Executive summary

    Up to 1945 `plotlanders' were able to make use of small patches of land not needed for agriculture, gradually building up weekend shacks into permanent residences, by using their own time and labour rather than large sums of money.

    Immediately after the Second World War, homeless people in their thousands squatted in recently-vacated military camps, organizing their own communal services. Then, in the 1960s and 1970s, a similar movement erupted across vacant local-authority properties, evolving into long-term housing co-operatives.

    Today various kinds of travellers are attempting to settle on their own land, living outside the formal economy and experimenting with a wide range of unconventional dwelling types.

    This sort of self-help housing provision is flexible, cheap and creative. It tends to use human capital rather than financial capital, and to evolve slowly from the most basic provision by devising ingenious new solutions.

    We should allow this to flourish, by restraining government's impulse to outlaw unconventional behaviour through such legislation as the Criminal Justice Act 1994.

    In addition, planning authorities should be more sympathetic to experimentation, perhaps even reviving the idea of relaxed planning zones associated with some of the New Towns in the 1960s.

 

The Squatters Handbook  (ISBN 0 - 9507769 ? 6-3) has been published by the Advisory Service for Squatters in London since 1976. It is now in its thirteenth edition and provides 83 pages of detailed legal and practical information about squatting, homelessness and Travellers in England and Wales. Be aware that the law is different in Scotland and Northern Ireland and that the info in the handbook won't apply there.

We put out the 13th edition of the handbook in July, 2009. Boxes and boxes of them are currently cluttering our office. Please help us get rid of them! More content, same price, even a shiny new cover.

 

It costs only £1.50, or £2 with postage. 

If you're in London, come into the office to pick them up. Otherwise, write, phone, or email for your copy. Send us your name and address along with a cheque for £2 written out to ASS, or four 50p stamps, or a postal order(although they're a bit of a rip off) and we'll get one in the post straight away. We don't take credit cards. If you urgently need one, call or email us with your details and we'll send one out along with an invoice. If you live outside of the UK, you can order them from AK press. Contact us for bulk rates if you need a load of them. If you're completely skint, come by or get in touch anyway - you can work off the cost of one washing our coffee encrusted mugs or something ;)