Cathy McCormack, global community anti-poverty activist, donated thirteen boxes of material to GWL in 2021 and 2022. The correspondence, invitations, writing, publications, press cuttings and research they contain document the development of her work as an activist and critical figure in the struggle for housing justice. Her activism began where she lived in Glasgow’s Easterhouse, an area to the east of the city centre where, during the post-war period, housing had been built at scale to replace cleared housing in areas of the East End.
However, Cathy along with other Easterhouse residents found herself struggling with excessive heating costs and other negative effects of damp housing. Cathy and other members of the Easthall Residents Association campaigned for the authorities to take action to address the problems. They employed many forms of action, from writing and performing the community play ‘Dampbusters’ with Easthall Theatre Group to co-creating pioneering work in collaboration with health researchers to provide scientific evidence of the negative impacts the damp was having on residents’ health. Ten years of efforts resulted in an EU-funded full retrofit and solar panel installation on a number of the flats in the area, drastically reducing fuel expenditure and demonstrating the power of adequate housing to improve lives.
Cathy’s housing rights and wider anti-poverty work would connect her through many networks and alliances, as she worked to raise awareness of what she termed the ‘War without Bullets’ that was being waged on those living in poverty in the UK and beyond. Her talent for forging links between communities working for change means that this collection, while rooted in 80s and 90s community activism around housing conditions and anti-poverty work, also documents her invitations to speak at international conferences, including the UN’s Commission on Sustainable Development, her notebooks from a health study trip to Nicaragua, and her wide-ranging desk research about the global ‘war waged against the poor with briefcases instead of guns’. Several folders of press cuttings show Cathy’s success at eliciting interest in her campaigning work among both national and international audiences.
The collection also contains her draft and published writing for academic and popular publications, as well as more creative and personal writing, including poetry, which draws on her faith and life experiences as a mother to her three children.
Using radio and online tools to disseminate her message, and continued efforts to generate funding to support her costs and enable her to keep working for change leave evidence of her diverse collaborators and the depth of many of these relationships, some of which lasted over decades. Cathy’s interest in popular education shows through in the later decades of her life in her involvement in the establishment of the DIY Education Collective (later So We Stand), led by healthcare and human rights activist Dan Glass.
The audiovisual material in this collection offers the opportunity to hear Cathy’s message. In one early tape, a film made by Glasgow City Council Housing Department about the residents’ campaign and council response, she is interviewed in her Easterhouse home, speaking powerfully about the impacts of the damp and arguing how the conditions could and should be improved. In a wholly different context, but one with which she draws out strong parallels, the feature-length documentary made with long-time collaborator Barbara Orton, At the Sharp End of the Knife, documents her visit to the townships of South Africa and discussions with community activists there about their fight for justice in the wake of apartheid. From Glasgow to South Africa, and many, many places in between, this collection provides incredible insight into the work of a remarkable community activist.
