Gimme Shelter S q u at t e r s h av e l o n g b e e n w r i t t e n o f f b y s o c i e t y a s h o m e - i n t r u d e r s a n d va n d a l s w i t h o u t a c a u s e . B u t t h at b l a c k - a n d - w h i t e n a r r at i v e i s a d e c e p t i v e h a l f - t r u t h . N o w, a s t h e UK g o v e r n m e n t c a l l s f o r s q u a t t i n g t o b e c r i m i n a l i s e d , HUCK b r e a k s d o w n t h e w a l l o f m i s i n f o r m a t i o n a n d d i s c o v e r s a far more colourful world. Te x t O l l y Z a n e t t i P h o t o g r a p h y C h l o e D e w e M a t t h e w s
ou know it’s no ordinary Thursday when, at 7am, your home is stormed by forty police officers. Of the seven people who live at Grow Heathrow – an abandoned market garden that has become a squat and hub for environmental action group Transition Heathrow – only one was up and preparing for work. At the sight of the police, he ran to wake the others. “Twenty of them came in through the back and the other twenty through the front, breaking the lock,” explains Joe, an activist who has been with the campaign since it began. “They said they were looking for items to be used for criminal damage. We were held, surrounded by police. Usually, when places are searched you’re allowed to have one person walking around with the police, watching what they’re doing, but this time that wasn’t allowed.” In light of such heavy-handed tactics, one may be forgiven for assuming that this squatted site in suburban London was, in fact, some kind of criminal den. The reality, however, is somewhat less dramatic. Grow Heathrow began life in March 2010 as a campaign hub for opposition to the nearby airport’s expansion plans. When those plans were shelved, the campaigners joined forces with local residents and turned the site into a community garden – a place where people gather to grow plants or host meetings about the impending peak oil crisis, in the hope of becoming “a beacon of community strength and a great example of how to live sustainably on this planet”. Dangerous stuff, right? And yet, on the morning of the swoop, the officers turned the site over. But as Joe explains, it was never clear what they were searching for: “They didn’t leave stuff as they found it, they left it upturned, like the spaces where people sleep – there were clothes scattered everywhere. It was complete intimidation tactics. They were fascinated by spray cans they found in the corner of one room, I think because paint has been used in a recent protest. It was pretty comical, actually, because items to be used for criminal damage could be anything. We’ve got all kinds of gardening tools, for example.” A couple of hours later, with no arrests and nothing seized, the officers left.
Adrian Rubi-Dentzel 77