Squatting -- the real story

Here, there and everywhere: the mid-seventies boom in squatting

There were a number of developments which served to heighten the housing crisis in the early seventies. These were the years of the property `boom' when house prices soared, especially in newly `desirable' parts of major towns and cities. The average price of new homes almost doubled in three years. As well as making it more difficult for people to buy their own homes, the boom also made it extremely profitable for landlords to evict tenants and sell the property. In many areas, low income tenants were pushed out and their dwellings, often improved with the aid of government grants, were sold off to wealthier newcomers. In some parts of London, entire neighbourhoods were altered in a few years by this `gentrification'. Property companies also bought rented properties to demolish or refurbish for offices or luxury homes. Worse still was the scourge of speculators who, with land values steadily rising, bought property as an investment with no intention of using it. For those people who fell between the twin stools of home ownership and council housing (ie those who would traditionally have been housed in the private sector), opportunities were shrinking, rents rocketing and security diminishing. This increasing desperation of people at the bottom end of the housing market together with the growing number of empty houses, led to the growth of squatting both in scale and scope.

Barricades in Islington
The best-publicised squatting struggle of 1972 took place in Islington. Three houses in a redevelopment area, occupied by 19 squatters, including six children and four pregnant women, were threatened with eviction by Islington Council. Their response was defiant. On 26 June they erected barricades at both ends of Lesly Street to which a sympathetic lorry driver gave added strength by dumping several tons of old bricks. The following day the area social work team gave its backing to the squatters and the social workers even marched down to the barricades to express their solidarity.
Their spokesperson remarked: `We refuse to act as social policemen. The squatters are being made scapegoats; it is not they who are driving people out of Islington but the speculators who can afford to pay up to 930,000 for a house . . . they are pushing up the cost of land, interest charges and rents." The brief presence of barricades in a North London street (the police cleared them after a day) attracted immense media interest at a time when the limitations of licensed `squatting' were becoming more apparent to people active in the squatting movement. Indeed the developing schism between family squatters in licensed property and `unofficial' squatters was heightened during the course of this struggle. According to Diana Shelley, one of the Islington squatters, Jim Radford, of FSAS, attempted to `negotiate' with the Council on behalf of the squatters without consulting them first. His unwelcome help was rejected and his `initiative' seen as interference.
In fact, these squatters won their struggle. The families were rehoused by the Council and single people were left in peace until the house they occupied was demolished. In addition, Student Community Housing was given its first licensed houses by Islington Council as a direct outcome of this fight. Local tenants, moreover, were delighted by the glare of publicity which focused attention on the appalling conditions in which they were living. The publicity resulted in some people obtaining rehousing much earlier than the Council had originally intended.
The story of these squatters clearly illustrates the way in which there was never a clear cut demarcation between licensed and unlicensed squatters. Student Community Housing obtained licenced properties from the Council as a result of a struggle by unlicensed squatters who gained an informal licence thereby making the transition to licensed status! Indeed, the main demand of many squatters was for a licence.

From Taunton to Colchester
Almost half the London boroughs had reached licensing arrangements with local squatting groups by 1972 but, in other parts of Britain, antagonism towards squatters meant that even small concessions were granted reluctantly and under immense pressure.
In Kent, for example, in October 1972, Medway Action Committee for the Homeless squatted an empty school in Gillingham because of the County Council's appalling record in housing homeless families. In particular, this squat was prompted by the Council's failure to provide accommodation for families who had been living in holiday chalets on the Isle of Sheppey and who were forced to leave when the chalets were closed at the end of the holiday season.This campaign serves as an example of the broad-based support which squatting was, on occasion, able to command. A local vicar was extremely active on their behalf and the Kent Evening Post, whilst not actually encouraging people to squat, certainly made it easier for those already squatting by organising a very successful `Homeless at Xmas' appeal for food, toys, cigarettes and furniture for the people in the school and otherhomeless in the area. Public support was so strong that Kent County Council turned a blind eye to the occupation and eventually agreed to use the school for homeless people.
Support for squatting started to come from unusual quarters. In November 1971 the Cyrenians, a charity for the single homeless which had be come exasperated with Brighton Council, squatted three houses. Social workers, probation officers,housing department officials, councillors and churchmen, unable to help people find somewhere to live, were suggesting squatting to the homeless.
In Slough, for example, the Council's General Purposes Committee chairperson, John Harley, noted in April 1972 that many private flats in the town were empty. To the homeless he had a clear message: `My advice is to squat these places. If necessary I will personally assist you.' Referring to one family squatting in a house without services,he said, `I can tell them about some far more comfortable places."2
As well as involving such diverse people, squatting spread to remote places. Although largely spontaneous in nature and lacking central direction or leadership, it became truly national. At the end of September 1972, a group called the Oakley Vigilantes was formed in a small Buckinghamshire village. They warned that if a local empty house owned by the Ernest Cook Trust was not used within a fortnight they would squat it. One can imagine the rushed work at the Trust which enabled it to announce plans for the house within the set time limit. There were many such small victories to prove that squatting, or the threat of it, was effective. During January 1973, 13 squatters moved into two houses in Belle Vue Road, Colchester. A few weeks later a further 20 people occupied the empty Woods Sports Club premises and turned it into a spartan People's Community Centre. The local authority was galvanised into action, offering some of its empty houses to a local Christian Action project. But this concession was insufficient to halt the spread of squatting in the town and by May 1973 there were around sixty squatters in Colchester.3
Steve, locally born and bred, and working for the Council on a building site, typified many thousands of people forced to squat out of desperation. Unable to find anywhere to live, he had slept rough since leaving home at 17 and had spent the previous winter in a beach but in West Mersea. In 1973?74 he was squatting in Colchester:
`I feel guilty taking over someone else's property, sure. But it came down to the simple fact that I needed somewhere to sleep ? that's all. It isn't an easy life and I don't know how people think we do it voluntarily. There is a continual overriding sense of insecurity. I pray as I come home that there will be a light on in the house so I'll have another night with a roof over, my head.'
Steve worked for as much as 88 hours a week to save the money to buy his own home. He did not give his full name for fear of losing his job. `I have come to the conclusion that to get anything in this world you have to fight. I have only my pride to keep me going. That's why I must keep my job.'
All sorts of people were being forced into choosing between squatting and homelessness: families denied access to council housing or mortgages, students, unemployed people and others on low incomes, battered women, gays denied the right to live as they choose, people with unorthodox lifestyles, ex-offenders fresh out of prison (in Colchester, the Senior Probation Officer said that he and his colleagues could see no alternative but to suggest squatting to `clients'), and many more. At times, they combined to form unexpected alliances. The squatters who had erected the barricades in Islington, for example, consisted of an anarcho-pacifist commune (The Living Theatre London) and three working class families.
By the end of 1973, there were about 3,000 licensed squatters in London and several hundred outside the capital. But there were an estimated 7,000 unlicensed squatters in London and a further 4,000 elsewhere. Each victory won by squatters, however small, increased the impetus towards further unlicensed squatting, particularly since licensing arrangements involved the use of only a very small proportion of empty dwellings.

Squatting speculators
Not all squatting was in council property. Indeed, many of the more influential struggles of 1972-1974 were in privately-owned property. In mid 1972, for example, squatters began moving into privately-owned terraced housing in the Parfett Street area of the East End of London. After several battles they succeeded in staying for many years, and eventually prompted the council to buy the houses with the squatters in occupation. (See Chapter 10 for a more detailed account).
Olive Morris and Liz Turnbull became the first successful squatters of private property in Lambeth when they occupied a flat above a launderette in Railton Road. Successfully fighting off attempts at illegal eviction, they set an example for hundreds of homeless young people in Brixton and the flat remained squatted for many years. In June 1.973, Lambeth Council gave squatters occupying maisonettes in Herne Hill support by agreeing to negotiate the purchase of the flats which were owned by Grandiose Properties Ltd (part of the Gerson Berger group) without vacant possession. This encouraged other local squatters to occupy millions of pounds worth of the company's property throughout the borough.
The Brixton Women's Centre in Railton Road became a focus for squatting advice and assistance and between 1972 and 1975 was responsible for the squatting of 300 empty private dwellings. These campaigns brought squatters into the forefront of struggles against property developers and speculators and they drew immense local sympathy and support. The picture became familiar. A property company intent on obtaining planning permission to redevelop began to buy up houses in an area, leaving them empty when possible and thus precipitating the neighbourhood's decline. Residents lost heart and the will to fight. Those that could moved out of their own accord and the neighbourhood deteriorated still further. Squatters entered onto the scene taking over empty houses and restoring them. The squatters were often young, enthusiastic and willing to fight back, providing the backbone to campaigns against redevelopment and speculation. Squatters often worked closely with the existing local communities. Unity was forged between squatters and other local people, for instance, in a long campaign against Prebbles, an estate agent in Islington. Prebbles was one of a number of estate agents playing an active role in the gentrification of the area. Regular pickets were organised outside the Prebbles office and were so successful that the company was compelled to seek a court injunction banning them. Prebbles was granted a temporary injunction pending a full hearing. The case was never brought to court and was eventually dropped in 1978. Nevertheless the action halted the pickets (after at least one supporter had been jailed for defying the injunction ) and the campaign against Prebbles failed in its ultimate objective. It did, however, make speculators more cautious about moving into Islington.
The campaigns in Camden against Joe Levy's property company, Stock Conversion, provide another good example of squatters and other residents fighting against speculators together. Without the involvement of squatters, it is likely that Stock Conversion would have been able to shape two areas, in Camden High Street and Tolmers Square respectively to suit its profit-making motives.
In the sixties Stock Conversion constructed Euston Centre, a massive 500,000 square foot office development, on a site formerly consisting of low rent working class housing, workshops and cheap commercial premises. The company had made £64 million profit this development by 1973 and started buying property in similar areas with a view to further office developments.
In June 1973 Susan Johns and John Rety were evicted from No 220 Camden High Street where they had lived and run an antique shop for 12 years. Cromdale Holdings, a subsidiary of Stock Conversion, had increased the rent from £15 to £60 per week on acquiring No 220, in order to force them out. The two gave full support to the people who squatted their old home in order to prevent what they described as `the carve-up of Camden High Street.' The building was used by a number of community groups over the next nine months and became the organising centre of the campaign against Stock Conversion's plans.
Impressed by the strength of local support for the squatters at No 220, Camden Council passed on a resolution giving them its backing. In April 1974, the police asked the local fire brigade if they could borrow ladders in order to get onto the roof to evict the squatters as the front of the shop had been barricaded with steel bars and iron bedsteads. The Camden Fire Brigade Union refused, saying that it would be `the first step towards a police state'.5 Six bailiffs backed by 120 police were eventually sent to carry out the eviction at 5 am one morning and had to use a winch mounted on a car transporter to tear down the front door. Backing its verbal support, Camden Council provided a nearby shop for the campaign. During the court proceedings for possession, Cromdale Holdings' representative had claimed that the company needed immediate possession in order to relet the premises; yet, straight after the eviction the staircase was smashed, wiring and toilets were ripped out and the building was securely boarded up. Companies connected with Stock Conversion then owned a quarter of Camden High Street and 50 shops in the area were empty.
Two weeks after the eviction, the squatters held a press conference and demonstration. They marched up the High Street and, to cheers from local people, reoccupied the building. By the time the police arrived, squatters were securely inside and a picket patrolled the pavement outside. A furious representative from Cromdale was told by the police that it would have to reapply to the courts for possession. The company had completely failed. It had gone through two court cases, two evictions, suffered intensive bad publicity and achieved nothing. No 220 remained squatted for two more years and the campaign eventually succeeded in halting Stock Conversion's redevelopment plans for Camden High Street.
In nearby Tolmers Square too, squatters staved off attempts at eviction by the same company and were instrumental in stopping its plans for a half million square feet office and commercial developments.6
Squatters became increasingly daring in their choice of targets. In January 1974, a group of activists pulled off a spectacular publicity coup occupying Centre Point, the best-known empty building in Britain. Their action required months of planning, including the infiltration of the firm supplying security guards and was performed with almost military precision. It made the front page of every newspaper in the country. Centre Point, empty since its completion in 1963, was a gross affront to the homeless and a powerful example of the way companies could make vast profits simply by owning empty office blocks: built for £5 million in 1963, by 1974 Centre Point was worth £45-55 million. The activists demanded that the building be requisitioned. (Camden Council did later attempt to compulsorily purchase 24 luxury flats at the rear of Centre Point but after protracted and costly legal proceedings, the Law Lords quashed the Council's Compulsory Purchase Order in April 1977. Most of the building remained empty until 1980.) As well as publicity, the occupiers received a great deal of support and, when they left the building after two days, they were greeted by a rally of 3,000 people.
The success of this 'propaganda squat' prompted others to follow. On the weekend of 17 May, Hillman House, described locally as Coventry's Centre Point, was occupied by 60 people. Later that month, a coalition of radicals in Bristol (where the amount of empty office space quadrupled in less than a year) took over an empty office block in VictoriaStreet and stayed there a month. Several homeless families were moved in and Bristol Council shortly afterwards put a ban on planning permission for new office building.

Taking the whole street
As well as raising questions about the amount of housing available, squatters increasingly challenged the nature of housing and the quality of community life. In many towns whole streets were empty pending redevelopment schemes, and these were gradually occupied creating sizeable squatting communities. One of the first was in the streets surrounding Prince of Wales Crescent in Camden, where by 1972 there were 280 mainly young people squatting. One third of them had university or college degrees or diplomas, yet it was far from being a traditional middle class city neighbourhood.
Employment patterns were unconventional with most people working freelance or doing casual work to earn money. The average wage in 1972 was estimated at £7 per week. Having been empty for up to seven years the houses were fairly derelict and conditions were primitive. Skills such as wiring or plumbing had to be self-taught and shared with people less able to do it. The increased leisure time available to people who often chose to live on low incomes enabled them to do more for themselves. It also allowed people to experiment and put ideas into practice.
Several squatters started workshops - electronics, engineering, silk-screening, jewellery and carpentry. A derelict site was turned into a park with a sand pit, paddling pool, cafe and treehouses. Musical events and barbecues were held regularly and two community newspapers were started. A creche began and unused food was collected from nearby markets and distributed free.
Enterprises sprang up and flourished both in squats and in buildings licensed by Camden Council:
· Community Supplies began as a cheap organic food supplier, where customers weighed, packed and priced their own goods. Demand was so great that a bulk store was opened serving people from all over Britain.
· The Institute of Art and Technology converted a former dairy into a centre for artists and craftsmen working in new media.
· The Centre for Advanced Television Studies began as a nationwide information centre for video users.
· The Guild of African Master Drummers made high quality drums.
Other groups which found a home around the Crescent included Airworks (a centre for air structures), the London Film Makers Co-op, Little Sister of Jesus, European Theatre Exchange, Polytantric and Action Space. Almost everyone lived in shared or communal houses, often because the houses couldn't easilybe divided into self-contained flats, but sometimes for more positive reasons. One person enthusiastically endorsed communal living as a response to the adverse psychological effects of individuals living alone - neurosis, depression, alienation which can in extreme cases lead to psychosis and general personality breakdown. People in this area have learnt from bitter experience and have set about changing their circumstances hence the development of community spirit. None of the residents have any desire to return to the isolation of a bedsitter."7
There were leaflets about various objectives of the community: a `decentralised urban self-managed community', a `green revolution in the city', finding `new ways of human interelationships', and building a `new culture from the pieces of the old'. Inevitably such ideals could not be sustained. They were, in essence a middle class luxury, promoted by people who could often retreat to a well?paid profession or a comfortable parental home if the going got rough. The relaxed atmosphere also attracted some people who shared few of the ideals of early Crescent squatters. At times, drug addicts, alcoholics and thieves threatened to overcome the whole community. Houses were constantly broken into, local tenants antagonised and the community spirit started to fall apart.
In response, squatters started to form their own forms of self-help community care. The Mental Patients Union was set up and provided a crisis centre where people with psychological difficulties couId help each other and remain in contact withsympathetic members of the community. Other groups dealt with drug dependency and a common work directory was established to enable the unemployed to develop new skills and serve a community which could not pay commercial rates.
A 'police force' was established and some improvement was made. However, the problems created by the people with severe psychological or social difficulties manifested on occasion by their excessive use of drugs or alcohol remained both in the Crescent and in later squatting communities.
The very transience of most squatting communities meant that a satisfactory long term solution on how to deal with these problems seldom had time to develop effectively (unlike in Christiania in Denmark where after a number of years extremely successful forms of self-management have evolved).
In December 1973 the Prince of Wales Residents Association was set up and an attempt made to persuade the Council to shelve its redevelopment plans and let the community stay to retain and reinforce its identity. `It is a genuine organic community. Planners are searching desperately to produce this phenomenon in new estates, so far without success. Prince of Wales Crescent is an excellent example of what people can do if left to their own devices."7 An alternative plan was drawn up. Houses could be rehabilitated on a self-help basis costing between £300 and £3,000 per dwelling compared with £9,000 for new build -- saving £1/2 million. A further £300,000 could be saved by turning the street into open space instead of knocking down houses to make one. Mixed uses could be allowed to continue instead of providing just housing and `turning a socially mixed area into another desertlike council development where the inhabitants are socially homogeneous.' And more people would be housed because the density could remain at 180 persons per acre instead of being reduced to 125 persons as laid down in government rule books for redevelopment.
The squatters suggested that the Council should see the area as an environment for experimenting with ways of living, and that it should actually take a positive interest in its growth. But the Council was not up to the challenge and rejected the squatters plan and eventually the squatters were evicted.
Squatting communities grew up all over London: at Bristol Gardens, Charrington Street, Tolmers Village, Finsbury Park, Longfellow Road and many other places. A few similar communities occurred outside the capital, too: Hebden Bridge, Bristol, Brighton etc. Each one was different depending on its size, the conditions of the property, the amount of security, and the people attracted to them. Some were made up of people from predominantly middle class backgrounds; others were almost exclusively working class. Some, like Prince of Wales Crescent, shared a hippy ideology which never truly adapted to overcome social or political problems.
And they all invariably changed rapidly, responding to external and internal pressures. But common to most was a sense of identity seldom found in towns. People had a sense of living somewhere special, symbolised by the street carnivals and parties which became a regular feature of squatting life. For some people, albeit only a small minority of squatters, squatting began to be more than simply finding a roof, it became fun, it offered new freedoms, a sense of community . . . almost a way of life in its own right.

Extending frontiers and explosive growth
The success of squatting both as a means of obtaining accommodation and as a more directly political tactic, led to its continuing growth during 1974 and 1975. Indeed, these were `boom' years, with the number of squatters increasing from 15,000 at the end of 1973 to an estimated 40-50,000 by mid-1975. Though the majority were concentrated in inner London, there were few towns of any size which escaped. In April 1974, for example, a group of young people took over houses in Queens Terrace, Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire. The local council was worried that too many young people were leaving the town, but had not accepted that it was partly due to housing shortage. Councillor Cyril Farrar, the Housing Committee chairperson, opposed letting the squatters stay on the grounds that, `Once we start to allow squatting, no one's house will be safe'.' However, such inflexible attitudes did not prevent the spread of squatting in Yorkshire, and by August there were squatters in Halifax, Harrogate, Sheffield, Batley, Huddersfield, Leeds, Barnsley, Bradford and many other towns.
The existence of squatting often revealed large numbers of `hidden homeless', people not shown as homeless in official housing statistics. In Norwich, for example, 19 houses were occupied in the Sandringham Improvement Area in May 1974, housing 63 people, almost all of them families.
Few, if any, would have been officially classified as `homeless'; they had come from overcrowded conditions (such as living with parents), expensive or substandard accommodation or from short-let rooms, hotels and hostels. There were also people for whom local authorities accepted no responsibility at all - the childless and families from outside Norwich.
At that time most councils did not consider women fleeing from domestic violence - `battered wives'- to be homeless. Such women often need support and help from others in the same position,and normal tenure arrangements do not allow much scope for the communal homes which best fulfil such requirements. As a result, large numbers of battered women turned to squatting and
many women's groups took over houses to provide refuges where women could escape from their violent partners. Squatted houses for battered women were opened in Manchester in March 1974 and, two months later, in Glasgow. The 1975 takeover of the Palm Court Hotel in Richmond was the best-publicised but there
were several others.
Squatting opened up new possibilities for women's groups, enabling them to find premises for a variety of activities. Brixton Women's Centre was housed in a squat for several years and played a leading role in the growth of squatting in Lambeth. In Radnor Terrace, South London, a women's meeting and resource centre operated until 1977 and in Mile End women squatted a house to use it as a nursery.
In Lambeth, the East End, Haringey, Bristol and elsewhere, empty buildings were taken over and used as gay centres. Properties were occupied,too, for offices, workshops, meeting rooms and social centres for community groups. Artists,carpenters, mechanics and second-hand furniture dealers operated from squatted premises. A variety of shops and cafes were established in squats and a group of prostitutes took over empty offices in Greek Street, Soho, from which they plied their trade. Several community groups squatted derelict plots of land, converting them into playgrounds, communal gardens, and even urban farms.
At the beginning of 1975, Cornwall Terrace, a historic Nash building overlooking London's Regents Park left empty by the Crown Commissioners, was opened up and rapidly filled by over 300 people. In North Islington the number of squatters in three blocks of GLC flats on Hornsey Rise rose to about 350. In the East End of London continuing racial violence was forcing Asian families to leave council flats on estates where they were often the only non-white residents. The Guardian told of one family's experiences: 'Abdul Mumin came to Britain in 1963 to work as a tailor's machinist in East London. It took him ten years to save enough money to bring his wife and children to Britain and within a few months he lost his rented accommodation. Tower Hamlets put the homeless Mumim family in a Council flat at Constant House, Harrow Lane, Poplar, in July 1973. A week later a boy knocked on the door and coolly said, "I don't like you coloured people." Someone else threw an iron bar as the family stood in the doorway.
Every night the door was kicked and the windows hammered. Within a few months the attacks had grown into the smashing of windows. One evening, as Mrs Mumin went to the dustbins, a youth jumped on her back. Another night three men tried to kick the door down. Then one of their four children opened the door to a caller and two men and a woman barged in. One man knocked Mr Mumin to the floor and kicked him in the ribs. He was threatened with a knife and abused because of his race. Soon after that a window was smashed, paraffin poured through the hole, and the curtains set alight.9
After that incident the Mumins finally decided to join several hundred other Bengali families who had already fled council flats for the security of squats in the predominantly Asian district of Spitalfields. They were aided by Tower Hamlets Squatters Union and the Bengali Housing Action Group which opened up several blocks to cope with the demand. At its height, one of these, Pelham Buildings, had almost 200 families squatting in it.
A Lambeth Council report in December 1974, identified 333 unlicensed squats in Council property. This figure added to the number of squats in private and GLC houses, and to those the Council did not know about, suggests a total of some 3-4,000 squatters in Lambeth alone. Similarly, in August 1975, Camden Council reported that 176 of its properties were occupied by unlicensed squatters. In addition both boroughs had about 1,000 people in licensed property. A London Boroughs Association survey published in September 1975 estimated that there were 20,000 squatters in council property in the capital. And this figure did not include those in GLC and private dwellings.
It was not only in London that squatting had become so common. In February 1975, Manchester Corporation claimed that 130 houses were occupied by squatters and issued eviction notices against 100. In fact, many squatters in Council property at this time did not receive eviction notices, indicating that the number of Council squats in Manchester was probably in excess of 200.
Estimates from various parts of the country are available for this period.' 10 For example:
o In Bristol there were around 200-300.
o In Portsmouth there were 80.
o In Brighton about 150.
o In Guildford there were 50.
o In Swansea there were between 60 and 80.
o In Cambridge there were 40.
o In Leicester there were 100.
Press cuttings from 1975 reveal squats in many remote rural areas, villages and small towns; from Sotterley in East Anglia to Chertsey in Surrey, from St Ives in Cornwall to Stone in Staffordshire and from Shepton Mallet in Somerset to a small farm near Heathrow Airport. Need had begun to assert itself over centuries of deference to the rights of property owners.

Mounting opposition: property owners and the media attack squatting