Learning from the 1915 Rent Strikes, Glasgow Women's Library, 27 November, 2015

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Learning from the 1915 Rent Strikes, Glasgow Women’s Library, 27 November, 2015

Women’s role in housing disputes in Scotland c. 1915 to the present

Dr Valerie Wright

Friday, 27 November 2015 from 09:30 to 16:30

Glasgow Women’s Library

Free event – tickets on eventbrite

This event will commemorate the centenary of the Rent Strikes of 1915 in Glasgow and elsewhere in Scotland. This was a grassroots community based movement led primarily by working-class women. This event aims not only to remember the leading figures involved in 1915 but will also ask what was the legacy of this struggle and what can be learned from it today.

We do not intend to disseminate research in a formal academic format but rather for contributors to discuss their work informally to provide contextual background for current campaigns and interests. The rents strikes are a well known and celebrated part of Glasgow’s history, but the impact of this dispute in the later twentieth century are less well known.

Programme

Registration and coffee from 9.30 onwards

MORNING SESSION 1 – 10.00-11.30 – The Rent Strikes in 1915:

– Annmarie Hughes – The Rent Strikes in Glasgow – women’s grassroots activism and it’s co-option by Labour men

– Ann Petrie – An East Coast Perspective

– Catriona Burness – Remembering Mary Barbour

COFFEE 11.30 – 12.00

MORNING SESSION 2 – 12.00-13.30 – Housing disputes in twentieth century Scotland – the heritage of the rent strikes?

– Valerie Wright – ‘What next? Women’s housing campaigns of the interwar years’

– Barry Hazley – ‘Rents, Rates and Roughs: Competing public narratives of rehousing in post-war Glasgow, c1945-70’

– John Cooper – ‘Campaigning in Castlemilk in the 1970s and beyond’

LUNCH – including short optional tour of Glasgow Green with Stewart Maclennan (Scottish Labour History Society)

AFTERNOON SESSION – 15.00-16.30 – Activism in housing today – how far have we come from the situation in 1915?

– Jean Devlin – Scottish Anti-Bedroom Tax Federation

– Liz Ely – Living Rent Campaign Scotland

– Ellie Hutchinson – Shelter

– Glasgow Women’s Aid

– Emily Beever – Scottish National Union of Students

– Castlemilk Against Austerity
Do you have questions about Learning from the 1915 Rent Strikes: Women’s role in housing disputes in Scotland c. 1915 to the present? Contact Dr Valerie Wright

womenslibrary.org.uk/