Today’s March for Homes brings into sharp focus the urgent need to address London’s acute housing crisis.

The reasons for this crisis are clear. Council housebuilding has ground to a virtual halt, the Tory right to buy has significantly depleted the housing stock and housing associations are incapable of filling the gap.

London needs around 63,000 new homes each year. But only a third of these are being built, mostly by private developers.

As house prices rise above people’s wages, they are forced into the private sector where they face soaring rents, poor conditions and parasitic letting agents.

Support for the march comes from a range of campaigning groups, unions and MPs.

They want to put a stop to the demolition of quality council homes and their replacement by expensive private developments, the introduction of rent controls, the scrapping of the bedroom tax and benefit caps, secure tenancies for all and a national programme of council housebuilding.

As Engels identified in 1872, housing shortages under capitalism are an inevitable consequence of rapid industrialisation as mass migration occurs from rural to urban areas, increases in land values lead to colossal increases in rents, downward pressure on wages reduces workers’ ability to pay these rents and the availability of workers’ housing is reduced as it is replaced by speculative building.

His analysis remains relevant today, as the Tories seek to put the clock back to the 1930s.

Labour, in typically timid fashion, has committed only to building a mere 200,000 homes a year by 2020, introducing a fair deal for renters with longer tenancies and banning rip-off letting fees. But it could do so much more.

Let’s remind ourselves of the vision of Aneurin Bevan, post-war minister for health and housing, who famously promoted a radical vision of new estates where “the working man, the doctor and the clergyman will live in close proximity to each other.”

Council housing has served the country well, and saw 30 per cent of British people living in a council house in the 1970s.

It is a public asset, providing decent, affordable and secure housing that pays its own way.

Council housing should be available to all on the basis of social need.

This means rejecting means testing and the deliberate creation of ghetto estates for the poorest and most vulnerable, which is what has happened to council housing since Thatcher.

Five million people are currently on the council house waiting list. We need a Labour government that is prepared to implement a bold housing plan for the whole country.

This must be based on building or renovating a million council houses a year for five years, reinstating local authority direct labour organisations and ensuring local authorities are properly funded.

There’s plenty of surplus public land which could be used for this purpose.

Let’s return to a vision of urban environments which serve their communities, based on the “garden city” ideas of planner Ebenezer Howard.

He understood the need for local authorities to own the land and control the planning process.

Let’s end the enforced sale of council houses to housing associations, which have been transformed from locally accountable charities into big businesses.

Let’s end the hated bedroom tax, reintroduce proper rent controls and end the right to buy.

Let’s require all private landlords to register with their local authority to ensure they meet housing decency standards and reinstate government regulations on minimum space standards for all residential property. Let’s end private, gated developments in cities.

Housing provision is a national issue which is rising up the political agenda. With sufficient political will we could finally eradicate homelessness in Britain.

With May 7 fast approaching, now is the time for Labour to seize the opportunity and make this a critical election issue.