If you have a Labour MP in yr area, lobby them to support McDonnell. Main point, how the New Labour hierachy in the National Executive, within the Labour Party Conference and in the Joint Policy Committee of the Labour Party, have consistently ignored the policy mandates on provision of council housing from commissions set up by their National Policy Forum (the National Policy Forum is made up of 184 members representing government, European and devolved assemblies, local government, affiliated trade unions, socialist societies and others, and individual members of the Labour Party). Three years running the Labour Party conference voted in favour of direct investment, yet were consistenly ignored by the New Labour hierarchy. Then, Gordon Brown finally ceded limited ground to this change of policy when £1.5bn of apparently new funding for new homes was announced in June last year. However, former Housing Minister John Healey's new announcement on Council Housing Finance Reform which despite saying that "'No local authority will have a proposed allocation of housing debt which is not sustainable", also paradoxically said that councils would be asked to take on escalating additional debt at £25.13 billion and greater economic risk (currently borne by central government) with no guarantee of the necessary capital funding, which depends on future spending reviews (which will basically mean no new money).

In 1946 the UK was building about 100 000 houses each year, with the the annual build increasing year by year until 1968 when it reached 628 000. Since 1968 the housebuilding rate has declined steadily to about 90 000 in 2008 (an alternative strategy which should exist alongside greater council housing, of course, is more provision in the planning system for self-build in rural areas for low-impact smallholding communities, to embrace a low-carbon future, with grants for low-income people to buys plots of land for a pursuit largely the domain of people who have money to buy land).

The Tories of course will not only not provide investment for council housing, but are likely to slash spending on housing provision (like in Hammersmith & Fulham where the Tory council sold off 12 homeless shelters, handing them to large property developers). The Tories are for the de-socialisation of housing through ending capital investment and the requirement to provide housing to those in need that right-wing ideologues see as a first step to deconstructing the welfare state.

For New Labour this is also the crux of the matter, ie. their capitulation to neoliberal dogma throughout their 13 years in power. Dispensation for the rich elite through tax breaks, bailout of the bankers, a meagre stab at readressing the shortfall in redistribution of tax from the well-off with their flat-rate Capital Gains tax (now overhauled to include a higher rate of 40% by the Tories of all people!)

Evidence if ever in doubt that the New Labour project was a right-wing coup on the Labour Party. The Millibands, Balls and Burnham are all fully paid-up members of this travesty and should be utterly rejected (.. an Abbot a diversionary caberet act).

More Info: Save the Labour Party:  http://petergkenyon.typepad.com/peterkenyon/save_the_labour_party/
[taken from this website above: "Save the Labour Party continues to campaign for an ethical, solvent, democratically run, mass membership organisation. Many say, rightly, it never has been. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't aspire to those goals. On the contrary, a radical manifesto presented to the electorate in less than 100 days time by such a party would be far more credible with the electorate than farcical efforts to revive 'New Labour'."]

The LabOUR Commission report:  http://www.savethelabourparty.org/labourcommissioninterimreport.pdf