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Title: Hidden Histories of Resistance Author: CrimethInc. Date: May 13, 2014 Language: en Topics: squatting, england, Read All About It, history Source: Retrieved on 2nd December 2020 from https://crimethinc.com/2014/05/13/squatting-in-england-heritage-prospects
Over the past few years, there has been a push to criminalize squatting
across Western Europe. But in a time of increasing economic instability,
can governments succeed in suppressing squatting? What is at stake here?
This article reviews the background and contemporary context of
squatting in England, beginning after the Second World War and comparing
the current movement to its counterparts on mainland Europe. It touches
on many stories: migrants squatting to build a life safe from fascist
attacks, gay activists finding spaces in which to build up a scene,
vibrant and insurgent squatted areas, single-issue campaigns occupying
as a direct action tactic, and anti-capitalist groups setting up social
centers. We hope this text will help those in present-day struggles to
root themselves in the heritage of previous movements.
---
When squatting in residential buildings was recently criminalized in
England and Wales, the debate raged primarily around the issue of
homelessness. Right-wing politicians implausibly claimed there was no
connection at all between squatters and the homeless, while supporters
of squatting warned that putting people in prison for occupying derelict
property was a retrograde step which would probably have tragic
consequences. When a homeless man froze to death outside an empty
bungalow after being told by the police not to enter it, the warnings
were sadly proved correct. Yet within this debate, which featured
simplified and polarized views, the many positive aspects of squatting
as a social movement were drowned out or ignored. Since the late 1960s,
as in previous times, squatting has enabled diverse groups to house
themselves. It has also supplied the opportunity structure for many
different projects to come to life.
This article describes only a few examples from this hidden history of
resistance. There are many other stories that we do not have space to
explore—the thriving rave scene that produces temporary autonomous zones
on a weekly basis across the country, travelers finding freedom on the
road, community-based activism such as Occupy or free schooling,
squatted homeless shelters, and more. Still others remain unwritten and
unrecorded. We hope to see more of these stories enter circulation.
When soldiers returned home after World War II, the English housing
stock was in a complete shambles; no new houses had been built for six
years and some areas were bombed out. Just as the Government had
promised “Homes for Heroes” in the 1920s but failed to deliver them in
sufficient numbers, the political rhetoric did not match the reality.
All over the UK, people began to squat.
In Brighton, the Vigilantes cracked houses for families. Also known as
the Secret Committee of Ex-Servicemen, they featured the redoubtable
Harry Cowley, whose name lives on in the present day Cowley Club, an
anarchist social centre. The idea spread like wildfire to other cities.
Without any central command, people were taking direct action to house
themselves. Many army camps slated for demolition were repurposed into
temporary housing; people lived in some of these well into the 1950s.
These Nissen huts were hard to heat and not always in great condition,
but over time they were adapted into homes to be proud of. At first, the
government was critical of this independent enterprise—saying it could
only lead to anarchy—but came to recognise that it was powerless in the
face of such a large-scale movement, which by 1946 numbered 45,000
people in over a thousand locations.
Later, people organized the protest occupation of large buildings in
central London such as the Ivanhoe Hotel. After first condemning the
squat actions and advising people to wait to be housed by the state, the
Communist Party eventually became involved; the fact that a few party
members were arrested for organizing the London actions sometimes
misleads commentators into thinking that the Communist Party was itself
behind the entire movement. While certain occupied camps benefited from
the involvement of local communists, this should not be understood as a
party political issue. There was widespread support for the squatters
across the political spectrum, since they were taking action to house
themselves in an extreme situation.
The right to housing is still far from being met today. The last thirty
years have seen a sustained attack on social housing, which the present
coalition government has continued, despite pre-election promises.
In Tower Hamlets[1] in the 1970s, male Bangladeshi immigrants found it
hard to get access to Council housing. They were caught in a catch-22:
single men were not given housing unless they had a family, but they
could not bring their families to London unless they provided proof of
accommodation. Yet there were derelict Council-owned properties
everywhere. A squatting movement sprang up in the East End, through
which hundreds of families were housed in areas such as Whitechapel and
Bethnal Green. Terry Fitzpatrick, an anti-racist organizer,[2] set up
the Tower Hamlets Squatters Union and worked alongside Race Today, a
black radical group which published a monthly magazine and included the
Black Panthers Darcus Howe and Linton Kwesi Johnson as members. In a
2006 interview, Fitzpatrick recalls that the Bengali Housing Action
Group (BHAG) was formed in 1976 and Pelham House was squatted soon
after. There were 60 flats, with seven or eight remaining tenants. The
owner, the Greater London Council (GLC), had marked it for
demolition—but by the end of 1976 there were 300 Bangladeshis in
occupation.
There were perhaps 1000 people altogether living in East End squats
connected through BHAG. Fitzpatrick says “We never lost a single squat,
between 1974 and 1979 or 1980, when it came to a sort of end.” The end
was a success rather than a defeat: the GLC caved in to the demands of
the squatters and rehoused them locally, exactly where they asked to be
placed. This was important only because the squatters got what they
wanted, but also since their activism was in part a response to the
racist activities of the National Front, which regularly attacked
immigrant families rehoused to areas further out in the borough, such as
Poplar.
Sadly, clustering together was not always enough. On May 4, 1978, Altab
Ali was stabbed and murdered by three skinhead youths as he walked home
past St. Mary’s Park in Whitechapel. The park was renamed in his memory.
Fitzpatrick concludes that “It was 1974–80 that shaped the community the
way it is today, without a shadow of a doubt. Had that [the squatting
movement] not happened, I don’t know what would have happened. Something
would, but it might just have come later.” The area around Brick Lane,
for example, would look and feel very different today. According to
historian Sarah Glynn, “The housing struggle not only improved living
conditions and left the Bengali community unique among ethnic minority
groups in the proportion living in council housing; it also helped to
involve a great many people in local activism and politics.” She also
observes that the Jewish Communist Party had led a campaign in the late
1930s for a previous wave of immigrants in the same area where Bengali
immigrants struggled for decent housing in the 1970s.
Glynn points out what could be taken as a central contradiction, namely
that it was the white Fitzpatrick and the black activists of Race Today
who were squatting on behalf of Bangladeshi families. Fitzpatrick was
squatting alongside the families and learned to speak fluent Sylheti,
but this remains a contentious issue. Whilst some participants in BHAG
were critical of the reasons for Race Today to be involved, seeing the
group as pushing its own agenda, others welcomed their help; over time,
more Bengalis became directly involved in the actions.
Glynn politely calls this a “possible trap for those arguing for the
self-organization of others” and touches upon a fundamental problem,
namely how activists of all sorts can avoid the pitfalls of parachuting
into a situation and instead constructively engage with the people
already enmeshed in it, people who are expressly asking for assistance.
When housing activists want to help diverse groups to house themselves,
a great deal hinges on how the help is expressed. Similar issues had
cropped up a few years earlier, when Ron Bailey, Tony Mahoney, and the
other activists of the London Squatters Campaign kickstarted the modern
squatters’ movement through a careful reading of relevant laws and a
series of tactical squatting actions that resulted in positive media
coverage and councils being persuaded to house squatters.
As his 2005 obituary records, Mahoney himself was involved with BHAG in
the struggle for decent housing in the East End, squatting in the
Fieldgate area and running the Campaign to Clear Hostels and Slums from
an office near Brick Lane.
Mahoney was also one of the founders of the East London Gay Liberation
Front (GLF). The first GLF group in London was formed in 1970; South
London GLF members were part of the Brixton Gay Community, which
consisted of a series of squats on Railton Road at numbers 153, 155, 159
and on the parallel-running Mayall Road at numbers 146, 148, 150, 152.
The houses backed onto each other and the squatters created one huge
communal garden. The place was “home for between fifty and sixty men for
anything from a week to almost ten years” and in fact, a version of the
community still lives on today in the Brixton Housing Co-operative,
formed between 1982 and 1984. The extended garden is still there, thanks
to squatting.
There was also the South London Gay Center at 78 Railton Road, which
existed from 1974 until 1976. Two women’s centers were squatted on the
same road, along with the People’s News Service, an anarchist bookshop,
which had the Gay Switchboard in an office above it.
Olive Morris had squatted with her partner Liz Obi at 121 Railton Road,
in what is regarded as one of the first occupations of privately-owned
property in Lambeth, as opposed to the occupation of council-owned
buildings. They resisted several eviction attempts and eventually moved
to another squat at 64 Railton Road. The 121 squat became Sabaar
Bookshop, a black infoshop and advice center which hosted meetings by
the Brixton Black Panthers; Morris and Obi were both members, along with
Race Today. In 1981, it appears that Sabaar got funding and moved to
Coldharbour Lane. The building became an anarchist social center known
as the 121 Center, which existed until 1999.
By the late 1990s, the 121 center was running out of steam as Brixton
began to gentrify around it—or so it seemed to us when we visited for
meetings, although it did host the first Queeruption in 1998, and the
monthly Dead by Dawn speedcore parties were great. In the 1980s, it had
been extremely active as a café, bookshop, library, venue, and rehearsal
space. It was used as a base by groups such as Brixton Squatters Aid,
Brixton Hunt Saboteurs, Food not Bombs, Community Resistance Against the
Poll Tax, Anarchist Black Cross, the Direct Action Movement, London
Socialist Film Co-op, the Kate Sharpley Library, and the Troops Out
Movement. There was a printing press in the basement which produced the
feminist magazine Bad Attitude, the anarchist magazine Black Flag, and
the squatters’ newspaper Crowbar, among other publications.
Olive Morris died tragically young, at the age of 27. The Remembering
Olive Collective, which organized events and set up a blog to
commemorate the thirty year anniversary of her death, emphasized that in
the already neglected history of the Brixton squatting scene, there are
several references to the 121 Railton Road but very little mention is
given to the use of the building first by black activists.
However, as the blog also notes, the Advisory Service for Squatters did
pay their respects to Olive Morris by putting a photograph on the front
cover of the 1979 version of the Squatters Handbook of her scaling the
roof of 121 Railton Road after one of the eviction attempts. The same
blog post states that:
Despite living side by side and having cordial relations, Black and
White squatters did not organise themselves together. Liz Obi remembers
that when they squatted 121 Railton Road, some white squatters came to
help them turn on the gas and the electricity. During evictions some
women from the “White Women Center” also came to show support, but that
was as far as the relationship went. Black activists at the time were
focused on the many specific issues affecting the Black community
(police violence, discrimination in education and workplace, etc). The
absence of joint activity might explain why in most accounts of the
Brixton squatting movement written in later years, there are no
references to the early Black squats of the 1970s.
In the 1970s, some struggles for minority rights did develop along
separatist lines, but it seems the tool of squatting was one way for
different groups to show solidarity with each other. Veteran anarchist
Albert Meltzer remarks in his autobiography I Couldn’t Paint Golden
Angels that there was occasional antagonism between Rastafarians and the
anarchists on the topics of religion and feminism, but presumably such
problems melted away when they faced attacks from a common enemy such as
the police or bailiffs.
In essence, without squatting we would have remained isolated as gay men
living in our individual shabby bedsit or flats or houses. Squatting
enabled us to come together collectively to break down that isolation
and produced some of the most productive political campaigning and
radical theatre, not to mention a shot at non-bourgeois, non-straight
ways of living.
– Ian Townson
The Brixton riots broke out in April 1981, when people reacted against
the refusal of police to allow medical treatment for a stabbed black
youth. It is worth examining the uprising in some detail since it
occurred in an area with a lot of squats, centred around Poet’s Corner
(comprised of Milton, Shakespeare, Spenser and Chaucer Roads), Railton
Road, and Dexter Parade (now demolished). Known as the Frontline, the
area seems to have been a sort of autonomous zone, featuring illegal
drinking dens, reggae systems, and people hanging out on the streets.
It is hard to discover how the Frontline got its name. Was that the name
of an off-licence or of a club, or the name residents used to describe
the feeling of being there? Courtney Laws of the Brixton Neighbourhood
Community Association described the frontline as a place “where people
from the Caribbean normally gather, meet, and talk, and very often start
up socialising groups and functions. It is very peaceful and quiet.”
Chief Superintendent Plowman called it “the front line of confrontation
between Black and White.” The gulf between these definitions is huge.
In April, tempers were already running high in the midst of Operation
Swamp. The Metropolitan Police had sent white undercover officers into
central Brixton, an Afro-Caribbean area, to stop and search over 1000
people in just five days. They had done this without any warning to the
local community or indeed even to the local bobbies.
The Met were widely despised and feared. Some cops were National Front
members. Blair Peach had been murdered by a cop at anti-fascist demo in
1979, hit over the head with an iron bar. Despite fourteen witnesses who
saw it happen, no cop was ever charged. Documents only recently
released—in the inquiry into the murder of Ian Tomlinson at the 2009 G20
protests—indicated one officer was responsible, but his name was
redacted. The fascist arson attack which claimed 13 young lives in
nearby Deptford in January 1981 had not been investigated by the police;
many people, black and white alike, were outraged. In March, 20,000
people had marched to Hyde Park in central London to demand justice.
Just as the 2011 London riots began in Tottenham with the police
shooting Mark Duggan but different narratives abound as to how the
subsequent events unfolded, stories about what happened in 1981 vary
widely. Some people thought the police had killed the stabbed youth;
others were already at breaking point on account of continual police
harassment. Early issues of Crowbar record that already, in 1978, the
police had sealed off the Frontline for a day, and that in the months
leading up to April 1981, various houses on Railton Road, Effra Parade,
and Dexter Parade had been evicted and smashed up by bailiffs so as to
render them uninhabitable before demolition. This was presumably part of
a plan to drive out the dealers and the music, although it seems that
everything always popped back up again.
The riot kicked off on Friday, April 10. For the next few days, the area
around Atlantic Road, Railton Road, and Poet’s Corner was the scene of
burning police cars and trashed buildings. Some shops were targeted for
looting, others left untouched. The statistics indicate genuine
disorder: two burned-out pubs, 140 seriously damaged buildings, 300
injured cops, 60 destroyed police vehicles, 80 arrests. In what seems to
be another mainstream media scare story, it was widely reported to be
the first time Molotov cocktails were used on English soil. In fact,
there is evidence of Molotovs being used earlier, for example in the
1958 Notting Hill riots, when West Indian immigrants fought back against
racism.
Incredibly, the police were caught with inadequate equipment. News
footage clearly shows cops with no riot gear, only truncheons and
shields that were not flame retardant. They also had no coherent
containment strategy. Commanding officers are seen on camera refusing to
listen to the suggestion of community mediators that they should
withdraw to defuse tensions; in an astounding error of judgement,
Operation Swamp was allowed to continue. Officers dealing with the riot
situation on Saturday waved a fire engine up Railton Road straight
towards a rampaging mob without even a warning; unsurprisingly, it was
attacked, leading to severe injuries for some of the crew. In contrast,
a black couple married on that very day were allowed to drive through
the area without a scratch. But this was not a race riot, as is
sometimes claimed. Locals of all skin colors and races were rising up
against the police. As one participant says, people were tired of being
intimidated by police driving past them slowly and threatening them with
arrest simply for standing on the street. An eyewitness report of the
mayhem described it as a “proletarian fairground.”
Unsurprisingly, right-wing commentators attempted to blame everything on
the anarchists. While we cannot confirm this, Meltzer recounts that a
pacifist called Jim was arrested, possibly because he shared the same
name as a Rastafarian friendly with the 121 who was subsequently
nicknamed “Jim the Anarchist.” Things may not have worked out very well
for pacifist Jim had he not possessed a cast-iron alibi: on the night he
was supposed to have been instigating violence in Brixton, he was
playing the violin in a church concert some distance away.
The 121 Center was not attacked during the riots. A nearby pub with a
racist landlord was burnt to the ground, but the 121’s colorful
shopfront was left untouched. Ian Townson, a squatter in the Brixton Gay
Community at the time, comments:
The riots were centered around Railton Road and when Brixton was burning
we showed our solidarity with the oppressed by joining them on the
streets. We even took tables and chairs out onto the street in front of
the gay squats for a celebration party—some people in drag—getting a
mixed reception from people on the street. Some hostile, others
indifferent, some amused. Two of us were sent to prison for a couple of
years for supplying petrol to the rioters.
The scenes of disorder shocked the nation. A public investigation was
launched, the Scarman Report; it declared that the stop and search
powers (the hated “sus” law) were indeed being used disproportionately
and indiscriminately against black people. It made recommendations
intended to produce a new code of behavior, but in 1999 a report on the
racist murder of Stephen Lawrence concluded that not all the
recommendations had been adopted and that the Met was still
institutionally racist.
Here we see disparate yet interconnected groups such as anarchists,
gays, and West Indian immigrants squatting to create a space where they
felt comfortable, and rising together against the police when they tried
to regulate the autonomous zone of the Frontline. There were other riots
to come in the 1980s, and the Frontline was not the only free space in
the UK; but it was the only one to receive such brutal repression.
The mid-1970s are said to be the time when the modern UK came closest to
revolution. Following those turbulent times, small pockets of autonomy
dotted across the country in the early 1980s. They might have grown into
English Christianias or Ruigoords had they not been neutered through a
mix of repression and assimilation. The generally accepted figure
estimated there were 30,000 squatters in London and 50,000 squatters in
England altogether. The majority lived in residential houses, alongside
renters and home-owners, but others lived together in larger projects.
The Alternative Republic of Argyle Street in Norwich housed more than
200 people from 1979 until 1985, when it was evicted and demolished. In
Brighton, squatters took on and renovated properties under license in
the derelict streets near the seafront. On one road in Bristol, there
was a venue (the Demolition Ballroom), a café (the Demolition Diner),
and the Full Marx bookshop. Around the same time, Manchester Council was
slowly losing control of the huge concrete crescent blocks of Hulme.
Punks, musicians, travelers, drop-outs, and artists moved in and
provided the underground base for what would become the Madchester
scene. Situated close to the legendary Hacienda (home of New Order and
Factory Records), the squatters had their own club, the Kitchen, which
was formed by smashing together three adjacent flats. The entire complex
was evicted and demolished in the mid-1990s.
Frestonia, a squatted area in West London, had declared its independence
from the UK and was entering its fifth year. The Clash recorded in a
rehearsal space at the People’s Hall; the Mutoid Waste Company put on
shows in the gallery, and stamps were produced featuring a gorilla’s
head instead of the Queen. David Rappaport, later to find fame acting in
films such as Time Bandits, was named Foreign Minister; the Minister of
Education was a two-year-old girl, and Heathcote Williams was ambassador
to the UK.
At Tolmers Village in Camden, just north of central London, squatters
joined local residents in fighting to save a Georgian square.
Eventually, it was demolished, but thanks to the campaign some social
housing was built in its stead instead of just offices. Alex and Ciara
Smith lived at Tolmers for a year without money, and then found two
pound notes in the street, which they used to set up Alara Wholefoods.
It began in a squatted dairy and is now a successful organic food
company, almost forty years later. In similar fashion, a law firm grew
out of the legal aid center. Meanwhile, in Huntley Street, more than a
hundred squatters cracked flats and won tenancies from the Greater
London Council.
All these free zones contained social spaces such as bakeries, cafés,
and bars. They produced their own newsletters and organized street
festivals. Back down in south London, the derelict Bonnington Square was
resettled and revived by squatters, some of whom still live there.
Nearby St. Agnes Place was another thriving squatted street, which was
finally evicted and demolished in 2005. In Brixton, there were squatted
blocks of flats, squatted crèches, and whole food cooperatives.
Brixton today is a multicultural place which benefits from this rich
history in many ways. One whole food cooperative is still going strong
on Atlantic Road. Yet the area is now undergoing a severe gentrification
process. While some squats remain, it is hard to imagine what it must
have been like on the Frontline in the early 1980s.
A few decades ago, Lambeth Council forgot that it owned certain
properties; squatters ended up gaining ownership of them through adverse
possession, living there for 12 years continuously without the
permission of the owner. In 2002, a change in law made this much more
difficult. Today, squatters are required to inform owners that they are
making a claim for possession; now only incredibly incompetent owners
will lose their unused properties. While the stories of squatters
gaining houses are heart-warming compared to the heart-rending cases
described below, this only occurred in a few cases. The 121, for
example, failed to do this.
Squats always come and go. But many long-term squats have been evicted
recently, such as Rushcroft Road and Clifton Mansions. Clifton could
boast members of the Pogues and the Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy
Deller as former occupants. The 22 three-bedroom flats have been
renovated and are now for rent at the eye-watering figure of ÂŁ2,100 per
month. To give an idea of how insane this is, the maximum housing
benefit (Local Housing Allowance) a person would be able to get in
Lambeth nowadays is ÂŁ340 per week for a three bedroom property, or ÂŁ1020
per month. Only yuppies will be able to afford to live in Clifton
Mansions now.
In another unpleasant manoeuver, Lambeth Council is currently
repossessing properties that it has long ignored. To take one example,
Maritza Tschepp has lived for 33 years in a house in Stockwell, adjacent
to Brixton, which was so run-down when she squatted it that it was
marked for demolition; she had to dig in a connection to the main water
supply herself. She has raised three children in the house and formed a
housing cooperative through which she rented it from the council. The
settlement appeared to have become permanent; but owing to the surge in
property values, in 2009 Lambeth decided to sell off all its so-called
shortlife properties. Tschepp has already lost possession in court and
now is awaiting an eviction order in 2014. The argument that the house
actually belongs to the Council does not hold much weight considering
the length of time Tschepp has lived there and the money and energy she
has expended upon it. This social housing is being sold off at a massive
profit to private companies which will then build homes for the wealthy.
Yet the Council appears deaf to her appeals.
In another case, Jimmy Rogers, now 74 and the inspirational force behind
the Brixton TopCats, one of the UK’s foremost basketball teams, is
threatened with eviction. The local Member of Parliament is supporting
him in his struggle to avert eviction from his home of 32 years by
Lambeth council, which previously gave him a Civic Award. Other places
under threat include Carlton Mansions and Rectory Road in nearby
Clapham. A “super cooperative” has been formed to represent a united
front of opposition, but the Council is unlikely to back down with so
much money at stake.
In other European cities such as Amsterdam and Copenhagen, squatters
have ended up owning their houses, yet this happens rarely in London.
The ex-squatters and activists of Berlin, some of whom live
cooperatively in “hausprojekten” (large tenement blocks, often legalised
squats), should be looking on with interest. Many of those projects are
on rolling 10-, 20-, or 30-year contracts and group themselves together
under the Wir Bleiben Alle (We All Stay) campaign. While squatting in
Berlin is difficult, ever since the 1980s squatters have made a point of
responding to evictions with as much property damage as possible. The
custom that every eviction should be met with 1 million Deutschmarks
worth of damage, now updated to 1 million euro, used to strike some
British squatters as more tantrum than tactic, but it appears to work
very well. There have been few evictions in recent years; the squats
that have been evicted, such as Yorckstrasse and Liebigstrasse, have
been fiercely defended, and in the former case, this resulted in a new
squatted project, New Yorck im Bethanien. The threat of disorder and
economic damage certainly seems have an impact, especially in the case
of large well-loved projects such as Koepi and Rote Flora in Hamburg.
If only such militancy and solidarity could help the people being
threatened in Lambeth. The problem is that the former squatters are
forty years older than they were and in many cases have become
disconnected from the current movement, despite the formation of the
super cooperative. The endangered squats are all small and
individualized. Recent evictions have been resisted, but not ambitiously
or successfully; after forty years of residence and long, draining legal
battles, it is understandable that people would give up, but this also
indicates the low ebb of the current movement.
While squatting was threatened, social centers and squatted protests
blossomed all over the country, but now things have quieted down. SQUASH
(Squatters Action for Secure Housing) continues to fight proposals to
extend the criminalization of squatting to all buildings, but most local
groups have disappeared off the map. This does not necessarily mean they
have ceased to be active, so much as that they have gone underground
again. A diffuse and scattered scene may be harder to repress, but we
can’t help wondering what would have happened if all the thousands
squatting had allied together to oppose criminalization.
The war over the public image of squatting has already been lost. As Ian
Townson puts it, “Things were not always like this. In the not too
distant past, Labour politicians and councillors stood up for social
justice and were on the side of ordinary working people, the poor and
dispossessed.” Unfortunately, it seems that those who bought their
squats or formed housing cooperatives that had good luck in engaging
with the system are still around, while more precarious squats are now
endangered or else already evicted. Will it even be possible to squat in
the future?
The precarity of squatting set against the perceived necessity of having
long-term spaces from which to organize has recently inspired the
establishment of cooperatively owned or rented social centers. These are
often based on the constitution of working men’s clubs and continue the
self-organized spirit of rented or squatted predecessors such as the
autonomy centers of the 1980s. One trailblazer was the 1 in 12 Center in
Bradford, which bought its building in 1988. Other centers include
Kebele (Bristol, originally squatted then bought with a loan from the
Triodos Bank), London Action Resource Centre, Cowley Club (Brighton),
Sumac (Nottingham), Freedom (London), 56a (London, the one remaining
squat from a squatted estate in Elephant & Castle, now legalised),
Autonomous Centre (Edinburgh, Scotland) and the Star and Shadow
(Newcastle). These centers are loosely linked through the UK Social
Centres Network, which also includes squatted projects such as the Red
and Black Umbrella (Cardiff, Wales) and 195 Mare Street (Hackney,
London).
There have also been many squatted social centers, and the legalized
projects often provide infrastructure and support for these more
fleeting interventions. London in particular has seen many social
centers, though many of these lasted months rather than years. Honorable
exceptions include Rampart, Ratstar, the 491 Gallery, the Spike, and the
previously mentioned 121. Squatting offered a chance for alternative
cultures to thrive without the pressure to pay rent.
The anti-globalization movement has utilized squats as convergence
spaces, but these antagonistic spaces have often been raided and
illegally evicted, as during protests against an arms fair in 2001, the
G20 in 2009, and the G8 in 2013.
In another take on the precarity of public, political squats, some
groups have decided to reinterpret the short time frame as a positive
feature. The Anarchist Teapot (Brighton), Temporary Autonomous Arts
(Brighton, Bristol, Edinburgh, London, Manchester, Sheffield), A-Spire
(Leeds), and OK Cafe (Manchester) all opened up for periods of a few
weeks at a time. The idea of the short term pop-up social center has
been used in London recently for various specific actions including
Palestine solidarity, anti-cuts organizing, radical housing activism,
and an exhibition about the history of squatting. The latter, Made
Possible by Squatting, is hopefully just the beginning of new efforts
from within the squatters’ movement to narrate its own multiple
histories.
Squatting has also been used as a means to protest about single issues,
such as the establishment of unwanted supermarkets. As huge supermarket
chains such as Lidl, Aldi, Sainsburys, Tescos, ASDA (owned by Walmart),
Morrisons, and the Co-operative seek to remake all high streets in their
own image, many prospective sites have been occupied in often
unsuccessful attempts to prevent their conversion. Failure to prevent
the eventual establishment of a supermarket does not necessarily mean
the campaign against it was futile; even occupations that did not
achieve their object have slowed the pace of progress, gathering support
and making it more difficult to impose future projects from above.
The Dis’ASDA crew managed to block an ASDA development for over a year
in South London, repeatedly reoccupying the buildings and the land on
the site. In Cambridge, the Mill Road social center lasted three months
as an anti-Tesco protest; it was evicted the day after Tesco had their
planning application refused. The Tesco Metro eventually opened, but as
the No Mill Road Tesco campaign records, “Tesco lost three planning
applications, an alcohol license application, and a public enquiry,
leaving it with one of its smallest stores in the UK that it will have
extreme difficulty in delivering to.”
In Brighton, there have been frequent interventions against
supermarkets. Near the city, the treehouses of the Titnore Woods land
squat prevented ancient trees being chopped down. The Harvest Forestry
and Sabotaj squats, in 2002 and 2011 respectively, served as short-lived
catalysts for long-term anti-Sainsburys campaigns. The Lewes Road
Community Garden lasted for a year; when it became known it was being
evicted to make way for a Tesco, resistance increased. Although a
building was eventually constructed on the site, the shop space under
residential flats remained empty and indeed was squatted again in 2013.
Unfortunately, this has now become a supermarket (but not at least a
Tesco).
Rioting occurred two weeks in a row in Stokes Croft, Bristol, when an
area that was undergoing gentrification exploded after police raided a
squat opposite an about-to-be-opened Tesco store, to look for Molotov
cocktails. None were found, but the supermarket site was completely
trashed.
To our knowledge, there have not yet been large-scale public squats for
and by undocumented migrants in the UK along the lines of the
occupations in many West European cities, although in London there have
been large low-profile squats and also the Occupy spin-offs such as the
Hobo Hilton. In Europe, protest squats include the We Are Here project
in Amsterdam, the Refugee Strike in Berlin, and the Refugee Protest Camp
in Vienna. In Calais and Brussels, there have been large squats for
hundreds of migrants. Further south, there are projects like Mount Zion
in Barcelona and Metropoliz and Porto Fluviale in Rome.
As Fortress Europe continues to tighten its security, more people will
fall into the cracks and we will likely see “sans papiers” (without
papers) squats in the UK. We hope that the scattered and fragmented UK
squatting movement will be able to help out. There is already much No
Borders work being done, and the recent case of Irina Putilova was
inspiring. She is a Russian LGBTQ activist and squatter seeking asylum
in the UK who was unexpectedly put into fast track detention at Yarl’s
Wood Immigration Removal Centre, then released as a result of public and
legal protests. This was inspiring both because she was not deported and
because as soon as she was safe, efforts were immediately made to help
the other people threatened with deportation who do not have a similar
support network around them.
There is much more to say about squatting as a social movement. We have
focused primarily on the boroughs of Lambeth and Tower Hamlets in
London, but there are other boroughs with equally strong squatting
heritages, such as Hackney and Southwark. But what will happen next? No
one knows how many people are squatting, but the figure is surely still
in the thousands.
Squatting in residential buildings is now criminalized, but it seems
unlikely that the new law will be enforced much, as two court cases have
already shown it to be hard to implement. Squatting is defined as living
or intending to live in a property without the permission of the owner,
but in practice it appears to be difficult for the police to prove that
someone is living somewhere without surveillance, forensic analysis, and
witness reports. This sort of intelligence gathering would require the
police to expend already overstretched resources. An occupation in
Southwark protesting the sale of Council housing defied the logic of the
law, occupying a building without anyone actually living in it. When
recently a similar action was attempted in Camden, two people were
arrested. If they end up being charged, this could be an interesting
test case. Still another matter, yet to be explored legally, is how
exactly a residential building is defined.
The criminalization of squatting was ineffective in Spain. In the
Netherlands, following a period of uncertainty, squatting now occurs
regularly again. It only really paused in Amsterdam while the new law
was challenged in the courts, as is taking place in the UK now;
squatting continued in other cities, and squatting actions seem to have
resumed in Amsterdam again. The heyday of the squatters movement in the
early 1980s now seems quite distant, when in Amsterdam there were over
twenty local “kraakspreekuren”—squatters’ advice hours providing
assistance on the practicalities of squatting and information on
available buildings. Yet three kraakspreekuren are still going strong in
Amsterdam: Center/West, Student, and East.
In Amsterdam, as in London, it is still possible to squat. The scene has
dwindled, but it may begin to grow again. There has been considerable
activity around the Valreep social center, which was squatted after
criminalization, and also support for refugees with the We Are Here
project noted above, which recently squatted offices adjacent to a
parking garage. Support for migrants remains a key issue.
In the 1990s, the mayor of Amsterdam declared “No culture without
subculture,” encouraging a view of squats as providers of cultural
activities or “broedplaatsen,” breeding places. This led to a number of
squats becoming legalised; some were glad to see squats glean mainstream
appreciation for hosting theaters, hacklabs, rehearsal spaces, venues,
and cinemas. Yet this policy was divisive: the value of squatter culture
was appraised by those in power according to their own interests, rather
than by the creators themselves, and some projects were favored over
others. Even projects that appeared to fit the “broedplaats” template,
such as the Kalenderpanden, were sometimes evicted. Legalization poses
further questions around institutionalization and co-optation.
In the UK, these questions are rarely raised, since the average life of
a squat is three months—the time it takes for an owner to go to court to
regain possession. Yet since there are still many groups which can
benefit from squatting, it continues. As the housing crisis deepens, we
anticipate that more people will turn to squatting. Shelter, a
homelessness charity, has warned that “Britain is now at the centre of a
perfect storm of housing problems. High and rising rents, the
cripplingly high costs of getting on the housing ladder, and the lowest
peacetime building figures since the 1920s have all combined with a
prolonged economic downturn to increase the pressure on families.”
Another commentator ends a long analysis by suggesting that we will soon
be witnessing the return of slums in the UK. If the Conservatives carry
out their threat to remove housing benefit for the under-25 age group,
squatting will become an attractive proposition for the youth of
tomorrow in the absence of other housing options. Victims of the bedroom
tax may soon squat their own houses. We can only hope that once people
have secured housing for themselves they will organize in structures
that are antagonistic to the state, which created the housing crisis in
the first place.
The lesson of history is that in times of housing deprivation, people
squat the empties. The fact that this has been made illegal does not
blind people to the empty buildings or to the use of squatting as a
tactic. The kraakspreekuur in Amsterdam East promotes the slogan “Wat
niet mag kan nog steeds”: what is not allowed is still possible. The
criminalization of squatting in England can be seen as a pre-emptive
attack on direct action for housing justice. But if enough people
disregard the new law, or indeed occupy the many non-residential
buildings that stand empty and unused, this could produce a new
population that understands itself as being in open conflict with the
state. Who can predict the diverse autonomous movements to come?
[1] Tower Hamlets is a London borough formed in 1965 from the
amalgamation of Bethnal Green, Stepney and Poplar.
[2] It is unfortunate to record that Fitzpatrick was convicted in 2011
of racially aggravated harassment against Lee Jasper. My mention of his
work in the 1970s here does not condone in any way his actions some
forty years later.