The Autonomous City. Alexander Vasudevan
property. They were driven by a more immediate need to secure housing. This was, as one commentator later opined, ‘mass action by ordinary people’ who turned to squatting as the only possible way to try and get a decent home.25 As the conditions in the camps worsened over time, many of their occupants simply left.26
The 1945–6 campaign served as an important if often forgotten point of reference for the next wave of squatting which emerged in London and elsewhere in the UK in the late 1960s. The main impetus for the so-called ‘rebirth’ of the squatting movement came from activists linked with the Committee of 100, a nuclear disarmament group, and the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign. Others belonged to a series of equally small groups such as the London Anarchists, the East London Libertarian Group, Solidarity and Socialist Action.27 Many were also involved in a series of direct action struggles that targeted the poor living conditions faced by many working-class families living in temporary accommodation or Greater London Council (GLC) slums in and around London. Local authorities had a statutory duty to house families, though they were often dispersed or put into hostels where the conditions were usually poor.28 It was against this backdrop, moreover, that Ken Loach’s Cathy Come Home, a film documenting the experience of homelessness in the UK, was first televised, sparking widespread anger and concern. Both Crisis and Shelter, national charities dedicated to the fight against homelessness, were also set up in the wake of the film.29
While Crisis and Shelter worked closely with local authorities, others advocated a more militant self-help approach. The London Squatters Campaign was, in this way, formed on 18 November 1968 during a meeting hosted by Ron Bailey. The aim of the campaign was to rehouse families from hostels or slums by ‘means of squatting’. As Bailey added:
We hoped that our action would spark off a squatting campaign on a mass scale, and that homeless people and slum dwellers would be inspired to squat in large numbers by small but successful actions … We saw our campaign as having a radicalising effect on existing movements in the housing field – tenants associations, action committees, community project groups, etc. If these could be radicalised and linked together then we would really have achieved something.30
On 1 December 1968, activists from the campaign linked up with a small group of homeless families to occupy an empty block of luxury flats on Wanstead High Street that had been vacant for over four years. A second occupation of an empty vicarage in Leyton followed on Christmas Day. While the occupations were largely symbolic in nature, the campaign escalated in the new year as its organisers began to install homeless families into a series of properties in the London Borough of Redbridge. Redbridge Council had been planning a major redevelopment scheme in Ilford, though it had not been approved by the Ministry of Housing. The council nevertheless chose to leave a number of houses in the neighbourhood to rot (some for over ten years), though they remained in good condition.31
Beginning in February 1969 and over the course of the next six months, a total of seventeen houses were squatted by thirteen separate families, one of whom had been homeless for over twelve years.32 The council responded by taking the squatters to court. In one particular case, they applied to the Barking Magistrates Court for restitution of a property under the 1429 Forcible Entry Act. A breach of the act would have given the council the opportunity to apply to the local magistrates to clear the premises, arrest the occupiers and hand the property back to them.
As it happened, Ron Bailey was sitting in the public gallery as the council barrister argued that the squatters were ‘forcibly detaining’ the premises. The magistrates insisted that they view the premises to see for themselves whether this was indeed the case. Legally, it was within the right of the squatters to refuse to grant the owner access to the property. They were obliged, however, to provide access to the magistrates. Bailey later recalled how he had to dash from the courthouse to the property in question (a house on Cleveland Drive) in order to warn the occupants that the magistrates were on their way and that they were to be let in when they knocked on the door. A couple of minutes later, the magistrates arrived and were shown in.
A few days later, they ruled in favour of the squatters. They saw no reason to hand back the premises to the council, who sought an Order of Mandamus from the High Court. The case was ultimately adjourned sine die, with Lord Justice Salmon referencing an old case heard during the reign of George III in his speech. ‘The poorest man,’ he noted, ‘may, in his cottage, beat defiance to all the forces of the Crown. The storm may enter, the rain may enter, but the King of England may not enter. All his forces dare not cross the threshold of a ruined tenement.’33
The Redbridge squatters were ‘in possession’ and the High Court therefore insisted that a court order was needed to evict the occupiers.34 The council was successful in obtaining a series of named possession orders, which prompted the squatters to adopt a new tactic. The occupants simply swapped houses so that the people named on the possession order where no longer resident at the property to which the order was applied. The council was forced to start again.35
Frustrated by the squatters’ success, the council resorted to more destructive measures. A ‘scorched earth’ policy was rolled out as council workmen were employed to gut dozens of houses in the borough. Floorboards were removed, sinks and toilets smashed, electrical fittings and wiring ripped out. They also turned to other forms of violence. A firm of private bailiffs were hired and carried out a series of illegal evictions in April 1969. A number of squatters were beaten up by the bailiffs, many of whom were sporting National Front badges.36 As one squatter recalled in an affidavit describing their eviction, ‘I was never served with any court order ordering me to hand over possession of the property to the Council or to anybody else. I firmly believe that there was never any legal steps taken to make us quit the premises.’37
The April 1969 evictions were a major blow to the Redbridge squatters, who regrouped and began a new series of occupations in June. They also made preparations in anticipation that the council would act quickly to clear them out. When the bailiffs returned to (illegally) evict the squatters, they were rebuffed and forced to strike a retreat. By this point, the struggles in Redbridge had reached the national press and a second unsuccessful attempt to evict the squatters on 25 June was featured in all the evening papers. Pictures of helmeted bailiffs attacking a house with bottles and bricks were greeted with widespread condemnation as public sympathy for the squatters grew. The squatters were interviewed by journalists from all over the world including Izvestia and Moscow Radio.38
The media spotlight and negative publicity forced the council to back down and negotiate with the squatters. In July 1969, a formal agreement was reached, though some of the squatters were reluctant to vacate houses they had occupied and defended. They denounced the agreement as tantamount to ‘surrender’.39 In the end, however, they voted two to one to accept the agreement. As a result, some of the squatters were immediately rehoused in permanent council accommodation, though it was only after a lengthy review that a number of empty properties were licensed on a short-life basis to homeless families in the borough.40 Several properties were handed over to squatters on similar terms in 1972.
The success of the London Squatters’ Campaign triggered a rapid expansion in what became a mass movement of sorts. A number of short-lived campaigns came into being in Notting Hill, Harringay, Wandsworth, Fulham, Greenwich and Lewisham. While the squatters in Fulham adopted a defensive approach which ultimately contributed to their eviction, their counterparts in Lewisham, the South East London Squatters, began negotiations with the local council in order to secure empty properties on short-term licences.41
The negotiations lasted months as the Labour minority on the council attempted to block a deal with the squatters. An arrangement was nevertheless reached in December 1969. According to the deal, only families on the council waiting list were to be housed as licensees. They were required, on the one hand, to leave a property when requested and there was no guarantee that they could be rehoused. The same families, on the other had, had their points ‘frozen’ on the waiting list for a council house so that they would continue to be assessed on the basis of their pre-squatting points. It was, in this context, that the Lewisham Family Squatting Association was established. By early 1970, it was responsible for over eighty