The rentstrike was a form of direct action used - sometimes very effectively - by the tenants movement from the 1890s to the 1970s. The Glasgow rent strike of 1915 won the first ever rent freeze in the private sector. Other rent strikes secured rent cuts or influenced legislation. But more often rentstrikes ended in mass evictions and defeat. The introduction of rent rebates and housing benefit doomed this form of protest to failure.

This page features local studies into rentstrikes.

It provides access to published research into renstrikes in London in the 1930s, the St Pancras rent strike in 1960, and the rentstrikes and protests against the Housing Finance Act in the early 1970s.

It also features original research into renstrikes in Leeds. The 1914 rentstrike in Leeds was part of the wave of national tenant protest against rent rises in the private sector that led to the famous Glasgow action of 1915. In 1934 Leeds tenants again used the rentstrike, this time against a Labour council and the introduction of market rents and means tested rent rebates. These two rentstrikes illustrate key moments in the formation of a distinct social movement, the tenants movement.