Skip to content or view screen version

Black Cat Social Centre (Bath) To Be Evicted!

Innocent Dave | 09.12.2009 12:35 | Free Spaces

The Black Cat, Bath's only autonomous social space, has lost an extended court battle against Cabot Investments, and is due to be evicted in the near future.

Being committed to fighting the current system of land ownership by any means we can, the Social Centre collective are hoping to get together the numbers and expertise to resist the eviction for a while. If we can hold them off for a week, we reckon their sale to a housing development company will fall through! And if we hold them off for two weeks, Cabot will probably go bust! Even though we probably won't keep the building indefinitely, this is a great opportunity to flex the muscles of community power and send a clear message of "leave us alone" to the property-owning classes of bath.

The current building is a fantastic space, with pretty much unlimited crash space available - although if you bring your own bedding it'll help us accommodate more people - and only fifteen minutes walk from the town centre of Bath, where you can enjoy the traditional Bathonian pursuits of gawking at pigeons and despising the tourists.

The Black Cat itself has gained alot of community support, with several neighbours dropping by most days to express support and ask questions. We've had a fantastic benefit gig to raise money for the Postal Strike and the Bath Bomb (Bath's best radical freesheet), with more in the pipeline, and we also provide a home to the Bath Freeshop and Radical Lending Library.

We're currently waiting for a date for eviction, and will send out another callout when we get one. If we can get half a dozen more people here after that then we can resist - and of course if we get more, we can resist more! So come on down; it'll be way more fun than your mates are having in Copenhagen...

-The Black Cat Collective
 http://blackcatcentre.blogspot.com/
7-10 Kelso Place, Upper Bristol Road, Bath (BA1 3AU)

Innocent Dave