HISTORY OF SQUATTING IN THE UK

From Aaron's reports (@aaronlakoff)

Jim is a resident of London, England, and a long-time organizer with the Advisory Service for Squatters, A.S.S. Here he speaks about the history of squatting in the UK, going as far back as the 1300's. This interview looks at squatting's relationship to the anarchist movement in the UK, the changing legal framework around squatting, and squatting within a framework of other social movements in the country.

The Advisory Service For Squatters is a collective of unpaid workers who have beenrunning a daily advice service for squatters and homeless people since 1975. It grewout of the former Family Squatters Advisory Service, which was founded in the late 1960's. ASS publishes The squatters Handbook, the twelfth edition of which is the current one, and has sold in excess of 150,000 copies since 1976. ASS offers advice on how to squat, legal help to squatters and helps fight evictions and challenge police abuse of the homeless.


READ THE INTERVIEW HERE
or just listen to the interview via radio4all.net

Images via the UK Squating Archive

SQUADSPACE SQUATTERS' HANDBOOK

SquatSpace is an Australian collective of artists and activists.
Want to know more?

The Squatters' Handbook is a resource for homeless people. It provides practical and legal information required by those seeking to find housing for themselves in abandoned buildings. The book does not seek to incite "illegal" activities (trespass is a criminal offence in NSW) but to provide essential information to people who might need it. Squatting has always been a tactic for finding housing in urban areas, all around the world. With the burgeoning real-estate investment market in Sydney, rental properties for low-income earners have become unaffordable in the last ten years. At the same time, the waiting list for public housing grows longer, while the state government sells off its available housing stock to developers. The Squatters' Handbook merely provides information to those already inclined to seek their own solutions in this unfriendly social environment.

Squatters' Handbook Chapter 1

Why Squat? Why Not?
Are you being squeezed out by ridiculously high rents and the gentrification of cities? Tired of waiting for disinterested governments to come to your assistance? Fed up with sleeping in parks/bus shelters/friends’ lounge room floors? Want to create and control your own living space? Take matters into your own hands — Go squat! There have been squatters for as long as the concept of owning land has existed: squatting on land that legally belongs to someone else takes place all over the world. There are probably as many reasons for squatting as there are people who squat — here are just a few of the things that motivate them.

Unaffordable rents
Despite government policies aimed at promoting ‘affordable’ housing, it’s clear that the number of low-income people able to afford housing is rapidly decreasing. The cost of private rental accommodation is increasing exponentially, pushing many low-income earners away from the areas in which they and their friends live. The private rental market is largely deregulated and tenancy laws afford low-income earners little protection from the increasingly exorbitant rents demanded by landowners and their real estate agents. It’s profit margins that count. Look at the scale of urban gentrification in Sydney at the moment — it doesn’t look like abating in the near future does it? Relax. It’s only natural — the strong over the weak. One day, when you can afford to purchase property of your own, you will understand. You too will give the gift of rental accommodation to someone who has enough money to afford it but not enough to return the gift. And they will give you the security you need for further speculation in real estate. Everyone’s a winner!

Why Wait Endlessly for Handouts?
Public housing once may have been an alternative. But with waiting lists as long as they are, and with waiting time of up to 12 years, government housing is not really a viable option for many. As governments become visibly less interested in housing low-income people — by selling Department of Housing land to private developers, cutting back on spending for new housing, outsourcing their role to private contractors in ‘community housing’ — it becomes more blatantly obvious that to rely on their goodwill to satisfy your housing needs and wants is a ploddingly dangerous mistake. People used to squat government-owned buildings before any others because it was thought there was more room to negotiate with ‘public’ authorities with a ‘conscience’, than with ‘private’ property speculators and companies who were more obviously concerned with ‘making money’. Now there are no doubts that such a comforting distinction cannot be maintained. What is ‘public’ space and what is ‘private’ space? They seem to have melded and colluded some time ago, and if they are keeping any secret it is this: welcome to a world without clear borders where power is much more diffuse and consumption (of goods, services, information) is all-encompassing.

If you can’t afford to purchase private property — or simply don’t want to assist private property owners to purchase more property by paying them excessive rent — there is no need to wait for the private rental market and/or the government to provide a solution to your housing needs. There are hundreds of houses/buildings left empty right now while people who are in need are left homeless or live in substandard and unaffordable accommodation. Help yourself and solve your own housing problems — squat in these buildings before the owners let them rot!

Maintain your Independence
Squatting allows you autonomy. Despite the ‘threat of eviction’, squatting actually gives you a high degree of control over where and how you choose to live. It enables you and the others that you squat with to learn a great deal about how to repair a building and organise your living space according to your individual and collective desires — a privilege usually reserved for owners of private property. And when you create that kind of autonomy you tend to actively participate in maintaining it, rather than simply waiting for the government / rental market to try and provide housing for you.

Town planners and ‘housing experts’ have long been perplexed as to why government programs to ‘house the poor’ in Western and non-Western countries fail to satisfy people’s needs for housing and community, while self-help squatter settlements around the world have been so successful. The answer lies in the autonomy that squatters create and maintain for themselves by taking control of their own housing problems.


Continue reading here

ANARCHISM IN AMERICA - DOCUMENTARY

Anarchism in America is a 1983 documentary, directed by Steven Fischler and Joel Sucher, and produced by Pacific Street Films. It has been re-released by AK Press to DVD. The film begins by explaining the filmmakers' interest in anarchism based on their involvement in the group Transcendental Students while in film school at NYU. The film includes interviews with influential anarchists Murray Bookchin, Paul Avrich, Jello Biafra, Mollie Steimer and Karl Hess, and with poet Kenneth Rexroth. It also discusses the Spanish Civil War, the 1917 Revolution, the influence of Emma Goldman and the case of executed anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti.

The film labels anarchism as the only ideology that is staunchly anti-authoritarian, and discusses how anarchist ideals align with the revolutionary, independent spirit of America from rural communities to urban zones.

SQUAT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO PARTY

by Gabriela Dworecki - squat-for-your-right-to-party.info

The documentary follows Matraka Sound System, a Spanish crew located in Madrid, on their quest to find a location for a celebration of free party/squat party culture. Filmed in Madrid in the summer of 2007, nearly 20 years after the birth of the free party movement, this documentary offers a glimpse of the constantly mutating underground electronic music scene. It's history, challenges, achievements and evolution can be viewed, through the lens of other social and political movements that break from the safe and familiar conventions of their original subcultures. Situated in a context of continual repression and public resistance, the film turns a subjective eye on a growing divide from within the scene, where critical self-assessment calls into question the validity of theories, notably those of Hakim Bey, that have been historically used to justify the movement itself.

A MESSAGE FROM YOUR GOVERNMENT

THE WINGNUT ANARCHIST COLLECTIVE

"We Gladly Consume Those Who Oppress Us!"

The Wingnut is an anarchist collective house in Southern Barton Heights in Richmond, Virginia.

The Wingnut hosts all sorts of sober, all ages events, such as acoustic musical performances, craft nights, food not bombs, movie screenings, workshops, group meetings, copwatch, anarchist black cross etc.

About The Wingnut

SPANNERED

‘Spannered’ by Bert Random is an illustrated novel about free-parties, friendship, and dancing. A thousand-mile-an-hour stomp through the dark and grimy corners of 90′s underground rave culture, it's a fierce reminder for those who were there and a vivid taster for those who weren't.

With Bert and his twisted crew of mates we experience the peaks and the troughs of a very long weekend, kissing the sky while stomping our feet to mind-blowing techno and scrabbling in the dirt looking for what is left of our minds as unreality starts to bite. This is a punters-eye-view of the most fun that drugs, dancefloors, and full-on music can offer.

As well as a disorientating story, ‘Spannered’ also contains twelve amazing illustrations from Bristol and London street and fine artists, including Silent Hobo and Rose Sanderson. You can buy ‘Spannered’ directly from Spannered Books 

Chapter preview - Buy it here

SYMZONIA : VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY

SYMZONIA;
VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY
BY CAPTAIN ADAM SEABORN

This is among the first and rarest of the Hollow Earth books. In the early 19th century, John Cleves Symmes proposed that the earth was actually a set of five nested spheres, each with polar openings. He unsuccessfully lobbied congress to fund an expedition to the poles to investigate this theory. This novel, based on Symmes' theories, was published in 1820. Some believe that Symmes was the author, but this has not been established beyond a shadow of doubt.

Probably the first US utopian science fiction novel, Symzonia is also a classic sea yarn. The narrator, Mr. Seaborn, initiates just such an expedition as Symmes dreamed of. With a special high-tech paddle boat, built with no metal to avoid magnetic effects, Seaborn sets out on a voyage into uncharted southern waters. Conflict is provided by a mutinous Mr. Slim, who proves to be Seaborn's nemesis. Eventually the ship penetrates into the Antarctic hole, and voyages deep into the inner surface of the earth, which Seaborn claims for the US and calls 'Symzonia'. They encounter a utopian society, run by a benevolent aristocracy, which has long since banished all of their misfits to a distant colony, and possibly the outside Earth. The Symzonians have advanced airships, boats with jet propulsion, flame-proof cloth woven from spiderwebs, and a mysterious weapon of mass destruction. Eventually, they expel Seaborn and his crew back to the exterior world. Due to a series of accidents, all material evidence of Symzonia is lost on the return voyage, and Seaborn is swindled out of his profits.

Continue reading.. or grab it here

THE ACTIVIST'S HANDBOOK

"1000 Ways to Politically and Socially Activate Your Life"

It is time for people to become more active politically, socially and culturally. It is not enough to spend your entire life waiting to be entertained by the political rhetoric.

>> activistshandbook.wordpress.com

I love #125!
"Change the way you see your free time, don’t be dependent on mass media generated entertainment to fill the void in your life."

SURFING THE WASTE

FREEGANISM

"One person's trash is another's treasure"

Follow a group of dumpster divers on a musical journey through the back alleys of Montreal. Between song and dance routines about waste and the joys of reusing other people's garbage, five young adults discuss the philosophy of living off society's excess. Going through other people's garbage provides these young Montrealers with food, furniture, clothing and luxury items they could never afford if they had to buy them.

SURFING THE WASTE

A Musical Documentary About Dumpster Diving

produced by Paul Aflalo 

RESIST NOW - PART ONE

 

RESIST NOW!

part one

Excerpt from the RUPTURE zine, issue October 2007;

Take a close look at the world around. Our social structures are creaking: high rents and cost of living; mostly crap food and reliance on a small number of grains and the mass slaughter of animals; control and mismanagement of land by the few at the expense of the many and the alienation from nature this causes; mega-transport of goods worldwide and peak oil; casualised labour and reliance on service indus ries; the selling off and privatisation of basics such as health care, and unholistic chemical fixes; an inane political circus of personality jocking with limited voting and no real mandate for government, with corporations and arms dealers/the military running the show from behind the scenes – manipulating class, race and gender for maximum control and profit.

Look forward to: ID cards, tagging and movement restrictions, nano-tek and genetic mother-fucking.

The background to this is pollution and destruction of our basic necessities of water and air, and rapid species loss and ecological armageddon rapidly taking hold of our fragile eco-system due to industrialisation and hyper-consumption.

What are those here who have recognised the situation to do?

Some solutions are already at hand and need to be acted upon without delay:

1) Recognise that other people can’t sort things for us and that the free market will not solve the problems it has created.

2) Two strands of action running simultaneously are required, one without the other won’t work – these are resistance (direct action) and sustainability (living lightly):

a)   Form a housing co-op and a workers co-op with a few friends/like-minded accomplices, this enables you to dip the vast and probably temporary funds of cash out there to get sorted. Get some land and/or property in order to have a base of operations and a small island of security.
b)   Get the kit together you will need to survive off the grid, ie alternative technology, tools, seeds, manuals, a crew.
c)   Grow your own and realise that with the present population you’ll mostly likely have to be vegan as animals/animal feed takes up too much space and uses more energy than it puts out (and hey, all life is equal).
d)   Get educated on the history of resistance and adapt effective techniques to fuck up the parts of the system you apply yourselves to. This will involve leaving behind much that now seems familiar and constant, and will entail great risk if we intend to be thorough and successful.
e)   Pass on useful knowledge and share skills. Your closest allies will be direct experience and a willingness to learn and act quickly.

The alternatives are to: ignore the problems and get fucked up while patting each other on the backs for being oh-socool, while in real terms doing nothing to help; hope for a tekno miracle and/or disease and economic-electrical collapse; wait for the UFOs to come and rescue us...

More info: catalystcollective.org; schnews.org.uk; pfaf.org; vegansociety.com; 325collective.com; omnipresence.mahost.org/inttxt.htm

I would never make a good vegan, that is my nature. But I am in for the rest! 

PERMANENT VACATION

How I Spent My Permanent Vacation

 First of all, and most importantly, there just isn't any other feeling that can compare with the sensation of complete freedom and self-determination. I wake up in the morning, when I want to, and make plans to do things that day—to do what I want to. Nobody can buy a beautiful sunny day away from me at seven dollars an hour. If I suddenly have a new inspiration or idea, I can pursue it spontaneously without having to worry about how it will reflect on my future employment. I'm free to suddenly go on tour with my favorite band, to accidentally run into an old friend and spend the day catching up on lost time, or to stay home all day and write the first chapter of a novel if I am moved to. So my life contains a great deal more diversity and spontaneous opportunity than it would otherwise. And because I don't have to do the same thing over and over every day, all day (for example, sell real estate, wait tables, or program computers), I can do enough different things to keep everything fresh and exciting. 

...

Full text here

BY CRIMETHINC

DESERT AUTONOMOUS ZONE

Survivalism meets the counterculture

Life on the mesa

 Somewhere in the northern New Mexico desert, a grizzled gardener called Robbie is praising the prickliness of his home. "The cops don't like to come out here," he says proudly, "and this place is built on being left alone by the authorities. People say to the government, 'Fuck you. Chinga tu madre. We don't want your government, and you can get out of here.'"

Robbie is a folksinger, a self-described "middle-aged hippie," and one of the rich cast of characters who populate Off the Grid, a film now playing the festival circuit that will make its New York debut at Lincoln Center on August 16. Jeremy and Randy Stulberg, a brother and sister team, originally set out to make a documentary about U.S. citizens living abroad. Then they discovered a tribe of expatriates here at home, fleeing the American mainstream in a way that only deepened their American identity. The Stulbergs filmed them instead, with riveting results.

In 15 square miles of abandoned land, about 400 misfits—aging hippies, disillusioned veterans, teenage runaways—have built a community where no one cares if you smoke pot, fire your rifle all day, let your kids drive your car, or walk around naked in the desert heat. It's a landscape of beat-up old trailers, shacks jerry-rigged from recycled materials, solar panels, little farms, greenhouses, and at least one tipi. "Where I live is the last remaining land of America that is left," says Dreadie Jeff, another Mesa resident. "You can do what you fucking want there."

The government in question mostly keeps out of his way. Hardly anyone seems to want the Mesa people's land -- the Stulbergs heard several mutually exclusive explanations for who, if anyone, technically owns it -- and the citizens of the closest town, 25 miles away, seem willing to stay out of the Mesa's hair if the desert folk will stay out of theirs. But the authorities do fly helicopters over the area, scouting for marijuana growers, and if they think they spot some pot they'll send in the cops. According to Dreadie Jeff, they don't always bring warrants.

Article here

 

AKASHIC RECORD OF THE ASTRAL CONVENTION

In 1987 Hakim Bey invited several friends and allies to astrally project to Antarctica for a convention. Afterwords, visitors sent their accounts to Bey and he compiled them into this zine. The Akashic Record of the Astral Convention. This collection was originally sent only to the contributors and has never before been reprinted. It features lost works by: Coil, Hakim Bey, Shirley MacLaine, James Koehnline, Ivan Stang, Feral Faun (aka Apio), Reverand Crowbar (aka Susan Poe) and Trevor Blake.

INTRODUCTION (excerpt from the zine)

This is the record of the AAAZ, the Antarctic Astral Autonomous Zone, that occurred on the night of August 31st - September 1st, 1987.

Hakim Bey is the author of Temporary Autonomous Zone. It's a cultural milestone for a wide variety of subversives from anarchists, occultists, vandal artists, and freaky festival people. The main idea of TAZ was to create exactly what it sounds like TAZ is about: creating places that serve as alternative realities to the prevailing system of control. Specific times and spaces designated to let chaos free, and allow psychological and social mechanisms to self regulate and mutate beyond the confines of so-called consensus reality.

The focus is on having individuals find and establish meaning on their own terms. Creating a TAZ requires face to face interaction and dialog, in a sense, creating an art form which is impossible to ever fully record or understand. In the void where stagnancy and boredom once ruled, wild fantasies called real life take root. The elusive genuine article, with no possible televised reenactments.

Before TAZ's thought virus would reach the anti-capitalists and the rave scene as it did in the 90's, many of the people who recognized the value of Bey's work were few and far apart. Mail order culture was the primary mode of communication with the underground for many people in the 80's. The postal world seen within the pages of High Weirdness by Mail by Ivan Stang has now mostly migrated to cyberspace, where many of these fringe cultures have exploded into bonafide phenomenas. In the meantime, the mutants who were plugged into the paper trail of fresh ideas were yearning for an opportunity to encounter a TAZ. This meant finding a 'Zone' which was totally unexpected.

It was decided to meet astrally or in dreams, at a specific sacred space in Antarctica. Bey sent invites out to his network, and arranged for everyone who participated to send him their experiences, which he would then compile and send back out. What you end up with is an compilation of rare works by an all-star cast of individuals who comprised the occulture before there was a word for it. In this instance, the media created here facilitated a syncing up of communal experiences, and was an essential component of the AAAZ, yet not the AAAZ in itself.

The objective reality of astral projection is inconsequential to the AAAZ. What is of importance is the narrative, lives encouraged to be lived mythically, drawing those lives together in the process. Then again, for those who do entertain astral experiences as accepted facets of reality, the AAAZ was most likely one of the earliest documented records of shared lucid dreams and consciousness. It is historically important for occultists, and personally fulfilling for those who got to participate in it.

READ IT HERE 

RECLAIM THE STREETS

Bonus features include a 4 minute musical documentary featuring images taken from the ’97 parties organized by Desert Storm in Sheffield, Bristol and Oxford. Musical and ecological activists, Reclaim The Streets (RTS) take the philosophy of the reappropriation of public space through cultural resistance to another level. They swept across the UK with street parties in Manchester, York and Oxford, and also appeared in cities like Tel-Aviv, Sydney, and Helsinki, among others.

DOWNLOAD PAGE
(updated 08/07/2013)

013

"Zijn wij gedoemd om nooit autonomie mee te maken, nooit zelfs maar een moment lang op een uitsluitend door vrijheid geregeerde bodem te staan? Moeten we wachten tot de hele wereld bevrijd is van politieke overheersing voordat één van ons weet wat vrijheid is?"

De TAZ (temporary autonomous zone) is een perfecte tactiek voor een tijdperk waarin de staat alomtegenwoordig is en tegelijkertijd vergeven van de barsten en lege ruimten. De TAZ is de opstand binnen ieders bereik, het feest dat elk moment kan losbarsten."

Our little revolution: 013 soundsystem

WERAUTONOMOUS

"The TAZ (temporary autonomous zone) is like an uprising which does not engage directly with the State, a guerilla operation which liberates an area and then dissolves itself to re-form elsewhere/elsewhen, before the State can crush it."

COMMUNE

In the late 1960s, a few free thinkers cobbled together donations, primarily from Hollywood, to buy 80 acres at the end of a dirt road in Siskiyou County, California: Big Bear Ranch, a commune with the motto "free land for free people." Archival footage, photographs, documents and news articles, and interviews with people who lived or still live there tell the commune's history: the cold first winter, women and men doing the same work, communal decision making, emerging environmental politics, free love and family formation, child rearing and memories of growing up there, a late 70's crisis with a cult-like group that moved in, and assessment by those grown old of what Big Bear meant.

http://rapidshare.com/files/174676131/Commune_-_2005.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/174689116/Commune_-_2005.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/174700647/Commune_-_2005.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/174712024/Commune_-_2005.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/174832810/Commune_-_2005.part5.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/174845705/Commune_-_2005.part6.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/174858844/Commune_-_2005.part7.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/174872554/Commune_-_2005.part8.rar

WHAT IF..

Approaching "the spot", walking so fast you might be floating.
The thumping of the music in tune with the beat of your heart.
The excitement of knowing, the thumping is growing, louder and louder, and...
You're going to a rave!
Like a child with your mischievious grin,
Pig tails flowing in the wind.
Toys in pocket, money in hand,
Now it is just around the bend.
Checking your watch every minute,
To make sure that you have waited long enough,
Like when you were eight,
Holding your mother's hand
On your way to Disneyland.
Prepared to sweat, prepared to dance,
Whatever else is just by chance.

Now you're in and people everywhere.
Distorted visions and laser lights,
Smiling faces, amazing sights.
The music lifts you off the ground,
Who are these faces from different places?
You never, ever, want to leave.
What if it was like this everywhere,
What if...
You never went to a rave?
I say, you may as well just dig your grave!

by Cary anno 1995

posted while driving to a free with kierewiet, beuken bv and many more.. just perfect.

RAVE & NO SYSTEM

The life on the road, traveling from Teknival to Teknival in Europe.

This film is a collaboration between Zena Merton (camera & editing), Zain Aziz (music) & Vinca Peterson (Camera and Directing).
Also by Vinca Petersen
No System

Vinca Petersen's life is that of a modern nomad: "Different people's lives are based around different things, ours are based around music." For a couple of years she has been cruising through Europe with a group of young people in convoy, organising illegal music events and raves. She lives with her friends in old vans, buses or caravans. These young nomads are constantly searching for wasteland or abandoned buildings to set up their soundsystems and pump out loud techno. No System is a personal document of this way of life. Petersen has photographed the everyday existence of these communities. The pictures are accompanied by her diary notes and collected ephemera describing the forms of autonomy and self organisation of the "tribes", explaining that these people don't want to rebel as much as to live outside the system.
This book presents a modern form of tribal life, where young people live together with their own rules. "Welcome to our way of living"

PUBLISHED BY: Steidl
FORMAT: Paperback, 7.25 x 10 in. / 144 pgs / 146 color
ISBN: 9783882436457 ISBN10: 388243645X
PUBLICATION DATE: 09/02/1999
AVAILABILITY: Sold out, hard to find these days.
A MUST HAVE.

www.vinx.co.uk