The social bases of tenant organisation

From a reading of much literature emanating from the 1970s, one would get the impression that the tenants’ movement in Britain was a united force organised into ‘urban social movements’ which showed an orientation towards militant collective action. On the basis of research in six local authority areas, this paper shows that such a picture gives an inaccurate view of the tenants’ movement in Britain in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Rather the tenants’ movement is divided on the basis of social class, status and consumption position. Further, although tenants do show some degree of collective feeling, they rarely have a strong orientation towards collective, militant, protest action.