The Squatters

Immediately after the First World War there was an acute housing shortage in Brighton. Harry was compelled to do something after he saw an article in the local paper about a family forced to move to institutions in Brighton due to over-crowding and the lack of affordable housing.

In 1921 he heard about an ex-serviceman called Hodson who was sleeping with his family on Brighton's racecourse: 'Harry come up and saw the predicament I was in. He said, 'Hodson, this won't do, we'll have to see into this.' I said, 'I don't know what to do Harry.' So one night he come up, he says, 'Hodson, I've got a house for you. Will you have it?' I says, 'Yes, I'll have it.'

We went down to Cheltenham Place and he showed me the place - number 14 it is. I said `Well we've got to get in Harry, haven't we.' He says, 'Yes.' So we both threw our weights on the door and busted the door open. Got our stuff in, what we had, left the bell tent in the garden.

And about two weeks after the owner come up and he said, 'We're not going to put up with this, you know, you'll have to get out of this.' I says, 'Oh, who's gonna shift me? Don't forget I'm not alone, I've got a few more behind me. Now I'll tell you straight,' I says, 'I'm willing to pay the rent, whatever you like to charge, but you're not going to put me out because I'll fight you, I'll fight you right to the bitter end.'
Who was Harry Cowley?

Harry Cowley first appropriated houses in 1920 for returning servicemen, but also extended his assistance to civilians. Again in the 1920s, with a fake bomb in each hand he threatened to blow up an estate agent who tried to evict an elderly lady squatter.

With a group of ex-servicemen searching for food and work he expropriated sheep off the Sussex Downs as well as houses. He broke up a Lord Mayor's banquet and forced the mayor to release an unemployed man from jail and threatened to "Strangle the Board of Guardians with my own hands" if local rates of unemployment were not increased.

Later in the 1930s he formed an anti-fascist group and had his home damaged and his leg broken by a gang of fascists who descended from London.

Of course it was the Press that was blowing it up. As a rule you would expect they'd have been shouting against the vigilantes. I think the secret is that the people were so strong that the Press were afraid to report it from the opposite angle.

It was pushed up quite a lot by the London papers, and there were people from London on holiday. They were witnessing the very thing they had been reading about in the papers. That made them much more enthusiastic about the movement.

Harry Cowley would announce "We're the vigilantes, we're helping the people. We're going to ask you to send some money down". We all stood there and it came down in showers. Propaganda was on his side, the Press itself, otherwise I don't think we'd have ever collected money like that.

Squatting on a large scale died out by late 1946 when the squatters, with the encouragement of the Ministry of Information, were increasingly portrayed by the Press as queue jumpers in the search for housing, pushing aside those more patient and law-abiding citizens who were unwilling to resort to the "illegal" methods of the vigilantes.
Les Moss - Live and Learn