The ACU

from squat to political and cultural centre

The Auto Centrale Utrecht / ACU (Car Centre Utrecht) on Voorstraat 71 in Utrecht was a garage from 1935 to 1967. After being shut down, the building stayed empty for quite some time, until it was squatted for the first time on the night of March 26-27, 1976. From then on, the ACU became a hotspot for radical left activism in Utrecht.

 In 1978, the ground floor part of the garage was turned into a bar and exhibition space, while the upper floors were used as housing spaces. From 1979 a film house settled in the ACU, where you could watch unique movies that were not shown anywhere else in the city. Among those movies, “kraakfilms” (“squat movies”, movies about squatting) were projected.

In 1983 the film house stopped. Everything was run by volunteers, and after many years of money shortage and failed demands for municipal subsidy, they were tired. It was at this moment that the people from the squatters café De Koffiekeet entered the game. They needed new space for their café and asked if they could use the ACU. After some renovations, the Koffiekeet became the main user of the ACU, opening later in 1983. It hosted several activities and events, both cultural and political. For example, there were jam sessions or dance nights, but also information meetings or squatting consultancy. The food co-op offering vegetarian or vegan meals is also a long-standing tradition by the ACU, a way to bring people together through food, but in a political way - refusing to eat animals as a way to oppose the speciesist system of oppression of humans over animals. Similarly, some concerts or gigs were hosted for a good cause often related to (radical) left activism.

Kaï Martchenova, a queer activist who worked and lived at the ACU in the 90s, explained that before the 1990s the ACU was quite closed, with the curtains drawn, and a bell to ring if you wanted to enter. This is to understand in a context where squatting was a rather closed community, where outsiders were suspicious. But at the same time, she added, it did not encourage people to reach out there, and specifically not queer people - even though they were welcome there!

In 1993, users and sympathisers of the ACU created a foundation, the Stichting Voorstaete. The foundation then bought the building in 1994, and the squat became legal. A lot of renovations followed, and not much is left from the original layout of the ACU building.

Zooming out: The ACU in the context of squatting in the Netherlands

The squatting movement in the Netherlands was a radical-left movement that started as such with the Provos during the 1960s. With their creative approach to reinventing the city and the collective urban life, the Provos had a great influence on later squatting movements. During the 70s and 80s, the movement contributed to make the housing crisis visible as well as to the emergence of a radical housing movement with a strong collective identity (culminating with the “Coronation Riots” in April 1980 where the squatter movement protested against the housing shortage with the slogan ‘no housing, no coronation’ during the ascendence of the throne by Beatrix). The squatting movement is nowadays less prominent and structured than it used to be, but it led to social housing policies and a more democratic planning process.

Critique of the 1980s squatting and left-radical movements from a gender perspective

Queer people were not massively present in the squatting movement. Specifically, during its booming years in the 1980s, the left-radical squatting movement was very masculine and heterosexual, where sexism was common. In Utrecht squatters’ zine Springstof, you could regularly read about “vrouwenpanden” (women’s squats), “vrouwenavondjes” (women’s evenings) or discuss topics like sexism in the left-radical movement. Marga Sutherland, a then queer activist who participated in the squatting movement in Utrecht in the 80s and 90s, including actions for gay and lesbian emancipation, recalls the squatting movement as “a white male stronghold”, a partly macho movement where sexism was very much alive, contrary to the often outspoken mantra of equality.

Because of that, some queer people, including Frank Vos, a queer activist co-founder of PATS and of ActUp Utrecht who also participated in the squatting movement in the 80s and 90s, did not feel at ease in the left-radical movement, until deep into the 1980s. According to Kaï and Frank, the 1990s marked a turning point, where queer people were more accepted, but also felt more comfortable in the left-radical scene.

In addition, Kaï mentioned that queer rights were also a blind spot in the left-radical movement during the 1980s. Rather, queer people activism extended outside the sphere of queer rights, to reach topics such as women’s emancipation, or emancipation for people of colour. For example, the queer movement in Utrecht was one of the groups that organised a demonstration against the Pope when he came to visit in 1985. Marga explained that the demonstration first stemmed from the need to protest homophobia of the Catholic church, but it also expanded to women’s rights and against racism.

Being queer AND part of the left-radical movement in the 1980s was a lot. According to Kaï, most queer people, at the time, wanted to show that they were just ‘like anyone else’, that they were not different. And being part of a left-radical movement, squatting and loudly protesting, did not help to fit in society as ‘normal people’. Partly for this reason, said Kaï, there were few queer people taking part in the squatting movement. Therefore, the loud demands for queer rights rather came from queer organisations like the COC, that were not part of the radical left movement but rather from the mainstream left. Navigating between queer organisations and left-radical group, it was not always easy to find your place, as summarised by Kaï in PATS #14 (1996):

In the COC they talk seriously about gay marriage. In the ACU I am the only dyke. [...] I like working in the ACU and the COC but I don't always feel at home, not in either place. The ideal workplace would be where a high percentage of dykes and faggots work and come up with progressive/left-wing radical ideas.

Justine Allasia