Revolting Tenants: The Great Abercromby Rent Strike of ‘69
source: http://www.catalystmedia.org.uk/issues/nerve15/revolting_tenants.php
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If you were there, you will know that during the late sixties and early seventies, the residential communities of inner Liverpool were broken up.
But, unless we took part, how much do we know of the people’s resistance? Who knows of the great rent strike in the Crown, Grove and Myrtle Streets, a part of Toxteth we called Abercromby?
By the late sixties, in the face of mounting financial losses caused by the impact on property values of the slum clearance programme, the University of Liverpool was struggling to rehouse its tenants and the housing association it employed to look after their interests had no money to carry out repairs.
In October 1968, hundreds of tenants, spread across thirty six Abercromby streets, joined the tiny Abercromby Tenants Association and began withholding all of their rent in protest at the impasse.
Within a few weeks, news of the strike reached the radical fringe at the University. Students helped ATA ‘hire’ a room in the union for its meetings and in December they published photographs of the tenant’s ‘slum’ homes in the student newspaper, the Guild Gazette.
Then, in May 1969, seven months into the strike, the University invited Princess Alexandra to open its new Senate House.
It invited the tenants association secretary, my mother, to attend the reception but ATA joined the students in a boycott of the event.
http://www.catalystmedia.org.uk/issues/nerve15/revolting_tenants.php
But, unless we took part, how much do we know of the people’s resistance? Who knows of the great rent strike in the Crown, Grove and Myrtle Streets, a part of Toxteth we called Abercromby?
By the late sixties, in the face of mounting financial losses caused by the impact on property values of the slum clearance programme, the University of Liverpool was struggling to rehouse its tenants and the housing association it employed to look after their interests had no money to carry out repairs.
In October 1968, hundreds of tenants, spread across thirty six Abercromby streets, joined the tiny Abercromby Tenants Association and began withholding all of their rent in protest at the impasse.
Within a few weeks, news of the strike reached the radical fringe at the University. Students helped ATA ‘hire’ a room in the union for its meetings and in December they published photographs of the tenant’s ‘slum’ homes in the student newspaper, the Guild Gazette.
Then, in May 1969, seven months into the strike, the University invited Princess Alexandra to open its new Senate House.
It invited the tenants association secretary, my mother, to attend the reception but ATA joined the students in a boycott of the event.
http://www.catalystmedia.org.uk/issues/nerve15/revolting_tenants.php
