Just two years ago, if you were a journalist covering a housing protest, you would find yourself spending time in squats talking mainly to groups of dispossessed and disenfranchised idealists. Many of these campaigns were led by traditional activists: students, Marxists, deep green ideologists. Small-scale illegal occupations and break-ins were the methods of choice, with the occupation of a new development in east London one of the most high-profile actions. Two years ago, standing up to the vested interests in property was still a fringe concern.
But last year things changed. At some point back in summer 2014, housing because a major issue of protest again. The New Era and Focus E15 campaign groups – fronted by and representing ordinary families who previously demonstrated little interest in revolutionary politics, but whose lives were suddenly hanging by a by a thread after receiving eviction notices – captured the public imagination. For good or ill, Russell Brand started turning up.
Just weeks into 2015, housing protest has shaken off its anarchic roots and turned professional. On Saturday, 5,000 people marched on London’s City Hall from two London locations. The group was a mixture of private renters, council housing campaigners and homeowners with a shared message that the housing crisis is bad for us all.
On Monday, even a group of developers who will reap huge profits from the coalition government’s latest planning policy, which absolves builders of the responsibility to include affordable housing, spoke up against the decision and called on the housing minister, Brandon Lewis, to scrap the idea.
And on Wednesday, campaign group Generation Rent gathered angry private tenants together for Rent Freedom Day – 12 hours of hard lobbying in Westminster that culminated in the first pre-election hustings on housing.
The parties’ performances were indicative of the appetite to this core election issue. Conservative Mark Pawsey and Liberal Democrat Stephen Williams conceded little in response to audience concerns, while Labour’s shadow housing minister, Emma Reynolds, and Green MP Caroline Lucas toughed it out over the difficult questions. There was little between them (Labour promised three-year fixed tenancies for renters, and the Greens stretched for five) but Lucas was the sole speaker on the panel of four to make the wider case for housing as a “human right”.
“Unless we get a place to live that we can genuinely call home, then it’s very difficult to get any other aspect of your life right,” she said, to rapturous applause. It was no surprise that Lucas would be the one to win campaigners’ hearts, but the day itself delivered some genuine surprises.
A few aggressive heckles aside, it represented a maturing of the grassroots pro-housing lobby, now considered a serious enough force that even the Residential Landlords’ Association wanted to address the crowd. As veteran council housing advocate Eileen Short said, this week they achieved what had a few short months ago been thought impossible: “We all came together … a housing movement from the bottom up.”
History should give these campaigners reason for optimism. Almost 100 years ago to the day, women left behind in the Glasgow tenement blocks as their husbands fought in the great war refused to be bullied into paying ever higher housing costs and went on a rent strike. The protest spread, forcing government to act, and on 27 November 1915 legislation was passed to cap rents at pre-war levels.
A century ago the women of Glasgow were no soft touch. The housing campaigners of today mean to follow in their footsteps.
