LETTER SENT TO PALACE

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24981, 16 September 1946, Page 5

LETTER SENT TO PALACE

The squatters in Fountain Court sent a registered letter to Buckingham Palace offering to vacate Fountain Court if the Westminster Council would put them in other available accommodation. The letter said there were 410 empty flats and houses in Westminster, and other empty blocks of buildings. A member of the committee of 10 who sent the letter denied that the Communist Party was backing the squatters, and added that the Communists were merely advising them. The squatters were not' fighting the Labour Government, and many squatters were labour supporters who knew full well the difficulties of the housing problem which faced the Government. The Press Association says 1000 names were obtained to a petition the Fountain Court squatters are sending to Mr Attlee. The “Daily Herald,” in a leading article, strongly attacks the Communist Party for its part in organising the squatter movement. It says: “It matters not to the Communists that the Labour Government is executing

its housing programme and winning results on new and Socialist principle*, decreeing in the face of Tory opposition that those most in need have first claim on new homes. What do the Communists care? In the search for much-needed political capital for themselves they encourage hundreds of people into taking over premise* where no proper living facilities are provided and where they cannot be provided without endangering the Government's plan by withdrawing labour and materials from new housing construction. How long will it be before the squatters realise that they are being used to play someone else’s game?’’ The “Daily Herald” says that several squatters* camps in the Birmingham district have broken away from the main body because the “continued help of the Communist Party can result in nothing but suffering for people so deliberately misled,” and predicts that what has become clear to the squatters in Birmingham will very soon become clear to squatters in Bloomsbury.