1968 in South London (3): Brixton Squatters

The following report of a 1968 protest in Brixton was published at the time in the radical newspaper Black Dwarf:

'Squatters seized an empty five-storey office block in London's Brixton Road on Saturday, 29 March. About a dozen squad cars, black marias and motor cycle police surrounded the building just before 9 a.m.) minutes after the “invasion squad" otherwise known as the South London Squatters, had got in through a back way.

A detachment of police headed by an inspector from the nearby Brixton police station and a plain-clothes man clambered over a ten-­foot hardboard fence at the back of the concrete and glass building and tried to get the squatters to leave quietly. They refused. A few minutes later large banners appeared over the balconies of the block reading: 'Homes not offices' and 'Enough room here for eighty families'. Plus a red flag.

The building is next to Brixton Register Office. Astonished wedding guests watched as police tried to get the squatters out. According to a leaflet handed out by supporters outside, the building - 40,500 sq. ft of it - has been empty for three years. 'Why can't Cathy come home to this'!' the leaflet asks. 'We have occupied this building to expose the housing shortage. A building this size could be converted at only £1,000 a unit to house eighty homeless families. Eight million sq. ft of office building stands empty in London alone - enough to house all the homeless in Britain.'

The operation, the first carried out by the group, was surprisingly simple. The glass in a door at the back of the building was cut and Hey Presto! The next they heard were the sirens.
Said Ray Gibbon, travel agency manager and father of two, of Shakespeare Road, Heme Hill, “We intend staying here until 5.30. Then we'll leave quietly after we've made our point.”

The squatters, all local people, passed their time listening to the radio, playing football and putting records on a record player they'd brought with them. At lunch-time fish and chips and bottles of beer were hoisted up by rope from outside. Rubbish was put in a Lambeth Council paper sack they had brought in with them. 'We want to be as tidy as possible,' said Mr Gibbon.

During the day, the squatters gave out over 7,000 leaflets in the Brixton shopping centre. One West Indian bus conductor said, 'Give me a heap man. I'll give them out to the lads when I get to the garage at Croydon.' The leaflet said: 'Some people try to blame immigrants for the housing shortage but we know we had lousy houses in Britain before we ever saw a black face or heard an Irish accent. The real for the housing shortage is that a small group of people make millions of pounds out of our need for a decent home.'

Source: David Widgery, The Left in Britain 1956-1968 (London: Penguin, 1976)