Wednesday, 27 November 2013

Mike Freer anti squatter is squatted Guardian article

politics

Diary: Biter bit. The anti-squatter's anti-squatter is squatted

Red faces, high tension at Margaret Thatcher House
diary squatting
Not for turning: squatters outside Margaret Thatcher House, in Finchley. Photograph: Richard Soans/ Richard Soans/Demotix/Corbis

 No man is an island, as they say, and MPs will have this in mind as they pronounce in parliament. The general can very quickly become specific; chickens come home to roost. It was Finchley MP Mike Freer's destiny perhaps to become the driving force behind the government's tough new anti-squatting legislation. But tough as it is, it isn't helping him with the squatters who have for the past four days occupied the yard outside his constituency office, Margaret Thatcher House, once the seat of power of Baroness Thatcher. For all the new legal powers, it's complicated. The squatters say officials in Freer's office told them they could protest in the forecourt rather than languish on the pavement. And that, the squatters say, represents a licence. And that means they're staying. Freer and his people are looking up the rules and trying to sort it out. Might be another job for parliament.



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