John Perry

On Friday, thousands of protesters will converge on Fort Benning, Georgia, home to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Co-operation (WHINSEC). It’s had this title since 2001, but when it was set up in Panama in 1946 it was the School of the Americas. In 66 years it has trained 64,000 soldiers from Latin America in counterinsurgency, sniper warfare, interrogation techniques and other useful methods for repressing their citizens.

Three weeks ago a remarkable caravan of vehicles arrived at the Mexican town of Reynosa, just across the border from Hidalgo, Texas. It left the northern border of Nicaragua on 12 October, carrying the relatives of migrants who made the journey north to cross illegally into the United States, but vanished along the way. The caravan, which finished its journey through Central America this weekend, was trying to draw attention to their disappearance and – if possible – find them.

Yesterday we went into the red. According to the Global Footprint Network, between 1 January and 22 August mankind used up a year’s worth of the earth’s resources. Earth Overshoot Day came sooner this year than ever before. Ten years ago it fell on 3 October, and as recently as the 1970s we were still living within our means. Things are slipping fast.

Policy Exchange, a right-wing think-tank, is calling on councils and housing associations to sell off their most valuable housing stock. Policy Exchange has a variable record. It was an advocate of the government’s austerity programme, predicting in August 2010 that ‘if the Coalition stays the course on cutting spending’, then ‘growth through most of 2011’ should be the ‘strongest seen in the UK since the late 1980s’. It also made the odd prediction in 2010 that a stagnant housing market would lead to a fall in council housing waiting lists, which have since reached their highest levels for many years.

Octavia Hill is probably best remembered 100 years after her death as one of the founders of the National Trust. But her legacy as an enlightened landlord of working-class housing is perhaps more important. She was born in 1838 into a family of political activists. Her father founded a school in Wisbech run on principles established by Robert Owen in New Lanark. He famously rode 50 miles to secure the pardon of the last man sentenced to hang for stealing sheep. Her mother was manager of the Ladies’ Co-operative Guild. Octavia and her sisters were brought up as Christian Socialists. Once found sitting bolt upright in bed as a teenager and asked what she was doing, Octavia is said to have replied: ‘Praying for Poland.’