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Book Details
Abstract
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.
Neil Gray is an urban researcher, writer and lecturer and a long-term housing activist. He is currently working as a Research Associate at the University of Glasgow.
This compelling book reminds us that decent housing has been fought for and won through struggle, by thousands of people in grass-roots campaigns, in direct action and protest, over one hundred years. It demonstrates the achievements and the continuing urgency of need in the long campaign for a fairer housing system.
Quintin Bradley, Senior Lecturer in Planning and Housing, Leeds Beckett University
This book covers some vital issues for housing campaigners everywhere: rent strikes, the role of women, the myth of housing associations and social cleansing to name but four. As Neil Gray reminds us, it arrives at a key moment. The demand for decent, secure, truly affordable and safe homes for all is growing, but not yet won. Rent and its Discontents will help.
Glyn Robbins, Housing Worker and Campaigner
The importance of this edited volume is threefold. Firstly, it offers a critical re-reading of historical rent struggles, secondly, it encourages comparisons between diverse rental issues and conditions for tenants’ organising, and thirdly, it promotes situated knowledge-production that combines academic and activist expertise, all of which are essential to understand and politicise rent as key to contemporary forms of capital accumulation and housing enclosures.
Mara Ferreri, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona
Essential reading for anyone interested in the history of tenant activism and contemporary housing struggles. Accessible and engaging, Rent and its Discontents explores the hidden continuum of tenant struggles in Britain and Ireland and highlights the relevance of these campaigns for those fighting today for decent, secure and affordable rented homes.
Rebecca Searle, Senior Lecturer in Humanities, University of Brighton
In this well edited book a range of contributors revisit and rethink the Glasgow Rent Strikes of a century ago; very effectively linking this to insightful analysis of contemporary housing movements and asking searching questions about the politics and strategies of the housing struggle today. Essential reading.
John Flint, Professor of Town and Regional Planning, University of Sheffield
Here is a lineup of tenant activists and key academic activist researchers from across the UK and Ireland reflecting on historic and current housing struggles. Taking their starting point in the 1915 Scottish rent strikes contributors on the frontline of campaigns report on eviction and social cleansing in England and rebuilding of tenant movements in Scotland and Dublin. They leave us with some thoughts on current housing movement theories and tactics. The book will give heart to the dwindling band of critical housing academics and will be an important source of useful knowledge for students and social movement activists.
John Grayson, Independent Researcher
Table of Contents
| Section Title | Page | Action | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cover | Cover | ||
| Rent and Its Discontents | i | ||
| Series page | ii | ||
| Rent and Its Discontents: A Century of Housing Struggle | iii | ||
| Copyright | iv | ||
| Contents | v | ||
| Acknowledgements | vii | ||
| Abbreviations | ix | ||
| Preface | xiii | ||
| Note | xiv | ||
| References | xv | ||
| Introduction | xvii | ||
| Glasgow 1915: \n‘A Mass Concern with the Facts of Everyday Life’ | xviii | ||
| The Collective Power of Organized Tenants’ Movements: Historical Rent Unrest in Glasgow and Beyond | xxi | ||
| Rethinking the Rent Strikes | xxiii | ||
| The Urbanization of Capital and the Return of the Rentier | xxv | ||
| The Contemporary Housing Crisis | xxvii | ||
| Plan of the Book | xxx | ||
| Notes | xxxv | ||
| References | xxxvi | ||
| Part I: HISTORY AGAINST THE GRAIN | 1 | ||
| Chapter 1 | 3 | ||
| ‘A Wondrous Spectacle’ | 3 | ||
| Suffrage in Glasgow: \nSetting the Scene for Wartime Activity | 4 | ||
| Rent Strikes and ‘Militancy’ | 5 | ||
| Wartime Activism Continues: 1916 and Beyond | 9 | ||
| The Rent Strikes and Their Relevance to Twenty-First-Century Activism | 13 | ||
| References | 14 | ||
| Chapter 2 | 17 | ||
| What Did the Rent Strikers Do Next? | 17 | ||
| Setting the Context: \nRent Strikes and Grassroots Activism | 17 | ||
| The Role of Women in the Politics of Housing in Interwar Scotland: Direct Action or Committee Work? | 20 | ||
| A Pragmatic Approach? Women’s Demands for Improved Housing in Interwar Scotland | 25 | ||
| Conclusion | 28 | ||
| Note | 29 | ||
| References | 29 | ||
| Chapter 3 | 33 | ||
| ‘Oary’ Dundee and \nWorking-Class Self-Organization in the 1915 Rent Strike | 33 | ||
| Social and Housing Conditions in Juteopolis | 34 | ||
| Class Struggle and Socialist Politics in Juteopolis | 36 | ||
| War, Workers’ Militancy and Rent Strikes | 38 | ||
| Conclusion | 43 | ||
| Notes | 46 | ||
| References | 47 | ||
| Chapter 4 | 49 | ||
| Spatial Composition and the Urbanization of Capital | 49 | ||
| The Urbanization of Capital | 50 | ||
| Housing Struggle: \nA Secondary Contradiction? | 52 | ||
| The Housing Question Reconsidered | 53 | ||
| The Housing Question Recomposed: The Method of the Tendency | 56 | ||
| Spatial Composition and the 1915 Rent Strikes | 59 | ||
| Conclusion | 62 | ||
| Notes | 64 | ||
| References | 64 | ||
| Part II: REPORTS FROM THE HOUSING FRONTLINE | 69 | ||
| Chapter 5 | 71 | ||
| Everyday Eviction in the Twenty-First Century | 71 | ||
| State-Led Evictions in the \nTwenty-First Century: Rent Matters | 73 | ||
| Transferring Debt: \nWelfare Cuts and Housing Policy | 75 | ||
| Eviction Industry | 77 | ||
| Where Next for Action? \nCounter-Hegemonic Response | 79 | ||
| Conclusion | 82 | ||
| Notes | 83 | ||
| References | 83 | ||
| Chapter 6 | 85 | ||
| Tenant Self-Organization after the Irish Crisis | 85 | ||
| Financialization and the PRS | 86 | ||
| Housing Activism in Dublin | 88 | ||
| The PAH and the Politics of \nHomeOwnership, Repossession and Debt | 90 | ||
| The Politics and Practices of the DTA | 92 | ||
| Conclusion | 97 | ||
| Notes | 98 | ||
| References | 98 | ||
| Chapter 7 | 101 | ||
| Rebuilding a Shattered Housing Movement | 101 | ||
| The Origins of Living Rent | 101 | ||
| Principles, Aims and Tactics | 104 | ||
| Campaigning around the Private Housing (Tenancies) (Scotland) Bill | 106 | ||
| The Future: A Scottish Union of Tenants | 112 | ||
| Notes | 114 | ||
| References | 114 | ||
| Chapter 8 | 117 | ||
| ‘Social Housing Not Social Cleansing’ | 117 | ||
| ‘Flatten That HAT’: \nThe Campaign against Housing Action Trusts | 118 | ||
| ‘Vote No to Privatization’:\n Campaign against Stock Transfers | 120 | ||
| ‘Save Our Homes’: \nThe Fight against Estate Demolitions | 121 | ||
| ‘Please Sir, We Want Some More Social Housing’: \nChallenging Planning Applications | 125 | ||
| ‘I Felt I Had a Right to Stay There’: Short-Life Housing Cooperatives | 127 | ||
| ‘These People Need Homes, These Homes Need People’: \nTemporary Occupations | 130 | ||
| Conclusion | 132 | ||
| Notes | 133 | ||
| References | 133 | ||
| Part III: RETHINKING \nTHE HOUSING QUESTION: THEORIES, AIMS, TACTICS AND STRATEGIES FOR TODAY | 137 | ||
| Chapter 9 | 139 | ||
| The Myths and Realities of Rent Control | 139 | ||
| The Power of Stories | 140 | ||
| A Trilogy of Myths: \nQuality, Supply and Efficiency | 144 | ||
| Conclusion | 148 | ||
| References | 150 | ||
| Chapter 10 | 153 | ||
| The Relational Articulation of Housing Crisis and Activism in Post-Crash Dublin, Ireland | 153 | ||
| Neoliberalization and Ireland’s Housing Crisis | 155 | ||
| The New Housing and Homelessness Crisis | 156 | ||
| New Housing Movements | 158 | ||
| The Challenge of Building an Irish Housing Movement | 162 | ||
| Conclusion | 165 | ||
| References | 166 | ||
| Chapter 11 | 169 | ||
| ‘Only Alternative Municipal Housing’ | 169 | ||
| The Growth of an Idea | 170 | ||
| Rent Strikes and Revolution | 171 | ||
| Why Public Ownership? | 172 | ||
| A Reluctant Consensus | 173 | ||
| Back to the Future | 174 | ||
| What Do We Want? | 176 | ||
| Towards a New Kind of Socialism | 176 | ||
| Arguing the Case for Public Housing—and Some Supporting Changes to Taxation | 177 | ||
| Bottom-up Democracy | 180 | ||
| Planning for the Long Term | 182 | ||
| Notes | 183 | ||
| References | 183 | ||
| Chapter 12 | 185 | ||
| Beyond the Rent Strike, Towards the Commons | 185 | ||
| The Potency of the Glasgow Rent Strike | 186 | ||
| The Rent Strike Neutered: \nThe Displacement of Dweller Power \nunder Neoliberalism | 187 | ||
| Reinventing the Rent Strike \nfor the Twenty-First Century: \nBreaking the Circuit, Building the Commons | 189 | ||
| Conclusion | 198 | ||
| References | 198 | ||
| Afterword | 201 | ||
| History against the Grain | 202 | ||
| The Financialization of Housing | 203 | ||
| Gender and Housing Politics | 205 | ||
| Rent Control | 206 | ||
| The Myth of Housing Associations | 208 | ||
| Public Housing Demands | 209 | ||
| Cross-Tenure Housing Struggles | 212 | ||
| Conclusion | 213 | ||
| Notes | 214 | ||
| References | 214 | ||
| References | 219 | ||
| Primary Sources | 219 | ||
| Bibliography | 219 | ||
| Index | 239 | ||
| About the Contributors | 251 |