McKenzie at an anti austerity demonstration in London, in 2015

Lisa Louise McKenzie (born March 1968) is a British anarchist and senior lecturer at the University of Bedfordshire 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.

Early life and education

Lisa Louise McKenzie[1] was born in March 1968 and grew up in Sutton-in-Ashfield.[2] 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. [3] 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.[4] The decision to choose that topic was a result of McKenzie's experiences.[3]

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.[5] 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.[6]

In the 2015 United Kingdom general election, McKenzie was the Class War party candidate for the Chingford and Woodford Green constituency;[7][8] she came last, receiving 53 votes (0.1 per cent of the votes cast).[1] 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]

Academic career

McKenzie has taught at Nottingham Trent University, University of Nottingham, LSE, and Middlesex University. At LSE she was a research fellow on the Great British Class Survey.[4] As of 2023 she is a senior lecturer in sociology in the School of Applied Social Sciences of the University of Bedfordshire, and serves as external examiner at University of Limerick and Bangor University.[14]

In April 2021 McKenzie launched a kickstarter appeal to fund the project Lockdown diaries of the working class.[15][16][17] The resulting book, funded by 800 donors, was published in 2022 by the Working Class Collective,[18][19] of which McKenzie was a director.[20] It included extracts from the diaries of 47 people for the period of March to May 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.[21]

Media appearances

In 2012, McKenzie appeared on BBC Radio 4's Thinking Allowed with Laurie Taylor to discuss working class alienation in Nottingham.[3]

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.[22]

As editor

  • Atkinson, Rowland; McKenzie, Lisa; Winlow, Simon, eds. (2017). Building Better Societies: Promoting Social Justice in a World Falling Apart. Policy Press. ISBN 978-1447332022.[23]
  • Lockdown Diaries of the Working-Class. The Working Class Collective. 2022.[17][24]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "General Election results, 7 May 2015". walthamforest.gov.uk. Archived from the original on 2 October 2015. Retrieved 2015-10-01.
  2. ↑ Lisa McKenzie (21 Jan 2017). "The estate we're in: how working class people became the 'problem'". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2017-07-19. Retrieved 2017-07-19.
  3. 1 2 3 Working class alienation - Nottingham council estate. Archived 2012-12-18 at the Wayback Machine Thinking Allowed, BBC Radio 4, 2012. Retrieved 31 January 2016.
  4. 1 2 "Dr Lisa Mckenzie". LSE: Sociology. Archived from the original on 2 December 2016. Retrieved 27 October 2023.
  5. ↑ Five reasons why Class War's Lisa McKenzie thinks you should vote for her. Archived 2015-10-02 at the Wayback Machine Natalie Glanvill, The Guardian, 22 April 2015. Retrieved 31 January 2016.
  6. ↑ Class War protester cleared of criminal damage at ‘poor doors’ demonstration Archived 2018-11-20 at the Wayback Machine The Guardian, 21 October 2015.
  7. ↑ Class War to spar with IDS in hustings. Class War Party, 22 April 2015. Archived at Internet Archive. Retrieved 31 January 2016.
  8. ↑ McKenzie, Lisa (8 April 2015). "Why I have to stand against Iain Duncan Smith in the general election". The Guardian. theguardian.com. Archived from the original on 2015-10-02. Retrieved 2015-10-01.
  9. ↑ "View registration - The Electoral Commission". search.electoralcommission.org.uk. Archived from the original on 2019-12-08. Retrieved 2021-03-09.
  10. ↑ Noor, Poppy (January 10, 2018). "I feel guilty for gentrifying my neighbourhood. What should I do?". The Guardian. Archived from the original on November 9, 2020. Retrieved November 29, 2019 – via www.theguardian.com.
  11. ↑ "Attack on Cereal Killer cafe is good publicity for them". Evening Standard. 29 September 2015. Archived from the original on 2015-10-02. Retrieved 2015-10-01.
  12. ↑ "Cereal offenders: who are the anti-gentrification protesters and are they justified?". newstatesman.com. 28 September 2015. Archived from the original on 2015-10-01. Retrieved 2015-10-01.
  13. ↑ "Attack on Cereal Killer cafe is good publicity for them". Evening Standard. 2015-09-29. Archived from the original on 2019-11-11. Retrieved 2019-11-11.
  14. ↑ "Lisa McKenzie". www.beds.ac.uk. University of Bedfordshire. Archived from the original on 26 October 2023. Retrieved 27 October 2023.
  15. ↑ Topple, Steve (29 April 2021). "A collection of working-class lockdown diaries is set to show what others won't". Canary. Archived from the original on 28 October 2023. Retrieved 28 October 2023.
  16. ↑ McKenzie, Lisa (8 April 2021). "Lockdown diaries of the working class". Transforming Society. Archived from the original on 28 October 2023. Retrieved 28 October 2023.
  17. 1 2 Cox, Phoebe (1 August 2022). "Sutton writer shares working class diaries in new book about life in lockdown". Chad. Archived from the original on 28 October 2023. Retrieved 28 October 2023.
  18. ↑ McKenzie, Lisa (22 July 2022). "Illustrating the lockdown diaries of the working class". Transforming Society. Archived from the original on 28 October 2023. Retrieved 28 October 2023.
  19. ↑ "The Working Class Collective". Archived from the original on 10 May 2023.
  20. ↑ "The Working Class Collective: Officers". find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk. Companies House. Archived from the original on 28 October 2023. Retrieved 28 October 2023.
  21. ↑ "Powerful new book reveals experiences of working class people during Covid-19 lockdown". www.mdx.ac.uk. MIddlesex University. 1 June 2022. Archived from the original on 28 October 2023. Retrieved 28 October 2023.
  22. ↑ Reviews of Getting By:
  23. ↑ Reviews of Building Better Societies:
  24. ↑ Review of Lockdown Diaries of the Working-Class:
    • Richard Longman, "Lockdown stories (un)told: Challenging official narratives through working class solidarity", Organization, doi:10.1177/1350508423119843
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