Press Release 1st August 2004 - St Agnes Place Community
st agnes residents | 01.08.2004 19:38 | London
For immediate release
CALL TO ACTION - Imminent threat to the community of St Agnes Place, Kennington, London SE11
CALL TO ACTION - Imminent threat to the community of St Agnes Place, Kennington, London SE11
Lambeth Council have a date and the budget to effect an eviction in the street and its going to happen VERY soon.....please come and help defend this last standing community. All this week there will be people building defences against eviction.
we need:
people - lots of them, timber, fencing, tools, scaffolding - long and short and towers, scaffolding clips, cement, sand, chain, polyprop rope, locks, ball bearings, nuts and bolts, nails and screws, sheet metal, steel cable and fasteners, fire doors, metal pipe, corrugated iron, karabiners, oil drums, heavy duty plastic pipe and tubing, shovels, large nets - steel and rope, bicycle d-locks, padlocks, ballast, tarps, teflon, wire all grades, metal and wood saws etc.
Most of all we need YOU!
Directions to St Agnes (including map) can be found here
http://www.stagnesplace.org/index.php?module=htmlpages&func=display&pid=5
Contact:
info@stagnesplace.org
Website: www.stagnesplace.org
Please come down this week and help save one of Londons oldest squatted streets!
BACKGROUND NOTES...........
St Agnes place is the oldest and largest multi-ethnic community of its kind, created as a radical solution to the housing crisis in the 1970s when a group of activists rescued, defended and renovated a street of derelict and condemned properties.
Home to people passing through and to permanent families alike, as well as being the Rastafarian International Headquarters, St Agnes Place has flourished for the past 29 years as a dissident community and is now seriously under threat of being destroyed. People have come and gone, but the community is just as interesting and diverse as it was then. Around two years ago Lambeth started legal proceedings against 12 of the houses. By the middle of last summer, they had gained repossession orders on them. On October 24 2003, the 12 houses were set to be evicted. These houses were defended and a continuous occupation has been maintained. None of the houses has been taken back by the council yet. For the council, it all seems a matter of making money, not helping a community. It has done nothing to help this neighbourhood. Lambeth likes to project a multi-cultural image, and yet it is threatening a place that is considered sacred to Rastafarian people. Squatting has changed from being an ancient civil right to a modern criminal offence. At St Agnes Place we have tried to protest against this. Lambeth will come again to try to evict us, this time with more force. If they succeed, it will mark the end of an era. This neighbourhood is one of the last stands of an alternative lifestyle in Britain. It is also our home. We do not intend to go without a fight.
Anonymous, from Time Out, June 2nd-9th
we need:
people - lots of them, timber, fencing, tools, scaffolding - long and short and towers, scaffolding clips, cement, sand, chain, polyprop rope, locks, ball bearings, nuts and bolts, nails and screws, sheet metal, steel cable and fasteners, fire doors, metal pipe, corrugated iron, karabiners, oil drums, heavy duty plastic pipe and tubing, shovels, large nets - steel and rope, bicycle d-locks, padlocks, ballast, tarps, teflon, wire all grades, metal and wood saws etc.
Most of all we need YOU!
Directions to St Agnes (including map) can be found here
http://www.stagnesplace.org/index.php?module=htmlpages&func=display&pid=5 Contact:
info@stagnesplace.org Website: www.stagnesplace.org
Please come down this week and help save one of Londons oldest squatted streets!
BACKGROUND NOTES...........
St Agnes place is the oldest and largest multi-ethnic community of its kind, created as a radical solution to the housing crisis in the 1970s when a group of activists rescued, defended and renovated a street of derelict and condemned properties.
Home to people passing through and to permanent families alike, as well as being the Rastafarian International Headquarters, St Agnes Place has flourished for the past 29 years as a dissident community and is now seriously under threat of being destroyed. People have come and gone, but the community is just as interesting and diverse as it was then. Around two years ago Lambeth started legal proceedings against 12 of the houses. By the middle of last summer, they had gained repossession orders on them. On October 24 2003, the 12 houses were set to be evicted. These houses were defended and a continuous occupation has been maintained. None of the houses has been taken back by the council yet. For the council, it all seems a matter of making money, not helping a community. It has done nothing to help this neighbourhood. Lambeth likes to project a multi-cultural image, and yet it is threatening a place that is considered sacred to Rastafarian people. Squatting has changed from being an ancient civil right to a modern criminal offence. At St Agnes Place we have tried to protest against this. Lambeth will come again to try to evict us, this time with more force. If they succeed, it will mark the end of an era. This neighbourhood is one of the last stands of an alternative lifestyle in Britain. It is also our home. We do not intend to go without a fight.
Anonymous, from Time Out, June 2nd-9th
st agnes residents
e-mail:
info@stagnesplace.org
Homepage:
http://www.stagnesplace.org
Comments
Hide the following 4 comments
Ok, though...
02.08.2004 11:19
Briaine
Last stands?
02.08.2004 13:29
Discuss squat Licencing, the hippies of the sixties and seventies ( many the business people of the eighties getting into property ), and solidarity in Londion and the rest of the UK.
Now you are under threat is the the last stand? I don't think so. Perhaps it is time to put our differences away but we need to attack the state. Or is it too late? Or are we too soft? Is there not enough support? The recent attack on the Posion Club maybe comes during a spate of evictions/moves on autonomous spaces. Last year there was a spate of attacks on co-ops at the same time eie. Cornerstone etc. Things will get a lot worse before we can get popular support to attack the state, the city, the gangsters and the media institutions that are posioning us and the planet. It's no suprise with all the new legislation and recruitment drives for spys, GCHQ, MOD workers ( Scab motherfuckers ).
fed up
Re: Poison club
02.08.2004 16:45
Alice Cooper
This is just the start !
03.08.2004 09:41
This is yet another fine example the continuing rise of community resistance to the housing crisis gripping our nation. A nation with a population pacified with the fear of not being able to meet the rent, or scared that the so called `value` of thier home will fall or that they will never be able too aford a home of thier own. All this as our so called `Leaders bomb in the name of peace.
The time has come for DIRECT ACTION against,Estate agents, property developers and housing departments.
Its time people.
THE POWER ARE THE PEOPLE !
RISE RISE RISE
Long haired M@rc