Just days after Wetherspoons closed the George pub, squatters have moved in and told people that there is nothing anyone can do about it.
The Wetherspoon signs were removed within 24 hours of the pub closing at the start of last week. It had just been announced that the pub had been taken over by Urban, a small chain which operates 50 other pubs in London.
But by the weekend, squatters had got access to the building and covered up the windows with paper and signs declaring their legal rights. This did not, however, stop scaffolding being erected on Monday.
Longtime readers will remember the squatting in the former Barclays Bank, which was empty for months while Sainsbury’s decided if it was going to turn it into a mini-supermarket. In the end it became Gail’s.
And going waaay back to 1968 (even before Wansteadium existed) the Hollies, the small block of flats on the crossroads of the high street with New Wanstead, was the target of the London Squatter Campaign which was demonstrating against ‘luxury flats lying empty for years’. For a while, apparently, Wanstead was a cause célèbre.
Buildings standing empty for years is hardly the case with the George, however, which was empty for just a matter of days.
