The Momentum group on the left of the Labour Party has outlined a three-stage campaign to secure a longer term ban on evictions and other measures.
The campaign – called Eviction Resistance, set up last autumn – involves extensive use of social media and WhatsApp groups for individuals to locate their local campaigns and to seek “direct support from HQ”.
Momentum’s “campaign hub” website outlines the strategy:
– “Mobilising in support of renters’ unions to take direct action to prevent evictions and stop landlords making people homeless in the middle of a pandemic”;
– “Building a political anti-eviction movement against the government to fight for: a reintroduction of the eviction ban [until at least August this year], rent debt forgiveness, and an end to ‘no fault’ evictions”; and
– “Educating renters about their legal rights and winning them over to a socialist solutions to the housing crisis.”
The site tells activist readers: “It’s up to you to choose how to pursue these goals.”
Over last weekend there were socially-distanced protests by Momentum against agents and what the organisation called “the big landlords.”
These took place in Southend, Tower Hamlets, Ealing, Loughborough and Charnwood, Lewisham, Catford and Bromley, Southwark and Lambeth, Hammersmith and Fulham, Wandsworth, and Bradford and Shipley.
Momentum is a pressure group that reached its greatest influence during the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.