ORE than 200 railway houses in North Blyth and South Shields have been sold to property companies. Prices for each house ranged from £260 to £400. But once they had got hold of them the property companies offered the houses to the sitting tenants at more than twice the price paid. This scandalous story was outlined by two M.P.s from the North East, Mr. Edward Milne and Mr. Arthur Blenkinsop, in the House of Commans. In North Blyth about 86 houses had been sold at around £260 each and almost immediately offered at £750 cach. In South Shields the houses cost about £400 and were offered sitting tenants at £900 a few days after they were bought from British Railways. The houses were first offered to the local authorities at £70,000 in the case of North Blyth. Bedlington urban council refused even to pay half that price and they went to a property dealer for £23,000. Mr. Milne said that British Railways had spent about £16,000 on the houses.
For the Government, Stephen Swingler, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, said he would make further investigations. He understood that in the case of North Blyth, tenants had been approached some years ago to accept higher rents in order to gain some improvements. But they had refused: The Board had decided to dispose of them, And they tried hard to sell them to the local authority. It was only after this that the Board advertised them for sale. It was the same in South Shields. On the reason why houses had-not been offered individually to tenants, Mr, Swingler said that for administrative and organisational convenience they had to sell them as a block. British Railways still own many thousands of houses. They are trying to dispost of them as fast as they can. They should be stopped immediately from selling another house until the major issue is settled, and that is: “Who really controls such a national asset as the railways, and who has the wer to see that the public interest is not damaged by too much ‘free
WORKERS'
CONTROL
SEMINAR
— a correction
In our report of the London Co-
operative Society’s Seminar on indus-
trial democracy there were two
mistakes. In fact the date is the week-
end of May 8th and gth, and the
delegation fee is five shillings.
Preparations for the meeting are
well-advanced, and we shall report
further developments in our next
issue. Enquiries should be addressed
to the Convenor, 1 Plantation Drive,
Anlaby Park, Hull.
enterprise’ in our publicly owned in-
dustries?”
The public corporation as conceived
and pushed through by Morrison has
not worked. It cannot work within
the terms of proper economic national
planning.
Freedom to operate as an indepen-
dent commercial enterprise is incon-
sistent with public ownership and
planning and should be dropped.
What we need is comprehensive
planning to use our resources in the
very best way, through integration,
common accountancy and overall
direction of function.
We could then put an end to the
wasteful competition between the
railways and British Road Services
and the nationalised bus companies,
between the coal, gas and electricity
industries. We could plan railway-
men’s housing properly in conjunc-
tion with other nationalised industries
and local authorities. | Market dicta-
tion is inappropriate to such arrange-
ments.
In short the sooner we get down
to true socialist planning and achieve-
ment the better it will be.
—Railway Review, 19/2/65
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