Notes on Squating

As a recent resident in London I’m often confronted with the cost of living here, and if you have any aspirations of being an artist and renting a studio you’d better have a grant or a massive bank account because the rent for a studio space can range from £75-200+/week, and usually that’s for a desk space, but there are ways around it.

At a pub in Brixton, The Prince Albert, I met a guy called Andy, he’s been a squatter all his life. His earliest memory is of living in a Brixton squat with his mother twenty five years ago, she was pregnant and going into labour, her contractions were kicking in and she ordered him to run to the phone box to call the ambulance.

“Help,” he cried into the phone, “I need an ambulance.

“Where to, son?”

“Brixton.”

Click, the phone hung up.

He dialed again. “Help. I need an ambulance to Brixton.”

Click.

He could hear his mother’s cries from outside on the street. He tried again. “My mother’s going into labour,” he cried, “She’s having a baby.”

“Woe. Slow down, son. Where is she?”

After he explained, the switchboard sent all three that he’d called for, but it was too late. His baby brother had been born in a squat.

Andy no longer lives in a squat but uses one for a studio. He paints urban landscapes of Brixton life, i.e. Drug dealers wandering through the marketplace with the crazy evangelists preaching on the street.

He hooked me up with my own studio in a squat, the old Clapham Junction theatre, but the whole place needed power. I knew that electrical engineering course I did would come in handy. But people talk, and soon I got a call from a girl called Erin asking if I could come over and help her out too. It was in a place that had only been recently claimed, a week ago.

The rules, I’m told, are if you can enter a building through an open door or window and it’s totally unoccupied, squatters have got the right to claim it, but that said, to lay claim to a space there must be at least one squatter present on the property at all times.

I went to this place and met Erin and her friends, they were cool guys. I was just getting down to the business of sorting out the electrics when there was a bashing on the door. “Who the f*** is in there?”

“Oh shit,” said Erin, standing next to me, holding my screwdriver. Her boyfriend, Scott, runs to the door to look through the peephole. “It’s a bloody big guy,” he says to us.

“Get the f*** out!” the big bloke starts kicking the door. The whole house is rattling.

“We’re squatting.” Scott yelled back, “We’ve got a right to be here.”

“Like f***.” He kicked the door again, and said something to his mates, soon someone’s kicking at the back door. “If you don’t want a bashing, you better come out now.”

I’m packing up my tools, thinking, there’s no way he’s going to keep that promise. Erin’s screaming out the key hole, “I’m calling the cops!” and she does. It was then, when she was on the phone to the cops, I discovered she was an epileptic. Her hands are shaking and she thrust the phone into my hand, “You gotta talk to them, I got to take my medication.”

“What?”

“Talk to them!”

I’m looking at the mobile in my hand, thinking, this isn’t my drama. I only came here to do you a favour. I don’t even know you people. “Hello?”

“What’s going on?” the copper asks.

I tell them four guys are trying to break into our house. There were only three but they were big. I didn’t mention our squatting situation. “Back off!” screams Erin, taking back her phone, she’s like a fired up banshee now after her medication. “The cops are on the way! You break in here, they’ll arrest you! Six months in gaol.”

They did back off too, it was like the eye inside the storm. Three big guys stood outside the door waiting for the cops, laughing. “When they come,” they said, “You’re f***ed.”

I smiled at my new friends inside, “Well, it sure has been nice to meet you.”

Erin and Scott ran upstairs to pack their bags. Minutes later, the cops arrived.

“What are they doing?” Scott yelled.

“Talking to the guys outside.” Then the cops left

“What?”

“They’re gone!” I yelled.

The big guy knocked on the door. “They’re getting a meat wagon to collect you.”

I’m thinking, how do I land myself into these situations? The other guys are running around, madly trying collecting their things. About three minutes later I looked out the window again, “Hey, I think they’re gone.”

Hesitantly, I opened the door. Two houses down, an old Jamaican man was fixing his car. “It’s okay,” he said, “They gone.”

“Where?” I asked, “To get their mates?”

“No. The coppers, they said they had to get a courts eviction.”

We met another guy who had been watching. “What are you kids doing?” he asked, “I was meant to auction that house today.”

He was the auctioneer and it was due to start at six thirty that evening.

As I said, they’d only recently got into that house, about a week ago, but you really wouldn’t have known it was for sale with the pigeons living in the roof and the stairs missing their banister, plus there were no ‘for sale’ signs out the front. The big guys were security guards who were meant to have been giving the place twenty-four-hour surveillance, but like the house they had been neglecting their duties, nicking down to the pub and getting paid for it, easy work for the last two months.

“They’re going to be unemployed soon,” said the auctioneer.

No wonder they were so pissed off.

The auctioneer was very nice, he even offered to show us some houses where we wouldn’t be discovered for months and to buy us all dinner. It was too weird so we declined. But one of the potential buyers did turn up, an orthodox Jew, with the beard, hat, and everything. Of course we let him in to inspect the house. The guys squatting decided to leave because it was a major inconvenience for everybody, and it’d only be a month before the courts evicted them.

I haven’t moved into a squat yet, not to live, but it’s still a cheap option for a studio. In some ways I feel like a tourist staring into the rabbit hole, one foot in the door and one out, but it sure is good being warm in winter.