Contested Commons: A History of Protest and Public Space in England

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A radical history of England, Contested Commons is a gripping overview of increasingly restrictive policing and legislation against protest in public spaces. It tells the long history of contests over Trafalgar Square, Hyde Park, Cable Street and Kinder Scout, as well as sites in towns and rural areas across the country. Navickas reveals how protesters claimed these spaces as their own commons, resisting their continuing enclosure and exclusion by social and political elites. She investigates famous and less well-known demonstrations and protest marches, from early democracy, trade union movements and the Suffragettes to anti-fascist, Black rights and environmental campaigners in more recent times. Contested Commons offers positive as well as troubling lessons on how we protect the right to protest.

Reviews

Formidably erudite, compellingly argued, and dryly humorous, Contested Commons will change the way you think about the politics of space, the myth of the commons, and the history of England since the eighteenth century. Protest is a practice of communing, Katrina Navickas argues, showing that commoning has been resistance to enclosure, claiming rights of access, and standing your ground when racists try forcing you out. It is also learning to see and contest new acts of enclosure today and, quite simply, children playing ball games out on the street. * Matthew Kelly, author of The Women Who Saved the English Countryside *

Author Bio

Katrina Navickas is Professor of History at the University of Hertfordshire. She is the author of Protest and the Politics of Space and Place, 17891848 (2016) and Loyalism and Radicalism in Lancashire, 17981815 (2009).