Love Activists turn former RBS office in London into housing protest squat | Society | The Guardian

Love Activists turn former RBS office in London into housing protest squat | Society | The Guardian: "Love Activists turn former RBS office in London into housing protest squat Campaigners plan to set up food bank and provide free Christmas lunch to homeless as they criticise bankers Share 3118 inShare 2 Email Diane Taylor The Guardian, Tuesday 23 December 2014 21.28 GMT Jump to comments (323) Some of the Love Activist protesters at the building on the corner of Charing Cross Road. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian A prime, five-storey Victorian office building off Trafalgar Square in London has been taken over by a group of squatters who plan to open the building on Christmas Day and provide a free festive lunch for homeless people in a protest against the housing crisis. Calling themselves the Love Activists, a group of 20 people on Saturday took over the grade II-listed building on the corner site of Charing Cross Road and St Martin’s Lane which has been empty for 18 months. Previously leased by the RBS group and housing a branch of National Westminster Bank, the squatters say that the building has “been taken by the people” in a statement posted on their Facebook page. The current ownership of the corner site is unclear: Land Registry records show that the owner is Greencap Ltd, a Jersey company that appears to have been dissolved. According to one of the activists, Danny Freedland, 22, the fact that the building was previously used by RBS, which was bailed out by the taxpayer during the financial crisis and today remains 79% owned by the state, has made their message of “homes not banks” all the more resonant."

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