Today we put an old booklet in the squat!net-archive. It is made for the London squatters conference in 1977 by Amsterdam squatters. The text is not perfect yet but we will make it better in the near future.
The url of the archive: http://squat.net/archiv
“Houses occupation- Liberation?”: http://squat.net/archiv/gb/london/index.html
The introduction:
WAYS OF SQUATTING
This text was written for the London squatters conference on 15 may ’77, where groups from Amsterdam were invited. It is not only a description of what is happening here, but also a critique of organisational proposals put forwards on this conference. Espescially from the SAC (Squatters Action Council), an organisation “infiltrated” by a few left-ideoloqists from the International Marxist Group (IMG/trotskist) who want to try out their models and schemes for world-revolution on the English squatters-movement. They want to make a squatters-union with an in our opinion very burocratic structure; executive, membership-cards, contribution, etc. The ideas behind it become quite clear when we read some of the “advantages” of the registered membership, mentioned in the discussion- sheats for the conference: – “it lends authority to the organisation, which can then truthfully claim to represent as many squatters as join” – “it qives people a genuine sense of involvement and makes their speaking, voting and political rights guaranteed” – “a membership drive is one way of reaching isolated squatters and we can form a true picture of how representative the organisatian is”
We are very disappointed about such proposals and ideas within the London squatters movement. Making a burocratic political organisation for squatters will not stimulate the squatting and other forms of human resistance against bad housinq, it will break them down, it will become a “harmless” political party or union, very easy to control by the authorities.
By giving a description of the squattinq in Amsterdam we try to show other possibilitias of squatting-organisation than the ridiculous union-proposals / Summary of the actual situation in Amsterdam /
