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Rebel Cities: The Urbanization of Class Struggle

David Harvey at LSE Thursday 10th May

Harvey explores the contemporary reality of cities as the arenas for revolutionary politics. To what extent can current movements be described as 'calss struggle'? How do these movements draw on 'right to the city' discourse in thier attempts to tranform societies as well as the streets?

See also

Hatherley on Harvey

 'For Harvey, the left must be modern and urban or it will remain powerless.'

What kind of life? Archbishop on riots report

Rioting is the choice of young people with nothing to lose

The Archbishop of Canterbury writes in response to the Guardian's Reading the Riots report.

“England risks a repeat” of the summer riots “unless the government and civil society do more to ‘rescue those who think they have nothing to lose’”.

'To ask if the riots were "political" or "opportunistic" is pointless. These are not people who live complacently in a culture of entitlement, nor are they, for the most part, committed criminals. Neither are they heroes of democratic protest, Britain's answer to Tahrir Square. They are people who have vague but strong longings for something like secure employment, and no idea where to look for it; who on the whole want to belong, and live in a climate where they are taken seriously as workers, as citizens – and as needy individuals; and who have got used to being pushed to the margins and told that they are dispensable.'

'How do we as a society back up good lessons in the home and show that we corporately want what a good family wants – mutual attention and affirmation, stability and emotional literacy, a sense of value that doesn't depend on accessories?'

'Demonising volatile and destructive young people doesn't help; criminalising them wholesale reinforces a lot of what produces the problem in the first place.'

 

Reporting the Riots

Reading the Riots - Guardian/LSE

The project collected more than 1.3m words of first-person accounts from rioters, giving an unprecedented insight into what drove people to participate in England's most serious bout of civil unrest in a generation. Rioters revealed that a complex mix of grievances brought them on to the streets but analysts appointed by the LSE identified distrust and antipathy toward police as a key driving force.

The August riots in England Understanding the involvement of young people - Nat Cen

NatCen who conducted interviews and focus groups with young people, business owners, youth workers and community leaders in affected and non-affected areas, speaking both to those directly involved and those who chose not to be.

5 Days in August -Riots Communities and Victims Panel Interim Report

There was no single cause of the riots and there is no single solution. This report is intended to prompt discussion about every aspect of the riots. It will generate ideas from which we will develop recommendations which will appear in our final report. We hope everyone who reads this report will want to work with us to develop proposals to address the fundamental challenges we face as a society.

 

 

Sharp rise in demand for food handouts from poverty-stricken families

Jay Rayner in The Observer: Food charity FareShare sees a 20% rise in demand, much of it from people hit by unemployment and benefit changes.

"People in our communities are going to bed hungry because they can't afford to feed themselves," said Lindsay Boswell, chief executive of FareShare. "This is a huge problem and it's right here, in our neighbourhoods, on our streets. This is outrageous enough even before you factor in the thousands of tonnes of good food thrown away each year. It's illogical and frankly immoral that these problems coexist."

 

Documenting the unrest

A great deal has been published about the events of August. The following are some of the more provocative or informative articles. (Some are reposted following the disruption this site experienced in late August).

Victor Adebowale Poverty isn't an excuse for the riots. It's a reason

Camila Batmanghelidjh: Caring costs – but so do riots

Philip Blond: Britain’s Liberal Riots

Luke Bretherton: Shopping with violence: Riots and the responsible society

Adrian Hamilton: Lets not go the way of LA

Ken Livingtone: These Riots Are Heartbreaking For London But We Must Learn Lessons

Hugh Muir: Tottenham riots: missteps in the dance of police and a frustrated community

Jonathan Rutherford Labour's response to the riots has to be conservative and radical

Archbishop of Canterbury in the House of Lords

Change in Bradford

Living through change: The effects of global, national and local change on people and places in Bradford

A review of recent reserach by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on the  effects of change in Bradford,  identifing ongoing fears within the local community surrounding spending cuts and makes key recommendations about ways in which Bradford can thrive economically and at a community level.

 

What might a fair future look like?

Islington Council has published the report of its Fairness Commission.

"No-one in Islington should do a hard day’s work for less than they can live on."

The Islington Fairness Commission was set up to improve the quality of life in the
borough by making it a fairer place for all who live and work in it. Islington is marked
by some of the starkest contrasts in wealth and poverty in the country.

The report details other ways in which Islington Council and its partners will try to
reduce income differences and inequality, such as in employment opportunities,
housing and children’s educational opportunities. It also outlines some of the
principles which will guide any further reductions it is obliged to make to its own
services in the years ahead as a result of reductions in its grants from the
government. But if Britain is ever to halve its income differences to reach the level
found in the more equal of the developed market democracies, what Islington can do
should be regarded only as the first steps in a campaign which will have to involve
the whole country and be sustained for ten or twenty years.

 

Archbishop of Canterbury guest-edits the New Statesman

In this week's New Statesman the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, calls the  coalition government to account, warning about the speed with which it is committing the country to "radical, long-term policies " which will have a deep impact on the most vulnerable.The Archbishop writes that the "anxiety and anger" felt by voters is a result of the coalition's failure to expose its policies to "proper public argument".  Full text

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Aylesbury Estate faces uncertain future

Chill wind of new political climate hits urban housing

The Aylesbury estate in south-east London was chosen by Tony Blair in 1997 to launch Labour's social exclusion unit and urban regeneration plans. 13 years later the planned regeneration of the estate is suddenly uncertain.

 

The future of poverty

Child and working-age poverty from 2010 to 2013

 

A new study from the Institute of Fiscal Studies gives projections of relative and absolute income poverty among children and working-age adults for each year between 2010/11 and 2013/14.

 

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation supported this work as part of its work to keep a spotlight on people and places in poverty during the public spending cuts.

                                    

Some key findings include:

 

Hundreds of thousands more adults and children will be in absolute poverty by 2014. By 2013/14,  under new Government reforms on welfare and poverty there will be:

 

·        a rise in absolute child poverty of about 200,000;

·        a rise in absolute poverty for working-age people without children, of about 300,000;

·        a rise in relative child poverty of about 100,000; and

·        a rise in relative poverty among working-age people without children of about 200,000.

 

Coalition reforms will mean slightly more people in poverty than if previous policies had continued, so more needs to be done to reduce the numbers of people living in poverty and disadvantage