Page 12 - C.A.L.L. #40 - Winter 2015

They want to kill off our way of life,

says London commune facing eviction

A pair of close communities have clung on in an upmarket area since the 1970s,
but may soon be victims of the housing crisis

Jamie Doward
6 June 2015
www.theguardian.com

“Come the zombie apocalypse, we’ll be OK,” declares Siobhan McSweeney as she
surveys a pile of toilet rolls big enough to supply a small village.

She gazes around a ground-floor room
at 44 Islington Park Street in north
London – four Victorian properties
knocked into one, a stone’s throw from
Upper Street, where sugar-free delis
compete with gluten-free delis for the
City banker’s pound. There are shelves
laden with large packets of pasta,

boxes of tea bags and enough sundry
(Left to right) Siobhan McSweeney, Karen staples to see out a sustained siege.
Nearby, a dozen bicycles nest in racks.
Grace, Keith Soutar.

The building could be mistaken for a university hall of residence, but the place
that McSweeney and 17 others call home is one of only two remaining communes
that were established in London in the early 1970s by a former Franciscan friar,
Greg Moore.

“He was so taken with what it was like to live communally that he decided to set
up a housing association so that people with varying kinds of needs could live
together and help each other,” said Chris Murphy, who lives at the second
commune, the Crescent Road Community in Kingston upon Thames, home to 21
adults and three children.

Moore’s big idea, that vulnerable people such as recovering drug addicts and ex-
offenders would live side-by-side with those who did not have problems in a
network of communes, continues to this day.

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