Squatting 101

This is a research document I never thought I'd have to write.

During the initial research process of 2 I watched a number of online documentaries about illegal raves and the process of orchestrating them. When I watched Vices 'Britains Illegal Rave Renaissance' documentary I learnt that the way rave conductors go about their illegitimate business is by abusing the flimsy squatting laws and their respected loopholes. In the documentary, the man hiding behind a mask teaches viewers that by printing out Section 144 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 and sticking it on the entrance of the raves non-residential location, you are effectively informing authorities that there are squatters present that cannot be evicted from the premises without a high court order.

I found these legal loopholes fascinating but knew that Vice wouldn't outright tell their millions of viewers exactly how to exploit the law to throw illegal raves, so I did some research for myself. Instead of finding an article that explicitly told me how to bend the laws for my own benefit (I tried but such an article didn't exist within Google's first page of results) I decided to spend an evening reading the relevant sections of the Criminal Law Act 1977 and the Criminal Just and Public Order Act 1994, and this is what I found.

• Trespassing on residential land with intention of squatting is illegal but trespassing on NON-residential land is legal.
• In a non-residential building, you're allowed up to 500 people squatting there until it becomes illegal.
• Owners of non-residential building cannot legally use violence or threats to evict squatters, they must seek a high court order.
• Section 6 of the CLA 1977 makes it an offence to force entry to a building which is occupied, including a squat (meaning that police would require a high court order or search warrant to enter the premises).
• Section 63 of the CJPOA 1994 states that if less than 20 people attend an event in open air where loud music is being played at night then it cannot be shut down (meaning that if we ultimately achieved a low turnout we could play this to our advantage in the case of police involvement).
• Section 64 of the CJPOA 1994 states that if we remove any vehicles and sound systems immediately from the site then they won't be seized.
• Section 66 of the CJPOA 1994 states that if sound systems are seized then legitimate owners can, by application, request delivery of seized item back if they are not the offender and claim ignorance to the gathering (meaning if I borrowed a sound system and used it for the rave without the owners knowledge they could retrieve it through ignorance of the rave)
• If a family member of the persons land we rave on is present and claim the rave as their own then we won't be evicted. 

With my freshly acquired law degree in illegal raving I got thinking about potential sites I could use. The obvious choice was a non-residential building with easy access that was not in a densely populated area. So I illegitimately acquired access the abandoned office buildings opposite Dominoes that are currently being demolished to scout out a potential rave site. To my good fortune, acquiring access to this site was as easy as crawling under an embarrassingly designed vehicle gate and then climbing through an open window at waist height. Inside I found the place was completely desolate of human life but had (apart from no electricity) the perfect infrastructure for a rave. The building was stripped of typical office furniture and what was left was a nascent carcass of a large empty room which screamed urban renaissance. The only problem with this location was unfortunately it's location. Being in the heart of Farnham and surrounded by residential areas meant that noise complaints would be flooding into the phone lines of Farnham's already hard working police force within minutes of our initiation. 

So I went on a walk one Sunday morning and stumbled upon a new potential rave site that was in the open air. This natural crater on the edge of a forest about 10 minutes walk away from university filled me with hope that I could transform this conservation area into a conseravetion area. The crater would host the music and dance area as its acoustics would reflect the sound back into the rave, making quieter sound systems louder and isolating music from neighbouring houses. The location was also off the beaten track so would be much easier for us to set up the rave without it being prematurely shut down. Unfortunately the majority of the squatting laws I had researched did not apply to open air areas and as I later found out that the forest was a conservation area owned by the Swiss biotechnology company Syngenta, I doubted that I could invite a member of the CEO's family to the rave. With these facts in mind my only hope for having an intellectual battle with a police officer (a fantasy I had practised in my bathroom mirror on the evening of my legal reading) was if less than 20 people turned up. 

Every cloud has its silver lining.