving the Garden of Remembrance at 1pm.

We need to unite all the council estates across Ireland and put pressure on the councils and on the landlords in government to deliver on housing, to maintain our estates when they’re built, to regenerate those estates that need it and to provide decent facilities for all council estates.

The root of the problem is that the logic of pandering to the market - to vulture funds, landlords and developers - means it’s going to be an uphill fight for council tenants unless the overall context changes and that’s going to take more than a few protests.

We should fight for whatever we can get from the councils - and protests do work. But if we still live under the same economy then they’re going to roll those gains back unless we keep pushing.

We need a planned economy, where working class people get to say what happens to all the wealth we create with our blood, sweat and tears. We need to kick out the establishment politicians and put the working class in the driving seat.

In the short term we need to fight for every crumb we can get. But in the long term this country needs a working class rebellion because that’s the only way you’re going to get a 32 County Workers’ Republic.

That’s the only way to put workers in the driving seat. If you agree with us you should get involved with the Red Network.

We are a new working class socialist organisation with members from places like Fatima Mansions and Basin Street Flats. We have activists in Dublin, Cork and other towns across the country.

We have activists in workplaces and in the unions who work hard on the issues of today but fight for workers to see the power that we have when we come together - we argue for us to use that power to take down the Dáil and replace it with real democracy.