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The first great surge of clearances began during the expansionary 1780s but then continued into the years of contraction and travail after Waterloo in 1815 when falling commodity prices squeezed all the previous optimism out of the Highland economy. The initial landlord assumption was that the people would be relocated and redeployed into new activities, usually along the coasts of the great estates. In the later phase the people were simply ousted without regard to alternative accommodation. The first step to eviction was the serving of a ‘Notice of Removal’ to a tenant. [35] The most infamous clearances entailed the wholesale displacement of traditional communities in sudden evacuations, but the exact circumstances were often complicated.

This chapter investigates how evicted slum dwellers and their representative organizations advance new forms of environmental subjectivity. The author shows that these forms directly challenge the notion of redevelopment and slum rehabilitation espoused through Mumbai's Slum Redevelopment Authority (SRA) housing scheme. This chapter examines slum redevelopment, especially the political struggles generated by periodic evictions. It provides a sustained account of the political ecology of urban social struggles around essential services and facilities. The poor always have to wrest from the government, their affluent neighbours and the relentless forces of urban commerce that would displace them.

Housing has always been a deeply political issue given its centrality to people’s lives. However, how it is politicised and treated, and its prominence in political and public debate, has changed over time. Housing is now becoming a political battleground of the 21st century between big finance, government and citizens seeking affordable housing. This chapter details the new housing protests and movements in Ireland challenging evictions and rising homelessness, and the scandal of derelict properties and high rents, and are campaigning for the use of vacant public land for affordable homes for all and the inclusion of the right to housing in the Constitution and law. A housing movement has been increasingly active in Ireland since 2014, responding to growing homelessness, and rental and mortgage arrears crises. Activity initially involved a number of small grassroots groups working incrementally to develop strategies and tactics around how to tackle the housing crisis in Ireland. A larger housing social movement erupted sporadically in 2016 over plans to demolish and redevelop Apollo House, a former government office block, and then in a more sustained manner in 2018 with the Take Back the City and Raise the Roof campaigns.

This chapter describes how hosiery workers went on the offensive against big business and government during the early years of the Great Depression while trying to aid those suffering the most. Hosiery workers joined with other unions and progressive organizations to form the Unemployed Leagues to stop the evictions of unemployed people, to assist with food and health care, and even birth control. In the course of a strike in 1930, the union lost its first martyr, Carl Mackley, and the ensuing memorial for this hero, attended by over 35,000 angry workers and residents of Kensington, raised the level of conflict for the remainder of the 1930s.