Housing is a human right! Has anyone told the guards?
It seems self-evident that everyone in the society should have a roof over their head, so what's the problem with having housing is a human rate as a slogan?
And the end of the day this is one of a list of issues such as water, education, housing and health that the trade union bureaucracy and the leaders of popular mobilisations put forward as been solved by a change to the law or by petitions to amend the constitution. With a new law or constitutional change, the argument goes, the government would have to find you a house.
Yet a quick glance around our society tells us right away that this isn't the case.
Ireland is supposed to be a neutral country, yet US soldiers pour through Shannon. Every institution in the country including the Garda and the courts, or utterly corrupt and immune from punishment even when they are found out. What few regulations apply to landlords and mortgage holders are routinely ignored.
When Take Over the City tried to organise around a right to housing they found the heavy squad and private thugs defending a higher right - the right of the super rich to private property and to minimise the return on capital.
The problem with a human rights approach is that it is an appeal to the capitalists to play fair.
The alternative is before us - seize the speculators property, build a mass movement in defence of those threatened with eviction and call for housing for all.