Squatting in England and Wales

The Library House squat in London, 2009

The Square Occupied Social Centre, a now-evicted squat in Russell Square, London

In England and Wales, squatting – taking possession of land or an empty house the squatter does not own – is a criminal or civil offence, depending on circumstances. People squat for a variety of reasons which include needing a home, protest, poverty, and recreation. Many squats are residential; some are also opened as social centres. Land may be occupied by New Age travellers or treesitters.

There have been waves of squatting through British history. The BBC states that squatting was "a big issue in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 and again for the Diggers in the 17th Century [who] were peasants who cultivated waste and common land, claiming it as their rightful due" and that squatting was a necessity after the Second World War when so many were homeless. A more recent wave began in the late 1960s in the midst of a housing crisis.

Many squatters legalised their homes or projects in the 1980s, for example Bonnington Square and Frestonia in London. More recently, there are still isolated examples such as the Invisible Circus in Bristol.

Under Section 144 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, squatting in residential property became a criminal offence on 1 September 2012. Squatting in non-residential property may be a civil or a criminal matter, depending upon the circumstances, and repossession by the owners, occupiers or intended occupiers may require legal process or police action.

History

During the Anglo-Saxon period, before the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 (the other countries of Britain have different histories), commoners were able to grow crops and graze their animals, by a system of customary rights, on common land. Traditionally in an English village there were several classes of people. At the lower end were the incomers known as borderers or squatters, who would erect a cottage or a hovel on common or waste ground to house themselves and would pay rent to the Manorial lord or would work on his demesne several days a week. The building of the cottage was generally tolerated or even sanctioned under customary right. Initially these rights were respected by the Norman conquerors, but over time landowners started to enclose land and deprive commoners of their ancient rights. Farm labourers would lose the ability to feed themselves and were dependent on their Manorial lord for an income. Squatters were made homeless.

16th- and 17th-century

In 16th- and 17th-century Wales (following its legal incorporation into England with the so-called Acts of Union, an expansion in population as well as taxation policy led to a move of people into the Welsh countryside, where they squatted on common land. These squatters built their own property under the assumption of a fictional piece of folklore, leading to the developments of small holdings around a Tŷ unnos, or "one-night house".

In Elizabethan times, there was a common belief that if a house was erected by a squatter and their friends on waste ground overnight, then they had the right of undisturbed possession. To make it difficult for squatters to build, an act was passed known as the Erection of Cottages Act 1588 whereby a cottage could only be built as long as it had a minimum of 4 acres (1.62 ha; 0.01 sq mi) of land associated with it. The act was repealed by the Erection of Cottages Act 1775 (15 Geo. 3. c. 32).

In 1649 at St George's Hill, Weybridge in Surrey, Gerrard Winstanley and others calling themselves The True Levellers occupied disused common land and cultivated it collectively in the hope that their actions would inspire other poor people to follow their lead. Gerrard Winstanley stated that "the poorest man hath as true a title and just right to the land as the richest man".

Post-World War II

There was a huge squatting movement involving ex-servicemen and their families following World War II. In Brighton, Harry Cowley and the Vigilantes installed families in empty properties all around the country. In London suburbs and villages such as Chalfont St Giles, families occupied derelict camps and in some cases stayed there until the mid-1950s. As word spread, more and more people squatted until there were an estimated 45,000 in total. On 10 October, Aneurin Bevan reported to the House of Commons that 1,038 camps in England and Wales were occupied by 39,535 people.

Whilst the Government prevaricated, there was considerable public support for the squatters, since they were perceived as honest people simply taking action to house themselves. Clementine Churchill, wife of the ex-Prime Minister, commented in August 1946: "These people are referred to by the ungraceful term 'squatters', and I wish the press would not use this word about respectable citizens whose only desire is to have a home."

On 8 September 1946, 1,500 people squatted flats in Kensington, Pimlico and St. Johns Wood. This action, termed the 'Great Sunday Squat' garnered much media attention and resulted in five of the leaders being arrested for 'conspiring to incite and direct trespass.' The squatters left the apartments but did receive temporary accommodation. A sympathetic judge merely bound the squatters over to good behaviour.

1960s

The campaign for "family housing"

In the sixties, the publication of reports like the Milner-Holland survey on London’s housing in 1965, TV dramas like Cathy Come Home (first broadcast in 1966) and the formation of Shelter, a national charity campaigning on housing, helped prepare public opinion for actions that might directly challenge the seeming complacency of the authorities. In November 1968, a group of activists, some with experience of direct action in the campaign for nuclear disarmament, launched the London Squatters Campaign "for family housing". This was against a background of the Greater London Council (GLC) acquiring private tenements, which could lie empty for extended periods while plans were brought forward for new public housing or private redevelopment.

The campaign's first major test was in the east London borough of Redbridge. After facing down the forceful efforts of a firm of private bailiffs, and with media coverage playing "a major part", the squatters succeeded in persuading the council to concede the use of empty properties under licence.

In the same year, 1969, Rastafarians joined in occupying a street of derelict houses in Kennington, south London, St Agnes Place. A High Court injunction prevented the demolition and, after an attempted eviction in 1974, the street was run as a housing cooperative. The squatted street featured a Rastafari temple (visited on occasion during the 1970s by Bob Marley), and a pirate radio station Rasta FM (which was raided by Ofcom in October 2005). Lambeth London Borough Council did not obtain an eviction order for "London’s longest running squat" until 2005. Demolition was completed in 2007.

The "hippie menace"

What had seemed to be a "tide of public opinion .. . firmly in favour of squatters in Redbridge", later in 1969 began to turn with the publicity a surrounding the occupation of a number of privately-owned buildings in central London, most notably 144 Piccadilly, an empty mansion at Hyde Park Corner. Its takeover in September 1969 by the London Street Commune and assorted supporters, triggered an "open season for hippie-hunting and squatter-bashing in the press". Under the front page heading "HIPPIE THUGS: THE SORDID TRUTH", The People reported "drug taking, couples making love while others look on, rule by heavy mob armed with iron bars, foul language, filth and stench". The Times warned of Molotov cocktails being manufactured’ in preparation for a long siege. In the event, the occupiers of 144 Piccadilly were quickly evicted.

1969 had also seen the much quieter occupation by a small group of local anarchists of an hotel on Eel Pie Island in the River Thames at Twickenham. By 1970 the Eel Pie Island Commune had become the UK's largest "hippie commune".

St Agnes Place pre-demolition in 2005, London

1970s

"Not a movement"

In 1973, Ron Bailey published The Squatters (Penguin) in which he described what he and other housing activists insisted was "the basic human reason why squatters occupy empty property and challenge the housing authorities".

Despite provisions by Part III of the National Assistance Act (1948), which scrapped workhouses (established by the Poor Law 1601) and instead made it a statutory duty for local authorities to house homeless persons, Part III accommodation and hostels were overcrowded, under-funded, and generally in poor condition . . . Welfare departments used the threat of eviction or taking children into care in order to discipline such shelters, booting occupants onto the streets during the day, placing bars on the windows and locking doors at night, as well as refusing husbands and fathers permission to visit. By 1971, there were in excess of 21,000 people living in such conditions, in addition to 1.8m families living in accommodation classified ‘unfit for human habitation’; 3m families living in slums; and 2m families living in accommodation classed as ‘badly in need of repair’ (i.e. tomorrow’s slums).

Facing rising court costs when evicting squatters, local housing departments would gut their empty properties, rendering them uninhabitable by pouring concrete into toilets and sinks or smashing the ceilings and staircases. In London, however, it was the assessment of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch in 1976 that the local authorities generally ignored squatters unless eviction was pending, and that they provided "no real channels to help wean people away from the field". The Advisory Service for Squatters reported that they were getting referrals from social services, citizen advice bureaux, and even the police. Squatters recall Hackney Council inviting them to occupy "hard to let" flats.

The tabloid press, meanwhile, was portraying squatting as a political threat. What may have "started as a desperate resort by the genuine homeless", was now spreading rapidly at the direction of "extremist political groups" (Piers Corbyn, of the Squatters Action Group was profiled as "a Marxist") for whom "anybody's home" could be a target. While they were sufficiently concerned to infiltrate and monitor the squatting scene, this was not the view of Special Branch: squatting, they concluded, did "not exist as movement".

Various organisations purported to speak on behalf of the estimated 30,000 squatters in the capital (a majority of the 50,000 thought to be in the country as a whole): SAC, the London Squatters Union and the All London Squatters Federation. But Special Branch found that the "real activists" in these organisations were "limited to not more than about a dozen persons", and that the largest political tendency among squatters were the anarchists whom they judged to be neither a "unifying", nor – excepting those with "affiliations to Iberia or South America" – a particularly challenging, force.

Squatting did figure in contemporary anarchist thinking. Colin Ward, who in 1971 had become Education Officer for the Town and Country Planning Association, provided the practice with a philosophical and political defence in Housing: an anarchist approach (1976). At the end of the decade he was part of a collective that included, among others, Christian Wolmar, Piers Corbyn, Ann Pettitt, and Steve Platt, that produced Squatting, the real story, a compendium of articles offering insider knowledge primarily of the London squatting scene.

Of the squatters organisations founded in the 1970s, the east-London based Advisory Service for Squatters (1975) survives. The A.S.S. publishes the Squatters Handbook, now in its 15th (2024) Freedom Press edition, which both serves as a guide for how and where to squat and explains the legal issues involved.

Villa Road

At the beginning of 1973, people started moving into the Villa Road, a street due for demolition in Brixton, south London. In the summer of 1975, the squatters organised a street carnival; and maintained a cafe, a food co-operative, and a regular news-sheet called The Villain was published. With sides of the street occupied, there were about 200 squatters including, in different houses, people professing to be anarchists, British Black Panthers, feminists, Marxists and primal screamers. Beginning in 1976, the street prepared to contest the evictions, building barricades and publicising its struggle. After a High Court, judge suggested negotiation, the council decided to legalise the occupation, but only after demolishing the southern side of the street.

The barricades were taken down in March 1978 and many occupants of the remaining buildings formed a housing association called Solon, which renovated 20 houses with the council remaining as the owner. A park was developed on the demolished south side. The Villa Road squat was profiled in the 2006 BBC Four documentary series Lefties.

Tolmers Square

Tolmers Square in 2008, London

In 1973, Tolmers Square, between Tottenham Court Road and Euston station in central London, was occupied by more than one hundred squatters. Nick Wates and other students from the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment (at that time called the School of Environmental Studies) joined local residents in protesting the intended demolition of the square's Georgian terraced housing and its non-residential redevelopment.

The Tolmers Village Association was founded to represent the interests of small business owners, tenants, owners and squatters, allied against the council and the developers. A 1975 documentary film,Tolmers: Beginning or End?, written by Nick Wates and directed by Philip Thompson screened twice on BBC2.

The 180 squatters were eventually evicted but many of the proposals made by their 1978 Tolmers Peoples Plan were included in a revamped scheme, which resulted in the council making a compulsory purchase of the land from the developer and building housing instead of offices. In the squat, Alex Smith established the Alara Wholefoods & Community Foods, now, employee-owned, one of Britain's largest wholefood companies.

Centre Point and Frestonia

In January 1974 an umbrella group of Direct Action housing campaigners, including Jim Radford, Ron Bailey and Jack Dromey, organised a weekend occupation of Centre Point from 18 January to 20 January to draw attention to the empty office block as a symbol of property speculation amidst a housing crisis. Later in the same year, two streets of terraced Victorian cottages – Freston Road and Bramley Road – in the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, were broken into by squatters who rigged up electricity, water and makeshift roofs. When threatened in October 1977 with eviction, they declared the "Free and Independent Republic of Frestonia" with actor David Rappaport as its "foreign minister", and playwright Heathcote Williams as "ambassador" to the United Kingdom. The squatters later formed themselves into the Bramley Housing Co-operative which still owns the buildings.

Bengali Housing Action Group

In 1976, aided by Tower Hamlets Squatters Union and members of Race Today, a new-formed Bengali Housing Action Group opened up several blocks of flats in the Whitechapel-Spitalfields area to cope with the demand of Bengali families, many of whom had found themselves isolated in council housing estates. At its height, one of these blocks, Pelham Buildings, on Woodseer Street, was perhaps the largest squat in the country, with almost 200 families. With the National Front present in the area, the BHAG set up vigilante patrols to defend the community against racist attacks. The squatted properties were firebombed, and at one point the authorities cut off the gas.

When in 1977 the Greater London Council (GLC), overwhelmed by the numbers squatting across the city, declared an amnesty, granting squatters the chance to register and secure a tenancy, the BHAG drew up a map for the GLC defining a safe living area for the Bengali community. It was within this area, that the Bengali families were given tenancies, some in their existing squats.

Eviction avoided: Elgin Avenue, Seymour Buildings, Bristol Gardens

1977 Queen's Silver Jubilee street party, Bristol Gardens

In October 1975, terraces in Elgin Avenue in Maida Vale, west London, had been occupied 3 years before the 200 squatters, gathered behind barricades, learned of a last-minute evacuation and rehousing deal struck with the police and GLC officials. It was "a 'victory' of sorts", that their spokesman Piers Corbyn attributed to three factors: (1) a public campaign that "related to the whole housing crisis" so that support was won from the labour movement; (2) democratic organisation so that "everyone could join in and know that what they did was part of what everyone was doing"; and (3) a readiness to "defy the law" proving that prove that the residents were "serious and not squatting for fun".

Two other large-scale squats in the same Westminster City Council area negotiated settlements. Avoiding direct confrontation, but addressing wider housing issues, those who in 1975 occupied the Seymour Buildings in Marylebone, were successful, after more than year's negotiation, in gaining Council's recognition as a legitimate housing association. Today members of the Seymour Housing Co-operative "collectively own and democratically manage homes across 3 sites".

Save for a small group of converts to Sufism, Bristol Gardens, on the edge of "Little Venice", had not been a organised squat. Beginning in 1972, individuals had moved into the GLC-purchased houses, as the former tenants were rehoused. They might have avoided all but local media attention but for the presence of Arabella Churchill, granddaughter of wartime Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. In 1977, she and her neighbours took advantage of a GLC "amnesty" to become licensed, rate paying, occupants. Despite the arrangement, in September 1977, together with squatters in the former Elizabeth Garrett Anderson maternity home in Hampstead, they were subjected to an early morning raid by the Met's Special Patrol Group. Doors were kicked in but no one in the street was arrested, suggesting to some that the purpose was intimidation not law enforcement. By the end of the decade, 131 adults and 13 children were represented by a residents association in a deal with the GLC that promised, in advance of redevelopment, alternative housing in properties, uncommitted to waiting-list families, elsewhere in the city.

Huntley Street

On 16th August 1978, in what reportedly was "the largest police presence ever seen at an eviction", 650 members of the Special Patrol Group cleared squatters out of 5 blocks in Huntley Street, behind University College Hospital. 160 people, some of whom were evictees from previous squats, had moved into the former police flats in February 1977. Their occupation featured a hostel for battered women established with the assistance of Women's Aid (who in 1975 had themselves occupied an hotel in Richmond as safe refuge), and offices for Piers Corbyn and the Squatters Action Council. Corbyn summarised the squatters case in the slogan "No [housing] waiting lists while homes lie empty".

The police had reportedly infiltrated the squat with two undercover agents, posing as homeless. Corbyn and Jim Paton of the Advisory Service for Squatters were convicted of "resisting the sheriff" contrary to Section 10 of the Criminal Law Act 1977. In solidarity, 150 Dutch squatters "besieged" at the British Embassy in The Hague.

Security on the barricades had been relaxed, because an agreement had been struck the day before with Camden's new housing chief, Ken Livingstone. As per the agreement many of those displaced were given "short-term community" flats on a nearby estate in Kings Cross.

1980s & 90s

The 121 Centre was set up on Railton Road in Brixton, London, having first been squatted by the black feminist Olive Morris. Until its eviction in 1999, the 121 hosted events and in the 1980s printed a squatters newspaper called Crowbar and the anarchist Black Flag news sheet in its basement. Centro Iberico, originally a Spanish anarchist centre, was an old, squatted, school on the Harrow Road that, following on from the Wapping Autonomy Centre, in the early 1980s served as an anarcho-punk venue.

Elsewhere in England, there were sizeable squatting communities in Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Leicester and Portsmouth. In Bristol, in the mid-1980s, squatters had the Full Marx bookshop, the Demolition Ballroom and the Demolition Diner, all on Cheltenham Road.

Road protests such as those against the M3 at Twyford Down, M11 link road in London and the Newbury bypass in Berkshire used squatting as a tactic to slow down development.

In 1996, a squatters group in Brighton, "Justice? Brighton's Campaign in Defiance of the Criminal Injustice Act", set up a Squatters Estate Agency which received national media coverage. Its corner shop displayed photographs of properties with captions such as "Easy to get in. Good condition. Been empty for a long time" and "Clean, nice but small. Alarmed with Chubb and Yale locks". In advance of a national homelessness campaign "to highlight the 'scandal' of more than 750,000 homes standing empty across Britain", in 1999 a similar estate-agency initiative followed in Nottingham.

Legality: the introduction of criminal trespass law 1977-2012

A property in Oxford owned by University College which has been occupied by squatters (2000s)

Forcible Entry Acts

Main article: Adverse possession

Through into the 1970s, in resisting evictions activists cited the Forcible Entry Act 1381 (5 Ric. 2 Stat. 1. c. 7) which had created a statutory offence of forcible entry. Squatting advocates were satisfied that its proscription against making "any entry into lands and tenements, but in case where entry is given by the law" and "not with strong hand", implied that, provided they had used no force to enter the property, squatters could not be evicted save in the service of a court order. It seemed "simple enough".

Most empty houses had open windows, doors or other means of access. If squatters secured the property (for example by putting a lock of their own on the door thus making it impossible for the owner to enter except by force), then the owner could not enter and carry out an eviction without breaking the criminal law which few owners were prepared to do.

Although seemingly confirmed by the Forcible Entry Act 1623, it is not clear that the courts, at any time, construed the 1381 law in this way. The issue was rendered mute by passage of the Criminal Law Act 1977, which abolished the offence of forcible entry and initiated the development of criminal trespass law.

Criminal Law Act 1977

In 1972, the Law Commission’s was given a brief "to examine the statutes of forcible entry 1381 to 1623 and relevant common law defences and to consider in what circumstances entering or remaining upon property should constitute a criminal offence or offences". Its initial recommendation was to make trespass criminal if the trespasser "failed to leave as soon as reasonably practicable after being ordered to do so by a person entitled to occupation". This faced not only opposition, mobilized by the Campaign Against a Criminal Trespass Law, from labour and student unions wary of the implications for on-site picketing and sit-down protest, but also express reservations on the part of the GLC and the Association of Chief Police Officers,. The eventual act was informed by substantially modified proposals.

Section 6 of the Criminal Law Act 1977 covers the occupation of property. While repealing the Forcible Entry Acts, it did rule that unless it is in the execution of a possession order, "violence for securing entry" is an offence. The law states:

if "(a) there is someone present on those premises at the time who is opposed to the entry which the violence is intended to secure; and (b) the person using or threatening the violence knows that that is the case."

The act does not distinguish for this purpose between violence to persons or property (e.g. breaking a door down).

But the act then created four further offences:

• Being on premises as a trespasser and failing to leave when asked "by a person claiming to be or to act on behalf of a protected intending occupier of the premises" (Section 7)
• Trespassing with a weapon (Section 8) •
• Trespassing on embassy or consular property (Section 9)
• Resisting or obstructing a bailiff or sheriff executing a possession order (Section 10)

The act was a "compromise": it made squatting “more difficult but not impossible". The Section 6 replacement of the offence of forcible entry, did mean that, unless they were physically present, squatters could be put out. At the same time, sections 7-10 made the squatters' initial entry more hazardous by establishing grounds for regarding their trespass (or conspiracy to trespass) as potentially criminal.

Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994

The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 qualified Section 6 of the Criminal Law Act 1977 by giving the right of entry to "displaced residential occupiers", "protected intending occupiers" (someone who had intended to occupy the property, including some tenants, licensees and landlords who require the property for use), or someone acting on their behalf. Such people may legally enter an occupied property even using force as the usual section 6 provision does not apply to them, and may require "any person who is on [their] premises as a trespasser" to leave. Failure to leave is a criminal offence under section 7 and removal may be enforced by police.

Civil Procedure Rules

In 2001, the Civil Procedure Rules introduced new processes for civil repossession of property and related processes, under section 55. These include a fast track process whereby the legally rightful occupier can obtain an interim possession order (IPO) in a civil court which will enable them to enter the premises at will. Any unlawful occupiers who refuse to leave after the granting of an IPO is committing a criminal offence and can then be removed by police. However some of these processes may not be available unless used within 28 days of the time that the claimant knew of the unauthorised occupancy.

Criminal law refers to an "occupier" or "trespasser", and the Civil Procedure Rules part 55 refer to possession claims against "trespassers".

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012

Main article: Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012

The 13th (2009) edition of the Squatters Handbook still felt able to advise that, "with few exceptions, if you can get into an empty building without doing any damage and can secure it, you can make it your home".

In March 2011, Mike Weatherley, Conservative MP for Hove, proposed an Early Day Motion to put a definitive end to this situation. His campaign to criminalise squatting was supported by a series of articles in the Daily Telegraph in which Justice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, and Housing Minister, Grant Shapps, were reported as backing the move.

The Government opened a consultation entitled "Options for dealing with squatters". It was "aimed at anyone affected by squatters or has experience of using the current law or procedures to get them evicted." The campaign group Squatters' Action for Secure Homes (SQUASH), a coalition of housing charities such as Shelter and Crisis, activists, lawyers and squatters,stated that "over 90% of responses argued against taking any action on squatting." Kenneth Clarke, who had taken position that "there are no valid arguments in defence of squatting". nonetheless, moved an amendment to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill which became Section 144 of the act.

Section 144 of the act, states that "the new offence will be committed where a person is in a residential building as a trespasser having entered it as a trespasser, knows or ought to know that he or she is a trespasser and is living in the building or intends to live there for any period." It came into force on 1 September 2012, making squatting in a residential building a criminal offence, subject to a fine of £5,000, 6 months in prison, or both.

Adverse possession

Main article: Adverse possession

There remains a common law right (known as "adverse possession") to claim ownership of a dwelling after continual unopposed occupation of land or property for a given period of several years or more, depending on the laws to a particular jurisdiction. UK laws allow for adverse possession claims range after 10 to 12 years, depending on if the land is unregistered. In practice, adverse possession can be difficult. For example, St Agnes Place in London had been occupied for 30 years until 29 November 2005, when Lambeth Borough Council evicted the entire street.

In 2007, the hermit Harry Hallowes won possession of a half-acre plot on Hampstead Heath in London in 2007. When In 2014, Keith Best sought to do the same, and register title to 35 Church Road, Ilford, east London, which he had occupied for ten years, his application was denied on the basis that, since the introduction of the criminal trespass section 144 in 2012, he had been committing an offense. The High Court, however, ruled that the decision was "founded on an error of law": intended to help people, "like those who went on holiday and found that squatters had moved in to their home in their absence", 144 did not overrule the established adverse possession law.

After criminalisation: squatting in the 21st century

2000s

In 2003, it was estimated that there were 15,000 squatters in England and Wales. In 2012, the Ministry of Justice believed the figure to be 20,000.

Linked through the UK Social Centre Network, in the 200s there were squatted social centres in many UK cities: the OKasional Cafe in Manchester; the RampART Social Centre in Whitechapel, London and, part of Occupy London, the Bank of Ideas in Hackney. The Spike Surplus Scheme was a venue and garden based in a former doss-house in Peckham, squatted from 1999 until 2009.

Young artists who could not afford studio or gallery fees, occupied abandoned buildings. Among the resulting artist-run spaces were the 491 Gallery in Leytonstone, and Lyndhurst Way in Peckham, east London. The Da! art collective received national attention in 2008 when in Mayfair, central London, they squatted in a £6.25 million, 30-room, grade II-listed mansion owned by the Duke of Westminster. After being evicted, they moved to a £22.5m property nearby in Clarges Mews.

Temporary Autonomous Art, run by a group called Random Artists, was a series of squatted exhibitions beginning in London in 2001. Events took place in Brighton, Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Cardiff.

Groups also squatted land as community gardens. Two such London projects were the Kew Bridge Ecovillage and the Hounslow community land project. In Reading, a garden called Common Ground was opened in 2007. It was then resquatted the following year as part of the April 2008 days of action in support of autonomous spaces. Raven's Ait, an island in the River Thames, was occupied in 2009. The squatters declared their intention to set up an eco conference centre. They were evicted by police using boats and specialist climbing teams.

2010s

Arrests and prosecutions

'Topple the Tyrants' occupy a London residence of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi in 2011.

In September 2012, Alex Haigh was the first squatter imprisoned under under Section 144 of the 2012 Act, receiving a sentence of 14 weeks for occupying a housing association property in London. In a case that was "blamed" on the new law, in February 2013, a homeless man named Daniel Gauntlett froze to death in Aylesford, Kent on the doorstep of an abandoned bungalow.

In November 2013, in what was seen by The Guardian as the "first test of new legislation that makes squatting a criminal offence" a squatter had his appeal upheld at Hove Crown Court. Two other squatters were also arrested and had the charges against them dropped. However, by May 2016, SQUASH was reporting that under Section 144 there had been "at least 738 arrests, 326 prosecutions, 260 convictions and 11 people imprisoned.

Continued occupations and protest

In April 2011, a riot in Bristol was reportedly triggered eviction of the Telepathic Heights squat in Stokes Croft. A week later, police raided five squats in London, one, part of the Transition Towns movement, set up in protest against the building of a third runway at Heathrow. Alleging unnecessary and illegal pre-emptive action was taken against them, the squatters requested a judicial review of the policing tactics. The police denied the implied connection to the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton which took place the following day.

Gremlins protesting on the roof of the squatted Spin Bowling building in Cardiff, 2012

Following the 2012 criminalisation of squatting in residential property, in Cardiff there were contested occupations of vacant commercial property, an hotel and, repurposed as a social centre, a bowling alley. Police and bailiffs were defied with the assistance of The Gremlins, a local anarchist group who linked the action to the enforcement of Section 144 against Alex Haigh in London. Moved on from the hotel and bowling alley, the Gremlins squatted the former Rumpoles pub building opposite Cardiff prison and prepared for another eviction battle.

Due to the increased in the squatting of business premises, Conservative MPs called for the criminalisation of squatting to be extended to non-residential property.

In London, a group calling themselves the Autonomous Nation of Anarchist Libertarians (ANAL) squatted a series of luxury mansions in order to bring attention to the housing crisis and the scandal of empty buildings. When they occupied the seven storey former Institute of Directors in Pall Mall, in March 2015, they claimed it was the seventeenth building in the area they had stayed in. They occupied Admiralty Arch and were quickly evicted. In January 2017, the group occupied a £15 million mansion at 102 Eaton Square in Belgravia which they proposed as a homeless shelter and social centre. After being quickly evicted they moved to a £14m mansion opposite Buckingham Palace.

In 2015, Left Unity, a political party promoted by filmmaker Ken Loach, launched its manifesto at Ingestre Court in Soho. National Secretary Kate Hudson said the squat was chosen to bring attention to the "terrible crisis" in UK housing.

Large scale evictions of social housing have led to local campaigns in London that use squatting as a tactic to support tenants at risk of being decanted. In 2014, 29 young mothers living in Newham, east London, given notices of eviction from their hostel, refused accommodation in other cities such as Birmingham or Manchester and instead, forming themselves as the campaign group Focus 15, squatted empty flats in the Carpenters Estate. In 2015, one of the Focus E15 activists was arrested when she squatted a council flat in Stratford, in support of a mother who had been evicted. The charges were later dropped. In Sweets Way in Barnet 100 squatters held out for six months in 2015 until evicted with the last council tenant, a 52-year-old wheelchair user.

In 2016, Camelot Property Management, which puts so-called "guardians" into buildings on-reduced rent contracts to prevent squatting, had its own vacant offices in in Shoreditch, east London, occupied and renamed Camesquat. The squatters were evicted under court order two months later.

The old Cornerhouse cinema in Manchester was squatted for five months in 2017 by the Loose Space collective. It had housed around 20 homeless people, who then moved on to another squat. The three rules established in the Cornerhouse were no hard drugs, no constant drinking, and no abuse in whatever form. The collective had previously occupied the Hulme Hippodrome. Forty squats and several homeless camps were evicted in Manchester between 2015 and 2018.

Across London, there was a pattern of squatted properties being used as venues for raves.

In 2023, with soaring rents and increasing destitution, the Advisory Service for Squatters was reporting "a rise in squatting for the first time in a generation".

• Homelessness in England
• Homelessness in the United Kingdom
• Squatting in Scotland

Further reading

• Bailey, R., Conn, M. & Mahony, T. (1969) Evicted: The Story of the Illegal Evictions of Squatters in Redbridge London Squatters Campaign: London.
• Bailey, R. (1973) The Squatters Penguin: London. ISBN 0140523006.
• Hinton, J. 'Self-help and Socialism The Squatters' Movement of 1946' in History Workshop Journal (1988) 25(1) pp. 100–126.
• Lessing, D. (1985) The Good Terrorist Jonathan Cape: London. ISBN 0-224-02323-3
• Wates, N. & Wolmar, C. (1980) Squatting the real story Bay Leaf: London.
• Wates, N. (1976) The Battle for Tolmers Square Routledge: London.
• Webber, H. 'A Domestic Rebellion: The Squatters' Movement of 1946' in Ex Historia (2012) 4 pp. 125–146.

External links

• UK Squatting Archive
• Wasteland (UK) – Documentary about squatting by Will Wright
• What's this place? (2008) – A booklet with stories from radical social centres in the United Kingdom and Ireland