Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 36, Number 2. 7th March 1973
Cars towed away
Cars towed away
The Royal Rack Renter is beginning to lose his cool. Last week he had several cars towed away from a block of flats in Lower Hutt. The tenant owners were told that they could have them back when the money was paid. The police are investigating the disappearance. He has taken a piano and deep freeze from another tenant.
The tenants have successfully picketed their own blocks of flats so that Rama finds it very difficult to re-let empty flats. Many tenants have vacated their flats to go to cheaper ones and have left no forwarding addresses, so it is almost impossible for Rama to find them. Any new ten-ants are informed of the strike by the other flats and usually join the strike.
Rama and his new lawyers have issued over 100 summonses in an attempt to get the courts to order back payment of rent and eviction notices. The first three cases appear in the Upper Hutt Magistrates court this week. Even if Rama wins his case and the tenants are ordered to leave their homes and pay Rama the money he claims they owe him they will continue fighting. The law will be broken because the tenants are no longer prepared to suffer injustice. Rama has lost. Whatever happens in court, he can never recover thousands of dollars that the strike has cost him.
The tenants have won. A bond has been established between the tenants themselves and the Tenants Protection Association which has cut across class and race differences. The TPA is no longer a small group of privileged middle-class pakehas. Hutt Valley TPA has been formed by the Rama tenants, and they have a reputation amongst land agents and landlords for being un compromising and tough in any action they undertake for or with other tenants in the area.
Tenants Protection has learnt from Rama's tenants that deputations to MPs, submissions to Government ministers and all the other attempts to make the bureau crats do something about the injustices our society is riddled with, are an utter waste of time. The most effective way to destroy the landlord system is to take direct action. Contact other tenants and TPA if the rent is too high. Organise a rent strike. If there are good houses lying empty, squat in them. If landlords and their thugs try and evict tenants, get in there and fight with them. "Time for a change" the Labour politicians told us. They were right. It is time for people to change the laws that protect the business men and capitalists by breaking the law and demanding their rights.