ofcourse people have been squatting in london for a long time. england's seemingly unique squatting laws were an effort to give servicemen returning from the 1st world war who had lost their homes the ability to live in empty ones left by their expired comrades. in the 70s and 80s they were the base of the civil and gay rights movements and alternative scenes in the capital- whole streets in north, east and south london were squatted, and some of our elders reminisce about that time with dewy eyed glee.
these days, for a person who sees the folly of the capitalist system and the work-survive-work-die ethos that it necessitates, squatting is one method, along with skipping, hitchiking and other creative means of living outside the system, of both ignoring and subverting this state of affairs, of living according to ones ethics and supporting the local community.
a squatted space is much more than a place to find shelter and cook food (though it can be just this too). it is a space in which a collective of individuals, lovers and sometimes families can forge a safe and creative space that is free from the stigmas and rules that have been honed over decades to make us dependent on an overarching fear that seems to pervade all the rhetoric of the mass media- fear of failure, fear of being different, fear of the 'other'. Beyond this, squatting opens up a plethora of super cool shit to be done, skills to be learnt and ideas to share. In just two years living in, visiting and partying in such places in london, i have learnt more about electrics (how to make a building safe, how to make electricity free), woodwork (how to build a room out of scrap wood) and the law (when to tell the police to fuck off; when to grab my shit and go) than i would ever have the time or the need to learn if i were renting. I have learnt how to resolve disputes in non-violent ways, how to live with people on the edge of sanity and, moreover, learn from them, how to swear in several european languages (because there are many, many italian, polish, spanish etc squatters). I have learnt the minimum of my requirments for personal space, possessions and cleanliness, and to respect that others' requirements are different and that that is cool too.
I had some inkling of these intricacies, though non of hte experience of them, when I finished university and, along with a crew of mostly fellow newly-graduated, began to walk and cycle the streets of north london looking for empty buildings.
We had a copy of the (excellent) Squatters' Handbook (available from Freedom Bookshop in whitechapel and, i think, online), but there was no book, and no up to date lists, of empty buildings to be liberated (people I know have got such lists off local councils, but for some reason we never got round to doing that). Our crew was nebulous and squat-virgin. We knew more about foucault than faucets (and i knew nothing of either), and could wax lyrical all day about the revolutionary necessity of squatting without ever having sat up all night by candlelight knowing that our only defence against the police, baliffs or indeed anyone was a plank of wood jammed between door and staircase.
But, considering all this and looking back, I think we did pretty well.
Squat 1- an empty shop with house above on a busy street in islington. Massive paintings of drunken santa claus's and upside-down jesus's denoted a former temporary christmas art squat space. We were extremely excited for all of 5 days until 6 beefy polish guys showed up in the middle of one sunday night and began crowbarring down the door. We called the police (we had the theoretical law on our side). They came, chatted with the poles, made some jokes and left. The door (and it's plank), were almost finished. They gave us an ultimatum through the letterbox with their crowbars in their hands. We left. A clever owner of a squatted building will realise that it is much quicker and more cost effective to hire some heavies to illegally evict than to go through the courts and do it legally. This, it can only be assumed, was one of those cases. The shop is now a spot to buy some polish pottery (not a joke).
squat 2- The Arundale Arms- a pub behind Dalston Kingsland that was big enough to hold our entire crew, but dark enough (all of the windows on the lower two floors had been covered with the squatter's mortal enemy- cytex) and dirty enough to drive away three or four of our original group, one of them later telling a friend 'i just don't know how people can live like that'. We cleaned the hell out of that place, including scraping pidgeon shit from the entire top floor. I had a tiny and beautiful room on the top floor of that place, just big enough for a raised bed from which one could wriggle out of the window and sit on the ledge smoking and feeling like the king of all dalston.
Then at work one day I got a phonecall, and cycled hard to find all of our things on the street, getting soaked in a light drizzle, with a couple of police vans, and my friends looking pretty shaken. The owners had come, and when we refused to leave, called the police, stating that we have caused criminal damage (a lie). This was all the police needed to get out their huge battering ram and, when they couldn't get through the front door (our wooden wedges held strong) had punched a whole straight through the back wall. Bastards. There were lots of us and we had the help of NELSN, the north east london squatters network, who recorded the whole thing (always good to have a camera incase there is any police violence or unlawful arrests) and allowed us to stay at their place up the road, an old solicitors' place, whilst we looked for somewhere else.
Squat 3- It was deep into winter by now, and we were basically couchsurfing. The cats who had been in the place up until then were really nice an accomodating, but there were many of us and we were pretty bummed out, chainsmoking and cold, and after a while it became clear we needed to leave. Along with 5 others (give or take), I slept on the ground floor, a former office with no windows, in two sleeping bags huddled next to a friend. It took a huge mental effort to get up in the mornings but, on the plus side, our hosts were skippers extraordinaire and we ate like kings.
Squat 4- Things seemed a bit desperate now and our party had shrunk somewhat, and everywhere we looked was either decrepid, unenterable or full of smackheads. And believe me we looked. All over north east london on bikes. Lists of properties made, late night excursions executed, nothing promising. We eventually ended up in a 2 room flat near manor house, squashed in and actually (for me at least) having quite a nice time being bunched up like sardines. Maybe the group at that time was special and particularly loving, but i do remember feeling a bit like being in a liferaft after a storm with the solidarity and penchant for heavy drinking that that would create.
Squat 5- A most beautiful of houses in highbury, with no sound of traffic and a huge oak tree holding firm and majestic out of my back window. The walls had beautiful murals on them painted by previous squatters and the water in the bath was hot and powerful.
But I am getting way too sidetracked. this is a post about 2a Belgrade Road.
We lasted at the Highbury place a couple of weeks with an eviction date from the previous squatters fast approaching. We had a list of buildings, prioritised according to their potential, and had been systematically checking them out- a former meat packing house near smithfields market that was the first place to really scare me as Bob climbed up a metal ladder to the electric box and prodded around, me with a fist in my mouth, shitting myself he would electricute himself. Terrace houses with neighbours calling the police. Town houses with concrete poured down the toilets (to ward off scum like us)... the last place on our list was a warehouse-looking building just off Dalston high street, with a big gate shrouding a huge metal door. Late one night three of us with our best jedi robes uttered the magic words and the big, black door opened to reveal a big room, the size of a 5-a-side football pitch, a bright lamp still lit, illuminating a floor filled with miscelannious crap- videos, speakers, a monopoly set, shopping trolleys, empty cans, furniture- all over the floor, as if the former residents had had a little 'throwing things around' spree before they left. The walls were covered in pretty artistic graffiti, dominated by a capitaled, iron-coloured sign with each letter as big as a big man- 'DIY OR DIE'. We ventured quickly up the dark staircase to the second floor, and found a similarly sized open plan room with a similar mix of crap all over the place. Another staircase led higher, but this was not the moment for surveys, and we popped on our D-lock and reported to base.
It was November 2008. We were so happy to find somewhere, anywhere,to stay that the full potential of the space did not dawn on us immediately. We sat in a small room off the big one on the ground floor, keeping warm and considering how to put in a new lock on the steel door. Soon enough though, our excitement of the possibilities of that place was piqued. We learnt (i can't remember how) that the previous squatters, mostly spanish, had got an eviction notice and left in a hurry. Their legacy was the mess, a big ass stash of needles that had apparently been used to mainline ketamine btu that had been put neatly in a sharp box, the graffiti, some rotting food in the fridge and, on the top floor that we had not initially explored, a patchwork of plywood, struts and bits of huge material that made up around 6 rooms- some complete, some collapsing, some just mounds of wood, that together gave the top floor the appearance of something between a shanty town and an extended treehouse. It was {beautiful}.
The sign on the wall read '100 flowers cultural centre' and we found many documents about various liberation struggles in turkey and kurdestan. the 100 flowers was a phrase coined by mao during the cultural revolution, and had been taken on by the PKK and, in this deeply turkish area of dalston, had it`s share of revolutionary history, though most of our crew thought that the maoist connotations and the , er, flowery name meant we should disgard the namesake and the place became known simply as 2a belgrade road. one day, however, an old woman died down the street and her belongings, which included over 100 plastic flowers, were donated to us. someone tied 100 of them to our gates.
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