SQUATTING

 

See Also: THE COUNTERCULTURE; HOUSING; SQUARES Tolmers Square

The post-Second World War squatting movement started in Brighton. Anarchists and Communists were involved in it. Speakers Corner was used as a forum through which information about the practice was spread. The first house in London to be taken over was in Maida Vale. The Kenilworth Hotel in Bloomsbury was squatted by former military personnel.

Location: The Kenilworth Hotel, 95-96 Great Russell Street, WC1B 3LB (purple, turquoise)

 

Frestonia

In the late 1960s Notting Dale was one of the principal victims of the Greater London Council s London Box inner city motorway scheme. Much of the district disappeared under the West Cross Route, which was one of the few portions of the scheme to be built prior to its cancellation. The project had an adverse impact on what remained of the Dale. Many properties were left vacant and therefore came to be squatted.

The squatters in over 30 houses in and around Freston Road proved to be able to act in a co-operative and imaginative manner. Nicholas Albery had visited Christiana in Copenhagen. At his suggestion, following a plebiscite, they declared Frestonia to be an independent country on 30 October 1977. They requested that the United Nations should send in a peace-keeping force to prevent the local council from evicting them. The state appointed a Cabinet and issued its own stamps and passports.1

Location: Freston Road, W11 4BY (blue, brown)

See Also: DISTRICT CHANGE Covent Garden, Neal s Yard; LIBERTIES Passport To Pimlico; REDONDA; ROADS The London Box

¹. The actor David Rappaport (1951-1990) was the Foreign Minister of Frestonia. He performed in the revues that the community mounted. He went on to star in the movie Time Bandits (1981).

 

Hampstead Heath

Harry Hallows won squatters rights for a small portion of Hampstead Heath. In 2018 the property was sold.

 

Sid Rawle and The Diggers

The Hyde Park Diggers was a collective that derived its name from the 17^thC radical group that had been founded by Gerrard Winstanley (1609-1676). The Countercultural writer Richard Neville (1941-2016) termed it an ultra-hippy cult .

Sid Rawle (1945-2010) was born in rural Somerset. He was impressed by the self-sufficiency of the local smallholders. He moved to Slough, where he became a Communist Party official and a militant Amalgamated Engineering Union shop steward. He spent time in London, where he became the leading figure in the Diggers. The tabloid newspapers were to dub him the King of the Hippies .

No. 144 Piccadilly was a 100-room building. In 1969 it was squatted by a collective that termed themselves the London Street Commune, in which the Diggers were leading members. The action drew considerable media attention. It was ended by a police action, however, it helped to galvanise the squatting movement.

John Lennon then offered Rawle and the Diggers the use of an island that he had bought in Clew Bay off County Mayo s coast. Despite the isle s being storm blasted, the community survived there for two years.

In 1971 the Diggers helped to organise the first Glastonbury Festival. Rawle is reputed to have been the only organiser to have made a profit. He sold food from a cauldron, the contents of which were fruit and veg rejects from Bristol Market.

Rawle became associated with Bill Ubi Dwyer, the organiser of the Windsor Free Festival in Windsor Great Park. The 1972 one was attended by 700 people. It was held again the following year. In 1974 one was attended by 7000 people. The authorities suppressed the event, making over 200 arrests. In 1975 Rawle produced a leaflet that was intended to promote the event. This was in contravention of a court order. He ended up being given a three-month-long prison sentence, although he served only four weeks. He helped to persuade the authorities to become more co-operative. In 1975 a nine-day event was staged at the former Watchfield airbase in Oxfordshire.

In 1975 Wally Hope, the organiser of the Stonehenge Free Festiva,l died. From 1976 to 1984 Rawle was a leading figure in the event.

In 1976 he became involved in the TeePee Valley hippy community in North Wales.

At the start of the 1980s he established the New Age traveller Peace Convoy. He left prior to its involvement in the Battle of the Beanfield in Wiltshire in June 1985, when c.1300 police officers arrested over 500 convoy participants. The government s Criminal Justice Act made it far harder to hold free festivals. Thereafter, he based himself in the Forest of Dean and continued to be active in a less prominent manner.

Location: 144 Piccadilly, W1J 7QY. The InterContinental London Park Lane occupies the site. (orange, red)

David Backhouse 2024