What Direct Action Actually Means
Not chaos. Shifting power.
What Direct Action Means
Direct action means people acting together to apply pressure where polite requests and formal processes have failed.
- It is collective, not individual
- It is strategic, not spontaneous
- It is a practical response to systems that ignore need
The Myth vs The Reality
Often portrayed as:
Disruptive
Reckless
Extreme
In reality:
Community pickets outside letting agents
Door-knocking to build collective letters
Showing up at council cabinet meetings
Bailiff resistance training in church halls
A practical response to systems that do not respond to need
Read how our community made Newcastle Council adopt our exact words through direct action.
Why Direct Action Is Necessary
For people facing poverty and housing insecurity, direct action is often the only way to be heard.
Complaints, appeals, and advice routes are slow, inaccessible, or designed to manage dissent rather than resolve harm.
Landlords, energy companies, and councils respond faster to organised collective pressure than to individual letters. That is not cynicism. It is the lesson of every campaign Food & Solidarity has run in Newcastle since 2020.
Direct Action in Newcastle: What It Has Won
These are not hypothetical examples. These are campaigns run by Food & Solidarity members in Newcastle. Each one involved collective action where formal processes had already failed.
Two-child benefit cap abolished
Autumn 2025 Budget, after a year of member-led campaign action including Fun Run protests, coordinated Edinburgh actions, and a Newcastle City Council motion passed by a single vote.
Read the campaign storyPPM force-fitting suspended nationally
February 2023. All major energy firms ordered to stop after Food & Solidarity ran PPM and bailiff resistance workshops across Newcastle.
Full campaign pageSeven-day refugee evictions reversed
2023. Home Office policy reversed after protests outside Mears' Darlington offices and sustained pressure from Food & Solidarity and allied organisations.
Full campaign pageNewcastle homelessness cuts halted
Winter 2023. Newcastle City Council put planned cuts on hold following member campaigns, stalls, and public pressure through the eviction crisis.
Full campaign pageAndy Burnham agrees to meet on rent control
2025. After Food & Solidarity and the Homes for Us Alliance disrupted a closed-doors meeting of seven mayors and major developers in Manchester.
Read moreBreamish House: emergency repairs within 24 hours
2025. After months of ignored reports from an elderly tenant, collective action at a council cabinet meeting produced repairs the next day and a full building inspection.
Read moreDirect action in housing: eviction and disrepair
Section 21 revenge eviction stopped, Newcastle West End, 2023/24
Sarah was served a Section 21 notice before Christmas after reporting dangerous disrepair to Jan Forster Estates. Food & Solidarity members picketed the letting agent's office, organised a Christmas stall outside their door, and met directly with the managing director. The landlord's own failure to protect the deposit invalidated the notice. Sarah stayed through Christmas and left on her own terms, more than six months after the original notice.
Read Sarah's full story. | Facing eviction? See our eviction help guide.
Damp and mould defeated through collective letters, Newcastle, 2023
JP and Shamme lived through winter with black mould on every wall and water dripping inside. Their letting agent, Hunters Newcastle, ignored every call. Food & Solidarity members marched to the office, picketed, and distributed hundreds of leaflets. After 25 days of collective action, Hunters surrendered the tenancy.
Read JP and Shamme's full story. | Dealing with disrepair? See our guide.
Council motion passed word for word, Newcastle City Council, 2025
Members drafted a motion on child poverty and No Recourse to Public Funds while packing food parcels. Green and Independent councillors put it forward. Labour tried to block it. It passed by a single vote, unchanged. The council wrote to Rachel Reeves. The two-child benefit cap was abolished in the Autumn 2025 Budget.
Read how the council night unfolded. | See all campaigns and victories.
Direct action is not about chaos.
It is about shifting power.
When systems ignore need, communities that organise together change outcomes. These wins prove it.
Take Direct Action Together
Join members who organise collectively, act strategically, and apply pressure where formal processes fail. Every campaign on this page was built by ordinary people.
📞 07393 101018
📍 120-126 Buckingham St, Newcastle upon Tyne NE4 5QR
Frequently Asked Questions
What is direct action?
Direct action means people acting together to apply pressure where polite requests and formal processes have failed. It is collective, not individual. It is strategic, not spontaneous. It is about shifting power from those who ignore need to communities demanding change.
Is direct action the same as chaos or violence?
No. Direct action is practical and strategic. Food & Solidarity's actions have included community pickets, door-knocking, collective letters, attending council meetings, and bailiff resistance training. None of these are chaotic. All of them have produced results. See our campaigns and victories.
Why do people facing poverty use direct action?
Because formal complaints, appeals, and advice routes are slow, inaccessible, or designed to manage dissent rather than resolve harm. Landlords, energy companies, and councils respond faster to organised collective pressure than to individual letters. Food & Solidarity has demonstrated this in Newcastle across every campaign it has run.
What has direct action actually achieved in Newcastle?
The two-child benefit cap abolished, prepayment meter force-fitting suspended nationally, seven-day refugee evictions reversed, Newcastle homelessness cuts halted, multiple evictions stopped, emergency housing repairs won, Andy Burnham committed to meet on rent control. Full list of campaigns and wins.
How can I take part in direct action with Food & Solidarity?
Join as a member from £3 a month. Members take part in weekly food distributions, eviction defence, housing campaigns, and community organising. Participation is always flexible and voluntary. Call 07393 101018 or fill in our support form.
Related Pages
- Campaigns and victories: the full record
- Eviction help in Newcastle: what to do if you receive a notice
- Housing disrepair in Newcastle: report it, get it fixed, fight back
- Bailiff rights: what enforcement agents can and cannot do
- Solidarity, not charity: why we organise rather than give
- Renters' Rights Act: what changes in May 2026
- Building tenant power: our housing organising series
- Striker solidarity parcels: direct action in the workplace
- Join Food & Solidarity
- FAQs: membership, food parcels, housing support
This April, Food & Solidarity is running a practical workshop on housing organising - how to act when someone near you is in trouble, and how neighbours can back each other up instead of dealing with landlords and councils alone.
The day before, we're also taking part in a booklet launch that came directly out of that work.
These events are about what happens when neighbours stop dealing with housing problems alone - and start acting together.
37% of private renters & around 40% of social renters are in poverty after housing costs and that many households are only pushed into poverty once rent is paid.
After housing costs matter because it shows what people have left to live on, not what they earn.
Freezing Local Housing Allowance while rents rise is deepening hardship. We see this every week in the lives of our members. But increasing this allowance in a housing system without rent regulation does not solve the problem.
Sometimes change doesn't start with a big plan. It starts with people talking about what they're seeing every day, and deciding they can't ignore it anymore. That's how this campaign began.
It Started at a Members' Meeting
At a regular Food and Solidarity members' meeting, child poverty came up again. Members talked about how the two-child benefit cap was affecting families, and how immigration rules like NRPF (No Recourse to Public Funds) meant some families couldn't get help at all.
Someone suggested: what if we actually organised around this?
The UK Poverty report, published annually by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, is the authoritative analysis of poverty in the UK. Drawing on extensive data sources, it identifies who is most affected by poverty, tracks how levels have evolved over time, and examines what lies ahead. The report provides in-depth insights into overall poverty rates, deep poverty, and persistent poverty across different groups throughout the UK.
This Valentine’s Day, people across the North of England are choosing a different kind of love: comradely love. Love that looks like showing up for each other when rents rise, repairs are ignored, and eviction threats land on the doormat.
On 14 February 2026, housing groups, tenants, and people fed up with being pushed around by landlords and councils will come together in Sheffield for the Homes for Us North Grassroots Housing Gathering.
This isn’t a conference for professionals. It’s a gathering for people living in the housing crisis, and deciding to take action together, because nothing changes unless you and other affected people are directly involved.
Jan Forster estates limited recently called in administrators who downsized the company (reducing it to a single office and sacking staff) selling it off to the former managing director and daughter of the registered directors Angela Dennison (aka Angela Forster) as a phoenix company. The new company is DENNISON PROPERTY SERVICES LTD but will continue trading under Jan Forster Estates, in a triumph of personal vanity over brand viability.
What is a SLAPP?
A Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) is not really about winning a legal case. It’s about stopping people from speaking.
SLAPPs are a misuse of the legal system. They involve bringing, or more commonly threatening, legal action that is weak, vague, or unmeritorious, using aggressive tactics to shut down lawful criticism or organising on matters of public interest.
The Housing Crisis Is Destroying Our Communities
When rents rise, whole neighbourhoods change. The people who built communities, who know their neighbours, who use the local school, the local shop, the food bank get pushed out. The housing crisis doesn't just affect renters. It hollows out the places we all live in.
Sky-high rents are forcing people to cut back on essentials like food and heating. Families are being pushed out of their homes altogether, cut off from family, friends, and community. Homelessness has reached record levels. There are an ever-increasing number of homeless deaths. Disabled renters face discrimination and cannot secure accessible homes. Institutionally racist housing associations and council landlords neglect and mismanage estates damaging our health and letting children like Awaab Ishak die.
This is not bad luck or mismanagement. It is the result of decades of political choices. For too long, successive governments have prioritised the desire of private developers and corporate landlords to make a profit over our need for affordable, secure, accessible homes. This can't go on. It's time to fight back.