The exposure of the Tory plans for “social cleansing” of poorer families in west London reveals both the odious underbelly of the party that David Cameron leads and the vision of society to which it is enthralled.
It is, as MP Andy Slaughter who revealed the scandal, says, an attempt at social engineering on a grand scale, social cleansing without respect to age, vulnerability or human rights. And it is being recommended to David Cameron as the way forward in housing by councillors in an authority he prizes as a flagship council.
In pursuit of “decent neighbourhoods” the Tories have ordered officials to work on plans which will potentially demolish entire working class communities. The project is not defensible by comparison with those slum developments of earlier decades in which communities were decanted wholesale to new towns or returned to new council estates and high-rise blocks. However misconceived these projects turned out with hindsight to be, the purpose was always to improve the living conditions of the communities they affected.
The purpose behind the plans of Hammersmith and Fulham Tories are exposed in the proposal which would raise rents for a two-bedroom flat from £85 to £360 a week, ensuring only the better-off could afford to live in the newly designated decent neighbourhoods.
This is not an isolated aberration. This strand of Tory prejudice was exposed when Shirley Porter notoriously led Westminster Council in the 1980s. Then, as now, poorer, Labour-voting tenants were dispersed in favour of wealthier, expectedly Tory voters. Now, as then, the true purpose of the plans were denied and attempts made to keep them secret.
Now that they are out it is incumbent on Mr Cameron to renounce the project and the purpose of it. Without such a denunciation it can be fairly assumed that the Tory Party nationally supports both. Moreover, it is imperative that the Labour leadership harnesses every effort to increase public awareness of what the Tories, as represented by the councillors in Hammersmith and Fulham, stand for and to bring pressure on Mr Cameron to reject the plans.
In a wider context, Hammersmith and Fulham underlines the need for Labour to put an end to the easy ride the Tories are enjoying. Is the party so short of resources that it cannot go on the offensive, not just in the brick-bat court of the House of Commons, but in a sustained, campaigning, revelatory offensive on Tory policy. Admittedly, any such operation would be on fallow ground nationally given the paucity of firm policy which Mr Cameron has allowed to seep out of his small coterie of front men for the nasty party.
Labour needs to show more life in politically engaging the enemy. In doing that it might be forced to reassess and slough off some of its own conservative policies so that more clear red water can be put between Labour and the Tories. That is what the traditional Labour voter in Norwich North would have wanted to see as they contemplated voting – or not – this week.
