had been left empty to profit from high holiday rents during the short summer season. The movement soon expanded to the mass takeover of service camps and, by October 1946, there were 39,535 people squatting in 1,038 camps in England and Wales. There were a further 4,000 squatters in Scotland.18
The government clamped down on the campaign, focusing in particular on squatters in London who had begun to occupy a number of high-profile buildings including a series of luxury flats in Duchess of Bedford House in Kensington. What became known as the ‘Great Sunday Squat’ was organised by members of the Communist Party who were successful in moving over one hundred families on 8 September 1946 with the help of the Women’s Voluntary Service, as well as police officers who carried luggage for the squatters. So many people turned up hoping to be housed that Communist stewards were forced to scour the neighbourhood for additional housing. Eight other empty buildings were found and taken over. Other would-be occupiers were moved to a building in Marylebone. A further two buildings were squatted the next day in Pimlico and St John’s Wood.19
The squatters’ own case histories provide a glimpse into the kind of housing insecurity they and many others faced:
‘Husband, wife, 5 children …
2 Rooms, one very small used as kitchen. All slept in one room.
Shared lav. In bad repair.’
‘Husband, wife, 2 children under 14, baby expected.
Room damp infested. Officially overcrowded.’
‘Husband, wife, 4 children …
Had two rooms, but one burnt out so living in one room. Beetles, damp and rot.’
‘Widow, 3 girls … Three rooms basement and ground floor.
Running with water and ceiling falling down. Slugs and beetles all over floor, climbing on tables and shelves. Rats.’20
While the actions of the squatters were generally well received in the press, and even celebrated in some quarters as an expression of English patriotism, the government took a firm stance.21 Possession orders were served on the leaders of the movement. The Cabinet also instructed the Home Office to draft a new law that would make squatting a criminal offence. At the same time, a more heavy-handed approach was adopted by the authorities. Guards were placed on empty buildings across London. Some houses were blockaded by the police. Food and other supplies including bedding were prevented from reaching them, though in the case of the squatters in St John’s Wood, an elaborate pulley system to deliver supplies from a neighbouring house was devised.22
In the face of intense pressure, the occupations in London quickly crumbled. The Communist Party backed down despite plans for a new wave of occupations. The government seized the opportunity, issuing a statement promising immunity from prosecution to any squatter who was willing to leave voluntarily.23 Efforts were also made to secure temporary accommodation for those who would otherwise be homeless. The plans for new criminal legislation were quickly scrapped. While there was some resistance, the squatters reluctantly caved in. The occupants of Duchess of Bedford House left on 20 September accompanied by a small marching band. They were moved to an Old Ladies Home in Hampstead along with other squatters from across the city.24
The squatted service camps were equally successful. Many were handed over to their occupants, though over time they were incorporated into the wider public housing system and used by social services to house homeless families well into the 1950s. As a series of reports produced by Mass Observation in the late 1940s and early 1950s show, the majority of the camp ‘squatters’ were not politically motivated or committed to the overthrow of private 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
