Mothers, wives, friends: women’s role in London squatting struggles since 1969

Squatting has long been a crucial form of direct action in housing struggles across the globe, in which women have always played an important part. However, despite recent calls to inflect housing studies with feminist, decolonial, and queer praxis, scholarship on women’s role in London’s squatting story remains significantly underdeveloped. Their absence becomes even more apparent when we consider that squatting’s second wave occurred simultaneously with that of feminism, during which time the home was articulated as a key site of feminist struggle. This paper therefore draws from materials authored by and about women during this period to trace broad contours of their involvement in London’s squatting history, focusing in particular on two avenues which call for further critical inquiry, namely: (1) the mobilisation of the ‘mother’ figure in press and public narratives, contrasted against the demonisation of young, single women for whom squatting defied popular understandings of how femininity should be performed; and (2) the world-building capacities of squatted domestic violence refuges, which provided safe spaces for women escaping violent partners and shared with squatting an autonomous, self-help ethos. At stake here is an understanding of what it meant for women to take (up) and remake space in late twentieth century London, and how similar feminist actions continue to enrich contemporary understandings of squatting as a radical, intersectional, and vital practice in ongoing struggles for urban housing justice worldwide.