I remember trying to save flats from being taken by people and being passed on for ‘Key Money’ by gangs. One night we had blocked ourselves into a flat in Romford St when we were attacked by a group of guys after closing at ‘George the Pole’s who had been paid to get us out, one of us received a broken shoulder from a car jack, but luckily some Rugby club friends returning from the Three Feathers, [student bar in London Hospital] waded in. The police arrived with dogs and guns!

I met lifelong friends in Fieldgate who I am still on contact with. Maybe more people could add personal reminiscences to this valuable social record of the period? The NF marches, police raids, rubbish strike, drug dealers, fights etc, but more than anything the wonderful humanity of the diverse people sharing this experience.

Greg Byatt, (working as an electrician at the Opera House) George’s son, and my brother, moved into another squat around the same time. I, Andrew Byatt (an actor) moved into another squat in 1974, followed by my brother Martin Byatt (a classical guitarist) and finally my artist sister Lucy Byatt moved into another squat a little later. We were all in the same block in the middle of the street – though I can’t remember the number of the block . This was around the time George Tremlet from the council was talking about a squatters amnesty but George was really suspicious of Tremlet and the council.

We had one small bedroom and a sitting room and tiny kitchen (with a toilet in it!) Nobody had a bath so we had to fill a tin bath with water from the small dangerous gas water heater. It took hours to fill and was lukewarm when finished! You had to then empty it with the basin into the sink. Another fifteen minutes! We lived there a couple of years and I used to cycle to the National Theatre where I was working at the time. I had an old Austin A35 but Lucy dropped a sugar bowl on it by accident from her upstairs balcony and the windscreen was smashed into bits! There were many shady characters around and one evening I heard a huge racket from the flat above. I was watching Viva Zapata on TV as someone in the movie says ” A weak people need a leader, a strong people are their own leader”. With the din outside I ran up the stairs to get a full wine bottle smashed over my head. The hardest I’d been hit in my life. It didn’t break so the wee shite hit me with it again! It smashed this time! This was 5 guys breaking into the flat above and stealing LP’s and money. The girl who lived there was into drugs and knew these punks so they knew what she had. My dad, knife in hand, Martin and Greg ran from their flats and we chased them up the street but they escaped. I had to go to the hospital which was just around the corner in Whitechapel High Street to get stitches. Being Glaswegian they though I had been in a drunken fight rather than helping a neighbour! We heard later that the local criminals (who we’d disturbed) called us the Glasgow Five (even though there were only 4 of us!) and we never had any trouble again.

Indeed, I met the wee shite in the street one day after and cornered him threatening him with GBH. I told him to bring her LP’s and stuff back or he was getting it. The next day he brought them back!

It was a strange time to live there as the National Front was just emerging and skinheads were around. I’ll never forget chatting to a blind NF supporter who was slagging off the “Paki’s” who were moving into the East End. For all he knew I could have been Pakistani myself! We often went to Brick Lane to buy furniture and bikes etc at low prices and frequented the local kebab shops. We liked the “donkey turds” as we called them with meat in a wrap. you could hear the rats scurry up and down the walls in the take away as you waited. Once the cops arrested me in a local pub and it turned out I was a double of a murderer they were after! I’m sure I saw Ayatollah Khomeini once in a mosque near our street. Don’t know if he did come to London then! I was 20 and met my future wife via my dad’s girlfriend.

We were at a Billy Connolly concert in London and, as I’d just been in The Great Northern Welly Boot show with Connolly at the 1972 Edinburgh Festival (George was the press officer for the production), we called backstage to see him. It was this night when I met Veronica -looking stunning in her Kaftan and shock of red hair! She moved in with me in Fieldgate Mansions not long after. It got a bit heavy I remember in Whitechapel and I went to a concert in Hyde Park when John Peel was doing a set. A huge skin head started hitting everyone around him and challenging all these hippies to fight. Nobody would and he was left shamefaced and embarrassed and slunk away. I’m afraid if I’d been closer to him my instincts wouldn’t have been so hippie-ish!

Veronica and I moved to Brighton and left my family still squatting for a while though they all moved on to other parts of London or the UK.

I once saw a documentary on TV saying Romford Street was the poorest street in Britain at that time and was shocked it could have been. Indeed, nobody had money really, there were many hippies and young drifters then. It was almost like being in a Donovan video!

The kids often tormented the stray cats in the street and I rescued a kitten they were attacking and we called him Charlie. He often had epileptic fits due to the brain damaged he’d received. I vividly remember kids chasing huge rats around and kicking them to death.

So, there were good times and bad. Same as everywhere I guess, but Romford Street and Fieldgate Mansions will always be in my mind. My kids wouldn’t believe that we lived there in such a condition, but c’est la vie!