New London Social Centre under Siege

A new autonomous space in Hack­ney sus­tained two vio­lent attacks this week as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of both Howen Estates Ltd., and the Hack­ney Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police attempt­ed to forcibly and ille­gal­ly gain entry to the new­ly opened social cen­tre.

At approx­i­mate­ly 7:17pm on the evening of Tues­day 22 Jan­u­ary, three peo­ple claim­ing to be the own­ers of the prop­er­ty attempt­ed to kick in the front door and break into the build­ing, refus­ing to engage in dia­logue with the occu­piers. No police offi­cers were involved though with­in 11 min­utes near­ly 30 mem­bers of the local activist com­mu­ni­ty had arrived at the premis­es to sup­port the occu­piers.

Pur­port­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Howen Estates, Ltd, returned on the morn­ing of Wednes­day 23 Jan­u­ary at approx­i­mate­ly 11:45am. They arrived in a large van, were equipped with a num­ber of tools, and again tried to gain forcible entry to the build­ing, ignor­ing and ridi­cul­ing the Sec­tion 6 Legal Warn­ing post­ed on the door and the requests of the occu­piers for dia­logue and non-vio­lence.

Hav­ing seri­ous­ly dam­aged the street entrance to the build­ing, the pur­port­ed own­ers stopped only after police offi­cers arrived at approx­i­mate­ly 12:15pm. Police had been called by the occu­piers to respond to the sup­posed own­ers’ con­tra­ven­tion of Sec­tion 6, Crim­i­nal Law Act, 1977.

The occu­piers attempt­ed to open dia­logue with the police, and met the offi­cers at the building’s back entrance. There, they were accused by the offi­cers and sup­posed own­er of glu­ing a pad­lock on the building’s street entrance, and the offi­cers demand­ed entry to the build­ing to inves­ti­gate.

After con­fer­ring with the own­er, the offi­cers also claimed they had called “the elec­tric­i­ty com­pa­ny” and had proof that the occu­piers had no account and were hence ille­gal­ly abstract­ing elec­tric­i­ty.

The occu­piers had no knowl­edge of any glued pad­lock on the build­ing. Fur­ther­more, accord­ing to an email sent from Ash­leigh Cor­bett, Ener­gy Advi­sor for British Gas Busi­ness, an elec­tric­i­ty account had been opened by the occu­piers on 18 Jan­u­ary 2008, with a one-year con­tract.

Regard­less, offi­cers main­tained that they had evi­dence of ille­gal elec­tric­i­ty abstrac­tion, and pro­ceed­ed to attempt forcible entry to the build­ing mak­ing use of tools includ­ing a crow­bar and a bat­ter­ing ram. After break­ing through the back gate and enter­ing the gar­den, offi­cers began try­ing to break through the building’s back door.

Mean­while, over twen­ty mem­bers of the local activist com­mu­ni­ty gath­ered out­side in sup­port of the occu­piers and offi­cers closed the back gates, imped­ing wit­ness pho­to and video doc­u­men­ta­tion. In response, sev­er­al activists scaled near­by walls to film offi­cers as they ille­gal­ly broke through the back entrance fire doors and began to dis­man­tle the bar­ri­cades con­struct­ed by the occu­piers.

While the police dis­cussed the sit­u­a­tion, the occu­piers over­heard offi­cers com­ment­ing on the accents of those inside the build­ing and spec­u­lat­ing on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of “get­ting them” on immi­gra­tion grounds.

The strug­gle over the remain­ing unsta­ble and makeshift back bar­ri­cades – built from doors, radi­a­tors, and scrap pieces of met­al and wood – last­ed over fif­teen min­utes, said the occu­piers. In the final min­utes, the bar­ri­cades had tipped over and on top of the occu­piers before they were able to push them back into place.

“I was scared of being crushed by the bar­ri­cades and was sur­prised by the aggres­sive­ness of the sit­u­a­tion,” said one occu­pi­er.

Offi­cers had become aware that sup­port­ers were film­ing their activ­i­ties from near­by walls and rooftops and re-opened the back gates. Activist sup­port­ers repeat­ed­ly told the offi­cers that their actions were ille­gal, that charges can and may be pressed against them, and that this is a civ­il mat­ter – between the own­ers and the occu­piers – and not a crim­i­nal mat­ter.

“They [the police] appeared to loose con­fi­dence after we made it clear that we had evi­dence and were will­ing to press charges,” said one wit­ness. “That’s why they left.”

Leav­ing the gar­den, the offi­cers said “You’ve won this round, but we’ll come back. It could be tomor­row, it could be at two in the morn­ing. We will get in, and you’ll all have to come in [to the sta­tion].”

Set to open to the pub­lic in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary, the as yet un-named autonomous space hopes to pro­vide non-com­mer­cial social space for the com­mu­ni­ty and to host activ­i­ties such as: detainee sup­port, a bike work­shop, free lan­guage class­es, a dona­tions-only café, silk-screen­ing and graf­fi­ti work­shops, and much more.

For more infor­ma­tion on the attacks or on future social cen­tre activ­i­ties and orga­niz­ing, con­tact Joan at 07506095491.