ABSTRACT
Somers Town is a compressed location, a road-bounded rectangle of intensity. It has been cut through by large building projects, such as the railways, the British Library and the Francis Crick Institute. In London, in August 1946, squatters, tens of thousands of people, mainly ex-servicemen and their families, moved into empty military camps around Britain. By early September the squattings had spread to hotels and flats. Squatting took off again in outer London areas, such as Redbridge, in the late 1960s, where activists, most notably Ron Bailey, rescued homeless families from squalid hostels. Through the 1970s, the All London Squatting movement faded, but the need for homes, especially for working class youth, young people who had fallen out with their families, refugees did not go away. New legislation made squatting harder. A criminal law act of 1977 repealed the forcible entry acts and made squatting more difficult.
