Potential Rents Strike in Cumbernauld

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In order to combat the proposed rent increases here in Cumbernauld when the Government's rents bill becomes law, the local Trades Council has swung into action and held a public protest meeting in conjunction with the .. Town Council (S.N.P)* The position here is that the Cumbernauld Development Corporation (who own the houses), a body as far removed from ever. bourgeois democracy as Archangelsk is from Vladivostok, are intending to up the rents on May 29th in anticipation of the bill becoming law. On 9th March (3 days before the first public protest meeting) the C.D.C. sent out letters to most of the tenants demanding the payment of rates, in some cases demanding up to C70 immediately, if not sooner. As was to be expected, the rates office was besieged by a crowd of angry tenants all demanding to know the reason for the letters. One of the bureaucrats in the rates office, smiling sardonically, directed them to other sardonically smiling bureaucrats in the Town Hall. It was discovered (eventually) that the letters were a new way of hastening the prompt payment of arrears. If the arrears were not paid within 10 days then the person in arrears would be faced with a bill for the sum total of the rates up to the end of the financial year, also to be paid within a stipulated time or else "court action" (a synonym for eviction). The first meeting (12th March) opened at 2.30 p.m. and on the platform were speakers from the Trades Council, the various tenants associations, and a representative of the Town Council, who is also an S.N.P. member, who is also the town's Provost, who was also the meeting's chairman. The first speaker was the chairman (S.N.P.) representing the Town Council, who, after boring everyone with 45 minutes of his own particular brand of bourgeois nationalism, very generously offered the other speakers from the Trades Council etc... 5 minutes to expound their views on the subject! After that the meeting was to be thrown open to questions, then statements, then resolutions.