Not Hate - A Housing Revolution Is Scotland’s Best Defence

Three thousand six hundred children are living in temporary accommodation in Edinburgh[1], waiting for a permanent home that never comes. That’s Scotland in 2025. This isn’t an anecdote. It’s a scandal that tells you everything about where we are.  Scotland is living through a housing emergency that should shame every politician in Holyrood. Yet the debate is muffled, shrouded in the safe managerial language of “affordability” and “targets.” Meanwhile, thousands are homeless, families rot in temporary flats and in cramped conditions, and young people give up hope of ever moving out.

We know what fills the void left by political cowardice. The far right steps in, weaponising scarcity and blaming “immigrants”. They peddle poison and hate because governments have failed us. And while MSPs and MPs wring their hands, communities are told to fight each other over scraps.

Here’s the truth: if we want to beat the far right, we don’t need slick slogans about “tolerance” and we fight to fight back against the far right. We need homes. Real ones. Council houses with secure tenancies and rents people can actually pay. A mass public housebuilding programme — not a trickle of developer-led “affordable” mid-market boxes.

Mary Barbour Wouldn’t Wait

A century ago, socialist Mary Barbour faced down landlords who thought they could bleed mostly women tenants dry while men fought in the trenches in World WW1. She organised women in Govan, led rent strikes, and chased sheriff officers from closes. She didn’t plead for mercy. She fought until the state caved and froze rents.  Mary Barbour wouldn’t wait for a task force, a consultation, or a ten-year strategy. She acted - because she knew waiting meant eviction, hunger, and despair.  That’s the spirit we need today. Because nothing will change until tenants, communities, trade unions and workers force the issue.

Wheatley Showed the Way

John Wheatley, socialist Red Clydesider and Minister of Health, proved in 1924 that mass council housing is not a fantasy. His Housing Act delivered hundreds of thousands of homes - solid, spacious, and transformative. Between 1924 and 1933, 500,000 homes were built, and millions more were constructed until the 1970s, including new streets, housing schemes, villages, and even new towns.

It wasn’t utopia. It was political will. And it created dignity for families who’d been crammed into slums. Wheatley showed what happens when the state acts boldly, not timidly. It’s far from impossible.  Wheatley’s legacy shows that scale is possible - half a million homes in under a decade.

The Scale of the Crisis

This isn’t a shortage. It’s a collapse.  Today, Scotland has only 633,030 social rented homes - about 23% of the housing stock.¹ A generation ago, it was twice that.

• In 2024–25, councils received 40,688 homelessness applications.²
• On 30 September 2024, 16,634 households were in temporary accommodation - 10,360 of them children.³
• Families in Glasgow spent an average of 445 days waiting in limbo.⁴
• 3,500 children in Edinburgh are in temporary accommodation, that’s more than in the whole of Wales.
• The housing waiting list is now 177,264 households long.⁵
• The average private rent for a two-bedroom flat in Edinburgh is £1,400 a month

These aren’t just numbers. They are lives shortened, opportunities crushed, and futures stolen. This is housing trauma. It’s not housing policy. It’s institutionalised neglect.

Starving the Far Right

Scarcity is fertile ground for hatred. When people are desperate for jobs and homes, they look for someone to blame. The far right seizes that chance, turning neighbour against neighbour. They point the finger not at the policies that did this, at the rentier economy and the austerity that cripples councils, but at immigrants.

The far right thrives on the housing crisis like mould in damp walls. Starve the mould - build the homes. But their lie collapses the moment homes are built. If every family had a secure, decent house, the far right would have nothing to feed on but their own bile. Building homes is not just an economic policy. It’s how you starve fascism as homes, jobs and communities are built. In a digital world facing job decimation through AI, let’s get building, create employment and futures before we face mass unemployment too.

A Housing Revolution: The Wheatley Act for Today

We don’t need another timid strategy. We need a 21st-century Wheatley Act:

• 100,000 new council homes in ten years (more if we can).
• Public investment and public control. Stop outsourcing to developers.
• Jobs and apprenticeships guaranteed. Build with local labour and train the next generation.
• Retrofit and upgrade the stock we’ve got. Cut bills and emissions together.
• Real rent controls and tenant rights. Stop exploitative landlords.

This isn’t just a list of policies. It’s a survival plan for Scotland’s working class.  This isn’t radical, it’s housing reform. It’s common sense. We’ve done it before. We can do it again.

Who Will Carry the Banner?

Someone has to own this fight. Currently, no party is well-suited for the job.  The SNP? They talk big, but their record is timid. They’ve let the language of “affordable housing” become a cover for market tinkering. It’s the language of austerity and neo-liberal economics.

Labour? Aye, right. They should, but they won’t.

The Greens? They talk climate, but where’s the housing revolution in their manifesto?

Or maybe it’s time for something new. A party or an alliance of the left, of movements across Scotland rooted in tenants, young people, unions, and working-class communities. Scottish Socialist Party, Your Party, an alliance of these parties and movements?  An alliance that builds solidarity, that takes no truck from developers, won’t be swayed by lobbyists, and has one uncompromising demand: people before profit.

Build or Bust

This is a test of whether Scotland can call itself a just society. We can either continue with hand-wringing strategies, or we can pick up the banners of Barbour and Wheatley and fight for everyone in Scotland to have a home.

Homes before hate. Bricks before bigotry. Jobs before despair.

If they won’t build, we need to organise until they have no choice. Because Scotland doesn’t need another strategy - it requires a housing revolution. It’s time for Holyrood to stop hiding. Either MSPs pass a bold Housing Act - or we build the movement to force them to do so. Because people are waiting, and people are angry.

And they have every right to be.

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References

1. Shelter Scotland, February 2025
2. Scottish Government, Housing Statistics for Scotland 2023–24: Social Housing Stock.
3. Shelter Scotland, Homelessness in Scotland 2024.
4. Shelter Scotland, ibid.
5. Understanding Glasgow, Homelessness Indicators, 2024.
6. Scottish Government, Housing Statistics for Scotland 2023–24.

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