‘ACORN is a community union that has landlords on the run’

Bristol’s landlords are starting to fear a phone call from ACORN.

Last month Zara and her six children were facing eviction from their home in Brislington when she called on ACORN for help.

The community union mobilised at short notice, and phoned the landlord to notify that they were taking action.

Adian Cassidy, national organiser for ACORN based in Bristol, said that the landlord “audibly gasped” when she heard who was calling. The eviction was swiftly called off and another victim of the housing crisis was averted.

Formed in 2014, in the wake of the financial crisis, recession and the coalition government’s austerity programme, ACORN began when a group of local people in Bristol started talking about the issues that were affecting them.

After knocking on doors, and holding a public meeting of 100 people, the key problem seemed to ring out loud and clear: housing. People were fed up with the declining standards of private renting in Bristol – with rising rents and poor quality housing, and with being evicted through no fault of their own.

From this small group of dissatisfied Bristolians, ACORN was born as a community union to take on the housing crisis and public services crippled by austerity. For ACORN’s members, it was the point at which they started fighting back against the landlords and decision-makers, using the most powerful tool they had: collective action.

An ACORN protest in Easton stopped a mother and her young children from being evicted – photo: Betty Woolerton

Improving conditions for renters in Bristol

ACORN’s first campaign focused on housing, seen as the most pressing issue at the time for its members. ACORN’s first action was the ‘Halloween Housing Horror’ protest in October 2014, where members picketed letting agents in Redfield in full fancy dress, demanding they sign up to the ethical lettings charter drawn up by members.

The action was successful, and the charter was also adopted by Bristol City Council for their own housing stock.

In 2016 ACORN joined together with advice agencies, housing associations and other community groups to form the Mayor for Homes coalition, campaigning to make housing one of the main focal points of the 2017 mayoral election. The coalition held a hustings where members demanded, and gained, commitments on housing from the main candidates.

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A community union

Since these early campaigning successes, ACORN has gone from strength to strength, growing from 100 concerned Bristol residents to become a nationwide organisation with a head office in London, branches in more than 25 towns, cities, and boroughs across the country, and thousands of active members.

This may be due to the saliency of housing as a national political issue, but is also down to its signature combination of playful direct action tactics that seek to push landlords into action through public embarrassment, while pushing for a wide and diverse membership of local people.

It has protested chicken-shop owning slum landlords in Easton dressed as chickens, placed ‘crime scene’ tape around a dodgy letting agent office in St Werburgh’s, and posted fake cockroaches through the door of another.

On top of that, the member-led organisation has reversed a huge number of illegal and no fault evictions across the city.

Inspired by similar groups in the US, ACORN is keen to point out it has always been a community union not just a renters union.

Although housing is often at the forefront of member concerns, ACORN has been part of other successful campaigns to improve the lives for ordinary local people in Bristol. In 2017 it forced Bristol City Council to keep the Council Tax Reduction benefit that it had wanted to scrap, ending this exemption for the city’s poorest households.

More recently, ACORN launched a campaign to ‘Take Back our Buses’, demanding that the West of England buses be brought under public control through a franchising scheme.

Members took to the city centre with a giant red cardboard bus to protest the unreliable, expensive bus service in the city run by large private monopoly First Bus. Other campaigns have focused on the lack of public toilets or the poor state of local roads.

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Mutual aid in the pandemic

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit the UK in March 2020, ACORN members came together to coordinate a huge network of mutual aid for those isolating, with hundreds of volunteers delivering food and prescriptions to clinically vulnerable people around the city, as well as providing isolated people with social support to help them through the lockdown.

At the same time, ACORN held an action outside Bristol County Court, in coordination with other branches around the country to demand an extension to the pandemic eviction ban, and continued to support members facing eviction, or struggling to pay rent during the lockdowns.

What next?

With the cost of living crisis really starting to hit people across the country, ACORN’s foundations of solidarity and direct action in defence of fellow community members seem more important than ever.

And as the union continues to gain members and launch new groups and campaigns across England and Wales, there seems to be no slowing down any time soon.

In Bristol, ACORN is seeking a new member defence organiser to join its team. For more information and to apply, visit www.acorntheunion.org.uk

Main photo: Acorn Bristol

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