12/04/2026
Statement on Fuel Protests
The Community Action Tenants Union (CATU) recognises the deep anger and frustration driving the current fuel protests. Skyrocketing fuel costs are part of a wider cost of living crisis that is placing unbearable pressure on communities across the island. People are feeling these pressures every day, trying to heat their homes, get to work, care for families, stretch wages that just aren’t going far enough, trying their hardest to live with dignity.
This is a vital time for workers and tenants to organise. CATU believes we need to unite in support of demands that remove the power that the private market has over our lives and our services.
For our members this means:
- Cutting and capping rents
- Stop linking rent to “market rate” that has no relationship to what we can afford.
- Universal public housing.
- Focusing on retrofitting rather than redevelopment where it is public owned and aids the creation of public jobs.
- Taking the vultures out of housing, including the expansion of airbnb and short term letting agencies who are soaking up homes.
- End sky high energy bills and profiteering by energy companies.
As a community union, CATU organises not only around housing, but around the broader conditions that our neighbours live in. We support the right of workers and communities to take collective action in pursuit of economic justice, especially in times of crisis.
We are aware of legitimate criticisms of some elements involved in the organisation of the fuel protests. CATU remains firmly committed to anti-racism, solidarity, and inclusion, and we reject any attempt to divide working class communities along racial or other lines. The real root of the current crisis is Government greed and neglect, not in our neighbours and fellow workers. Solutions to the cost of living crisis must unite people, not encourage scapegoating or exclusion
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