1"When a black flag bearing the words 'no rent' floats over a single slum, when streets are torn up and barricaded, when from the windows and roofs of the houses there comes a shower of hot water and storm of stones and brickbats, what can the police or bailiffs do?"

John Greaghe in the anarchist Commonweal in 1891 - a rent strike in the East End helped win the London Dockers Strike

2 "Tory and Liberal councillors like to help their fat landlord friends to pluck the workers pockets...

Labour Party in Leeds 1913 - just before the 1914 Leeds Rent Strike

3 "It is outrageous. I am confident that the people on Leeds estates will not pay the new rents. They will not stand for it and I am certain they will expect the Federation to fight it for all they are worth"

Leeds Tenants Federation president, T.H. Gilberthorpe - launching the 1934 Leeds Rent Strike

4 "I deeply regret to see the continued prominence of the vigilantes. This is a matter of considerable importance, and lawlessness should not be allowed. The police should consider all means of putting an end to these pranks."

Winston Churchill in 1945 when over 40,000 families squatted disused army camps and empty houses

5 "Distress rockets and cars equipped with loudspeakers were used to rouse the tenants against the bailiffs, one alarm bringing over 1000 people into the area around one besieged flat at midnight"

St Pancras United Tenants Association on rent strike against a council rent rise 1959

6 "A gang of organised thugs and anarchists who have created a general atmosphere of terrorism in North Kensington"

Leader of Kensington Borough Council in 1973 describing the Notting Hill People's Association which led the fight against the profiteering landlords

7"A dozen women supported by tenants from other South Wales estates stormed the council offices, barricaded themselves into a committee room, chained themselves to radiator pipes and stayed in occupation for 3 days and 2 nights."

The South Wales Association of Tenants' campaign against damp homes in 1979

8 "Tenant involvement in Britain emerged out of the wider struggle over wages and rents between the capitalist class and the working class"

from Charlie Cooper and Murray Hawtin's "Housing, Community and Conflict" 1997

Organising Unemployed Tenants in the 1920s

"Evictions were a particular problem - there were a lot of men out of work and a lot of men out on strike, so working class families were often unable to pay the rent and consequently they were evicted under the instructions of the local magistrate. The bailiff would come and haul them out of their houses.

So we decided that we should assist these unemployed and low wage workers. If they were threatened with eviction we would put into the house a defense committee of ten to twenty members, according to the size of the houses. We would supply them with a bucket and also keep in constant communication. When we had barricaded the front door and the ground floor windows, back and front, we would fill the street with unemployed workers or sympathetic neighbours so that the bailiffs or the police could not penetrate near the house to do the eviction.

Then I would go to the landlords agent with my friends. We would argue that if they wanted to throw us out of the houses there would be more damage done and that would cost a hell of a lot of money. We would repay some of the back rent and some of the regular payments and then we would leave. This tactic became the order for the day. On many occasions the local bailiff would come to me and say 'Are you going to take this case, Mr Edwards?, and if I said yes, he would say 'All right, I won't take it.'

Bert Edwards "Organising the Unemployed in the 1920s

In G Craig (ed) "Jobs and Community Action " Routledge 1982

Stepney Tenants Struggles in the 1930s

One day we were told that two of the families were to be evicted the next day…Very early the next morning the barricades were being arranged at the entrance of this block of buildings. No one could get up the stairs without removing these barricades, there were balconies overhead from which any one trying to get access without permission could be bombarded with ease. From a nearby grocer's shop old and mouldy flour was obtained, with the grocer's compliments, and this was placed upstairs at strategic points. The two flats themselves were locked and barred from inside. Some of the women had to be persuaded by the Communists that it was inadvisable to use anything more than the flour and pails of water. Some were disappointed. All was ready for action when the bailiffs were due to arrive.

Within half an hour the bailiffs were back with forty police. The police were a little dismayed when they saw the kind of job they had to do, and the Inspector gave the order for the barricades to be pulled away. Then out came the flour, and the police were smothered. The water soon followed and when this got mixed up with the flour they were completely hors de combat."

Phil Piratin "Our flag stays red" (1948)

Further reading: John Grayson's "Opening the window - the hidden history of tenants organisations"; Stuart Lowe's "Urban Social Movements" and the Glasgow Rent Strike in Carol Grant's "Built to Last"