Suburban Socialism (Or Barbarism)

Reflecting on his own landslide loss in conservative suburbia, Oly Durose asks how we can transform the urban outskirts of the status quo into centres of transformative change.

In December 2019, Oly Durose lost by over 25,000 votes as the Labour Party Parliamentary Candidate for Brentwood & Ongar. Revealing what it’s like to stand on a socialist platform in one of the safest Conservative seats in the UK, this book makes the case for socialism in the suburbs, unveils the challenges of its electoral realisation, and proposes a strategic revolution required to win.

Suburban Socialism asks what it would be like to bring white picket fences under collective control instead. To convince suburbanites of this radical alternative inside the electoral arena, this book argues that we must revolutionise our strategy outside of it. 

From the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution to the shockwaves of the metropolitan youthquake, socialism has predominantly been framed as an urban struggle. Identifying the possibilities for suburban resistance, this book offers a more geographically inclusive invitation to the socialist struggle, revealing why the suburban struggle is global in scale. Turning a suburb that shares from a hopeless fantasy into an electoral reality, Suburban Socialism illustrates why the path to socialism around the world is through the heterogenous suburban terrain.

Oly Durose is a socialist activist, parliamentary researcher and writer. In the 2019 UK General Election, he stood as the Labour Party Parliamentary Candidate for Brentwood & Ongar. In February 2020, he was a Caucus Site Leader for the Bernie Sanders Campaign in Nevada.