Lisa McKenzie


Lisa Louise Mckenzie is a British sociologist and research fellow at the London School of Economics whose work relates to class inequality, social justice, and British working class culture. She was politically active in the Class War party and her research and politics have been influenced by being a working class mother of a mixed race child in a poor area of Nottingham where she grew up.

Early life and education

McKenzie was born in March 1968 and grew up in Sutton-in-Ashfield. She moved from the predominantly white suburbs of Nottingham to the inner city where she had her mixed-race son in 1988 as there were more black people there and she felt more comfortable. Mckenzie attended university by going on an access course through which she realised that she could enter higher education. She earned her BA in 2004 and her master's degree in research methods from the University of Nottingham in 2005. She completed her doctorate in 2009 on "Finding value on a council estate: complex lives, motherhood, and exclusion", also at Nottingham, which dealt with working class mothers with mixed-race children on the St Ann's estate where she lived at the time. The decision to choose that topic was a result of Mckenzie's experiences.

Politics and activism

Mckenzie is active in left-wing politics and regularly attends demonstrations in London. She opposes social mobility and instead wants the living standards of all working class people to rise. She opposes private education and the charitable status of private schools. She opposes the sale of public housing through the right-to-buy legislation and wants to keep it public. In April 2015, she was arrested at a protest over the "poor door" at One Commercial Street in London and charged with three public order offences.
In May 2015, McKenzie was the Class War party candidate for the Chingford and Woodford Green constituency in the British general election that year. She received 53 votes. The incumbent member of Parliament, Iain Duncan Smith, was re-elected.
McKenzie has described the phenomenon of gentrification as a "violent process. In September 2015, Mckenzie took part in an anti-gentrification protest in London in which the Cereal Killer Cafe was vandalised. She was criticised for saying that the publicity was good for the owners.
In March 2017, McKenzie was arrested on suspicion of common assault during a protest over the treatment of cleaning staff at the London School of Economics, before being released on bail.

Media appearances

In 2012, McKenzie appeared on BBC Radio 4's Thinking Allowed with Laurie Taylor to discuss working class alienation in Nottingham. Lisa regularly appears on Russian Television as a representative on the current affairs debate show RENEGADE INC, most recently in January 2020.

Selected publications

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