Lisa McKenzie

Lisa Louise Mckenzie (born March 1968) is a British anarchist and research fellow at the University of Durham whose work relates to class inequality, social justice, and British working class culture. She was active in the Class War party and her research and politics have been influenced by being a working-class mother of a mixed-race child in a poor area of Nottingham where she grew up.

McKenzie at an anti austerity demonstration in London, in 2015

Early life and education

McKenzie was born in March 1968 and grew up in Sutton-in-Ashfield.[1] She moved from predominantly white suburbs to the inner city of Nottingham where she had her mixed-race son in 1988 as there were more black people there and she felt more comfortable.[2] McKenzie attended university by going on an access course through which she realised that she could enter higher education. She earned her BA in 2004 and her master's degree in research methods from the University of Nottingham in 2005. She completed her doctorate in 2009 on "Finding value on a council estate: complex lives, motherhood, and exclusion", also at Nottingham, which dealt with working-class mothers with mixed-race children on the St Ann's estate where she lived at the time.[3] The decision to choose that topic was a result of McKenzie's experiences.[2]

Politics and activism

Mckenzie is active in left-wing politics and regularly attends demonstrations in London. She opposes social mobility and instead wants the living standards of all working-class people to rise. She opposes private education and the charitable status of private schools. She opposes the sale of public housing through the right-to-buy legislation and wants to keep it public.[4] In April 2015, she was arrested at a protest over the "poor door" at One Commercial Street in London and charged with three public order offences. She was subsequently found not guilty of joint enterprise for causing criminal damage, after a sticker was fixed on a window, as well as acquitted of intent to cause alarm and distress and causing alarm and distress due to lack of evidence.[5]

In the 2015 United Kingdom general election, McKenzie was the Class War party candidate for the Chingford and Woodford Green constituency;[6][7] she came last, receiving 53 votes (0.1 per cent of the votes cast).[8] The Member of Parliament, Iain Duncan Smith, was re-elected. The Class War party was voluntarily deregistered with the electoral commission in July 2015, 17 months after initial registration.[9]

McKenzie has described the phenomenon of gentrification as a "violent process”.[10] In September 2015, Mckenzie took part in an anti-gentrification protest in London in which the Cereal Killer Cafe was vandalised.[11][12] She was criticised for saying that the publicity was good for the owners.[13]

Media appearances

In 2012, McKenzie appeared on BBC Radio 4's Thinking Allowed with Laurie Taylor to discuss working class alienation in Nottingham.[2]

Selected publications
  • "Narratives from the Inside: Re-studying St Anns in Nottingham". Sociological Review. III: 457–476. August 2012. doi:10.1111/j.1467-954X.2012.02094.x. S2CID 145733099.
  • "Narratives from a Nottingham Council Estate: A Story of White Working Class Mothers with Mixed-race Children". Ethnic and Racial Studies. 36 (8): 1342–1358. May 2013. doi:10.1080/01419870.2013.776698. S2CID 144841003.
  • "Foxtrotting the Riot: The Slow Rioting in Britain's Inner City" (PDF). Sociological Research Online. 18 (Special Issue: Collisions, Coalitions and Riotous Subjects: Reflections and Repercussions): 68–99. August 2013. doi:10.5153/sro.3155. S2CID 143796342.
  • Getting by: Estates, Class and Culture in Austerity Britain. Bristol: Policy Press. 2015. ISBN 978-1-4473-0995-6.

See also

References
  1. Lisa McKenzie (21 Jan 2017). "The estate we're in: how working class people became the 'problem'". The Guardian. Retrieved 2017-07-19.
  2. Working class alienation - Nottingham council estate. Thinking Aloud, BBC Radio 4, 2012. Retrieved 31 January 2016.
  3. Dr Lisa Mckenzie. London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Sociology. 16 September 2014. Retrieved 31 January 2016.
  4. Five reasons why Class War's Lisa McKenzie thinks you should vote for her. Natalie Glanvill, The Guardian, 22 April 2015. Retrieved 31 January 2016.
  5. Class War protester cleared of criminal damage at ‘poor doors’ demonstration The Guardian, 21 October 2015.
  6. Class War to spar with IDS in hustings. Class War Party, 22 April 2015. Archived at Internet Archive. Retrieved 31 January 2016.
  7. "Why I have to stand against Iain Duncan Smith in the general election". theguardian.com. Retrieved 2015-10-01.
  8. "General Election results, 7 May 2015". walthamforest.gov.uk. Archived from the original on 2 October 2015. Retrieved 2015-10-01.
  9. "View registration - The Electoral Commission". search.electoralcommission.org.uk.
  10. Noor, Poppy (January 10, 2018). "I feel guilty for gentrifying my neighbourhood. What should I do?" – via www.theguardian.com.
  11. "Attack on Cereal Killer cafe is good publicity for them". Evening Standard. Retrieved 2015-10-01.
  12. "Cereal offenders: who are the anti-gentrification protesters and are they justified?". newstatesman.com. Retrieved 2015-10-01.
  13. "Attack on Cereal Killer cafe is good publicity for them". Evening Standard. 2015-09-29. Retrieved 2019-11-11.
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