eroding empire

Advisory Service for Squatters Fundraiser
2026-02-07 16:00 (Europe/London) | The Castle, 44 Commercial Road, E1 1LN
FUNDRAISER – Feb 07, 2026, The Castle Whitechapel – Advisory Service for Squatters (ASS)
Squatters? Invading people’s home? Dear Lord, what heresy is this?
A quick check on the stats of empty properties across the country and homelessness rate makes you realise the lack of logic that is out there.
This fundraiser is dedicated to people who provide the best support possible in our troubled times of an endless housing crisis.
Some of the finest UK Punk and Hardcore artists have united to help raise money not only for a collective but for an idea, and we are glad for our amazing lineup with:
@hemiptera.crust
@uptight.hc
@mental_issues_1312
@oi.letsavit
@guttedcrust
@redeemingf
Are you a squatter? Maybe you are, maybe you are not, maybe you and your friends would like to learn more about what it really means?
Are you unfamiliar with the subject and want to hear what it’s really about, rather than some nonsense being depicted on social media or the boulevard press?
Are you interested in meeting people who help their community? Do you need help and don’t know where to start? Are you ready to start giving a fuck?
This event is for you!
Come to a safe space, listen to great music and meet local collectives, then get FUCKING involved!!!
Cheers for the following collectives for coming to support !
Advisory Service for Squatters
@punxpicnic
@punksagainstapartheid @autonomouswintershelter @punk4transsexualism
more info coming soon!!

56a Infoshop Open
2026-02-07 14:00 - 18:00, 2026-02-05 14:00 - 20:00, 2026-01-31 14:00 - 18:00, 2026-01-29 14:00 - 20:00, 2026-01-24 14:00 - 18:00, 2026-01-22 14:00 - 20:00 | 56a InfoShop, 56 Crampton Street,, SE17 3AE
Open: Thurs 2-8 / Fri 3-7 / Sat 2-6
56a Infoshop is a long-term volunteer-run, 100% unfunded, DIY social centre in Walworth, South London since 1991. We share a collectively-run building with the brilliant Fareshares Food Co-op and the awesome 56a Bikespace.
we sell radical books, zines, magazines, pamphlets and other printed matter on a wide variety of topics from Anarchism to Zapatistas via everything in between.
we have a massive open-access archive so you can read and research about all sorts of radical politics (both local and international).
you can hang out and meet people in the space. Tea and coffee is free!
find out about what’s going on with other centres, squats, struggles and campaigns.
come and help us put on small events in our space. We can offer free meeting space for groups / study groups / book launches etc. We fit about 15 ok inside plus we have the outside large yard space good in Spring through early Autumn.
Use our SQUATTERS NOTICEBOARD to meet other squatters, post up info on empty buildings, read legal advice etc.
For exceptional closures check Twitter: @56aInfoshop

Saturday Hangout
2026-02-07 12:00 - 14:00 | TRESPASS, 48 albury street, SE8 3PS
The anarchist weekly hangout is a lowkey social event happening once a week at TRESPASS for people to come and chill out from 12-2pm. TRESPASS is an old building and we have done our best to clean it but there is a risk some asbestos has been disturbed

Hardcore Unlawful Assembly presents from Italy: NIHILDUM
2026-02-06 20:00 | The Castle, 44 Commercial Road, E1 1LN
NIHILDUM stench core doom crust from Rome, Italy
ASHES OF DEATH crust Punk
BOMBER D-beat from Brighton
NEVER ARISE metallic crust

Sorcerer – No Relief – Bind. – Regress – Agency
2026-02-06 19:00 | The Black Heart, Greenland Place, NW1 0AP
GIG ANNOUNCEMENT – 🔥 Sorcerer/No Relief – 6th of February🔥
Cash Pistache X Stronger Bookings Presents –
Paris very own @sorcererhc is bringing their set for 3 dates in the UK alongside Brighton’s beasts of @noreliefbn1 – Starting over here at @ourblackheart
⚡ Opening set –
No Relief
www.instagram.com/noreliefbn1
BIND.
www.instagram.com/bind.mp3
Agency
www.instagram.com/agency.ldn
🗓 Date: 6th of February, 2026
📍 Venue: The Black Heart, London (UK)
🎫 Tickets: £15adv, £18atd
https://www.ourblackheart.com/events/2026/2/6/sorcerer
https://dice.fm/partner/tickets/event/bbnd5x-sorcerer-6th-feb-the-black-heart-london-tickets

First Friday Freedom Fun board game night!
2026-02-06 19:00 | Freedom Bookshop, Angel Alley, 84b Whitechapel High Street, E1 7QX
Come and join us for a night of frivolity, fun and friendly competition. Every 1st Friday of the month. Next one is the 1st November, 7pm Decentre.

56a Infoshop Open
2026-02-06 15:00 - 19:00, 2026-01-30 15:00 - 19:00, 2026-01-23 15:00 - 19:00 | 56a InfoShop, 56 Crampton Street,, SE17 3AE
Open: Thurs 2-8 / Fri 3-7 / Sat 2-6
56a Infoshop is a long-term volunteer-run, 100% unfunded, DIY social centre in Walworth, South London since 1991. We share a collectively-run building with the brilliant Fareshares Food Co-op and the awesome 56a Bikespace.
we sell radical books, zines, magazines, pamphlets and other printed matter on a wide variety of topics from Anarchism to Zapatistas via everything in between.
we have a massive open-access archive so you can read and research about all sorts of radical politics (both local and international).
you can hang out and meet people in the space. Tea and coffee is free!
find out about what’s going on with other centres, squats, struggles and campaigns.
come and help us put on small events in our space. We can offer free meeting space for groups / study groups / book launches etc. We fit about 15 ok inside plus we have the outside large yard space good in Spring through early Autumn.
Use our SQUATTERS NOTICEBOARD to meet other squatters, post up info on empty buildings, read legal advice etc.

Creative Anarchy: an event series exploring connections between anarchist thought, organising, and creative practice
2026-02-05 19:00 - 21:00 | Mayday Rooms, 88 Fleet Street, EC4Y 1AE
Creative Anarchy’ is an event series exploring the relationships between anarchist thought, organising, and creative practice. Resulting from a placement at the Mayday Rooms, researcher Ruari Paterson-Achenbach will host a series of discussions around materials in the archive, alongside creative practitioners, trying to explore what it might mean to ‘create anarchically’. What might it mean to consider creative practice a form of direct action, or vice-versa? How can artists incorporate the principles of mutual aid into their work? Is the notion of ‘art’ compatible with anarchist thought? Across these three events, we will answer these questions together using historical examples, with all the possibilities and limitations they might offer us.
For the first session, Ruari will be in discussion with Stefan Szczelkun, artist and former member of the Scratch Orchestra. They will focus particularly on a performance by the Scratch Orchestra at the 1971 Art Spectrum exhibition where they collectively built a cottage, “conceived as a place to play – insulated from the context of ‘high art’”, based on Szczelkun’s designs. Using materials from the Mayday Rooms collection pertaining to the Cottage performance and Szczelkun’s work more broadly, they will think about the possibilities for conceiving of creative practice as a form of direct action, and the particular kinds of political imagination that can be worked towards when making something together.
Future events in the series:
Situationism Revisited – 5th March 2026 7 – 9pm
Creativity and Mutual Aid – 9th April 2026 7 – 9pm

SOLD OUT! THE LOG BOOKS: VOICES OF QUEER BRITAIN AND THE HELPLINE THAT LISTENED with Tash Walker &Adam Zmith
2026-02-05 19:00 - 20:30 | Housmans, 5 Caledonian Road King’s Cross, N1 9DX
please note this event is now sold out. To be added to a waiting list please email shop@housmans.com An intimate history of LGBTQ+ life over four decades, discovered in a stash of forgotten, handwritten notes. Switchboard was founded at Housmans, and operated out of our premises for many years. So we are honored to start LGBT+ History Month by launching a book that covers an intimate part of Switchboard’s proud history and we look forward to welcoming its authors Tash Walker and Adam Zmith to the shop for an evening of discussion and celebration.
‘A fantastic journey through an overlooked archive bursting with humanity and real life on every page.’ Dan Snow
In a crawlspace at the offices of Switchboard, a queer helpline in operation since 1974, lies dozens of log books kept by volunteers describing the phone calls they had taken: a teenager whose parents had kicked them out of their home for dressing as the wrong gender; a lesbian terrified of having her baby taken away from her; a man arrested for chatting up another man in a public toilet; a young person wanting to know how to come out. These logs were traces of tens of thousands of queer lives, a bridge to a past hidden from people like Tash Walker and Adam Zmith in their youth, captured by people who lent an ear to those in need. Walker and Zmith came of age in the time of Section 28, a law which banned councils and schools ‘promoting the teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’. In recovering these logs, they encountered people grappling with feelings, questions and problems both familiar and different. They set out to learn from – and sometimes speak to – people on both sides of the calls. Charged with joy, gossip, sensuality, heartbreak and sometimes fear, and with a potent relevancy to the world today, Walker and Zmith have collected these stories in The Log Books. They capture queer lives in stunning detail, embarking on a journey of both collective history and self -discovery, propelling it into the foreground of our national history.
‘Essential reading, grounded in the past while also explaining the urgency of LGBTQ+ politics today.’TOM RASMUSSEN, author of Diary of a Drag Queen
‘Hauntingly beautiful, this is a testament to the ongoing courage and care so profound in our community. I was enchanted at every page. Completely life – changing.’ DAN GLASS, author of Queer Footprints
OUR SPEAKERS:
Tash Walker is a writer, podcast producer and community organiser who has worked with institutions such as the Barbican, BBC, and Queer Britain; they were a member of Switchboard’s board for eight years.
Adam Zmith is a writer and multi-format producer; his book Deep Sniff: A History of Poppers and Queer Futures won the Polari First Book Prize. He writes theatre shows, talks and podcasts, including Press Play Turn On which won Podcast of the Year at the British Podcast Awards 2024.
If you choose ‘book +entry’ your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier, or arrange for delivery, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com.
Doors Open at 6:45pm, Event Starts 7:00.
please note this event is now sold out. To be added to a waiting list please email shop@housmans.com
Share this:
Share on X (Opens in new window)
X Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Facebook Share on Insta (Opens in new window)
Insta
Like this:Like Loading…

BOOK LAUNCH: THE LOG BOOKS: VOICES OF QUEER BRITAIN AND THE HELPLINE THAT LISTENED with Tash Walker &Adam Zmith
2026-02-05 19:00 - 20:30 | Housmans, 5 Caledonian Road King’s Cross, N1 9DX
THE HISTORY OF SWITCHBOARD
An intimate history of LGBTQ+ life over four decades, discovered in a stash of forgotten, handwritten notes.
Switchboard was founded at Housmans, and operated out of our premises for many years. So we are honored to start LGBT+ History Month by launching a book that covers an intimate part of Switchboard’s proud history and we look forward to welcoming its authors Tash Walker and Adam Zmith to the shop for an evening of discussion and celebration.
‘A fantastic journey through an overlooked archive bursting with humanity and real life on every page.’ Dan Snow
In a crawlspace at the offices of Switchboard, a queer helpline in operation since 1974, lies dozens of log books kept by volunteers describing the phone calls they had taken: a teenager whose parents had kicked them out of their home for dressing as the wrong gender; a lesbian terrified of having her baby taken away from her; a man arrested for chatting up another man in a public toilet; a young person wanting to know how to come out. These logs were traces of tens of thousands of queer lives, a bridge to a past hidden from people like Tash Walker and Adam Zmith in their youth, captured by people who lent an ear to those in need. Walker and Zmith came of age in the time of Section 28, a law which banned councils and schools ‘promoting the teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’. In recovering these logs, they encountered people grappling with feelings, questions and problems both familiar and different. They set out to learn from – and sometimes speak to – people on both sides of the calls. Charged with joy, gossip, sensuality, heartbreak and sometimes fear, and with a potent relevancy to the world today, Walker and Zmith have collected these stories in The Log Books. They capture queer lives in stunning detail, embarking on a journey of both collective history and self -discovery, propelling it into the foreground of our national history.
‘Essential reading, grounded in the past while also explaining the urgency of LGBTQ+ politics today.’TOM RASMUSSEN, author of Diary of a Drag Queen
‘Hauntingly beautiful, this is a testament to the ongoing courage and care so profound in our community. I was enchanted at every page. Completely life – changing.’ DAN GLASS, author of Queer Footprints
OUR SPEAKERS:
Tash Walker is a writer, podcast producer and community organiser who has worked with institutions such as the Barbican, BBC, and Queer Britain; they were a member of Switchboard’s board for eight years.
Adam Zmith is a writer and multi-format producer; his book Deep Sniff: A History of Poppers and Queer Futures won the Polari First Book Prize. He writes theatre shows, talks and podcasts, including Press Play Turn On which won Podcast of the Year at the British Podcast Awards 2024.
As always, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please do not hesitate to contact us at shop@housmans.com, and a free ticket will be made available.
If you choose ‘book +entry’ your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier, or arrange for delivery, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com.
Doors Open at 6:45pm, Event Starts 7:00.

First Thursday Freedom board game night!
2026-02-05 19:00 | Freedom Bookshop, Angel Alley, 84b Whitechapel High Street, E1 7QX
Come and join us for a night of frivolity, fun and friendly competition. Every 1st Friday of the month. Next one is the 5th February, 7pm Decentre.

MINCE!
2026-02-04 19:00 | The Feminist Library, 161 Sumner Road, SE15 6JL
sharing new/experimental/queer work in progress, music, film, performance, and other stuff that can happen live.
MINCE is a variety show of queer, experimental, work-in-progress art. Anything that can be performed live or shown on a screen!
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/mince-tickets-1979988558077

I, Doris /Moron Butler All Ages Matinee
2026-02-01 14:00 - 18:00 | Walthamstow Trade Hall, 61-63 Tower Hamlets Road, E17 4RQ
We are proud to be promoting this as part of independent venues week.
Headliners I, Doris are patriarchy smashing, internationally famous, mummy-core rockers bringing their joyous take on feminism to the Trades for the first time. There will be keytars
We’ll keep putting on Moron Butler until everyone has seen them. Skewed, inventive catchy post-punk that backs Troy’s poetic but forceful words.
Lazy Jane so impressed with their singular and mature riot grrrl indie rock with just 2 songs at a U-18’s open mic, we offered them a gig immediately. Think Sonic Youth/Breeders/Bikini Kill
Mungus are a local young bunch currently wowing all that see with their own take on New Country, Black Roads/Black Midi meets arty indie rock
https://wegottickets.com/event/686473/

Repulsive Vision / T.R.E.S.T/ Decay87/ Sewer Trench @helgi's
2026-01-31 19:00 - 22:30 | Helgi’s, 177 Mare Street, E8 3RH
Saturday 31st of January at Helgi’s, Hackney
Repulsive Vision
death/grind from Cumbria
https://open.spotify.com/artist/0ZRKL1Uk1qrfhnfjRtSVRC?si=syQIKmIXQnScrFcOXrPqbA
T.R.E.S.T
crustcore from the midlands
https://open.spotify.com/artist/0azytDJ1GU2sLwBCv65dSl?si=30yxrJCPQjCkZ8TPZdQTxQ
Decay87
punk rock, Birmingham
https://open.spotify.com/artist/38X4i2P9mUWf4InnSHk0GN?si=YMqBwQLPSsKvZSOzrib25w
Sewer Trench
london stadium crust
https://open.spotify.com/artist/6qDoV3PFJHlUosw6ATltxl?si=xGHdKN1FSFuBYd6UZAvAlQ
£6 adv £10 otd
https://wegottickets.com/event/680957

Rockaway Beach #103 - anarchistwood fest
2026-01-30 19:30 - 2026-01-31 01:00 | Hope and Anchor, 207 Upper Street, N1 1RL
Rockaway Beach is proud to present the First anarchistwood Festival…
What A Riot… we will also be doing a Food Drop for (Food For All UK) PLEASE BRING A BAG OF RICE, PASTA, LENTILS
The line up is Fantastic! check it out:
+++ anarchistwood
“anarchistwood aren’t a screeching anti everything band, they take that hippy/punk union of subversive chaotic love and peace and ally it to a musically proficient and tight sound that can veer between out and out punk to a Gang of Four funk or a Zappa style shift of rhythm. Add to this a clever use of sound bites and vocals that switch between anger and beauty, and you have a whole record that is bigger than its parts.”
Mark Ray, Louder than War
https://punkvert.tv/anarchistwood
+++ Rites of Hadda
Sax ‘n’ drag and rock ‘n’ roll…
Anarcho-pagan-gothic-psychedelic-queer-Witchpunk.
https://linktr.ee/RitesofHadda
+++ Agents of Lexicon
WORD AS PARASITE// Honk n’ Screech on THE SPITS-Double Microwave on BEATS // CLOWN CORE FREAK HOP
https://agentsofthelexicon.bandcamp.com/
+++ Jem Moore
Punk Poet ex Serious Drinking entertains with some wise words…
https://www.discogs.com/artist/1017738-Jem-Moore
+++ your most glamorous host, Timmy DeRella Spinning The Best Punk /Glam/Trash/ Goth.
The Best see ya down the front
Adv Tickets £13

Feminist Fightback Filmclub presents: Sister Midnight
2026-01-30 19:00 | Pelican House, 114 Cambridge Heath Road, Bethnal Green, E1 5QJ
Join us this January as we start the year with a genre-bending comedy to beat the winter blues.
Sister Midnight (2024, 110mins) by Karan Kandhari is a film about a misanthropic newlywed giving into her feral impulses which lead her to unlikely situations.
Uma travels to Mumbai for a newly arranged marriage. The oddball couple shoved together in a small Mumbai shack with paper-thin walls are awkward and alone-together. Uma does her best to cope with the heat, her total lack of domestic skills, nosy neighbours and her bumbling spouse until the nocturnal world of Mumbai and its inhabitants lead her to face her own strange behaviours. And then things take a surreal turn.
Watch the trailer here.
Exhibiting anger/ joy during the film at oppressive behaviour/ high points of struggle very much encouraged.
Drinks and snacks will be available.
Suggested donations on the door £2/5/10 unwaged/waged/solidarity.
All genders welcome.
Doors open at 7pm.
ACCESS:
The film showing will take place on the ground floor of Pelican House, in the room at the back of the courtyard. The toilets are on the same same level. The space and toilets are level access from the road.
Closest stations Bethnal Green tube station and Bethnal Green overground station.
Closest bus stops Cephas Street and Three Colts Lane for the 106 and 254 buses.

VIVA PALASTINA - REASONS OF RESISTANCE
2026-01-28 19:00 - 21:00 | Mayday Rooms, 88 Fleet Street, EC4Y 1AE
As part of its international tour, we are showing Kamal El Salim’s “Viva Palastina – Reason of Resistance”
Set in Berlin, this documentary follows four activists navigating the Palestine solidarity movement and the escalating repression it faces, centring on the shutdown of the “Palästina Kongress” in 2024. From there, it turns to the city’s student movement and its role within a growing global struggle for expression and resistance. Underneath it all runs a deeper thread, how Germany’s unresolved history of fascism continues to shape its politics today.
The event is organised together with MDR building collective members @statewatcheu and @pymbritain, who will introduce the film by discussing the recent repression of the Palestinian movement in Britain.
https://events.maydayrooms.org/e/77/viva-palastina-reason-of-resistance-film-screening

Reading Group 17 – Abolitionist Voices Part Two
2026-01-27 19:00 - 21:00 | Freedom Bookshop, 84b Whitechapel High Street, E1 7QX
For our seventeenth reading group we will finish reading Abolitionist Voices, a compilation edited by David Gordon Scott. From the blurb: Why have so many radical thinkers advocated for the abolition of prisons and punishment? And why have their ideas been so difficult to popularize or garner the political will for change? This book outlines several different approaches to penal abolitionism and showcases their calls for the ending of legal coercion, domination, and repression. This exciting and innovative edited collection shows how abolitionist ideas have continued topicality and relevance in the present day and how they can collectively help with devising new ways of thinking about social problems, as well as suggesting alternatives to existing penal policies, practices and institutions.
This month we will be finishing the book, reading Part III onward. We normally link to a free online version of what we are reading, but this month we could not find one. If you would like to join the reading group but can no afford to buy Abolitionist Voices, please send us an email and we will try and get something sorted for you. Our friends at Freedom Press here kindly offer the space for our use, visit them for radical books, news, and events.

workshop: in my room
2026-01-27 18:30 | The Feminist Library, 161 Sumner Road, SE15 6JL
This workshop draws on open studio approaches , emphasising art-making as the core of the group as a form of social action and collaboration.
Through the lens of psychodynamic literature, homes, rooms and their arrangements become powerful symbols of the complex interplay between our internal worlds and the physical spaces we inhabit. The architecture we inhabit, particularly those spaces imbued with personal significance, can evoke powerful emotional responses that find expression in our dreams. In this way, our built environments not only frame our waking lives but also resonate in the symbolic narratives of our dreams, revealing the deep connections between the spaces we occupy and the inner workings of our psyche.
Drawing on the current housing crisis and material conditions of the here and now as well as the feminist libraries archive, we will be creatively exploring (free) associations to the theme of ‘home’. We invite participants to bring an object from ‘home’ as part of this.
This workshop will not be a therapy space, rather a creative studio space where we can offer materials and time to explore how our inside lives can be thought about and transformed into artmaking, whatever shape that takes within the group.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/in-my-room-tickets-1979985926205

TV Cult / Heckle Chamber / Millpool
2026-01-25 18:00 | New Cross Inn, 323 New Cross Rd, SE14 6AS
New Cross Live Presents
TV Cult
A brutalist, 80s-inspired blend of hardcore and post-punk — somewhere between Killing Joke, New Order, and Black Flag.
https://linktr.ee/tvcult
Heckle Chamber
Artful noises from members of Pere Ubu, Thurston Moore Group and Abstract Concrete
[www.instagram.com/hecklechamber/]
Millpool
Sax-infused emotional post-punk
[www.instagram.com/faithfulmillpool/]
Sunday 25th January
New Cross Inn
£12
Doors 6pm
14+, u16s with an adult 18+
https://pit.live/events/tv-cult

herstories book club: Annie John
2026-01-24 14:00 | The Feminist Library, 161 Sumner Road, SE15 6JL
☕ Next meeting: Sat 24 January 2.00-3.30pm
📍Location: Feminist Library
📖 Book: Annie John, Jamaica Kincaid, 1997.
160 pages
📚 Previous books we’ve read: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/herstories-book-club
The island of Antigua is a magical place: growing up there should be a sojourn in paradise for young Annie John. But, as in the basket of green figs carried on her mother’s head, there is a snake hidden somewhere within. Annie John begins by adoring her beautiful mother, but inexplicably she comes to hate her. Adolescence takes this brilliant, headstrong girl into open rebellions and secret discoveries – and finally to a crisis of emotions that wrenches her away from her island home.

Hardcore Unlawful Assembly presents
2026-01-23 20:00 | The Birds Nest, 32 Deptford Church Street, SE8 4RZ
Fuck It – hardcore punk from Portugal
Revival – d-beat raw punk
Mortar – d-beat crust punk

info-night FROM THE US TO THE UK: FUCK THE BORDERS AND FUCK ICE!
2026-01-23 19:00 - 21:00 | The People’s Letters, 392 Cambridge Heath Road, E2 9RA
From the US to the UK: fuck the borders and fuck ICE!
Join us for an evening of updates from Minneapolis and beyond with a comrade on the ground. We will be talking about ways we resist ICE in the US and in the UK. Bring questions, love and rage! Food provided.
Friday 23rd January at The Peoples Letters, 7pm.
395 Cambridge Heath Road, E2 9RA.
Suggested donation £5, no one turned away for lack of funds.
