Beyond Kenmure Street: lifecycles of antiracism amongst activists in Glasgow

This paper examines antiracist activism in Glasgow, Scotland, through the anchor of the 2021 “Battle of Kenmure Street,” when residents and activists stopped a Home Office immigration raid. Drawing on twenty interviews and long-term activist-scholar engagement with groups involved, the paper explores how participants make sense of both the euphoric high of such events and the longer-term organisational and personal challenges that undergird them. Exploring participants' own usage and critique of language from “movement lifecycle” models, we analyse how such rubrics flatten activist experience, obscuring the gendered, racialised and classed dimensions of antiracist struggle. Here, activists draw upon ideas of hope, grief, purpose and care to offer alternative ways of understanding how movements are sustained or falter. Ultimately, we argue for grounding antiracist theory in everyday organising while critically historicising the strategies employed. Through this, we can build an antiracist theory that emerges from and (crucially) contributes to antiracist struggle.