Gan Nora Rhiannon
In my three years with ACORN Cardiff I calculate that we’ve gotten £3,240 worth of fees cancelled and an estimated £1,900 in deposits & rent returned for our members. We’ve saved a Community Café from a 50% rent increase, secured housing repairs for around twelve tenants and protected three families from eviction. We’ve also occupied a bank, disrupted a Senedd committee meeting and infiltrated five separate landlord conferences.
This is a story about ordinary people: ordinary people who got organised, linked arms, and told the bailiffs to fuck off
ACORN is a community union of workers, tenants and families, and as you can see we win big for our members. Yet despite our impressive record we seem to go largely unmentioned in left-wing circles. At most I have heard lip service: “Oh ACORN? That’s the housing group, right?”. The story of the Left in Wales over the past few decades has largely been one of failure and decline, and so it’s astounding that ACORN, one of the few big recent successes, has been left out of the picture. I’m here to fill in the gaps in the narrative. If you hear of ACORN at all in the media we’re usually described as “activists” or a “campaign group”, but this is a story about ordinary people: ordinary people who got organised, linked arms, and told the bailiffs to fuck off.
One of the reasons ACORN is so successful is that its tactics hinge on the main advantage the working class have over the rich: the fact that we outnumber them. There’s a great deal of strength in numbers, indeed picket lines, occupations and targeted marches are just as effective now as when the first trade unions began using them. One tenant has little chance in beating their landlord, but fifty tenants together is another matter entirely; when ACORN members stand in front of bailiffs to stop an eviction, we illustrate that working class power perfectly. Worker-led, high-participation organising like that instills a strong sense of class consciousness and unveils the ongoing class struggle for everyone to see. There’s nothing quite like the sense of pride and power that comes from blocking the bailiffs’ path and keeping your neighbours safe in their homes.
What keeps ACORN strong is its discipline: ACORN members have clear roles and responsibilities, and hold each other to a high standard. So much is on the line for the members we defend, and so it’s extremely important that we get things right. For the organisation to keep functioning, members have to follow through on our commitments, put in the work, and take an active role in the union. By encouraging each other to step up to new challenges, we train effective actionists and build a culture of trust, of self-sustaining, “do it yourself” engagement. It’s no wonder then that ACORN develops its members into such competent, confident, committed organisers. Our belief in ourselves and each other means that members are ready to take action the moment we’re called upon. ACORN discipline is about a willingness to both lead and follow, an ability to act as a unit and stand firm, rush forward or retreat at a moment’s notice.
Planning ahead pays off massively, and if you fail to prepare you prepare to fail. Behind every ACORN victory is months of work: research, doorknocking, ringrounds, strategy charts and meetings. We go into every direct action briefed, trained and knowing why we’re there. We know our opponents, we know our strategy, and we know the law better than the police. ACORN strive to be intentional and impactful with our actions, so they’re carefully designed to maximise the pressure they put on decision-makers. Our success comes partly from our aversion to the broad left-wing obsession with marches and rallies in town centres, and our ability to abandon a tactic when it’s not working. To us, open-minded appraisal and discussion of a movement’s strategy is essential to its function. If there was no analysis, no planned path to power, no measure of victory or defeat… then our organisation would cease to be an engine of class struggle and would be relegated to the role of a subculture. ACORN members know why we do what we do, how it works and what our next step is.
All across Wales, rents are rising, standards are dropping and evictions are rampant. An organised landlord class of three million people is sucking the blood from tenants in the UK and has huge sway over government decisions. Austerity, the housing crisis and the cost of living crisis are part of a class war, pushing more and more people into poverty, debt and homelessness. Tenants and low-middle income residents need to organise in response, and demand not only our basic rights but genuine democratic control over the country we live in. What ACORN does in Cardiff works, it’s a clear model for that working class movement and it deserves attention. Imagine what we could do with branches in Swansea, Newport, Merthyr, Wrexham, Bangor and elsewhere! If you join today and get involved in the national membership team or the Cardiff branch, you get us one step closer to that dream. It’s time the tenants and working-class residents of Wales started asking ourselves “why haven’t I signed up for ACORN?”. Join the union and come fuck up a landlord’s day.
