just been on the squat website and seen the usual expected comments from local residents supporting the eviction because the squatters lived “rent-free” and claiming the area attracted drug use and crime..

yet… the local councillor who pushed for the eviction is himself in potential trouble over a failed housing project which cost 2.8m of taxpayers money (over half the unpaid rent) yet delivered nothing..

at least these squatters, even if they broke the rules still delivered housing for 30 years, and various community facilities.

If anyone wants to play numbers games it would be easy to work out that if you costed the volunteer time and effort put into redevelopment of this area and the delivery of the services such as those workshops it would have easily offset some of the unpaid rent, and the residents had legally paid for utilities bills.

I know the South London area fairly well, and have spent a fair bit of time there during my life; and as many may have seen I regularly read the local press websites and take an interest in crime reports which affect the younger community in that area, particularly those who live alternative lifestyles.

I put as much research into monitoring these things as a professional journo working for LWT, Thames or any other media source would.

Had I noticed a large amount of trouble in/around St Agnes Place I would have mentioned it here at least once, and wanted it to be discussed, not hidden under the carpet.

In fact what I have seen over at least 3 years of checking the reports is quite the opposite – crime – often violent and involving the deadly use of firearms and other weapons happens in every other corner of South London – yet St Agnes place was rarely mentioned (I think there was one crackhouse busted on the outskirts of the area but nowhere near the main squat bit!). By South London standards, this is an exceedingly safe and crime-free neighbourhood!

whatever they did in this street – and sadly I will never get the chance now to see for myself; it worked.

crime may have happened and there may have been a minority dysfunctional elements creeping into the community due to lack of control; but this community It kept people in homes, happy and crime to a minimum.

now Britain’s so-called “conventional society”, by its own stubborness and refusal to accept those who rebel; has destroyed this community; and created a potentially problematic groundswell of hate and anger as the shock to who have been displaced subsides. The outlook is not particularly bright for this part of London.

IMO the only law was the law of truncheons, big boots and big numbers (such as totting up rent arrears; according to sources I have seen at least some of the evictions were legally questionable as the full posession hearings were yet to run – but without sight of the legal papers there’s no way I can confirm this (of course, any ex-residents are welcome to use our gallery to store a scan of these if the have them!)

but if you want to really get an idea on what appears to have led to this there you need to dredge a brimming cesspool of stubborness, spin, hate and bile; and consider wider events in the area.

looking at a fairly sympathetic wikipedia site
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Agnes_Place

this mentions there was a posession order granted to the Council back in 1993…. which in legal terms meant the place could have been evicted way back then.

However it appears the Council did not have the resources available then to carry out the eviction – Further, the CJA (which enables the Police to assist bailifs at civil evictions) was not in force until 1994.

I would expect the Council would have debated evicting this place many a time; but found it to be a politically sensitive and expensive proposal ; particularly due to the racial issues (part of the squat being a Rastafarian centre)

So eviction merely became a hot potato to be passed from councillor to councillor and eventually quietly dropped at the back of the meeting room for a random animal to investigate.

Also from 1995 until 2001, there seemed to be a slightly greater popular support in society for alternative lifestyles, particularly in the late 90s as the net boom created jobs in the London area for designers/artists etc.
many of these had transient working patterns and would live in squats to save money. but when the boom turned to bust (and NYC went boom on 9/11), it appears a larger backlash started; racial tension in creased, people became more envious of one another and a bunch of squatters “getting something for nothing” would easily have become a target. Also some “squatters” (but not the St Agnes place lot it seems) were becoming increasingly addicted to class A substances and committing crimes in their locality (often burglaries) to fund their addictions; as well as often intimidating other less aggressive people and taking over their spaces; the crackhouse phenomenon which got worse from around 2001 onwards.

I noticed a lot more negative campaigning against squatters in the early 21st century onwards – the bulk of it actually coming not from traditional conservative sources (which always would have hated this onslaught against the sanctity of private property rights) but from the “liberal” quarter of social housing organisations!

Many of them though merely seemed angry that their bumbling bureaucracies were being shown up by people taking matters into their own hands and housing themselves, but were also picking at weaknesses in the squat scene (such as crack/smack use) to justify the need for conventional solutions to the housing problem.

Around this time a random creature did turn up at Lambeth Town Hall to nibble at the now rather rotten potato of evicting the St Agnes Place squat – a councillor called Fitchett (Lib Dem). Facing allegations of a scandal over a failed social housing project where 2.8m of taxpayers money was lost for no gain; it appears that he has been the most vociferous opponent of St Agnes Place – perhaps to “prove himself” more than anything else.

He called the squatters “parasites” on many occasions, the squatters countered by publicising the failings in his own housing projects.

Unfortunately, he has the power of the Establishment and the “proper channels” behind him, as well as the oxygen of publicity to fuel the fires of hate against the squatters. Worse still from what I noticed on various messageboards even normal working class Londoners seemed to mistrust (if not hate) the squatters; their flamboyant partying/bohemian lifestyle must have irked many a grumpy old Cockney as much as the sharp-suited businessman..

At the same time Scotland Yard has had its numbers, communications and logistics facilities beefed up to “protect” a divided “Londonistan” believed to be under attack from both foreign terrorists and its own people (or at least those who do not accept the workings of the capitalist society)….

they had always been living on borrowed time since 1993 as the strict letter of the law said that the Council had ownership of the land… so this November it seems the Establishment simply mounted a show of strength; 200+ cops forcibly removed this community and destroyed it, busting heads were necessary.

but TBH there was no law here – only enforcement.