In May this year the Labour Group lost control of Newcastle City Council, Most people obviously expected little change from the Tories, the elections were merely a matter of substituting new faces for the same policies, However the Tories have quickly shown that they are not short of ideas even more reactionary than they would have ever dared suggest before, Already after three months, the plans for comprehensive schools have been re-organised out of existence, bus fares have taken a sharp boost upwards, and now rent increases of up to 17s 6d (often a 40% rise) are to be clammed on Council Houses, However, as over the past month notices of the rent increases and the accompanying rebate scheme have been handed out, a mounting campaign of resistance has sprung up. While tenants in the east end were moving disjointedly into some form of opposition, Newbiggin Hall Labour Party called for the formation of a tenants action committee. Within days its Secretary, Bob Armstrong had support from nine city estates, representing over half the city tenants. Two weeks later at the first meeting of the Newcastle Council Tenants' Action Committee after it had been formed (with Bob Armstrong at its head), 16 tenants or community associations, three local labour parties and the regional Union of Post Office Workers were represented on the Committee, Over 90% of council tenants are represented. A mass meeting has been called at the City Hall on September 4 and meetings are being held all over the city. Bob Brown MP has addressed one on the Montagu Estate, and Ted Garrett MP attended one in Longbenton. Already new tenants associations have been formed in Kenton and Cruddas Park. At Longbenton tenants had to be shut out of a packed meeting where over 700 tenants unanimously adopted a resolution deploring the rent increases as excessive and the rebate scheme as "an anti-social means test", Ted Garrett, the MP promised to bring the matter up with the Minister of Housing in October, but for many tenants looking for a positive lead this was simply not enough. Longbenton U.D.C. (although a City estate it is situated outside the City boundaries) promised full support against the rent rebate scheme, and the Local Labour Party has been urged to call a meeting to send an emergency resolution to the Party Conference, calling on the government to delete the Ministry of Housing circular advocating rebate schemes which involve means tests, and to introduce the means to provide cheap loans of 3% or less for council house building. It is important that the present impetus of the campaign is maintained, and it is not allowed to die a glorious but unvictorious death at the City Hall meeting, This must not be the culmination of the campaign, but the rallying point of all the localised protest and the spring board for increased pressure and action. The Action Committee has great responsibility in ensuring this; it has till now been the focus of wide-spread and deep rooted working-class opposition to both the increases and the rebate scheme, Clir Forsyth, Tory Chairman of the Housing Management Committee has pompously declared that there is no case for opposition, that the increases are necessary and inevitable, The Action Committee has the task of organising and involving the widespread militancy, ultimately the source of its power; it must not let it be hived off into an inert mass of disorganised resentment and inaction, a shallow show of strength that the Council will easily be able to bluff its way past when it comes to the crunch in October, The response from the trade unions has been disappointing, although the campaign was partly initiated by a petition from the Post Office workers,
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