London: Grow Heathrow’s 5th birthday, 27th February – 1st March

London_Grow_Heathrow_ExhibitionJust days to go and we’re warming up for Saturday’s birthday celebrations.
There’s an exciting line up, and more information about workshops, activities and timings below.
Don’t forget to bring along seeds for the seed-swap, cakes for the cake competition and instruments for the jam.
There’s plenty of space for camping. Join the Grow Heathrow camping crew and bring a tent and sleeping bag. We also recommend warm layers, hot water bottles and friendly bodies to provide extra cosy heat.
If you can donate any mugs, please bring them along as we want to make sure everyone can drink tea! [Read More]

London: Squat the lot (Aylesbury Estate)

[Posted on their website Feb 20]

*We wondered where our wages went*

*We wasted most by paying rent*

*Since, we’ve learnt to change our lot*

*So now we’re living in a squat*
[Read More]

London: Guinness Estate Occupation

Yesterday, an empty flat in Elveden House on the Guinness Trust estate in Brixton was occupied by local residents and supporters protesting at the threatened eviction of dozens of Guinness tenants from the estate.

More people have joined the action today and they plan to keep the occupation running until Guinness agree to halt all evictions and rehouse all the tenants in local social housing.
[Read More]

London: Southwark Council smashing up homes

This is a video someone made on Thursday evening (5 February) when the police and Southwark Council came and smashed up 8 homes and welded them up to prevent the occupation spreading.
You can hear loud banging and breaking of glass inside the flats that are blocked off by police. This is them smashing the toilets and sinks, and the windows, to make the homes uninhabitable. Here is a picture of a bathroom after being smashed by the council.

There are around 18,000 people on the Southwark council housing waiting list. [Read More]

London: Aylesbury Estate Occupation – Statement of support for our occupation from local tenants and leaseholder groups

Southwark Council, a bunch of Labour party career crooks who disregard their tenants’ clear wishes and smash up empty homes on a cold winter’s night, claims that our occupation has no support from residents. The reality is there is real strong solidarity between occupiers and long-time residents, as we saw last night when dozens of people turned out to help defend the buildings under attack.

Today a number of local residents’ groups have emphasised the point with the statement below.

Message for Southwark Council: your cowardly attack last night helped bring us together and make us even stronger!
Tenants, leaseholders, squatters, homeless people … wherever we stand on the sick “housing ladder”, we are coming together and fighting. Stop social cleansing of our city. Homes for all. Solidarity.

Statement on the occupation and housing action on Aylesbury Estate ( Friday 6th February):

Numerous Southwark housing campaigns and other local activists warmly welcome the ongoing occupation of a number of empty homes on the Aylesbury Estate. The current occupation of Chartridge block on the Aylesbury Estate has brought a much-needed spark of inspiration to local residents and housing campaigners. [Read More]

London: Aylesbury Estate empty flats revitalised

Aylesbury Estate Occupation: 77 – 105 Chartridge, Westmoreland Road, SE17. Map here.

You probably heard but people have opened up a few of the decanted and empty flats in Chartridge House on Aylesbury Estate in Walworth. The occupation came at the end of the March for Homes on Saturday 31st January which ended at City Hall at Tower Bridge. About 150 people marched back to the Aylesbury and helped support the flats that had been opened up earlier on. Right now (Monday night), the occupiers have released a statement of why they are doing this and have set up a website to keep people informed.

[Read More]

London: Statement from Aylesbury Estate Occupation

Since the “March for Homes” demo on 31st January, we have re-opened and occupied a part of the Aylesbury Estate in Southwark, South London.

We are tenants, squatters, and other people who care about how our city is being grabbed by the rich, by developers and corrupt politicians, socially cleansed and sold off for profit.

The Aylesbury Estate is where Tony Blair made his first speech as Prime Minister in 1997, making empty promises about social housing. Since then, for the past 18 years, Southwark Council and their developer friends have come up with one scheme after another. All with the same aim: to dispossess the residents, demolish their homes, and sell the land.

In 2002 Aylesbury tenants fought and won a campaign against demolition and voted down the original scheme in a ballot. But now big areas of the estate are emptied and sealed up awaiting the bulldozers, while residents are “decanted” away from the area.

The same bullshit that we have seen on the nearby Heygate estate, and all across London. [Read More]

London: The March for Homes

Good Morning Comrades and friends all…

And what a morning song of delight do I sing…What a ‘turnout’ by Londoners yesterday, on what was after all a very cold and in every sense a real winters day, but it didn’t stop thousands of us taking to the streets to demand homes for all those in need 35 years after the Thatcher government made the push to turn the nation into a land full of homeowners and of course as we now know with disastrous consequences for (no exaggeration) millions.

Two legs one from the South and the other from East London merged on and over Tower Bridge creating the massive march, the biggest on housing ever seen in London for many a year.

I joined the south London leg with my comrades from the Love Activists (London) and the Bohemians the occupying crews at the 12 Bar in Soho and on our second day in defence and in defiance of the court IPO, we still hold the Bar and what a joy that is to behold, for the people and by the people, power to the people! [Read More]

London: Aylesbury Estate Occupied

Message from the occupiers: “We are occupying part of the aylesbury estate se1 resisting social cleansing. Join us. Neighbourhood Assembly 3 pm tomorrow sunday. Charteridge house off albany rd.”

Yesterday (Saturday 31 Jan) after the March for Homes demo, a 100-200 strong “squatters bloc” broke off from the main rally and headed South to occupy the Aylesbury Estate in Southwark, South London. Houses on the Charteridge House bloc have been opened and were occupied overnight.

The occupiers are holding an assembly this afternoon and ask for neighbours, squatters, and everyone who wants to, to join them. There are homes here for hundreds, lying empty because of the greed of developers and bribed politicians.

The Aylesbury Estate is one of the largest “social housing”complexes in Europe. It was built in the 1960s-70s with 2700 homes. Because it sits on prime inner London real estate, it is being socially cleansed of its working class inhabitants, in a saga that has gone on for over 15 years now. In 1997, genocidal scumbag Tony Blair came here to make his first speech as prime shitster, promising to invest millions to gentrify the area. But in 2001 tenants campaigned and voted against the first plan to sell the estate to a “charitable” private housing association. [Read More]

London: Squatters bloc @ March for Homes, January 31st

20150131_london_SQUATTERS_BLOC_March_for_HomesFrom Squatters in North and South London.
SPREAD WIDELY. JOIN US.
Whose City? Our City.

Are we going to let all of London become a playground for rich fuckers? Where every inch of space is taken for profit? A sterile zone drained of history, culture and life? Are we going to hand it to them without a fight?

Squatters and Tenants unite.
Fight ALL evictions.
Homes for all.
Take the empties.
Take back our city.

Join the SQUATTERS BLOC on the March for Homes.

UPDATE: the main squat bloc meet up will be at Elephant & Castle at 12 noon: St Mary’s Churchyard, Newington Butts, SE1 6SQ. Though there will certainly also be squatters on the East London march, which starts from St Leonards Church, Shoreditch High Street, also at noon. [Read More]

Soho, London: The Bohemians Manifesto

Soho is under threat of gentrification endangering Our cultural heritage. Without culture society cannot exist.
We are a collective of Artists, activists and campaigners who are willing to become Cultural Heritage Wardens, in order to prevent the disillusion of culture from Our history.
For too long the GLA(Greater London Authority) and local Councils have dictated through Rent increases, as well as business rate increases the services available in specific areas of London.
It is unfair, discriminatory and in-just that areas established in the 1690 ’s are not subjected to heritage laws, that protect the establishment and their aims. As opposed to the will of the people, that the establishment represent.
In history there is a point which determines revolutionary action. We feel that the unification of activists, squatters, musicians , landlords, sex-workers and the public is the beginning of measures,which when implemented by the people and for the people can bring about social change within our society. [Read More]

London: Meeting the Protesters Squatting Soho’s Doomed 12-Bar Club

London’s venues are dying a grisly death. There are high-speed rails to build and cultural institutions to be redeveloped into luxury flats that nobody’s going to live in, and it’s the city’s nightlife that’s been selected to pay the price. Madam Jojo’s, The Joiners Arms, The Intrepid Fox and Vibe Bar – among a raft of others – have all already been forced to serve their last pints and shut up shop.

Last week, after an 18-month battle with the Crossrail project, the The 12 Bar Club on Soho’s Denmark Street closed down, too. The venue has been moved to a new location in Islington, so at least it’s still alive in one sense. But the story is the same here as it was when the Southbank Centre suggested moving the nearby 40-year-old skatepark from the “undercroft” to another spot just down the river; the Tin Pan Alley location was steeped in a history that’s a little harder to relocate.

On Tuesday, a group of protesters calling themselves The Bohemians started squatting the Grade II listed building, both in a bid to save it from demolition and to inspire others to unite to save Soho. After reading their manifesto – “Without culture, society cannot exist” – I walked in for a chat. [Read More]