Vigilantes

A bowler-hatted chimney sweep, Harry Cowley, 60, called "The Guv'nor," blew the lid off Britain's housing problem. In Brighton, jampacked seaside resort, a posse of 400 self-styled Vigilantes (all local war veterans), headed by Cowley, took the law into their own hands. Into three empty, habitable houses, they moved the families of servicemen. The moving was done at night, with hand barrows, in defiance of the law. But the tenants could not be ejected without lengthy eviction proceedings.

For their first three successful operations, the Guv'nor taught his Vigilantes a simple strategy: choose a vacant house by daylight,' install the selected tenant after dark. Padlocked homes were eschewed, since forced entry would entail a criminal charge of housebr'eaking.

Last week the Guv'nor traveled to "Spouter's Corner" in Hyde Park (London's Union Square) to explain the theory and practice of house snatching. Before his speech, Cowley's Brighton boys gave a practical demonstration by "snatching" an empty house in London's Maida Vale for an Army gunner's wife and sick daughter. Said the Guv'nor grimly: the Vigilantes had put their fingers on one of Britain's aching nerves; from all over the country requests were pouring in for the formation of new Vigilante groups. In Clacton, another seaside resort, the town" council set up its own official (and legal) Vigilante Committee to speed the requisitioning of houses.

Impatient Populace. The spread of the Vigilante idea among law-abiding Britons was symptomatic of their fast-ebbing patience with continuing war restrictions.* The Brighton pioneers, had shown how to slash through the jungle of legal red tape that was keeping usable houses vacant. But it would need more than a practical protest to relieve the country's acute housing pains. There was a physical shortage of nearly a million houses, which only new construction (estimated to take four years) could provide. But the Guv'nor and his Vigilantes were a warning: Britain's new Government, Tory or Labor, must give housing top priority. Every homeless Englishman demanded his castle.

Another symptom: British housewives, led by a clergyman's wife, last week rebelled against queuing up for all foods, signed an "end-the-queue" petition to the Government.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.