and are members of the single largest organisation of council licensees. the 800-strong Camden-based SCH (Short-life Community Housing).
Built on the strength of the 'unofficial' squatting wave of the late sixties and establishing, as they do, a certain elementary right of security of tenure for their members, the licensed squatting' schemes represent a partial gain for the housing movement. On the other hand, they embody an attempt by the State to contain spontaneous squatting and sweep under the carpet the worst of the spectacle of homelessness.
On-the-cheap It is this latter aspect which explains the Environment Minister's cal last year for une extension of such schemes. The Labour Government's policy of housing expenditure cuts can only mean more homelessness and bad housing. Yet because there is a widespread gut sympathy The probable increase in shortlife schemes in the near future makes it absolutely essential that council "licensees' threatened with eviction can enforce a right to re-housing. The SCH members, learning from the struggle of the Elgin Avenue squattels, are insisting on re housing for all: in proper council flats for the households with children, and in more short-life accommodation of a decent standard for the single people and couples withOULKES They have refused to comply with the possession orders and leave their homes unless everyone threatened with eviction is granted re-housing. Continued possession of the buildings is their main material leverage in negotiations. The licensees have made it aosolutely clear from the start that they are not wilfully holding up public sector redevelopment, but point out that redevelopment that makes us homeless is no development at all. Government's present cuts.
is not to evict licensees' without re-housing them. policies needed to begin to resolve the housing crisis in the interests of the working class are:
1. Refuse to implement the cuts. 2. Municipal requisitioning of empty private property. 3. A crash programme of public building and repairs which can help to end unemployment in -the building industry as well as homelessness.
This is what licensees must fight for, along with the local labour movement, to press on Camden's Labour Councillors. They must be urged to defy the Government's cuts and if necessary do a Clay Cross. Contact: SCH, 18A Camden Road, London NW1. (01-267 4622): or Jane or Paul, Flat 9, Campen Court, NW3. But the answer to these problems
6 World economy 1************** free fall toward barbarism. "The capitalist world will not be able to pass from its present phase of general social crisis and generalised economic recession to a new phase of lasting and prolonged expansion except by first inflicting a crushing defeat on the working class and by inflicting disasters in the form of appalling famines, new bloody dictatorships, and new murderous wars on all humanity. To grasp the current crisis of the imperialist system as the point of departure for an assault on the power of capital is not only to take advantage of an exceptionally favourable opening for the international extension of the socialist revolution, but is also and above all to work to spare the human race a new era of Red Weekly