Annette Collins Eviction, Guilden Road 1972
Annette Collins Eviction, Guilden Road 1972
The black-and-white video is an interview between John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins and Sue Hall with the family of Annette Collins who were evicted from a squat in Guilden Road.
Annette speaks to Hoppy about how her family has been staying in Bed & Breakfasts for 3 weeks and how the Council keeps making false promises to find them a home. She speak about how 2 adults and a child living together in one small room is cramped and causing her daughter to become more anxious as she is not allowed to play with the other children in the Bed & Breakfast. The camera pans to Annette’s daughter playing with a balloon. Hoppy speaks about the importance of recording the evictions to prove the unjustness to the outside world while Annette says that: “Sure, some type of documentation should be taken down. But at the time, we didn’t think that way. It was a home. We were just living there.” For Annette, young families are being alienated because older landlords don’t want to rent to young people with “eccentric clothes” as she adds, “We can all see what’s happening in America with Nixon and his lies.” Annette and her husband both speak about how the Council’s poor decision-making wastes more State money on temporary Bed & Breakfasts rather than allowing families to squat in homes for temporary amounts of time. She also raises the point that it makes more sense for people to live in a big house and share a kitchen rather than chopping up homes into little atomised spaces.