1. Activist spaces

2. Around the country
    Bradford  Brighton  Bristol  Edinburgh  Glasgow  Liverpool  London  Manchester  Newcastle  Nottingham 

3. Networks
    London Social Centres Network  UK Social Centre Network 

4. References

5. External links

Social centres in the United Kingdom can be found in squatted, rented, mortgaged and fully owned buildings in many cities. These social centres differ from community centres in that they are run autonomously, usually without assistance from the state/corporations.

The aims and policies of the centres are determined by those running them. This means that whilst every place is unique, functions will include some of the following: exhibition space, concert venue, radical library, infoshop, bar, cafe, bicycle repair workshop, migrant support, language classes, meeting space.^[1]

Some social centres are co-operatively owned, such as the 1 in 12 Club in Bradford, Sumac Centre in Nottingham and the Cowley Club in Brighton. The latter two are members of Radical Routes. An advantage of ownership is that those projects have a longer lifetime than squatted or rented projects.^[2]

Activist spaces

UK social centres can trace their direct roots back to networking between the workers' centres and autonomous clubs of the 1980s such as Centro Iberico, Wapping Autonomy Centre and the still extant 1 in 12 Club in Bradford.^[3]

Other influences include the Diggers, working mens clubs, the Landless Workers' Movement (MST) in Brazil, the social centres of Italy and the occupied factories of Argentina.^[4]

Anita Lacey writes that "Actions, plans, ideas, and contacts are circulated via zines, at infoshop and stalls, and in social centres. Networks of activism develop and do not spontaneously emerge on the day of any given action; they emerge from the interaction of activists, in shared physical and/or emotional spaces." ^[5]

Paul Chatterton and Stuart Hodkinson view social centres as part of the "broader 'autonomous movement,'" playing an "important role in the re-thinking and re-making 'citizenship' by bringing people together in spaces whose very reason for existence is to question and confront the rampant individualism of everyday life."^[6]

The fledgling social centre network was profiled in 2008, in the pamphlet What's This Place? which was produced as part of the academic project Autonomous Geographies (funded by the ESRC).^[7] Around this time there was also debate on whether legal spaces are a useful anti-capitalist tactic, or not.^[8] One view asserted that buying a social centre left activists concerned with mundane activities such as business plans and mortgage applications.^[8] The counter-view stated the advantage to owning a place were longevity and stability.^[9]

Around the country

Most UK cities have or have had social centre projects. In Birmingham there was the Aardvark Centre.^[10]

Bradford

Bradford has the long-running 1 in 12 Club. Over several floors it has a library, bar and cafe.

Brighton

The Cowley Club was founded in 2002 and has a bar, bookshop, library and cafe. There have also been many squatted projects in Brighton such as Medina House and the Sabotaj squat, which was a protest against supermarket expansion.^[11]

Bristol

The still extant Kebele was squatted in Bristol in 1995, initially as housing for homeless people before it became a social centre. A housing co-operative was formed to run the building and the mortgage was paid off in 2005. In 2008, a community co-operative took over the building and more recently the name was changed to BASE (Base for Anarchy & Solidarity in Easton). The centre contains a radical library, art room, apothecary and bike space.^[12]

Edinburgh

The Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh (ACE) was founded in 1997. The Forest Café was set up in 2000.

Glasgow

The George’s X Chalkboard project ran in Glasgow from September 2005 to September 2006.^[13]

Liverpool

The still extant Initiative Factory (also known as CASA) was set up in Liverpool following the dockers' strike in order to provide free community services. It was estimated in 2015 that the group had supplied advice to the value of £15 million.^[14]

A spokesperson said in 2008 "the guiding principles are that we’ve never shirked the fact that we’re a socialist organisation, our principles are founded out of the struggle of workers. So that will never change. It’s to help people in poverty, promote education for workers and for people in need." ^[15] Liverpool also has the News from Nowhere, a radical and commmunity bookshop.^[17]

London

The Wapping Autonomy Centre was rented between 1981 and 1983 by anarchist punks. Bands such as Crass, Zounds and Flux of Pink Indians played there. As both squatting a place and buying a property have become more difficult in 2010s, some projects have rented a space, for example DIY Space For London. A spokeperson said “We need a friendly landlord and about 2,000 ground-floor square feet, near to accessible transport, which is a tall order given the crazy cost of renting in London.”^[16]

Examples of long-term squatted and now evicted projects include the 491 Gallery, the Bank of Ideas, Centro Iberico, RampART and the Spike Surplus Scheme. The 121 Centre was first squatted by Olive Morris and existed as a social centre for 18 years in Brixton. There was a bookshop, cafe, gig and rehearsal space, printing facility, office and meeting space. It also provided space for groups such as the radical women's magazine Bad Attitude, AnarQuist (the anarcho-queer group), Brixton Squatters' Aid and the prisoner support group Anarchist Black Cross.^[17] The Rainbow Centre was a squatted church in Kentish Town and there was the Hackney Squatters Centre.^[10]

The still extant infoshop at 56A Crampton Street in Elephant & Castle began in 1991, inspired by both European infoshops and local squatting movement in Southwark.^[18]

There are also many examples of squatted projects which did not last very long, since the owner quickly regained possession, for example the Bloomsbury social centre. In the 2000s, there was a series of projects squatted by people connected to Reclaim the Streets and the WOMBLES, such as the Radical Dairy, Grand Banks and Institute for Autonomy.^[19]

Currently, alongside 56A and LARC, active London projects include the Common Place in Bethnal Green, DeCentre at Freedom in Whitechapel and the Mayday Rooms on Fleet Street.^[17]

Manchester

In Manchester, the Partisan collective acquired a building on Cheetham Hill Road as a social space and concert venue.^[20] Partisan follows in the tradition of the Basement (2005-2008)^[21] and Subrosa (2014).^[22]

Newcastle

The Star and Shadow community cinema began in Stepney Bank in 2006 and since 2018 is based on Warwick Street.^[23][17]

Nottingham

The Sumac Centre building was bought in June 2001 in Forest Fields, Nottingham.

Formed out of the Rainbow Centre, the Sumac provides a meeting space for groups and a base for Veggies catering.

===Occasional centres===

There are also groups which choose to do short-term squatted events lasting a fixed time so as to mitigate the difficulties of long term occupation. Such groups may exist for years and do a series of events, for example: A-Spire (Leeds),^[24] Temporary Autonomous Arts (London, Sheffield, Brighton, Bristol, Manchester, Edinburgh, Cardiff),^[25] Anarchist Teapot (Brighton) ^[26] or the OKasional Cafe^[27] (Manchester). The Okasional cafe did a number of events in the late 1990s and early 2000s, reforming for two weeks in 2010.^[28]

==Active social centres==

Networks

London Social Centres Network

The London social centres network existed in the 2000s with a discussion list and newsletter.^[2] This then continued until 2011 with the Autonomous London blog. ^[19]

UK Social Centre Network

There was a gathering of social centres at the 1 in 12 Club in January 2007. After several years of inactivity, the Sumac Centre in Nottingham hosted a relaunch of the UK Social Centre Network in November 2014.^[32] The network met again in April 2015 at the Next To Nowhere Social Centre in Liverpool and became known as the "Social Centre Network of UK and Ireland." Another gathering of the Social Centre Network was held on the 22nd and 23rd September 2018 at GAS in Glasgow.

==See also==

• Advisory Service for Squatters
• Ecovillages
• Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012

References

External links

• Social Centre Network E-list
• [https://socialcentresnetwork.wordpress.com/ UK Social Centre Network]

• Philippe Rizzo
• Philipp Ernst, 8th Prince of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst
• Philipp Ernst, 8th Prince of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst
• Philippe Rochat
• Philippe Rochat (Quebec politician)
• Philippe Rombi
• Philippe Rozier
• Philippe Russo
• Philippe Révillon
• Philippe Samyn
• Philippe Sansonetti
• Philippe Sauve
• Philippe Schaaf
• Philippes Des Portes
• Philippes Desportes
• Philippe-Servule Desranleau
• Philippe Servulo Desranleau
• Philippe Seydoux
• Philippe-Sirice Bridel
• Philippe Souanga
• Philippe Souchard
• Philippe Sternis
• Philippe Suchard
• Philippe Suywens
• Philippe Swan