On 11th November, Spain will have a general strike over housing, supported by all the major unions. In Britain we have a housing crisis too, so where’s our general strike?

One quite straightforward answer is that the British trade unions can’t legally call a strike like this, a strike here can only be in a direct dispute with your own employer. If you go on strike to demand the government do something, or in solidarity with another group of workers, or against police brutality, say, you can be sacked without legal recourse and the union can be sued. Union activity on wider issues is still possible, but you can’t openly call a dispute about it.

The housing movement in Spain is more developed than in Britain. The current wave of tenants’ unions are only a decade old, but they came out of a wave of actions responding to the 2008 financial crisis, with groups like the PAH set up in 2009. The PAH, Plataforma Afectados de Hipoteca (Platform for People Affected by Mortgages) started in Barcelona and were organising neighbourhood meetings and eviction resistances for people at risk of foreclosure and homelessness because of the crisis. And before the PAH there were groups like V de Vivienda (V for Housing) during the housing boom prior to 2008.

The 2008 crisis hit Spain especially badly, with massive layoffs in the construction industry and foreclosure and evictions of people who couldn’t pay their mortgages, to a much greater degree than in Britain. This meant nearly all working-class people in Spain know somebody who was badly affected by the repossession wave and the injustice of that was felt more widely in society in Spain than in England, where home owners were less affected and evictions have been suffered mostly by tenants.

After the drop in house prices and mass foreclosures, investment companies moved into the Spanish rental market, buying up buildings to rent, including taking over a lot of social housing. The proportion of people living in rented accommodation is increasing (though still lower than Britain). The tenants’ unions which have formed more recently use strategies of block building, going door to door in apartment buildings and collectively contesting issues with the landlord. In Britain this is more difficult as there is a greater percentage of small landlords owning less than five homes, meaning tenants are more dispersed and acting collectively against a landlord is more difficult.

There is currently an indefinite strike in the education sector in Madrid, and strikers have been linking up with the tenants’ movement. The Spanish trade union movement is in general more militant than in Britain and there have been friendly relations between the workers movement and the housing movement for years. There have been six one-day strikes since 1975, and people are generally more likely to look to collective action when faced with difficulties and are more comfortable with it.

The anti-trade union laws do inhibit the possibilities for solidarity action, but we are also inhibited by internalising these restrictions. Workplace struggles in Spain face police and legal repression too and they have to collectively respond to that. If we take the ban on solidarity action and the more timid and apolitical trade union culture here as some kind of unbreakable divine law, and don’t try to do anything, then we can just stay stuck paying 70% of our wages on rent forever. Trade union movements were born during very overtly repressive moments in history. The options aren’t only ‘nothing’ or ‘general strike’.

In Spain 70% of households are home owners. In Britain the figure is 65% and falling. Investment companies are moving in more on the rental market, including buying up housing associations. Housing is a critical aspect of life and tenants’ movements are going to be an important part of class struggle going forward. We are in a difficult position, with increasing repression of all kinds of action and protest, a dispersed and atomised renting population, and a more ingrained individualistic and neoliberal culture. The only thing you can do really with difficult situations is start where you are. Building a movement, even in tough and unrewarding conditions, means you can seize the moment when it arises, as has happened in Spain after the eviction of Maricarmen.

Tenants’ unions abroad are often successfully using block strategies, going door to door in a block of flats and building a common struggle against the shared landlord. The LA tenants Union and the Madrid Tenants Union both have built strong organisations on this base. This doesn’t fit with the situation of most private tenants in the UK due to the prevalence of small landlords. That means we need to use block strategies where they do apply, which is going to be mostly in social housing, and develop organising methods which work for the majority of private sector tenants, which will probably mean basing organising on a locality and coming together collectively to fight lots of small landlords. This is an exhausting and demanding strategy which will often feel like doing loads of work for little gain, but in the last general strike in Spain pickets were deliberately run over by cars and that was quite shit as well.

Housing struggle involves activity both within the legal terrain and outside it, and is excellent territory for winning people over who are suffering materially and might be attracted to the right. It should be a serious priority for people. As much as anything in the legal situation, we suffer from being demoralised and fragmented as a class, but the only way we overcome that is through struggle. Getting excited about stuff happening in other countries is fine, doing this quite superficial “WOWAMAZINGLET’SGO!!/this country’s crap we can’t do anything” boom and bust surge and crash cycle is demoralising. Union branches have autonomy and can and should support local housing struggles whatever the high-level opinion of it is. The way out of feeling too demoralised and atomised is going out and talking to neighbours, getting a repair done, stopping an eviction, and building up from there. This is how all the tenants’ unions started.