Irish Anarchist Review #7 - Squatting, Urban Politics & the Dublin Housing Action Committee: 1968-71

The contemporary crisis of capitalism has made markedly visible the relationship between 
finance capital and property speculation, between the concentrated money-power of bankers 
and speculators and the shaping of the built environment in our towns and cities. ---This 
relationship has had all manner of disastrous consequences for the working class (inflated 
rents or mortgages, lower living standards, ghettoisation and suburbanisation etc.) and 
for the environment (distorted flood plains, abandoned buildings, the prioritisation of 
car commuting over public transport etc.). Today, it seems that one of the real challenges 
for the working class is to change that relationship, to claim a ?right to the city? for 
its inhabitants.[1]

Dublin, as it turns out, has quite a significant heritage of anti-capitalist urban 
politics of precisely this sort, notably the Housing Action campaign of the late 1960s. 
Given that this kind of activism is beginning to re-emerge ? Unlock NAMA being a recent 
example - it might be useful to assess that history.

The political economy of Dublin?s urbanisation

Owing to decades of state-assisted slum landlordism, housing conditions for Dublin?s 
working class were notoriously bad throughout the early twentieth century. In the 1960s, 
however, a number of factors combined to make the chronic acute. Austerity cutbacks on 
housing provision in the 1950s combined with population increases in the 1960s to pressure 
the state?s available housing resources. (Some 10,000 applicants waited on Dublin 
Corporation?s ?approved? housing list;
an equivalent number waited off it). At the same time, inner-city tenements were 
collapsing, resulting in numerous fatalities. The Fianna F?il government?s immediate 
response was to condemn the buildings and to compel several hundred families to be 
re-housed in suburbs without social amenities or public transportation. This fitted a 
broader urbanisation process whereby Dublin?s working class were to be suburbanised and 
the city centre adapted for offices, retail and car parking spaces. [2] Given the extent 
of housing waiting lists, however, the government?s attempts to clear tenement residents 
triggered an intense political campaign. In May, 1967, left-leaning members of Sinn F?in 
(predecessors of the Workers Party) established the Dublin Housing Action Committee 
(DHAC), which soon expanded to include a range of left- wing organisations, including the 
Irish Communist Organisation, Labour party branches, Connolly Youth, trade unionists and a 
variety of local housing groups such as the Ballymun Tenants? Association and the Dublin 
Flat-dwellers? Association.

The DHAC combined building voluntary networks of the homeless with holding prominent, 
public demonstrations aimed at publicising demands for social housing. Initially, the DHAC 
picketed Dublin Corporation meetings to call for more housing. By September 1968, 
however, the Committee had moved to direct action, organising homeless families to squat 
vacant property. Throughout 1968 and 1969 the DHAC contested office developments such as 
those in Mount Street and helped the homeless resist evictions. Its publication, The 
Squatter, disseminated information on suitable locations. Similar organising models were 
adopted by Housing Action Committees in Derry and Cork. [3] The DHAC, like the DUA before 
them, appealed to a combination of direct action, civil disobedience and moral force. 
Alternative interpretations of the constitution ? notably the priority of the rights of 
the family over the rights of property ? featured prominently in their legal and public 
defence. When the legal system continued to serve injunctions against the DHAC, it 
responded by challenging the justice system.



Wave of protest

Of all the DHAC squatters taken to the High Court, the most high profile was perhaps 
Dennis Dennehy. During the summer of 1968, Dennehy, a meber of the Irish Communist 
Organisation, squatted with his wife, M?ire, and children at 20 Mountjoy Square, the 
property of landlord, Ivor Underwood. [4] Up to that point, the family had been living in 
a leaking caravan with the children ?shivering at the side of the road?.[5] Local 
residents had previously signed a petition demanding that the square be rebuilt as 
working-class housing (not as offices or gentrified, single-family dwellings), and marched 
to the Custom House to raise awareness of the city?s housing shortages. When Underwood 
sold a number of houses on Mountjoy Square to a development company, slogans denouncing 
the sale were painted on the walls of his Dalkey residence and his car was damaged by a 
home-made pipe-bomb.[6] Although the Dennehy family offered to pay rent, the landlord 
refused and subsequently sought an injunction to restrain them from occupying the 
premises. Dennehy was subsequently imprisoned for failing to comply with the order.[7]

The imprisonment of DHAC members focussed media attention on the state?s housing policy 
and ignited popular discontent at housing shortages. When Denis Dennehy went on hunger 
strike, a wave of protest erupted across Dublin. Public meetings took place outside the 
GPO where nightly marches would set off for Mountjoy prison to support imprisoned 
squatters. Hundreds also took part in regular sit-down protests at O?Connell Bridge. 
Joseph Clarke, a veteran of the 1916 Rising, interrupted State celebrations in the Mansion 
House commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the first D?il to protest Dennehy?s 
treatment. As security guards carried Clarke outside, students greeted them with banners 
proclaiming ?Evictions: English landlords, 1868; Irish landlords, 1968- 69?. People?s 
Democracy, en route from Belfast to the GPO as part of its campaign for civil rights for 
Northern Ireland?s Catholic minority, held a meeting of 800 people outside Dennis 
Dennehy?s squat at 20 Mountjoy Square to protest about the housing situation on both sides 
of the border. The Dublin Trades Council passed a resolution calling for street 
demonstrations by trade unionists. Dennehy was eventually released and found housing. 
Undeterred, he supported a more extensive campaign of squatting.

These protests aimed at foregrounding the judiciary?s complicity with the property-owning 
class. In September 1969, five members of the DHAC (three women and two men) occupied the 
Four Courts in Dublin.[8] The group arrived at 11am and announced that they had an 
appointment to see a senior counsel. When they found the Master?s Court vacant, they 
barricaded the door with furniture and then painted a sign on a window blind overlooking 
Inn?s Quay proclaiming: ?DHAC. We are occupying the Four Courts to demand the release of 
jailed homeless?. The object of the demonstration was to protest at the imprisonment of 
Patrick Brady and Patrick Geraghty for refusing to vacate a squat at the Carlton Hotel, 
Harcourt Street. Se?n Dunne, vice-chairman of the DHAC, claimed that Brady and Geraghty 
were being treated as criminals and that their food had been cut off when they complained 
about the prison?s ?atrocious conditions?. At 1pm a force of twenty garda? arrived, 
cleared photographers and reporters from the corridors and broke down the barricade.[9]

Despite the Four Courts group making it clear that their protest was peaceful, that no 
damage had been done to property and that no resistance was contemplated, the garda? beat 
and kicked them around the room. Eric Fleming and Isolda Byrne claimed they were forced to 
sit on the floor while garda? kicked them in the head and mouth. The DHAC insisted it was 
not ?anti-police?, citing as proof their helping a Garda widow threatened with eviction 
from her home of 35 years.[10]

Repression

Various protests and squats across the city typically met with a violent state response. 
Hilary Boyle, a seventy year old social justice campaigner, described how the garda? 
charged at one such march ?like mad bulls...They hit out with their batons, they kicked 
and punched and generally acted as agent provocateurs?. As the conflict in Northern 
Ireland escalated, the government introduced a raft of ?law and order? measures, some of 
which aimed at breaking the DHAC. The Prohibition of Forcible Entry and Occupation Act 
(1971) changed squatting from a civil to a criminal offence and, furthermore, made its 
public endorsement illegal. Throughout 1971, a diverse coalition attempted to oppose the 
legislation, including Citizens for Civil Liberties, the National Association of Tenant 
Organisations, the Union of Students of Ireland, Labour party branches and the Irish 
Congress of Trade Unions.[11] sixty-five RT? workers signed a petition opposing the Bill 
on the grounds that it permitted one-sided media coverage only. Some forty garda? 
prevented a group of protestors from going beyond the gates of Leinster House to lobby 
politicians directly, the first time in the history of the State that this had occurred.[12]

By this stage, however, the anti-squat legislation was almost unnecessary: Dublin 
Corporation?s ?crowbar brigades? were ejecting people daily without recourse to the law. 
These evictions came as the DHAC was fracturing under the pressures of its own internal 
politics, largely centring on how members interpreted and responded to the Northern 
Ireland conflict. However, in a large number of cases, the DHAC had succeeded in 
negotiating on behalf of tenants with Dublin Corporation and pri-
vate landlords, a number of whom, unwilling to be publically shamed by protests, accepted 
squatters as legal tenants.[13] Members of the DHAC identi- fied their primary achievement 
as one of deeper politicisation. Speaking of the thirty or so families she had encouraged 
to occupy empty houses to defy the law, M?ir?n de B?rca observed: ?They won?t ever lie 
down again and accept whatever the law says if they think the law is unjust?.

Urban Politics: Then and Now

Urban campaigns adopting popular direct action re-emerged in later years, notably the 
Dublin Squatters? Association of the 1970s and the Coalition of Communities against Drugs 
of the 1980s and 1990s.[14] During the boom years, notwithstanding the persistence of 
unequal and often dire living conditions, the state succeededin incorporating civil 
society energies from these urban centres, primarily through social partnership 
mechanisms. Meanwhile, successive governments encouraged banks, speculators and developers 
to make out like bandits through ?public private partnerships?, maximising profits at the 
expense of inner-city living conditions. Of these PPPs? spectacular unfairness, the 
abysmal failure to re-develop O?Devaney Gardens on Dublin?s North Circular Road is 
emblematic.[15] The contemporary crisis demonstrates how this toxic collaboration operated 
on an even larger geographical scale.

Following the property crash, the commuter belts of Dublin, Cork and Galway are daily 
emerging as regions haunted by ghost estates, negative equity and escalating mortgage 
arrears. In the coming decade, exorcising these demons is likely to be pivotal to all 
forms of politics in Ireland. Unlike younger, mortgage-less people currently fleeing 
Ireland in droves, populations in these areas are more closely tied by mortgage and family 
commitments to the island and its political system.[16]

Admittedly, the demands of private homeowners are not traditionally associated with 
radical politics. Nevertheless, as David Harvey argues, there are grounds for social 
movements and progressive groups to take seriously the possibility of contesting the 
politics of the built environment as opposed to fighting around sectional interests or 
single issues. If such a politics were to take organisational form, the Dublin Housing 
Action Committee would approximate a good working model of direct action and co-operative 
practice that communities, left political parties and non-aligned activists could aspire to.

WORDS: Tom Murray

References:

[1] See David Harvey, 2012, Rebel Cities.
[2] Conor McCabe, 2011, Sins of the Father, pp.31-32.
[3] ?Gardai hurt in street row in Cork? in Irish Times, 17.02.1969.
[4] From the 1960s onwards, Ivor Underwood built up a portfolio of Dublin properties, 
including some 70 Georgian houses, leaving an estate of EUR 69m on his death in the 2000s. 
?Ireland?s Rich List: No. 176? in Irish Independent, 31.03.2010.
[5] ?Judge orders family to leave house? in Irish Times, 26.11.1968
[6] ?Explosion damages car outside home? in Irish Times, 09.10.1968.
[7] ?Landlord seeks to restrain occupiers? in Irish Times, 23.11.1968. ?Judge orders 
family to leave house? in Irish Times, 26.11.1968.
[8] ?Protestors forced from Four Courts? in Irish Times, 26.09.1969.
[9] ?Housing Group seeks inquiry into police attitude at Four Courts? in the Irish Times, 
27.09.1969.
[10] ?Housing Group seeks inquiry into police attitude at Four Courts? in the Irish Times, 
27.09.1969.
[11] ?Demand for Axing Anti-Squat Bill? in Irish Times, 02.03.1971.
[12] ?40 gardai curtail Dail lobby? in Irish Times, 24.02.1971.
[13] Mary Maher, ?The Making of a Revolutionary? in Irish Times, 19.01.1970.
[14] Alan MacSimoin on ?The hidden history of squatting in Ireland?; 
http://struggle.ws/ws/squat48.html . See Aoifer Fisher, ?Review of Andre Lyder?s "Pushers 
Out: The inside story of Dublin's anti-drugs movement". http://struggle. 
ws/wsm/ws/2005/89/drugs.html
[15] The property developer in this PPP was Ber- nard McNamara. Christine Bohan, ?After 
more than 15 years, plans for O?Devaney Gardens officially scrapped? 
http://www.thejournal.ie/o-devaney- gardens-scrapped-694646-Dec2012/
??[16] Since 2007, Irish property prices have fallen by some 50-70%. As of 2012, Irish 
citizens carried the largest mortgage debt per head of population in the world while at 
least 40% of all Irish households were in negative equity and some 10% are in mortgage 
arrears of more than three months. See also Morgan Kelly ?If you thought the bank bailout 
was bad, wait until the mortgage defaults hit home? in Irish Times, 16.11.2010.