Squalor

Daniel Renwick is a writer, youth-worker and videographer. He lives in London. Robbie Shilliam is Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. He was previously Professor of International Relations at Queen Mary University of London.

In this compelling history of squalor’s political and racial construction, Renwick and Shilliam debunk right-wing attempts to cast today’s squalid living conditions forced on many across the UK as a matter of morality and show them to be one of mortality. This is perhaps most poignantly exposed in their discussion of the Grenfell Fire, a touchpoint throughout the book. A truly significant contribution to the contemporary rethinking of one of Beveridge’s five impediments to social progress.

• Introduction1. A moral history of squalor2. Housing policy and national reform3. A postwar consensus?4. Demolishing slums, building up5. The struggle for the city6. The right to buy7. Organized negligence8. Twenty-first-century squalor9. Social murder