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Author: preorg

Streetscene outside a cafe

What will it take to build a renters’ movement?

Posted on 28 June, 202230 June, 2022 by preorg

An organisation like London Renters Union sees itself as part of a renters’ movement, or sometimes a housing movement. Like all movements it is not clear where the boundaries of the movement are, nor should it be. However activists in LRU do sometimes talk about a ‘renter identity’ that LRU is trying to marshall into…

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Renters, landlords, the people who love them, and the win

Posted on 16 May, 202231 May, 2022 by preorg

Is it better to be right or to win? And under what circumstances we you do both? These are big questions for a movement of renters in the UK. From the point of view of renters, there is a strong desire to morally judge landlords for their extraction of so much wealth, often for very…

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placard about rent debt

Can LRU grow it’s more precarious and vulnerable renter membership?

Posted on 6 April, 20226 April, 2022 by preorg

I’ve been talking to a wide variety of union members lately for my academic research and one of the conversations that I’ve fallen into with more precariously housed members – even when I haven’t brought it up – is how the union can do more to help members like them to be involved. Of course…

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Can't pay won't pay poster from London Renters Union

Whatever happened to the pandemic rent strike? – a view from within LRU

Posted on 29 January, 202215 February, 2022 by preorg

[Please note this is a personal view] The early days of the pandemic and lockdown saw a flurry of activity in London Renters Union, along with nearly every other tenants union in the world. It was clear that people were about to lose jobs and income on a large scale and that many would have…

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The space for a right to housing

Posted on 11 January, 202211 January, 2022 by preorg

London Renters Union, seeing itself as a radical organisation drawing on radical traditions, refers to a ‘right to housing’ seldom, bordering on never – at least in its formal literatures and trainings. Yet as this news clip featuring the union demonstrates, the idea of a right to housing does come up in the union’s street…

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city street with spire

Leftists like us: on the left and recruitment

Posted on 16 November, 202116 November, 2021 by preorg

I have noticed that one key difference between people who are left wing activists and – for want of a better term – ‘normal people’, is that the former are motivated by the very idea of collective action. In the more orthodox left tradition this is collective action in the workplace, while in the post-60s…

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Should we have a right to evict our landlord?

Posted on 27 September, 202127 September, 2021 by preorg

It’s exciting to see tenants in Berlin campaigning to take formerly government owned properties back into public hands, but it does rely on specific elements of German law that we don’t have in the UK. So how could we equalise the relationship between renters and landlords in the UK – not in some hand-wavy level-playing…

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Trauma and social change – some initial thoughts

Posted on 19 August, 202119 August, 2021 by preorg

There is today no strong relationship between therapy and radical politics. In my experience many people who are interested in changing the world are very unsure about therapy. They worry it will seek to dampen their anger. They worry that they will become better adjusted to a world which does not deserve to be accommodated….

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Owning the Earth by Andro Linklater – a review

Posted on 12 July, 202112 July, 2021 by preorg

Owning the Earth is an account of Western land ownership from the medieval period, through colonisation to the present, though it does not, alas, always recognise how geographically restricted it is. While I enjoyed the book’s account of private property in the Anglo-sphere I’d have to disagree with reviews that refer to it as ‘comprehensive’….

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Social knowledge and the academy: a gulf with few bridges

Posted on 3 April, 202126 May, 2021 by preorg

Academia likes to see itself as a producer of knowledge, and that’s difficult to argue with. But most of the time its self-conception goes further than this. We are the knowledge experts, think the academics. We are better at developing knowledge than other people. It’s what we’re paid for. Years of post-modernism has, curiously, failed…

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Recent Posts

  • What will it take to build a renters’ movement?
  • Renters, landlords, the people who love them, and the win
  • Can LRU grow it’s more precarious and vulnerable renter membership?
  • Whatever happened to the pandemic rent strike? – a view from within LRU
  • The space for a right to housing
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