From police fortress to anarchy HQ: Britain's most secure station once house terrorists and killers - now it's occupied by fanatics bent on smashing the state

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Built to a fittingly Brutalist design half a century ago as a stronghold detaining IRA terrorists, and later holding the most dangerous jihadists, Paddington Green police station was once Scotland Yard's answer to Alcatraz.

Prisoners described being shut away for interrogation in its 16 subterranean cells, with their two-inch thick doors and sound-proofed walls, as a Kafkaesque hell that could unhinge the most resilient mind. No one ever escaped.

Since it is topped by a 15-storey accommodation block, this formidable concrete bunker also served as a billet for the Met's fearsome Territorial Support Group, and housed officers drafted into Central London to marshal protest marches and demonstrations, as well as other potentially troublesome events.

Police officers arrive at Paddington Green police station on January 26, 2005

Built to a fittingly Brutalist design half a century ago as a stronghold detaining IRA terrorists, and later holding the most dangerous jihadists, Paddington Green police station was once Scotland Yard's answer to Alcatraz

the inside of the former police station with it's new residents. Yes, you read that correctly. A bunch of hardline agitators have commandeered what was once Britain's most secure police station, and are not only 'occupying' this former bastion of law and order, but using it as a base from which to wage war on the very society it was built to protect

Next Friday, dozens of men and women will again pour down its ramps and take to the streets. But this time, they will not be constables tasked with maintaining law and order. Astonishingly, they will be a mob of masked anarchists on a mission to 'strike at the heart of the capital'.

Rallying to a slogan of 'F*** the Banks, F*** the City', this menacing rabble — a coalition of anti-capitalist and environmental extremists who regard Extinction Rebellion as too limited in aim and insufficiently radical — will do whatever it takes to cause mayhem in the financial district around the Bank of England.

Yes, you read that correctly. A bunch of hardline agitators have commandeered what was once Britain's most secure police station, and are not only 'occupying' this former bastion of law and order, but using it as a base from which to wage war on the very society it was built to protect.

The squatters belong to groups singled out for attention in a police anti-terrorism document recently uncovered by the Guardian newspaper. They include Anarchist Federation, the Industrial Workers of the World and Reclaim Power. It is surely the ultimate irony. More ironic even than the Mail's revelation last year that a former Manchester police station was being used as a cannabis farm.

It is claimed that some 50 anarchists are now squatting in Paddington Green station and the tower-block that rises 175ft above it.

Since gaining access on February 8, they have triumphantly renamed it the Green Tower, hung a green flag from its mast, smeared it with slogans and attached propagandist leaflets to its railings.

They have also daubed the initials ACAB — an acronym for 'All Coppers Are B******s' — in huge letters on its grimy windows, overlooking the thronging Edgware Road.

Unlike the more pacifist Extinction Rebellion they say they 'respect a diversity of tactics' which they will adapt according to the situation.

Armed police waiting for the convoy to arrive at Liverpool Crown Court, Thursday January 17, 2009 for the sentencing of Mark Fellows and Steven Boyle for the murders of John Kinsella and Paul Massey

Paddington Green Police Station which is being occupied by antiestablishment groups

They pledge to use squatters' rights to turn the police station into their permanent base, and the Paddington Green squatters are urging people to join them.

During the past decade an estimated 600 police stations have closed down in England and Wales, and the Paddington Green mob are calling for others to be similarly taken over.

This week, before their disruptive demo in Threadneedle Street, they will also hold various other events there. These are set to include everything from 'self-defence workshops' to seminars bearing titles such as 'weaving ecology, democracy and gender liberation into a revolutionary political paradigm'.

Given such mumbo-jumbo, many might be tempted to surmise that the lunatics, rather than the anarchists, have in fact taken over the asylum.

Yet whatever we might think of this rabble, who call themselves the Green Anti-Capitalist Front (GAF) and derive from an amalgam of anarchist factions, one has to admit they have pulled off quite a coup — humiliating the Met and the entire police service.

In a week when the force in Cambrideshire faced heavy criticism for standing by without taking action as Extinction Rebellion dug trenches in a beautiful lawn at Trinity College, it is another body-blow for the police's reputation.

In many ways, the capture of Paddington Green is part of a bigger story — one that has become depressingly familiar in lawless Britain. It is a story of police stations, not only in London but all across the country, being closed down and sold off to save costs and raise revenue.

And for the communities they served, the consequences have been devastating.

All too often, the victims of crime must journey many miles if they wish to see an officer in person rather than speaking to an answer-phone or logging the offence online. People have lost the symbolically reassuring presence of a blue lamp shining from a building manned 24 hours a day.

But back to Paddington Green, whose former detainees include Patrick Magee, the IRA bomber who murdered five people at a hotel during the 1984 Tory Conference in Brighton, and Finsbury Park mosque hate preacher Abu Hamza. It also housed several Guantanamo Bay prisoners for debriefing after they were released from the U.S. top security prison in Cuba.

The inside of the former police station with it's new residents

The inside of the former police station with it's new residents

Inside Paddington Green Police Station, which is being occupied by antiestablishment groups

Having withstood the full might of major terror groups — the IRA once targeted it with a bomb, and one of the fanatics who murdered Fusilier Lee Rigby led a protest march on the building — how could it fall to a few dozen unarmed quasi-Lefties?

Totemic and strategically important though it had previously been, the station went on to be decommissioned less than two years ago, in July 2018, since when it has stood empty.

Indeed, though more than half of London's 73 stations have been shut since 2017, under a plan to sell them off and raise £165 million for the Met, only one has found a buyer, according to a Freedom of Information request from the Hackney Gazette. Two other leases were allowed to expire.

The remainder have been largely abandoned or used for storage — a colossal waste of buildings situated in prime locations.

But the anarchists have found that Paddington Green was being used by the police for firearms training.

For when they gained entry, they were shocked to find it littered with spent cartridges, grenade pins and a lifelike 'terrorist' shooting target. Doors had been smashed down and bullet-holes riddled the windows — a discovery they announced with relish.

The Met says its 'important' weapons training sessions will have to be 'rescheduled' owing to the squatters' presence, adding that the bullet casings would not have been from live rounds.

It was clearly far easier to break into this former fortress than ever it was to break out.

According to the Met, the interlopers simply used a ladder to scale the roof under cover of darkness and, with a 'concentrated effort', forced their way in.

As the power supply remains obligingly switched on, apparently for safety reasons, they have lighting and heating, and the plumbing and even the lifts work. Who is footing the bill for these creature comforts? The taxpayer, naturally.

On Wednesday, I went to the station to try to speak to its shadowy new occupants, whose presence — after almost two weeks — remains largely unknown to shopkeepers and passers-by.

It was an eerie experience. They had covered one window with the cardboard 'terrorist' (complete with shades and pistol) and when I banged on the door, a pair of human eyes peered at me through bullet-holes.

'What do you want?' came a gruff voice. When I explained, he said he would 'feed my request to the rest of the group'. Several minutes later he was back. 'It's a No,' he barked. 'Now I'm going to stop talking.'

Then there was silence. But, the anarchists wasted no time in posting my interest on their website. 'What do we say to Daily Mail journalists? We tell them to get f****d,' they wrote, saying they would never speak to this newspaper, nor other so-called 'hate rags'.

This week, though, they deigned to receive a reporter from the Left-leaning news and entertainment website Joe. The anarchist's spokesman — an articulate, bitter man with a North-Eastern accent, a black face-mask and hooded Parka coat — led him on a tour.

Though we can read the GAF'S self-righteous ramblings on their website, the resulting video tells us much about them and their ludicrous aims.

Taking Paddington Green was hugely significant, the spokesman said self-importantly, as the camera followed him through ghostly corridors strewn with the detritus of police-work — keys, papers and the discarded munitions.

'This is a massive building and we see no point keeping it to ourselves. The police relentlessly side with the State against people trying to get by . . . we're turning their tools against them and making it a space for the people again.'

An awkward moment came when he was challenged over why the group wore 'intimidating' masks. Yes, they were 'scary', he laughed, but they were necessary. Artlessly he added: 'It's a kind of cool aesthetic.'

The triumphal tour ended with the spokesman and several comrades gazing down on the city they aim to attack, from the dizzying heights of the tower-block roof. Did he have a message for the police whose bastion they had captured?

'Come and get it mother******s!' he whooped, making the sort of double-handed, 'bring-it-on' gesture that boxers use to taunt opponents at the weigh-in.

He was reproached by a savvier female member. 'No! What do we always have to say to the cops? 'No comment',' she prompts.

But yesterday on the group's website and Twitter feed, the gloating continued unchecked.

'Let's take a minute to reflect on all those poor coppers who dreamed of using violence to protect the interests of climate destroyers, only to see one of their most iconic centres of repression turned into a green community centre,' read one post.

Then there was a somewhat disturbing video in which an activist whose voice has been distorted appears to approach two officers and ask them whether they are going to Paddington Green station. 'Well you can't — 'cause it's ours now!' he sniggers.

One follower hailed the anarchists as 'absolute legends'. We can only imagine what the officers who served at Paddington Green must make of all this.

But who should shoulder the blame? Labour will say the mass closure of police stations is a consequence of Tory cuts; and there is no denying that in London, where there is now just one 24-hour staffed station per borough, the shutdown began when Boris Johnson was mayor.

However, Shaun Bailey, the Conservative mayoral candidate in the election this May, justifies this with the claim that the capital's crime-rate was then falling.

He points the finger at Johnson's successor, Sadiq Khan, who — when in opposition — warned that the closures could mean that victims would be forced to report crimes at desig- nated contact points, such as McDonald's restaurants.

This week, Mr Bailey pledged as mayor to re-open London's 38 shut-down stations, arguing that 'police station visibility is a central plank of making Londoners feel safe in their community again'.

Rallying to a slogan of 'F*** the Banks, F*** the City', this menacing rabble — a coalition of anti-capitalist and environmental extremists who regard Extinction Rebellion as too limited in aim and insufficiently radical — will do whatever it takes to cause mayhem in the financial district around the Bank of England

Inside the former police station. When the anarchists spring from their unlikely lair next Friday, he added, thousands of hard-working Londoners would suffer

The former youth worker, who grew up in West London's tough Ladbroke Grove area, said the closure and anarchist occupation of London's most secure police station was 'embarrassing' and 'ridiculous', and emblematic of Mr Khan's loss of control of the streets at a time of rising violent crime.

When the anarchists spring from their unlikely lair next Friday, he added, thousands of hard-working Londoners would suffer.

Mr Khan, for his part, recently told the London Assembly that the sell-off had been 'paused', as the Met examines where to accommodate the 1,400 extra officers it expects to recruit under Johnson's promise to boost Britain's police ranks by 20,000.

A spokesman for the Mayor told me this week: 'A review of the Met's entire estate is under way and some sites previously approved for disposal have been put on hold while the potential impact of an increase in officers is taken into account.'

For many Londoners this will come as some relief. But there will be no reprieve for Paddington Green, whose 'size, condition, location and value' meant it would not be retained, City Hall said.

As to the famous building's future use, the spokesman said it was being discussed with the 'owner of the adjoining site' — presumably meaning a huge block of mainly high-end flats being developed by Berkeley Homes.

However, as a security guard working there remarked this week, unless they are speedily ejected, the squatters' presence could jeopardise the sale, which would doubtless delight them.

Meanwhile, as London braces itself for another day of chaos this Friday, we might wonder how many more empty police stations, in the capital and beyond, could ironically fall into the hands of an enemy whose very purpose is to sabotage law and order.