Re "How could you get in unless you broke in? And, how did they keep warm in winter, etc. If a house was unoccupied around here, the first thing happens is the power gets cut off. Did they just use candles and kerosene heaters??":
You've got me now! I'm afraid I was very bad. You can't legally break in. But if a house was secure people did indeed break in. If the police asked what happened you just said you'd found a window already broken when you arrived. How could they disprove that? When we broke in to our house in Kentish Town we asked the Sid Rawle's commune at Chalk Farm for help in settling in. They sent over a guy called Mervin (if I remember his name aright) and he connected us to the water main and connected us to both the electricity and gas supplies (all highly illegal). For the two years I lived there we never paid any bills - no rent, no rates, no heating - as we were off the official record. Astonishing that the power companies couldn't detect that we were siphoning off juice. There were popular books on sale, like Alternative London (sample page below), that also showed people how to sidestep the security measures of the power companies. I'm sure they are much harder to overcome today. You'll be glad to learn that over the years since then I've more than paid my share towards the profits of our rip-off energy companies. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <mjackson74@...> wrote : How could you get in unless you broke in? And, how did they keep warm in winter, etc. If a house was unoccupied around here, the first thing happens is the power gets cut off. Did they just use candles and kerosene heaters?? From: "s3raphita@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, October 20, 2014 4:23 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Why do people sound American when they sing in English? Squatting has been popular in the UK since the 14th century - following the Black Death! Lots and lots of dead people and acres of unoccupied land = living people move in. Until a few years ago the Law took the view that trespassing is a civil offense, not a criminal one. Provided the squatters did not break-in or otherwise damage the property, police were powerless to remove them. Landlords had to apply for an eviction order and could not remove the intruders by force. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <mjackson74@...> wrote : you will have to explain that to us crass and crude Americans, I never heard of such doings as this - and it was legal at one time? Who changed the law and why wasn't it illegal to begin with? From: salyavin808 <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, October 20, 2014 3:24 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Why do people sound American when they sing in English? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <s3raphita@...> wrote : Sorry - I replied too fast. Re "Still there?": No, we stayed at the squat for two years then we got a letter from the owner saying that he was returning from Africa, that he'd heard the place was occupied, and could we please vacate the premises shortly. We did exactly that - so he never lost out from us using his house and we left it in good order. Would all be illegal now of course but was still allowed then. And we thought at the time that we were just continuing the Levellers work . . . Excellent, a lot of my friends did squatting and they always looked after the places. We all ended up in a nice empty pub once and planned our anti-poll tax campaign from the saloon bar. Ah, happy days. Am currently squatting a bit of land and have divided it up between friends into allotments. Worked well for a few years but interest is waning and the place is getting overgrown, great sense of achievement when we started though. We were the new diggers. Shame it's all illegal now, kids these days don't know what they're missing!
