| One afternoon last November I had been stopped in Church Street by a young woman wanting to know whether I was Penny of the anarchist punk band Crass. Somewhat cautiously I had admitted that I was. ‘In that case,’ she’d said, ‘you might be interested. We’re planning to squat the Vortex.’ Later that evening I met up with the core of anarchist activists who recently had so successfully run a squatted social centre in Russell Square. Having been evicted, they were now looking for an alternative. While offering whatever help I could give, I warned that Midda would be a hard customer to deal with, but they were unconcerned. Their planning was impeccable. They had insiders on the job. They didn’t see the Vortex as a problem. They were confident that they would take it over and, true to their word, on Saturday 6 January they did.
The place was a sad mess. Midda had already started internal demolition. The kitchen had been trashed and the walls half smashed. It felt and smelt derelict, but within a couple of weeks it had been transformed. Free paint was collected from a recycling plant and the walls were patched and given a lick, furniture was collected from dumps or donated by supporters (anarchists, lefties, bums, beats, squatters and scallywags), the bogs were cleaned and painted, looking (and smelling) better than they ever had, the kitchen was refurbished, a café was installed on the ground floor (including a precious espresso machine saved from Russell Square), photos displaying past activist successes were displayed on the walls, work rotas were created, committee meetings organised, activities planned. Everything was done for free, and everyone worked for free because this was genuine free-space: an autonomous zone. Then Midda turned up on the doorstep pleading his case, but no one was interested. He offered them £1,500 to get out, but was told where he could shove his money. Didn’t he know that Social Centres were anti-capitalist? He threatened to inform Health and Safety Officers of the dangers of the building’s asbestos roof, but then probably realised that he might be dropping himself well and truly into it through having rented out the building for the past two years. He then took the matter to the Courts and brought in bailiffs, but they were the wrong sort of bailiffs with the wrong sort of writs, so they, in turn, were told where to get off to. The Old Bill came back with the bailiffs, but hadn’t anything to say or do other than to say that they hadn’t anything to do or say, so they left.
On 13 January the Social Centre officially opened. The black and red flags were flying proud in Church Street: sod the corporations, bugger the politicians, this was peoples’ power. Nothing was charged for because everything was through donation only. If you weren’t up for it, you got it for nothing: veggie curry, carrot cake and herb teas. This was a place to ‘create, conspire and communicate’. Revolutionary chit chat, evolutionary dreams. A space in which kindness and consideration was to the fore (where, unprompted, even I felt I didn’t want to smoke). Sofas to lounge in, soap-boxes to rant from. Old friends to greet, new ones to meet. Fellowship and warmth. No one waiting for you to get up and leave (but not before paying the bill). Radical journals to read rather than the standard brain-draining Guardian or sub-standard, soul-sucking Sun. A place free from age, gender, class or race differences (with the right sense of will, you can be anyone or anything you want to be). Bring-and-take rather than bring-and-buy, discussion groups, toddlers’ afternoons, art gatherings, community meetings, political shindigs, film shows, poetry and open-mike evenings, gigs to finance political activism and awareness (one of which I was fortunate enough to play with a hastily put together band of jazzers). More than anything else, the space gave a sense of self-empowerment. It was like the banner on the wall said, ‘there is no authority but yourself’: the Social Centre actively proved the point.
This was a place where hope, trust and freedom were firmly back on the agenda: a very, very long way away from mean-minded mentality of New Labour Britain. Sounds idyllic, doesn’t it? Well, it was, because the predominantly young people who put such enormous effort into making it a reality were prepared to act and if need be to fight for a better future than that on offer in the glossy catalogues of global capitalism. While the politicians condemn British youth to cultural and economic poverty (see ‘Talking Guns’, page 16), political activists such as those behind the Social Centre offer a real alternative to the social deprivation that so many people are forced to accept as a life. Some of us are tired of seeing a Starbucks on every corner, tired of supermarkets draining the heart out of communities, tired of being told that, like the poor across the planet, we’ll benefit from the trickle-down effects of globalisation. It seems to me that the only people who benefit from those effects are the Middas of the world. Meanwhile, we get pissed on. No Future? In its short life, the Social Centre creatively proved otherwise.
Very early on the morning of 6 March, bailiffs (with full police support) forced their way into the Social Centre. They met with no resistance. The inhabitants were ordered out with whatever few possessions they had time to grab a hold of. In perhaps a final act of ‘tzedakah’, Midda later informed them that they could collect their remaining possessions from the rubbish skip that would be installed later in the week. No arrests were made, but who in any case were the real bad guys in this story?
Footnote. A few days before the repossession took place, I had rung Midda to see whether he had any comments to make: ‘the squat is a nuisance which simply delays things. There is no story to tell.’ Ironically, minutes after I had put down the phone I received a call from the BBC. They were interested in the ‘Vortex Story’. I referred them to Midda, and now eagerly await the results.
For further information on radical Social Centres throughout Britain, google Social Centre Networks or go to londonscn@yahoo.co.uk |
