It has been some time now since a group of anarchists and like minded people decided to occupy an empty bank on Deptford High Street, London. Well they are still there and doing fine thank you. Of course they will need all the support they can get, not just to survive, but to spread their ideas and keep up the good work of working with the community creating solidarity where needed and over as wide an area as possible.
This is their latest communiqué:
We are rats running rabid through the stinking guts of London …
Sick of the fractured ‘scene’ of squatters in London, sick of faux-punk venues and the fashionable veneer of rebellion, sick of the apathy and passivity, sick of housing where everyone is locked in their own rooms, their own lives, their existence atomised, stinking of fried chicken and choking on the bones of what once was, we came together to act …
We are a collective of those in active rebellion. Warsaw. Barcelona. Roma. Thessaloniki. London. All over we meet in joint attack.
We organised on the beaches of London for the TRESPASS gig – selling propaganda to fashionpunx and tourists about the trial of the Warsaw 3, dropping banners and smokeflares whilst the crowd rioted amongst itself, spitting in our faces and rejecting all politics.
We put on infonights, skyping with comrades from across Europe, and people came and listened, complained that there was nothing organised in London, that everything was too fluid, too temporary, that nothing ever happened, and we laughed to hide the tragedy of their blindness to their own domestication. ‘You can’t win’, they said, and we sneered, knowing our victory is in the struggle itself.
We meet in the streets outside squats under threat of eviction in Bethnal Green, Brixton, Aldwych, to jeer at bailiffs covered in paint, or see doors battered in, or taunt the cops and accuse them of murder by association. Though we called out for accomplices, few came, but enough remained to support each other and fight.
We battled outside the Camelot HQ, trapped between lines of security and cops and vans and carnage and refused to let go, refused to give up even one of our number, until all were dispersed and the squat remained, refusing any collaboration with the business snakes trying to turn rebellion into money.
We gather, seeking out other accomplices. Inspired by the mould that grows on rotting food, we chose our target – a disused bank in the heart of Deptford – a no-go zone for the UKBA immigration filth, a frontline of the gentrification war, a barrio within London where there still exists community, affinity, fucking neighbours instead of yuppies and hipsters and cops cops cops.
We took it – and lined its innards with mattresses to dull the sounds. Within five days it was packed to the rafters with punks in support of the Warsaw 3, its walls lined with banners, its floor full of curious locals and friends old and new. After how many years, finally a non-commercial venue, free of the tyranny of rent and capital.
The infonights continue – on the progress of the Warsaw 3, on the antiraids network spreading from Deptford to Whitechapel to beyond, on the arrest of the anarchist comrades in Italy, their words now as dangerous as bombs. Once a week we open the doors for Scum Dine With Me, part-street kitchen, part-info-night, part-cinema, where all and sundry are welcome and fed, and we mix more with our neighbours and friends from further afield.
The bailiffs came but did not succeed in getting rid of us. On the day we are forced to leave, we will take our ideas, our struggle, our new connections, and spread across London, the UK, Fortress Europe, unstoppably changing and adapting, spreading our disease and infecting new mutantations against domination, power, hierarchy.
Until we mutate into an end to all forms of oppression.
Until all are free.
