Attempted Edinburgh Squat

Artists and activists squat­ted the old art col­lege on the grass­mar­ket at the week­end to open it up as a free arts space for the fes­ti­val and a com­mu­ni­ty resource cen­tre, and to con­test the squat­ting laws in Scot­land.

Artists and activists squat­ted the old art col­lege on the grass­mar­ket at the week­end to open it up as a free arts space for the fes­ti­val and a com­mu­ni­ty resource cen­tre, and to con­test the squat­ting laws in Scot­land.

The fol­low­ing is from an inter­view with one of the squat­ters who wish­es to remain anony­mous.

A few days before the evic­tion 18 peo­ple entered the build­ing and began work mak­ing it safe and clean, and start­ing paint­ing.

The squat­ters gained the atten­tion of the police due to clean­ers that still used the build­ing, who dis­cov­ered them and called the police.

Police, num­ber­ing approx­i­mate­ly 20, failed to gain entry to the well bar­ri­cad­ed main entrance, how­ev­er they broke through the side door that had yet to be rein­forced. One man had chained him­self to the door to pre­vent the police enter­ing, he removed him­self sec­onds before the door was bro­ken down. He was thrown to the floor and hand­cuffed behind his back.

The police shout­ed “lay your brush­es down” to those who were paint­ing at the time of the raid, as they began aggres­sive­ly push­ing peo­ple into a line against the wall. The details (names, address­es) of the squat­ters were tak­en sev­er­al times, some of them were hand­cuffed and oth­ers not, and they were allowed ton drink alco­hol by some offi­cers but at oth­er times this was pro­hib­it­ed. The police were appar­ent­ly very dis­or­gan­ised. The artists and activists were held in the build­ing for approx­i­mate­ly 3 hours.

They were all tak­en to St Leonards police sta­tion for ques­tion­ing and to have their DNA, fin­ger­prints and pho­tographs tak­en for the per­ma­nent bio­met­ric data­base. They were inter­viewed and ques­tioned specif­i­cal­ly about who their leader was, what group they belonged to and if they were part of or had knowl­edge of ‘the Black Bloc’.

All of the indi­vid­u­als were charged with aggra­vat­ed tres­pass and those who had obvi­ous­ly been paint­ing were charged with mali­cious mis­chief, and have all been bailed except one man who had out­stand­ing war­rants for oth­er protests. They are all due in court on the 20th of Sep­tem­ber.