Squatting -- the real story

A whole new ball game: winning concessions and learning to live with the new law

'Remember - trying to stop squatting is like stamping on a greasy golfball. (All Lambeth Squatters 1974)

By 1976 the squatting movement was under sustained attack. Even large evictions had ceased to be newsworthy and there were countless unpublicised evictions of individual squats. In addition, most squatters left voluntarily without resistance. For instance, in the London Borough of Haringey at this time, the average life of a squat was three to four months 1 - an average common to most areas outside inner London. In many rural areas, where support networks were less well developed, squatting was virtually wiped out.
On the other hand, squatters were fighting back and the movement had certainly not been destroyed. Local campaigns, particularly in central Lon- don, had achieved significant victories and long and patient campaigning had persuaded some councils to soften their hard-line approach. Cam- den Council, for instance, was prepared to leave squatters in short-life property 'providing they are not a nuisance to their neighbours and are not preventing the Council [from] housing people off the waiting list'. Camden still took 'immediate legal action to get rid of squatters in anything but its short-life properties'. It still gutted empty prop- erties to prevent squatting and it rarely offered re- housing to people it evicted. But one important step forward had been made. As a press statement proudly proclaimed on 19 March 1975: 'Camden takes the view that short-life houses are better in use than left empty.'

The Lambeth fightback
Another Labour-controlled Borough - Lambeth - was less 'enlightened', and it was here that the major squatting struggles were now fought. The number of squatted Council properties in the bor- ough had risen from 333 at the end of 1974, to 524 by April 1976. They were scattered but many were concentrated in Victorian terraces around Brixton. Streets like St Agnes Place and Villa Road were given new life by their squatter occupants. Squatters first moved in to St Agnes Place in late 1974, some of its houses having been empty for 14 years. By April 1976, 65 people were squatting there. Villa Road provided homes for another 200 people and the total number of squatters in Lambeth, including licensees and squatters in GLC and private property, had topped 5,000.
In April 1976, Lambeth Council announced a five-point plan of attack:
o Immediate eviction for single squatters.
o Power supply cut-offs to squatted premises.
o More houses to be 'sealed up' or 'made uninhabitable' to deter squatters.
o Council-funded groups to have their grants cut if they tolerated squatting.
o The use of private investigators to help deal with squatters.2
In addition, the crackdown on squatters involved the demolition of houses long before sites were actually required. In particular, Villa Road and St Agnes Place were due to be pulled down for two open spaces. Although the Council readily admitted that it would not have enough money to complete either scheme for five years, it insisted it wanted to demolish the houses to get rid of the squatters as quickly as possible.
By December 1976 almost 100 people were squatting in St Agnes Place and, anxious to ensure this number did not increase, the Council gutted a number of houses immediately the tenants moved out. On 10 December, it expected to do the same to No 85 without too much difficulty. The tenant, 78-year-old Ruby Thompson who had lived there for 30 years was leaving, but as she went out squat- ters entered the house from the rear and occupied the two top floors, while workers wrecked her ground floor flat. (The workers were non-union because UCATT, the building workers union, had instructed its members to black work involving the gutting of good homes.) The press had been alerted to the event and lambasted the Council. The Evening Standard headlined its story 'Council "vandals" are defied by squatters'3, and the Sunday Times later ran an editorial under a similar headline.4
Councils were being urged to cut spending, and yet here was a council deliberately wrecking perfectly good homes for no reason other than a vendetta against squatters. Council-bashing in the press, particularly of Labour councils, became a suitable alternative to squatter-bashing, at least for a while. There was strong opposition within the Labour Group of the Labour-controlled Council for the anti-squatting measures policy. Norwood councillor Ted Knight (later to become the Leader of the new left-dominated Labour administration in 1978) was quoted as saying:
'The Council's policies are bankrupt. They talk to the waiting list and say it is because of squatters. They talk to the homeless and say it is because of the waiting list. And yet we still have vast quantities of empty property.'5
Indeed, the administrative resources needed to implement the policy were not available and, although some unlucky squatters suffered, squatting continued largely unabated in Lambeth. Any redu tion in their number was due to the Council carrying out its redevelopment programme rather than to its punitive policy. The policy finally foundered when the Council underestimated the strength of the opposition to it and overplayed its hand at St Agnes Place. On 19 January 1977, the occupants of St Agnes Place were awakened by the sound of a huge crane rigged up with a demolition ball moving into position outside. The street was closed off by police coaches parked across the road and 200 ployees refused to do. The squatters, with the help of Lambeth Community Law Centre, hurriedly and successfully applied for an injunction to halt the demolition - but not before 16 houses had been wrecked, 10 irretrievably.
The outcry which this affair caused brought an end to the Council's most rabidly anti-squatting policies. On 25 January the Labour Group voted to think again about the future of St Agnes Place and later it agreed to allow the squatters to remain until the park could be laid out. Many councillors were angered by the deceit that had surrounded sending in demolition contractors as the decision had been kept secret from all but a handful of high-ranking officers and councillors. Even the police were said to have been misled when asked to attend. They were told to come to assist in an eviction and the officer in charge of the operation was later quoted as saying that he hoped never again to be involved in anything similar.
The fight for St Agnes Place was a remarkable one. At times official attitudes were completely at odds with the needs of local people. For example, Councillor Carey, leader of the Conservative Group, had seconded the proposal to demolish St Agnes Place at a Planning Committee meeting with the memorable suggestion that there were already too many people living in Lambeth and 'to make sure that the extra population doesn't stay, we should demolish houses that encourage them to do so.'6
In the aftermath of the St Agnes Place affair, the entire 'get tough on squatting' steamroller ground to a halt, not only in Lambeth, but else- where. The continuing presence of squatters in St Agnes Place and in Villa Road after a similar confrontation (Chapter 12), constituted a victory for all squatters. The outcome of these struggles, moreover, comprised a victory for the homeless in Lambeth, because it prevented the loss of housing that the original plans entailed. The role of squatting in forcing policy changes out of Lambeth Council had been absolutely crucial. As Lambeth's Assistant Director of Housing remarked 'If it wasn't for squatter pressure we'd have all these [houses] down months ago and nobody would have noticed.'7
The successes of squatters in Lambeth were unexpected at a time when the government's major response to squatting, Part 2 of the Criminal Law Bill was making its way through Parliament. It was widely believed that the Bill would make squatting illegal and property owners, and sometimes even the police, began to act as if the provisions in the Bill were already law by evicting people illegally. The impending bill also had a demoralising effect on squatters as few people who did not have legal training could understand its implications and limitations.

The London Squatters Union
It was against this background that some squatters attempted in 1977, yet again, to form a more co- ordinated organisation to counter the opposition they were now facing. A squatters' conference arranged mainly by ASS and attended by 150 people, was held in May 1977 to discuss the way forward. Its main purpose was to try to set up a more representative body than the Squatters Action Council which, for all its achievements, had failed to bring together more than a small number of squatters and which could offer little to isolated and individual squats away from the main areas of squatting activity.
Two conflicting methods of organization were suggested in discussions leading up to the conference. One, advocated principally by the majority of the ASS collective, was an informally constituted federation of local groups. The other, backed by many individuals involved with SAC, was a more structured and centralised 'union' with membership cards and formalised aims and objectives. The London Squatters Union (LSU), which was closer to the latter form of organisation, eventually emerged in July 1977 from the long series of follow-up meetings that were held in the months after the conference. Membership was open to all squatters, ex-squatters and licensees for a cost of 25p and 10p per month, and the Squatters Charter, a statement of the Union's aims combined with a code of behaviour for squatters, was adopted as the Union's policy.

Opposing the Criminal Trespass Law
A dark cloud had hung over the squatting movement since 1974 when the Law Commission published its proposal to make all forms of trespass, and consequently squatting, illegal. All the events described above since that date were affected by the prospect of the new law. The squatting movement's response had been, perhaps uncharacteristically, swift. At an All London Squatters meeting in 1974 it was decided to set up a campaign to fight the proposals and the Campaign Against a Criminal Trespass Law (CACTL) was born.
CACTL's beginnings were humble. A leaflet was produced and circulated to a variety of organisations and regular meetings gradually started to be held. CACTL's first task was to spread information about the proposals which had been poorly publicised. Apart from a few active squatters, not many people knew about the new law or understood the breadth of its scope. The importance of spreading information about the draconian proposals of the Law Commission was quickly recognised by many people both within and outside the squatting movement, and CACTL grew very quickly. Whereas none of the London-wide squatting organisations - ALS, SAC and LSU - were ever able to build any extensive links with organisations outside the housing field, CACTL was remarkably successful in obtaining support from the labour movement and students.
CACTL's success lay in the fact that the proposed Criminal Trespass Law posed a serious threat to workers and students occupying their places of work. Indeed CACTL argued that the real purpose of the legislation was not to wipe out squatting but to stop occupations of factories. The fact that politicians rooting for the new law denied that it would affect workers only served to emphasise people's fears. By the end of 1975, CACTL was op- erating out of rent free offices in West London and had two full-time workers who were paid a small wage. CACTL began to receive invitations to send speakers to trades councils, trade union branches and student unions. It soon became clear that in addition to its primary role of building opposition to the Trespass Law proposals, CACTL was playing a vital role in forging links between the squatting movement which had been largely discredited in the media, and the wider political movement.
A measure of CACTL's support can be seen by the fact that in 1976 it had received support from 36 trades councils, 85 trade union branches, 51 student unions and many other organisations. In its primary aim, CACTL was partly successful. The initial plan to outlaw trespass entirely was greatly watered down when the Law Commission's final proposals were published in 1976. These were to become Part Two of the Criminal Law Act 1977 passed in the summer of that year, and brought into effect on 1 December 1977. Five new offences relating to squatting and trespass were created. Specific forms of squatting which related to a minority of squatters (e g squatting on embassy property, squatting in houses that the owner is planning to live in, etc.) were made criminal offences. It also became legal to evict squatters when they were not in the squat (e g they were at work or shopping) and it was made an offence to resist bailiffs once the owners had obtained a possesesion order. However, squatting had survived the legal onslaught and had not been made into a criminal offence.
Only eight days after the Act came into force, Alan Beddoe was charged, and later convicted of, resisting a bailiff contrary to Section 10 of the Act at an eviction in Battersea, south London. But in its final form, the new Act turned out to be less of a threat to the squatting movement than might have been expected from a Parliament which re- garded squatting as a law and order problem rather than as a symptom of housing shortage. Neverthe- less, about 25 people were arrested under its pro- visions in the first two years of its operation, almost exclusively for 'obstructing or resisting a bailiff. While the new law was certainly a set-back and did make squatting more difficult, it did not make it illegal. Perhaps its most significant initial effect was to curb the number of new squats. Unsure of the precise legal position and, perhaps under the misapprehension that it was now illegal to squat (a belief, ironically, reinforced by the propaganda of CACTL), many potential squatters were put off. Indeed, in the summer of 1978, ASS felt it necesesary to mount a campaign with the slogan 'Squatting is still legal'.
CACTL continued operating with two full time workers until the summer of 1979, having widened its brief by opposing other legislation affecting the rights of workers to take direct action: strikes, picketing, the closed shop and so on. In this latter period, to some extent CACTL lost touch with the squatting movement which was largely in disarray. CACTL's eventual demise came not through lack of support, or even of funds, but as a product of its success. The TUC, anxious that an independent non-party organisation had built up so much support within the labour movement, began to oppose its progress and in mid-1979 CACTL decided to cease to run an office.

Some 'solutions'
Ever since squatting re-emerged in 1969, property owners had called for tougher legal sanctions, and many pinned their hopes on the new Criminal Law Act. Yet it became clear well before the law was passed that it would not end squatting. Despite concerted opposition, squatting continued through 1977 to 1979, not on the same scale as during the previous years but sufficient to be seen as a threat by property owners. The experience of almost a decade meant that squatting activists were frequently capable of mounting campaigns which led to defeat for councils or, at least, meant that owners had to use increasing force to achieve their aims. Massive police presence at evictions became commonplace and frequently this cast the owner in a poor light. A stalemate had been reached and as licensed squatting had proved to be insufficient to cope, there was a need to look for other 'solutions'. Some councils began to explore ways of making their housing systems more flexible and providing more accommodation particularly for single people who were making up an increasing proportion of squatters. In a similar vein, central government encouraged the growth of the co-operative housing movement.

Hard-to-let
One of the more ironic responses to squatting was initiated by the GLC. When it evicted the Hornsey Rise squatters in early 1976, it told them there were no empty properties available to give them on licence. The occupants of the 1,172 known unofficially occupied GLC dwellings were told the same thing. Yet a new lettings scheme had just been started for which there appeared to be no lack of available empty properties. This was the 'difficult to-let' scheme, whereby dwellings which applicants on the waiting list had consistently turned down are leased to single people and childless couples on a first-come, first-served or ballot basis. When the scheme was inaugurated in December 1975 by the release of 101 homes in Southwark, over 600 people turned out to queue for them, many waiting all night. The next month, a further 120 dwellings in Tower Hamlets were put on offer and the scheme mushroomed. Suddenly there seemed to be no shortage of empty, unwanted accommodation. The arbitrary allocation system too was not what might have been expected from a Council which had attacked squatting so consistently, precisely because squatters did not operate any priorities based on housing need.

Amnesty
While they alleviated the plight of people who might otherwise have been forced to squat and although they undoubtedly were a response to squatting, the difficult-to-let schemes were not aimed specifically at squatters. It was not until 1977 that the Conservative administration at the GLC elected the previous May directly confronted the issue of squatting. In October, in a sensational about-turn, it suddenly offered to legitimise the occupancy of every squatter in GLC premises.
The number of GLC squatters had reached an all-time high. The GLC estimated there were 1,438 of its properties occupied by squatters but it turned out to be over 1,850; the difference between the two figures being some 400 squats that the GLC did not find in its survey.9 The Conservative leadership realised it would be impossible to evict the 7,000 people living in these squats and decided instead to offer tenancies in GLC properties to every squatter living in its dwellings on 25 October, provided they registered within a month. After that, it proposed to use 'all measures which the law allows' against future squatters or those who did not register. This was seen as 'a positive step to end the practice of squatting in Council accommodation and to facilitate a restoration of law and order'. It was not then a policy rooted in any change of attitude towards squatters, but a means of 'dealing on a realistic basis with those already in unauthorised occupation' It would provide the 'first step' in 'an attack on the problem of squatting'.10
The Conservatives remained committed to their election pledge to end squatting in GLC property and the decision to regularise the position of people already squatting was taken for pragmatic reasons. There was no recognition of the fact that squatters take over houses because of housing need. By making concessions to squatters already in its property, the GLC was hoping to stop all future squatting. It adopted imaginative and flexible policies at this stage merely to facilitate implementing totally rigid and reactionary policies at a later date. Its attitude was contradictory; if people squatting in GLC dwellings on 25 October 1977 deserved legitimate tenancies, then what was likely to be so different about squatters who moved in after that date?
In one sense, by moving squatters into poor condition flats which really needed to be modernised, the GLC were institutionalising bad housing. Thus many squatters were rightly suspicious of the GLC's motives as Squatters News No 7 commented: 'Although the GLC is accepting responsibility for more people, it is also officially increasing the pool of people living in the poor conditions dictated by the housing cuts.' Housing conditions acceptable to squatters were not necessarily adequate if rent had to be paid for unfit housing.
Squatters in 1,300 properties responded to the GLC offer, comprising 1,700 households which contained 5,000 people or about 70 per cent of those eligible. However, the extent of squatting in GLC dwellings remained considerable after the amnesty. There were 550 squats whose residents did not register or who had moved in after the amnesty.
Some squatters were given tenancies or licences to properties they were occupying, but the majority eventually received offers of rehousing in other GLC homes. According to figures released by the GLC for the first 300 such offers, 90 per cent were accepted. Most of the refusals were in the GLC's West London District where squatters were offered rehousing as far away as Slough and Borehamwood. Since the GLC made only one rehousing offer per household, unpopular ones like these presented the recipients with difficult choices. In general, though, it seemed that the GLC tried to be reasonable. For example, it offered 150 Bengali families squatting in Pelham Buildings in the East End rehousing in the same area which many of them were afraid to leave because of racist intimidation and violence in other parts of East London. The GLC also allowed several squatter communities to remain in their homes as housing co-operatives.
Needless to say squatting did not cease in GLC property following the amnesty and the Conservatives carried out their promised crackdown. An anti-squatting squad was established consisting of 'one man and four heavies', according to Housing Policy Chairperson George Tremlett. On discovering squatters in a property, a visit was made and if the squatters did not agree to leave immediately, possession orders were sought from the courts. Between March 1978 and July 1979, 787 possession orders were obtained, there were 557 evictions and 389 'voluntary' vacations. At a press conference in July 1979 Tremlett declared proudly, but perhaps not altogether accurately, 'squatting is contained'. Yet despite the imperfections of the amnesty and the subsequent crackdown, the squatting movement had forced a remarkable concession out of a previously implacable opponent. One important factor behind these concessions was the change in attitude of certain influential housing officers. Their experience, day by day', court by court, had convinced them that there were too many organised squatters in GLC property for it to be possible to evict them all. A conciliatory approach was also made easier because a DOE-commissioned survey of squatters, finally published in the previous summer (after a long delay and numerous leaks), provided incontrovertible evidence that 'The majority of people have squatted because of shortage of accommodation and not because they are opposed to law and order or they wish to live rent-free.'11
In addition the media was presenting a more positive picture of squatting. During the year, a TV documentary 'Goodbye Longfellow Road', had shown squatters in a favourable light and a number of newspapers carried less hostile articles (most notably the Evening Standard under the editorship of Simon Jenkins). Even the Daily Telegraph carried a pro-squatting feature.12
This sudden apparent conversion of the media was partly a product of prevailing economic circumstances. Public expenditure was still being cut and there was a search for cheap solutions to social problems. Squatting is one of the various movements which embrace a belief in, or concern with, the principles of self-help. While for most the attraction of self-help is philosophical or political - people solving problems collectively by mutual aid - the attraction for both local and central government lies in its cheapness.13
The wide-ranging possibilities of self-help in housing, which squatters helped to demonstrate, were being examined with growing enthusiasm during 1977. Consequently, many of the properties released by rehousing squatters during the amnesty were used for the GLC's new 'homesteading'. scheme. People bought derelict houses on a normal mortgage basis but had the first three years interest waived and were supposed to spend the money saved on restoring the property. The high price of even derelict houses in London prevented many people from taking part in the scheme, but the fact that 15,000 people responded when it was first advertised showed the strong demand for some form of self-build.

Co-ops
A more positive product of the growing interest in self-help solutions in housing was the co-operative movement and many squatters formed co-ops in the hope of securing permanent accommodation as communities. Co-operative organisational forms were not new to squatters, having been used by both licensed and unlicensed groups since 1969. Indeed the extensive experience of short-life housing groups in the field of tenant self-management had provided some of the evidence that encouraged wider government interest in increased 'dweller control' and participation. For instance, Mike King-han (author of the DOE sponsored survey on squatting), used the example of family squatting associations 'to demonstrate that the devolution of housing management need not necessarily result in the disasters forecast by the pessimists.'14 So when the 1974 Housing Act made Housing Association Grants accessible to housing co-ops, interest among squatters and short-life groups in formal cooperative structures began to grow rapidly.
The notion of squatters forming housing cooperatives was pioneered by the Committee for the Faceless Homeless which squatted Sumner House in Tower Hamlets in August 1974. The 50 families who moved into the flats quickly formed the Sumner House Co-op. They never succeeded in their original aim of obtaining permission to take over and rehabilitate Sumner House as they were evicted in 1976 but a group of people connected with that squat finally formed a bona fide housing co-op, the Poplar West Housing Co-operative. Poplar West has since been wound up by the Housing Corporation for alleged irregularities in the handling of money, but its role as a pioneer in the field of co-ops for squatters was a vital one.
During 1975, the idea was picked up by a number of squatter communities. Unsuccessful efforts were made to form a co-operative at Cornwall Terrace and elsewhere but at Seymour Buildings in -Westminster which was squatted in 1975 the first successful transition from squat to co-op was made.
The success of the Seymour Co-op, which took two years of hard work, gave encouragement to licensed groups, many of which were already looking into the possibility of forming co-ops as a means of transferring the self-management they had tried out in short-life property to a permanent setting. Lewisham Family Squatting Association, Islington Community Housing (an offshoot of SCH) and other short-life groups had already formed housing co-ops by the end of 1977, and there were at least eight co-ops established from short-life housing groups by mid-1978.15
Squatters, too, showed interest in the events at Seymour Buildings. The GLC amnesty produced a series of proposals from squatter communities for the establishment of co-ops, and at the beginning of 1978 the first of these was agreed in principle at Bishops Way, Hackney. Numerous other schemes have emerged among ex-GLC squatters and, while not all of them have been successful, a considerable number have taken over management of their homes. Indeed of 161 housing co-ops and interested groups listed in the Co-operative Housing Agency's 1978 Directory, 11 had been formed by squatters and 13 had a substantial input from squatters or ex-squatters.
Self-help in housing was getting increased institutional support but the success of co-ops did not mean that the principle of self-managed communities was accepted by councils. Each co-op had to be fought for and those that succeeded did so mainly because at a time of cut-backs, they presented cheap alternatives to councils' plans. For instance, an attempt to establish a co-op by a community of squatters in Bristol Gardens, West London, failed when the GLC found it could make more money by selling the houses.
Ironically, there was sometimes more chance of success in Tory areas than Labour ones; the Tory councils were happy with anything which relieved them of their housing responsibilities, whereas Labour councils tended to stick dogmatically to their plans on the grounds that it was in the best interests of people on their waiting lists. For example, a thriving community of squatters and licensees in Winchester Road and Winchester Mews in Labour-controlled Camden met with little success. By 1977, over 70 people were squatting there, many of whom had put considerable energy into renovating the derelict buildings (p!78). The community spawned several craft workshops, youth organisations and a wholefood cafe employing school leavers from the local youth club. A market sprang up on a vacant site and was used by people from all over the borough. Festivals were regularly organised. Yet Camden remained intent on its redevelopment plans, describing the site in its 1977 planning report, A Plan for Camden, as 'largely vacant, temporary'.
As with other squatting communities no effort was made to understand its positive qualities, and in 1979 the remaining squatters were evicted. The houses in Winchester Road were converted back into family units, but after demolishing the Mews, plans for building new housing fell through. The site remained derelict and the Council started negotiations with hotel developers.
The notion of the squatting community was carried to its ultimate conclusion in 1977 when 120 squatters in Freston Road, West London, occupying GLC property carried out an imaginative stunt. They made a unilateral declaration of independence from Great Britain and declared a 'Free Independent Republic of Frestonia'. Full membership of the United Nations and the EEC was applied for, and a telegram sent to the Queen.
All the squatters in Freston Road had been offered alternative accommodation under the GLC amnesty but the offers were scattered and meant leaving a locality in which many of them worked and had developed close ties. They wanted to be rehoused in the neighbourhood together and close by. The GLC only recognised families as a unit for rehousing, so all inhabitants adopted the surname Bramley, and Frestonia's motto was 'We are all one family'. A full cabinet of ministers was appointed and all those not in the cabinet were made ambassadors.
A letter from the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, David Rappaport-Bramley to the Secretary General of the United Nations declared:
'A Referendum of each inhabitant of Frestonia was held on Sunday, 30 October, 1977, and the overwhelming majority was in favour of self-determination for the people of the area, and independence from the previous rulers, Great Britain.
'The area was recently acquired by the Greater London Council, an organ of the British Government, and by its own confession, the area was allowed to deteriorate over the years into a derelict site, with tenants moved out of their homes, the well-established community destroyed, and empty sites of demolished buildings fenced off with corrugated iron and used for dumping rubbish, with half-demolished houses next to people's homes.
'Our case is that the GLC and the British Government, through a long history of neglect and mismanagement of Frestonia, have forfeited the right to determine the future of the area.
If delay in processing our application occurs, an invasion into Frestonia and eviction by the Greater London Council and other organs of the British Government may occur, in which case there will exist a crisis with international ramifications, and the necessity may arise for Frestonia to require the UN to send a token peacekeeping force. These are developments which we must at all costs avoid.'
The United Nations did not reply. But the media loved it, eagerly taking photographs of the four year old Minister of State in his pushchair and for weeks the street was full of TV crews from all over the world.
At first the GLC insisted it would continue its plans for demolishing the houses and developing the site for industry. Some of the squatters accepted their amnesty offers but some returned to Frestonia when they found their new homes to be too isolated and distant. A housing co-op was formed, local opinion was mobilised against the plans, and the support of several local organisations was obtained. Bowing to this pressure and eager to save money, two yearslater the GLC agreed to hand over the site to the Netting Hill Housing Trust which planned to build new houses and craft workshops. At the time of writing it appears that the squatters will be able to stay in the new scheme but that their plan for preserving most of the houses and retaining the communal gardens have been ignored.
Co-ops were not always a success and many squatters who became involved in them were critical of the bureaucratic controls and restrictions imposed on them by the Housing Corporation through which funds for co-ops are chanelled. Despite being the most democratic form of public housing, the dependency on public funds of most co-ops limits the amount of control that individual members have over their housing. These bureaucratic barriers and the delays they inevitably created often left many ex-squatters disillusioned about co-ops.

Other concessions
Other mildly concessionary policies on homelessness were also implemented. The Housing (Homeless Persons) Act came into force on 1 December 1977, the same day as the Criminal Law Act. This placed an obligation on councils to provide housing for certain groups of homeless people deemed at risk - basically people with children, pensioners, the handicapped, the sick and pregnant women. The Act has not lived up to the high expectations of its supporters mainly because of loopholes (like the Calderdale Clause, p 63) and because many groups of people, including the single and childless couples are not helped by it. Nevertheless, the fact that it came into force simultaneously with the new law on squatting showed that the state's approach towards the homeless was ambivalent.
A few months earlier, councils had been urged by central government to improve their use of empty property. A circular, sent out in July 1977 to councils, stated:
'Authorities should aim to develop a constructive and close working relationship with the housing association movement and responsible voluntary organisations in a position to use short-life property to alleviate the housing needs of special groups in their area. Local authorities should consider the possibility of licensing responsible groups who apply to occupy empty property which cannot be brought into use in any other way, and who otherwise might feel driven to unlawful squatting.'16 The last sentence shows that squatting provided the impetus for this move.
The formation of agencies specialising in the use of short-life property (such as Shelter's Housing Emergency Office, the Federation of Short-Life Housing Groups, the Self-Help Housing Resource Library and innumerable local organisations) and the introduction of the 'mini-HAG' (Housing Association Grant) whereby finance was available through the Housing Corporation for repairs to short-life dwellings, also facilitated the increased use of empty property.
In Lewisham, for example, where the first licenses were given to a squatting group in 1969, the Council had continued its efforts to use the positive contribution of squatters. Lewisham Family Self-Help Housing Association, as the original Family Squatting Association had been renamed, still provided homes for 79 families in June 1977. The Council had a policy towards unlicensed squatters which, in theory, was the best that might be expected. According to a paper by the Assistant Borough Housing Officer, when unlicensed squatting did occur, 'No action is taken . . . until the properties are required for redevelopment or there is evidence of serious nuisance or annoyance to adjoining residents.'17 The paper went on to describe how the Council had also offered difficult-to-let properties to single people, couples and sharers, including an entire estate of flats dissected by a major road and several tower blocks from which families had been vacated. Single person new-build schemes were planned too. The paper readily acknowledged that squatting had played a vital role in bringing the Council's attention to the need to provide housing to people other than nuclear families.

Yet squatting continues
But such flexible approaches had not become the norm and central government recommendations were often meaningless at the local level. In Portsmouth for instance, the local squatting group was involved in a long fight against the Council gutting and demolition of houses in the Cumberland Road area prior to a public inquiry into its future. Attempts to obtain houses for short-life use met with little success and in an internal memo of 29 November 1977 the City Engineer made the Council's policy clear:
'Properties acquired in this area are acquired for clearance purposes and will not be re-used. They are then rendered unattractive to potential squatters by breaking up the insides, rendered unattractive to small-time thieves by removing valuables such as lead, copper etc which again involves a certain amount of breaking out and steps are also taken to combat rodents etc by sealing sewer connections which again necessitates a certain amount of breaking out'
When this policy failed to deter squatters, the council resorted to demolition instead.
In 1978 the largest police presence ever seen at an eviction smashed down barricades at Huntley Street, one of Britain's best organised squats. The eviction was unnecessary, as it was already known that the squatters had, the day before, won an agreement for rehousing all the squatters .
Five adjoining blocks of flats in Huntley Street were squatted in February 1977 in an initiative by the Squatters Action Council. One block was allocated to women and children from a battered wives hostel, and a ground floor flat was used for meetings and an office first for the Squatters Action Council and later for the London Squatters Union. The 54 flats which had been empty for four years eventually housed 160 people including 30 children. Three days after the occupation, the Area Health Authority, the owner, announced plans to convert the flats for nurses and doctors. But it also intended to abandon a lease on a nearby nurses home and turn down purpose-built flats provided by Camden Council. The squatters and the local community campaigned bitterly against the plans which would have reduced housing and turned a playground into a car park.
After the Authority obtained a possession order at the second attempt in July 1978 the flats were barricaded and round the clock watches maintained. But no barricades and no amount of support for the occupiers could have prevented the eviction when it came. At dawn on 16 August, 650 police armed with riot shields and grappling hooks and backed up by four bulldozers descended like a blue plague. Led by steel helmeted bailiffs, advised by Special Branch experts on political 'subversives' and spearheaded by the notorious Special Patrol Group (SPG), the police forced an entry within minutes. Fourteen people were arrested for 'resisting the sheriff contrary to Section 10 of the Criminal Law Act 1977 .
Police preparations for this paramilitary operation were extensive. Helicopters took aerial photographs, the phone was tapped and surveillance cameras were mounted in flats opposite. Most significantly, three weeks before the eviction, two police officers, posing as a homeless couple - Nigel Wildman and Mary McClosky - moved in as squatters. Their true identity was revealed later at the trial of the 'Huntley Street 14'. The eviction, estimated to have cost over £50,000, was widely condemned.
At the court case a year after the eviction, the magistrate eventually decided there was insufficient evidence to convict 12 of the defendants but two, Piers Corbyn and Jim Paton, were found guilty. Corbyn received an exemplary 28 days imprisonment, the first immediate prison sentence under the new anti-squatting law, but it was reduced on appeal to 200 hours community service. Paton was given a suspended sentence of 28 days imprisonment, confirmed on appeal. The eviction was organised by London's Under Sheriff, Michael Harris, who played a prominent role in the eviction of several large squats and seemed to take particular delight in evicting groups of squatters. In 1980 he had to resign his post as Under Sheriff following reports in Private Eye alleging his involvement with the Mafia and pornography.18
While Harris had hoped for harsher sentences the operation fulfilled its purpose as a training exercise for large scale police actions (not necessarily against squatters) and as a piece of intimidation. Nonetheless the campaign following the eviction received widespread support. The Trades Union Congress that autumn condemned the use of the SPG against squatters and Labour Party National Executive Committee speakers at their annual conference also criticised the eviction.
The concessions in council housing policies that had been gained in 1977-8 and the intimidatory effect of both the Criminal Law Act and police actions led to a marked decline in squatting in 1978. Many homeless single people were absorbed into new council schemes to use difficult-to-let and short-life housing, while potential squatters were worried by rumours that squatting was now illegal. In addition these concessions removed a layer of the most experienced and seasoned activists from squatting. The successes of organised squatter communities, or their eviction and dispersal, led to a situation in which isolated squats remained common while concentrations of squatters became rarer. The natural unit of organisation, the street or block, was disappearing, partly as a result of the success of squatters as part of a larger social movement in persuading local authorities to carry out less wholesale redevelopment and more small-scale rehabilitation. Isolated squatters could not hope to reproduce the organisation developed by those who had lived near each other.

Housing Action
Many ex-squatter activists become involved in other fields of housing or political activity, such as the growing housing co-operative movement or anti-racist, anti-fascist struggles. People who cut their teeth in squatting activity carried their political experiences into other housing struggles. A Housing Action Convention, in Sheffield in September 1978, attracted over 300 people, the majority of whom had been involved in squatting. From this emerged the seeds for a new campaigning network, Housing Action, which concentrates on issues of wider relevance than squatting or empty property.
Housing Action had its roots deeply embedded in the squatting movement, and the squatters and (more commonly) ex-squatters who were closely involved in its formation remained among its key activists. There was an attempt by Housing Action to link the experience and tactics of the squatting movement (as the most militant and sustained housing movement of the seventies) with the more traditional tenants organisations and labour movement bodies. This worked best in one-off ventures or pieces of direct action.
In March 1979, for example, Housing Action and the London Tenants Organisation's GLC group linked up with local trades unionists to stage a spectacular protest occupation of a GLC show-house at the Ideal Home Exhibition. The 'Ideal Squat' was evicted within 30 minutes, but not before the 100 or so people involved had brought the Exhibition to a standstill with one of the liveliest pieces of protest theatre ever enacted over a housing issue. The protest failed to halt the GLC's policies of selling off council houses and running down its housing programme, but it did indicate the possibilities for unity between squatters, tenants and trades unionists.
Housing Action's attempts to take this protest action a stage further by occupying an entire block of GLC flats on the Ferry Lane Estate in Tottenham also drew in a wide range of supporters. The flats had been empty for two years while the GLC prepared plans for their sale to private buyers and they stood among some 500 empty GLC dwellings on the same estate. The local tenants association, the Labour MP and the Liberal parliamentary candidate for the area pledged their support. One tenants association in Dulwich sent a telegram addressed to 'The Rightful Occupiers of Ferry Lane Estate'. Even the security guards employed to defend the properties against squatting expressed sympathy (an attitude which was probably important in persuading the police not to intervene when the occupation first occurred).

Stop the Blitz
A similarly wide range of support had been obtained by the Stop the Blitz Campaign when it organised the occupation and repair of over 50 empty houses in three streets in Redbridge at the end of 1978. It was the same area which had been the focus of the famous pitched battles between bailiffs and squatters in 1969. At that time the Council was gutting and demolishing perfectly good houses in a deliberate attempt to force the public inquiry inspector to agree to their demolition to make way for a grandiose central area redevelopment scheme. Nothing changed much. Despite losing the public inquiry in 1970, the Council drew up another plan which was due to go to a public inquiry in 1979. In the meantime it continued to gut and demolish, presumably hoping to do better second time around. To cover up its wanton waste of resources, the Council consistently lied to the electorate, presented false figures to official surveys about empty property and harassed and blackmailed residents. So eager was it in pursuing its goals that on one occasion council workmen by mistake gutted a privately-owned house and boarded it up, preventing the owner from getting in.19
The Stop the Blitz occupation was intended more as a protest against this demolition or gutting prior to a public enquiry than as a squat. Nonetheless, it involved many veteran squatting activists and was described as a '10th birthday celebration' of the contemporary squatting movement.
Neither the Ferry Lane squat or the Stop the Blitz campaign were very successful. In Redbridge, the Council's increased understanding of the law on squatting and the removal of loopholes which had benefitted squatters in the past led to eviction in three weeks. At Ferry Lane the GLC dithered longer, perhaps unsure of the strength of the opposition. Ultimately a combination of electricity cutoffs, the Conservative general election victory and the fact that none of the activists involved in organising the occupation actually lived in the flats, led to defeat (and the arrest of 15 supporters when police broke up peaceful pickets called in protest against the eviction). The degree of planning and organisation behind such actions, and the number of people involved in them (over 100 in each case) demonstrated a commitment to direct action which augured well for the future.
The Redbridge and Ferry Lane occupations were also important in publicising the fact that squatting had not been made illegal, and during the latter half of 1979 the decline in the number of people squatting came to an end. Every agency dealing with squatters or would-be squatters reported a renewed activity or heightened interest. Islington Council, in London, reported that the number of squats in its property doubled during 1979 to almost 200 units, though it failed to see how, in scrapping its housing scheme for single sharers, it was partly the author of its own misfortunes.
The Self Help Housing Resource Library reported an increase in squatting outside London, quoting cases of sizeable new campaigns in Cambridge, Bristol, Stoke-on-Trent and Birmingham during the summer of 1979. In London, a number of squats made the news, including the occupation of a large DDE-owned property in Bloomsbury which had been designed by the famous architect John Nash. The Area Health Authority responsible for the eviction of Huntley Street had a nursing home overlooking Highbury Fields (and empty for five years) squatted by a group who remained in occupation for a number of months without mains gas, water or electric supplies. Even St Paul's Cathedral had its Chancellery squatted.
Massive cuts in public spending and the end of any government commitment to provide homes for all resulted in the renewed growth in the number of people squatting. Single people, trapped at the bottom of the housing pile, made up a large proportion of the new squatters, though people with children were still being forced to squat despite the Homeless Persons Act. Groups which had been on the verge of collapse were given a fresh impetus by the upsurge. The Advisory Service for Squatters, for example, survived the withdrawal of most of its long-serving collective (who, after up to four years of unpaid advice work, were simply worn out or wanted to spend their time on other things) and continued to function. The London Squatters Union, which had been virtually inactive for a number of months, revived itself at the beginning of 1980, using the Housing Action office three nights a week for advisory and organisational work. The LSU later moved to offices near Trafalgar Square.
Other organisations did fold, however. Most local squatting groups, for instance, were moribund by the end of 1979, and the Federation of Short-Life Housing Groups (which at one time could claim almost 30 different short-life and squatting groups among its members) only met twice during 1979. Others like the Self Help Housing Resource Library, ASS and LSU stumbled on with the efforts of a smaller number of active supporters. Without an influx of energy and activists into such groups, their future seems uncertain - and without the minimal organisational and advisory capacities of such groups, the future of squatting would become even more uncertain.

Changed climate
The overall political climate has changed drastically since the seventies, and it is doubtful whether the concessions won by the squatting movement in the past will be readily repeated. Squatters will need to be better organised in future in order to win less. They will need to draw upon much wider support and develop the links that have begun to be made with other organisations.
Squatting will inevitably continue on an individual level. Isolated squatters without links with any wider movement will continue to take over property in order to solve their immediate housing needs. Projections of the housing situation leave no doubt that the crisis will worsen substantially in the eighties and that homelessness will increase greatly. The number of people needing to squat will rise. Whether squatting will be merely the last resort of desperate individuals, or whether it might also be an organised means for people to secure better housing, depends upon how well squatters can organize as part of wider housing and political movements.