The Hippydilly Squat

Witness History

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture, History

4.5 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 13 September 2017

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A group of hippies known as the London Street Commune occupied a sixty-room mansion in central London in September 1969. 144 Piccadilly became a flash point for the conflict between alternative culture and the mainstream – and it was later cleared by the police. Lucy Burns speaks to Richie Gardener, who was one of the squatters.

Picture credit: A policeman removes a flag from the balcony of 144 Piccadilly as squatters are evicted from the building, London, 21st September 1969. (Photo by Terry Disney/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
0:06.8	searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the
0:11.8	telly we share what we've been watching
0:14.0	Cladie Aide.
0:16.0	Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:19.0	Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
0:21.0	And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less
0:24.9	searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds just before this
0:30.3	BBC podcast gets underway here's something you may not know.
0:34.4	My name's Linda Davies and I commission podcast for BBC Sounds.
0:38.3	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely
0:46.0	engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:54.2	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories.
0:57.6	And that's just a few examples.
0:59.4	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected.
1:02.8	Find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.
1:06.0	Hi and thanks for downloading Witness from the BBC World Service,
1:09.6	history told by the people who were there.
1:12.2	I'm Lucy Burns, and today I'm taking you back to
1:14.7	September 1969 when a group of squatters occupied a mansion in Central London.
1:21.4	144 Piccadilly. They attempted to defy law and order. They thought they could
1:26.7	snub the conventions of decent society when they seized the 60-room mansion and transformed
	...

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