Full Description
The 1915 Rent Strikes in Glasgow, along with similar campaigns across the UK, catalysed rent restrictions and eventually public housing as a right, with a legacy of progressive improvement in UK housing through the central decades of the 20th century.
With the decimation of social housing and the resurgence of a profoundly exploitative private housing market, the contemporary political economy of housing now shares many distressing features with the situation one hundred years ago. Starting with a re-appraisal of the Rent Strikes, this book asks what housing campaigners can learn today from a proven organisational victory for the working class. A series of investigative accounts from scholar-activists and housing campaign groups across the UK charts the diverse aims, tactics and strategies of current urban resistance, seeking to make a vital contribution to the contemporary housing question in a time of crisis.
Contents
Preface: Seán Damer, Housing and Direct Action' / Introduction: Neil Gray, 'Rent Unrest: From the 1915 Rent Strikes to Contemporary Housing Agitation' / Part 1: History Against the Grain / Chapter 1: Pam Currie, '"A Wondrous Spectacle": Protest, Class and Femininity in the 1915 Rent Strikes' / Chapter 2: Annmarie Hughes and Valerie Wright, 'What Did the Rent Strikers Do Next? Women and "The Politics of the Kitchen" in Interwar Scotland' / Chapter 3: Tony Cox, '"Oary"' Dundee and Working Class Self-Organization in the 1915 Rent Strike' / Chapter 4: Neil Gray, 'Spatial Composition and the Urbanization of Capital: The 1915 Glasgow Rent Strikes and the Housing Question Reconsidered' / Part 2: Reports from the Housing Frontline / Chapter 5: Vickie Cooper and Kirsteen Paton, 'Everyday Eviction in the Twenty-First Century' / Chapter 6: Michael Byrne, 'Tenant Self-Organization after the Irish Crisis: The Dublin Tenants Association' / Chapter 7: Living Rent (Emma Saunders, Kate Samuels and Dave Statham), 'Rebuilding a
