‘Get up! Wake up! We share a common plight / Kick back against the system, fight for squatters’ rights!’ Inner Terrestrials – Squatters’ Rights (1996). It’s cold, bright Friday lunchtime and Kerrang! is waiting outside a three-storey office building just off a busy high street in London. We’re meeting Distras – a South African-born punk who has squatted here for the last two years. A double-door swings open and a bloke in a bandana, Cyness band tee and backwards cap shouts us over. Squatting is a slang term for living in a property without permission from a landlord, tenant or licensee. Many squat out of necessity and homelessness, others for ideological reasons, some for both. The phrase “squatters’ rights” is often in referenc...