Paper short abstract:

This paper sets the subjective property ideologies and imagined futures of individual activists within an Edinburgh-based tenants' rights campaign group alongside the campaign's collective messages. The aim is to explore the idea that the collective utopia is a consciously strategic construct.

Paper long abstract:

The proportion of households in the private rented sector in Scotland has doubled during the past decade. Three weeks after the independence referendum, the Scottish Government launched a consultation paper entitled 'A New Tenancy for the Private Sector', setting out initial proposals for the reform of the private rented sector tenancy system, and seeking views from both individuals and organisations. Following further consultation, this eventually led to the Private Housing (Tenancies) (Scotland) Bill, which was introduced to Parliament in October 2015.

The focus of this paper is a small group of Edinburgh-based activists who organised over four thousand campaign responses to the consultation, calling rent controls and increased security of tenure. There were collected primarily as postcards from street stalls and as signatories to e-petitions shared via social media. The activist group have subsequently conducted further petitions, lobbied political party conference delegates, taken part in May Day marches, founded branches in other Scottish cities, and are currently aiming to establish a Scotland-wide tenants' union.

Drawing upon fieldwork, this paper sets the subjective property ideologies and imagined futures of individual activists alongside the formal messages promoted by the campaign. Particular attention is paid to the ways that the activists themselves conceptualise these distinctions. By focusing upon the intersections between collective and individual utopias, this paper explores the idea that the collective is a consciously strategic and pragmatic construct produced by subjective persons for the building of a deliberately diverse coalition for immediate policy change that is rooted in utopian ideals.