including the South London’s Women Centre on Radnor Terrace in Vauxhall, the Crossroads Women’s Centre on Drummond Street near Euston and the Brixton Women’s Centre on Railton Road.66 These were spaces grounded in struggles around women’s liberation and, as such, they provided a radical milieu where new forms of resistance against patriarchal power structures, endemic sexual violence and other forms of oppression were developed.
These were also struggles linked to the various histories of gay radical culture in 1970s London and the questioning of queer sexual identities that emerged during this period. The Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was, after all, set up in October 1970 in a meeting at the London School of Economics. The GLF drew inspiration from various liberationist groups in the United States and was committed to a social and sexual revolution that was predicated, in part, on experiments with alternative forms of communal living.67
While the first incarnation of the GLF dissolved in 1972, the spirit of the original organisation was carried forward by local groups in London and elsewhere who were inspired by earlier GLF communities in Brixton, Notting Hill and Bethnal Green. In Brixton, beginning in 1974, members of the South London GLF squatted a number of dilapidated back-to-back houses on Railton Road and Mayall Road which were home to over sixty men and were later converted into a housing co-operative.68 They also set up the South London Gay Community Centre at 78 Railton Road, which opened in March 1974 and was evicted in April 1976. The squats were widely seen as a pragmatic, practical solution to the challenges and difficulties of living a straight ‘separatist life’. At the same time, they also represented an ‘experimental space where men with loosely shared politics, sexuality and investment in youth and counterculture came together’.69
The centre became, in its own right, a key site within the radical queer community in South London. It hosted a number of different groups and events and, until its closure in 1976, was part of an infrastructure of alternative community-based groups on Railton Road which included two women’s centres, an Anarchist News Service, the Brixton Advice Centre and a food co-operative on nearby Shakespeare Road.70
The development of the queer squatting scene in Brixton was, as the historian Matt Cook reminds us, ‘part – and partly representative – of a broader history of 1970s counterculture in London and beyond’. The Brixton squatters were, in many ways, successful in articulating ‘an alternative vision of queer urban life’ and they did so through a form of ‘direct action’ which afforded them a ‘degree of self-determination within the city’.71 And yet, these were alternative identifications and community formations that were part of an expansive history with its own exclusions and blind spots. These are stories that have tended to be colour-blind, overlooking the role assumed by communities of colour within London’s squatting community.
It was, after all, on Railton Road in Brixton in 1972 that Olive Morris and Liz Turnbell, members of the British Black Panthers Movement, squatted an empty flat. The first successful squat of a private property in Lambeth was 121 Railton Road. Morris and Turnbell resisted a number of evictions over the course of the next few months though, in the face of growing police pressure, they eventually moved down the road and squatted a council property.72 Once they had moved, a bookstore, Sabaar Bookshop, was opened at 121 Railton Road. It doubled as a meeting place and advice centre for local black activists. The flat above the bookstore was, in turn, occupied by a group of squatters linked to the Brixton and Croydon Collective. They were previously involved in a major squat on Evendale Road near Loughborough Junction and were part of Black Roof, an organisation that played an instrumental role in coordinating and defending black squatters living in Brixton and Clapham.73
The British Black Panthers dissolved in 1973. It reformed as a group of organisations including the Brixton Black Women’s Group, which was set up by Olive Morris and other women to address specific issues faced by black women living in the UK. It operated out of a squat at 64 Railton Road before moving to Stockwell Green where it became the Black Women’s Centre. The Race Today Collective was started in the same year and was based at 165–7 Railton Road (C.L.R. James later lived at the same address). It’s membership included Darcus Howe, Farukh Dhondy, Leila Hassan, Gus John and Linton Kwesi Johnson. Dhondy, in particular, played an important role in the BHAG, who were squatting flats across East London.74
Looking through the lens of critical race and feminist theory, it can be argued that various struggles over squatting in London were, in some ways, intersectional.75 Issues of race, class, gender and sexuality were all present and raised by different groups, though these entanglements were often ignored and the approaches that were adopted by activists across the city were largely non-inclusive. What is nevertheless clear is that the number of squatters in London had risen sharply by the mid-1970s. A survey in September 1975 estimated that there were 20,000 squatters in council properties alone. The figure excluded those living in GLC and private properties, and it was suggested by some commentators that the overall number of squatters in the city could be upwards of 50,000.
As the number of squatters across London grew, efforts were made to coordinate at a citywide level. The first edition of the Squatters’ Handbook was produced in 1973 by a group of squatters in Islington. The same year, the All London Squatters (ALS) was founded with a view to defending the interests of unlicensed squatters. The ALS soon clashed with the FSAS over their approach to direct action and their willingness to negotiate with local authorities. Similar tensions within the FSAS led to the dissolution of the group and its reformation as the Advisory Service for Squatters (ASS) in July 1975. The ASS is still active and continues to support both licensed and unlicensed squatters. It offers legal and practical advice to squatters across London and is responsible for the publication of the Squatters’ Handbook (now in its 14th edition). Other citywide efforts including the Squatters’ Action Council and the London Squatters Union were largely unsuccessful in mobilising squatters.76
The disagreements and tensions that erupted between squatters in the mid-1970s pointed to enduring questions surrounding what it meant to squat. It also prompted a series of legal moves that reflected shifting attitudes to the nature of squatting. A new era of legal ‘revanchism’ was ushered in which challenged the limited protection afforded to squatters in the civil courts. In 1972, this was extended to criminal law as the Law Commission began to reconsider the statutes on trespass. The Commission published its preliminary findings in June 1974 and recommended the repeal of the Forcible Entry Acts and the criminalisation of all forms of trespass.77
In the wake of intense criticism, a watered-down Final Report was published in March 1976. The report formed the basis for the Criminal Law Act of 1977, which represented an ‘extension of the criminal law in the area of trespass’. While new offences came into force and were punishable through prison sentences, neither squatting nor trespass was, as such, made illegal. The act made it easier, however, to evict squatters. A squatter who resisted a request to leave a property on behalf of a ‘displaced residential occupier’ or a ‘protected intended occupier’ could be arrested and evicted without a court order. Resisting court-appointed bailiffs was reclassified as a form of ‘obstruction’.78
In the late 1970s, London squatters were thus under sustained attack, legally or otherwise. There were countless high-profile evictions (Cornwall Terrace in 1975, Hornsey Rise in 1976, St Agnes Place in 1977). And yet, many organised squatting groups were remarkably resilient and were successful in eking out concessions, including the Street Group who managed to save a number of houses on Villa Road in Brixton which became part of a housing co-operative scheme.79
Determined resistance by squatters prompted a volte face by the Conservative Administration running the GLC. In October 1977, they announced an amnesty to all squatters living in GLC properties provided that they registered within a month. Over 1,300 properties (out of 1,850) responded to the offer. Some were given tenancies, others licences.80 The majority were eventually rehoused in other GLC properties. A number of squatting groups used the opportunity to set up housing co-operatives.
