It is customary to include in a book of this kind a list of all those to whom the writer is indebted for stimulus or guidance. If I fail to do so, it is not from any lack of gratitude to the many who have, perhaps unwittingly, contributed to my blundering search after understanding. Rather it is because I wish to emphasise the magnitude of my debt to that regiment of the nameless to whom I owe such wisdom as I have acquired. It is to the unsung men and women of the inner city who strive so unceasingly for the betterment of others and whom it has been my good fortune to encounter that I take this opportunity to pay my most sincere tribute.

Finally, I must record my profound gratitude to my husband. It was by the happiest of chances that, in the context of this book which is all about the interlock between the women's movement and the search for urban democracy, I should have been enabled to explore that very issue with him in terms of our own lives. The moral and philosophical content of his approach to the process of social change added immensely to my comprehension of my own quest for personal fulfilment in a world of ambiguities and injustices that I find hard to understand.