Squatting With Andrew  ## Metadata - Author: [[It Could Happen Here]] - Full Title: Squatting With Andrew - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/1c0b39fb-35b5-46e2-83aa-1155fe0e59e3 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Property Was Built On Violence** - Private property and land ownership were enforced through violence, war, and state power rather than peaceful agreements. - Andrew Sage argues that ownership is legalized violence that extracts rent and enforces exclusion via eviction and police power. Transcript: Andrew Sage But the thing is, for as long as humans have been humans uh long before the states existed and long after the states existed people are gonna stay where they want to stay they're gonna Be where they want to be right and although the state could come up with all these laws and restrictions and property rights all these things and criminalize a very natural human inclination People are still going to do it, right? And that thing that people do is now known as squatting, right? But it wasn't always so chastised and criminalised with that terminology. Before it was just, you know, you find a piece of land, nobody else is living there, you go and you use that piece of land to survive. So today we'll be talking about issues with land ownership, looking into its history as a resistance practice in England, and seeing where a politicized approach to squatting could Take us in the future. Oh, cool. Crime Thinks article on squatting was really helpful for this, so I'll link it in the show notes. Land ownership and governance are inextricably linked. Private property and land didn't emerge out of peaceful agreements, but violence. Wars of conquest, colonialism, slavery, and state repression have been the true foundation of these now considered noble and official property titles. What we call ownership today is just violence legitimized by law and it follows a very similar structure whether you're talking about feudalism, an empire, land inclusion, colonization. It starts with violence, it becomes officialized and then rent is extracted. This is not something that people took lying down, of course. People have long resisted it, you know, but this is why the government responds with the police and the armies to protect the landlords. And the people have criticized and have called out these practices. Thinkers like Ricardo Flores Magón and Alexander Berkman, Peter Kapotkin, Bakunin, all of these hammered home the point of the absurdity at the heart of land ownership. The idea that someone, they could just pull up somewhere, claim an area of land as theirs, and back it by soldiers and pieces of paper. Now anarchists are not in the business of fixating on just one system of domination or the other because they're very connected. You know, landlords and governments and all the other authorities contribute to the system of domination that we all live under. As Anders Kaur writes in Anarchist Squatting and Land Use in the West, land ownership and government use exploitation and manipulation in a similar manner. Where a landowner builds a fence, the government erects a boundary. Where a landowner charges rent, a government levies taxes. Where a landowner advertises a vacant house so as not to waste it as an income-producing property, a government encourages migration to those of its territories which are not producing Adequate revenue. Where a landowner evicts a tenant, a government wages war against a population. ([Time 0:05:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/58638680-21fa-46c6-b213-ea14cdab927e)) - **Landlord And State Mirror Each Other** - Landlord power and state governance mirror each other: fences vs boundaries, rent vs taxes, eviction vs war. - Anders Kaur's comparison highlights how private and state control both extract and exclude. Transcript: Andrew Sage In a similar manner. Where a landowner builds a fence, the government erects a boundary. Where a landowner charges rent, a government levies taxes. Where a landowner advertises a vacant house so as not to waste it as an income-producing property, a government encourages migration to those of its territories which are not producing Adequate revenue. Where a landowner evicts a tenant, a government wages war against a population. Right now in the United States, as we can see, the government is waging war not only against its indigenous population, its black population, but also its migrant population and a few Other populations. The list, unfortunately, goes on. James Stout Yeah, like the two are so tied, right, that like many parts of the United Kingdom, like as it was moving towards, like before we had a universal franchise, right, where people could vote If they were citizens and over a certain age, they had a property owner franchise, right? Like if you owned land, you could vote. Andrew Sage If you didn't then you couldn't landed voting yes yeah and in a sense that is still reflected in the way that the government operates today you know the landowners the capitalists they Still have far outsized influence over anyone else considering the the laws and the policies that our governments carry out yeah absolutely and this is really getting to the heart Of it because you know we may have had the abolition of slavery and the abolition of serfdom but in no way did the formal abolition of those things end exploitation at all it just continued In new and old forms. You know, without the police and armies and laws propping them up, private property would collapse. But those things still exist. And it is through those ([Time 0:07:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/56422023-9432-4a20-b7fa-0b92c4782c8e)) - **Postwar Squatting Filled A Housing Gap** - After WWII tens of thousands of British families and veterans occupied empty houses and army camps to solve housing shortages. - The state initially tolerated many squats because evicting veterans would be politically costly. Transcript: Andrew Sage You know, after the Second World War, it's no surprise to anyone that Britain was going through it, right? Whole neighborhoods were flattened, housing stock was in ruins. And for the six years while the bombs were falling, not a single new home was built. So people took matters into their own hands. You know, across the country, families and veterans began to squat because they came home from the war and they had nowhere to live. In Brighton, a group of ex-servicemen calling themselves vigilantes, led by the legendary Harry Cowley, started cracking houses for families. The spirit of it eventually spread like wildfire. And abandoned army camps, which were once meant for demolition, soon became makeshift neighborhoods. By 1946, over 45,000 people were squatted in more than a thousand locations. And I mean, the government was concerned this could only lead to anarchy. But faced with tens of thousands of people who had self-rehoused, the state didn't really have any choice but to step back. You know, direct action solved an issue that their bureaucracy couldn't solve. And the PR of kicking out a bunch of veterans from homes was not a line they seemed willing to cross at that point in time. ([Time 0:19:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1cd1e307-b42e-4415-8c5a-12e5dcd5c3cb)) - **Bangladeshi Squats Won Housing Rights** - Bangladeshi immigrants in 1970s London squatted derelict council blocks to house families blocked from council housing. - Organizers like Terry Fitzpatrick and the Bengali Housing Action Group opened Pelham House for 300 residents and later won re-housing. Transcript: Andrew Sage You know, you also had Bangladeshi immigrants that end up coming into the UK, particularly around the 1970s. And the issue was that single men couldn't get council housing unless they had a family. But they couldn't bring their families over into the UK without housing. So it was like a catch-22. They had all these rows of council flats sitting empty, rotten. And young men who wanted to bring their families over, can't bring their families over, can't get housing, what are they going to do? They end up squatting, right? Organizers like Terry Fitzpatrick, working with groups like Race Today and later the Bengali Housing Action Group, opened up derelict blocks to Bengali families. Pelham House, for instance, which was slated for demolition, was transformed into homes for 300 people by the end of 1976. Over a thousand Bangladeshis ended up living in East End Squats during that period. And eventually, through that taking that first step of direct action, they won. By the early 1980s, the council caved, re-housed the squatters locally, and they ended up getting to live right where they wanted to live. ([Time 0:21:22](https://share.snipd.com/snip/09d84633-79cf-47d7-b0e0-9e53108f0b2b)) - **Brixton Squats Built Radical Community** - Brixton squats became refuges for queer people and Black radicals, hosting communal homes, gardens, and cultural projects. - Railton Road housed activists like Olive Morris and evolved into community institutions like the Anarchist One-to Centre. Transcript: Andrew Sage In Brixton, the Gay Liberation Front took over houses along Railton Road and Mile Road, creating a network of communal homes with shared gardens. And as you can imagine, in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, you know, this was really a refuge, you know, for queer people dealing with isolation and hostility from their families, from their communities. These squats ended up becoming places where they can find love and solidarity and theatre and radical politics. Railton Road was also home to black radicalism, and black radicals squatting in that territory. Olive Morris and Liz Obie squatted there in the 1970s and resisted multiple eviction attempts. And their space evolved into the Sabah Bookshop, and later the Anarchist One-to Centre, which lasted until 1999. Now this intersection of black, queer, and anarchist squatting created Brixton's reputation as a frontline of resistance. Police harassment, racist violence, and neglect would boil over into days of rioting in Brixton in 1981. And amidst that chaos, the gay squads of Railton threw open their doors, even dragging tables and chairs into the streets for a kind of riot party. A mix of drag and defiance. And through all this, these squads allowed people to survive. They became places where people could experiment with alternative living. ([Time 0:23:03](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3702802b-afcd-4339-ba63-2e5ca7074e10)) - **Law And Market Killed Squat Communities** - Legal changes and council sell-offs in the 1990s–2000s ended the "golden age" of squatting in the UK. - Gentrification and adverse possession tightening displaced long-term squat communities and working-class neighborhoods. Transcript: Andrew Sage But this golden age of squatting kind of came into a decline by the 90s and 2000s. Gentrification and new laws had to tighten the screws. You know, streets like Barrington Square or St. Agnes' Place, which were once thriving squatted communities, were cleared up. You know, the law was changed to make quote-unquote adverse possession harder so long-term squatters could no longer as easily claim ownership and then certain councils like lambeth Council began selling off properties that it had ignored for decades evicting people who have been living there for decades raising families yeah ([Time 0:24:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2bb05291-ba50-48f2-a091-743956fc80b4)) - **Use Direct Action To Build Dignity** - Use squatting as direct action to create housing and mutual aid rather than only symbolic protest. - Build communal infrastructure that provides dignity and services for marginalized populations. Transcript: James Stout Yeah. I think about a lot in Greece right where anarchists have squatted places that were built for like the era when people could come from northern europe to southern europe to spend their Money and then avoid the winter and since you know general economic decline that doesn't happen as much and now people have squatted those hotels to allow migrants a dignified place To live right yeah that's a really beautiful project it's envisioning another world literally in the ruins of the old world exactly i think it's a really beautiful thing that people Do to to you know take that action to address not just to protest something but to say like the system which deprives people of even a safe place to live, even the dignity of being able to Sleep in it under a roof at night. Like we are going to take action that strikes at the roots of that to ensure that we give others the dignity that they deserve. ([Time 0:35:15](https://share.snipd.com/snip/103cf3df-d6a7-4c7f-97a6-2dbaa5d4fc2e))