Red Metropolis
Socialism and the Government of London
Published on 10. November 2020
266 pages
978-1-913462-21-5 (ISBN)
Description
A polemical history of municipal socialism in London - and an argument for turning this capitalist capital red again.
London is conventionally seen as merely a combination of the financial centre in the City and the centre of governmental power in Westminster, a uniquely capitalist capital city. This book is about the third London - a social democratic twentieth-century metropolis, a pioneer in council housing, public enterprise, socialist design, radical local democracy and multiculturalism.
This book charts the development of this municipal power base under leaders from Herbert Morrison to Ken Livingstone, and its destruction in 1986, leaving a gap which has been only very inadequately filled by the Greater London Authority under Livingstone, Boris Johnson and Sadiq Khan.
Opposing currently fashionable bullshit about an imaginary "metropolitan elite", this book makes a case for London pride on the left, and makes an argument for using that pride as a weapon against a government of suburban landlords that ruthlessly exploits Londoners.
London is conventionally seen as merely a combination of the financial centre in the City and the centre of governmental power in Westminster, a uniquely capitalist capital city. This book is about the third London - a social democratic twentieth-century metropolis, a pioneer in council housing, public enterprise, socialist design, radical local democracy and multiculturalism.
This book charts the development of this municipal power base under leaders from Herbert Morrison to Ken Livingstone, and its destruction in 1986, leaving a gap which has been only very inadequately filled by the Greater London Authority under Livingstone, Boris Johnson and Sadiq Khan.
Opposing currently fashionable bullshit about an imaginary "metropolitan elite", this book makes a case for London pride on the left, and makes an argument for using that pride as a weapon against a government of suburban landlords that ruthlessly exploits Londoners.
Reviews / Votes
"No one else writes so clearly yet with such elegiac intensity about the symbiosis that exists between history and the built environment, or the lives that are caught, mangled and realised in its midst." "Hatherley is a hugely knowledgeable and passionate advocate for architecture and planning, a cracking writer, and an undervalued figure of the left. For anyone daring to tackle social issues, Red Metropolis should be compulsory reading." "An excellent basis from which to launch the next wave of radical thinking about the future of the capital." "Some of his suggestions - for instance, that London must stop growing, and seek to give away some of its accumulated power - may strike Londoners as provocative, but this is one of the few serious efforts at historically informed strategic thinking we have seen from the post-2019 left."More details
Edition
New edition
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Watkins Media Limited
Edition type
New edition
Product notice
Reflowable
File size
24,72 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-913462-21-5 (9781913462215)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
12/2020
Repeater Books
€14.00
Shipment within 3-4 weeks
Person
Owen Hatherley writes regularly on aesthetics and politics for, among others, the Architectural Review, the Calvert Journal, Dezeen, the Guardian, Jacobin, and the London Review of Books. He is the author of several books, including, Red Metropolis, Artificial Islands and Modern Buildings in Britain: A Gazetteer.
