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Fairies, Feminists & Queer Anarchists: Geographies of Squatting In

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Fairies, Feminists & Queer Anarchists: Geographies of Squatting In FAIRIES, FEMINISTS & QUEER ANARCHISTS: Geographies of squatting in Brixton, south London Milo Bettocchi Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Geography 7 January 2021 Approx. 87,000 words Abstract This thesis assembles cultural, historical, political, affective and infrastructural geographies of squatting in Brixton, south London. It does so to spatialise the complex material and affective processes through which identities, collectivities and political projects are assembled, negotiated and navigated; to document vital spaces, histories, dynamics, political lineages and struggles which the literature on squatting in England has overlooked; and to critically interrogate and expand how squatting in England has been conceptualised. In pursuing these aims, this thesis insists on and demonstrates the co-constitution of the spatial and the political. Where work on squatting in England has largely concentrated on a narrow range of collectives, spaces and time periods and has neglected how squatting has intersected with anti-racist, decolonial, feminist and LGBTQ struggles and politics, this thesis responds to these gaps. Chapters focus on what became known in the 1970s as the Brixton Gay Community, an experiment in communal living and revolutionary politics by gay men; on the Brixton Black Women’s Group, a socialist, anti-imperialist feminist organisation active in the 1970s and 1980s; on Queeruption, an anarchist queer festival organised out of a squat in the late 1990s; and on the House of Brag, a queer squatting collective active between 2012 and 2014. I argue that thinking squatting through these can profoundly reframe our understandings of squatting. To this end, I have drawn on 24 original interviews as well as on a broad range of archival material. In making important contributions to critical considerations of squatting in England, this thesis draws on and extends a variety of bodies of literature, including geographies of urban sexualities, queer geographies, anarchist geographies, geographies of affect and emotions, as well as geographies of feminist organising in England and social movements more broadly. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ..................................................................................................................................... I TABLE OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................................................ III CHAPTER 1 / INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................... 1 SOME NOTES ON TERMINOLOGY .......................................................................................................................... 9 CHAPTER 2 / SQUATTING IN ENGLAND: A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE AND THE LAW ... 11 SQUATTING AND THE LAW ................................................................................................................................ 19 Forcible Entry and Detainer Act 1381 ........................................................................................................ 21 Railway Regulation Act 1840 and British Transport Commission Act 1949 .............................................. 22 Criminal Law Act 1977 ................................................................................................................................ 22 Limitation Act 1980 ..................................................................................................................................... 25 Aviation Security Act 1982 and Aviation and Maritime Security Act 1990 ................................................ 25 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 .............................................................................................. 26 Land Registration Act 2002 ......................................................................................................................... 27 Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 ................................................................... 27 CHAPTER 3 / METHODOLOGY .................................................................................................................... 31 ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEWS .............................................................................................................................. 33 ARCHIVES .......................................................................................................................................................... 35 OUTLINE OF MATERIALS .................................................................................................................................... 38 TABLE OF PARTICIPANTS ................................................................................................................................... 41 CHAPTER 4 / A GEOGRAPHY OF BRIXTON ............................................................................................. 43 REDEVELOPMENT PLANS, AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES ...................................................................................... 47 NEGOTIATIONS, LICENSES, EVICTIONS AND UPRISINGS ..................................................................................... 51 AUSTERITY, DISPLACEMENT AND A ‘PROFIT-MAKING CULTURE’ ...................................................................... 58 ASIDE: RUSHCROFT ROAD .......................................................................................................................... 62 CHAPTER 5 / ‘...THEIR OWN SELF-CONTAINED, SELF-DEFINED SPACE’: THE SQUATTED BRIXTON GAY COMMUNITY AND NEGOTIATIONS OF RACE, GENDER AND SEXUALITY, 1974– 1984 ....................................................................................................................................................................... 65 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................................. 65 GEOGRAPHIES OF SEXUALITIES, SQUATTING IN LONDON AND THE BRIXTON GAY COMMUNITY ...................... 68 THE LONDON GAY LIBERATION FRONT AND EXPERIMENTS IN COMMUNAL LIVING .......................................... 71 THE BRIXTON GAY COMMUNITY ...................................................................................................................... 72 ‘Quite a wonderful place in the middle of a city’ ........................................................................................ 75 BORDERING THE BRIXTON GAY COMMUNITY ................................................................................................... 78 ‘… girlfriends appearing’ ............................................................................................................................ 78 ‘[T]here were women here as well as men’ ................................................................................................. 81 ‘Pearl’s place ... A gay place?’ ................................................................................................................... 83 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................................................... 87 ASIDE: PEARL ALCOCK ................................................................................................................................ 89 CHAPTER 6 / ‘THERE ARE EMPTY HOUSES; WE HAVE A RIGHT TO THEM AS BLACK FOLKS’: SQUATTING AND THE GEOGRAPHIES OF THE BRIXTON BLACK WOMEN’S GROUP, 1970–1985 ............................................................................................................................................................................... 93 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................................. 93 Situating the Brixton Black Women’s Group ............................................................................................... 93 OLIVE MORRIS .................................................................................................................................................. 97 ‘She had to squat because they wouldn’t give her anywhere to live’ .......................................................... 99 121 AND 65 RAILTON ROAD: THE BEGINNINGS OF THE BRIXTON BLACK WOMEN’S GROUP ......................... 100 ‘WE’RE HERE AS A RESULT OF BRITISH IMPERIALISM’: ASSERTING A RIGHT TO SPACE IN BRITAIN ................ 102 ‘… this funny racialised and racist divide between what constituted feminist activism and what wasn’t …’ ................................................................................................................................................................... 106 ‘DAILY BATTLES’ IN ‘BRITAIN’S BLACK UTOPIA’ ........................................................................................... 108 41 STOCKWELL GREEN: ‘WE WANT A CENTRE OF OUR OWN’ ......................................................................... 111 The BriXton Black Women’s Centre .......................................................................................................... 113 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................................... 117 ASIDE: 372 COLDHARBOUR LANE: ‘THE OLD DOLE OFFICE’ / COOLTAN ...............................
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