WEBVTT - Squatting with Andrew 0:00:01.760 --> 0:00:08.959 Also media, Hey, what's up and welcome to it could 0:00:09.000 --> 0:00:13.119 happen here. I'm Andrew Sage. I'm andrews I on YouTube 0:00:13.440 --> 0:00:15.400 and I'm joined by James. 0:00:15.440 --> 0:00:17.480 It's me. It's nice to be back with you, Andrew 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:18.840 once again. Yeah. 0:00:18.880 --> 0:00:24.120 Indeed, indeed, in a time of poly crisis, unfortunately, Yeah, 0:00:24.480 --> 0:00:27.680 the housing crisis. People are pretty familiar with the lack 0:00:27.680 --> 0:00:30.080 of affordability of housing, the way that housing has been 0:00:30.120 --> 0:00:33.479 speculated upon, you know, the way that more and more 0:00:33.520 --> 0:00:36.200 people are finding it difficult to get something as simple 0:00:36.840 --> 0:00:43.680 as shelter. Yeah, and it's particularly generational, right, Yeah. 0:00:43.800 --> 0:00:47.479 Yeah, Like I don't generally love generational discourse, but it 0:00:47.920 --> 0:00:52.280 is a marked difference for our generation compared to the 0:00:52.280 --> 0:00:55.840 previous generation in terms of, yeah, housing security. 0:00:56.080 --> 0:00:58.320 The data bears it out in terms of the age 0:00:58.360 --> 0:01:01.080 at which people have previous generations were able to get 0:01:01.440 --> 0:01:05.160 house in versus you know what millennials and our gen 0:01:05.280 --> 0:01:07.720 z are dealing with where housing is concerned. 0:01:07.840 --> 0:01:08.600 Yeah. Absolutely. 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:10.720 And then on top of that, we're also lacking a 0:01:10.760 --> 0:01:14.840 lot of public spaces, places to gather, places to reflect, 0:01:14.920 --> 0:01:21.039 to socialized game to explore, to interact, to discuss land 0:01:21.120 --> 0:01:24.760 and housing and social spaces are really what at the 0:01:24.800 --> 0:01:27.520 heart of human survival. You know, we speak of the 0:01:27.640 --> 0:01:32.920 hearth as in that space where you know, humans were gathering. 0:01:34.080 --> 0:01:36.640 But unfortunately that that ownership of that space has been 0:01:36.680 --> 0:01:39.600 concentrated in the hands of a few people, you know, 0:01:39.720 --> 0:01:46.240 ritually's and corporations, the state, and some cases still literal aristocracies. Yeah, 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:48.640 I'm sure you're you're very much familiar with that. 0:01:48.920 --> 0:01:52.240 Oh yeah, just thinking about the land I grew up 0:01:52.240 --> 0:01:54.240 on for people who were not privy to Andrew and 0:01:54.280 --> 0:01:56.760 I talking before the show. I just spent some time 0:01:56.920 --> 0:02:00.120 with the gwitch In people in the very north of 0:02:00.120 --> 0:02:03.720 Alaska there, just in the sub Arctic, and someone was 0:02:03.760 --> 0:02:07.200 asking me about like how I related to my ancestral land. 0:02:07.400 --> 0:02:09.919 I was thinking about it, like the village I grew 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:12.680 up in was entirely owned by one family. They owned 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:14.840 our house in every other house, and my dad worked 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:17.200 for them, and so did almost everyone else who lived there, 0:02:17.400 --> 0:02:21.359 like an extremely feudal relationship. 0:02:22.120 --> 0:02:26.680 Yeah, that's unfortunately the experience of a lot of people 0:02:26.680 --> 0:02:32.200 through human history, or the experience of landlessness or homelessness. 0:02:33.080 --> 0:02:34.120 Well, homelessness is. 0:02:34.480 --> 0:02:39.639 Relatively recent all things considered, but or being extortion and rents, 0:02:39.680 --> 0:02:43.280 which a lot of people unfortunately would have experienced throughout 0:02:43.320 --> 0:02:46.079 that feudal period into a capitalism. 0:02:46.200 --> 0:02:47.000 Yeah, definitely. 0:02:47.440 --> 0:02:49.800 But the thing is, for as long as humans have 0:02:49.800 --> 0:02:54.160 been humans, long before the states existed, and long after 0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:57.120 the states existed, people are going to stay where they 0:02:57.160 --> 0:02:58.880 want to stay. They're going to be where they want 0:02:58.919 --> 0:03:01.240 to be. Right all those take a coup with all 0:03:01.280 --> 0:03:04.200 these laws and restrictions and property rights, all these things 0:03:05.160 --> 0:03:09.200 and criminalize a very natural human inclination, people are still 0:03:09.200 --> 0:03:12.840 going to do it right. And that thing that people 0:03:12.880 --> 0:03:17.600 do is now known as squatting, right, but it wasn't 0:03:17.639 --> 0:03:22.880 always so chastised and criminalized with that terminology before. It 0:03:22.960 --> 0:03:25.480 was just you know, I find a piece of land, 0:03:25.520 --> 0:03:27.800 nobody else is living there. You going to use that 0:03:27.840 --> 0:03:32.680 piece of land to survive. So today we'll be talking 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:36.320 about issues with land ownership, looking into its history as 0:03:36.360 --> 0:03:40.880 a resistance practice in England, and seeing where politicized approach 0:03:40.920 --> 0:03:43.920 to squatron could take us in the future. Oh cool, 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:47.520 Crime thinks article on squating was really helpful for this, 0:03:47.720 --> 0:03:48.840 so I'll link it. 0:03:48.960 --> 0:03:49.760 In the show notes. 0:03:51.160 --> 0:03:55.440 Land ownership and governance are inextricably linked. Private property and 0:03:55.520 --> 0:04:00.320 land didn't emerge out of peaceful agreements, but violence was 0:04:00.320 --> 0:04:03.960 of conquest. Colonialism, slavery, and steel repression have been the 0:04:03.960 --> 0:04:09.040 true foundation of these now considered noble and official property titles. 0:04:09.840 --> 0:04:13.680 What we call ownership today is just violence legitimized by law, 0:04:14.320 --> 0:04:17.920 and it follows a very similar structure whether you're talking 0:04:17.960 --> 0:04:23.800 about feudalism and empire, land inclosure, colonization. Your start of 0:04:23.800 --> 0:04:28.560 the violence, it becomes officialized, and then rent is extracted. 0:04:29.160 --> 0:04:31.400 This is not something that people took lining down. 0:04:31.440 --> 0:04:31.880 Of course. 0:04:31.920 --> 0:04:35.080 People have long resisted it, you know, but this is 0:04:35.120 --> 0:04:39.800 why the government responds with the police and the armies 0:04:39.839 --> 0:04:45.120 to protect the landlords. And the people have criticized and 0:04:45.160 --> 0:04:50.320 have called out these practices. Thinkers like Ricardo Flores Margon 0:04:50.839 --> 0:04:55.599 and Alexander Berkmann, peterko Potkin Qunan, all of these hammered 0:04:55.640 --> 0:04:59.880 home the point of the absurdity at the heart of 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:03.080 land ownership, the idea that tod they could just pull 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:08.080 up somewhere, claim an area of land as theirs, and 0:05:08.160 --> 0:05:14.000 back it by soldiers and pieces of paper. Now, anarchists 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:16.799 not in the business of fixating on just one system 0:05:16.920 --> 0:05:20.520 of domination or the other, because they're very connected. You know, 0:05:20.680 --> 0:05:23.359 landlords and governments and all the other authorities contribute to 0:05:23.360 --> 0:05:26.400 the system of domination that we all live under as 0:05:26.440 --> 0:05:27.400 and its core rights. 0:05:27.400 --> 0:05:29.120 In anarchists squat in and land use. 0:05:29.160 --> 0:05:32.960 In the West, land ownership and government use exploitation and 0:05:33.000 --> 0:05:36.559 manipulation in a similar manner. Where a landowner builds a fence, 0:05:36.880 --> 0:05:40.480 the government erects a boundary. Where landowner charges rent, a 0:05:40.560 --> 0:05:44.799 government levies taxes. Where a landowner advertises a vacant house 0:05:45.160 --> 0:05:48.040 so as not to waste it as an income producing property, 0:05:48.480 --> 0:05:51.680 a government encourages migration to those of its territories which 0:05:51.720 --> 0:05:56.320 are not producing adequate revenue. Where landowner evicts a tenant, 0:05:56.800 --> 0:05:59.200 a government wages war against the population. 0:06:00.120 --> 0:06:01.960 Right now, in the United States, as. 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:05.800 We can see, the government issueesian war not only against 0:06:05.920 --> 0:06:10.440 its indigenous population, its black population, but also it's migrant 0:06:10.560 --> 0:06:13.039 population and a few other populations. 0:06:13.080 --> 0:06:14.840 The list unfortunately goes on. 0:06:15.480 --> 0:06:18.160 Yeah, like the two are so tied, right that, Like 0:06:19.480 --> 0:06:22.599 in many parts of the United Kingdom, like as it 0:06:22.720 --> 0:06:25.760 was moving towards like before, we have a universal franchise 0:06:25.839 --> 0:06:27.800 right where people could vote if it were citizens and 0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:31.760 over a certain age they had a property owner franchise, right, 0:06:31.800 --> 0:06:33.800 Like if you owned land, you could vote, and if 0:06:33.800 --> 0:06:35.880 you didn't then you couldn't landed voting. 0:06:36.000 --> 0:06:39.839 Yes, yeah, and in a sense that is still reflected 0:06:39.839 --> 0:06:42.479 in the way that the government operates today. You know, 0:06:42.560 --> 0:06:46.760 the land owners, the capitalist they still have far outsized 0:06:46.760 --> 0:06:51.839 influence with anyone else, considering the laws and the policies 0:06:52.440 --> 0:06:54.560 that our governments carry out. 0:06:54.839 --> 0:06:55.039 Yeah. 0:06:55.040 --> 0:06:57.320 Absolutely, And this is really. 0:06:57.320 --> 0:07:00.120 Get into the heart of it, because you know, I 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:02.960 have had the abolition of slavery and the abolition of selfdom, 0:07:03.680 --> 0:07:06.000 but in no way that the formal abolition of those 0:07:06.040 --> 0:07:10.320 things end exploitation at all. It has continued in new 0:07:10.360 --> 0:07:13.760 and old forms. You know, without the police and armies 0:07:13.760 --> 0:07:17.720 and laws propping them up, private property would collapse. But 0:07:18.600 --> 0:07:23.000 those things still exist, and it is through those things 0:07:23.560 --> 0:07:29.080 that the power to exclude, extract, and dominate continues throughout 0:07:29.080 --> 0:07:33.400 our society and continues to uphold violence throughout her society. 0:07:33.920 --> 0:07:36.440 You know, slavery may have been formally abolished, but we 0:07:36.480 --> 0:07:39.520 still find it in the prison system safe They may 0:07:39.520 --> 0:07:42.680 have been formally abolished, but we still find it in 0:07:43.720 --> 0:07:46.520 slightly different forms. With debt and the way that people 0:07:46.560 --> 0:07:49.280 are tied on by debt, and as long as that 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:54.520 principle of extraction and expectation and rent is not dealt with, 0:07:54.680 --> 0:07:57.440 we will continue to see new forms and old forms 0:07:57.480 --> 0:08:10.120 bringing up Yeah, I want to play the devil's advocate 0:08:10.160 --> 0:08:13.360 for a moment, right and say that maybe, you know, 0:08:13.680 --> 0:08:17.520 the problem is just the violence of its origins, the 0:08:17.560 --> 0:08:20.400 problem with land ownership and property. If it just came 0:08:20.480 --> 0:08:23.840 from violent origins and no other violence continued, maybe it 0:08:23.840 --> 0:08:25.840 could be excused. Maybe we could say, okay, well that's 0:08:25.880 --> 0:08:29.040 in the past and we can do stuff about that. 0:08:29.280 --> 0:08:32.560 But we could leave the system as it is. But 0:08:32.600 --> 0:08:36.000 the violence didn't stop with the way that the system originated. 0:08:36.160 --> 0:08:40.040 The violence continues, you know, and as Core notes, quote, 0:08:40.360 --> 0:08:44.040 ownership is enforced through eviction, you know, families are thrown 0:08:44.040 --> 0:08:48.240 out of homes, squatters beaten back by police, villages raised 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:51.640 to expand mining operations, et cetera. Yeah, and then these 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:54.920 economic theft and cultural destruction involved as well, you know, 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:59.160 because communities are uprooted, Indigenous traditions are severed, neighborhood cultures 0:08:59.200 --> 0:09:03.319 getting raised by gentrification. And then all this dispossession drives 0:09:03.400 --> 0:09:07.120 unemployments because without access to land, people are forced into 0:09:07.160 --> 0:09:10.000 wage labor on the terms of capitalists. This is really 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:13.200 how that rapid period of industrialization got started, you know, 0:09:13.240 --> 0:09:15.240 with the enclosure of the commons. 0:09:15.559 --> 0:09:18.720 Yeah, I was just thinking about that. With the folks 0:09:18.720 --> 0:09:22.640 are with with right there. Their lifestyle is to hunt caribou. 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:25.839 That is how they've lived for twenty thousand years. They 0:09:25.880 --> 0:09:28.560 also fish for salmon, but there are still salmon. There 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:32.760 are fewer salmon due to climate change and the downstream 0:09:32.760 --> 0:09:36.120 effects of that. Right, But like they have their own land, 0:09:36.200 --> 0:09:38.920 a large portion of land. But like it's the fact 0:09:38.960 --> 0:09:41.680 that someone in this case a drump administration, could lease 0:09:41.720 --> 0:09:46.400 oil rights in other land, which would directly impact their land, 0:09:46.520 --> 0:09:50.280 because in this case, the caribou can't carve if there 0:09:50.280 --> 0:09:52.280 are oil wells where they want to have their carves, 0:09:52.320 --> 0:09:55.200 right yeah, And so like it's not just that them 0:09:55.280 --> 0:09:57.600 having some land of their own does not provide a 0:09:57.640 --> 0:10:02.360 solution to the issue, which is that people can under 0:10:02.360 --> 0:10:06.360 our current system own exploit and destroy a resource. It 0:10:06.360 --> 0:10:07.160 should be common. 0:10:07.520 --> 0:10:11.280 I mean, it really highlights the absurd notion that you 0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:12.320 can just cut up. 0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:15.319 Land, right yeah, exactly, which you can separate it by 0:10:15.360 --> 0:10:18.960 by boundaries, and that its self contained in that way, 0:10:19.600 --> 0:10:22.600 all the land and wars on the earth is connected. Yeah, 0:10:22.800 --> 0:10:25.839 through all the cycles and systems is one big biosphere. 0:10:26.679 --> 0:10:26.920 Right. 0:10:27.320 --> 0:10:29.640 The damage done in one place will have an impact 0:10:29.679 --> 0:10:32.880 on another place. And I mean that's so very obvious 0:10:32.960 --> 0:10:35.760 to most of us now, but that our system of 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:39.880 land ownership ignores that. Our pretend it doesn't happen. 0:10:39.640 --> 0:10:44.400 Right, Yeah. Yeah, Instead, we're upholing this ridiculous notion that 0:10:44.480 --> 0:10:50.480 you can maintain exclusive lordship, literal land lordship over a 0:10:50.520 --> 0:10:53.240 couple of weeks of property and just do whatever you 0:10:53.280 --> 0:10:55.080 want with it because it's under your. 0:10:55.080 --> 0:10:58.240 Name, right, Yeah, And that's that's your problem, because it's 0:10:58.280 --> 0:11:04.120 your landrease. It's completely ridiculous to make that claim. 0:11:04.240 --> 0:11:04.440 Yeah. 0:11:04.480 --> 0:11:07.120 And on top of all of these consequences, you know, 0:11:07.120 --> 0:11:10.200 were also dealing with poverty and hunger because when people 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:14.439 are producing lots of food, rent and mortgages continue to 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:19.080 keep people in a permanent state of paying just to exist, right, 0:11:19.120 --> 0:11:22.000 And then this concentrated ownership of land and of property 0:11:22.440 --> 0:11:27.600 produces inefficient production and environmental degradation because property ends upsitting 0:11:27.679 --> 0:11:31.880 Idle was used to speculate even though millions of people 0:11:32.600 --> 0:11:35.760 are in need of that land are starving as a result. 0:11:35.920 --> 0:11:37.440 Of lack of access to that land. 0:11:38.160 --> 0:11:39.000 Yeah. 0:11:39.400 --> 0:11:43.520 Also because so much land gets traded around as assets, 0:11:43.559 --> 0:11:47.040 as property, rather than you know, it being what it is, 0:11:47.080 --> 0:11:50.600 which is our commonwealth. There's no need for the owner 0:11:50.640 --> 0:11:53.440 at the point in time to really care about, you know, 0:11:53.520 --> 0:11:56.559 the quality of the soil, the impact on its ecosystems. 0:11:57.040 --> 0:11:59.560 They don't have to. All they're concerning is their only 0:12:00.440 --> 0:12:02.760 need is to concern themselves with profit. 0:12:03.080 --> 0:12:06.400 Right, Like, it's an asset to be traded, not a 0:12:06.480 --> 0:12:09.320 thing that has inherent value and should be protected, not 0:12:09.520 --> 0:12:13.719 just because of its economic value, but because it's all 0:12:13.760 --> 0:12:17.280 that we can leave future generations, right exactly. 0:12:17.679 --> 0:12:19.760 And I mean with all these issues of the land 0:12:19.800 --> 0:12:22.880 in mind, I think we can talk now about how 0:12:22.960 --> 0:12:26.120 people have resisted, particularly in England. 0:12:26.320 --> 0:12:28.440 Yeah, which is really why I want to talk to 0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:30.680 you in particular with this episode. 0:12:31.040 --> 0:12:34.320 Yeah, okay, I'm excited to hear which which particular moveing 0:12:34.360 --> 0:12:35.079 you want to talk about. 0:12:35.679 --> 0:12:41.240 I mean, the story can begin in the first century, yeah, right, 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:44.520 with the British tribes resisting the expansion of the Roman Empire. 0:12:44.760 --> 0:12:45.439 Yeah. 0:12:45.559 --> 0:12:48.559 We could also speak about the diggers of the seventeenth 0:12:48.640 --> 0:12:54.000 century in England, in massacred for trying to reclaim common land. Yeah, 0:12:54.200 --> 0:12:56.840 England has a very long history of land struggles. 0:12:56.920 --> 0:12:59.880 Yeah, definitely, and it's completely or it's not lost to 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:02.840 us now. People have reclaimed, especially at the Diggers, right, 0:13:03.080 --> 0:13:07.719 but there are still commons to an extent, but they're 0:13:07.760 --> 0:13:10.000 nothing like what they were, right, Like, you can you 0:13:10.040 --> 0:13:11.920 can go out to Clapham Common and just get grads 0:13:11.920 --> 0:13:15.400 a sheep if you wanted to. And it's really sad 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:19.080 that we've lost that. We've completely as a nation like 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:21.320 accepted that land is the thing that people can only 0:13:21.320 --> 0:13:22.520 shouldn't just be for everyone. 0:13:23.080 --> 0:13:27.559 Yeah, I mean I kind of see how that would 0:13:28.320 --> 0:13:31.160 get to the extent that it did, because you know, 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:33.400 it was the capital of the British Empire, and in 0:13:33.400 --> 0:13:38.800 many ways the British Isles was the laboratory where that 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:42.319 sort of experimentation with the control of people and land 0:13:42.360 --> 0:13:45.240 got started and was then able to expand elsewhere. 0:13:45.360 --> 0:13:46.280 Yeah, very much, sir. 0:13:46.840 --> 0:13:49.640 Yeah, So, I mean there's a long timeline that we 0:13:49.679 --> 0:13:51.760 could go through, but I really want to focus on 0:13:51.880 --> 0:13:54.480 the all the ways the people have been squatting in 0:13:54.559 --> 0:13:57.880 England over the twentieth century. You know, after the Second 0:13:57.880 --> 0:14:01.040 World War, it's no surprise anyone that Britain was going 0:14:01.080 --> 0:14:05.520 through it. Whole neighborhoods were flattened, housing stock was in ruins, 0:14:06.360 --> 0:14:09.920 and for the six years while the bombs were fallen, 0:14:10.400 --> 0:14:13.560 not a single new home was built. So people took 0:14:13.600 --> 0:14:14.840 matters into their own hands. 0:14:15.280 --> 0:14:15.520 You know. 0:14:15.720 --> 0:14:19.000 Across the country, families and veterans began to squat because 0:14:19.040 --> 0:14:21.000 they came home from the war and they had nowhere 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:24.960 to live. In Brighton, a group of ex servicemen calling 0:14:25.000 --> 0:14:30.040 themselves Virgilantes, led by the legendary Harry Cowley, started cracking 0:14:30.120 --> 0:14:34.280 houses for families. The spirit of it eventually spread like wildfire, 0:14:34.960 --> 0:14:38.320 and abandoned army camps which were once mean for demolition, 0:14:39.000 --> 0:14:43.040 soon became makeshift neighborhoods. By nineteen forty six, over forty 0:14:43.040 --> 0:14:47.040 five thousand people were squatted in more than a thousand locations, 0:14:47.200 --> 0:14:50.400 and I mean the government was concerned this could only 0:14:50.480 --> 0:14:55.040 lead to anarchy, but faced with tens of thousands of 0:14:55.040 --> 0:14:59.360 people who had self freehoused, the state didn't really have 0:14:59.400 --> 0:15:01.880 any choice but to step back, right, you know, direct 0:15:01.920 --> 0:15:05.120 actions solved an issue that their bureaucracy. 0:15:04.520 --> 0:15:07.840 Couldn't solve, and the pr of kicking out a. 0:15:07.760 --> 0:15:12.080 Bunch of veterans from homes was not a line they 0:15:12.120 --> 0:15:15.160 seemed willing to cross at that point in time because 0:15:15.240 --> 0:15:15.920 times changed. 0:15:15.960 --> 0:15:18.560 But yeah, they wouldn't have any fear of doing that. 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:23.120 Now there's only English that were squatting in the UK. 0:15:23.400 --> 0:15:26.600 You know, you also had Bangladeshi immigrants that end up 0:15:26.600 --> 0:15:30.640 coming into the UK, particularly around the nineteen seventies, and 0:15:31.440 --> 0:15:35.240 the issue was that single men couldn't get council housing 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:38.560 unless they had a family, but they couldn't bring their 0:15:38.640 --> 0:15:42.880 families over into the UK without housing, So it's like 0:15:42.920 --> 0:15:45.720 a cash twenty two. They had all these rows of 0:15:46.200 --> 0:15:52.160 council flats sitting empty, rotten, and young men who wanted 0:15:52.160 --> 0:15:54.240 to bring their families over can't bring their families over, 0:15:55.400 --> 0:15:57.680 can't get housing, What are they going to do? 0:15:58.640 --> 0:16:01.960 They end up squatting. Organizers like Terry. 0:16:01.680 --> 0:16:05.240 Fitzpatrick, working with groups like Race Today and later the 0:16:05.280 --> 0:16:09.040 Bengali House and Action Group opened up derelict blocks to 0:16:09.080 --> 0:16:13.480 Bengali families. Pelham House, for instance, which was slated for demolition, 0:16:14.080 --> 0:16:17.160 was transformed into homes for three hundred people. By the 0:16:17.200 --> 0:16:20.720 end of nineteen seventy six, Over one thousand Bangladeshis ended 0:16:20.760 --> 0:16:24.520 up living in East End squads during that period, and eventually, 0:16:25.080 --> 0:16:28.040 through that taking that full step of direct action, they won. 0:16:28.640 --> 0:16:32.080 By the early nineteen eighties, the Council caved rehoused the 0:16:32.120 --> 0:16:35.200 squat as locally and they ended up getting to live 0:16:35.280 --> 0:16:38.280 right where they wanted to live. But unfortunately, as you 0:16:38.360 --> 0:16:42.800 might expect, this came with racist violence. In nineteen seventy eight, 0:16:43.200 --> 0:16:47.320 altub Ali was stabbed to death by three skinheads in 0:16:47.360 --> 0:16:51.080 Whitechapel and there's now a park that was renamed in 0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:53.960 his memory where the history of his people can be 0:16:54.120 --> 0:16:58.840 remembered and live on. Beyond the English Shandi Bangladeshi immigrants, 0:16:59.360 --> 0:17:02.200 you also had another marginalized group that took on the 0:17:02.320 --> 0:17:06.440 tactic of squatted in Brixton. The Gay Liberation Front took 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:10.679 over houses along Relton Road and Mile Road, creating a 0:17:10.720 --> 0:17:15.280 network of communal homes which shared gardens and as you 0:17:15.320 --> 0:17:20.959 can imagine, in the seventies, eighties and nineties, you know, 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:27.080 this was really a refuge, you know, for queer people 0:17:27.080 --> 0:17:31.080 dealing with isolation and hostility from their families, from their communities. 0:17:31.600 --> 0:17:34.120 These squats ended up becoming places where they can find 0:17:34.200 --> 0:17:39.360 love and solidarity and theater and radical politics. Railton Road 0:17:39.440 --> 0:17:43.520 was also home to black radicalism and black radicals squat 0:17:43.600 --> 0:17:47.280 in in that territory. Olive Morris and Liz Obi squatted 0:17:47.400 --> 0:17:51.840 in the nineteen seventies and resisted multiple eviction attempts, and 0:17:51.880 --> 0:17:56.000 their space evolved into Sabah Bookshop and later the anarchist 0:17:56.119 --> 0:18:00.640 one two one Center, which lasted until nineteen ninety nine. Now, 0:18:00.640 --> 0:18:04.719 this intersection of black queer and anarchist squatron created Brixton's 0:18:04.760 --> 0:18:09.760 reputation as a frontline of resistance. Police harassment, racist violence 0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:13.280 and neglect would boil over into days of rioting in 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:16.560 Brixton in nineteen eighty one, and amidst that chaos, the 0:18:16.600 --> 0:18:20.000 gay squads of Realton threw open their doors, even dragon 0:18:20.080 --> 0:18:22.320 tables and chairs into the streets for a kind of 0:18:22.440 --> 0:18:27.520 riot party, a mix of drag and defiance. And through 0:18:27.600 --> 0:18:30.960 all this these squats allow people to survive. They became 0:18:31.080 --> 0:18:34.960 places where people can experiment with alternative living, even had 0:18:34.960 --> 0:18:38.200 some people declare on independence. There's a space in West 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:41.760 London called Frestonia, which issued its own stamps and had 0:18:41.760 --> 0:18:43.640 a two year old as Minister of Education. 0:18:44.280 --> 0:18:47.159 Yeah, and then you had other squats. 0:18:46.840 --> 0:18:50.359 Ending up becoming seeds for future cooperatives and social centers 0:18:50.440 --> 0:18:51.639 and even some businesses. 0:18:52.640 --> 0:18:54.240 But this goal and age of squat and. 0:18:54.320 --> 0:18:57.000 Kind of came into a decline by the nineties and 0:18:57.080 --> 0:19:00.639 two thousand sons gentrification and new laws. 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:02.120 To tighten the screws. 0:19:02.640 --> 0:19:05.680 You know, streets like Barrington Square or Saint Agnus's Police, 0:19:05.760 --> 0:19:08.680 which were once thriving squatted communities. 0:19:08.600 --> 0:19:09.400 Were cleared up. 0:19:09.840 --> 0:19:12.360 You know, the law was changed to make couldn't quote 0:19:12.480 --> 0:19:16.240 adverse possession harder, so long term squatters could no longer 0:19:16.280 --> 0:19:20.680 as easily clean ownership. And then sitt councils like Lambeth 0:19:20.680 --> 0:19:23.919 Council began selling off properties that it had ignored for decades, 0:19:24.280 --> 0:19:27.399 evicting people who have been living there for decades or 0:19:27.400 --> 0:19:28.280 reason families. 0:19:29.119 --> 0:19:32.120 Yeah, I guess post thatcher like when they could sell 0:19:32.160 --> 0:19:35.080 off the council houses like that massively contributed to the 0:19:35.119 --> 0:19:39.480 decline of working class communities, right. And then Britain went 0:19:39.520 --> 0:19:44.120 through this extreme manoliberal turn in the late nineties with 0:19:44.160 --> 0:19:48.040 like New Labor, and Labour's entire thing came to be 0:19:48.080 --> 0:19:51.240 punting down on the young people and the working class. 0:19:51.400 --> 0:19:55.800 So like it lines up with our general political like 0:19:56.000 --> 0:19:57.879 that was that I was a teenager at that time, Right, 0:19:57.880 --> 0:20:02.000 I remember how belie it felt to be like all 0:20:02.040 --> 0:20:04.679 the time getting this like oh cool Britanni, you know, 0:20:04.760 --> 0:20:07.240 you know, like Britain is having its like renaissance as this, 0:20:07.600 --> 0:20:11.600 like like like outside of empire, like as a cultural 0:20:12.400 --> 0:20:14.920 capital or whatever. Meanwhile people are struggling to get by 0:20:15.000 --> 0:20:18.080 and people that finding it hard to put food on 0:20:18.119 --> 0:20:21.480 the table. It was just such a I mean, looking back, 0:20:21.760 --> 0:20:23.000 it was the way things were going to be for 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:24.800 the rest of my life, at least up to now, 0:20:24.840 --> 0:20:26.800 I guess. But at the time I remember it being 0:20:26.800 --> 0:20:29.000 such a jarring experience. 0:20:29.840 --> 0:20:34.880 Yeah, that's quite an interesting quote unquote end of history, right. 0:20:35.720 --> 0:20:40.199 Yeah, right, yeah, it's just the end of caring. Like 0:20:40.400 --> 0:20:43.159 it was just such a yeah to be to be 0:20:43.240 --> 0:20:48.680 told that we'd like perfected human existence. Meanwhile, racialized violence 0:20:48.800 --> 0:20:51.960 was on the increase, right, Like people were struggling. We 0:20:52.280 --> 0:20:54.920 like had become more connected and aware of each other struggles. 0:20:54.920 --> 0:20:57.280 Like we could see people around the world, not just 0:20:57.320 --> 0:21:02.919 in the UK struggling, right, or the communities that like 0:21:03.000 --> 0:21:05.680 my parents grew up in, just gut it by the 0:21:07.000 --> 0:21:10.120 withdrawal of the failure of the industries that were there 0:21:10.119 --> 0:21:14.640 before the whole towns with like no reason for existing anymore, 0:21:15.200 --> 0:21:17.399 and then to come on top of that and have like, 0:21:17.440 --> 0:21:19.879 oh yeah, but it will cost you more just to 0:21:19.920 --> 0:21:22.040 exist in this town which is shit now and there's 0:21:22.080 --> 0:21:24.760 nothing to do, but we're going to use all the 0:21:24.760 --> 0:21:27.040 power of the state to try and extract every penny 0:21:27.080 --> 0:21:27.560 that you have. 0:21:27.840 --> 0:21:29.320 To squeeze everything out of you. 0:21:29.600 --> 0:21:35.520 Yeah, just a bleak vision going home now. I just 0:21:35.560 --> 0:21:39.520 see the continuation of that decline of like some of 0:21:39.560 --> 0:21:42.280 those towns you know, where there's no particular reason people 0:21:42.280 --> 0:21:44.000 to live there and it's where they're from and it's 0:21:44.000 --> 0:21:46.200 where their community is, but it's getting harder and harder 0:21:46.240 --> 0:21:48.399 for them to live there. And you know, the industries 0:21:48.440 --> 0:21:51.240 that used to at least give people a chance to 0:21:51.440 --> 0:21:55.760 like have a dignified life there are now gone. Yet 0:21:56.119 --> 0:22:00.840 the ability of landlords to extract you know, get landlords 0:22:00.880 --> 0:22:04.040 now right, These giant corporations building these generic homes, although 0:22:04.080 --> 0:22:07.879 for the UK it's still very much there and the 0:22:07.920 --> 0:22:12.399 state has doubled down on supporting them and completely refused 0:22:12.400 --> 0:22:14.280 to support its own people. 0:22:14.880 --> 0:22:28.040 Yep, in London, as and elsewhere, the state and the 0:22:28.080 --> 0:22:34.760 capitalist market of hand in hand to relea erase our autonomy, 0:22:34.960 --> 0:22:37.840 our independence, our ability to live and survive. 0:22:38.440 --> 0:22:40.560 Yeah, you know, ivan as places like. 0:22:40.560 --> 0:22:45.960 Berlin and Amsterdam and Copenhagen had some leaps forward where 0:22:46.000 --> 0:22:49.679 squadron was concerned, you know, legalized housing cooperatives and that 0:22:49.720 --> 0:22:53.800 sort of thing. Particularly in London, that was the opposite 0:22:53.840 --> 0:22:56.560 of the case. You know, things got harder. 0:22:57.520 --> 0:23:00.400 Yeah, Like Britain led the charge in like this kind 0:23:00.400 --> 0:23:05.440 of particularly cruel and callous neoliberalism right from the nineties 0:23:05.480 --> 0:23:09.520 to today, like with absolutely no concern for the well 0:23:09.560 --> 0:23:12.199 being of its people. Even Yeah, you would see it 0:23:13.359 --> 0:23:18.520 going to continental Europe, you know, compared to living in Barcelona, 0:23:18.560 --> 0:23:23.280 which I did later, Like, squads still existed, people economically, 0:23:23.320 --> 0:23:26.040 things were equally dire, right, if not worse. Spain had 0:23:26.080 --> 0:23:28.120 a really rough time as fifty of two thousand and eight, 0:23:28.200 --> 0:23:33.560