Doris Lessing's once active membership with socialist organizations provided her with the necessary background to develop believable interactions among a large cast of characters who occupy a soon-to-bedemolished London communal squat house.

Fighting against capitalism and bourgeois attitudes, these characters may be ineffectual but still maintain a dignity to change the practices of the hegemony. This determination appears repeatedly in how they handle the sewage problem they encounter in the house by rolling up their sleeves, digging a hole, and disposing of it. A sharp contrast appears with how the enforcers of the bureaucracy, the police, respond to the presence of excrement. Rather than actively find a way to dispose of it, they disgustedly criticize the occupants about their living conditions. According to Lessing, the crux of the problem, however, is that whoever takes over power will enforce his or her ideas and exhibit fascist tendencies...