‘Why not work the system’? How punks inspired by Thatcher built a Hull housing cooperative

The workers’ cooperative, Giroscope, was named after the ubiquitous giro benefit cheques of the high unemployment 1980s. Photograph: Denis Thorpe/The Guardian

Forty years ago, a small group of students and university dropouts living rough had a novel idea. What if they pooled meagre savings and jobless benefits for a modest terrace house, rather than rent a run-down flat?

They raised a deposit for a £3,200 mortgage on a neglected two-bedroom property in the Victorian terraces of west Hull, running down to the quayside of a once-thriving fishing port, from where boats used to trawl the north Atlantic.