Oly Durose - Suburban Socialism: (Or Barbarism)

Suburban Socialism will undoubtedly provoke debate in the labour movement and challenge perceptions held by both the left and right of British society that vast swathes of our country remain irrevocably immune to the offer of a non-capitalist world.

MARCUS BARNETT, ASSOCIATE EDITOR AT TRIBUNE

A convincing and forceful case for radical change in the outskirts.

JEREMY CORBYN

If there is any redemption for the suburbs, it is in this imaginative and stereotype-shattering account. Oly Duroses work is a fierce companion for those ready to wage class warfare in the suburbs and against surburbia.

BREANNE FAHS, AUTHOR OF BURN IT DOWN!

If we are to have socialism, it will be suburban or not at all. With examples from Essex to Nevada, Oly Durose outlines some of the starting points to turn the outskirts red.

OWEN HATHERLEY, AUTHOR OF RED METROPOLIS

This sharply observed analysis grounded in theory offers fascinating insight into what goes on politically on the fringes of our capital, and sets out the politics we all need in the face of an era where glib phrases like levelling up are the order of the day. A warmly recommended cautionary tale for our times.

RUPA HUQ, LABOUR MP AND AUTHOR OF ON THE EDGE: THE CONTESTED CULTURES OF ENGLISH SUBURBIA

A thoughtful, engaging and original despatch from the neglected ground of suburbia, and a roadmap for how the left in Britain and beyond can meet our urgent present and future challenges.

RHIAN E. JONES, AUTHOR OF PAINT YOUR TOWN RED

Out of tough and tender experiences of an election candidate in a constituency with a political mountain to climb, comes a stimulating economic and political analysis of suburbia that creates a Suburban Manifesto to rise to this challenge.

JOHN MCDONNELL, LABOUR MP

This is an amazingly and successfully ambitious effort to reconceptualise the suburbs as an arena for emancipatory politics, threaded into an engrossing account of an only apparently quixotic Labour campaign in hostile territory. Its a one-off mix of practical campaigning and visionary theorising, a hustings war story and a comprehensive critique of suburban capitalism that are equally down-to-earth and accessible.

SCOTT NEWTON, HEAD OF SCHOOL OF LAW, GENDER AND MEDIA, SOAS

I thought I knew all the suburban socialists until I read this. I now know I was wrong. Reading about endangered species is always a challenge: a mixture of despair and hope tinged with a belief that goes beyond immediate reality. Oly Durose may not be the David Attenborough of electioneering, but this book is flavoured with the same kind of inspiring feeling.

MICHAEL ROSEN

The assumptions we have about class, and the frameworks that have been adopted to conceptualise it are outdated. Oly has analysed emerging economic and social dynamics from first principles, and by burnishing mainstream misconceptions he has provided an account of socialisms relevance and popularity in suburbia.

MATT ZARB-COUSIN, FORMER SPOKESPERSON FOR JEREMY CORBYN

Published by Repeater Books

An imprint of Watkins Media Ltd

Unit 11 Shepperton House

89-93 Shepperton Road

London

N1 3DF

United Kingdom

www.repeaterbooks.com

A Repeater Books paperback original 2022

Distributed in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York.

Copyright Oly Durose 2022

Oly Durose asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

ISBN: 9781913462895

Ebook ISBN: 9781913462901

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Printed and bound in the UK by TJ Books

In memory of Doreen Acton, a suburban socialist whose limitless generosity is proof that another way of living one of compassion and collective care is possible.

1. INTRODUCTION

Losing

Im sorry, but youll never win anything as a socialist. Certainly not in this neck of the woods. Youll understand as you get older.

On 12 December 2019, the night the Labour Party crawled to its worst defeat since 1935, there were perhaps better places to be than my own election count in a Conservative stronghold. Funnily enough, unsolicited advice from a Tory councillor did little to ease my distress. His scepticism was hardly unfounded. Brentwood & Ongar, an affluent commuter hub in Essex sitting just outside the M25, had been a safe Conservative seat ever since its creation in 1974. And if we wanted to prove just how serious we were about turning Tory suburbia red, we probably shouldnt have spent the entire day canvassing in constituencies elsewhere.

Part of me had wanted to stay here and go door to door. The most important part of a campaign is also the least glamorous: reminding Labour supporters to get out and vote on the day. Given the incumbent Alex Burghart MP was sitting on a majority of 24,002, I knew we werent going to win, but I wanted us to secure as many votes as possible. Local polling suggested we might lose narrowly to the Liberal Democrats, which filled me with untold shame and misery. Nevertheless, trying to reduce the Tories majority in the Conservative heartlands of Essex by a few votes didnt seem like the most efficient use of our time. In 2019, the stakes were too high.

Compromising with my own fear of coming third to the Lib Dems, I got up to make one last leaflet drop in my neighbourhood, Shenfield. Most of the time we leafleted and canvassed as a team, but on this occasion it was probably for the best that I kept my quixotic delusions to myself. Convinced that two more hours in a seven-week campaign would be the difference between glory and defeat, I wanted to make sure that a Labour leaflet was the last thing people saw before leaving the house, reminding (or even persuading) them to pop into a polling station on their way to work. In that case, of course, I hoped theyd vote for me. Inwardly, I knew that my gurning face on the leaflet might just as easily remind people to vote Tory. Worse, I could be turning sympathetic voters away every time I rattled the letterbox and woke them up.

I didnt have the energy to question what I was doing. Instead, I walked out of the door into the 5am mist. Turning right onto the tree-lined pavement, I passed several large, detached houses, with driveways large enough for two or three cars abreast, testament to a constituency that has a higher than national average income. Or, if Id taken the second left, Id have ended up on a footpath to the town centre. There Id find the invisible grave of Billy, a homeless man who died outside the clothing shop, Next, seven months before Polling Day.

Instead, I took the first left into a spray of cul-de-sacs. Suburbia sounds different before sunrise. It isnt exactly carnivalesque at the best of times, but in the absence of lawnmowers humming, dog-walkers shuffling, garage doors opening or car boots slamming, there is even less punctuation to break the silence. As households began to wake up, I posted my last few leaflets and headed home. Feeling the weightlessness of my Sainsburys carrier bag, I lulled myself into a sense of relief that the election was over. Really, the most important day of the campaign had only just begun.