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Keeping Occupied - six months on the squatted Ocean Estate

Keith Hallack | 09.11.2009 22:21 | Free Spaces

This is a politicised look at the my last six months living in what was a mass squat in Stepney Green. I’m writing this at the request of another L&S member who pointed out that lots of what I have been doing over the last few months is political and worth recording. I already knew it was political to a point, and I had started writing up action reports and articles on the place I’ve lived for the half a year several times, but it always fell apart after a few lines because it felt too personal to express properly. Now that all of the events are in the past, I’ll try and record it in an intentionally personal manner – it is better to have any record at all than none.

One of the blocks - this one was about 70% squatted at one point.
One of the blocks - this one was about 70% squatted at one point.

This is tenants a vegetable garden creatively carved out of the existing lawn.
This is tenants a vegetable garden creatively carved out of the existing lawn.



Writing this piece
Writing this piece

...and that was that.
...and that was that.


I’m writing this at the request of another L&S member who pointed out that lots of what I have been doing over the last few months is political and worth recording. I already knew it was political to a point, and I had started writing up action reports and articles on the place I’ve lived for the half a year several times, but it always fell apart after a few lines because it felt too personal to express properly. Now that all of the events are in the past, I’ll try and record it in an intentionally personal manner – it is better to have any record at all than none.

Moving in

In the space of a month I split up with my long term partner of over half a decade and finished a degree course that had taken me 4 years. With no one to share the rent and no reason to stay near the university, I had to move onto the sofa bed in my parents place in East London. I have worked in construction on and off since 16 years old, but my last agency will not take me back after leaving to go back to university without giving them due notice, and there was hardly any labouring work at this point – construction being hit the hardest very early in current recession. With no job, and no strong claim to housing from the council (able bodied, single, young, educated etc.) I expected to be at my parents for the foreseeable. After visiting my friends flat on the notorious Ocean Estate in Stepney Green I spotted a spare room and asked if I could move in. Over the next 2 months I repainted the walls, built desks and shelves, installed an electric shower, polished the floor tiles, replaced the smashed window panes with Perspex and built a double bed; but there was no denying it whatever I did, I still had a room in a squat.

My reservations about squatting being more effort than it was worth were overcome by my need to not feel completely inadequate and have a place of my own in my mid 20s. These reservations were not shared by my neighbours: they had been aware they had very little chance of alternative housing far longer than I had. I knew my flatmate from a community occupation we had both been at in 2006 and from L&S which he joined 3 months after it started. He left school at 16 and has only ever been able to find casual work like waitering: he has lived in squats since leaving home. He has made a housing claim recently on the basis of homelessness (squatting can count as homeless) but does not expect the council to approve it. Other neighbours on my floor included a 17 year old who had met us through LCAP after being thrown out of home, and he was later joined by a homeless couple who had been staying on friends sofas. Above us in our block were Polish migrant workers and a fifty year old woman who has been fighting for accommodation from the council for several years. We lived in a three story block built in 1949 in the Attlee’s massive post-war council housing push, “homes for heroes” – the third and most genuine wave of state housing provision. The blocks are old but well built and much more homely than the later Brutalist 1960’s towers. When I moved in there were still 4 paying tenants, 3 of them families with young children.

Our block was identical to 7 other blocks built side by side, and identical to blocks throughout the square mile that makes up the Ocean Estate, which also has the later tower blocks and even later terrace house revival style council buildings from the 1990’s onwards when councils came to realise that they were right first time (1920’s and 30’s) and should build housing as close as possible to normal commercial stock. The Ocean looks as close to an American style ghetto as you get in England. In terms of crime there are far worse places, but in terms of concentrated poverty, overcrowding (inside flats and just in general), and decaying buildings it is similar to 1970’s Brooklyn. It is overwhelmingly Bangladeshi, to the point where many street signs are in Bangladeshi and many residents speak only this language. Tower Hamlets has the highest number of a single ethnic group which is not White-British, but it is important to note that apparently even then no London borough has a non-white majority. In my area though, the communal space and social life is majority Bangladeshi, giving the impression of a majority. This plays a significant role in any political or social interaction, it isn’t just me spouting. George Galloway was elected MP here on the basis of being seen as a Muslim friendly, even pro-Islam, candidate and being endorsed by the Mosques whilst his party (RESPECT) tanked everywhere else; you can hear people listening to his radio talk show in shops and taxis everywhere. He presents a TV show for a cable channel owned and run by Iran and adverts for the station are common in the area.

Life on our blocks has changed significantly for the tenants over the last ten years – it was in 2000 that Tony Blair used the Ocean as a stage to launch his anti-poverty initiatives, suggesting silently that no one should live like this anymore. But rather than development, they have used the £56 million ‘New Deal’ for dispersal. Around my block council tenants were asked if they would accept mass transfer, and tenants voted no. The council considered their views, and transferred them anyway – mostly to Barking and Dagenham. Where they cannot simply move someone to other council housing because they own the flat or rent from a private landlord who does, they offer them an inadequate amount of money for their property. The family downstairs say they will have to move to Manchester or Sheffield to find somewhere half the size with what the council have offered. By transferring them a few at a time, the council has left the blocks increasingly desolate and inhospitable for remaining tenants – and eventually they can remove the last few with Compulsory Purchase Orders. As for what they want to do with our blocks, it is a simple case of selling the land to a private developer who will knock them down and build private housing. By law 20% of this will have to be “social housing”, but social housing can simply be housing for Key Workers (NHS, teachers etc. – comparatively safe jobs): it does not replace council housing, and certainly at 20% couldn’t accommodate the current residents even if it was actual council housing.

The piecemeal removal of residents has had two other effects. The area is no longer as notorious - with less people has come an end to the siege mentality locals lived under when the Ocean was the cheapest place to buy heroin in Europe (circa 2001); and the empty flats have been squatted. The oldest squats I know of have been open for 5 years, and several have been evicted only to be reopened, sometimes many times over. As there were always paying tenants left in the buildings, evictions were not immediate as the council couldn’t actually knock them down until they were totally empty. Since I have been living here though, the process has been accelerating rapidly. 24 hour private security with dogs watch every block purely to stop squatters moving in (they actually ignore violent crime and open heroin dealing – I have witnessed this), and whole blocks have been given notice of eviction.

First meeting

A week after I moved I attended a squatters’ general meeting. These were arranged by a text-out from a squatter who had unlimited texts, and this system was also used to call out squatters to emergencies like attacks or evictions. When I asked who the chair was and raised my hand to make points I was laughed at, but this actually was the system they used informally - even if they didn’t recognise it. The meeting had about 30 people in it and we discussed what we were going to do in response to the arrest of a couple accused of breaking into an empty flat. A number of actions were suggested and we eventually decided we would open the flat in a big group with support from outside. The plan was fleshed out at a meeting the following week, roles were handed out and my flatmate became the Action Coordinator at his suggestion, a role we knew from LCAP work.

Action and statement

The action went off without a hitch. 50 of us in hats and scarves descended on the empty flat, dropping a banner from the balcony above to hide the opening team, and formed a human wall to stop the security from reaching them on the corridor. A police liaison volunteer in a hi-vis vest talked to the security and then the police, whilst another person filmed them: they were prevented from using force or their dogs by these. The law was on our side, so long as we kept the openers covered: the only crime was breaking and entering, which you need a witness statement for. If you do not see who it was, there is no crime. As soon as a door is in place with a Section 6 notice, the space is legally squatted and cannot be entered without legal recourse. After about an hour the police, security and Tower Hamlets Housing officers left, and the flat is still occupied by the couple to this day.

There was a lot of controversy over the action. Those on it felt it had been a success, but several people outside said it had been an own goal that alienated paying tenants and showed the squatters to be a united and threatening group who would use force and numbers to get their way. There was criticism that we wore hoods, which we did to disguise the identities of the opening team (everyone wears a hood, everyone looks alike), and there was even a suggestion that the action was sexist due to it being macho. I reject the last one out of hand: the action was called and directed by women, and “macho” direct action is sexist only if you assume gender roles and think that force is masculine. I didn’t address this at the time. I did accept that the action might have worried the tenants though, and in light of that I wrote a statement that we posted on stairwells. The security took them down and we only delivered a few door to door: we hoped to have it translated into Bengali first, but our translator worked in the local community and did not want to be associated with the squatters at that time.

Junky on a hot tin roof

At one point we did actually have a communal flat for meeting space, but nobody seemed to know who had the keys – so our next general meeting was in a park. Problems with the action were considered and I was asked to help draft and print the statement. We discussed new and tougher problems, such as hard drugs in the area. The dealers had a corner that they never left and we never went near, but the junkies they sold to would use our stairwells and lifts as chasing and shooting galleries. Opinions on what to do were divided, but one suggestion was to organise against a local pharmacy which actually sold syringes at a high price (which are free from the council to stop the spread of HIV). Confronting the dealers themselves was seen as way out of our league, and there was some confusion between anti-social and recreational drug use. Some people felt we had no right to talk about acting against drug use if we saw no inherent evil in it, but this was a minority opinion and others were able to argue that the resulting anti-social behaviour was what we needed to prevent – we were not passing judgement on personal choices which did not harm others. One woman told us she had a junky living in the roof of her block that had tried to get in to her flat by the trap door when she was home alone! I was amongst the group who argued successfully for his eviction.

On a chosen day, as soon as the junkie was seen leaving, a text went out and 10 of us went to the block. We entered the roof and found a television, suitcase, clothes, shoes, and mattress, blankets, and of course used needles and burnt foil. We removed all of these to a pile outside the block for him to take on his return. We stacked weights on the main hatch and locked it again from the outside with a new lock, leaving the roof by the trap door in the woman’s flat.

Techno Techno Techno

A recurring problem on the estate was loud music; the mix of squatters included lots of people from the freeparty subculture. Lots of them viewed squats as a place to have parties, no matter what their size or how near they were to other people. I know from experience of putting on unlicensed parties myself that the police will shut down any party in a residential area for noise pollution; the fact they did not do that here suggests they have little more than contempt for the residents, whether they are paying tenants or squatters. Residents, and maybe other squatters, ended up sabotaging the electricity supply to the worst offending buildings. This is fair play; apparently simply asking them to turn the music down or off met with “we have rights too!” and general abuse. When the squat next door to me had its own all night techno party I was met with “hey man, it’s a squat” as some sort of explanation. I rounded up as many fellow sleep-enthusiasts as I could and knocked again and again, getting the same response. We returned in the day and argued with the culprit at length. Even though he made a show of not budging on his opinions, there have been no parties at his since. If this had been taken up on mass, with big delegations going to the worst offending party-squats to have a go at them, maybe it would have had an effect overall. It shouldn’t be necessary in the first place though, and I include these events to illustrate some of the perils of “the squatting scene”.

When Kids Attack

The immiediate problem that this sort of antisocial behaviour caused was not attention from the law, but quite the opposite. Large groups of Bangladeshi lads saw the squatters as on a level with them; the squatters, given the outlandish appearance of both themselves and their buildings, were outside of the mainstream/lawless, an acceptable target for harassment. This is only a supposition, but when the kids attacked, they attacked the most obviously squatted block covered in graffiti and dirt where the loud parties were held. My block, which started with as many tenants as squatters, and we which kept clean, never came in for serious attack. I mean serious attack too – squatters from the building in question were beaten badly by gangs of lads, their windows were smashed and one flat was even set on fire with someone in it (they escaped). As far as we can tell the kids were doing it purely because they could get away with it. The police weren’t called and the security guards let them get on with it: during one window smashing session they were heard actually encouraging the kids, but asking them to watch out for security cars when throwing bricks. Whenever attacks occurred we got to the scene as quickly as possible and just talked to the kids, to let them know they were being watched and distract them. They were generally drunk on cheap vodka and Boost energy drink, the chosen tipple of men who are too Muslim for pubs but not for drunken violence. Although we still think there was no motive for these attacks other than general hooliganism and maybe dislike of outsiders, I personally think the obvious anti-community attitude of the party-squats made them more of a target than others. It isn’t that the kids were acting as the militant wing of the Residents Association, but they could see that these squatters were opting out of the local community, and therefore opting into their world by way of drugs and parties. Talking to one lad during a de-escalation attempt, he blamed the trouble on ‘druggies and squatters’: from my appearance and attitude he must not have thought I was a squatter.

Councilling

About 2 months ago one of the blocks which was totally squatted was served a mass eviction notice. After postponing the hearing for a week, a second court date ruled the squatters had a week to leave or be evicted by High Court Bailiffs. These can actually arrest you if you refuse to leave on demand, and they cost thousands of pounds a day. Clearly, the Council saw this as money well spent. They had already launched a propaganda war in the area warning residents away from one particular block with a leaflet carrying a picture of a heroin needle – utter bollocks, if the council or police had evidence that it was a shooting gallery or crackhouse it could have been evicted there and then under special legislation. Instead, by depicting the slightly anti-social but unthreatening block as a site of serious crime, they could duck having to deal with the real heroin dealers who were parked openly on the edge of the estate trading 24/7. Evicting the squats could be made to look like tackling crime, which is the exact tone the local press often take [“Armed Police Raid Squat”] making no distinction between a squat and crackhouse.

In response 4 of us attended an open council meeting to argue our case. We explained that we actually evicted a heroin user and kept the blocks busy and safe. We asked that we set a date for an eviction far into the future when the blocks were ready to be knocked down after all tenants had left. This was dismissed out of hand by the councillors and they rejected any further contact with us.

A Plague On Both Our Houses

There was no mass eviction, the block in question voluntarily packed up and left. After this people began to leave slowly from the other blocks too. The sense of momentum and cohesion we had subsided and there were no more general meetings. There are only 2 tenants left in my block now, and every unused corridor has been sealed off with sheet metal. The guards watch us intently and a sense of doom lingers. In the same week, two friends called me asking if there was a chance of accommodation, and hoping that we could open more empties and get our community going again I said yes. Due to the non-stop surveillance, it was decided any opening would take the Bear Hunt approach: when you cannot go around it or under it, you have to go through it. A breaker (smaller, electric version of a pneumatic drill) was rented, and a hole was chipped out of the wall of one squat into the empty flat next door. Obviously this made quite some noise, but I’m at a loss as to how the guards and police who turned up just as the work was done knew that a hole had been made – I’m assuming guesswork. They gave everyone in the flat the option of opening the door and clearing their things out in 30 minutes, or the door being broken down and everyone inside being arrested for criminal damage. “And I can smell cannabis” added one PC for good measure. Unfortunately nobody in the flat knew that none of this was legal: police cannot enter without a warrant, which they did not have, and cannot charge anyone with criminal damage without a witness, which they did not have. Their major priority is getting the door open – once they enter the property, it is no longer legally occupied.

After the success of this police operation, similar tricks were pulled on the flats upstairs from me. Realising one squatter was out, cops broke in and evicted the place in her absence, then talked their way into the neighbours and arrested 2 people for abstracting (stealing) electricity, a charge they later dropped. A third person in the flat was not arrested, and was actually told that as long as he stayed there, the squat would remain – something they wouldn’t have known if the police had not said. These opportunist operations seem to be spurred on by the Council or security guards, with the police not consistent in their response.

Adding to the week-long Festival of General Misfortune, our roof began to leak. When the tenants above us left, “Environmmental Protection Services” smashed up the flat, leaving a burst water-pipe running. Cracks and drips appeared first in our kitchen and them in a bedroom, and soon all available bowls and cups were scattered across the flat catching the deluge. We called Tower Hamlets Housing repairs hotline and the first person they sent clearly did not realise we were a squat, apologising and promising the leaking flat would be opened up and fixed in 24 hours. Someone higher up sussed. When we called back 48 hours later they told us they told us the building was condemned and they had no obligation to stop the roof falling on squatters. We have heard a rumour that some kind of squat-sympathetic plumbing ninjas entered the flat under cover of darkness and stopped the leak, but cannot comment on the truth of this. The leak started again a day later anyway.

Regrets, I have a few

The principal mistake in my time here was to try and politicise something in a way that would have required miracles to work. Turning a mass squat by a totally diverse group of people into direct action against privatisation and uneven ‘regeneration’ was beyond ambitious, and we only took to it half heartedly, our energy going in ebbs and flows with the general energy of the community. It was never actually made into a priority by me or my housemate, our political commitments at this time were not to our home. We made no approaches to the local Residents Association or to Defend Council Housing who have a very strong branch in the borough, an obvious first step. With that said then, it is almost by accident that I have had such a massive dose of local organising and a rough education of the challenges and solutions to community control. No I’m not currently in the local Tenants Association, but how many people can say they got together with their neighbours and evicted a junky? If a big group of lads started throwing things or attacking a house near me, the knowledge that 5 or more people just talking to them calmly and distracting them might be all it took to sort things out is a revelation to me, someone who has largely preferred to look the other way in my own city after being repeatedly attacked or mugged by gangs as a teenager. I walk that bit taller in lived experience that people can and will back each other up in these situations. The squatters are something of an ‘intentional community’ so it is miles from the challenge of building familiarity, trust and confidence amongst residents in an area where you don’t already have so much in common; but despite this I refuse to accept the confidence I have gained to do community work is in any way false.

This Is The End

The situation in the car park just now sums up why I’m on the left, and why I’ll likely stay on the left all my life. I don’t have any great hatred of injustice, it passes me by mostly; it is unpleasant but it doesn’t drive me to my conclusions and actions – I don’t cry over pictures of starving kids in the papers or write to my MP about the landmines in Cambodia. I only favour equality because it makes it simpler to relate to other people. What I hate is the total senselessness of our actions in modern society.

We started out with just a council worker and a plumber, both nice guys who had no problem with us being squatters, asking us about the leak. We told them exactly where it was, but they wanted to look in other empty flats to check because they think they already fixed it last week which meant taking the steel sheets back off. So they called Orbis, the company that puts the steel sheets on properties to stop them being squatted – they seem to be a monopoly in London, every eviction and closure is carried out by them. They are professional anti-squatters. My question is not ‘why is there a gap in the market for a company purely to close useable properties?’ That’s simple – the economy wants the housing market to stay artificially competitive; if squatting were easier it might become more widespread. In all honesty the council is probably liable if some kid wanders into an empty building and falls down a lift shaft too – it isn’t all malicious reasoning. What I cannot comprehend is why a group of working class people who turned up in 2 Orbis vans, the same sort of people I clock into work with every day (I’m now more or less a builder again) would automatically hate the squatters and take perverse pleasure in trying to turn fixing a leak into working out which properties they could do an ad hoc eviction on. “There’s no one in there Terry, fuck the key – we got our universal key here innit. Break in and chuck their fucking stuff over the balcony.” Why? Cos they’re prepared to live in a condemned building to avoid rent? What difference does it make to the Orbis worker? We were told by a Housing Officer from the council that the building will be stay up now for another 8 weeks. What is the point then, in breaking into peoples’ homes, throwing their belongings into the rain and smashing up sinks and windows so that no one can live there for a further 8 weeks? In this life we take pride in what we do for a living, even if we do badly. Whether you spray rough sleepers with cold water to move them on, throw punters down flights of stairs in nightclubs, repossess cars or sell televisions on hire-purchase you know customers will default on, you’re just doing your job. We never question it, not seriously. We are paid to do it, and therefore it is valid. Anything you get paid to do is worthwhile, the cash justifies it. We can never rationally talk about what we want to do with our lives, what a happy and productive life actually is, so long as money makes our motivations.

Even though we technically have two months if they leave us alone, the combined forces of the guards, Housing Officers and police can strike at any time now in any way. They could break in when we’re all out, they could cook up a charge they later drop to raid us with, they could destroy the building some more. The security have always been scum, hitting their dogs, making death threats and yelling racial and sexual abuse; but now they seem calm, like they know they have the upper hand. No new flats are opening and they are closing squats at a record pace. The first block to be totally emptied is being demolished this week, and builders have sprayed measurements on the lawn around our building.

Post script

It is three months since the above piece was written. First things first, we’re still in the flat: we went to court in mid September 2009 and lost legal possession of the property to council. We moved most of our things and waited for the warrant – the letter that would give us a final date to quit the building. It is now early November and we are still waiting. A call to the council’s planning department under the guise of a concerned resident revealed that our block cannot be demolished until at least March 2010 now anyway. During the writing of the piece, we were heavily involved in an attempt to put the lessons learned into a distinct project – unimaginatively called the Tower Hamlets Housing Initiative. The idea was to combine the housing rights advocacy work we do in LCAP with the direct action element of squatting: we would seize empty council stock that was being sold off somewhere in the borough, renovate it, then recruit people we met at the Homeless Persons Unit who were willing to take the risk and join the fight and become residents. A three pronged legal, media and physical approach would be employed – challenging the council not only very publically, but directly, by taking the housing first and asking questions later. By the time the project fizzled out we actually had 2 potential residents and roughly 10 live-in activists, a fully researched building in our sights, the support of a local legal centre and no less than 3 people wanting to make a documentary about it all. But fizzle out it did; a wave of Possession Orders in early September threw most of us into looking after our own housing needs first, and many of the activists have now moved out of the borough.

About this time I started looking into making a Housing Allowance claim, finding myself unemployed again. In short, I was eventually told by an advisor in the HPU that squatting was probably my best option! Housing benefit varied each month, but for my age range it would be about £110 a week: in 3 weeks of looking we never found anything that price in the borough – because landlords that accepted Housing Allowance kept their rents high, knowing the money was guaranteed by the council and expecting the difference to be made up out of the tenants dole. If we did get a flat on HA, as soon as we found work, we would not be able to afford the rent – or spend almost all our wages on it. Despite the fact I have experienced this kind of madness several times working with other people, to go through it myself was still eye opening.

Occupation is a powerful tactic, not only against a private business but also against a private property. The government are being bankrupted by Housing Allowance, and are doing next to nothing to rebuild their own housing – it is simply inevitable that successive governments will cut spending on housing. At the same time there is an explosion of small-landlordism and second-home ownership amongst those who have ‘made it’ (or ‘always had it’), and rising homelessness and mass unemployment amongst the young. Housing is as likely to lead to polarisation of social classes just as much as (un)employment. I’ve always been very aware - and probably overly sensitive – to the stereotypical image of squatters as plastic anarchists or dropouts; whether a self conscious mass movement of housing occupations comes about, or the viability of squatting just spreads organically amongst the struggling, what happens next is likely to sweep all preconceptions away.

Keith Hallack
- Homepage: http://www.libertyandsolidarity.org/node/70

Comments

Hide the following 17 comments

excellent article

10.11.2009 11:07

great stuff. Your flat was better than my gaff!

I had no idea that this stuff was happening on such a large scale. Reminds me of the old crescents in Manchester!

david


Five Stories Falling

10.11.2009 13:14

I only joined the Ocean squatting scene quite late on, but even I saw the sort of solidarity and community that was still evident amongst the non-paying residents. When our building got court appearance papers regarding our evictions, at least one person from every flat came to a meeting to discuss all aspects of the threatened evictions: from options for resistance tactics, to general points of squatting law, to new places to occupy in the future. I'd never experienced such a spontaneous community spirit emerging from a bad shared situation, and although most people seem to be moving on from Ocean now, I hope that the positive experiences gained here (from community organising to keeping the noise down when people are trying to sleep!) will travel with them to the next communities they live among. Maybe if people keep it that way, squatting will become more acceptable again, and us poor people won't feel we have to give all our earnings to landlords!

Danny


excellent article

10.11.2009 16:26

thanks very much, well written and gave me a better idea than before about the situation, cheers.

autonomouse


nice work

10.11.2009 17:07

Nice work guys, I know you've put a lot of effort into this project and built amicable links with all the neighbors. Keep up the good work chaps/chapesses

David


Boasting about evicting a junkie though? Doesn't sound like a comment from someo

10.11.2009 17:58

Hey I read your account about ocean. It was good and funny at times.

Boasting about evicting a junkie though? Doesn't sound like a comment from someone coming from the left! 'We can squat here.....but you can't?' 'We shouldn't be evicted.....but you should be?' Oh yeah, but you're a junkie! OK so that's ok then? Some poor cunt that made a mistake who should have known better before trying it but bricked it, now has to pay for the rest of his/her life. With heroin and crack being big business (check out what's going on in Afghanistan) and major multinational companies + MI5 being secretely behind it and pharmaceutical companies cashing in as well (think about all the drugs designed to get people off drugs -oxymoron-) what hope does a poor person have? A raging habit and a dealer on every corner. The state doesn't want people off drugs it wants them on them. Whatever kind. Legal or illegal. It's the same shit and profits the same greedy people.

People who apparentely claim to be on the left just buy into this "junkie scum" mentality which is what's been pumped into them through the media, thus perpetuating the problem and stopping people getting better.

Addiction is a disease and should be considered so. We shouldn't persecute those that have fallen foul of it. We should be working together to try to help them. The only ones that woke up up to how drugs are used as a means of profit and social control were the Black Panthers. They took on the problem and succeded.

I've seen you tucking into many a greasy kebab. You complain about your expanding waistline and you've said you know you shouldn't be eating it but you can't help yourself. It's ok, i don't care. It's an addiction -not as worse as others -luckily. But, fortunately (for the giant food corporations) it's a socially acceptable addiction.

Don't attack the human beings; attack the corporations!

LB (ex ocean estate squatter)


on evicting junkies

10.11.2009 18:35

Hi LB xx

I where your coming from and you would definitely have a lot more experience rather than knee jerk assumptions about people suffering from addictions; and yes, i have developed a very addictive relationship with cheap food that may well be self destructive over time, maybe already is. However, it is only *self* destructive; if you remember, the junky tried to break into a girls' house when only she was in. Its not ignorance that makes me associate heroin addicts with anti social crime, its experience. Yes they need help, but it takes a far stronger community than a squatters' resident group of our size and experience to provide it, it takes a medical and social care infrastructure. We couldn't provide that.

Here is what the ground rules of the Tower Hamlets Housing Initiative (which never happened, true enough!) had to say - i believe you voted yourself for these? Check point 4:

"Ground Rules
1) All decisions are to be taken democratically. Decisions that affect the whole Initiative will be made by everyone in the initiative using a simple one person, one vote system. Decisions will be made by a majority vote at meetings of all residents. The first meeting will decide when the next meeting will be, and so on.
2) Violence and intimidation will not be tolerated whatsoever between residents. There will be no warning, if a resident makes another feel seriously unsafe they will be barred from the Initiative and will leave. We cannot fix everybody’s problems at once – this is a political fight, if people need special help with behaviour problems than they will need to find it elsewhere.
3) Alcoholism or drug addiction will not be tolerated. We cannot fix everybody’s problems at once – this is a political fight, if people need special help with behaviour problems than they will need to find it elsewhere.
4) No drink or drugs are allowed in meetings or communal spaces. People who come to meetings and public events unfit due to drugs or alcohol will get a warning, if they do it again they will have to leave the Initiative.
5) Live-in activists know and accept that they will move out if and when their space is needed by an applicant. Their role is purely to get the project going, support it, and make the story and activity centre entirely on the housing applicants. "


I believe that once, and only once, we can take care of our immiediate interests in our areas will we be a challenge to the corporations; I think blaming a perrsons addiction entirely on big business interests is a bit like blaming the local kids violence entirely on capitalist alienation or imperialism! The buck does maybe stop there, but we can pick it up ourselves a bit earlier. Cos fuck me, the cops and the business class won't. As long as it stays in its own borders and doesn't make too much noise, they don't give a tug.

We should however aim to do more than just kick problematic people out, we should try and deal with their problems. And you know, we did - *you* did. But in this particular case the junky in the roof wasn't part of our community to start with, on any level, and tried to break into someone's home. It seemed an open and shut case of community self defence. There was a meeting about it, and we voted to evict him - nobody totally opposed it either, though some people had a problems with it. Maybe i shouldn't have been as dismissive of the person on the basis of being a junky, and maybe i should have put it another way in the article, i hold my hands up to that.

Also i don't know much about the panthers anti drugs programs - could you link me? I'd be really interested.

KH x

Keith Hallack
- Homepage: http://www.libertyandsolidarity.org


o rly?

10.11.2009 20:31

"yes, i have developed a very addictive relationship with cheap food that may well be self destructive over time, maybe already is. However, it is only *self* destructive;"

Really?

What about the people (all over the world) expoited to provide your cheap food? What about the animals? The land/environment that is raped and poisoned?

You sound like the typical middle-class "activist" tbh, everyone elses issues have to be dealt with, but not your own.

The sensible thing would've been to help the "junkie" open their own flat, meaning that they pose no problem to the girl concerned.

Very good piece.

10.11.2009 20:54

The junkies were a problem, it was a particular group of junkies that were a problem. and to be fair to them, they were there before the bulk of squaters moved in. they used to open flats in the middle of the night, spend the night and get evicted the next day becuase they couldn't even get it together to secure the front door. they used to scrape pipes to feed their addiction and every once in a while they'd leave the pipes broken so that the whole flat got flooded, on one occation we had to call the fire brigade to clear the water up. they used to jack up in the stairways and made the place feel really unsafe, there were children living in that house and this is no enviornment for them to feel safe.
Also the guards didn't do much about it, at least on of the guards was a drug dealer, which makes him a tower hamlet employed drug dealer. It was an experience living in ocean, definitely one i won't forget. but i think we could of done better. we had plans to set up all sorts of things that never materialized, bike workshops, a cafe, a garden. we never made proper attempt to join up with the paying residents and become a part of the community that was already there, we could of been a lot more useful to them, but we in effect made a community separated and alienated from them.

Ocean has a very distinct feel to it, it feels like a ghetto, there are guards going around in the corridors with dogs and being really intimidating, sometimes taking pictures of us, sometimes threatening us with violence. there was an undercover police car doing patrols and randomly stopping and searching people, before the G20 they very much intensified their policing, following activists around town and having a few police vans in the area. I suspect they did more then that, I mean I suspect there was a higher presence of police then we even realized. at least one flat got evicted when the occupiers were at the book fair.

Orbis were there smashing up flats at some point almost daily, trying to make the houses unlivable but we time and again fixed them up, sometimes during the night you couldn't sleep because they were busy smashing things up.

but with all this, it was still a very good experience, very good people around always, people sharing tools and whenever you needed help there will be people to lend a hand or give advice. professionals in all aspects from computer help to plumbing, to DIY to electricity, you could always get help.

well done to EVERYONE in the ocean crew, and I'll see you all around town :)

Another ex-oceanner


well written

10.11.2009 21:11

I have to say your writing skills are very good. It's a very well written article.

Max


@ boom

10.11.2009 21:13

It wasn't even my idea, it was a collective response to the break in. I stand by it though, i think it was brave of the group, and i challenge what you've said about class and antisocial behaviour and your response in general.

1) give me an example of working class communities offering to house junkies who have attempted to rob flats or worse. I can think of lots of community campaigns that were against even having free food and social care for addicts in their areas, let alone housing.
2) go on then, open him a flat. Start your own action group. I know loads of people with drug problems, they'd be stoked.
3) not dealing with my own problems? This is an 8 page article all about how i dealt with my own problems, mostly housing.

u got me on the food one tho. I do buy from supermarkets and shops are supplied by mass produced agribusinesses which are bad for the planet. I assume you grow your own food and harvest rainwater...?




Keith Hallack


Evicting a Junkie - In defence of Squatters.

10.11.2009 21:13

Hey there,

As the girl in question who had the junkie living in my roof - his vices really were not the issue at all. I first met him when he was stripping copper from inside the roof, and when someone called the police he jumped off in front of my flat, and asked to come in and wash his hands. I had no problems with that, even though I wasnt really up for him stripping all our pipes - and sat talking to him in my living room for a good hour or so before he left. A little disturbed by his countless tales of the people he had mugged along the canal, but not too worried about being a victim myself, I said my goodbyes and didnt see him again for a couple of months.

The next time I saw him, he was again climbing down from the roof - this time with a few squatters at the bottom of the hatch he was crawling out of. They were telling him that he couldnt live in the roof above our flats because it wasnt safe, which was quite true, so I gave him a weak smile and scuttled off. After speaking to the other squatters, they had basically given him time and help to leave, and offered to open a squat for him to stay in - he wasnt just turfed out and expected to move along.

Here I just want to add that the reason that I was nervous about him living in the roof was that the roofspace covered the whole top floor of the block, and we all had attic hatches which we couldn't secure - so everybody's homes were vulnerable from up there. This was an issue because being on the Ocean and it being so easy to squat there meant a lot of people were leaving squats empty when they went to work or school, and after this guy had told me so much about his expertise in theft - I didnt want to take any chances.

So - the guy was gone. Or so we thought.
A month or so later again, I saw him climbing out of the same hatch and walking away from the building. We had heard someone moving about up there for weeks, but were waiting for confirmation that there was definitely someone there, and that it was the same guy, before we decided on doing anything about it.
We spoke to him, and he refused to leave - so we had no choice really but to remove him. If we had had another option that worked for all of us - then I assure you we would've taken it.

Again - I dont buy into this 'junkie scum' culture at all - you cant live life judging people on things like that. It was just the only simple safe solution to secure our homes, and to secure them from ALL angles.

Like I said - we offered him space in already open squats, and we offered to open him a new flat, but theres just no pleasing some people.


Beth x

Beth
mail e-mail: anti.fa@hotmail.co.uk


Indy mods: can this get a little highlight box?

10.11.2009 21:20

mods can this get a little box? I mean if someone writing SMASH NATO, SMASH IMPERIALISM! on a wall in Gravesend
 https://publish.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/11/441392.html
gets a box, this should.

caspian hard house


awesome

11.11.2009 02:20

really enjoyed reading this, thanks a lot for posting!

i wish there was more stuff like this (introspective reports about squatting) on indymedia - there's so much we can learn from the experiences because the same lessons crop up again and again.

la lutte continue!

squatworld
- Homepage: http://squatworld.blogsport.de/


Keith - yr email isn't working

11.11.2009 10:30

Keith

tried emailing you at:  enquiries@libertyandsolidarity.org


However, that email is bouncing. Do you have another email address?


M

m


email bouncing

11.11.2009 14:41

dunno why thats happened will pass it on to the secretary. In the meantime if u wanna chat to us or just get a better contact address go to our forum:  http://www.libertyandsolidarity.org/forum/

a few of us post here too:
www.anarchistblackcat.org (britain forum)

Keith Hallack


Thanks...great article

11.11.2009 18:34

Thanks for the article; really informative, and outlines the importance of connecting with local community groups when consolidating action in a neighbourhood. And interesting observations on the "systemic" use of crime to clear areas/ make them unlivable. Onwards.....

KID


see also "The Regeneration Game" about regentrification in Liverpool

11.11.2009 21:43

See also a documentary produced by a local housing activist in Liverpool - Mike Lane - called "The Regeneration Game" about regeneration in Liverpool, that looks at Pathfinder in Liverpool and its huge social costs
Only web-reference to it here:  http://blog.wildprovider.ch/?p=130
Background/more info here:  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/liverpool/2005/11/328114.html

More on Pathfinder programme/regentrification sweep of a few years ago across the north of England, here:  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/manchester/2005/03/306577.html








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