Stop the Rot, Squat the Lot — new Brighton social centre

An attempt to cre­ate a social space in Brighton out­is­de of the banal injus­tice of land­lord­ship and cap­i­tal­ism, and all the highs and lows that come with it!

A cou­ple of weeks ago, in the depths of night, a small group of pesky squat­ters approached Van­tage Point with the intent of enter­ing and occu­py­ing one of the emp­ty ground floor shop fronts. After a suc­cess­ful entrance, the prop­er­ty was secured and some of our last remain­ing civ­il rights cel­e­brat­ed.

The occu­pied prop­er­ty, the old ‘Gamer Heav­en’ games café (7 – 8 Cir­cus Parade), is part of a large build­ing owned by St. James’ Invest­ments, a May­fair based prop­er­ty devel­op­er who buy up the hous­es, shops or any oth­er build­ing of those in finan­cial cri­sis for cash, but for sig­nif­i­cant­ly less than it’s actu­al val­ue. It is they that are build­ing the new Tesco super­store to the west of Lon­don Road, thus dis­plac­ing a mul­ti­tude of small busi­ness­es and gen­er­al­ly gen­tri­fy­ing the area.
The inten­tion of those involved was to open up the space as a social cen­tre, using it as a blank slate for any­one and every­one to get involved, so artists and musi­cians were invit­ed to come and make the one room as cre­ative and com­fort­able as pos­si­ble. After a fran­tic week of tat­ting, paint­ing, build­ing and gen­er­al­ly organ­is­ing with ridicu­lous­ly low funds, the space was opened to the pub­lic on Fri­day the 27th of Feb­ru­ary. There was live music, a con­tin­u­a­tion of the Smash EDO ‘Art not War’ art gallery, food and a small info shop, as well as some oth­er bits ‘n’ bobs. The whole event went down in a beau­ti­ful­ly hap­haz­ard way, and despite every­thing hap­pen­ing in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent man­ner to what was expect­ed, the con­sen­sus was that a good thing had hap­pened.
There was no con­tact for a week, despite the par­ty going on until 4am, but on Mon­day the 2nd of March, the build­ing man­ag­er attempt­ed to enter. After the briefest of con­ver­sa­tions through the door, with his con­tri­bu­tion being ‘f***ing squat­ters!’, a hand­ful of suits turned up. They did­n’t want to talk, and it was obvi­ous that they did­n’t know the law, but it was explained to them that there were prop­er legal chan­nels through which they had to go in order to evict the occu­piers.

Accu­sa­tions of sex­u­al abuse!

Despite this, on Thurs­day the 5th of March Rossendales secu­ri­ty, whose slo­gan is ‘Proud to be Pro­fes­sion­als’, issued the occu­pants with a ‘Notice to Quit’, pre­car­i­ous­ly claim­ing that under sec­tion 33 of the Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Act 1994 (CJA), and sec­tion 61 of the Crim­i­nal Jus­tice and Pub­lic Order Act 1994 (CJPOA), they had the right to remove any peo­ple or vehi­cles still resid­ing in the prop­er­ty after twen­ty-four hours of issu­ing the notice.

How­ev­er, a quick liai­son with the the fan­tas­ti­cal­ly use­ful and great­ly appre­ci­at­ed Advi­so­ry Ser­vice for Squat­ters (ASS) revealed that there is no sec­tion 33 of the CJA, but sec­tion 33 of the CJPOA deals with the “Abo­li­tion of cor­rob­o­ra­tion require­ments under the Sex­u­al Offences Act 1956”. Now, despite the squat­ter stereo­type, we are not sex­u­al offend­ers, so it is hard to see where Rossendales were going with this!

Fur­ther on, and the ASS revealed that sec­tion 61 of the CJPOA deals with “Pow­ers to remove tres­passers on land”, but sub­sec­tion (9) makes it clear that this only refers to tres­passers on com­mon land, and since the occu­pied prop­er­ty is not com­mon land but pri­vate prop­er­ty, the sec­tion does not apply, and the mat­ter is only resolv­able in a court of law, as the suits were told when we first spoke to them!

Any­way, the mat­ter was resolved by the ASS fax­ing a let­ter explain­ing this to Rossendales secu­ri­ty, as well as con­tact­ing Brighton police to con­firm that any attempt at forced entry would result in a swift arrest, and guess what…the bailiffs nev­er showed.

Same old abstrac­tion bol­locks

To con­tin­ue the bom­bard­ment Brighton squat­ters receive by var­i­ous author­i­ties, the police reared their ugly head on Mon­day (the 5th) accus­ing those inside of abstrac­tion (the ille­gal use of elec­tric­i­ty). When an occu­pant asked who was at the door, one pig called him­self Phil and asked to be let in, but when they were refused entry they pro­ceed­ed to try and kick the door in, an ille­gal act con­sid­er­ing they did­n’t have a war­rant.

How­ev­er, due to this com­mon attempt by the cops at a quick an easy evic­tion, Brighton squat­ters have got quite savvy with the legal­i­ties of elec­tric­i­ty, and quick­ly pro­duced a let­ter from the occu­pants to the sup­pli­er con­firm­ing their intent to pay for any elec­tric­i­ty they used, and a reply from the sup­pli­er to the occu­pants accept­ing this affir­ma­tion. Even­tu­al­ly the police left, but what was inter­est­ing was that both of them were recog­nis­able by a num­ber of the squat­ters as the team that had ille­gal­ly evict­ed them from a res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty ear­li­er in the year. Nice try Sergeant Bell­field and the ille­gal squat evic­tion team, but you won’t get us out this time!

After all this malarkey, the space is still there and wait­ing to be used by any­one, for what­ev­er you want. So far we have had acoustic music nights, films, food, as well as ever-chang­ing art­work and an infos­hop. We still have not received court papers but are expect­ing them in the next few days, so come along and enjoy the space whilst it is still there! Just pop down, or email brightonfreespace@riseup.net.

Brighton Free­Space
http://www.brightonfreespace.webs.com