Squatting photo exhibition at the ICA until Sun 29 Nov

Fri Oct 30 13:31:01 GMT 2015

New photography exhibition shows the tough 
reality of the now barely legal squatting movement

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/photography/new-photography-exhibition-shows-the-tough-reality-of-the-now-barely-legal-squatting-movement-a6695946.html
Squatting has withered since its 1970s heyday. As 
a historic show of photos opens in London, 
Charlie Gilmour wonders if the movement is ripe 
for reinvention in the new era of eviction, bedroom tax and homelessness
    * 
<http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/photography/http://www.independent.co.uk/author/charlie-gilmour-0>charlie 
gilmour      Wednesday 21 October 2015
36-Big-Read2.jpg

As a child, I dreamed of squatting. It 
was  hearing second-hand stories about my 
biological father, Heathcote Williams, that did 
it. The Free Independent Republic of Frestonia, a 
chunk of West London that he and others attempted 
to secede from the United Kingdom in the late 
Seventies, sounded like the most exciting and 
glamorous thing in the world. They produced their 
own stamps, manufactured their own passports and 
declared a two-year-old to be the Minister for 
Education. More to the point, they held on to 1.8 
acres of prime London real estate for years on 
end. You couldnt get away with that today.

A recently unearthed treasure trove of images 
captured by painter-decorator, photographer and 
artist Mark Cawson  aka Smiler  provides a 
rare and intimate (at times painfully so) insight 
into what might be regarded as the golden age of squatting.

By the end of the 1970s, there were an estimated 
30,000 squatters in London alone. When Cawson 
moved to the city in 1978 to attend Hornsey 
College of Art, joining their ranks was, he says, natural.

It was just a way of life at that time, he 
recalls. There were a lot of empty properties 
around. Not having the funds or the wherewithal 
to go the normal route, I started doing it with 
fellow students Hornsey way, then ended up in a 
huge ex-blind hospital in Muswell Hill. It was an extraordinary place.

Thanks to aborted redevelopment schemes  delayed 
by tough economic times  whole streets were left 
abandoned, so if you had a crowbar, you had a 
home  and London in the 1970s was a land of 
opportunity. Piers Corbyn, weather forecaster, 
housing activist and brother of Jeremy, remembers it well:

It was an amazing time. We had 600 squats around 
us in the area of Elgin Avenue alone. We squatted 
numbers 9-51. There were hundreds of us. The 
legality was that if you gained entry without 
breaking and entering then you couldnt be 
arrested for anything, and you couldnt be 
removed without a court order, says Corbyn, who, 
at 68, gleefully celebrated his most recent 
birthday in a squatted council redevelopment office.

And squatters were heroes as well as 
mischief-makers. Tony Allen, considered by many 
to be the father of alternative comedy, helped 
set up the Ruff Tuff Cream Puff Estate Agency, 
which over the decade  matched 3,000 homeless people with empty homes.

We broke into places and we gave them to people, 
basically, says Allen. (While breaking and 
entering was illegal, it was almost impossible 
for the police to prove.) We were just helping 
people have somewhere to live, he says. 
Everybody loves this idea of owning their own 
property and having a mortgage  but thats a 
death debt. If everybodys tied to maintaining 
the mortgage and maintaining the property, 
theyre fucked. Theyre screwed. Then they need 
work. They need money. They need to obey the 
rules. Squatting liberates people.

These pictures may suggest otherwise. But 
actually, squats came in all sizes. Some were 
mattresses-on-the-floor affairs, some cosy family 
homes, where the occupiers lived by the rules, 
paying utilities and council tax. Still, not all 
were so saintly. A couple of buildings got quite 
badly destroyed, says KLF hit-maker, music 
industry executioner, and million-quid 
incinerator Jimmy Cauty, who lived rent free from 1977-1991.

READ MORE

    * 
<http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/photography/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-cameron-defends-starter-homes-that-only-the-richest-can-afford-a6693751.html>David 
Cameron defends 'starter homes' that only the richest can afford
    * 
<http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/photography/http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jeremy-corbyn-confronted-the-tories-with-the-poverty-theyre-creating-at-pmqs-and-all-they-could-do-a6693756.html>PMQs: 
Corbyn confronted the Tories over poverty - and they laughed

There was a house that we broke into in 
Clapham, he remembers. It was only a small 
two-up, two-down. We felt kind of cramped in it, 
so we started taking the walls out. Then we took 
out all the floors and ceilings as well. We ended 
up with just a huge open space with no internal 
anything. It took us weeks to do it. It was 
totally impractical. We had to build little sheds to sleep in.

And obviously, he continues, if the building 
doesnt actually belong to you, then youre much 
more adventurous with what you do. The outside 
walls started bowing out because there was 
nothing to hold them in. Floors are integral to 
the structure of a building. I know that now.

Cauty became something of a removals expert. It 
was easy, he says. You only needed a crowbar. 
He tried five or six places before finding his 
dream home, a building on Jeffreys Road, 
Stockwell, that eventually became known as 
Trancentral, the KLFs quasi-mythical base of operations.

But life was not always a jolly game of anarchist 
Monopoly. That the Cawson archive has come to 
light is, in itself, something of a miracle. Half 
the people in the pictures, he recalls, are dead.

Or if theyre not dead, he says, Ive never 
seen them again. At that time, London had become 
flooded with Iranian heroin after the Revolution, 
which had a big impact. As did Margaret Thatcher and Aids.

Cawson was not entirely untouched by the chaos 
that surrounded him. I did get my first shot of 
heroin in a squat, he says, although he insists 
it wasnt the lifestyle that was to blame. Id 
always experienced problems, way back to school 
days, he says. Id never say that I was a fully functioning person.

Indeed, after a lifetime of struggles, by the 
mid-2000s, Cawson was burnt out. Battling drug 
addiction, tuberculosis and lone parenthood, 
salvation came via a drug recovery programme, 
albeit in a rather unexpected way.

A chance conversation at an addiction meeting led 
to his pictures being seen by top photographer 
Gareth McConnell. Through him came a solo show, 
now at the ICA. Its really given me a new lease 
of life, says Cawson, who, after decades of 
neglect, has picked up his camera once more.

Back on the streets, hell find life on the edge 
is sharper than ever. In London, the number of 
rough sleepers has increased by 79 per cent since 
David Cameron came to power in 2010. Many others 
are only a payslip away: according to the English 
Housing Survey, private tenants in the city are 
handing over an average 72 per cent of their income for rent.

And its not just landlords who are raking it in. 
Bailiffs are making a killing too. Thanks, 
largely, to rising rents, the bedroom tax, and 
cuts to housing benefit, tenants are being booted 
out of their homes at the highest rate since records began.

In London, the number of  rough sleepers has 
increased by 79 per cent since David Cameron came to power.

The picture is clear. As capital floods into the 
city, so the people are being flushed out. 
Figures obtained by The Independent this year 
revealed that homeless families are being moved 
out of their local boroughs, often out of the 
city entirely, at a rate of 500 per week. If ever 
Londoners needed an alternative to the violence 
of the housing market, its now.

Unfortunately, Tony Allens old tag  Squat Now 
While Stocks Last  has turned out to be 
horribly prescient. Squatting is harder than 
ever. Not that theres any shortage of houses. 
According to a recent report published by the 
Empty Homes Agency, there are 600,000 empty 
houses in the UK; 22,000 of them are in London 
alone. But since 2012, recycling these spaces has 
become an offence punishable with six months in prison, a £5,000 fine or both.

Non-residential properties can still be squatted, 
until eviction papers arrive from the courts. But 
activists claim the law against squatting 
residential buildings  brainchild of the former 
Conservative MP Mike Weatherley  has even 
killed. In February 2013, 35-year-old Daniel 
Gauntlett, a homeless father of two, was found 
frozen to death on the doorstep of an empty 
bungalow in Kent. To enter the house would have 
been a crime and, according to Squatters Action 
for Secure Homes (Squash), the new law was the nail in Daniels coffin.

Its tragic, but hardly surprising. According to 
data gathered by Squash, there is a noticeable 
and significant rise in the use of the new law 
during the winter months, demonstrating, they 
say, that the police are using it to force 
homeless people out into the cold. Evictions  
never pleasant  have also, the campaigning group 
claims, become more violent, aggressive and 
dangerous, especially now that squatters are commonly viewed as criminals.
35-BigRead1.jpg

Duvet day: Aarons Room (Notting Hill), 1980 is 
one of the revealing pictures by former squatter Mark Cawson now showing at ICA

Theres been a lot more violence against men, 
women and children from squats, says Phoenix 
Rainbow, an activist who has been on the scene 
for more than 20 years. Theres men breaking in 
and dragging people out by the hair. Its created 
a lot of prejudice against squatters.

And while it is not illegal to occupy empty 
commercial property  of which there is enough in 
the UK to create 420,000 homes  often, it has simply become too hot to handle.

Thanks to the booming market, properties are 
more carefully watched, says Simon, a recent 
graduate who started squatting when his job in 
the charity sector failed to match rent. Youre lucky if you get a month.

Some of Britains greatest cultural movements, 
from punk to rave, grew from these cracks in the 
city. Now that theyre being sealed up and 
cemented over, life is more about survival than art.

Squatters have to spend all their time 
squatting, says Jake, an activist in his late 
twenties who lives in an abandoned commercial 
property in east London. If youre getting 
evicted every month, you get in, you sort the 
building out, you get your papers, then youve 
got a week or two and youre just looking for 
buildings because you know youre going to get 
evicted. So it really can negate some of the 
political potential of the movement.

Even outside of the city, utopia is hard to come 
by. Rainbow was there when the bailiffs came, 
with chainsaws and dogs, to clear Runnymede Eco 
Village from its squatted plot of land in Surrey last month.

They had a big team of bailiffs just going 
through from one end to the other, chainsawing 
things and smashing things up, says Rainbow. It 
was an incredible community. There was 
everything: from an Anglo-Saxon longhouse that we 
built, through to proper old-style Celtic 
roundhouses, octagon-shaped houses, shacks made 
out of pallets and wood, a teepee powered by 
solar panels
 It was just old fridges and 
bicycles and cans and broken glass when we got there three years ago.

Despite it all, Rainbow sees sunshine through the 
storm. Its been very hard for squatting in the 
last few years but there is a vast wave of 
push-back, he says. Theres a massive housing 
movement building. A tidal wave is coming.

In some parts, it has reached land. Across 
London, squatters and tenants have been forming 
alliances against councils and developers. 
Indeed, as development blight continues to uproot 
communities  renters and squatters alike  its 
becoming hard to tell one group from the other. 
Even legal squatting has become a political act.

Focus E15  a group of young mothers living in a 
homeless hostel in Newham  rose to fame this 
time last year when, rather than allowing 
themselves to be evicted and sent as far away 
from their families and friends as Manchester, 
they occupied a disused block of flats on the 
nearby Carpenters estate. Embarrassed by the 
media attention, Newham Council eventually agreed 
to house 40 people on the estate. This, said 
founders Jasmine Stone and Sam Middleton at the 
time, is the beginning of the end of the housing crisis.

More recently, at Sweets Way, an estate in north 
London, activists and squatters fought alongside 
social and private tenants down to the very last 
man. As in so many of these cases, residents were 
being evicted en masse to allow the owners  
Annington Homes in this instance  to redevelop the site.

The whole estate was covered in piles of 
peoples belongings they couldnt bring with 
them, says Liam, an activist who was there from 
the start. The few remaining families were, he says, scared and demoralised.

All we did as activists was raise the sense of 
possibility, says Liam. I told some stories 
from Focus E15 and the work wed done in Newham 
and it was like things just flipped. A group of 
about 20 residents went right across the road to 
Barnet Homes and blockaded the front of the 
office that day and all managed to get slotted in 
for meetings with senior staff that afternoon. I 
was utterly blown away by it. People just became 
so militant about it so quickly.

The occupation that followed lasted more than six 
months and the end, when it finally came, threw 
the harshness of the housing market into stark 
relief. Social cleansing, as wheelchair-bound 
father of four Mostafa Aliverdipour discovered 
when High Court enforcement officers smashed in 
his windows and dragged him out of his flat, is no empty phrase.

At the very least, every redevelopment project 
in London and maybe beyond is going to be 
thinking about the things that weve done when 
they put their next bids in, says Liam. The 
associated legal costs [for them] were in the 
tens if not the hundreds of thousands.
36-Big-Read5.jpg

Dan, Dixon House (Latimer Road) 1979 (by Mark Cawson)

As the housing crisis intensifies, the skills of 
squatters, such as eviction resistance, are going 
to become more and more important, adds activist 
Jake. Eviction resistance used to be the 
preserve of squatters, but evictions have been 
massively on the rise over the last few years. 
Theres been not only an obvious need but a 
desire from groups of residents to come together 
and start learning some of those skills from squatters.

Their detractors would have you believe that 
squatters spend their days depriving people of 
their own homes. No mention of how often the 
opposite can be true. For  while much has 
changed since Smilers 1970s  squatting is now, 
as it always was, a simple response to a serious problem.

As Focus E15 puts it: These homes need people. These people need homes.

Smiler: Photographs of London by Mark  Cawson is at the ICA until 29 November
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