Hello there. I have been a lifelong trade union and political activist. I was Secretary of Swindon TUC for 20 years, and an RMT activist for 20 years before compulsory redundancy forced me off the railway. I am a Council tenant and Secretary of Swindon Tenants Campaign Group which led a successful campaign against the proposed sell-off of Swindon’s Council housing stock.
I am Secretary of the Labour Campaign for Council Housing and on the national committee of Defend Council Housing.
This ‘blog’ is a site to post my writing rather than one of those stream of consciousness blogs in which people venture an opinion on every issue under the sun.
You can read here political and trade union articles, but also reviews of films and music, as well as seeing some of my photographs.
My articles have been published by Labour Briefing, the Labour Representation Committee, Inside Housing and Guardian Housing Network and the Morning Star.
I would welcome feedback either in the comments box after the posts or privately at martin.wicks@btinternet.com
Martin Wicks 
Hi Martin, a very good article on the threat to our NHS! I found it on Socialist Unity blog. have copied and will circulate it round the union reps in NBS. Cheers.
Andy Ford
Secretary
Amicus reps committee
National Blood Service
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Dear Martin,
Good article on Iran, “friends like this”. The best part was the critical view of Chavez support of Iranian regime. We may translate it in Urdu and print in our weekly paper Workers Struggle published from Lahore.
Anyhow, I am forwarding it to editors.
Farooq Tariq
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Helpful article on housing ,Martin.Keep it up
Graham Durham
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Martin, an excellent article focusing on the erosion of secure tenancies. Keep up your good work.
Derek Fry
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Hi Martin
Excellent piece on zero hours contracts. Absolutely on the nail. A pity Ed Milliband doesn’t think this way.
Fred Dobie
Labour Representation Committee
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Cheers Fred
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Good evening Martin.
I read your article in inside housing with great interest and feel the need to explain the real truth about council/ social housing.
Conservative/Labour/libs, it make no difference, I approached over 100 local authorities with an offer of which 52 entered into dialogue, the offer was simple you (council) put in the land and I will build your homes for free and after 25 years I will give you back all the homes and the land on which they sit F O C !!
No rent would be taken/ used by us all homes would comply to local and national building regs.
Number of councils who took up this offer NIL
As I don’t want to throw away the business model I will say no more, but suffice to say LA’s live in their world and little fiefdoms, all the parties mentioned above said no. They are with a few notable exceptions by n large selfish lying arrogant people who if the pubic knew what they did would be horrified and disgusted.
My offer was for as many properties as they needed for all or any, I had unlimited funding from a major pension fund who supported me and social housing. I can validate all of the above.
You will now have my email address feel free to contact me anytime.
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I like your website Martin…very easy on th eye. Looking forwrad to more articles
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