25.05.2007

Last Sat­ur­day, anti-cap­i­tal­ists in Read­ing opened the squat­ted Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den to the pub­lic for the first time, and are receiv­ing sup­port from all cor­ners of the com­mu­ni­ty.

Six months ago, a few anar­chists squat­ted a for­mer Wom­ens Infor­ma­tion Cen­tre in the Kates­grove area of Read­ing. Hav­ing had their fund­ing cut by Read­ing Bor­ough Coun­cil the Wom­ens Cen­tre team moved out and this build­ing joined its run-down & derelict neigh­bours — all owned by the Coun­cil. Liv­ing and work­ing in the area, we quick­ly dis­cov­ered the total lack of any green space or com­mu­ni­ty space. Look­ing over our wall at the derelict gar­dens next door, with the sto­ries of New Yorks com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens and Zap­atista land occu­pa­tions in mind, we knew just what to do.

For the next three months we worked ridicu­lous­ly hard on our occu­pied land, clear­ing rub­bish, nee­dles and weeds, land­scap­ing our new gar­den, obtain­ing mate­ri­als, paint­ing, plant­i­ng and con­struct­ing deck­ing, bench­es and a chil­drens play area. Much of the gar­den was cre­at­ed using stuff oth­ers were throw­ing away and dona­tions from fam­i­ly, friends and neigh­bours. Unnavoid­able costs (£150 rough­ly) were fund­ed out of week­ly subs (the price of a pint!). And all this through inter­nal con­flicts about deci­sion mak­ing and account­abil­i­ty along the way.

After hang­ing a ban­ner, putting up posters and dis­trib­ut­ing about 600 fly­ers door-to-door adver­tis­ing our open­ing day two days lat­er, the Coun­cil took out an injunc­tion “pre­vent­ing the open­ing day from tak­ing place”. Yeah right! We imme­di­ate­ly dis­trib­uted anoth­er 500 let­ters telling our neigh­bours about this and mak­ing it clear we would go ahead regard­less.

Ear­ly Sat­ur­day morn­ing, pix­ies removed the front fence, open­ing the gar­den up ful­ly. About mid­day, two Pol­ish secu­ri­ty guards turned up to serve the Coun­cil’s injunc­tion. After five min­utes of being ignored they did the sen­si­ble thing and went and sat in their car. Got to be said, they were great and just stayed out of the way all day, so thanks to them! Through the day, many neigh­bours came through the gar­den, break­ing the law to show their sup­port and look­ing amazed at the dif­fer­ence to the area. Rumours are, we even had one local cop show her sup­port on our peti­tion! Over­all we had about 200 peo­ple through the gar­den at var­i­ous times, the same num­ber of sig­na­tures on a peti­tion (sup­port­ing the gar­den and demand­ing com­mu­ni­ty con­trol over the land).

The cel­e­bra­tion in the evening was great! About 100 peo­ple enjoyed a great BBQ and plen­ty of alco­hol late into the evening. The great­est thing was the diver­si­ty; activists and punks along­side neigh­bours aged 8 to 80! And the tunes were fan­tas­tic, again rang­ing from grey-haired coun­try and blue­grass, to grav­el voiced acoustic punkrock. Singing along with my mid­dle-aged neigh­bours to acoustic punks PJ Shep­pard and Gaby’s “Instead of war lets have a beer!” was class, and the blues ver­sion of Mar­ley’s redemp­tion song was­nt bad either!

After the hun­gover tidy up, the gar­den has been vis­it­ed by many more neigh­bours over the last few days, all equal­ly sup­port­ive. The local press have ran great arti­cles about the gar­den, and a few locals have writ­ten let­ters in our favour to the media and the coun­cil. We’ve even been on tel­ly now, as ITN Thames-Val­ley ran a bril­liant piece on their evening news, fea­tur­ing the coun­cil sound­ing a bit sil­ly and our neigh­bours sound­ing great!

One inter­est­ing thing is how wide­ly held is the view that the coun­cil’s mod­el of devel­op­ment — unaf­ford­able flats, roads and shop­ping cen­tres i.e. cap­i­tal­ist devel­op­ment, gen­tri­fi­ca­tion and spec­u­la­tion — is not what local peo­ple want or need. Even some of the peo­ple liv­ing in the posh flats over the road agree with us! A pos­si­bil­i­ty being moot­ed now, is to hold a neigh­bour­hood con­sul­ta­tion and assem­bly to decide the future of the land and build­ings, fight­ing for what­ev­er is agreed. The begin­ings of links with oth­er local strug­gles — such as mobile-home own­ers and allot­ment hold­ers fight­ing a new road, or mar­ket stall hold­ers resist­ing being forced out of the mar­ket by devel­op­ment — are already being seen.

Despite the extend­ed injunc­tion grant­ed today — mak­ing open­ing the site ille­gal — the gar­den will now be kept open every­day, for local res­i­dents and work­ers to enjoy. We also intend to fight evic­tion by any means, through the courts and with direct-action. It seems obvi­ous to us and our neigh­bours that the coun­cil had their chance with this land and did­nt give a damn for five years — now it belongs to nobody, because it belongs to every­body! It is tru­ly ‘Com­mon Ground’.

katesgrovegarden(AT)yahoo.co.uk