{"id":17610,"date":"2026-04-20T08:13:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T08:13:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/17610\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T08:13:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T08:13:19","slug":"national-housing-demo-calls-for-rent-controls-and-council-housing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/17610\/","title":{"rendered":"National Housing Demo calls for rent controls and council housing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tNews<\/a><\/p>\n

The militant march in London demanded housing justice<\/p>\n

By Pat Meusel<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDownloading PDF. Please wait…<\/p>\n

Saturday 18 April 2026<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tIssue 3002<\/a>
\n\t\t\t\t\"Protesters<\/p>\n

Marchers took to the streets in central London (Pic: Guy Smallman)<\/p>\n

Thousands of people marched through London on Saturday for the national housing demonstration<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The protest was called by Homes4All and the London Renters Union, among others, and backed by over 50 other tenants\u2019 unions, trade unions and grassroots campaigns.\u00a0And activists travelled from as far as Newcastle and Portsmouth to join.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Their demands included a call for rent controls<\/a> and the construction of council housing.<\/p>\n

Emily and Paul are architects working in London. They told Socialist Worker, \u201cWe left Dublin because of a housing crisis there, and now we\u2019re faced with rising rents here.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d love nothing more than to be working on council housing. But everything\u2019s geared towards private development and profit.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Molly, an activist and council housing tenant in north London told Socialist Worker, \u201cI\u2019m here today because as a mother, grandmother and working class person who\u2019s been fortunate enough to benefit from council housing, I fear there won\u2019t be affordable housing for future generations.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the mood on the demo was militant.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Left wing MP Zarah Sultana told the rally, \u201cPriorities are a political choice. So we have to ask, why is there always money to destroy homes abroad while we fail to build them here?\u201d<\/p>\n

Becca from Trans Action for Housing Justice, said, \u201cYes, we need rent controls, we need council housing. But that is a fraction of what we deserve. These are the first demands in a fight for our freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Adam, a disability activist from Inclusion London, said \u201cWe are not asking for sympathy, we are demanding justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tanya, an activist with Homes 4 All and Southwark Housing and Planning Emergency (Shape<\/a>) called for unity against racism. She said, \u201cThe most important thing I have to say today is that refugees<\/a> did not cause the housing crisis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe billionaires who make the rules want us to blame each other. But we need to say, loud and clear, no to fascists like Tommy Robinson, no to racists like Reform UK, and no to those like Keir Starmer who have acted as Nigel Farage\u2019s best recruiting agents. We must not let racism divide us.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The march set off with chants of \u201cHere to stay, here to fight, housing is a human right\u201d, \u201cWhen I say \u2018rents up\u2019, you say \u2018fight back\u201d and \u201cStarmer in your ivory tower, this is called people power\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There were banners on the march from a big and broad number of organisations, including Justice for Grenfell, renters\u2019 unions from Bristol, Greater Manchester, Liverpool, Oxford and Sheffield, local branches of the NEU, Unison and Unite unions, the London Green Party, Your Party branches from Lewisham and Walthamstow, and Stand Up To Racism.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Molly called for more action over housing. She said, \u201cIt\u2019s great that so many people have come together here today, but this needs to be the start of something bigger.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"News The militant march in London demanded housing justice By Pat Meusel Downloading PDF. Please wait… Saturday 18…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[3783,154,27],"class_list":{"0":"post-17610","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-disability","9":"tag-housing","10":"tag-london"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116436035346314259","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}