In 1973 a “lollipop lady” working on Balls Pond Road was knocked down by a passing vehicle. Kerridge and Hawthorne Tenants Association protested about the incident – and the generally unsafe road conditions where children and old people were crossing – by staging a series of unauthorised demonstrations in which the road was blocked:
“The chaos these demonstrations caused – diversions, buses rerouted and retimed, jams – illustrated very well precisely the point the tenants were trying to make: Balls Pond Road is a very busy, rather narrow and potentially dangerous road badly in need of a safer crossing.”
Hackney peoples press october 1973
After several non-committal meetings with council officers, it was this sustained campaign of “Reclaim The Streets”-style direct action which finally spurred the powers that be into action. A pedestrian crossing was installed – and is still there today!
In the blockade photos we can see The Greyhound pub, which was at 72 Balls Pond Road. So I believe the hard-fought-for crossing is the one shown above, near the junction with Kingsbury Road. So whenever you cross there, you can thank the protestors of 1973 for their courage.
Another great story from Hackney Peoples Press…
Hackney Peoples Press was a radical community newspaper published between 1973 and 1985. I have scanned 96 issues and made them available for your delectation here.
A kind reader of the site got in touch and supplied me with a copy of issue 6, which was missing, so that has now been added to the archive too. You should be able to read and download a PDF of the whole issue here. (See below for a note on digital archiving sites some current difficulties).
The rest of this issue is a the usual mixed bag:
The front page story is a bit of a moan about the low turnout to a protest about council cuts to services for the elderly. Castigating your readers for “apathy” is probably not the best approach? There are more details about the campaign on page 2.
Page 3 covers homelessness – 1,000 people without homes in the borough and at least 600 empty council properties. (According to London World, Hackney had one of thei highest rates of homelessness in the country at the end of 2023, with 7,923 people estimated to be without permanent accomodation.).
There is also a handy guide for council tenants in furnished flats on how to get rent rebates.
Page 4 is a hair raising account of life on Haggerston Estate, in which local residents band together to solve mismanagement by the council, culminating in a rent strike. This includes a reference to the amazing Haggerston Food Co-op initiative, which you can see more about in this short fiilm from the time:
There are also shorter stories covering: a protest in Docklands against the opening of a luxury hotel, a campaign for greater democracy in schools, various disagreements at the Workers Educational Association AGM, a leaflet discouraging kids from joining the army. adult literacy classes, etc.
Page 6 is a lovely selection of Hackney photos from an exhibition at Centerprise:
Click / double click for a larger version
All in all, a great issue that gives a good flavour of the times.
A note on digital archving
It’s important to me to provide scans of original documents about the radical history of Hackney, as well as dishing out my own thoughts. That way people can make up their own minds – and see the context for the issues I cover. A good example of this is the listings section of Hackney Peoples Press, which gives us some insights into regular meetings, venues, events, etc.
So that’s why I’ve uploaded 235 items (and counting…) to archive.org. That site appeared to be reasonably accessible and stable compared to other options. This has proved to be a useful resource for a much larger number of people than I had anticipated, which is great. Some of the material I have uploaded has been used by participants in the Undercover Policing Inquiry into spycops – and author Joe Thomas has found it all invaluable for his excellent trilogy of novels about crime and policing (and crimes committed by the police) in Hackney.
But archive.org was hacked earlier this month, which is irritating and instructive in equal measure. Luckily I have back ups of most of the material I uploaded there. And it looks like archive.org is slowly returning to its former state – although users are not yet able to login or upload new items.
So as a bonus, I’ve uploaded all my scans of Hackney Peioples Press and a few other things to the mega.nz site.
Digital archives are a great way to get material out to people – 24 hours a day, anywhere in the world, but they are far from an infalliable permanent record. So I definitely see the work I have done as a parallel activity to physical archives such as Hackney Archives and Bishopsgate Institute (both of whom have good hardcopy collections of Hackney Peoples Press and many other interesting things) and Mayday Rooms, Sparrows Nest, etc.
Image taken from “Pirate pics from the past” page on the Beyond The Airwaves site
Pirate radio was all over Hackney in the eighties and nineties. Aerials illegally placed on tower blocks beamed underground music to heavyweight car stereos and tinny transitor radios in shops.
Pirate crews played a cat and mouse game with the police and council officials. These exciting times were documented on DJ Clockwork’s website a few years back: http://www.djclockwork.com/
For example this hair-raising account of installing an aerial on Seaton Point in the Nightingale Estate near Hackney Downs:
September 20th 1999
“Andy the rigs gone off mate” The owner of Pure 94, Bish Bash calls me up.
“We’re gonna go up there tonight and put it on top of the chimney” He said.
“You’re mad Tom” I say “You can’t stick it up there”
“Yes I can” He said “I’m gonna stick it on the chimney and I’m gonna put a 30ft double stack aerial up there as well”
This seemed like madness to me. A double stack is a huge twin diapole aerial and it would be so so high if it was on the chimney it would stick out like a sore thumb!!
The block was completely surrounded in scaffolding covered with a green & white mesh, all the way up from the ground to the very top. This was the only way possible Tom & Cleggs were able to gain access to get in and climb up there.
“Come up there Andy, it’s gonna be great & we could do with your help”
I’m not gonna lie I was shitting myself! Nightingale had always seemed like a foreign land to me anyway. I grew up in Clapton Park, another estate notorious for pirate radio down the road and it was kind of the done thing back then to stick to your own estate, so the thought of going to the top of Nightingale scared me to death but I was also excited. I wanted to see the view from up there and experience a tiny taste of the Kool FM & Rush Glory days…
“Ok mate I’m in” I said.
DJ Clockwork – The Nightingale Chimney
That piece is especially interesting as it is a first person account of the later period of pirates, which isn’t documented that well. The writing really captures the excitement of the times – you get a real sense of the challenges people overcame to keep the stations running.
Image taken from “Pirate pics from the past” page on the Beyond The Airwaves site
What’s wrong with pirate radio?
Being a boring old bastard, I feel a bit conflicted about all this these days. On the one hand, I loved pirate radio myself and the musical cultures that they amplified. And I recognise that the pirates only existed because that music was marginalised. I am playing tunes from that time whilst writing this.
But as I wrote back in 2003, there were other people living in those tower blocks that took a very different view:
What also struck me was that I often have a very glamourised view of urban life and that this is tied to my own cultural preferences and age. So pirate radio, for example, is obviously a good thing because it cuts through the mainstream media’s stranglehold and gives people access to great music – music which speaks to, and is produced by, a marginalised section of society.
The people at the Residents’ Association have a very different experience of pirates. There are a few aerials on top of some of the tower blocks on the estate. Pensioners in the blocks hear people in the middle of the night scrambling about on the roof. They open their front doors and see gigantic young blokes busting open access hatches to the roof. They maybe get verbally threatened by them, they definitely FEEL threatened by them. They meet strangers in the lifts.
The lifts are a crucial part of all that is bad about living in the blocks. They break down, between floors at nine o’clock at night. Junkies use them as toilets, after shooting up and nodding out on the stairwells. A woman at the meeting had been mugged in the lift for her pension. Unsurprisingly, people on my estate do not regard pirate radio as being an excitingly vibrant part of urban life. They are too old to be excited by the latest plates being rinsed out, or MC battles. They regard pirate radio as being a menace, and not just because you can’t pick up Radio 4 at the weekends.
So, really, for all its pretensions at being “community” and “representing”, pirates only represent a particular section of the community. A section which is young, and yes, black. Responses are welcome to this point from the underground shout-out white-label-fondling massif. I’m NOT saying this to suggest that people are wrong to enjoy pirates, but that this is an interesting contradiction for those of us who choose to theorise about pirate radio.
Reading that back now I’d add that another beautiful thing about pirate radio (and the music played on it like dancehall and especially jungle) was its multi-ethnic composition. Working class kids in London of all colours really did unite behind the basslines on offer.
Plus it’s the nature of London’s working class communities that they are overcrowded and loud and sometimes fractious. And there have always been generational tensions. So singling out pirate radio as a problem was probably not sensible when compared to other issues, like the council deliberately failing to maintain estates, or the many other anti-social things that were happening where I lived.
Pirates gradually shifted online throughout the 2000s as part of the wider dematerialisation of music culture – away from physical media, record shops, etc… The tenacity of the people who worked on them to get their music out there, often a great risk to themselves remains very inspiring – so let’s finish with some tunes:
HHH Video were an activist collective working out of a studio in Martello Street, near London Fields. This second edition of their “magazine” is a great round up of the London counter culture and protest scenes of the mid 1990s.
Thanks to History is Made at Night, we know that there was a showing of this video at the 121 Centre in Brixton on September 11 1995:
This flyer is also a handy guide to the contents, as we are without the cover…
The most relevant part of this edition is the coverage of the eviction of the Spikey Thing With Curves squat in Hackney Central, which I have written a separate post about.
And now here is the rest for you:
The Criminal Justice Bill was a huge piece of repressive legislation conjured up in 1994 – the dying days of the Conservative government. The bill targeted a diverse section of youth culture and the protest movement, although its powers would of course be used by the poilice in a wide range of contexts against ordinary people.
Whole sections of the CJB were aimed squarely at travellers, squatters, hunt saboteurs, road protestors and infamously ravers, with the much mocked definition of:
“any gathering of 20 or more people [where there is music…] ‘music’ includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats.”
Other clauses gave the police even more powers of stop and search, of taking bodily samples – and reduced the status of the right to silence when under arrest.
On October 9th 1994, around 100,000 people marched against the Criminal Justice Bill in London. (A previous march in July, in which people climbed the gates of Downing Street is covered in HHH Video Magazine issue 1).
This clip begins with a bunch of Hackney squatters getting ready to attend the demo and speaking about various issues of the day.
It ends with the police violently attacking the protest after it reached its final destination of Hyde Park – and the protestors dong what they could to resist this. It was a messy evening. My friends and I were charged at by mounted police and then forcibly pushed down Oxford Street by riot cops…
The Criminal Justice Bill passed into law on 3 November 1994.
The McLibel trial was a huge issue in the late eighties and 1990s.
London Greenpeace activists being sued by an evil multinational corporation generated a lot of media attention and many solidarity actions, including the widespread dissemination of the “What is wrong with McDonalds” leaflet that had triggered the court case.
In this clip, activists disrupt the filiming of a McDonalds TV commercial in Ruskin Park south London, ensuring a frustrating day for the camera crew. You would need a heart of stone not to laugh.
The McLibel trial lasted nearly ten years, making it the longest-running libel case in English history. McDonald’s announced it did not plan to collect the £40,000 it was awarded by the courts and the European Court of Human Rights eventually ruled that the two defendants had been denied a fair trial.
“Anarchy In The UK: Ten Days That Shook The World” was an ambitious festival called by Class War founder Ian Bone. It took place from 21st-30th October 1994 at various locations across London:
“Anarchy In The UK” was the inspiration for Hackney Anarchy Week in 1996, which HHH Video also produced a documentary about.
The levitation footage is followed by a promo clip for an unknown (to me) band in a warehouse somewhere… this is probably the “Russian Techno Art Performance” on the 121 poster above.
In the summer of 1994 an entire row of houses in Claremont Road, East London was squatted in protest against the construction of the M11 motorway – a huge project which required the demolition of 350 homes and several wildlife habitats, so that commuters could drive to and from London more quickly.
The Claremont Road eviction lasted from 28th November to 5th December 1994. According to Squall magazine it was “the longest eviction in post-war European history”, featuring 400 protestors.
This footage is especially interesting as you get a sense of the community that had been created by the squatters and their alterations to houses and the street.
The M11 extension was eventually built, but it is widely acknowledged that the 1990s road protest movement made the construction of roads so complicated and expensive that several other projects were abandoned.
Cover photo by Hackney resident David McCairley
This clip is followed by a few minutes of firebreathing and fire juggling outside Hackney Town Hall. This was apparently a protest against the eviction of the Spikey Thing With Curves squat. A photograph from this ended up on the cover of Tony White’s debut novel Road Rage, which is a recommended pulp fiction take on 1990 UK road protests, with a nod to Hackney:
Road Rage! takes some liberties with the ‘sprawling consensual hallucination that is Hackney’, chiefly by relocating a lightly-drawn (no research, remember) analogue of the then M11 Link Road protests (which centred around the proposed ‘East Cross Route’ in Leytonstone) a few miles west to Well Street, E9. Events take place in a number of expedient and/or contingent locations around Well Street and London Fields: in the Pub on the Park, on Hackney Central railway station and the trains of the North London Line, in the Hackney DSS office and a still markedly pre-gentrification Broadway Market that would be unrecognisable now. This was where I lived at the time.
Tony white – Road Rage archive #1
There is more information about the book in the links below from Tony’s site.
HHH Video was ahead of its time – at what we used to call the “bleeding edge” of technology. It was very unusual to have access to a video camera thirty years ago, let alone the technology to do decent editing. There were only a handful of activist produced VHS tapes on sale in radical bookshops and through distributors – and public showings at squatted social centres like the 121 Centre were few and far between.
So it is pleasing that this footage has survived. For some of us it may trigger a nice trip down memory lane, whilst generating confusion and questions for younger viewers.
In 2024 many of us carry a video camera at all times. Widespread CCTV combined with repressive legislation such as the Criminal Justice Act and its successors have made direct action a riskier business. Nevertheless, I hope this footage is inspiring in some way…
I’ve added all the HHH video output I have found to archive.org where it can be downloaded. HHH were always clear that their work was anti-copyright, so use as you will! It’s also all on the Radical History of Hackney YouTube channel along with other videos of interest…
Spikey Things With Curves was an occupied building across the road from Hackney Town Hall. Many people lived there and its residents created a cafe, workshops and exhibtion space for artists, and a music/party venue. It was named after some eccentric sculputures that were placed by the windows by one of its residents.
Below is a five minute video about this squat and its eviction in late 1994:
As the video makes clear, Spikey Things With Curves was very much focussed on being a creative community space and most people seem to agree that it was briefly a happening hub for some innovative art and great parties.
The best account I have heard is by Rachel aka Miss Pink on a recent episode of the excellent Tales From A Disappearing Citypodcast/vidcast hosted by DJ Controlled Weirdness:
“There was a big community of squatters in Hackney, and particularly Ellingfort Road and London Lane, which is by London Fields. Most of the houses were all squatted there. And then a group of people squatted the building right opposite Hackney Town Hall.
And so it was opened up, it was squatted with a cafe, it had massive windows at the front. So someone had made all these sculptures of mad looking things that were in the window, trying to sort of draw attention.
At that time I was still at college making glass stuff. So I would make just piles of round circles of glass. And then there was, you know, photographs, a photographic exhibition. And then we started doing parties in the basement.
I’d never DJ’d. [laughs] It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter – at all. The vibe was, kind of – you might be getting drowned out by a punk band in the next room and whatever.
But yeah, I enjoyed it. And then I started to get more into it. And then I started to kind of seek out more of the sounds that I liked, which would end up be sort of early, jungly, like kind of breakbeat-y kind of stuff.
So yeah, the Spikey Thing With Curves, that’s [where I started] DJing. It was only going for a few months – just my boyfriend at the time and his decks and yeah, just getting into it.”
From Tales From A Disappearing City: Episode 18 – 90’s London Subculture. Fashion, Clubs and Ambient Soho – special guest – Miss Pink, 15 May 2024
Miss Pink went on to be an excellent DJ and a rare friendly face behind the counters of some of Soho’s trendiest dance music record shops, including Ambient Soho and Black Market. Perhaps this would have happened anyway, but it’s clear that the open creativity of a squatted space played its part in Rachel’s evolution.
Whenwas it squatted?
Suggestions of the dates when Spikey Thing With Curves existed seem to vary between 1994-1996. We can see from the video that it was winter and most accounts seem to agree that it was only occupied for a few months.
Hackney’s Anarchic Nineties (written in 1996) states 1994, so that seems like a good bet and is what I will say until a grumpy old squatter contradicts me!
That article also points out that 280 has been previously squatted as emergency accomodation in March 1988, following the mass eviction of Stamford Hill Estate.
This handy spreadsheet of London squats also mentions that the same building was squatted in the noughties by veteran London punk organisers the Reknaw crew (you need to read it backwards).
Any more information on any of these squats would be very welcome – please leave a comment! I’d be especially interested in people’s memories and photos.
London Remembers gives a nice summary of its earlier incarnation as a site for God-botherers:
Built for the Salvation Army in 1910. Their Women’s Social Work HQ moved here in 1911 from offices at another nearby Salvation Army address, 259 Mare Street. The work run from here included: women’s social and slum work, rescue homes and children’s aid, all that we now know as ‘social work’. Refurbished in 2008 the building is now used as council offices.
It appears that after 2008, 280 Mare Street became the soul-sappingly named “Kreativ House”:
“a collection of uniquely designed private studios and workspaces that support forward-thinking businesses and their teams.”
It seems to have been home to a bunch of businesses including massage therapy, hairdressers, desks for rent and a private home care company…
Sistah Space, an inspiring domestic violence charity for women of African Heritage was based in the building too (whilst being properly messed about by the council) before moving to Ashwin Street in Dalston.
Footways, a charity focussed on encouraging walking is also based there.
The building is between the Baxter’s Court Wetherspoons pub and the Picturehouse Cinema. Raise a pint to its previous occupants if you are in the area.
Raising Hell is a veteran UK squat-punk fanzine that has recently been relaunched, as well as compiling its classic issues from the eighties and nineties into a handy anthology. The zine’s Instagram feed carries on its irreverent spirit and is well worth a follow.
They recently posted a flyer for this gig from 1994 featuring Hackney squatters Coitus (apparently originally called Eternal Diarrhoea when the formed in 1989). The band included some former affiliates of the infamous nihilistic Hackney Hellcrew.
As Raising Hell say in a note accompanying the flyer:
January 1994…. 30 years ago the Putlogs pub in Clapton was home to a series of punk gigs until a gig on the eve of the “Hackney Homeless Festival ” (a couple of months after this gig) in nearby Clissold Park was ruthlessly attacked by the local Stoke Newington cops.
It was quite common for London cops to target punk gigs at this time, both at squats and regular pub venues, but this was a particularly vicious assault resulting in many busted heads and 16 people arrested and then fitted up on completely false charges.
None of the cops cock and bullshit stories stood up in Magistrates Court or Crown Court and none of the defendants were found guilty. However the tables were turned a few years later when an internal investigation into the corrupt and violent regime of Stoke Newington cop shop resulted in 7 of the cops present that night being prosecuted and put on trial at the Old Bailey….
A putlog “is a short horizontal pole projecting from a wall, on which scaffold floorboards rest”.
Putlogs was located at 2 Charnwood Street E5 8SH, on the corner with Northwold Road. It was also known as Pudlocks and was previously the Duke of York pub:
Photo of Duke of York courtesy of CAMRA
The pub closed in 2000 and was converted for residential use in 2003.
Hackney Homeless Festival took place on Sunday 8th May 1994, which means the gig at Putlogs that was attacked by the police was Saturday night of 7th May 1994. According to the Independent, local heroes Coitus also headlined this one.
Press clipping coutesy of Raising Hell
Officers from Stoke Newington police station being corrupt and violent was par for the course in the 1990s. This incident was highly unusual as it led to PC Paul “protagonist of brutality” Evans being jailed for six months for assault. None of the trumped up charges agains the punks led to any convictions either, which was not always the case.
As usual there seems to have been a great deal of work undertaken by Hackney Community Defence Association / The Colin Roach Centre to assist the victims of police crime. It has to be mentioned that suing the police is a very stressful and time-consuming activity. The significant number of Hackney residents who were prepared to put themselves through the courts was a major reason for the downfall of the extraordinarily corrupt cops at Stoke Newington police station in the 1990s.
There are several media stories about the incident at the foot of this post, but the most useful account comes from anti-capitalist weekly freesheet SchNEWS:
Cowards and Bullies
Yes it’s official, on Wednesday Judge Graham Boal sentenced P.C. Paul Evans from Stoke Newington, Hackney, for assaulting a student on the eve of a festival, to six months saying, “You are a coward and a bully and you have brought shame on the force”. A solicitor told SchNEWS. “Members of the public charged with these offences could expect six to twelve months but I would expect someone who was in a position of trust and respect (sic) to receive considerably more”.
Six other members of the same scum squad were cleared of all charges. On the night before the 1994 Hackney Homeless Festival, two police officers were called to a pub to investigate a vandalised slot machine. Despite admitting that they were not threatened in any way they called for assistance, this being provided by another twenty of Newington’s worst.
A series of random beatings began after police chased a man they wrongly believed to have smashed the window of their car. A bystander was knocked to the ground then assaulted and arrested by a passing plod, his friend complained and was dragged to the ground, kicked in the groin then held to the floor by a boot on the face.
P.C. Evans approached a group of people standing outside the pub saying, “I’ve never seen so much collected scum.” One man remarked to a friend, “I couldn’t agree more”. Evans then beat him to the ground with his torch. Another two who objected to this behaviour were also assaulted, arrested and taken to Stoke Newington police station where Evans continued to kick them about the head, demanding they “Call yourselves cunts” as he did so.
A police photo showing the injuries to one man later went missing. The seven officers involved then got together in the station canteen where it took them an hour and twenty minutes to write their notes, claiming they had faced “an angry and violent mob”.
All arrested were acquitted and all charges dropped. The irony about this case is not that the police launched unprovoked attacks on the public, Stoke Newington have a history of this, but that one of their own who saw them fabricating their notes was so disgusted he blew the whistle. The local area complaint unit recommended that the seven officers be charged with ‘conspiracy to pervert the course of justice’ on the strength of his statement.
But, surprise surprise, the Criminal Prosecution Service kept the existence of the officer and his statement from the jury. Neither was any mention made of the fact that these same officers were involved in an attack on a squatted pub or that they were also involved the day after in attacks on 29 members of the public at the festival. One, a woman, suffered a broken arm, another a man suffering from Spina Biffida. No-one who was attacked or arrested were ever convicted of any crime and a number are currently suing police.
During 1987-94 alone, the Colin Roach Centre (set up after Colin Roach was shot dead in the foyer of Stoke Newington police st.), dealt with over 500 allegations of assault, the planting of evidence, police drug dealing and fit-ups.The centre also told us P.C. Evans is under investigation for nine other claims of assault against members of the public. It’s clear to SchNews that it’s not one apple, it’s the whole fucking barrel.
Colin Roach Centre: 0181 533 711
* Vocab Watch:
Affray – The unlawful use or threat of violence
Conspiracy (not applicable to the police)
(From: SchNEWS Issue 144, Friday 21st November 1997)
Finally let’s end on a song, with Coitus performing “Submission/Domination” to an audience of Stoke Newington punks (not sure when/where excactly):
This clip is taken from this cool short film “Stokey Punx” from 1995. Other bands featured included Dread Messiah and the anthemic “Beer” performed by Suicidal Supermarket Trollies.
Text of Guardian clipping photographed above:
(Undated but probably September 1997)
Police ‘covered up brutal attack’ Seven officers ‘invented story after beating up youngsters’ Vivek Chaudhary
POLICE officers launched a brual and unprov;ked attack on a group of young people attending a music festival and then colluded with colleagues to cover up their illegal conduct, the Old Bailey was told yesterday. The officers. all from Stoke Newington police station. north London, attacked festival goers who were attending a two day event in a north London park in May 1994, the court was told. James O’Mahony. prosecuting, told the court that the youngsters, who were having a “Saturday night out’, had not done anything wrong. They were attacked after some of them protested at police brutality when officers attempted to arrest a man close to a pub where there had been trouble. He said one man was beaten with a torch, another had his head smashed into railings, while another was attacked in the yard of the police station. Others were punched, kicked and verbally abused by officers.
Mr O’Mahony said: “If that was not bad enough the officers then told lies about what happened. It was a beating up and then a cover-up. “They put together a framework of lies for the basis of the continued detention of those arrested. All the officers made entries into police note-books and made witness statements… These were then used for the prosecution of those who had been assaulted and unlawfully arrested.”
Police officers Martin Pearl, David Hay, Paul Evans, Colin MacLennan, Mark Astley, Dustin Irribarren and Emma Flannigan all deny conspiring to pervert the course of justice on May 8, 1994. Messrs Evans, Hay and MacLennan deny conspiring to commit perjury between May 7 and October 15. 1994, while Messrs Evans, Astley, lrribarren, Hay and Pearl deny affray on May 8. 1994. Messrs Evans, Astley and Irribarren deny assault on the same day and Messrs Evans, Astley, Irribarren, Hay and Pearl deny false imprisonment — again on May 8, 1994.
The court was told that the officers arrived following trouble at the Putlog pub, Stoke Newington.
Mr O’Mahony said: “No complaint could be made as to fair and firm enforcement of the law but police conduct here was brutal, unprovoked and over the top. It was deliberately directed at innocent people.”
He told the jury that not all seven officers in the dock were responsible for the violence but all seven were responsible for making false notes in their police note-books. Messrs Evans, Hay and MacLennan also lied on oath as to what happened during the trial of one of those arrested, he said. The man was, however, acquitted.
Mr O’Mahony described Evans as the “protagonist of brutality” who launched his attack, along with some colleagues, in two Iocations close to the pub.
“Those people had done nothing wrong. Again and again, protests were made at the heavy-handed, brutal violence but to no avail. It didn’t stop on the streets. It continued in police vans and it continued at Stoke Newington police aation.” The court was told that at least five festival goers sustained injuries and were then prosecuted on the basis of false witness statements made by the officers. They are all due to give evidence at the trial along with other witnesses who saw police launch the unprovoked attack, the jury was told.
Mr O’Mahony said: “That night all the defendants were in the canteen of Stoke Newington police station. All made notes in official note-books as to what happened and the contents later went into witness statements. The jury also heard extracts from the statemenek which alleged that police had come under attack.
Seven Metropolitan Police officers have been charged with offences including assault, unlawful imprisonment and conspiring to pervert the course of justice over incidents in east London, the force confirmed last night.
The charges follow incidents in May 1994 and February 1995 which prompted several complaints and an internal police inquiry, supervised by the Police Complaints Authority.
Two of the officers have already appeared in court and been remanded on bail. The others have been summonsed and will appear before magistrates in early November.
Six of the officers, all male, were based at nearby Stoke Newington police station, and were on duty at the time of the alleged offences. The seventh was based at Enfield, in north London.
The charges arise out of a public-order incident when 12 people were arrested outside the Putlogs pub in Hackney. The arrests came after a performance by a punk band called Coitus the day before a festival for Hackney’s homeless. All those arrested were charged with counts of obstruction, affray and criminal damage. All were subsequently acquitted.
One set of complaints is believed to centre on four people among those arrested. A second, and unrelated, set of complaints is believed to centre on accusations of assault in cells at Stoke Newington.
Charges were laid after advice from the Crown Prosecution Service. None of the complainants has been named. Additional case papers have been filed to the CPS and its decisions on further allegations of assault and perverting the course of justice are awaited.
Scotland Yard said that Constable Jason Cook and Sergeant Terence Norman had already been bailed by Bow Street magistrates on charges of assault in Dalston, east London, in February last year.
On Monday, summonses were served on PCs Martin Pearl and David Hay alleging unlawful imprisonment and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice in Stoke Newington in May 1994. PC Mark Astley, based at Enfield, faces the same charges.
PC Colin MacLennan is charged with conspiring to pervert the course of justice in Stoke Newington in May 1994. Yesterday, a further summons, alleging assault, unlawful imprisonment and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, was served on PC Dustin Irribarren.
All five are due to appear at Bow Street on 5 November.
Russell Miller, solicitor for nine of the complainants, hailed the decision to prosecute as “the culmination of 14 months’ work and an unprecedented example of co-operation between victims, their solicitors and those responsible for investigating police crime. It is an example all those concerned with the current crisis in policing should look to as a model”.
A police officer convicted of assaulting a reveller at a festival for the homeless has been jailed for six months at the Old Bailey.
PC Paul Evans, 32, from Stoke Newington police station, north east London, had brought disgrace on himself and shame on his profession, said Judge Graham Boal.
He was found guilty of assaulting Ben Swarbrick by beating him, and of affray and was sentenced to a total of six months.
Evans was cleared of false imprisonment and conspiring to pervert the course of justice.
He had denied all charges.
The judge told him: “As a constable in the Metropolitan Police, your duty was to uphold law and order.”
He said a prison sentence was inevitable and added: “Were it not so, the public would have cause for concern.”
Six other officers from the same station were all cleared on Monday of various charges they faced after the festival for Hackney’s homeless in May 1994.
The officers faced a total of 15 charges related to alleged attacks on the public or that they had conspired to pervert the course of justice regarding those events.
Mr Swarbrick said afterwards: “I was brutally assaulted by PC Evans that night. I’m not too happy with the verdict but I’m glad it’s all out of the way now.”
The officers had been called to a pub after they received reports of vandalism on a fruit machine.
They made 12 arrests but people involved alleged the officers had been heavy-handed.
The prosecution described PC Evans as the “main protagonist” in the events.
The Independent 18 November 1997The Times, November 19 1997
The Acton Arms was located at 296 Kingsland Road. According to The Lost Pubs Project, the pub existed since at least 1839 [actually 1832] and was substantially rebuilt in 1889. An Irish couple Luke and Mary Nolan took the place over in the mid-eighties and changed the name to Nolans. In the 1990s, the name reverted to the Acton Arms, but the pub closed in 2001 and was converted for use as a hairdressers’ salon. The ground floor was out of use the last time I passed by from what I can recall.
Before it closed, The Acton Arms was a popular venue for punks, squatters and anarchists. Indeed, veteran folk singer Robb Johnson was inspired to write a song about it called “Anarchy In Hackney”:
“Well the golden sun stops dead outside this window. There’s the dust of generations in this bar. That have gone down the Kingsland Road from the Dalston Junction. When the brave new Britain’s never got this far.
‘Cos we don’t do what we’re told to do. Whatever it is – fuck you! Anarchy, anarchy, anarchy in Hackney now!”
There are a number of live versions of the song on Youtube too, with updated lyrics in keeping with the folk tradition.
You can support Robb by buying the song on Bandcamp, (on its own for £1, or as part of the recommended 8 Songs About Anarchism album) – where he has added this great reflection on the scene around The Acton Arms:
In the mid 90s, a young anarcho punk, Mark the Mohawk, decided to run a series of gigs in a nondescript little boozer called the Acton Arms on the Kingsland Road. He called this “Making Punk a Treat Again”[1], & any money raised left after expenses went to good causes like the Anarchist Black Cross.[2]
Somehow I ended up being the support act quite a bit there. Mark Astronaut was another inspirational individual, a lovely man, a great songwriter & a unique performer – & also someone who encouraged other people to get creative too. His new drummer mentioned in this song turned out to be Andi Tuck, who for a while played drums with me too.
This acoustic version has updated a few of its references. Sadly the Acton Arms is no more, & Hackney definitely isn’t as punkrock as it used to be either. But who doesn’t like a song that encourages you to shout “fuck off” loudly at regular intervals? When we first recorded it in 1997 we left a gap & just did the shouty bit on the last chorus, but sometimes you realise in some situations, subtlety is over-rated.
Robb Johnson
[1] – This was a riff on “Making Punk A Threat Again” – a slogan by American anarchist punk newspaper and record label Profane Existence.
[2] – Longstanding organisation/umbrella concept to support anarchist and class struggle prisoners.
The flyers below show that several of the “Making Punk A Treat” gigs at The Acton Arms were benfits for political prisoners, in addition to ones for the striking Liverpool Dockers and refugees:
1996199619971997
Other events at the Acton Arms over the years included an anarchist pub quiz, a launch event for a book of anarchist poetry, a benefit for the Hunt Saboteurs Association, etc.
It being the 1990s, very few people had video cameras, so there isn’t much live footage to be found, except this set from Polish hardcore punk band Post Regiment:
With cruel irony, one of the collective that had organised so many benefits for political prisoners became one himself following the J18 Carnival Against Capitalism on June 18th 1999:
It looks like a bunch of people involved with the “Making Punk a Treat Again” gigs went on to be involved with London Celtic Punks.
If you want a some good first-person accounts and artwork about punk squatting in Hackney in the late 1980s and 1990s, check out They’ve Taken Our Ghettos: A Punk History of the Woodberry Down Estate, which is available cheap from the excellent Active Distribution. (Active was set up in the punk squat Lee House in the 1980s)
If you went to gigs at the Acton Arms and can remember anything, please leave a comment below…
The first day of my apprenticeship, on the ride to the construction site, it suddenly hit me: you’re gonna be doing this for fifty years, there’s no escaping it. The scare of that just stuck in my bones. I had to look for ways to get out.
bommi baumann – TERROR OR LOVE?
Tuesday February 10th 1981 would have been quite memorable for residents of Elderfield Road, Clapton E5. Their 33 year old German neighbour Alex, “the punk with the golden hair” was arrested by eight armed policemen at his squat at number 102. He was held at Hackney police station on Lower Clapton Road.
It soon emerged that 33 year old “Alex Green” was actually Michael “Bommi” Baumann, who – like Astrid Proll – had been on the run from the German authorities for his activities as a militant revolutionary/terrorist.
Baumann was born in 1947 and was radicalised in the 1960s whilst doing typical working class construction jobs in West Berlin. His nickname “Bommi” came from his love of Bommi mit Pflaume – a plum-flavoured spirit – and not from the explosive activities he became infamous for.
In an interview with Richard Huffman, Baumann states that he and the other West Berlin hippies were in direct confrontation with their parents’ generation, most of whom had supported the Nazi regime in some way. He mentions older people saying that hippies should be gassed or sent to labour camps.
Bommi became politicised, joining the German Socialist Student Group (SDS) whilst a studying on an evening course in early 1967. Soon after this, he was involved with Kommune 1, Germany’s first political commune, which combined long hair, free love and Mao t-shirts.
Sixties West Berlin / J2M
June 2nd 1967 was a turning point for the West German youth movements – much of the subsequent urban guerilla actvity can be traced back to this one point in time.
On that date, an unarmed student named Benno Ohnesorg was fatally shot by a policeman during a demonstration against the state visit of the Shah of Iran. The policeman later turned out to be a Stasi agent. This event would lead to the formation of the Red Army Faction (aka Baader-Meinhof gang) and the lesser known June 2nd Movement (J2M).
Benno Ohnesorg. It did a crazy thing to me. When his casket went by, it just went ding, something got started there.
Bommi Baumann – Terror or Love?
The June 2nd Movement was far more bohemian and anarchist than the austere Red Army Faction – and had its roots squarely in the counter culture, including loose groups like The Central Committe of the Roaming Hash Rebels, and the Tupamaros. Bommi was involved with all of these groups as well as taking a keen interest in the music and drug scenes of the time.
His first arrest was in 1968 for slashing the tyres of over a hundred cars parked outside police accommodation. He was sentenced to nine months in jail. Around this time he was also involved in arson attacks using molotov cocktails. And then more than that:
A smaller grounp within the commune formed itself into the first urban guerilla cell. Some had already started looking for better stuff than molotovs; that is, bombs.
Our first big action was Nixon’s visit [February 1969]. We drove through Berlin with the illegal transmitters, broadcasting. And along the way I planted a bomb, to give Mr Nixon a little scare. I placed it in such a way that it wouldn’t accidentally hurt a passerby.
Bommi Baumann – Terror or Love?
That bomb did not detonate. Baumann subsequently admitted that the groups he was involved in had set about 120 bombs, many of which did go off. Targets included judges, prison superintendents, the American Embassy, the offices of El Al (Israeli airline) and an American Army officers’ club.
A J2M faction which Bommi disavowed left a bomb at a synagogue on the anniversay of Kristalnacht – a completely stupid act, misguidely aimed at solidarity with the struggle of Palestinian people. Fortunately that one didn’t go off either. The bombing of Berlin’s British Yacht Club resulted in the unintentional killing of a 66 year old German boat builder.
Alongside the bombings, J2M participated in other actions including destroying ticket machines on the subway in protest at fare rises, as well as more conventional comunity politics. Bommi was involved bank robberies to fund the underground lifestyle of the group.
Michael quickly became a wanted man and adapted to an underground lifestyle. He was arrested again with two others in February 1970 whilst beating up a tabloid journalist who had written a sensationalist and inaccurate story about the movement. He was 22 years old.
“Free Bommi” “Destroy what destroys you”
The charges for Baumann and an accomplice did not stick and they were released on parole in July 1971. The third J2M member Georg von Rauch was due to be sentenced to at least ten years, but managed a dramatic escape by impersonating his other paroled comrade.
The ongoing activities of the Red Army Faction and J2M led to a huge police clampdown in December 1971. Baumann and von Rauch were questioned by an armed policeman whilst parking a car. A shoot-out ensued in which Georg was killed.
Rauch’s death and the violent arrests of RAF members took its toll on Baumann, who dropped out urban guerilla activity at the end of 1972. J2M essentially ended around this point, with some members joining the Red Army Faction. Bommi went on the run to Afghanistan, India and Syria.
For me, the whole time it was a question of creating human values which did not exist in capitalism, in all of Europe, in all of Western culture—they’d been cleared away by the machine. That’s what it’s about: to discover them anew, to unfold them anew, and to create them anew. In that way, too, you carry the torch again, you become the bearer of a new society—if it is possible. And you’ll be better doing that than bombing it in, creating the same rigid figures of hatred at the end.
bommi baumann – terror or love?
There was a huge scandal in Autumn 1975 when Bommi Baumann’s entertaining autobiography Wie Alles Anfing (“How it all began”) was published. The small publishing house was raided by armed police and all copies of the book were seized. This resulted in a freedom of speech campaign, during which hundreds of German and international intellectuals claimed to be the co-authors of the book when it was republished. How It All Began was then translated into seven languages and sold over 100,000 copies. It is still in print today.
Life in London
Bommi had visited London for a holiday in 1969 and appreciated the counter culture here. And it was this that tempted him back while he was on the run:
I met the first English punks in 1977 in Dharmsala on the Tibet-India border, where the Dalai Lama lives. The hippies made a flea market there, on Sundays, in a meadow. They sat there and for the 5000th time they played “Hey Mr. Tambourine-Man”, it was appalling. I thought, oh my god, when will it all end? All this whiny whimper is going on […]
But there were just a few young Englishmen with bright hair who talked about the punks, and I realized that this is similar to us hash rebels in 1967, the same trip we went on, but now accomplished, the mass movement. Okay, they no longer had long hair, but short colored hair, but if you know your way around a little, you would immediately recognize the signs, the symbols, so I decided to go to London […] I was really interested in punk. It started with the music.
Bommi Baumann – HiHo
After a stint squatting in Brixton and Paddington, Alex settled in Hackney in 1979 until his arrest in February 1981:
I lived with a squatters’ collective in London. […] All imaginable people who could not find an apartment got together and renovated vacant houses. […] in Hackney, where we repaired these houses, there was a whole section of these typical English single-family homes with front gardens from Queen Victoria’s time. Behind the houses was a small garden, where people cultivated vegetables and chickens.
There were only freaks, in one house only skinheads, in the other only punks, in the third only motorcycling freaks and of course social workers. They all got along with each other. At most there was the usual quarrels, jealousy dramas. Even the skinheads were OK.
Many anarcho-punk bands also lived in the area and always played somewhere, there were several small venues and pubs. It is a fairly diverse district with many Pakistani and Indians, but not quite as black as Brixton.
Of course I also cut my hair. For someone like me, punk had the advantage that I could dress up a bit again. The freakier people look, the better the situation for someone who is “wanted”. I always went with the people to the punk concerts in the back rooms of pubs. About a hundred punks stood around and were happy. And me too. I thought the bands were all good. I only saw the Sex Pistols once, with the guitarist from Thin Lizzy, who is now dead.
Bommi Baumann – HiHo
By all accounts Bommi was far more gregarious than fellow Hackney resident Astrid Proll:
…finding friends, especially among the young punks, and the music scene around Chats Palace. ‘I‘d nearly given up on rock with Mr Dylan and the Stones and all those other pensioners!’ – 33 year old ‘Alex’ was liked by the youth as a Grandad figure. He was fond of babysitting too. He got odd jobs as a carpenter and also some royalties from his book ‘Wie Alles Anfing‘.”
Islington Gutter Press April 1981
Anarchist punk benefit gig for Action Space arts centre in 1981Anoher punk gig at Chats Palace, 1980
Punk acts who played Chats Palace during Bommi’s time in Hackney include: Folk-punk Patrik Fitzgerald, Crisis, The Mekons (as part of a Rock Against Racism benefit), anarchopunk stalwarts The Poison Girls, Flux of Pink Indians, The Au Pairs and the Hackney Musicians’ Collective adjacent Oxy & The Morons. Most of these seem to have been benefit gigs of some kind, which speaks to a healthy political culture…
Bommi was even arrested in London for drunkenness, but discharged the next day. His ID was a passport given to him by a dropout in Goa some years previously.
His income from casual worked was topped up with the occasional royalty payment for his book. The arrival of a cheque in February 1981 called for a party to celebrate…
Arrest and Extradition
At some point I got money for my book and partied all night with the punk girl.
We had arranged for a chimney sweep to visit the next morning. We woke up with a total hangover and there was a knock on the front door. I just wanted to go down to make tea and so I just opened the front door and say ‘come in’ and go on to the kitchen. Suddenly I noticed someone moving at the door.
I opened the door properly, and there are already eight men standing there, holding out a gun and ID card and saying, “Are you Mr. Green? They are wanted in Germany.” I say: “Mr. Green is not being searched for in Germany at all, I can tell you now.” One of them says: “Watch out, we want to take fingerprints here.” I say: “No, we can save ourselves.” Then he says: “So come with me” I say: “Sure.” Then they looked for weapons. They were totally surprised that I was messing around and laughing all the time, they’d never seen anything like that before. They usually arrested the IRA people.
Michael “Bommi” Baumann – HiHo
Bommi suggested two different reasons why the police were able to find him. In his book HiHo he says that the hippy in Goa who had given him his passport had changed their mind and reported it as stolen to the police, who linked it with his unemployment benefit payments.
In the interview with Richard Huffman he says that he had known some other escapees from Berlin who were living in London – and that they were continuing the underground lifestyle by robbing banks. When they were arrested, they had Baumann’s address in their pocket.
Bommi had studied the complexities of the Astrid Proll extradition case in 1978-9. But there would be no time for a solidarity campaign or benefit gigs for him. (Although he does note that people involved with the band Motorhead sent him money and t-shirts!). Astrid had married an Englishman, but Baumann had no claims on UK citizenship – and the British and German states had both learned lessons from the Proll extradition.
36 hours after his arrest, Bommi was on a plane back to Berlin. In the Huffman interview he admits to leaving England of his own volition in the belief that this woud lead to a reduced sentence.
Michael Baumann was sentenced to five years and two months imprisonment for two bank robberies and a bomb attack on the Berlin police headquarters.
Baumann in 1987
After his release, he continued life in Berlin and worked in drug therapy. His long-term drug use meant that he was in poor health. He also wrote three more books, none of which have yet been translated into English.
Public access to the files of the Stasi in 1998 revealed that Baumann had been blackmailed (and probably tortured) by the East German secret police after being arrested in the seventies and had written hundreds of pages about members of the revolutionary cells. He later apologized for this.
Michael “Bommi” Baumann died on July 19, 2016 in his apartment in Berlin-Friedrichshain at the age of 68.
Bommi Baumann – Terror Or Love?: The personal account of a West German Urban Guerilla (Platform Books, 1979) – this is essentially the same book as the earlier How it all began… which is available to read on Libcom.
Michael “Bommi” Baumann – HiHo: Die abenteuerliche Flucht eines Ex-Terroisten (Panama Publications, 2007. “HiHo: The adventurous escape of an ex-terrorist” – quotes from this book have been machine-translated so please do correct me if any of that could be improved.
“The punk with the golden hair” – Islington Gutter Press April 1981, reprinted on p11 of Black Flag vol VI #7 April 1981 – available at Libcom.
Archive of AGIT 883 – German anarchist newspaper including contributions from Bommi Baumann and his comrades as well as calls for him to be released (see below).
“Free Bommi” – detail from AGIT 883“Self Defence / “Free Bommi” / “Destroy what destroys you” – AGIT 883 #59“A pig is a pig – the pig must be offed!” / “Free all prisoners” / etc – from AGIT 883
The 2024 Radical History Faction programme will be unleashed in the near future. Until then, here are some other Hackney happenings you may be interested in:
Hackney Art Activism Festival 27 April – 6 May
“A 10 day sound + visual art festival exploring community resistance to policing in Hackney from 1980s to today.
Venues + Locations: Gillett Square, The Vortex, C.L.R. James Library, Hackney Archives, The RIO + Online.”
One of the reasons this site started was the lack of information available about community responses to corrupt, racist and violent policing in Hackney in the eighties and nineties, specifically the amazing work done by Hackney Community Defence Association.
It looks like a number of people who were active in HCDA are involved with this event. There are lots of great things in the programme, but everyone should go to the free exhibitions at Hackney Archives and Gillett Square.
Gillett Square has specifically been chosen because of its proximity to Bradbury Street, which was home to the HCDA HQ, the Colin Roach Centre – as well as number of other co-operatives. The square is not immune to local pressures and struggles and an anti-gentrification protest was held there in 2006. Since then it has been a contested space, being a cornerstone of “radical black history” and also, more ominously, the focus of an award winning redevelopment by architects. Clearly the festival is squarely in the tradition of the former…
Including: Susan Doe on Hackney’s Suffragettes, Breda Corish on how the campaign for Home Rule in Ireland played out in Hackney, Stephen May on the weeks Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg spent in Hackney in 1907 and a Black History Walks tour of Dalston.
Towards the end of the 19th Century, Elijah Sherry founded a timber business, initially dealing in dockyard off-cuts before opening a timber yard in Bethnal Green. The family business rapidly expanded and in 1912 “bought a site along the Hackney Cut at Homerton Bridge, kitted out with a new steam and electric plants – including band mill, sawmill, planing and mould mill.” This site closed in 1970 after a series of mergers.
Sherry’s Wharf Estate
In 1972 the land was acquired by the Greater London Council (GLC), who redeveloped it into an estate of 143 maisonettes with gardens. Of these, 43 were specially adapted sheltered flats for the elderly. This new estate was finished in early 1981 and overlooked Hackney Marshes and the River Lea. (I am unclear if that was desireable in 1981 or not – leave a comment if you know more!)
Residents in the adjoining and delapidated Kingsmead Estate were originally promised first refusal for the new flats by the Labour-controlled GLC. Including several pensioners who were looking forward to the new sheltered accommodation.
But there was a change of heart in May 1977 when the GLC became controlled by the Conservatives. With typical greed, the tories decided instead to put the new flats up for sale with a minimum asking price of £30,000 (£233,595 in 2024 money).
This did not go down well with local people, who protested the GLC into a minor climbdown: Some of the flats would be rented out at between £22 and £37 a week – a figure astronomically higher than the council rents of the time. New tenants were vetted by the GLC and expected to be on a wage of at least five times their rent. There is a fairly transparent agenda here to reserve the new estate for wealthier, more “respectable” people.
Protest!
Around 50 of the flats were rented out. But then, at 1:30am on the 1st of February 1981, 200 people squatted 30-50* of the properties in Sherry’s Wharf in protest against homlessness in London and against the sell off.
(*Some accounts say 30 and some 50).
Immediately after the occupation, a leaflet was distributed round the Kingsmead Estate to explain to tenants why the flats and houses were being squatted.
The squatters have also drawn up a charter of basic aims, to be agreed by everyone living there. These include taking care of the flats and houses and of the lawns and pathways on the estate, and respecting the rights and property of fellow squatters.
Regular meetings are held, attended by representatives of all the flats ana houses, and organisational tasks are shared out.
Hackney peoples press
The Times 16 February 1981
The squatters included local people organised as Sherry’s Wharf Action Group supported by activists from Squat Against Sales, who had recently been involved with an occupation of Kilner House in Kennington which was evicted in January 1981 by 600 cops from the notorious Special Patrol Group.
Hackney Peoples Press reported on the occupation and its demands:
That the sheltered accommodation should be restored and returned to the local pensioners for whom it was intended;
and that the rents on the estate should be reduced in line with the rest of Kingsmead Estate, and the income qualification removed.
The occupation has a third aim: to draw attention to the worsening problem of homelessness in London.
Hackney Gazette 17th February 1981
A street party was held on Sunday 15th February 1981 – opened by Hackney GLC Councillor Gerry Ross (Labour). About 200 people attended:
entertainment was provided by Smiley the Clown and local young musicians; there was play equipment for children, and local people got the chance to look round the flats and houses which had been intended for them.
Hackney peoples press
During the party the Offa’s Mead block / area of the estate was renamed “Liberation Square” with new signage. (See photo above). This all generated some decent press coverage.
Hackney Peoples Press
But by April, the squatters were predicting a mass eviction, and according to Past Tense this came to pass on 17th April 1981.
The Labour Party regained control of the GLC in May 1981, heralding the era of “loony lefty” Ken Livingstone. This supposed municipal socialism does not appear to have made any difference to the situation at Sherry’s Wharf.
In May 1982, the anarchist newspaper Black Flag published some terrible poetry commemorating the protests:
Today!
The story of Sherry’s Wharf in the late 20th Century is the story of London in microcosm. It begins with the deindustrialisation of the river, followed by a move to residential use of the land, in which existing residents are priced out…
In 2018 the Hackney Council bought the freehold on the Sherry’s Wharf land from the Canal and River Trust.
Section 144 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 made it a criminal offence to trespass in residential properties with the intention of living there… But all is not lost!
If people are squatting in a clearly residential property, they risk arrest and so losing their home, but it does not cover all situations. The law DOES NOT cover situations where:
• the property is not residential, people are or were tenants (including sub-tenants) of the property,
• people have (or had) an agreement with someone with a right to the property,
• people in the property are not intending to live there (maybe merely visiting, holding a short term art project, a protest,etc.)
Notes For New Squatters
So despite what you’ve heard, it might be possible for protests like the occupation of Sherry’s Wharf to happen in London today.
Official organisations like Hackney Night Shelter struggle on, doing incredible work with little funding. It was brilliant to attend a Hackney Anarchists benefit for the homeless earlier this month too.
Meanwhile, a three bed flat in Offa’s Mead sold for £520.000 in 2019, which is £286k above inflation. Rental prices appear to be an immoral £2300 a month, but that, dear reader, is what you get after 43 years of local and national governments colluding in price gouging, property speculation and gentrification.
There isn’t a silver bullet to solve the housing problem (although musing on who to shoot is an increasingly enticing pastime). Fundamentally a home needs to be recognised as a human right rather than a commodity – and we won’t get there by blogging eh?
But the occupation of Sherry’s Wharf and the support this got from local residents shows us what is possible. Perhaps Liberation Square was shortlived and ultimately a failure as a protest. But it was followed by a huge revival of the squatting movement – with tens of thousands of people taking matters into their own hands and turning empty properties into homes.
As late as 1993 Hackney was still the number one borough in London for squatting. After this it became increasingy “desirable”, which meant evictions and spiralling rents.
The Radical History of Hackney 
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