E. T. C. Dee

According to the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, also known as the ‘Nelson Mandela Rules’, to keep a prisoner in solitary confinement for 22 hours a day for more than 15 days is a form of torture, acceptable ‘in no circumstances’.

It annoys me no end to read articles by people who used to squat in the 1980s and who now dismiss the current squatting movement from a position of ignorance. It happens all too often that someone grandly declares how different things were back then compared to now, with the difference being that they used to be embedded in social struggles and now they are not.

Banner @ Tabakspanden [Credit: HansFoto] Amsterdam is the capital of the Netherlands and sits at the top of the Randstad area. The city has a population of 800,000 and 1.5 million people live in the greater metropolitan area. It has long been regarded as one of the squatting strongholds of Western Europe, a thought which I want to interrogate here. This article is based on my academic work and it is a fascinating topic. Squatters have done so much to shape the city of Amsterdam.