Squatting in England and Wales

The Square Occupied Social Centre, a now-evicted squat in Russell Square, London

In England and Wales,¹ squatting  – the occupation of property without the owner's permission – has been progressively criminalised since the 1970s. The relative toleration accorded by a common law tradition in which the practice was unlawful but not criminal, was eroded in the wake of a wave of squatting that crested in London in the 1970s. Toward the end of that decade there were estimated to be 50,000 squatters in England and Wales, with 30,000 in the capital.

Although there were significant numbers of parents with children, these for the most part, were single people in occupation of what had been empty local council owned housing slated for eventual redevelopment or demolition. Having a statutory duty under the 1948 National Assistance Act to house homeless persons, local councils were at times willing to tolerate these occupations on a temporary, licensed, basis. On rarer occasions, squatters were able to persuade the authorities to recognise them as a housing association or cooperative with a legitimate claim to permanent accommodation.

There was a much smaller incidence, in London, of organised groups squatting in privately-owned city-centre properties. The greater publicity surrounding these higher-profile occupations contributed to an increasingly hostile coverage of squatting in the media focused on left-wing politics, alternative life-styles and psychedelic drug-taking.

The law surrounding squatting began to tighten. The courts accelerated the grant of [re]possession orders, notably by allowing owners to proceed against "persons unknown". In 1977, the Criminal Law Act defined conditions in which trespass, which has been a tort (that is, a matter for damage claims in a civil proceeding), could be considered criminal. These were broadened by the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 to include refusal to leave after being ordered to do so by a person entitled to occupation. Finally, the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 made squatting in residential property, in itself, an offence subject to a penalty of up to 6 months in prison, a £5,000 fine or both.

Within this criminal-law framework, squatting in the 21st century, tends to be a protest action involving only short-term occupation.

Early history and folklore

From the 14th century onward, where they continued to work or graze what had been commons, peasants in England were rendered squatters by a process of enclosure. In law (when resorted to) there was a presumption against the manor lords themselves forcibly exerting their new property claims. This was reinforced by the Forcible Entry Act of 1381, whose proscription of making "entry into lands and tenements, but in case where entry is given by the law, . . .. with strong hand [or] with multitude of people" was open to the interpretation that evictions could forcefully proceed only under court order. Although the actual court precedents remain unclear, into the 1970s the statute was widely invoked by squatters to oppose or delay eviction.

In 16th- and 17th-century, similar issues arose in Wales. Following its legal incorporation into England, enclosure and taxation drove people to build their own small holdings around a Tŷ unnos ("one-night house"), believing that a shelter erected overnight on common land or the "lord's waste" gave them a claim to freehold. In England too this was a folk belief: if a squatter erected a structure on waste land overnight they had the right of undisturbed possession. To counter the practice, an act was passed known as the Erection of Cottages Act 1588 whereby a cottage could only be built as long as it had a minimum of 4 acres of land associated with it.

In 1649 at St George's Hill, Weybridge in Surrey, Gerrard Winstanley and others calling themselves the True Levellers occupied disused common land and cultivated it collectively in the hope that their actions would inspire other poor people to defy enclosure and follow their lead. In The Law of Freedom (1652), Winstanley famously declared: "the poorest man hath as true a title and just right to the land as the richest man".

Rural squatting on what was recognised locally as common land continued through to the end of the nineteenth century.. In the early 1800s, Herefordshire's commons hosted almost a hundred settlements comprising ten or more dwellings. Wasteland and commons also accommodated workers in mines, ironwork and manufacture. Over time, some of these squatted settlements developed as "the nuclei of large-scale industries in areas like the Black Country, the Forest of Dean and the Potteries".

Post World War Two

Memory of the failure of the Conservative-led coalition after the First World War to deliver on the promise of "homes fit for heroes" may have contributed, at the end of the Second, to Labour's 1945 electoral landslide. But with the housing shortage rendered acute by the destruction of stock in the Blitz, it also encouraged organised direct action. In July 1945, Time magazine credited a "bowler-hatted chimney sweep, Harry Cowley," with blowing "the lid off Britain’s housing problem". In Brighton, at the head of 400 self-styled Vigilantes he moved families of servicemen into three empty houses and then went on to Speaker's Corner at London's Hyde Park "to explain the theory and practice of house snatching". As military camps were vacated, the example was followed by families across the country. In October 1946, Aneurin Bevan reported to the House of Commons that 1,038 camps in England and Wales were occupied by 39,535 people.

Given the considerable public support for the squatters, the government hesitated to act. In August 1946, Clementine Churchill, wife of the ex-Prime Minister, protested that the "people are referred to by the ungraceful term 'squatters'" were "respectable citizens whose only desire is to have a home". A month later, 1,500 people squatted flats in Kensington, Pimlico and St. Johns Wood. This action, termed the "Great Sunday Squat" garnered much media attention and resulted in five of the leaders being arrested for "conspiring to incite and direct trespass", this notwithstanding that trespass was not an offence but a civil matter. The squatters left the apartments but did receive temporary accommodation. A sympathetic judge merely bound the squatters over to good behaviour.

1960s

St Agnes Place pre-demolition in 2005, London

The campaign for "family housing"

In the sixties, the publication of reports like the Milner-Holland survey on London’s housing in 1965, TV dramas like "Cathy Come Home" (first broadcast in 1966) and the formation of Shelter, a national charity campaigning on housing, helped prepare public opinion for actions that might directly challenge the seeming complacency of the authorities. Drawing on experience of direct action in the campaign for nuclear disarmament, in November 1968 a group, meeting in the home of Ron Bailey, launched the London Squatters Campaign "for family housing".

According to Bailey, the immediate aim of the campaign was simply "the rehousing of families from hostels or slums by means of squatting’". But there was also the hope the that example of "ordinary people taking action for themselves" would have "a radicalising effect on existing movements in the housing field’".

The campaign's first major test was in the east London borough of Redbridge. After facing down the forceful efforts of a firm of private bailiffs, and with media coverage playing "a major part", the squatters succeeded in persuading the council to concede the use of empty properties under licence.

In the same year, 1969, Rastafarians joined in occupying a street of derelict houses in Kennington, south London, St Agnes Place. A High Court injunction prevented the demolition and, after an attempted eviction in 1974, the street was run as a housing cooperative. The squatted street featured a Rastafari temple (visited on occasion during the 1970s by Bob Marley), and a pirate radio station Rasta FM (which was raided by Ofcom in October 2005). Lambeth London Borough Council did not obtain an eviction order for "London’s longest running squat" until 2005. Demolition was completed in 2007.

The "hippie menace"

What appeared to some activists to be a "tide of public opinion .. . firmly in favour of squatters in Redbridge", later in 1969 began to turn with the publicity a surrounding the occupation of a number of prominent buildings in central London, most notably 144 Piccadilly, a privately owned empty mansion at Hyde Park Corner. Its takeover in September 1969 by the London Street Commune and assorted supporters, triggered an "open season for hippie-hunting and squatter-bashing in the press". Under the front page heading "HIPPIE THUGS: THE SORDID TRUTH", The People reported "drug taking, couples making love while others look on, rule by heavy mob armed with iron bars, foul language, filth and stench". The Times warned of Molotov cocktails being manufactured’ in preparation for a long siege.

In the event, the occupiers of 144 Piccadilly were quickly evicted. The extensive media coverage had nonetheless created what one commune leader, 'Dr John', described as hysterical fear of squatters, creating a moral panic.

1969 had also seen the much quieter occupation by a small group of local anarchists of an hotel on Eel Pie Island in the River Thames at Twickenham. By 1970 the Eel Pie Island Commune had become the UK's largest "hippie commune".

1970s

"Not a movement"

In 1973, Ron Bailey published The Squatters (Penguin) in which he described "the basic human reason why squatters occupy empty property and challenge the housing authorities".

Despite provisions by Part III of the National Assistance Act (1948), which scrapped workhouses (established by the Poor Law 1601) and instead made it a statutory duty for local authorities to house homeless persons, Part III accommodation and hostels were overcrowded, under-funded, and generally in poor condition . . . Welfare departments used the threat of eviction or taking children into care in order to discipline such shelters, booting occupants onto the streets during the day, placing bars on the windows and locking doors at night, as well as refusing husbands and fathers permission to visit. By 1971, there were in excess of 21,000 people living in such conditions, in addition to 1.8m families living in accommodation classified ‘unfit for human habitation’; 3m families living in slums; and 2m families living in accommodation classed as ‘badly in need of repair’ (i.e. tomorrow’s slums).

Facing rising court costs when evicting squatters, local authority housing departments would attempt to deter occupation of their empty properties by "gutting" the houses, rendering them uninhabitable by pouring concrete into toilets and sinks or smashing the ceilings and staircases. In London, however, it was the assessment of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch in 1976 that the local authorities generally ignored squatters unless eviction was pending, and that they provided "no real channels to help wean people away from the field".

The tabloid press meanwhile was sounding a political alarm. An "investigation" by The People proposed that while squatting may have "started as a desperate resort by the genuine homeless", "highly organised, nationwide [and] spreading rapidly" it now posed a "sinister political threat". An "army" of "live-for-nothing invaders", for whom "anybody's home" could be a target, were being directed by "extremist political groups" who want "to change your world"--Piers Corbyn, of the Squatters Action Group (SAC) was profiled as "a Marxist". While they were sufficiently concerned to infiltrate and monitor the squatting scene, this was not the view of Special Branch: squatting, they concluded, did "not exist as movement".

Various organisations purported to speak on behalf of the estimated 30,000 squatters in the capital (a majority of the 50,000 thought to be in the country as a whole): SAC, the London Squatters Union and the All London Squatters Federation. But Special Branch found that the "real activists" in these organisations were "limited to not more than about a dozen persons", and that the largest political tendency among squatters were the anarchists whom they judged to be neither a "unifying", nor particularly challenging, force.

Squatting did figure prominently in contemporary anarchist thinking. Colin Ward, who in 1971 had become Education Officer for the Town and Country Planning Association, provided the practice with a philosophical and political defence in Housing: an anarchist approach (1976). At the end of the decade he was part of a collective that included, among others, Christian Wolmar, Piers Corbyn, Ann Pettitt, and Steve Platt, that produced Squatting, the real story, a compendium of articles offering insider knowledge primarily of the London squatting scene. In his introduction, Nick Wates proposed that "the most obvious achievement of squatting" is that it had provided people who would otherwise be homeless or faced with "overcrowded or slum conditions" with "an alternative means" (they "cannot go on strike") of "taking the initiative and with a focus around which to organise politically".

Of the squatters organisations founded in the 1970s the Advisory Service for Squatters (1975), which continued the work of the Family Squatting Advisory Service Family Squatting Advisory (1970), survives. The A.S.S. publishes the Squatters Handbook, now in its 15th (2024) Freedom Press edition, which both serves as a guide for how and where to squat and explains the legal issues involved.

Police raids

The police attempted to bring criminal charges against squatters, typically of criminal damage or theft, although if squatters had not actually taken or damaged anything in entering premises these often failed in court. In the case of squats, magistrates readily handed over warrants to search for drugs, but the resulting raids did not necessarily lead to arrests suggesting the intention may have been intimidation rather than enforcement. In September 1977, the Special Patrol Group led early morning raids on the former Elizabeth Garrett Anderson maternity home in Hampstead, north London, and on the Bristol Gardens squat in Little Venice, west London. While more than two hundred people would have been rudely awakened – doors were kicked in – only three were charged, all for possession of small amounts of cannabis

Villa Road

At the beginning of 1973, people started moving into the Villa Road, a street due for demolition in Brixton, south London. In the summer of 1975, the squatters organised a street carnival; and maintained a cafe, a food co-operative, and a regular news-sheet called The Villain was published. With sides of the street occupied, there were about 200 squatters including, in different houses, people professing to be anarchists, British Black Panthers, feminists, Marxists and primal screamers. Beginning in 1976, the street prepared to contest the evictions, building barricades and publicising its struggle. After a High Court, judge suggested negotiation, the council decided to legalise the occupation, but only after demolishing the southern side of the street.

The barricades were taken down in March 1978 and many occupants of the remaining buildings formed a housing association called Solon, which renovated 20 houses with the council remaining as the owner. A park was developed on the demolished south side. The Villa Road squat was profiled in the 2006 BBC Four documentary series Lefties.

Tolmers Square

Tolmers Square in 2008, London

In 1973, Tolmers Square, between Tottenham Court Road and Euston station in central London, was occupied by more than one hundred squatters. Nick Wates and other students from the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment (at that time called the School of Environmental Studies) joined local residents in protesting the intended demolition of the square's Georgian terraced housing and its non-residential redevelopment.

The Tolmers Village Association was founded to represent the interests of small business owners, tenants, owners and squatters, allied against the council and the developers. It published an infosheet called Tolmers News and produced a report, Tolmers Destroyed, to publicise the struggle. By 1975, 'Tolmers Village' had 49 squats housing over 180 people. Philip Thompson made a documentary film called Tolmers: Beginning or End?, which screened twice on BBC2.

The squatters lived there for six years, during which time Alara Wholefoods & Community Foods started up. Alara grew to become the largest wholefood company in Britain in the 1980s and 1990s. The squatters were eventually evicted but many of the proposals made by their 1978 Tolmers Peoples Plan were included in the revamped development plans, which resulted in the council making a compulsory purchase of the land from the developer and building housing instead of offices. Nick Wates writes that "It was only by taking direct action that anyone could intervene. By occupying empty buildings, squatters were able to halt the decline, revive the community and revive leadership in the struggle against the developers."

Centre Point and Frestonia

In January 1974 an umbrella group of Direct Action housing campaigners, including Jim Radford, Ron Bailey and Jack Dromey, organised a weekend occupation of Centre Point from 18 January to 20 January to draw attention to its being deliberately left empty during a housing crisis in London. Later in the same year, two streets of terraced Victorian cottages – Freston Road and Bramley Road – in the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, were broken into by squatters who rigged up electricity, water and makeshift roofs. When threatened in October 1977 with eviction, they declared the "Free and Independent Republic of Frestonia" with actor David Rappaport as its "foreign minister", and playwright Heathcote Williams as "ambassador" to the United Kingdom. The squatters later formed themselves into the Bramley Housing Co-operative which still owns the buildings.

Bengali Housing Action Group

In 1976, aided by Tower Hamlets Squatters Union and members of Race Today, a new-formed Bengali Housing Action Group opened up several blocks of flats in the Whitechapel-Spitalfields area to cope with the demand of Bengali families, many of whom had found themselves isolated in council housing estates. At its height, one of these blocks, Pelham Buildings, on Woodseer Street, was perhaps the largest squat in the country, with almost 200 families. With the National Front present in the area, the BHAG set up vigilante patrols to defend the community against racist attacks. The squatted properties were firebombed, and at one point the authorities cut off the gas.

When in 1977 the Greater London Council, overwhelmed by the numbers squatting across the city, declared an amnesty, granting squatters the chance to register and secure a tenancy, the BHAG drew up a map for the GLC defining a safe living area for the Bengali community. It was within this area, that the Bengali families were given tenancies, some in their existing squats.

Eviction avoided: Elgin Avenue, Seymour Buildings, Bristol Gardens

1977 Queen's Silver Jubilee street party, Bristol Gardens

From in 1972, perhaps a thousand people had, over various periods of time, squatted in Elgin Avenue, on the boundary of Notting Hill and Maida Vale in West London, Elgin Avenue. The 200, resident on 15 October 1975, were "gathered behind barricades" when their spokesman, Piers Corbyn emerged from a meeting with a sheriff, police and GLC officials to announce that an agreement had been reached on rehousing, and that "the GLC is providing us with transport to our new homes". It was "a 'victory' of sorts", that Corbyn attributed to three factors: (1) a public campaign that "related to the whole housing crisis" so that support was won from the labour movement; (2) democratic organisation so that "everyone could join in and know that what they did was part of what everyone was doing"; and (3) a readiness to "defy the law" proving that prove that the residents were "serious and no squatting for fun".

Two other large-scale squats in the same Westminster City Council area negotiated settlements. Avoiding direct confrontation, but addressing wider housing issues, those who in 1975 occupied the Seymour Buildings in Marylebone, were successful, after more than year's negotiation, in gaining Council's recognition as a legitimate housing association. Today members of the Seymour Housing Co-operative "collectively own and democratically manage homes across 3 sites".

Beginning in 1972, Bristol Gardens, in the "Little Venice" area of Maida Vale, was squatted progressively over a period of three to four years as those who had been private tenants in the GLC-purchased terraces moved on or were rehoused. The squat, briefly home to a community of counter-cultural converts to Sufism, might have entirely avoided all but local media attention, had it not been for the presence of Arabella Churchill. The granddaughter of wartime Prime Minister, Winston Churchill described the street as the "one place" she had "been accepted and not thought of as a Churchill”. In 1977, she and her neighbours took advantage of a GLC "amnesty" to become licensed, rate paying, occupants. By the end of the decade, 131 adults and 13 children were represented by a residents association in a deal with the GLC that promised, in advance of redevelopment, alternative housing (but not, as had been hoped, as a co-operative) in properties, uncommitted to waiting-list families, elsewhere in the city.

Huntley Street

On 16th August 1978, in London’s biggest mass eviction, 5 blocks of 54 former police flats, in Huntley Street, behind University College Hospital were cleared of squatters by 650 members of the Met's Special Patrol Group. The blocks, which had lain empty for 4 years, were squatted in February 1977. Among the 160 people who moved in were recent evictees from squats at Cleveland Street, Trentishoe Mansions and Cornwall Terrace. In co-operation with Women's Aid (who in 1975 had occupied the empty Palm Court Hotel in Richmond as safe refuge), one block was allocated to women and children from a hostel for battered women. The Squatters Action Council (and later the London Squatters Union), with Piers Corbyn, set up offices in a ground floor flat. The office organised festivals and opened empty flats for the homeless.

The squatters believed that their entry en masse had been sanctioned by Camden’s new housing chief, Ken Livingstone. He wished to see the blocks demolished for redevelopment, but was not adverse to the abandoned flats being occupied in the interim. Corbyn summarised the squatters case in the slogan "No [housing] waiting lists while homes lie empty".

The police had reportedly infiltrated the squat with two undercover agents, posing as homeless, and had been tapping the phones. Fourteen residents charged with "resisting the sheriff" contrary to Section 10 of the Criminal Law Act 1977; Piers Corbyn and Jim Paton of the Advisory Service for Squatters were convicted. In solidarity with the evicted Huntley Street residents, 150 Dutch squatters "besieged" at the British Embassy in The Hague.

Security on the barricades had been relaxed, because a rehousing agreement had been struck the day before with Livingstone. As per the agreement many of those displaced were given "short-term community" flats on the nearby Hillview Estate, in Kings Cross.

1980s & '90s

The 121 Centre was set up on Railton Road in Brixton, London, having first been squatted by the black feminist Olive Morris. Until its eviction in 1999, the 121 hosted events and in the 1980s printed a squatters newspaper called Crowbar and the anarchist Black Flag magazine in its basement. Centro Iberico was an old school in Notting Hill squatted as a social centre and anarcho-punk venue in the 1980s, following on from the Wapping Autonomy Centre. Comedians Harry Enfield, Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse all squatted in Hackney in east London.

Elsewhere in England, there were sizeable squatting communities in Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Leicester and Portsmouth. In Bristol, in the mid-1980s, squatters had the Full Marx bookshop, the Demolition Ballroom and the Demolition Diner, all on Cheltenham Road.

Road protests such as those against the M3 at Twyford Down, M11 link road in London and the Newbury bypass in Berkshire used squatting as a tactic to slow down development.

In 1996, a squatters group in Brighton, "Justice? Brighton's Campaign in Defiance of the Criminal Injustice Act", set up a Squatters Estate Agency which received national media coverage. Its corner shop displayed photographs of properties with captions such as "Easy to get in. Good condition. Been empty for a long time" and "Clean, nice but small. Alarmed with Chubb and Yale locks". In advance of a national homelessness campaign "to highlight the 'scandal' of more than 750,000 homes standing empty across Britain", in 1999 a similar "estate-agency" initiative followed in Nottingham.

The 2012 Brighton Photo Biennial focused on "Agents of Change" and released a full colour pamphlet entitled "Another Space: Political Squatting in Brighton 1994 – present". Projects such as the estate agency, a community garden, exhibitions and an anti-supermarket project were all featured. The curator commented that "While millionaires leave 'spare' houses empty for months on end and Tesco buy up land to be left vacant indefinitely, so called public space continues to diminish. By opening buildings to the public to make and share art, squatters create temporary autonomous spaces that radically refute this logic."

Changes in law, 1977-2012

Forcible Entry Act 1381

Through into the 1970s, in resisting evictions activists cited the Forcible Entry Act 1381 (5 Ric. 2 Stat. 1. c. 7) which had created a statutory offence of forcible entry.

Written in the Anglo-Norman language, its key provision has been translated as follows:

And also the King defendeth, that none from henceforth make any entry into lands and tenements, but in case where entry is given by the law; and in such case not with strong hand, nor with multitude of people, but only in [peaceable] and easy manner. And if any man from henceforth do the contrary, and thereof be duly convict, he shall be punished by imprisonment of his body, and thereof ransomed at the King's will.

Squatting advocates were satisfied that this implied that, provided the squatters had used no force to enter an unoccupied property, the owners could not force entry to evict them. It seemed "simple enough".

Most empty houses had open windows, doors or other means of access. If squatters secured the property (for example by putting a lock of their own on the door thus making it impossible for the owner to enter except by force), then the owner could not enter and carry out an eviction without breaking the criminal law which few owners were prepared to do.

Although seemingly confirmed by the Forcible Entry Act 1623, it is not clear that the courts, at any time, construed the 1381 law in this way. But, in any case, the issue was rendered mute by passage of the Criminal Law Act 1977, which abolished the offence of forcible entry and initiated the development of criminal trespass law.

Criminal Law Act 1977

In 1972, the Law Commission’s was given a brief "to examine the statutes of forcible entry 1381 to 1623 and relevant common law defences and to consider in what circumstances entering or remaining upon property should constitute a criminal offence or offences". In its first report, the Commission’s proposed repealing the Forcible Entry Acts and replacing them with two new offences the effect of which would have been to make trespass criminal if the trespasser "failed to leave as soon as reasonably practicable after being ordered to do so by a person entitled to occupation". In the face of opposition, mobilized by the Campaign Against a Criminal Trespass Law, that included labour and student unions wary of the implications for on-site picketing and sit-down protest, and reservations even on the part of the GLC and the Association of Chief Police Officers, the eventual act was informed by substantially modified proposals.

Section 6 of the Criminal Law Act 1977 covers the occupation of property. It appears to affirm an important principle of the Forcible Entry Acts: unless it is in the execution of a possession order, "violence for securing entry" is made an offence. The law states:

if "(a) there is someone present on those premises at the time who is opposed to the entry which the violence is intended to secure; and (b) the person using or threatening the violence knows that that is the case."

The act does not distinguish for this purpose between violence to persons or property (e.g. breaking a door down).

But the act then created four further offences:

• Being on premises as a trespasser and failing to leave after having been required to do so by a displaced residential occupier or a protected intending occupier (Section 7)
• Trespassing with a weapon of offence (Section 8) •
• Trespassing on embassy or consular property (Section 9)
• Resisting or obstructing a bailiff or sheriff executing a possession order under Order 113 or 26 (Section 10)

The act was a compromise: it made squatting “more difficult but not impossible". Repeal of the Forcible Entry Acts and their replacement with Section 6, did allow landlords to evict squatters whilst they are all out. At the same time, sections 7-10 made the squatters' initial entry more hazardous by establishing grounds for regarding their trespass (or conspiracy to trespass) as potentially criminal.

Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994

The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 qualified Section 6 of the Criminal Law Act 1977 by giving the right of entry to "displaced residential occupiers", "protected intending occupiers" (someone who had intended to occupy the property, including some tenants, licensees and landlords who require the property for use), or someone acting on their behalf. Such people may legally enter an occupied property even using force as the usual section 6 provision does not apply to them, and may require "any person who is on [their] premises as a trespasser" to leave. Failure to leave is a criminal offence under section 7 and removal may be enforced by police.

Civil Procedure Rules

In 2001, the Civil Procedure Rules introduced new processes for civil repossession of property and related processes, under section 55. These include a fast track process whereby the legally rightful occupier can obtain an interim possession order (IPO) in a civil court which will enable them to enter the premises at will. Any unlawful occupiers who refuse to leave after the granting of an IPO is committing a criminal offence and can then be removed by police. However some of these processes may not be available unless used within 28 days of the time that the claimant knew of the unauthorised occupancy.

Criminal law refers to an "occupier" or "trespasser", and the Civil Procedure Rules part 55 refer to possession claims against "trespassers".

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012

Main article: Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012

The 13th (2009) edition of the Squatters Handbook still felt able to advise that, "with few exceptions, if you can get into an empty building without doing any damage and can secure it, you can make it your home".

'Topple the Tyrants' occupy a London residence of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi in 2011.

In March 2011, Mike Weatherley, Conservative MP for Hove, proposed an Early Day Motion to put a definitive end to this situation. His campaign to criminalise squatting was supported by a series of articles in the Daily Telegraph in which Kenneth Clarke (the Secretary of Justice) and Grant Shapps (Minister of Housing) were reported to be backing the move.

In response, Jenny Jones, Green mayoral candidate for London, said that squatting was an "excellent thing to do". Campaigners relaunched Squatters' Action for Secure Homes (SQUASH) with a Parliamentary briefing chaired by John McDonnell MP. This formed a coalition between housing charities such as Shelter and Crisis, activists, lawyers and squatters.

A total of 158 concerned academics, barristers and solicitors specialising in property law published a letter in The Guardian stating their concerns that "misleading" comments were being made in the mainstream media about squatting. Mike Weatherley replied that "the self-proclaimed experts who signed the letter, sheep-like, have a huge vested interest when it comes to fees after all" and Grant Shapps tweeted that "these lawyers are sadly out of touch".

The Government opened a consultation entitled 'Options for dealing with squatters' on 13 July 2011, which ran until 5 October. It was "aimed at anyone affected by squatters or has experience of using the current law or procedures to get them evicted." The pro-squatting campaign group SQUASH stated that there were "2,217 responses and over 90% of responses argued against taking any action on squatting."

Kenneth Clarke then announced an amendment to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill which would criminalise squatting in residential buildings. In 1991, Clarke stated "There are no valid arguments in defence of squatting. It represents the seizure of another's property without consent." John McDonnell commented that "by trying to sneak this amendment through the back door the government are attempting to bypass democracy."

The amendment, which became Section 144 of the act, states that "the new offence will be committed where a person is in a residential building as a trespasser having entered it as a trespasser, knows or ought to know that he or she is a trespasser and is living in the building or intends to live there for any period."

The change in legislation has been referred to by Mike Weatherley as "Weatherley's Law" and came into force on 1 September 2012, making squatting in a residential building a criminal offence, subject to a fine of £5,000, 6 months in prison, or both.

When the Government announced its plans to criminalise squatting, protests were launched across the UK and SQUASH (Squatters Action for Secure Homes) was reformed (it was first set up to fight previous plans regarding criminalisation in the mid-1990s) with a presentation at the House of Commons. Squatters attempted to occupy the house of Justice Secretary Ken Clarke in September 2011. The following month, twelve people were arrested outside the House of Commons whilst the criminalisation of squatting was being debated.

Adverse possession

Main article: Adverse possession

There remains a common law right (known as "adverse possession") to claim ownership of a dwelling after continual unopposed occupation of land or property for a given period of several years or more, depending on the laws to a particular jurisdiction.

UK laws allow for adverse possession claims range after 10 to 12 years, depending on if the land is unregistered. In practice, adverse possession can be difficult. For example, St Agnes Place in London had been occupied for 30 years until 29 November 2005, when Lambeth London Borough Council evicted the entire street. The hermit Harry Hallowes won possession of a half-acre plot on Hampstead Heath in London in 2007.

In 2014, Keith Best won, on appeal, the right to register title to 35 Church Road, Newbury Park, Ilford, east London, which he had occupied for ten years. The High Court ruled that the denial of title on the basis that Mr Best had been committing an offence since the introduction of the criminal trespass section 144 in 2012 was "founded on an error of law". Intended to help people, "like those who went on holiday and found that squatters had moved in to their home in their absence", 144 did not overrule the old laws of adverse possession.

Squatting in the 21st century

A property in Oxford owned by University College which has been occupied by squatters (2000s)

2000s

In 2003, it was estimated that there were 15,000 squatters in England and Wales. In 2012, the Ministry of Justice deemed the figure to be 20,000.

According to statistics compiled by the Empty Homes Agency in 2009, the most empty homes in the UK were in Birmingham (21,532), Leeds (24,796) Liverpool (20,860) and Manchester (24,955). The fewest empty homes were in South East England and East Anglia. Groups such as Justice Not Crisis campaigned for more social housing.

There have been squatted social centres in many UK cities, linked through the UK Social Centre Network. The OKasional Cafe in Manchester began in 1998 and periodically created short-term autonomous spaces including cafes. The RampART Social Centre in Whitechapel, London, existed from May 2004 until October 2009, hosting meetings, screenings, performances, exhibitions and benefit gigs. As part of Occupy London the Bank of Ideas was occupied in Hackney. The Spike Surplus Scheme was a venue and garden based in a former doss-house in Peckham, squatted from 1999 until 2009.

The 491 Gallery in Leytonstone, east London was a multidisciplinary art gallery. Young artists who cannot afford to rent studio or gallery space, occupy abandoned buildings. Artist Matthew Stone from the !WOWOW! collective in south London states "I was obsessed with the idea of it, but also with getting to London and being part of a dynamic group of young people doing things." Lyndhurst Way was squatted as a gallery from 2006 to 2007.

Temporary Autonomous Art, run by a group called Random Artists, is a series of squatted exhibitions which have been occurring since 2001. Beginning in London, the events have also taken place in Brighton, Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Cardiff.

Groups have also squatted land as community gardens. Two such London projects were the Kew Bridge Ecovillage and the Hounslow community land project. In Reading, a garden called Common Ground was opened in 2007. It was then resquatted the following year as part of the April2008 days of action in support of autonomous spaces.

Da! collective is an art collective that received national attention when they squatted in a £6.25 million, 30-room, grade II-listed 1730s mansion owned by the Duke of Westminster in 2008. After being evicted, they moved to a £22.5m property nearby in Clarges Mews.

Raven's Ait, an island in the River Thames, was occupied in 2009. The squatters declared their intention to set up an eco conference centre. The eviction of these squatters took place on 1 May by police using boats and specialist climbing teams.

2010s

Bloomsbury social centre squat in London, 2011

In April 2011, a riot in Bristol was reportedly triggered eviction of the Telepathic Heights squat in Stokes Croft. A week later, the Metropolitan police raided five squats in London, one, part of the Transition Towns movement , set up in protest against the building of a third runway at Heathrow, three in Camberwell, south London and a fifth in Hackney, north-east London. Alleging unnecessary and illegal pre-emptive action was taken against them, the squatters requested a judicial review of the policing tactics. The police denied the implied connection to the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton which took place the following day.

Gremlins protesting on the roof of the squatted Spin Bowling building in Cardiff, 2012

Following the 2012 criminalisation of squatting in residential property, in Cardiff there were contested occupations of vacant commercial property, an hotel and, repurposed as a social centre, a bowling alley. Police and bailiffs were defied with the assistance of The Gremlins, a local anarchist group who linked the action to the 14-week sentence handed down to London squatter Alex Haigh, the first person jailed for squatting under the 2012 Sentencing Act.

In 2013, moved on from the hotel and bowling alley, the Gremlins squatted the former Rumpoles pub building opposite Cardiff prison and prepared for another eviction battle. Due to the perceived increase in the squatting of business premises, Conservative MPs were already calling for the criminalisation of squatting to be extended to commercial property.

In London, a group calling themselves the Autonomous Nation of Anarchist Libertarians (ANAL) squatted a series of luxury mansions in order to bring attention to the housing crisis and the scandal of empty buildings. When they occupied the seven storey former Institute of Directors in Pall Mall, in March 2015, they claimed it was the seventeenth building in the area they had stayed in. They occupied Admiralty Arch and were quickly evicted. In January 2017, the group occupied a £15 million mansion at 102 Eaton Square in Belgravia and stated they would open a homeless shelter and community centre. After being quickly evicted they moved to a £14m mansion nearby which was opposite Buckingham Palace.

The political party Left Unity launched its manifesto at Ingestre Court in Soho in 2015. National Secretary Kate Hudson said the choice of a squat as venue was to bring attention to the "terrible crisis" in UK housing.

Largescale evictions of social housing have led to many local campaigns in London, which often involved occupation as a tactic to support tenants at risk of being decanted. These would include the Aylesbury estate in Elephant and Castle, Sweets Way in Barnet, Focus E15 in Newham and a property management company in Shoreditch.

Tenant eviction resistance at Sweets Way was bolstered by housing activists occupying empty flats in March 2015. The owner, Annington Property (controlled by a private equity fund run by Guy Hands), planned to evict and demolish all 142 residences and build 282 properties of 80% of which would be for private sale. In September the last council tenant Mostafa Aliverdipour (a 52-year-old wheelchair user), was forcibly evicted and at the same time over 100 squatters.

Focus E15 was formed when 29 young mothers living in Newham, east London were given notices of eviction from their hostel. The mothers refused to take rented accommodation in other cities such as Birmingham or Manchester and instead squatted flats on the mostly empty Carpenters Estate in 2014.

Camelot Property Management manages empty property for owners and puts in users on lease contracts (with less rights than a rental contract) so as to prevent squatting. The empty Camelot headquarters in Shoreditch, east London, was itself squatted in September 2016. The building was renamed Camesquat. After Camelot obtained an eviction order the squatters were evicted two months later.

The old Cornerhouse cinema in Manchester was squatted by the Loose Space collective in March 2017 and was evicted in August 2017. It had housed around 20 homeless people, who then moved on to another squat. The three rules established in the Cornerhouse were no hard drugs, no constant drinking, and no abuse in whatever form. The collective had previously occupied the Hulme Hippodrome.

Addressing problem of homelessness in Manchester was a key pledge when Andy Burnham was elected mayor in 2017. He promised to end rough sleeping by 2020. However, there were 40 squat evictions between 2015 and 2018 in Manchester and several homeless camps. In January 2018, there was a squatted homeless shelter in Manchester and the Loose Space collective were running a squat called the Wonder Inn.

Across London, there was a pattern of squatted properties being used as venues for free parties and raves.

Arrests and prosecutions

In September 2012, Alex Haigh was the first squatter imprisoned under the new law, receiving a sentence of 14 weeks after occupying a housing association property in London. Two men were then found guilty of squatting above the Lamb Inn, in Romford.

In February 2013, a homeless man named Daniel Gauntlett froze to death on the doorstep of an abandoned bungalow, in a case that has been linked with the new law.

In November 2013, a squatter convicted under section 144 had his appeal upheld at Hove Crown Court. The man had been arrested on 3 September 2012, in what was seen by The Guardian as the "first test of new legislation that makes squatting a criminal offence." Two other squatters were also arrested and had previously had the charges against them dropped completely.

An activist from Focus E15 was arrested on suspicion of squatting in 2015, when she was occupying a council flat in Stratford, London, in support of a mother who had been evicted. The charges were later dropped less than 24 hours before the court hearing.

A newsletter from SQUASH published in May 2016 states that there have been "at least 738 arrests, 326 prosecutions, 260 convictions and 11 people imprisoned for the offence, based on available information" since criminalisation.

Notes

^{1. In the two other legal jurisdictions within the United Kingdom, in Scotland (which has had a criminal trespass law since 1885) and in Northern Ireland (where paramilitarism is a factor), the history and development of squatting is significantly distinct.}

See also

• Homelessness in England
• Homelessness in the United Kingdom
• Squatting in Scotland

Further reading

• Bailey, R., Conn, M. & Mahony, T. (1969) Evicted: The Story of the Illegal Evictions of Squatters in Redbridge London Squatters Campaign: London.
• Bailey, R. (1973) The Squatters Penguin: London. ISBN 0140523006.
• Hinton, J. 'Self-help and Socialism The Squatters' Movement of 1946' in History Workshop Journal (1988) 25(1) pp. 100–126.
• Lessing, D. (1985) The Good Terrorist Jonathan Cape: London. ISBN 0-224-02323-3
• Wates, N. & Wolmar, C. (1980) Squatting the real story Bay Leaf: London.
• Wates, N. (1976) The Battle for Tolmers Square Routledge: London.
• Webber, H. 'A Domestic Rebellion: The Squatters' Movement of 1946' in Ex Historia (2012) 4 pp. 125–146.

External links

• UK Squatting Archive
• Wasteland (UK) – Documentary about squatting by Will Wright
• What's this place? (2008) – A booklet with stories from radical social centres in the United Kingdom and Ireland