Council housing campaigners scored a victory in Swindon today when thousands of the local authority's tenants voted overwhelmingly against plans to transfer of their homes to private providers.
In a ballot of more than 10,000 Swindon council tenants, nearly 73 per cent voted against the plans despite the city authority's best efforts to persuade them otherwise.
"The Swindon tenants' Vote No campaign was a grass-roots affair," said Paul Burnham of Defend Council Housing, which helped run the campaign.
"The council spent in excess of £600,000 on the transfer consultation, while the Vote No campaign spent less than £6,000 - but still the tenants delivered a No vote."
Swindon Tenants Campaign Group spokesman Martin Wicks accused the council of "organising an undeclared Yes campaign" under the cover of providing impartial facts.
"Every piece of propaganda they produced was designed to lead tenants to draw the conclusion that there was no alternative to transfer," he said.
Mr Wicks said his group had received complaints about "disgraceful" behaviour from council officers who door-stepped tenants during the campaign.
"On one occasion a tenant was told they might as well take a No poster down as it wouldn't make any difference, or another told 'you can vote No, but it will still go through'," he recalled.
"On the council's own Housing Group Facebook page there were complaints from tenants about harassment.
"Rest assured we'll be pursuing these issues."
Mr Burnham added that the result sent a strong message to the coalition as it promotes a new wave of council house transfers and privatisation under its new Housing Strategy for England.
"This government promises debt write-down to sell off council housing, while loading extra debt onto the backs of council tenants," he said.
Mr Whick added: "We need to campaign for funding which measures up to the needs of tenants and for a new council house-building programme to address the housing crisis both locally and nationally.
"What we need to do now is to build on this victory by developing an independent tenants' organisation to fight for our interests on an ongoing basis."
Taken from the Morning Star
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