Rent and its discontents : a century of housing struggle

Gray, Neil, 1970- (editor.).

Summary: "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." --

Record details

ISBN: 1786605759
ISBN: 9781786605757
ISBN: 1786605740
ISBN: 9781786605740
Physical Description: xxxix, 253 pages ; 23 cm.
print
Publisher: London ; New York : Rowman & Littlefield International, [2018]

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Preface: Housing and direct action / Seán Damer -- Introduction: Rent unrest : from the 1915 rent strikes to contemporary housing agitation / Neil Gray -- Part I: History against the grain. 'A wondrous spectacle' : protest, class and femininity in the 1915 rent strikes / Pam Currie -- What did the rent strikers do next? Women and 'The politics of the kitchen' in interwar Scotland / Annmarie Hughes and Valerie Wright -- 'Oary' Dundee and working class self-organization in the 1915 rent strike / Tony Cox -- Spatial composition and the urbanization of capital : the 1915 Glasgow rent strikes and the housing question reconsidered / Neil Gray -- Part II: Reports from the housing frontline. Everyday eviction in the twenty-first century / Vickie Cooper and Kirsteen Paton -- Tenant self-organization after the Irish crisis : the Dublin Tenants Association / Michael Byrne -- Rebuilding a shattered housing movement : Living Rent and contemporary private tenant struggles in Scotland / Living Rent (Emma Saunders, Kate Samuels and Dave Statham) -- 'Social housing not social cleansing' : contemporary housing struggles in London / Paul Watt -- Part III: Rethinking the housing question : theories, aims, tactics and strategies for today. The myth and realities of rent control / Hamish Kallin and Tom Slater -- The relational articulation of housing crisis and activism in post-crash Dublin, Ireland / Rory Hearne, Cian O'Callaghan, Cesare Di Feliciantonio and Rob Kitchin -- 'Only alternative municipal housing' : making the case for public housing then and now / Sarah Glynn -- Beyond the rent strike, towards the commons : why the housing question requires activism that generates its own alternatives / Tim Joubert and Stuart Hodkinson -- Afterword: The futures of housing activism / Neil Gray.