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Letters Dear Comrades, Peter Lush's review of Labour's housing programme in the MIR election special rightly pointed out its most important weakness - the Labour leaders won't commit themselves to come up with the necessary cash.
But I believe there's another important fault in their approach - the Tories have a strategy for housing and to say that the Tories have a strategy to eliminate homelessness, slum housing or sky-high rents and mortgages. Of course they don't. But they are committed to eliminating publicly-owned housing, just as they're committed to wiping out all other public ownership. One reason for this is that they can't bear to see something not making a profit for their rich friends. Our homes shouldn't just be sitting there keeping the rain off our heads; they should be providing our betters with a few extra quid from rent and interest.
But there's another reason Thatcher had a strategy, which hasn't been reversed by her successors, of trying to create a permanent electoral base for the Tories and a permanent social base for capitalism her 'property-owning democracy.
wasn't going to be If Britain Napoleon's 'nation of shopkeepers' again - Tesco and Sainsburys have seen to that - it would have to be transformed into a nation of home-owners all with a couple of shares in a privatised industry and membership of Вира.
This is a coherent strategy based on what they see as the interests of the class they represent. Labour's trouble is that its leaders don't have any alternative set of ideas from the opposing class point of view. In fact the Labour leaders have swallowed the Tories' ideology whole. They accept that the capitalist market has triumphed and refuse to defend public ownership. So, as well as having no plans to pay for a house-building programme, they are afraid to defend the idea of publicly-orned housing. On the face of it the Tories strategy seems to have worked - and the Labour leaders certainly believe it has. More than two-thirds of housing stock is now owner-occupied But this hasn't been because of mass conversions to free-market ideology. The main cause of the house-sale boom was that mortgages dropped and rents rose, making it as cheap to buy as to rent and as at some point you hoped to have paid your mortgage off.
was helped by the This Tories introducing subsidised mortgages on council homes so as to get them out of council control.
But that's all changed. Those who bought at the height of the boom were soon confronted with a 50% increase in interest rates. Mortgage debt has gone from 30% of personal disposable income to more than 70%. For millions of people the Tories housing strategy has been a disaster. Home-owners have seen their mortgage payments soar and many can't afford the repairs and care their homes need, meaning Britain's housing stock is decaying at an alarming and Then there's the Tories' plans to take rented housing out of council control. They have advanced various schemes to accomplish this. The most notorious have been HATS which have met stiff resistance in most areas where they've been proposed.
But they have other tactics as well. In fact, everything they propose in housing is The main reason tenants look for alternatives is that council housing has been starved of money and left to deteriorate, although they're also attracted to the chance to have more control over running their estates.
Labour leaders react to Tory proposals individually; they don't point out the Tories' not-so-secret plans. There's no point in socialists campaigning against existing housing associations or the principle of tenants running their estates. But we should point out why the Tories are advocating these measures and encourage tenants to check the small print for plans to privatise But I don't believe Labour should advocate these measures. A socialist housing policy shouldn't encourage housing associations, it should unashamedly stand for massively expanded public housing under council control. It should extend tenants' control but oppose attempts to get estates fighting against each other for funds.
I also don't agree with Peter that Labour should stand for for interest-free mortgages. Nationalised banks should offer low interest, stable mortgages, which would be a big improvement on today's situation. Interest-free loans should be reserved for public services.
A socialist housing policy would demand homes for all as a right and explain that this Have you any comments about this issue of the MIR? Let's hear from you.
MIR C31
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Name..
Address TUTE PROFIT can only be guaranteed through expanding publicly-owned housing. There should be a programme of repair and renovation of existing housing stock. But the key to solving the housing crisis is building good homes with materials, good planning and low rents That means a central plan to build publicly owned housing with democratic control by councils and tenants. Tony Cross, Tower Hamlets Dear Comrades, The recent death of Dr Isaac Asimor provides an appropriate opportunity to discuss his contribution to science and science fiction in a career that spanned five decades. His serious scientific writings popularised science and the nature of his science fiction was different to other writers. Asimor's major works do not deal with bug-eyed monsters by securing its financial base. Just fill in the form below or write to us with a cheque or postal order payable to Work Socialist Books, 3/13 Hepscott Road. London E9 SHB. Subscription Rates: $5 for four issues, UK/Ireland, $6 overseas. or strange alien cultures but with humans. He dealt with the probable impact of science and technology on human society rather than Star Wars adventuring. He aimed to make his readers think rather than recoil in horror.
That's not to say that he made accurate predictions of the future - he foretold the positronic robot and hyper-space but not the personal computer or the car phone.
But he took the civilised view that robots autonomous mechanical devices - could only be allowed to function in human society if their programming included three unbreakable laws: a robot cannot harm a human being or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm: a robot must obey the orders given to it by a human being unless they conflict with law one: a robot must protect its own existence unless this conflicts with law one.
In reality, in their callous drive for profits. the Rupert Murdochs and Fords of this world have introduced new technolog! at the expense of human beings - except themselves and their shareholders, of course. Yet Asimov had no illusions about the capitalist class - he simply believed that they would be swept away by what he called 'psycho-historical necessity.
He personified 'psycho-history' in Hari Seldon in The Foundation trilogy Seldon foresaw how a better society could be constructed on the ruins of the former galactic empire. He set up two Foundations 'at the opposite ends of the galaxy' to bring it about.
Asimor wasn't a Marxist writing in America in the McCarthy era it was unlikely that he would be! - but it is no accident that Hollywood has failed to turn any of his works into space epics. Some of his ideas are far too dangerous.
Take the anti-racism of his work. He presents the inhabitants of earth as a persecuted race in the later Robot novels. He also showed the subjugation and oppression of a white race in The Currents of Space in which apartheid is subjected to ruthless satire.
His atheism did not endear him to the movie moguls either. He found it hard to beliere in a loving God who would 'condemn his opponents to a kind of super-Auschwitz. for eternity.
Finally, a word of warning. Like all professional writers Asimov's work is uneven. His work aimed at a juvenile market is just that - juvenile His later work followed the trend of sci-fi and included sex scenes which he seems to have written reluctantly and not very well.
Nevertheless his best works - the Foundation and Robot novels - and many of the short stories, are of a very high standard Derek McMillan, Sussex
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