Sunday 12 July 2015

The Notting Hill Squatters Who Declared Independence from the UK | VICE | United Kingdom

The Notting Hill Squatters Who Declared Independence from the UK | VICE | United Kingdom



In 1977, squatters in Freston Road, Notting Hill declared independence from the British state. Facing eviction by the Greater London Council (GLC), the community figured the best way to evade the constraints imposed on them was to just free themselves of those constraints altogether. So they lobbied the UN and established a 1.8-acre microstate - "The Free and Independent Republic of Frestonia" - complete with its own postage stamps, visas and passports.
The 100-odd citizens of Frestonia varied from actors, artists and addicts to normal working class Londoners and assorted bohemian flotsam. Playwright - and one of London's first graffiti artists - Heathcote Williams was Ambassador to Great Britain. David Rappaport (the actor who starred as Randall, King of the Dwarves in Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits) was the Minister of Foreign Affairs. A two-year-old child named Francesco Bogina Bramley was the Minister for Education.
If the same thing happened today (which it probably wouldn't, because squatting residential buildings is now something you can go to jail for), police would likely move in with eviction papers and battering rams. But back then, living in abandoned buildings apparently wasn't seen as the abhorrent transgression we now know it to be. In fact, even Tory MP Geoffrey Howe - Margaret Thatcher's longest-serving Cabinet minister - wrote to the Frestonians expressing his support, saying, "I can hardly fail to be moved by your aspirations."

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