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Category: Social movements

Loudhailers on telegraph pole

Amplifying your community organising

Posted on 18 October, 2022 by preorg

One of the things I’ve realised through my research is that it is a vain hope that everyone who cares about the issues you are organising around will get involved in intensive community organising. The meetings and one-to-ones and campaign building are all very time-consuming. Many people – the majority of people, if we are…

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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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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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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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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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What does community organising mean when there’s no community?

Posted on 25 September, 2020 by preorg

I have been interested in community organising for some time, and am currently part of an organisation trying to do it. When you try to do it, you find it is hard, or at least, we find that. But has it always been this hard? I’ve been reading some historical accounts of community organising in…

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On Participatory Action Research as a burden

Posted on 15 September, 202012 July, 2021 by preorg

I’ve just finished my first attempt at Participatory Action Research within a social movement organisation, specifically London Renters Union. I designed the research so that there would be two types of participatory interaction – interviews and workshops – and two different outputs, one for academia and one for the union. I wouldn’t expect anyone in…

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The story of enclosures in Britain had a (sort of) happy ending – why don’t we talk about it?

Posted on 17 November, 201917 November, 2019 by preorg

The left in Britain has a great narrative of loss in the story of enclosures. The rich stole the land of the commoners, forcing them to be wage slaves at best, forcibly urbanised slumdwellers dying from disease at worst. The narrative was written strongly and passionately by Marx, and many of the best social historians…

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New Cross fights new wave of housing privatisation

Posted on 4 March, 201815 June, 2019 by preorg

Residents of New Cross, London have rejected the borough of Lewisham’s proposal to build council-owned private rental housing on public land. The council plans to run a profit-making housing business in an area of deprivation and housing need. “We want more council housing, not private housing. The council just wants to make money,” said a…

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Politics in a time of crisis by Pablo Iglesias: A review

Posted on 15 September, 201715 June, 2019 by preorg

This work by Pablo Iglesias, leader of insurgent Spanish party Podemos, is now subtitled ‘Podemos and the future of a Democratic Europe’. It wouldn’t have been so originally, because Podemos did not exist when the book was first written. This makes the book of historical interest, though the addition of appendices in this 2015 edition…

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Recent Posts

  • Can left housing campaigners in London please stop saying there’s no housing supply problem?
  • ‘Our Bloc: How We Win’ by James Schneider – a review
  • What would it take for UK tenants unions to really win?
  • Amplifying your community organising
  • What will it take to build a renters’ movement?
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