The Notting Hill Squatters Who Declared Independence from the UK

Tue Oct 28 18:01:22 GMT 2014

The Notting Hill Squatters Who Declared Independence from the UK
By Harry Sword, Photos: Tony Sleep Oct 28 2014
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/republic-of-frestonia-tony-sleep-032

Emacs!

A sign painted onto a building in Freston Road, 
Notting Hill, marking the Free Independent 
Republic of Frestonia (All photos by Tony Sleep)

  In 1977, squatters in Freston Road, Notting 
Hill declared independence from the British 
state. Facing eviction by the Greater London 
Council (GLC), the community figured the best way 
to evade the constraints imposed on them was to 
just free themselves of those constraints 
altogether. So they lobbied the UN and 
established a 1.8-acre microstate  The Free and 
Independent Republic of Frestonia  complete 
with its own postage stamps, visas and passports.

  The 100-odd citizens of Frestonia varied from 
actors, artists and addicts to normal working 
class Londoners and assorted bohemian flotsam. 
Playwright  and one of Londons first graffiti 
artists  Heathcote Williams was Ambassador to 
Great Britain. David Rappaport (the actor who 
starred as Randall, King of the Dwarves in Terry 
Gilliams Time Bandits) was the Minister of 
Foreign Affairs. A two-year-old child named 
Francesco Bogina Bramley was the Minister for Education.

  If the same thing happened today (which it 
probably wouldnt, because squatting residential 
buildings is now something you can go to jail 
for), police would likely move in with eviction 
papers and battering rams. But back then, living 
in abandoned buildings apparently wasnt seen as 
the abhorrent transgression we now know it to be. 
In fact, even Tory MP Geoffrey Howe  Margaret 
Thatchers longest-serving Cabinet minister  
wrote to the Frestonians expressing his support, 
saying, I can hardly fail to be moved by your aspirations.

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  Photographer Tony Sleep  who documented the 
period in his Frestonia photo series  was one 
of the microstates very first residents.

  "I was working with an alternative work agency 
called Gentle Ghost at the time," he tells me. 
"Notting Hill was full of all kinds of nascent 
counter-culture projects, which was why I moved 
there. Id split up with my girlfriend and moved 
into one of the squats on Freston Road as it was opening up."

  Before Notting Hill became a byword for 
gentrification  and the stomping ground of a 
weird mix of fund managers, Italian tourists and 
artisanal candle designers  it wasnt exactly a 
desirable area. Now somewhere a holistic pet spa 
could conceivably turn a profit, it used to be a 
hash-scented expanse of dilapidated bedsits and 
barren yards  the perfect breeding ground for a counter-cultural scene.

  "Notting Hill was incredibly lively in those 
days," says Tony. "The whole area was in a 
political turmoil of minority rights, race hate, 
pressure groups
 you name it. People wanted to 
experiment with different ways of living. It was 
so far away from the gentrified place that it is 
now, full of merchant bankers. A lot of Notting Hill was a slum.

"Frestonian entertainers would always attract 
hordes of kids from the local estates," writes 
Tony. "Mostly they despised the squatters, but 
they loved fire. Every few days some would set 
fire to dumped tyres or cars or rubbish just to 
watch the Fire Brigade turn up."

  The 1960s council housing boom, and 
accompanying high rise estates, saw entire 
streets of condemned terrace housing sitting 
empty throughout the rest of the decade and into 
the early-70s  a situation that helped to 
facilitate large scale squatting in the capital. 
However, as social problems from failed new 
estates took hold on the area, so too did 
tensions between squatters and the recently shifted long-term residents.

  With the local community, it was difficult, 
recalls Tony. Many of them were not happy  the 
dream didn't work out with those 60s estates, as 
we well know. Yes, it was nice to escape the damp 
and the horrible housing that we then squatted, 
but I think people were put out to see a bunch 
of freeloaders come in and take over their old 
homes. We had communal gardens. We were on the 
ground floor. They were 20 storeys up in a broken 
lift, looking down on their old homes.

  "There was also the class thing," he continues. 
"The area surrounding Freston Road back then was 
poor and very working class. It was an industrial 
area full of breakers yards... a lot of 
gangsters. There was dereliction and poverty 
everywhere. There was a big cultural difference 
between us and people who thought wed come in 
and stolen the housing that  in some ways  they 
would have preferred to stay in."

  Houses in Freston Road were squatted for four 
years before the idea for a declaration of 
independence was floated. Drawn up by Nick Albery 
 a cultural agitator and, later, a Green Party 
candidate for the area  the inspiration was the 
classic 1949 comedy Passport to Pimlico, in which 
an unexploded WWII bomb detonates, exposing an 
old document that declares Pimlico to be part of 
Burgundy and its residents honouree Burgundians 
 an identity they take to with determined, drunken relish.

David Rappaport, the Frestonia Minister of 
Foreign Affairs, lived in Frestonia before making his name as an actor

  "The GLC decided that they were going to kick 
out all the dirty squatters, knock down the 
housing and leave a field of rubble, says Tony. 
We werent very happy about that. There was no 
plan, no greater scheme for building alternative 
housing. They just wanted to clear the site.

  "Nick was the father of the whole idea, along 
with David Rappaport and Heathcote Williams. 
There was also a chap called Mick Saunders who 
wrote Alternative London, a counter-cultural 
compendium of all the stuff that was happening in 
the 1970s. Those four cooked up the idea. They 
rented a 16mm copy of Passport to Pimlico, set up 
a local screening for anyone who wanted to watch 
it and said, Shall we do this? And everybody 
said, Well, yes, I suppose we could. It was an 
expedient response, one that came out of threat. 
But it was also a great bit of theatre, and fantastic PR.

  On the 31st of October, 1977, independence was 
declared. Thanks to the subsequent media 
attention, the GLC found it more difficult than 
ever to broach the subject of full-scale 
demolition. Head of the GLC, Sir Horace Cutler, 
wrote a letter to the residents stating that if 
you didnt exist, it would be necessary to make 
you up. Nick Albery responded: Since we do 
exist, why is it necessary to destroy us?

"Miss Nazi were a local punk band who made the 
Sex Pistols seem sophisticated and restrained. 
They made little pretence of musical ability, but 
were cutting-edge when it came to upsetting people."

  There are certain things that every sovereign 
state needs, and the Frestonians were quick to 
get themselves up to international standards. 
They introduced postage stamps, for instance, 
that replaced the Queen with Gary the Gorilla.

  "There was a visa stamp; there were postage 
stamps; there was a little table on the entrance 
to Frestonia that would stamp passports, recalls 
Tony. People managed to send letters around the 
world using Frestonia stamps. God knows how, but 
they worked... they were actually recognised by the Post Office.

  Frestonias cultural scene was equally 
industrious. The Frestonian National Theatre 
(at the Peoples Hall, Freston Road) ran the 
London premiere of Heathcote Williams The 
Immoralist, while the Frestonian National Film 
Institute held regular movie screenings. In 
1982, as Frestonia celebrated its fifth 
anniversary, The Clash recorded much of Combat Rock at Peoples Hall.

  Richard Adams, a Frestonia resident, invented a 
coat of arms for the community, bearing the 
motto: Nos Sumos Una Familia, or We are all 
one family. Like any extended family, however, a 
certain amount of tension between residents was inevitable.

  "It created a dynamic kind of friction, says 
Tony. Everyone had an equal right to be there, 
so in a way you just had to get along. Generally, 
what we all had in common was that we were under 
threat of being chucked out and made homeless  
exactly the psychology you had during the Blitz. 
You end up with a community forging itself because of external threat.

  The thing about squatting is that there are no 
gateway requirements. There was no homogeneity to 
it at all; it was a complete spectrum of people. 
I suppose you could say that there was a dominant 
hippie element to it because of what squatting 
was at that time, but you also had people who 
were homeless for all kinds of reasons. There 
were a lot of people with drug and alcohol 
problems; there were a lot of people who had a 
history of mental illness; and there were 
ordinary working class people who just needed somewhere to live.

"The Apocalypse Hotel. Definitely far out along 
the punk axis, the inhabitants were compulsively 
creative, even though it usually meant wrecking 
things. The frontage of the hotel changed almost 
weekly, from camouflage to spattered blood-red, 
to detritus collage. Inside, staircases vanished 
overnight, walls were purely provisional and it 
was a dangerous place for the careless."

  Residents were consistently harassed by both 
the police and criminals in the area, the former 
wanting to bust people for drugs and the latter 
wanting to steal the supply. In fact, break-in 
attempts were so frequent that Tony resorted to 
stacking bricks next to his bed in case he ever needed a midnight projectile.

  Despite that aggro, the community forged on. By 
1982, Frestonia encompassed 23 houses containing 
97 residents, and the GLC had abandoned plans for 
a demolition  though were still determined to redevelop the site.

  In a bid to keep a hold on their home, 
residents set themselves up as Bramleys Housing 
Co-Op (all Frestonia residents adopted the 
surname Bramley, the idea being that the GLC 
would have to move them all as one family if they 
eventually kicked them out) and negotiated a deal 
with the Notting Hill housing trust.

  That step towards legitimacy essentially 
spelled the end of Frestonia, with a number of 
new residents moving in who were unable to stick 
to the ideals of the Frestonian nation. 
However, as Nick Albery wrote in 1983, it was 
still a small victory for the community, which 
had spent the better part of a decade battling 
the GLC and had now saved a small part of West London from a bleak future.

  Its a sentiment that Tony echoes: "The spirit 
of Frestonia is still there in a sense, because 
Bramleys is still there. And because we formed 
the co-op, we were able to have some input into 
what got built. So an echo of the old Frestonia 
exists
 culturally, its different down there. 
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