wates-wolmar-squatting-real-story

court of appeal.For several weeks, one area of dispute was to dowith that old chestnut, the tension between organisationand spontaneity. Some people wanted to laydown that the street meeting had certain definitepowers – such as deciding which people movedinto the street, for example. They were scaredthat chaos might arise if every house or evenevery individual simply made their own decisions.Others insisted that the street meeting neithershould, nor could, have any actual power. Theywere scared of the authoritarian bureaucracythat could arise if we gave too much power to themeeting. There was a great deal of argument anddiscussion and it helped understanding whenpeople saw the issue in terms of their fears ofboth bureaucracy and chaos and accepted thatwe needed both organisation and spontaneity.There has never been any articulatedresolution, nor any formal powers worked out forthe street meeting. But somehow it does exertpressure: most people do, on the whole, pay their‘rent’; newcomers have been dissuaded fromoccupying empty houses already designated foruse; disapproval of ‘anti-social’ behaviour has gothome and reconciliations have somehowresulted. It has been a very ad hoc, pragmaticform of organisation without authority.St Agnes Place has always been towards theanarchist end of the political spectrum, with aclimate of tolerance. Even at the time of wreckingsand confrontations, when we desperately neededthe presence of as many people as possible, noone was censured when they did not turn out.There seemed to be a conscious effort to alloweach person to make his or her own decision.In practice, crucial ‘decisions’ were made notat meetings but actually on the spot by weight ofspontaneous opinion. An example is theoccupation of No 85 on the day when the tenantmoved out and the Council wreckers moved in.The tenancy was in the lower half of the house,the upper half being empty. So, technically, wecould have squatted the upper half if we couldhave got in. But the tenant was a crotchety oldlady who was paranoid (understandably, consideringthe turmoil she had suffered in that blightedstreet) about both the Council and the squattersand she would not allow us through her flat. Wealso knew the wreckers would really go to townon this house. In the last one, they had sawnthrough joists and broken through the roof, as wellas tearing out the services. The previous wreckinghad been a half-hearted job; squatters had movedin within a week and had quickly repaired muchof the damage. So the score stood at ‘one all’.The question of how and when to move into thetop half of No 85 was crucial. Various plans weresuggested at street meetings including ideaswhich needed preparation before the day. Adecision was even taken to carry some of them outbut not implemented. On the day itself, a crowdof us gathered in the house next door facing thedilemma: move in too early and the police wouldkick us out; move in too late and the wreckerswould be in possession. In the event, we choseexactly the right moment. Until that moment,nobody could have said what would happen. Thearrival of police was ignored as was that of theCouncil’s Construction (sic) Department van (thewreckers team!). The moment came – somethingto do with the approach of the Council officialwho would let in the wreckers – when suddenlythere was no doubt and everyone surgedforward. Downstairs, the wreckers destroyedservices, ripped out floors, smashed windows andframes, and even removed the stairs up to thelanding window but no further because thepolice fortunately conceded that legally we hadto have access! We saved the top flat and, mostimportant, the roof. The whole house wasrepaired by squatters and is lived in again.This decision-making process was an eyeopenerto me. I had always believed in makingjoint decisions and being committed to them.This was another process – joint decision-makingin action.There has always been a conscious effort not tohave ‘key people’ or fixed roles. People do a taskfor a time while their energy for it lasts and thenanother takes over. It means that things do notalways get done. But on the whole the importantthings are done, and with more pleasure and lesssense of burden than usual.Fixed and traditional sex roles too are changed,sometimes just naturally, sometimes with consciousthought through women’s and men’s groups.Women can be seen repairing bicycles and cars,mending roofs and window panes. Men can beseen giving children baths and hanging outwashing. Women and men together write postersand negotiate with councillors. It is taken forgranted that cooking and housework are shared.There are other things I have learned duringmy time in St Agnes Place. One of them is how totolerate dirt and disorder, and things being out ofplace or unfinished. Keeping things ‘neat and tidy’is one of the props of the existing culture. It is astandard description of ‘well-behaved’ patients inmental hospitals. We just have to get it out of oursystem – and out of the system. There are thedifficulties of sharing too, like not having one’stools returned and learning how to return toolsand to be tidy when it is important: doing thingsbecause people want to or because they are needed,rather than because there are rules to follow.When, and by whom, the washing up gets done isno triviality but a symbol of freedom and organisation.Learning both what we, and other people,need; facing one’s fear in a confrontation with theCouncil or the police; getting on with it when youwant to do something and finding out for yourselfwhat can be done, practically or in terms of otherpeople’s sensitivities (the true meaning of selfhelp);accepting other people’s differences, andhaving your own accepted, dealing with someone’sfreak-out or your own: all these are a part ofliving in a community like St Agnes Place.This ‘therapeutic’ aspect of squatting isinseparable from the growth of new ownership ordecision-making structures. It is an integral partof the healing process of escaping the old cultureand the formative process of building a new one.The Physical EnvironmentThe attitude of squatters to the physicalenvironment expresses itself most strongly in theway houses are used and repairs undertaken.First, practical tasks are carried out as far aspossible by squatters themselves. People learnhow to do their own wiring, plumbing, glazingand guttering. Expertise is not rejected butdemystified and no longer used as an instrumentof control and bureaucracy. And second, existingmaterials are employed wherever possible. Themyth that it is quicker, simpler, safer, economicaland more efficient to scrap and replace the oldwith the new is challenged.The power of the ‘expert’ and the drive to usenew products are connected as both are manifestationsof our existing culture. The squatter’srelationship with the physical environment is notjust to do with mending one’s own living space butis a central part of the urban pioneer’s confrontationwith the existing culture. For instance, inour street, two houses were so badly gutted bythe Council to prevent squatting that theDistrict Surveyor put ‘dangerous structure’notices on them. Most of the joists had been cutout and the walls were therefore in danger ofcollapse. The Council had been ordered to putscaffolding around the houses to support them.At this time the Council’s decision on whether ornot to keep the street standing depended onHousing Corporation grants for rehabilitationand for a time these were withheld on theground that it would be too expensive.It was in this context that we decided to repairthe two gutted houses. They were not among thehouses even considered for rehabilitation by theCouncil as they were so badly damaged. Oneobjective was to demonstrate how much can bedone for very little financial outlay. The total costwas £900 compared with the Council’s estimatesof £3,500–£5,000, although of course we had nolabour costs.Once we start to look closely at the squatter’srelationship with the physical environment, weperceive more and more how this connects withthe way the new culture relates to outside society.In other words, we have to talk about politics.Lambeth Self-HelpThere is the politics of personal relationships, ofthe use of possessions, of the way meetings areconducted, decisions made and actions planned;there is too, the politics of doing your own practicalwork, of learning skills, using old materialsand mending buildings. But it is in its relationshipto conventional society that the characteristics ofthe new culture become most clearly political.In July 1977, the Council agreed to hand overa number of houses in the street to Lambeth Self-Help Housing Association for short-term use. Buta number of obstacles came up such as the questionof allocation. The Council was pushing forcontrol over the allocation of all places even whenindividual rooms became empty in communalhouses. There was also the question of the statusof St Agnes Place. The Council attempted torefuse to deal directly with us as a collective andto go through Lambeth Self-Help. Under the termsof the rehabilitation proposal we were all tobecome members of Lambeth Self-Help HousingAssociation. On the other hand, we were alreadya community and Lambeth Self-Help did not wantto interfere with our autonomy.Lambeth Self-Help is worth describing in detail.It started in 1971 as a family squatting groupand later was given short-life licences on houseswhich it renovated. In 1977 it was housing 250adults (mostly families) in 110 houses belongingto Lambeth Council and the GLC. All the peoplein its houses are members who are jointlyresponsible for running the Association.Members paid £1 per week per single person or£4 per week for families which is used to repairother houses and run the organisation. This wasits only source of revenue until 1975 when it wasgiven an annual grant from the Council and‘mini-HAG’ grants from central government forthe rehabilitation of short-life properties.The allocation of houses by Lambeth Self-Help is fairly remarkable. Every Wednesdaynight there is a meeting for people who haveapplied for housing. It is their own meeting andthey decide who will get the next tenancy. Apartfrom the applicants, it will be attended only byone or two existing members and a paid officer ofLambeth Self-Help to provide information.Everybody has to explain their needs and listento those of other people. They also visit eachother’s existing accommodation. Since people arelikely to have been attending for a long timebefore they get their own house, there will be amutual understanding of problems and asensible judgement can be made. It is a trulydemocratic process. It means that neither theCouncil, to its chagrin, nor Lambeth Self-Helpcan make direct nominations. The decision ismade by the people who are most affected.The Council does, in fact, indirectly influenceallocation since 75 per cent of people’who contactLambeth Self-Help are sent by its Housing AdviceCentre and its Social Services Department. But itis the Lambeth Self-Help ‘New Members Meeting’that allocates places. It is easy to see that such ademocratic organisation is threatening to thehierarchical controlling set-up that prevails inour society; and that the education in collectivitywhich it provides is an example to uphold.The outpost in the existing cultureThis issue of control comes into every reaction ofsociety to the new culture. It is the same withthe efforts to negate the collective organism of StAgnes Place. The Council has tried to avoid givingthe rehabilitation of our houses to Lambeth Self-Help, in the belief that another association wouldbe more authoritarian and easier for it to dealwith. Attempts by Council officials, police, andjournalists, to deal with ‘leaders’ has become awell-known joke in St Agnes.‘Who is your leader?’ they say.And we say ‘We are all leaders’, ‘We don’t haveleaders’ or ‘Talk to us all’.When we carefully designate ‘spokespeople’,they are immediately considered leaders.The concept of a non-hierarchical group is athreat to the established culture’s structure ofcontrol. That is why outposts of the new culturecannot be tolerated. Planning and healthregulations and allocation systems are allstructures of control. The idea that people canactually control themselves seems to be quiteterrifying. Any real encroachment on the systemof private property, or the control that needs tobe wielded to maintain it, is gradually squashed.The whittling away of ‘squatters’ rights’ by thecourts and the enactment of the Criminal LawAct (Chapter 14) are both parts of this process.How do squatting, the new culture and thereaction to it fit into a formal analysis which helpsus to understand our existing culture as a systemand to change it? Squatting is not, after all, at thetraditional point of primary struggle, ie production.So squatters are a sort of second-class revolutionary.Many squatters are in any case suspicious ofhardline revolutionary positions, finding themdifficult to apply to their own experience.According to traditional Marxist orthodoxy, itis the working-class who will change things andit is politically ‘correct’ to relate everything to theworking-class. People tend to be self-conscious andeven somewhat shameful of what may be relatedto the middle-class. Yet when one looks at a smallchanged society such as St Agnes Place this doesnot seem to be quite right as it is a largely ‘middleclass’squat in two ways. First, two-thirds of thepeople there come from middle-class backgroundsor work at middle-class occupations. Second, onepart of the campaign by the street in its strugglewith the Council is a middle-class campaign. Thus,we have used contacts with the liberal press whichhas focused on the planning and conservationaspects of the issue that are those most likely toappeal to a middle-class readership; and we havemade use of the law in the form of an injunctionrestraining the Council from demolishing the188189