Policy Statement by the RCP Political Bureau¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter, a policy statement from the Political Bureau of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) published in Socialist Appeal, No. 30, constitutes a direct intervention in a specific conjuncture of post-war class struggle: the squatters’ movement. Its core argument is that the occupation of empty property by homeless families is a progressive, revolutionary act that places working-class need above the “reactionary rights” of landlord property owners. The RCP does not merely offer solidarity; it frames the squatters’ initiative as a strategic lever to expose and oppose the Labour Government’s betrayal of its working-class mandate.
The key claim is that the Labour Government, by deploying police to evict squatters and prosecuting activists, has violated the electoral mandate given by the organised working class, which explicitly included housing the homeless. The RCP denounces the government’s move to formulate new legislation protecting property owners as a “monstrous betrayal.” The evidence cited is the government’s concrete actions: police assistance to landlords, prosecution of Squatters Committees and trade-unionists, and the Minister of Health’s instruction to cut off water, gas, and electricity to occupied premises.
The chapter draws on a Marxist theoretical framework that distinguishes between immediate, transitional demands and a final socialist solution. The RCP’s demands are calibrated to escalate the struggle: it calls on the organised labour movement to force the government to legalise squatting, establish local and national tenants’ committees, and requisition all empty premises. It further urges Trades Councils to refuse to carry out the Minister’s instruction to cut utilities, protecting trade unionists who defy it. This is a call for direct, rank-and-file action against a Labour government perceived as acting in the interests of capital.
The polemic is directed squarely at the Labour Government, which the RCP accuses of acting as the “protector of landlord property against worker homeless.” The statement also implicitly argues against reformist or legalistic approaches to housing, insisting that even the most radical immediate measures—requisitioning, state-financed building programmes—are only “partial solutions.” The final, necessary resolution is a national housing plan based on the nationalisation of land and all large buildings, directed by building trades unions and tenants’ committees. The RCP thus uses the squatters’ movement to advance a revolutionary perspective, demanding that the working class press the Labour government to operate demands that ultimately point beyond capitalism itself.