On Saturday I went on the March for Homes to City Hall. The weather didn’t help – grey, wet and miserable – but still thousands turned up, braving the cold and rain, in the hope that Boris might notice and remedy our deranged housing situation.
They’re odd things, demonstrations. I never know what I feel. Half determined, half hopeless, but mainly furious, because why should people have to bravely come here, old and young, disabled, in wheelchairs, to the office of the mayor of one of the richest capital cities in the world, and beg for a roof over their heads?
I had a little grizzle by the wall of ugly County Hall at the outrageous iniquity and possible futility of it all. Why were we here?
“Because we’re very stupid and old and have a romantic idea about democracy,” said my friend Olga, rather crabbily. “And the young are too idealistic to know that it’s pointless.” What a cynic. But she’s wrong. There is no point being weedy and giving up.
Why make it easier for Boris? I doubt that he gives much of a toss. He was probably relaxing in some luxurious dwelling beside a cosy open fire, wondering how he could further enrage Isis, while we all stood in the widdling rain. We must at least go down fighting. And on the way, we can point out how disgraceful it is that the poor are desperate for homes in London when there are so many empty buildings, and when the tremendously rich have a squillion rooms each but, as my mother used to say, only one bum, which they can only put in one room at a time.
Perhaps we can at least appeal to their monumental self-interest by warning them that soon there will be no one left to clean their drains, put out their fires, look after them when they’re old and sick, build and clean their mansions, produce and cook their food, and mend their roads, sewers and black Range Rovers.
This march is the beginning of a unified campaign for better housing policies. We hope. Next step: rent controls. Labour party, where are you?
