THE RENT STRIKE.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—This matter is of very general interest, but the points involved are highly technical, and it is not surprising thaein the" News of the Week," in your last issue, there are certain inaccuracies.
(1) The effect of the decision of the House of Lords in Kerr v. Bryde is that the provision of the Rent Restriction Act : "Nothing in this Act shall be taken to authorise any increase of rent except in respect of a period during which but for this Act the landlord would be entitled to obtain possession" implies that notice to quit is necessary, although not enforceable. Apart from that decision it is not true, as you say, that landlords were required simultaneously with the notice of the permitted increase of rent to give notice to quit. (2). There may have been cases in which landlords forbore to give notices to quit out of consideration for inen still at the Front, although I have never heard of any, but such notices were not given simply because they
were considered unnecessary, and would have been an empty formality. One House Factors' Association, for greater security, took opinion of eminent Counsel, and it was to the effect that such notices were not required. (3) Save in Glasgow, where the Communists for their own ends have fomented agitation, tenants have continued to pay their rents without question, recognizing that someone had blundered. (4) The decision of the House of Lords, so far from being "obvious and inevitable," was only given by a majority of three to two. Lords Dunedin and Wrenbury, who formed the minority, held that the provision above quoted meant no more than that the landlord "would, if unfettered, be entitled to give notice of removal, and to get an Order of the Court. He would, if unfettered, be entitled to obtain possession by doing those acts."
The result of a strict reading of the language of the Act is so ludicrous and inequitable that legislation is inevitable, and has been promised. You doubt the expediency of making it retrospective, but what of the legislation that followed another decision of the House of Lords—in the Free Church of Scotland case ? Meanwhile, imperial taxes and local rates are being withheld. They cannot be paid if tenants are to be entitled to repayment of over-payments.—
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