Seventies squatters’ republic takes on Kidston flower power
WHEN squatters declared their dilapidated west London commune the “Republic of Frestonia” in 1977, they believed they had struck a revolutionary blow against capitalism.
Artists, writers and musicians from a North Kensington enclave even wrote to the United Nations demanding peacekeeping troops be sent in because the “independent state” declared it would secede from Great Britain.
Forty-two years later, Frestonians are uniting again after discovering Cath Kidston, the floral print home furnishing company, has applied to trademark “Frestonia” to launch a range of flowery bags, clothes and umbrellas.
Shelley Assiter, who lives in social housing created by the group and whose husband Brien became Frestonia’s arts minister, said: “I will oppose this application, which is a cheeky insult.
“Frestonia still exists as a concept and a community.
You can’t have a trademark on our name. Anyone can use the word Frestonia.”
In the late Seventies, about 200 squatters fought Greater London Council plans to knock down derelict buildings in and surrounding Freston Road. Many adopted the name Bramley to try to be rehoused as a single family, before backing a referendum declaring Frestonia an independent state, setting up a government, and even making their own flag and stamps.
Eventually, the anarchic movement, which attracted headlines worldwide, spawned a housing co-operative that built social houses in the area where many “Frestonians” still live today.
Tony Sleep, a photographer who lived in the squat until 1982 and published the book Welcome to Frestonia, said it was “bonkers and strange” to brand household goods “on one of the most notorious squats of the Seventies”.
“Frestonia actually smelt terrible. So it’s as far removed as you could get from a body scrub or perfume the trademark outlines,” he said.
Alexei Sayle, the surrealist comedian who performed at the National Theatre of Frestonia, condemned the application, adding that revolutionaries had predicted how Left-wing ideas would eventually be commercialised.
He told The Telegraph: “Sadly, Cath Kidston stealing the name Frestonia is something which the Marxist surrealists – known as ‘the Situationists’ – predicted.
“They called the process ‘recuperation’, in which they said ‘politically radical ideas and images are twisted, coopted, absorbed, defused, incorporated, annexed and commodified within bourgeois society and instead are re- gurgitated as flowery c--- printed on handbags, radiators and pop-up toasters’.”
Robert Kerr, who wrote the screenplay The Republic of Frestonia, said branding the movement was “as legitimate as a Che Guevara shoulder bag”.
“The spectacle of the little guy taking on big business was Frestonia’s trademark. They created a brand, and their values were wit, artistic fervour and social justice.”
A Cath Kidston spokesman said: “The Frestonia range takes its name from Cath Kidston’s head office, which is on Freston Road, as we are proud of our roots and part of the local community. It is designed to celebrate our heritage and certainly not intended to cause any offence.”
Cath Kidston was founded in Holland Park in 1993. The company moved to Freston Road in 2010, six years before it was sold to Baring Private Equity Asia, an investment company.
‘The spectacle of the little guy taking on big business was Frestonia’s trademark’
Cath Kidston, that comforting brand of domestic cheer and flowery accessories, wants a new range of bags and umbrellas to be trademarked Frestonia. It’s political dynamite. Frestonia is not to be confused with the unlucky republic of which Rufus T Firefly became president in the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup. That was Freedonia. Frestonia was the independent state declared by some squatters in 1977, to stop the demolition of old houses in Freston Road near Shepherd’s Bush in west London. Like all utopias it could not last. Although a housing association was succesfully founded, the squatters’ great enemy was creeping prosperity and gentrification. As we report today, old Frestonians are objecting to the trademark, mortified that their youthful struggles are to be trivialised by floral prints.