United Kingdom (UK)

The general election did not allow for the full expression of people power. Rather, we saw a rejection of the political establishment, leading to a loveless landslide; this election saw the second-lowest turnout since 1918 and the smallest combined vote share for the two main parties since 1945. Public discontent with a broken political system will only grow as the government fails to make the real change that people expect.

That energy needs somewhere to go. It needs to be channelled. It needs to be mobilised. That’s why our campaign will organise with those who have been inspired by our victory to build community power in every corner of the country. Once our grassroots model has been replicated elsewhere, this can be the genesis of a new movement capable of challenging the stale two-party system. A movement that offers a real alternative to child poverty, inequality and endless war. A movement that provides a real opposition to the far right – one that doesn’t concede ground to divisive rhetoric, but stands by its principles of anti-racism, equality and inclusion.

I have no doubt that this movement will eventually run in elections. However, to create a new, centralised party, based around the personality of one person, is to put the cart before the horse. Remember that only once strength is built from below can we challenge those at the top.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced a 12-year plan for the building industry when peace came.

The Ministry of Works had come up with Emergency Factory Made Houses, or EFMs.

They devised an ideal floor plan of a one-storey bungalow with two bedrooms, inside toilets, a fitted kitchen, a bathroom and a living room.

The homes would be detached and surrounded by a garden to encourage householders to grow fruit and vegetables, and would have a coal shed.

Soon better known as prefabs than EFMs, the homes were cheap to produce and, for many, an improvement on their previous living conditions.

[…]

In the first decade after the war, nearly 500,000 homes were built using some form of prefabrication.

Originally intended as an interim solution until the country could return to building permanent homes with traditional materials, 156,623 prefab bungalows were built between 1945 and 1949.

Each was expected to last for a decade. About 8,000 remain today.

Now, as concerns about the UK's housing-affordability crisis continue to grow, author and journalist Anna Minton believes changing public sentiment about social housing may be turning the tide against further estate regeneration.

"The stock has been decimated and people would love to live in it," said Minton, a vocal critic of estate regeneration. "I think it's lost its bad reputation – people think, 'if only houses were available on council estates in the way they used to be'."

"There is a renewed interest because affordable housing and the housing crisis is right at the top of the political agenda in a way that it wasn't before," she told Dezeen. "This big push on estate regeneration – I think it has kind of peaked."

As Michael Gove launched his preposterous and dangerous new extremism definition, some of the groups he targeted have hit back – calling it a “deep dive into authoritarianism” and laying cover for the government “aiding and abetting” Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

As set out in JRF's recent report Making a house a home, the shifting balance of tenure has played a key role in myriad housing problems, from unaffordability and poor conditions to insecurity, and a plan for building a more equitable housing market must reckon with who owns our housing stock (Baxter et al, 2022).

This should take the form of efforts to shift tenure over time, and doing that directly through socialisation could play an important role. However, there are criticisms of this approach, and there needs to be a consideration of how acquisition may be best used within the housing system.

This briefing explores these criticisms, how they may be best overcome, and proposes the best way of deploying socialisation, arguing for a focus on:

• reducing the cost of providing temporary accommodation (TA), while supporting efforts to drive up standards in the sector
• growing a community rented sector in lower-cost housing markets that are otherwise plagued by poor conditions, poor management, and where rental payments are not benefiting local communities
• a wider plan to reform the Right to Buy scheme to arrest the decline of social housing and to keep subsidies in the system.

Following a pattern of jury acquittals of environmental defenders and anti-genocide activists, which exposes the media fiction that the British government’s ‘crackdown on protest’ is in any way democratic, the Court of Appeal has today backed the Attorney General’s call to remove what was for many their last remaining line of legal defence.

It has ruled that mass loss of life from climate breakdown and the government’s failure to act on the science are irrelevant to the circumstances of an action, for the purposes of the defence of consent to damage to property (Criminal Damage Act 1971, s.5(2)(a)). That is – protesters deeply-held and factual beliefs are no defence.

[…]

In the absence of any defence, some judges, such as Judge Silas Reid at Inner London Crown Court, have taken to banning activists from explaining their motivations to the jury and banning them from using words such as ‘climate change’ and ‘fuel poverty’ in their courtroom. Judge Reid has sent 3 people to prison just for using those words in court.

Such measures prompted an extraordinary intervention by the UN Special Rapporteur, Michel Forst, earlier this year:

 "I was … alarmed to learn that, in some recent cases, presiding judges have forbidden environmental defenders from explaining to the jury their motivation for participating in a given protest or from mentioning climate change at all.

 "It is very difficult to understand what could justify denying the jury the opportunity to hear the reason for the defendant’s action, and how a jury could reach a properly informed decision without hearing it, in particular at the time of environmental defenders’ peaceful but ever more urgent calls for the government to take pressing action for the climate."

Australia has supported the US and UK militaries as they launched more than a dozen airstrikes against sites used by Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen.

The US president, Joe Biden, confirmed the strikes, which are the most significant military response to the Houthis’ campaign of drone and missile attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

The Australian defence minister, Richard Marles, said the decision to launch the strikes “was not taken lightly”.

[…]

Asked if the US-led attacks risked escalating tensions in the region, Marles said defending freedom of navigation and global trade routes was “utterly central to Australia’s national interest”.

A recent judgement on copyright in the Court of Appeal (20 November) heralds the end of UK museums charging fees to reproduce historic artworks. In fact, it suggests museums have been mis-selling “image licences” for over a decade. For those of us who have been campaigning on the issue for years, it is the news we’ve been waiting for.

The judgement is important because it confirms that museums do not have valid copyright in photographs of (two-dimensional) works which are themselves out of copyright. It means these photographs are in the public domain, and free to use.

Veteran TV executive Samir Shah, the co-author of Boris Johnson’s controversial race report, has been named the new chairman of the BBC.

The role was vacated by Richard Sharp in a cloud of controversy earlier this year, when the ex-Goldman Sachs banker quit after failing to declare his link to an £800,000 loan made to Mr Johnson.

[…] 

The new chairman is best-known for his role co-authoring a much-criticised 2021 race report that dismissed the idea that Britain was institutionally racist.

Mr Shah strongly defended the findings of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report – and claimed the response of the “race lobby” had failed to understand it.

He argued that “class, poverty, family circumstance and geography” played as big a role as race in life outcomes.

Mr Shah also said there was “no doubt” that racial disparity still existed – but insisted that racism was “not sweeping” and was “diminishing” in the UK today.

Commissioned in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, the report found that institutional racism doesn’t exist. Some commissioners later claimed officials at No 10 helped rewrite the conclusion of the report.

As the Labour leader faces a backlash for his praise of the former Tory prime minister, a leaked email shows he stopped Sam Tarry, then the party’s shadow minister for transport, from attacking her failed policies in 2021.

[…] 

Left-winger Mr Tarry had wanted to criticise her 1985 Transport Act, saying it “failed to deliver lower fares and better services across Greater Manchester”.

But when the comments were sent to Sir Keir’s office for approval, one of his top aides insisted the reference to Thatcher be taken out.

The leaked email said: “Can we take out the Thatcher stuff and instead criticise the current government?” 

An adviser to Mr Tarry pushed back on the suggested edit and replied: “Mr Burnham’s happy with it and she’s despised in the north, so it will play well with voters.”

But Sir Keir’s aide insisted the reference be removed to “focus on the current set of elections and criticise the current set of Tories”.

[…] 

A source familiar with the exchange said it was indicative of Labour’s refusal to criticise Ms Thatcher under Sir Keir’s leadership, adding that recent praise for her was “less of a surprise and more of a confirmation of the Labour leader’s admiration for the former prime minister”.