The ever so short lived Bingo Bomb squat in Brixton, it lasted all of about 4 hours after the "Official" opening before being illegally evicted by the police, a lot of the people inside at the time were on bail after the Trafalgar square poll tax riot and getting arrested was therefore not an option for them and the police were certainly not listening to any "you know that what you are doing is illegal" talk that particular day, I'm still unsure why this particular squat got this particular treatment, maybe because it was right in the centre of Brixton (opposite Sub-station just behind red records) it had a massive banner hanging out and people had been handing out tracts to the crowd of Saturday shoppers.
Great site - we have definitely been in the same place a few times! (name's Neil, lived in Brixton at this time, was friend of Cristina who I'm guessing you may know too). Must admit I have always felt slightly guilty about this particular squat - I was there in the day and me and friend Andy made a big 'pay no poll tax' banner and hung it from top of the building. It was politically the right thing to do and we had some great feed back from the neighbours whose flat gardens backed on to the place. But obviously it drew attention to the place and raised the stakes with the police, so in hindsight it might have been better to have saved the political gesture to a bit later in the day.
ReplyDeleteI think the bingo bomb banner on the front quite possibly had something to do with that too :)
ReplyDeleteIt was one of those 3am decision, we'd only got in the place about 4 hours previous to that, i think none of our crew was quite used to what it entailed to squat a massive building in London at that time.
If you were there that day we most definitely met, I was on the phone to some solicitors (there was one still on in one of the offices) when somebody ran into the room to say that the police were coming through and I was the last person in the building.
My guess is they knew that we'd probably run for it which is why they never posted anyone by the door we were actually using for entry: nicking someone inside after they'djust broken into the place would not have look good in court.
Ah well, innocent days :)
As with a lot of these squats, I had a sense of the fading beauty of fantastic abandoned buildings. This place had once been a cinema, and then a bingo hall, I remember there were still all the bingo gear in there. Confess I wasn't actually there when the police turned up, I popped home for a bit intending to come back to the party... but history had other plans!
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