brighton.squat.net

From the Morning Star:

If you are inspired by stories of resistance, this is the book for you.

It contains many, starting with the 1936 attempt by Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists to rally at The Level in central Brighton. They were resisted, as “working-class people would pour from the small fisherman’s houses in the Hanover district opposite to deal with them.”

The Level earned a reputation as the people’s park and, at the same place in 1948, a fight between Mosley’s fascist revivalist Union Movement and anti-fascists lasted over an hour and became known as “the battle of The Level.”

The book’s great strength lies in the chapters on the 1970s and 1980s, the period when its author Tony Greenstein began a long period of activism in the anti-fascist struggle.

One account, not initially a story of success, contains everything you might need to know about anti-fascism – how to respond when you are outnumbered and the role of political and physical resistance, as was the case in Tunbridge Wells and Brighton in the summer of 1980.

Undeterred by an arson attack on their meeting place less than a month later, Brighton’s anti-fascists began a leafleting campaign outside school gates and the football ground, stopping National Front members selling papers in the city centre.

“There was no occasion when they were able to do so unhindered,” Greenstein comments, “though on occasions there were running battles.”

The fact that this is such a good read is less important than that it is so timely. It is impossible not to notice the lessons from the past that apply to the present.

Greenstein’s work makes a very valuable contribution to radical local histories and certainly helps understanding of why Brighton as a centre of resistance to fascism has maintained its reputation as an “alternative” city.

Yet its relevance extends much further afield than the south coast. The author reminds us that the origins of fascism lie in the early 20th-century combination of religious intolerance and opposition to immigration.

The anti-semitism of the 1920s and 1930s was as politically expedient, acceptable and widespread within right-wing establishments and their popular followers as Islamophobia is now. The new English fascism, the EDL and its anti-jihadist European allies, pose no lesser threat than Mosley’s Blackshirts.

Read The Fight Against Fascism, enjoy it, then put it into practice.

To order a copy of the book please make cheques out to BUWC and send to 4 Crestway Parade, The Crestway, Brighton BN1 7BL. The launch of the book takes place at 12 noon on Saturday March 17 at the Brighthelm Centre, North Road, Brighton BN1.

ADDENDUM

The book launch was opposed by seven fascists, who were easily outnumbered by a huge contingent of cops. For more on that see SchNEWS.

From the New Internationalist:

As regular readers of the New Internationalist blog will know, proposals are currently before the House of Lords which will see people who use empty residential buildings for shelter facing up to a year in prison or a £5000 ($7800) fine.

In response, Squatters’ Action for Secure Homes (SQUASH) released a report ‘Can We Afford to Criminalise Squatting?’ on Friday, which is backed by a range of academics and legal practitioners. In it, we show that clause 136 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) Bill is likely to cost the UK taxpayer around £790 million ($US 1.24 billion) over the next five years.

In other words, the costs of criminalising squatting will obliterate any savings made by a bill that has savaged Legal Aid for the poorest to make savings of just £350 million ($548 million).

The government has not done its maths. We’ve done it for them, by putting numbers against the costs that were left out of their ‘back-of-the-envelope’ Financial Impact Assessment. We considered the cost of rehousing those who currently squat, rehabilitating those who end up on the streets, eviction and prosecution to the Criminal Justice System, as well as managing the rise in rough sleepers.

We think it’s about time the government does a proper assessment before they push through this law. This has been a campaign driven by media hysteria and anecdote since the very beginning.

Legislation should be based on facts. For instance, the fact that the housing crisis in the UK is severe. First-time buyers are floored by unaffordable house prices and ever-rising rents, which eat up a huge proportion of average wages. Some five million people are languishing on social housing waiting lists in England alone. Homelessness is spiralling, with the latest figures showing an increase of 18 per cent on this quarter, compared to last year.

For many people, squatting is a last resort. Around 40 per cent of homeless people rely on it at some point to keep themselves off the streets. And here’s another fact which ministers seem determined to ignore: it’s already a criminal offence to squat an inhabited house, LAPSO has nothing to do with protecting ordinary homeowners.

Instead, it’s like a security racket for the super rich, which is geared at protecting off-shore property speculators and major landlords. In the words of the ALTER lobby group (of which Nick Clegg is vice-president), criminalization will ‘provide a valuable state-funded benefit to wealthy tax avoiders.’

Like much of this government’s ‘austerity’ drive, this is an ideologically-driven bill. It has nothing to do with saving money, and everything to do with a radical right-wing conception of the state and its citizens.

Put simply, the criminalization of squatting is part of a wider mission to protect the rich and powerful and unpick the safety nets of the poor and the vulnerable.

On Wednesday night the proposed new law to criminalise squatting in residential properties (clause 130 of the LASPO Bill) was debated in the House of Lords. This was, in fact, the first time the clause has been properly debated since it was proposed. Or rather, the first time since the 1st November when the government slipped the clause into a bill which was in its last stage in the House of Commons.
[…]

A new law is racing through the Lords, having passed the Commons. It is called the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, and it contains an infamous clause, which goes by the number 130. If clause 130 passes, squatting an unoccupied residential property will no longer be a civil offence but a criminal one, punishable by a maximum fine of £5,000 – which feels like a joke when tossed at the homeless – or a sentence of up to a year. If the government does jail the homeless for being homeless, the joke surely is – well, they won’t be homeless any more.
[…]

Lobby our Lord, oh lord, lordy lord – lobby a lord

As you know the bill to criminalise squatting in residential properties was rushed through the House of Commons and is already in the House of Lords despite a 96% majority against in the consultation (oh what a fat surprise). Over the past few months Squash has been busy lobbying the Lords to oppose the squatting clause and have had some successes. We have produced a briefing for Lords, and have contacted as many sympathetic Lords as we can lay our hands on.

So far two amendments we support have been proposed by some Lords. The first, would strike the clause entirely and the second states that any new law only covers residential property left empty for less than 6 months.

We need your help. If you would like to help us lobby the Lords – please email info@squashcampaign.org and we will send you a template letter and the details of a Lord for you to approach. And even better, if you already happen to personally know a Lord, or someone who does, let us at em.

Keep squatting,

SQUASH

www.squashcampaign.org

This is the year that squatters evict landlords,
gazing like admirals from the rail
of the roofdeck
or levitating hands in praise
of steam in the shower;
this is the year
that shawled refugees deport judges
who stare at the floor
and their swollen feet
as files are stamped
with their destination;
this is the year that police revolvers,
stove-hot, blister the fingers
of raging cops,
and nightsticks splinter
in their palms;
this is the year that darkskinned men
lynched a century ago
return to sip coffee quietly
with the apologizing descendants
of their executioners.

This is the year that those
who swim the border’s undertow
and shiver in boxcars
are greeted with trumpets and drums
at the first railroad crossing
on the other side;
this is the year that the hands
pulling tomatoes from the vine
uproot the deed to the earth that sprouts
the vine,
the hands canning tomatoes
are named in the will
that owns the bedlam of the cannery;
this is the year that the eyes stinging from the poison that purifies toilets
awaken at last to the sight
of a rooster-loud hillside,
pilgrimage of immigrant birth; this is the year that cockroaches
become extinct, that no doctor
finds a roach embedded
in the ear of an infant;
this is the year that the food stamps
of adolescent mothers
are auctioned like gold doubloons,
and no coin is given to buy machetes
for the next bouquet of severed heads
in coffee plantation country.

If the abolition of slave-manacles
began as a vision of hands without manacles,then this is the year;
if the shutdown of extermination camps
began as imagination of a land
without barbed wire or the crematorum,
then this is the year;
if every rebellion begins with the idea
that conquerors on horsebackare not many-legged gods, that they too drown
if plunged in the river,
then this is the year.

So may every humiliated mouth,
teeth like desecrated headstones,
fill with the angels of bread.

— Martín Espada

This morning at 8am, less than 48 hours after a possession order was granted by Brighton Magistrates Court, the Brighton and Hove council attempted to evict the occupiers of Ainsworth House on Wellington Road, Brighton.

The building has been occupied for less than a month by at least 25 people. Despite the fact Christmas is only 4 days away, the council is pushing ahead with plans to make the occupiers (including vulnerable people with disabilities) homless. For more info see the previous indymedia article here.

High Court Balliffs with a tool team and a locksmith arrived around 8am this morning and attempted to pursuade the occupiers to let them in. When this was refused, they threatened people with arrest and loosing their possessions, then broke out an angle grinder, trying to cut through the metal door. The occupants barricaded the door and the balliffs where met with projectiles and had fire extinguishers sprayed at them. Needless to say they hastily retreated. Three cars and a van full of police arrived, but refused to do the council’s dirty work and evict the occupuiers. The balliffs left, no doubt to return with greater force at a later date.

The occupiers have vowed to continue to resist any attempt to evict them from their home and call on Brighton’s (Green Party) council to let them stay over Christmas at least.

Any messages of Solidarity can be sent to the Squatter’s Network Phone (07531871995).

Any and all support in greatly needed. Anyone who wants to come and help in any way is more than welcome.

SNOBAHA (Squatter’s Network of Brighton and Hove Actually)

From Schnews this week, with a resolutely misspelt Mike Weatherley sporting a Pinocchio nose…
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From Rough Music

The last issue of Rough Music saw Hove MP Mike Weatherly safely ensconced in Wanker’s Corner, mostly due to his attacks on squatting and homelessness. Unfortunately even our heroic efforts weren’t enough to halt the anti-squatting bandwagon.

The last issue of Rough Music saw Hove MP Mike Weatherly safely ensconced in Wanker’s Corner, mostly due to his attacks on squatting and homelessness. Unfortunately even our heroic efforts weren’t enough to halt the anti-squatting bandwagon.
[…]