European Court of Human Rights declares application inadmissible

This morning the Dellow Centre handed Declan a letter from the European Court of Human Rights dated 14 October, which states that on 7 October the Court decided to declare the application in the case of Heavey v the United Kingdom “inadmissible” because it did not comply with the requirements set out in Article 34 and 35 of the Convention. “In the light of all the material and its possession, and in so far as the matters complained of were within its competence, the Court found that they did not disclose any appearance of a violation of the rights and freedoms set out in the Convention or its Protocols,” it states (the letter is presented below).

The primary material to which the Court refers has been published in the following blogs: application of 8 September 2007 here; first request for priority of 8 September here; second request for priority of 4 July here. The Court first wrote to Declan on 22 November 2007 stating that it was “unnecessary” to consider his request for priority because it would be examining his application “shortly, possibly by the end of January 2008”; seven months later, in a letter dated 16 June (see here), it became “as soon as practicable”. We didn’t in fact expect to hear from the Court until well into the New Year. Anyway, with the likely election within two weeks of Barack Obama as the next President of the United States (he will be lifting the funding restrictions on embryonic stem cell research imposed by President George W Bush), and with the United Nations set to revisit the cloning issue next week (see previous blog), we believe that the momentum is swinging behind Declan's petition to the UN on research cloning of embryos and stem cells and what will be our campaign in support of embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning.

Prior to today we were not in a position to entertain the thought of signing on for benefits because Declan would have had to withdraw his application to the European Court – the Department of Work and Pensions terminated our benefits on 27 September 2006 because Declan did not ‘sign on’ two days before he was due to do so on 29 September. However, even now, signing on for benefits remains a non-option: there is clearly no remedy available to a claimant once the Department of Work and Pensions decides to terminate benefits. So we have no choice but to keep working as hard as we can to raise the £450 we need to buy a laptop for the campaign in support of embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning that will eventually take us off the streets (see blog of 26 August “Fighting for the Right to Clone”).

This is the letter from the Court:

Application no. 22541/07
Heavey v. the United Kingdom

Dear Sir,

I write to inform you that on 7 October 2008 the European Court of Human Rights, sitting as a Committee of three judges (G. Bonello, President, David Thor Björgvinsson and J. Šikuta) pursuant to Article 27 of the Convention, decided under Article 28 of the Convention to declare the above application inadmissible because it did not comply with the requirements set out in Article 34 and 35 of the Convention.

In the light of all the material and its possession, and in so far as the matters complained of were within its competence, the Court found that they did not disclose any appearance of a violation of the rights and freedoms set out in the Convention or its Protocols.

This decision is final and not subject to any appeal to either the Court, including its Grand Chamber, or any other body. You will therefore appreciate that the Registry will be unable to provide any further details about the Committee’s deliberations or to conduct further correspondence relating to its decision in this case. You will receive no further documents from the Court concerning this case and, in accordance with the Court’s instructions, the file will be destroyed one year after the date of the decision.

The present communication is made pursuant to Rule 53 § 2 of the Rules of Court.

Yours faithfully,
For the Committee

Fatoş Aracı
Deputy Section Registrar

Second Request for Priority to the European Court

On 30 June, Declan emailed the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, in his capacity as Archbishop of the Diocese of Westminster, to which the Sister of Mercy Dellow Centre belongs (see previous blog). Nonetheless, the orchestrated campaign of violence and economic strangulation against us continues (see, for example, blog of 25 June “Police ‘No sleeping’ sign in the porch”), so this afternoon Declan sent his second request for priority, with supporting documents, to the Registrar of the European Court of Human Rights by registered post.

Actually, this request is much better than the one Declan had intended posting on 18 June – which he had to postpone (although I uploaded it that afternoon; it can be read here) because of the robbery of all our money and documents that very morning in the Dellow Day Centre (see blog of 18 June “Declan robbed in the Sisters of Mercy Dellow Centre”). It so happens that the robbery also occured two days before Declan received from the staff of the Dellow a letter to him from the European Court dated 16 June, wherein it states: “The Court will deal with the case as soon as practicable”, published here.

So here it is:

Application no. 22541/07
Heavey v. the United Kingdom

                                  RULE 41-URGENT

Dear Mr Fribergh

With reference to my application of 8 September 2007 under Article 34 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the Court's recent letter to me of 16 June 2008, ref ECHR-LE1.1R CO/CO/ysp, signed for the Registrar by Legal Secretary Clare Ovey, states as follows:

The Court will deal with the case as soon as practicable. It will do so on the basis of the information and documents submitted by you. The proceedings are primarily in writing and you will only be required to appear in person if the Court invites you to do so. You will be informed of any decision taken by the Court.

Please find enclosed (i) a second Request for Priority under Rule 41 of the Rules of Court, and (ii) Supporting Documents.

Yours faithfully

Declan Heavey

This is the request:

                 SECOND REQUEST FOR PRIORITY UNDER
                      RULE 41 OF THE RULES OF COURT

   1.       The applicant respectfully requests that the Court consider this second request for priority under Rule 41 of the Rules of Court.
   2.      The request is made by the applicant in person. The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) entered into force for the Government of the United Kingdom on 3 September 1953 and has been in force since that time with no reservations, declarations or understandings relevant to this present applicant.

BACKGROUND OF REQUEST

As the applicant submitted in his application of 8 September 2007 (para. 22), he and his wife have been sleeping rough in the porch of an office building in the City of London since 3 November 2006, the Department for Work and Pensions having terminated the applicant's joint claim for Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA) on 27 September 2006 because the applicant did not "sign on" two days before he was due to do so on 29 September. At paragraph 22, the applicant submits that on 22 November 2006 the Dellow Centre of the Catholic Sisters of Mercy Providence Row Charity recorded on the applicant's wife's registration form that St Mungo's, London's largest homelessness organisation, had informed the centre that neither the applicant nor his wife could be referred to a hostel "due to not being on any benefits". For the avoidance of doubt, the applicant maintains each and every aspect of his application: this second request for priority is in addition to the application.

Since 10 April 2008, the applicant has been washing in the streets as a result of harassment and intimidation in the Dellow Centre, and due to his concern that he and his wife may be barred from the centre through no fault of their own: as submitted in his application (para 25), the applicant and his wife were barred from the Methodist Church Whitechapel Mission on 18 June 2007 due to concerns about their safety following an unprovoked assault on the applicant’s wife by a homeless woman in the canteen of the premises (crime reference no. 4217341/07).

On 21 April 2008, arising from his concern that he and his wife may be barred from the Dellow Centre, the applicant wrote to the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, in his capacity as Archbishop of the Diocese of Westminster, to which the Dellow Centre belongs (see copy of this email letter of 21 April in Supporting Documents, p 14). The applicant has subsequently written on several occasions to Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, including, inter alia, on 28 April, having submitted a written complaint to the Chief Executive of Providence Row Charity, Ms Jo Ansell, against a homeless man for verbal abuse of the applicant in the canteen of the Dellow Centre; on 16 May, having reported a homeless man to the Metropolitan Police for racially aggravated harassment of the applicant in the centre's men's washroom (crime reference no. 4212667/08); and on 30 June, having submitted a written complaint to Ms Ansell against a homeless woman for verbal abuse of the applicant and his wife in the centre's canteen (see copy of these email letters of 28 April, 16 May and 30 June in Supporting Documents, p 17, p 16 and p 1 respectively).

Since 9 May 2008, the applicant and his wife have been visited on a number of occasions by the City of London Police in the middle of the night to be ordered to immediately move out of the porch they have been sleeping in since 3 November 2006 to beyond city boundaries or be arrested: on 9 and 17 May, they were told by police officers that the City of London was being "cleaned" of rough sleepers (see copy of letter and enclosures to Prime Minister Gordon Brown of 19 May in Supporting Documents, pp 10-15); and on 2 and 9 June they were told by police officers that, pursuant to the City of London Police's "Operation Poncho II", the City of London's Cleansing service had to wash and disinfect the porch floor with immediate effect (see copy of email letter and attachments to Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis Sir Ian Blair of 11 June in Supporting Documents, pp 7-9). On 10 June, the applicant received an email from Superintendent Lorraine Cussen of Snow Hill police station, wherein the applicant is advised to find accommodation with the help of Broadway, a homeless charity, and in which it states that "the cleansing will continue for the foreseeable future" (see copy of this email of 10 June in Supporting Documents, p 8).

On 14 June, the applicant was assaulted by a man in the porch he has been sleeping with his wife, the first time the applicant has been assaulted in the porch (the applicant sleeps on the inside with his and his wife's bags; his wife on the outside). The suspect jumped on the applicant's feet while the applicant was asleep in his sleeping bag, and could have caused serious injury had the applicant not been wearing runners. The suspect was subsequently arrested in the porch for "common assault" (crime reference no. CR/4359/08).

On 18 June, the applicant was robbed in the Dellow Centre of his main bag, containing, among other things, all his and his wife's money and documents, including, inter alia, passports, birth and marriage certificates, driving licence, and court related and educational qualification documentation (crime reference no. 4215697/08). On 24 June, the applicant visited Bow Street police station to be updated on the investigation into the robbery. He was informed that the investigating officer, PC Van-Gelder (number unknown), was unable to obtain any CCTV footage whatsoever from the Dellow Centre, and consequently the case had been "struck out" (see email to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor of 24 June, p 5).

Having been robbed of all their money and documents, the applicant is especially concerned that his wife may be reduced to begging, a criminal offence in England. In this regard, the Court is referred to paragraph 28 of the application, wherein the applicant submits that he and his wife survive on the streets of London by selling The Big Issue, a magazine sold by homeless people throughout the UK on registered street pitches, and that numerous written complaints have been lodged by the applicant with The Big Issue Head Office in respect of his wife and himself being walked off their respective pitch on Liverpool Street by other street traders, including, inter alia, Big Issue vendors. The applicant's written complaints to head office have continued unabated: most recently, on 10 June, the applicant complained in writing that he was walked off his pitch by a street distributor for an estate agent who insisted on passing fliers within one foot of the applicant; in fact, seldom does a week go by when the applicant and/or his wife is not forced to walk off their respective pitch in order to avoid confrontation (for which they can be debadged) with other street traders, including Big Issue vendors.

On 19 June, the applicant was assaulted in the Catholic Manna Centre while queuing for food. (The applicant walks a two-hour round trip every weekday to the Manna Centre to get a free lunch; his wife’s only food after 9.00am are two grated-cheese sandwiches, one of which is the applicant’s, which the nuns in the Dellow Centre give the homeless with their cereal breakfast "for later".) A homeless man, whom the applicant had reported to the Metropolitan Police on 16 May for racially aggravated harassment in the Dellow Centre (crime reference no. 4212667/08), clipped the applicant's heels four to six times, while brushing up against him as the queue moved. Presented with this homeless man's history of racially aggravated harassment of the applicant in the Dellow Centre, the police recorded the incident as "common assault" (crime reference no. 3021917/08).

On 23 June at approximately 3.30pm, while on computer 23 in the Tower Hamlets Council Idea Store Whitechapel, the applicant's wife was asked by a member of staff to give the computer up to another card holder, despite that a member of staff had confirmed in writing that she had booked the computer for the applicant's wife from 2.30pm to 5.30pm (notwithstanding that since 1 February the applicant and his wife have each been restricted by the Council to a 3-hour maximum computer use per day, despite that for several months previous we were given "additional time" subject to computer availability and in accordance with the council's then and current "Idea Stores PC Usage Policy"). On 24 June at approximately 12.30pm, while on computer 24 in Idea Store Whitechapel, the applicant's wife was aggressively told by a male member of staff to give the computer up to another card holder and, despite that 30 minutes earlier a member of staff had confirmed in writing that the applicant's wife had booked the computer from 11.30am to 2.30pm, threatened her with security if she did not do so immediately. (For a brief history of the applicant and his wife's recent loss of computer bookings and internet access in Idea Store Whitechapel, see copy of email letter and attachments of 25 June to the Leader of Tower Hamlets Council, Cllr Denise Jones, in Supporting Documents, pp 2-4).

On 24 June, the applicant and his wife arrived back at the porch they sleep in to find for the first time a City of London Police "No sleeping" sign on the back wall. The May 2008 issue of The Pavement, a free magazine for London's homeless, reports that some shopkeepers in the Strand, a large tourist area in the City of London, had posted "No sleeping" signs on their shop fronts, which give police "permission to move on anyone found sleeping in a doorway". That night, the applicant and his wife were visited at 10.00pm by three workers from Broadway, the homeless charity mentioned by Superintendent Cussen in her email to the applicant on 10 June, to be asked if they would go on benefits. The applicant declined, stating that he would have to withdraw his application to the Court.

The subject matter of the applicant and his wife being visited by the City of London Police at night to be ordered to immediately move out of the porch they sleep in to beyond city boundaries or be arrested is of considerable concern and may in itself be a ground for acceding to this application.

VIOLATIONS OF THE EUROPEAN CONVENTION

Under Articles 1 and 8 of the ECHR the United Kingdom has a positive obligation to ensure respect for an individual's private and family life. The Court has previously held that private life includes an individual's physical and moral integrity (X and Y v Netherlands, No. 8978/80, Series A, No. 91, 26.3.85, (1986) 8 EHRR 235, para. 22).

The recent assault and robbery of the applicant and his concern that his wife may be reduced to begging has very serious and damaging consequences for him and amounts to a very severe intrusion into his private sphere and his right to physical and moral integrity. These rights have been violated by the Government of the United Kingdom as a result of the ceasing the applicant and his wife's entitlement to JSA in breach of regulation 27(1) of the Jobseeker's Allowance Regulations 1996, which provides that such entitlement shall not cease if the claimant shows, before the end of the fifth working day after the day on which he failed to provide a signed declaration, that he had a good cause for the failure. (As submitted above, the Department for Work and Pensions terminated the applicant's joint claim JSA on 27 September 2006 because the applicant did not "sign on" two days before he was due to do so on 29 September.)

In the case of Sidabras and Dziautas v Lithuania (Nos 55480/00 and 59330/00, para. 49, ECHR 2004-VII), the Court noted the applicants' argument that, as result of the publicity caused by the adoption of the KGB Act and its application to them, they had suffered constant embarrassment as a result of their past activities. The Court accepted that the applicants continued to be burdened with the status of "former KGB officers" affecting the enjoyment of their "private life". The Court stated that "they are marked in the eyes of society on account of their past association with an oppressive regime." Like the position of the applicants in Sidabras and Dziautas v Lithuania, the applicant and his wife will suffer constant embarrassment as result of the criminal record that may follow from her begging. They will be burdened with the "criminal" status affecting the enjoyment of their private life. They will be marked in the eyes of society on account of the applicant's wife having a criminal record.

The applicant also submits that there is a severe violation of the right to respect for his "family life" under Article 8. It is well established that this right primarily obliges the state to protect the integrity of the family: to ensure that family relationships develop normally (Marckx v Belgium, (1979) Series A, No. 31, paras 31 and 45) and that members of a family have "the mutual enjoyment of each other's company" (Olsson v Sweden, (1988) Series A, No. 130, para. 59). In Lopez Ostra v Spain (1994), Series A, No. 303-C, at para. 51, the Court found that "severe environmental pollution may affect individuals' well-being and prevent them from enjoying their homes in such a way as to affect their private and family life adversely …". In the present case, the applicant submits that there has been a similar interference with the applicant's family life. Following the recent assault of the applicant in the porch he shares with his wife, the robbery of all their money and documents, and arising from his concern that his wife may be reduced to begging, there has been a profoundly distressing effect on both the applicant and his wife, thereby seriously affecting their relationship in violation of the positive duty on the state to respect his family life.

It is therefore submitted in respect of the applicant that the recent assault on him, the robbery of all his and his wife's money and documents and his concern that his wife may be reduced to begging is in fact a violation of his rights under Article 8 of the ECHR.

The applicant further submits that the numerous visits by the City of London Police in the middle of the night to order the applicant and his wife to immediately move out of the porch they sleep in to beyond city boundaries or be arrested constitutes a violation of Article 34 (formally Article 25) of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Court will note that Superintendent Cussen in her email of 10 June does not dispute that on 2 and 9 June the City of London's Cleansing service was used by the City of London Police to move the applicant and his wife to beyond City boundaries, stating that "the cleansing will continue for the foreseeable future".

Article 34 establishes a duty on Convention states not to hinder the effective exercise of the right to apply to the European Court of Human Rights. The Court has frequently emphasised that it is of the utmost importance for the effective operation of the system of individual petition that applicants or potential applicants should be able to communicate freely with the Court. Article 34 states that:

The Court may receive applications from any person, non-governmental organisation or group of individuals claiming to be the victim of a violation by one of the High Contracting Parties of the rights set forth in the Convention or the protocols thereto. The High Contracting Parties undertake not to hinder in any way the effective exercise of this right.

Under Article 34, applicants must not be subjected to any form of pressure from the authorities to modify or withdraw their complaints. "Pressure" includes direct coercion and flagrant acts of intimidation (of applicants, potential applicants, their families and legal representatives), but also any improper indirect acts or contacts designed to dissuade or discourage applicants from pursuing a Convention remedy.

In the case of Kurt v Turkey (No. 24276/94, 25.5.98, (1999) 26 EHRR 373), the Court found there had been improper pressure in violation of former Article 25, after the applicant alleged that she had been pressurised by the authorities to withdraw her application to the Commission.

The applicant believes that the "No sleeping" sign on the back wall of the porch they sleep in at night was introduced on 24 June as no more than an alternative means for the City of London Police to move the applicant and his wife on, and as such is a fabrication: there has never been a complaint against the applicant or his wife since they started to sleep in this porch over a year and a half ago (3 November 2006); they bed down at 9.00pm, and get up every weekday at 4.30am (on Saturdays and Sundays at 6.30am); neither the applicant nor his wife drink or smoke; and the office building in question has its front entrance around the corner. The applicant wishes to emphasise that he has informed the City of London Police on numerous occasions that he and his wife have never found a more suitable place to sleep, neither within the City of London nor beyond its boundaries, and that all their contacts are within walking distance of the porch.

With reference to Superintendent Cussen’s recommendation in her email of 10 June that the applicant engage with Broadway for help to find accommodation, the applicant wishes to draw to the Court's attention that he and his wife would need to apply for JSA, and as a consequence withdraw his application to the Court. (As submitted above, on 22 November 2006 the Dellow Centre recorded on the applicant's wife's registration form that St Mungo's, London's largest homelessness organisation, had informed the centre that neither the applicant nor his wife could be referred to a hostel "due to not being on any benefits".)

It is therefore submitted in respect of the applicant that the various attempts by the City of London Police to move him and his wife out of the porch they sleep in at night, culminating in the current "No sleeping" sign on the back wall of the porch, is in fact a violation of his rights under Article 34 of the ECHR.

NECESSITY OF EXPEDITION

An urgent expedition is necessary in this instance because of the violations of the applicant's human rights already existing and are likely to be even greater. The right that has been violated is the right to private and family life as established under Article 8 by the applicant being assaulted in the porch he shares with his wife, having been robbed of all their money and documents, and arising from his concern that his wife may be reduced to begging. The attempts by the City of London Police to move the applicant and his wife from the porch they sleep in at night to beyond the City boundaries, culminating in the current "No sleeping" sign on the back wall of the porch, constitutes a violation of the applicant's effective right of application as established under Article 34. These violations constitute a grave threat of irreparable and serious harm.

IRREPARABLE HARM

Once the applicant is in fact severely assaulted or arrested (due to his refusal to put his wife at risk of more ill-treatment by moving out of the porch they sleep in at night; they have never found a more suitable place to sleep), it will become very difficult if not almost impossible for him to pursue his application to the Court and this applicant has of course become subject to human rights violations as previously described.

The applicant has for example limited access to computers, exacerbated by difficulties with computer access in his local library, Idea Store Whitechapel, and therefore has had great difficulty preparing and lodging applications prior to this time.

In establishing the extent of the risk to the applicant of ill-treatment, the Court will note that the applicant has been washing in the streets since 10 April as a result of harassment and intimidation in the Dellow Centre. The applicant complains that nothing ever came of the investigation by the Metropolitan Police into his statement against a homeless man for racially aggravated harassment in the Dellow Centre (16 May). Moreover, the case of the robbery of all the applicant and his wife's money and documents in the Dellow Centre (18 June) was "struck out" due to the Metropolitan Police being unable to obtain any CCTV footage whatsoever from the centre. The applicant submits that the way the former case was dealt with by the Metropolitan Police may have been a factor in the assault of the applicant by the same homeless man in the Manna Centre (19 June).

Should the applicant be severely assaulted and/or his wife reduced to begging, the Court may have to strike the case out, for example because the applicant has failed to reply to Court letters over a period of time (see, Peltonen v Finland, No. 27323/95, 28.9.00 and Yakan v Turkey, No. 43362/98, 19.9.00). As the applicant submitted in his first request for priority that accompanied his application of 8 September 2007, his use of a landline phone was withdrawn by the Dellow Centre on 26 July 2007. Further, as sumitted above, the applicant's written complaints to The Big Issue Head Office have continued unabated in respect of his wife and himself being walked off their respective pitch on Liverpool Street by other street traders, including, inter alia, Big Issue vendors.

Much longer a period as a rough sleeper is more than likely to subject the applicant to serious ill-treatment and continued violations of Article 8 and Article 34.

SERIOUS HARM

The very fact that the applicant and his wife are threatened with a criminal record arising from the City of London Police "No sleeping" sign currently on the back wall of the porch they sleep in at night, and the devastating repercussions of any such record for the applicant and his wife's career and prospects, is sufficient to demonstrate the serious harm that will result from the failure to adopt an expedition of the applicant's case against the Government of the United Kingdom.

CONCLUSION

For the above reasons the applicant respectfully requests that the Court indicate the expedition of the applicant's case to the Government of the United Kingdom.

DECLAN HEAVEY

c/o THE DELLOW CENTRE

82 WENTWORTH STREET

LONDON E1 7SA

UNITED KINGDOM

EMAIL: dheavey@gmail.com

TEL: 0779 284 3167 (mobile)

4 July 2008 LONDON
 

More harassment by the police

Last night at 2.10am we were woken in the porch we sleep in by a police officer, this last visit makes four times in four days (see previous blog). It transpires that this is no longer about "cleaning" the City of London of rough sleepers as previously, but about the "cleaning" of the City of London. So could we please pack up and leave so that the cleaners (two cleaners in a van) can get on with the job of disinfecting the porch, says PC 365B of Snow Hill Police Station. What an insult! I may wear shabby clothes – I have great difficulty in getting them replaced: in the Manna Centre (whose building is provided rent-free by the Catholic Archdiocese of Southwark) I only get a couple of minutes, every two Sundays, to find a maximum of three items from a jumble of second-hand clothes stored in a dark women's room; and in the Catholic Sisters of Mercy Dellow Centre whatever we need, the last time it was a pair of jeans for Declan and runners for me, the nun in charge seldom has it, and it’s never a question of wait for a few days – but we are both clean, our bags are tied, covered in black bags and well stacked, and I myself clean the porch floor almost every night. I don't know you, he replies, despite we have been sleeping there for over a year and a half.

Can we have two tickets, and could you write that you want us to leave the porch so cleaners can disinfect it, Declan asks (this is one of two questions we prepared a few days ago for more compelling evidence of a violation of Article 34 of the European Convention on Human Rights (see blog of 13 May "Letter to the European Court under Article 34") - Article 34 establishes a duty on Convention states not to subject applicants to any improper indirect acts or contacts designed to dissuade or discourage applicants from pursuing a Convention remedy). No problem, he says, and writes "Welfare. OP Poncho II."

"Are you in a hostel?" he asks. So Declan explains for the second time in three days that the Department for Work and Pensions unlawfully terminated our benefits over a year and a half ago because he didn't sign on two days before he was due to do so, and that he submitted his application to the European Court on 8 September 2007 with a request for priority under Rule 41 of the Rules of Court (paragraph 3 of Declan's application has a brief account of the reason for benefits). He also informs PC 365B that the Dellow Centre recorded on my registration form of 22 November 2006 that St Mungo's, London's largest homelessness organisation, had informed the centre that we could not be referred to a hostel "due to not being on any benefits" – the Court didn't consider us sleeping in the street enough to expedite the case, and Declan has yet to be notified by the Court as to whether his application has been dismissed or the Government invited to set out its observations on the merits and admissibility of the case.

Even if we could get into a hostel, we wouldn't entertain the thought of it, Declan adds. The Methodist Church Whitechapel Mission barred us last June due to concerns about our safety, and the risk must have been so great that, even after writing to the minister himself and to the head of the Methodist Church in the UK, Rev Graham Carter, we were never readmitted. Declan is now unstoppable. "I have been assaulted several times by homeless, and my wife once. We have a bunch of crime reference numbers," he says, adding that we have problems with homeless both in the Manna and Dellow. (Declan forgot to mention that such are the problems with homeless that for several weeks now he has been washing and shaving in the street, see blog of 22 April “Letter to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor”.) PC 365B has nothing to say.

Does he intend to arrest us if we don’t leave, I ask him (since on 9 May PC 698B told us he would and on 17 May PC 601B told us she wouldn’t). He replies that he can arrest us. “If we are harassing people, or drunk,” Declan adds. “Or obstructing police,” PC 365B warns. We have nowhere to go at 2.35am with all our stuff and barely the money to buy four Big Issues (a magazine sold buy homeless people on registered street pitches), but if he could write on the tickets he is going to issue us that he is going to arrest us if we don’t move, we will obviously pack up and leave, I amenably say – this is our second question. He doesn’t have to write anything, he informs us, but what about if we step down to the pavement with our bags, let the cleaners do their job, and then bed back down when they are done. I reject this proposal straight away because our sleeping bags would be soaked with water and disinfectant, and I already have a bad cold as result of all the rain and wet socks; Declan has been hospitalised with a viral infection, also because of the rain, and we have no access to healthcare … So if he is not going to arrest us, we are staying put, I insist.

In the end, he tells the cleaners to disinfect the step, no need to do the free space by the porch door – which Declan always leaves clear so we don’t block the door; the last thing we want is to cause any trouble so we also bed down at 9.00pm and get up at 4.30am (the office building also has a front door around the corner). The cleaners haven’t the slightest interest in cleaning at all: the small porch beside ours, which is so dirty not even a drunk homeless would lay in it, is left untouched; and so are the big, dirty stains along the pavement where Pret A Manger normally leave rubbish bags. In fact, with the exception of the porch step, they clean nothing. The outcome of the encounter, which we read when everything is back quiet again, is “Satisfactory”.

Operation Poncho II

So what does Operation Poncho II have to do with cleaners “cleaning” the City of London, including privately owned property? Well, according to Google, nothing. There are only three references in Google UK, one of which is official: the Autumn/Winter 2007 issue of Talkback, a community news magazine from the City of London Police. It appears that Operation Poncho II happened back in May 2007 “aimed to engage with people who are sleeping on the street, checking their welfare and offering access to support services such as accommodation and drugs and alcohol rehabilitation … a positive step towards ensuring that rough sleepers have access to housing and services before the colder winter months arrive”.

So OP Poncho II is about the "welfare" of rough sleepers. Well, that may explain why PC 365B didn’t write that cleaners were going to disinfect the porch, or that he wanted us to pack up and leave, or that an arrest was in the air. Anyway, I may be completely wrong here, but if a police officer was to issue us with a ticket in respect of OP Poncho II citing either “cleaning” or “arrest” – and it sure looks like tonight we may be adding more tickets to our growing collection – we could well be looking at prima facie improper pressure in violation of Article 34.

Police harassment

Last night we were visited twice by the police at the porch we sleep in at night, at 9.10pm and 1.50am, and if I count a visit from the night before, well, that is three times then – that could probably qualify as police harassment. (Pursuant to Article 34 of the European Convention on Human Rights, Declan has already sent an email letter to the Registrar of the European Court of Human Rights (see blog of 13 May "Letter to the European Court under Article 34") and has also sent the Registrar a copy of his email letter to the Prime Minister Gordon Brown (see blog of 17 May "Letter to the British Prime Minister") – Article 34 establishes a duty on Convention states not to subject applicants to any improper indirect acts or contacts designed to dissuade or discourage applicants from pursuing a Convention remedy.)

The first of these visits was at 11.30pm on Thursday, when we were woken by a police officer to be asked if we were doing ok. Having ascertained our names, she told us to go back to sleep and left. The second, at 9.10pm last night, lasted thirty minutes. PC 136A, PC 474A and PC 525A of Wood Street Police Station informed us that we were not going to be asked to pack up and leave due to this (mysterious) police "cleaning" the City of London of rough sleepers; so the two questions I had prepared did not really apply (see previous blog). We don't look rough sleepers, we were told, and surely we would want to be part of the mainstream once again. We didn't put ourselves in this porch by free choice, Declan said, adding that the Department for Work and Pensions unlawfully put us to the street over a year and a half ago when they terminated our benefits in the middle of judicial review proceedings because he didn't sign on two days before he was due to do so (see paragraph 3 of Declan's application to the European Court of Human Rights, submitted on 8 September 2007, for a brief account of the reason for benefits).

Declan explained that his case in the European Court was filed under Article 8 (the right to respect for his private and family life) and Article 13 (which provides for the right for an effective remedy before national authorities for violations of rights under the Convention), and that the Court may well have invited the Government to set out its observations on the merits and admissibility of the case – in December Declan received a letter from the Court turning down his request of 8 September for priority, but informing him that his application would be examined possibly before the end of January; we remain in the dark about the outcome, however. Declan also mentioned a loophole in the law relating to jobseeker’s allowance (paragraphs 57 - 62 of Declan’s application). Philip Leach in Taking a Case to the European Court of Human Rights states that, more often than not, it is the quality of the domestic law, or even the absence of legal regulation, which leads to violations of Article 8 of the Convention.

PC 525A said that the case could take up to seven years – are we going to be in the street that long? So Declan told him about his petition to the United Nations; that it has been signed by 519 scientists, including 22 Nobel laureates; and that we are in the process of trying to raise £4,000 to run an international campaign in support of the petition - with some of the money we would rent the most basic place imaginable (see blog of 26 March “We are seeking to raise £4,000”).

It was a “welfare” visit - or so my ticket states – the outcome “Satisfactory words of advice”. The advice must have come from PC 474A when she said that we are not entitled to sleep in the street and therefore can be moved at any time and even arrested. Her Police Review magazine may beg to differ: in the April 2007 issue an article entitled “Rough Sleepers” states that “people have the right to sleep in the streets if they want to”, and in this respect the police “need to comply with the Human Rights Act 1998”. Curiously, the May issue of The Pavement, a free magazine for London’s homeless, says that shopkeepers in the big tourist area of the Strand (Westminster area) are abandoning the Whitehall Safer Neighbourhood [police] Team’s “No sleeping” signs on their shop fronts, claiming that they are no longer effective so “we prefer to call the police if we have any problems or incidents”. (We, by the way, sleep in the porch of an office building, bed down at 9.00pm, get up at 4.30am, and don’t drink or smoke – hardly material for a complaint.)

Our third visit, at 1.50am last night, was from PC 601B. As we are already well acquainted (see previous blog), she gets straight to the point: we have to pack up and leave right away due to, yep, police "cleaning" the City of London of rough sleepers. When I show her the two “welfare” tickets we were given only a few hours earlier, she says “OK”, and off she goes. No tickets.

Stem cells and morality

The police didn't wake us up in the middle of the night over the holiday weekend to tell us to pack our bags and leave the porch right away due to police "cleaning" the City of London of rough sleepers – we have been sleeping in this porch since being forced to become rough sleepers on 3 November 2006. As I wrote in the previous blog, the first time we were told to pack up and leave was on 9 May (see blog "Letter to the Mayor of London"), and after that, on 17 May (see blog "Letter to the British Prime Minister"). On the first occasion, PC 698B told us the "cleaning" would carry on for a month, so we may very well be visited again. (Sleeping in the porch is still eventful though. For example: this morning, for the first time in a year and a half, the cleaner – who since mid-April has been going in and out through the porch door every weekday morning between 4.00am and 5.15am (we get up at 4.30am) – cleaned the outside of the door while we were packing to leave; on Sunday night somebody threw a cigarette butt, burning a hole in my sleeping bag; and on Saturday night someone parked their car a few feet away, blasting music for forty-five minutes.)

Declan would like to send the Registrar of the European Court of Human Rights more compelling evidence of a violation of Article 34 of the European Convention on Human Rights (see blog of 13 May "Letter to the European Court under Article 34") - Article 34 establishes a duty on Convention states not to subject applicants to any improper indirect acts or contacts designed to dissuade or discourage applicants from pursuing a Convention remedy. So, I would have two questions for the police officer(s): (a) could the ticket we each ought to be issued state that the reason for the encounter is the "cleaning" of rough sleepers from the City of London (on 9 May, PC 698B didn't even issue us tickets; on 17 May, PC 601B wrote that the reason for the encounter was "welfare" – although since when did being told at 1.50am on a Friday night to pack your bags and leave the porch you are sleeping in constitute "welfare"?); and (b) could the tickets state that refusal to leave carries a power of arrest (PC 698B told us to leave or he would arrest us; PC 601B told us we wouldn't be arrested if we didn't leave and wrote on each of our tickets "ATP" for Allowed To Proceed).

Sperm Swimming Towards Egg

The New Statesman this week carries a story entitled "Lisa Jardine on life and death", with the subheadline: "The new chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority did not seek a fight, but she is ready. Christians, she says, have no monopoly on morality." In April Jardine, the Centenary Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London, former Booker Prize chair, councillor of the Royal Institution and prolific broadcaster, writer and commentator, became chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the regulatory body tasked with overseeing the areas covered by the new Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill (see blog of 20 May "UK parliament backs human-animal embryo research").

The article says that Jardine didn't even have time to settle into the role before the attacks began. Hybrid embryos, "saviour siblings", the role of fathers in IVF and amendments on abortion limits all provided plenty of issues on which temperatures could, and did, rise. At the end of March, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, condemned the bill's proposals on human-animal embryo research as "a public government endorsement of experiments of Frankenstein proportion", and the Anglican Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, said that all denominations of Christians, as well as Jews and Muslims, should object to what he called "species-bending".

Commenting on the Catholic view on hybrid embryos, which will not be allowed to live beyond 14 days, but whose creation the Church still considers to be an intolerable meddling with human life, Jardine says: "It was only relatively recently that the date at which the soul enters the embryo was moved back to fertilisation. St Augustine believed that it happened when the baby kicked in the womb - 17 weeks - and that suited for a very long time. This isn't conscience, this is Church ruling." (The New Statesman article adds that Pope Pius IX removed the distinction between "unformed" and "formed" foetuses in 1869; prior to that, a number of theologians, including Thomas Aquinas as well as Augustine, accepted that "ensoulment" occurred later than conception.)

So when does Jardine think that this mysterious, key stage of life, whatever one calls it, begins? "I think I need consciousness - I've a little bit of a philosophical temperament - and we're a hell of a way from consciousness at 14 days." She adds: "The moment of fertilisation is not a very helpful moment to begin talking about the sanctity of human life. As a woman who's had a long childbearing life, I know perfectly well that any number of embryos were swept away. Maybe [some] naturally, but some of them weren't. Sometimes I'd jumped up and down in the hope that I wasn't pregnant, you know?"

Jardine says she was surprised at the churches' reaction to hybrid embryos for research. When it was put to her by the New Statesman that for many religions - and especially today, when hardline or more strictly orthodox faiths are gaining ground - to obey conscience is not about deciding whether to follow edicts from the pulpit but simply to follow those edicts, Jardine replied: "I think it's not correct for any church to suggest that they have a monopoly on conscience. There is a debate to be had, a serious debate, about conscience." (Also in this week's New Statesman is philosopher Julian Baggini on deciding ethical issues. "When it comes to specific matters of morality, the idea that religious convictions need respect, not interrogation and defence, is absurd," he writes. "The world's major religious texts have nothing to say about stem cells, not least because those words do not appear in any of them. It may be a matter of faith that Christ rose from the dead, but Christians have to defend anything they say about the first stages of life.")

Lisa Jardine has her own answer to the citadels of faith. "My church is education," she says. "It's no accident that I work in the period 1500-1700, which is the time when mass education altered the face of Europe for the better. Individual conscience is something you can't have unless you've been taught the autonomy of decision-making. I have to believe that education will take people beyond regulatory religion. That's why I go on teaching. I still teach because I believe every single person you educate, you help take moral decisions for themselves, rather than be told the rules. I have to believe it."

In a recent article for The New Republic entitled “The Stupidity of Dignity” (see previous blog), Steven Pinker, world-renowned thinker and Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University - and an honorary associate of NAC and early signatory of Declan’s petition to the UN on therapeutic cloning – poses the question: “How did the United States, the world's scientific powerhouse, reach a point at which it grapples with the ethical challenges of twenty-first-century biomedicine using Bible stories, Catholic doctrine, and woolly rabbinical allegory? Part of the answer, Pinker says, lies with the “outsize influence” of Leon Kass, the founding director of the President’s Council on Bioethics, who came to prominence in the 1970s with his moralistic condemnation of in vitro fertilization and, in 2001, convinced President Bush to outlaw federally funded research that used new embryonic stem cell lines.

“Kass packed it [the Council] with conservative scholars and pundits, advocates of religious (particularly Catholic) principles in the public sphere, and writers with a paper trail of skittishness toward biomedical advances, together with a smattering of scientists (mostly with a reputation for being religious or politically conservative),” Pinker writes. “After several members opposed Kass on embryonic stem-cell research, on therapeutic cloning (which Kass was in favor of criminalizing), and on the distortions of science that kept finding their way into Council reports, Kass fired two of them (biologist Elizabeth Blackburn and philosopher William May) and replaced them with Christian-affiliated scholars.”

It’s hard not to conclude that for the Catholic Church in Britain, in the short term at least, life under Kass might be very different to life under Jardine.

The Stupidity of Dignity

It has been a week now since we were visited by PC 601B at the porch we sleep in at night and told to leave – it was 1.50am – due to police “cleaning” the City of London of rough sleepers. We stayed in the porch though because she told us we wouldn’t be arrested if we did so. When PC 698B visited us on 9 May he wasn’t so accommodating and informed us he would arrest us if we didn’t pack up and leave right away – it was 2.20am – despite Declan having been diagnosed in the Royal London Hospital with a sprained ankle only hours before. Pursuant to Article 34 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), Declan has written to Prime Minister Gordon Brown (see blog of 17 May “Letter to the British Prime Minister”) and the Registrar of the European Court of Human Rights (see blog of 13 May “Letter to the European Court under Article 34”).

Article 34 of the ECHR establishes a duty on Convention states not to subject applicants to any improper indirect acts or contacts designed to dissuade or discourage applicants from pursuing a Convention remedy. Between one thing and another, in particular the homeless on Declan’s case, especially in the Sisters of Mercy Dellow Centre and the Manna Centre (whose building is provided rent-free by the Catholic Archdiocese of Southwark), we are now more convinced than ever that the European Court has invited the Government to set out its observations on the merits and admissibility of Declan’s case – in December Declan received a letter from the Court turning down his request of 8 September for priority, but informing him that his application, also of 8 September, would be examined possibly before the end of January.

Human Dignity and Bioethics

On 1 March, President George W Bush’s Council on Bioethics released a 555-page report, entitled “Human Dignity and Bioethics: Essays Commissioned by the President’s Council on Bioethics”, a volume of 28 essays and commentaries by Council members and invited contributors. The Council, created in 2001 by President Bush, is a panel of scholars charged with advising the president and exploring policy issues related to the ethics of biomedical innovation, including drugs that would enhance cognition, genetic manipulation of animals or humans, therapies that could extend the lifespan and embryonic stem cells and therapeutic cloning that could furnish replacements for diseased tissue and organs.

Steven Pinker, world-renowned thinker and Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University (and an honorary associate of NAC and early signatory of Declan’s petition to the UN on therapeutic cloning), was one of three people invited by the Council to a panel discussion on 7 March devoted to the subject of human dignity. In a subsequent article for The New Republic, entitled “The Stupidity of Dignity”, Pinker writes that the Dignity report “reveals a great deal about the approach to bioethics represented by the Council”, adding: “And what it reveals should alarm anyone concerned with American biomedicine and its promise to improve human welfare. For this government-sponsored bioethics does not want medical practice to maximize health and flourishing; it considers that quest to be a bad thing, not a good thing.”

According to Pinker, a majority of the contributors, 12 out of the 23, were selected from institutions with an explicitly Christian and almost entirely Catholic mission statement, and that of the remaining 11 contributors four are known for their advocacy of a greater role of religion in public life. “Conspicuous by their absence are several fields of expertise that one might have thought would have something to offer any discussion of dignity and biomedicine,” Pinker writes. “None of the contributors is a life scientist - or a psychologist, an anthropologist, a sociologist, or a historian.”

The volume finds room for seven essays that “align their arguments with Judeo-Christian doctrine”, writes Pinker. “We read passages that assume the divine authorship of the Bible, that accept the literal truth of the miracles narrated in Genesis (such as the notion that the biblical patriarchs lived up to 900 years), that claim that divine revelation is a source of truth, that argue for the existence of an immaterial soul separate from the physiology of the brain, and that assert that the Old Testament is the only grounds for morality (for example, the article by Leon Kass [the Council’s founding director] claims that respect for human life is rooted in Genesis 9:6, in which God instructs the survivors of his Flood in the code of vendetta: ‘Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God was man made’).”

Pinker argues that the concept of dignity is natural ground on which to build an obstructionist bioethics. “An alleged breach of dignity provides a way for third parties to pass judgment on actions that are knowingly and willingly chosen by the affected individuals,” he writes. “It thus offers a moralistic justification for expanded government regulation of science, medicine, and private life. And the Church’s franchise to guide people in the most profound events of their lives - birth, death, and reproduction - is in danger of being undermined when biomedicine scrambles the rules. It’s not surprising, then, that ‘dignity’ is a recurring theme in Catholic doctrine: The word appears more than 100 times in the 1997 edition of the Catechism and is a leitmotif in the Vatican’s recent pronouncements on biomedicine.”

According to Pinker, many members of the President’s Council are repelled by a number of biomedical advances – examples brought up in the volume: drugs that enhance cognitive functioning, anti-aging research that promises to extend the human lifespan, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, somatic cell nuclear transfer, surrogacy, in vitro fertilization and other reproductive technologies, cloning, a market in organs for donation, and many others – but realise that they can’t rule them out with the consensus ethics of autonomy, human rights, or respect for persons. Hence, the appeal to dignity. The problem, Pinker argues, is that, for one thing, dignity is, as just about all the essays acknowledge, a “squishy” concept (ambiguous, slippery, and vague). It has much of its basis in religious doctrine. And for these two reasons, it has not provided the kind of consensus definition of the kind that would be necessary in a democracy.

The concept, writes Pinker, is a source of obvious contradictions: “We read that slavery and degradation are morally wrong because they take someone’s dignity away. But we also read that nothing you can do to a person, including enslaving or degrading him, can take his dignity away. We read that dignity reflects excellence, striving, and conscience, so that only some people achieve it by dint of effort and character. We also read that everyone, no matter how lazy, evil, or mentally impaired, has dignity in full measure. Several essayists play the genocide card and claim that the horrors of the twentieth century are what you get when you fail to hold dignity sacrosanct. But one hardly needs the notion of ‘dignity’ to say why it’s wrong to gas six million Jews or to send Russian dissidents to the gulag.”

Pinker explains that dignity has three features that undermine any possibility of using it as a foundation for bioethics: dignity is relative (we chuckle at the photographs of Victorians in starched collars and wool suits hiking in the woods on a sweltering day); dignity is fungible (modern medicine is a gauntlet of indignities); and dignity is often harmful (think of the Salman Rushdie fatwa). In his article, Pinker mentions the bioethicist Ruth Macklin who, fed up with loose talk about dignity intended to squelch research and therapy, argued in a 2003 editorial “Dignity Is a Useless Concept” that bioethics has done just fine with the principle of personal autonomy - the idea that, because all humans have the same minimum capacity to suffer, prosper, reason, and choose, no human has the right to impinge on the life, body, or freedom of another. Once you recognise the principle of autonomy, Macklin argued, “dignity” adds nothing. (In his presentation to the Council on 7 March, Pinker pointed out that in the index to the Dignity report there are 15 page references to Macklin, more than anyone else except Kant with 35, the Bible with 34, and Aristotle with 21, and yet the volume does not have an essay by her or anyone else who would defend her obviously important viewpoint. Everyone else is replying to it.)

Pinker concludes: “Worst of all, theocon bioethics flaunts a callousness toward the billions of non-geriatric people, born and unborn, whose lives or health could be saved by biomedical advances. Even if progress were delayed a mere decade by moratoria, red tape, and funding taboos (to say nothing of the threat of criminal prosecution), millions of people with degenerative diseases and failing organs would needlessly suffer and die. And that would be the biggest affront to human dignity of all.”

Letter to the British Prime Minister

Last night at 1.50am we received our second visit by the police to the porch we sleep in at night (and in which we have been sleeping since being forced to become rough sleepers on 3 November 2006) in respect of this mysterious policy to “clean” the City of London of rough sleepers – and I say “mysterious” because there is no mention of it anywhere, not even on the ticket PC 601B issued each of us before leaving. Initially we were again told we would be arrested if we did not leave, but subsequently we were told we wouldn’t be arrested if we decided not to leave, so we stayed put because … where are we supposed to go at 2.00am carrying all our bags and with barely enough money to get by for the weekend?

The police seem determined to get us out of the porch by hook or crook (for the first visit see blog of 9 May “Letter to the Mayor of London”). Which might explain why PC 601B would also say that the police have received a complaint that we block the porch door: we bed down at 9.00pm and get up at 4.30am, and for over a year and a half have never had a complaint against us of any kind. Well, this “complaint” seems to me to smack of the same good timing as PC 698B ordering us at 2.20am on 9 May to leave the porch or be arrested within hours of Declan being diagnosed with, err, a sprained ankle – his Certificate of Attendance from the Royal London Hospital also states that he was "advised to rest, elevate and ice ankle".

Writing to the Mayor of London and the Registrar of the European Court of Human Rights (see blog of 13 May “Letter to the European Court under Article 34”) doesn’t seem to have done much good, so this afternoon Declan wrote to Prime Minister Gordon Brown. After all, Article 34 of the European Convention on Human Rights establishes a duty on Convention states not to hinder the effective exercise of the right to apply to the European Court of Human Rights.

This is the letter via Email the PM Form, which was confirmed as received:

Subject: Heavey v. the United Kingdom (Application no. 22541/07)

Dear Prime Minister

I am writing to bring to your attention a submission I made to the European Court of Human Rights on 12 May 2008 in the above case, citing a violation of Article 34 of the European Convention on Human Rights. (Article 34 establishes a duty on Convention states not to subject applicants to any improper indirect acts or contacts designed to dissuade or discourage applicants from pursuing a Convention remedy.)

I will forward to you by registered post a copy of my email letter of 12 May to the Registrar of the European Court of Human Rights, Mr Erik Fribergh, together with attachments: (i) copy of my email letter of 9 May 2008 (and attachment) to the Mayor of London, Mr Boris Johnson, in respect of an order from PC 698B of Bishopsgate Police Station on the night of 8 May instructing my wife and I to either leave the porch we were sleeping in or be arrested due to police "cleaning" the City of London of rough sleepers, and (ii) copy of my Certificate of Attendance of 8 May from the Royal London Hospital stating that I had a sprained ankle and was advised to “rest elevate and ice ankle”.

I can confirm that my most recent letter from the Court is a letter of 22 November 2007, reference ECHR-LEO.1R CO/PHA/gz, signed for the Registrar by Legal Secretary C Ovey, stating: "I acknowledge receipt of your letter of 22 September 2007 and enclosures. With reference to your request for priority under Rule 41 of the Rules of Court, I can inform you that the Court will examine your application shortly, possibly by the end of January 2008. It would therefore appear unnecessary to consider your request."

I can also confirm that, in addition to the order from PC 698B of Bishopsgate Police Station on the night of 8 May that my wife and I leave the porch we were sleeping in or be arrested, last night at 1.50am we were woken by PC 601B of Snowhill Police Station and told to leave the same porch or be arrested – again, due to police “cleaning” the City of London of rough sleepers – although the police officer subsequently informed us that we would not be arrested if we did not leave, so we stayed. PC 601B also informed us a complaint has been made that we block the porch door, which we deny. (We have been sleeping in this porch without any complaint against us for over a year and a half – we were forced to become rough sleepers on 3 November 2006. We bed down at 9.00pm and get up at 4.30am, save Saturday and Sunday when we get up at 6.30am.)

As stated in my letter to Mayor Johnson of 9 May, there is no mention in any newspaper, homeless organisation website, or in london.gov.uk that there is any kind of police operation – or that one is going to be undertaken or has ever been undertaken – to expel rough sleepers from the City of London. This morning the Manna Centre, a day care centre for homeless people, made no mention of it.

I should also point out that the tickets PC 601B issued my wife and I state that the reason for the encounter was “Welfare” and the outcome “ATP” (Allowed To Proceed). Further, all our contacts are within walking distance of the porch, and we have never found a more suitable place to sleep.

In relation to our ongoing efforts to get ourselves off the street, my wife and I are in the process of trying to raise £4,000 to run a campaign in support of my petition to the United Nations on therapeutic cloning and the use of stem cells for research and for the treatment of disease, which since 22 October 2007 has been signed by 519 scientists and academics, including 22 Nobel laureates.

Please would you acknowledge receipt.

Yours sincerely
Declan Heavey

cc Mr Boris Johnson, Mayor of London (together with attachments herein referred to)
Mr Erik Fribergh, Registrar of the European Court of Human Rights (together with attachments and copy of the two tickets issued by PC 601B herein referred to)

European Court of Human Rights declines to expedite Declan’s case

Declan has received a letter from the European Court of Human Rights in respect of his request of 8 September for priority under Rule 41 of the Rules of the Court. The Court is not going to consider the request, and will examine his application, also of 8 September, possibly before the end of the month. According to Philip Leach in Taking a Case to the European Court of Human Rights, cases "usually take at least four to five years to progress through the system (if they pass through the admissibility stage) and some cases take longer", so obviously we are not very happy about this.

In addition to providing the Court with full reasons for expedition, Declan also sent the Registrar his latest hospital discharge summary report of 4 October (this time from the Royal London Hospital, where he was hospitalised for two days with a viral infection), my police statement of 22 September (I was woken by a guy who repeatedly kicked me in the chest and shoulders), and two tickets police issued to me for begging on 13 and 14 November. Alas, we were not able to convince the Court of the merits of the case.

Anybody browsing through this blog cannot but note that it has been some achievement to survive on the streets for so long. I haven't written anything since 25 November, primarily because we have been too busy, but the entries in my diary since then – I have been keeping a diary in case I am arrested for begging and brought before a court – might have inspired Charles Dickens for one of his books. Among other things: we stand in our registered pitches to sell The Big Issue (a magazine sold by homeless people) in the bitter cold and rain and still the London Lite and The London Paper regularly take over Declan's pitch (oh, on three occasions a Big Issue vendor refused to leave Declan's pitch when asked); for two nights of the second weekend of December we were graced with the alarm of the porch we sleep in, all night; and on 15 December somebody defecated and urinated in the porch (a first). Things like walking everywhere carrying all our belongings (as result of all the problems while attempting to sell The Big Issue, we haven't been able to afford transport since July), being reduced to washing in public toilets (we were barred back in June from the Methodist Church-run Whitechapel Mission due to concerns about our safety), and wearing clothes barely fit for a scarecrow (the last time I asked the nun in charge of clothes in the Sisters of Mercy-run Dellow Centre, she didn't have a pair of jeans for me, and gave me a jumper so old you can't figure out its colour) don't even register in this diary.

All of that being said, we consider it a small price to pay in light of the success of Declan's petition to the UN in support of research cloning of embryos and stem cells: 151 signatories so far, including 20 Nobel Laureates. We are incredibly frustrated though, because despite that we get up at 4.50am every morning and go to sleep around 10.00pm, the time we get to spend on computers is only a fraction: everyday we walk two or three hours; have to queue outside the Dellow Centre for even a cup of tea; stand in our Big Issue pitches unless it is extremely cold or particularly rainy; one of us must stand over all our bags while the other washes in public toilets (more time ridiculously wasted); and Declan takes what it seems to me forever collecting cardboard and securing the bags for the night.

There really is not much work we can do in such a short space of time. I do the research and the emailing, while Declan has the difficult job of maintaining the spreadsheet, which contains all kinds of relevant information, including the date(s) scientists have been emailed. Research from a public library is particularly nightmarish, so I have a notebook and also use a couple of free on-line bookmarking services to store pages I find on the web – I have them in dozens of folders and subfolders for quick access. My ultimate objective is to build a campaign to accompany this petition, and our model is Oxfam International's website ‘Make Fair Trade’, which 20 million have signed to date. I also think wildly interesting the page that Greenpeace UK has created in relation to the current proposal to build a sixth terminal at Heathrow Airport – what a brilliant idea for people who support embryonic stem cell research to put their comments on a video. Still, I have hundreds of scientists that we want to email but haven't because I don't have the time.

A matter of particular worry to us is how many emails are actually getting through. Declan has already been informed by some signatories that they didn't receive the email he had referred to, despite me having a record of it having been sent. Last week, for example, I found two emails from scientists, asking Declan to add their name to the petition, in the spam box! We believe France in particular is targeted in this regard: our spreadsheet is broken up into batches of 10 and you can see that in some batches containing mainly French scientists nobody has signed. We are aware that the late Italian Luca Coscioni sent faxes to scientists when he was seeking their support and Declan would very much like to supplement the emailing with faxes and phone calls, at least to leading scientists and Nobel Laureates.

Even when I have more time at my disposal I encounter difficulties. Take last Friday. Because we only had two Big Issues to sell come evening time – due to the difficulties with Declan’s pitch and my pitch not being a very good one, we can only afford to buy 5 or 6 magazines a day – I stayed in the Idea Store Whitechapel library only to lose my computer to another person. This afternoon I also ran into problems. A member of staff refused to book me a computer for a fourth hour, despite that she can override the library’s 3-hour limit if there are computers available at the time, and if it wasn't because Declan confronted her with an email from her manager informing him of procedure, I would have found myself at 3.00pm with nothing to do. I had the same problem just prior to the holiday period: a member of staff more or less told me that if the library was deserted and all the computers were free, she still would refuse to book me. Of course when things like that happen we go to the internet café – if we have £3 we buy ourselves 7 hours. Anyway, this is the email that Declan sent to the manager of Idea Store Whitechapel on Friday night:

Subject: Internet access

Dear Mr Abidin,

I wish to confirm that this evening, in the middle of a 1-hour session on computer 15 on floor 1 in Idea Store Whitechapel, my wife (card no. D000350314) had to re-start the computer after an unexpected interference with her work and lost her booking to another customer. A member of your staff (name withheld) informed my wife that she had to give the computer up.

Please would you acknowledge receipt. Below is a copy of my email to you of 14 November, to which I did not receive a response.

Yours sincerely,
Declan Heavey

--------------------------

Subject: Internet access

Dear Mr Abidin,

My previous correspondence refers. I wish to confirm that this evening, in the middle of a one-hour session on computer 15 on floor 1 in Idea Store Whitechapel, and as verified by your floor supervisor Ms Nadine Lasmel at 6.30pm, my wife (card no. D000350314) was unable to open any page from the internet or send an email.

Yours sincerely,
Declan Heavey
Card no. D000355837

Declan’s last two postings in the JREF Forum

Declan has posted two new postings in the JREF Forum. The one yesterday is in answer to why Declan doesn’t get a job and the second, well, it is really a general statement about what NAC’s mission is. (There was actually a comment in relation to the assault on me yesterday to the effect that it was strange that the attack continued while Declan's arm was on me – Declan wouldn’t know how to respond to that.)

Anyway, these are the two postings:

                         (1)  Why don’t you get a job?

Lola was severely assaulted last night – it has just been put in the NAC blog. Her statement was taken by the police this morning, a copy of which I have sent off to the European Court of Human Rights in my case against the UK (with particular regard to the reasons cited for the necessity of expedition), which is summarised as follows:

1. This application concerns a serious violation of the applicant’s right to respect for his private and family life arising from the refusal of his local jobcentre to accept his wife’s proposed jobseeker’s agreement for referral to an adjudication officer in accordance with section 9(6)(a) of the Jobseekers Act 1995. As a result of the refusal, the applicant’s and his wife’s entitlement to JSA was twice suspended and then ceased, and they are currently sleeping rough on the streets of London. The applicant invokes Articles 8 and 13.
2. The applicant submits that the interference with his rights under Article 8 was not prescribed by law, that it did not pursue any of the legitimate aims in Article 8(2), and that the interference was not necessary in a democratic society. He also submits that there was no effective remedy available in respect of the interference, in violation of Article 13.

[we have not requested permission to publish the question asked]

The issue of gainful employment has been addressed in my application of 8 September to the Court under the heading “Sleeping rough in London”, paras 22-31:

22. Since 3 November 2006 the applicant and his wife have been sleeping rough in the porch of an office building in the heart of London’s business district. On 22 November 2006, the Dellow Centre recorded on the applicant’s wife’s registration form that St Mungo’s, London’s largest homelessness organisation, had informed the Centre that neither the applicant nor his wife could be referred to a hostel “due to not being on any benefits”. The last ten months have been physically, mentally and emotionally draining for the applicant and his wife. Throughout this time, they have had to cope with a severe and unnecessary strain upon their lives.
23. On 18 November 2006 a stocky man in his thirties sat on the right hand side of the applicant’s wife’s face while she was sleeping. On 4 May 2007 the applicant’s wife was asleep in her sleeping bag when a passer-by grabbed her hard by the ankles, dragged her in an arc down the two marble steps of the porch and, having turned her a full 180 degrees, dragged her a further three or so metres down the pavement before releasing her and walking off. Later that night, with her back to the street and her head inside her sleeping bag, she was kicked in the back by a passer-by with the sole of his shoe. The first of these two assaults left the applicant’s wife with severe bruising on her left thigh and forearm that lasted two weeks, as well as with a sore left wrist and little finger. On 1 July 2007 the applicant was woken by a well-dressed passer-by that lent over his wife and hit him in the thigh. On 27 July a passer-by threw two unopened plastic bottles of mustard at an unused door the applicant uses to prop his pillow rest against, each one narrowly missing the applicant’s head on its fall. On 26 August a passer-by threw a metal Metropolitan Police A-board (for traffic redirection) onto the steps of the porch, the handle end of which hit the applicant’s wife on the back while she was sleeping. On 7 September a passer-by threw a glass of beer over the applicant and his wife while they were sleeping.
24. On 26 and 28 February 2007 the alarm on the wall of the porch they sleep in sounded and flashed all night. Frequently the applicant and his wife have to endure the sounding and/or flashing alarm (most recently on 13 August), people going in and out of the office building through the porch door at all hours of the night (most recently on 6 September) and noisy and intrusive passers-by (most recently on 7 September). There are some nights the applicant and his wife only get a few hours sleep.
25. On 17 February 2007 the applicant was punched twice in the face in an unprovoked attack by a homeless man in the canteen of the Whitechapel Mission (Crime Reference No. 4204886/07). On 21 May the applicant applied under the Data Protection Act 1998, as advised by the Metropolitan Police Service, for a copy of the witness statement that the Metropolitan Police took from him at Bethnal Green Police Station on 27 April 2007 in respect of the assault, but the statement was never provided to him (see copy of the applicant’s letter and enclosures of 25 July 2007 to the European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services in Supporting Documents, pp. 27-43). On 18 June the applicant’s wife was assaulted by a homeless woman in the canteen of the Whitechapel Mission (Crime Reference No. 4217341/07). Later that morning the manager of the Mission barred the applicant and his wife due to concerns about their safety. On 19 June the applicant lodged a complaint with the Charity Commission in respect of the bar (see copy of the applicant’s letter and enclosures of 17 August 2007 to the President of the European Commission in Supporting Documents, pp. 64-78).
26. According to the website “Whitechapel Mission” (whitechapel.org.uk), the Methodist Church-run Whitechapel Mission is “often the only place open weekends, Bank Holidays, Christmas and Easter” and “the only place to obtain a cooked breakfast in the City or the East End”. The barring of the applicant and his wife from the Whitechapel Mission has had a very detrimental and disruptive impact on their lives, not least because they have been reduced to washing in public toilets.
27. On 18 December 2006 the applicant was admitted to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for interstitial pneumonia. In the Discharge Summary Report dated 20 December 2006 (see Supporting Documents, p. 26), the applicant’s doctor, Dr M Feher, recorded that the applicant was admitted feeling feverish with cough, shortness of breath, and a chest pain that was worse on breathing, worse on inspiration. Dr Feher also noted that the applicant had not been eating due to lack of finance and had an episode of loss of consciousness, witnessed by his wife. Since then, the applicant’s physical health has deteriorated significantly. He has lost a lot of weight, and on 2 August 2007 attended the Accident & Emergency department at the Royal London Hospital. The Certificate of Attendance (see Supporting Documents, p. 52) records that he attended with an upper respiratory tract infection, for which he was prescribed a course of antibiotics to follow for five days (to prevent the infection travelling to the lung tissue to cause pneumonia).
28. The applicant and his wife have been surviving on the streets of London by selling The Big Issue magazine, which is sold on the streets by homeless people. Frequently of late the applicant and his wife have had to walk off their pitches in order to avoid confrontation with other street traders. The applicant has lodged complaints with The Big Issue in respect of the intrusion onto his and/or his wife’s pitch of other Big Issue vendors and distributors of, inter alia, London Lite, The London Paper, City AM and Sport (see copy of the applicant’s letter and enclosures of 30 August 2007 to the founder and editor-in-chief of The Big Issue in Supporting Documents, pp. 79-87).
29. Since 20 July 2007 and as a consequence of not being able to sell enough Big Issues, the applicant and his wife have been unable to afford transport (for the last seven weeks they have been walking everywhere with all their belongings), clothes or other basic necessities, and have been eating very poorly. On 6 August the applicant had to withdraw £200 from his Yorkshire Building Society account (see Supporting Documents, p. 53), the last of the money he and his wife had been saving to put down a deposit on a flat. (The Big Issue had told the applicant that if he had £350 for a deposit they would be able to find him and his wife somewhere to live.) The applicant and his wife are extremely concerned that they will be further reduced to begging – a criminal offence in England.
30. On 1 September 2007 the applicant made a statement to the City of London Police at Bishopsgate Police Station following the arrest of a beggar for the racist and discriminative abuse of the applicant while he was selling The Big Issue the day previous, and a subsequent threat to kill (see copy of the applicant’s witness statement of 1 September 2007, with attachment, in Supporting Documents, pp. 88-94).
31. The applicant submits that neither he nor his wife have been able to obtain any kind of gainful employment as a result of their particular circumstances. The City of London Police has visited them at the porch they sleep in on twelve occasions to date. On 10 August they were each issued a stop and search ticket stating that the reason for the stop was “welfare”, and that the outcome was “satisfactory”.

Such is our case to the Court. Hopefully, the UK government will have to reply. Thank you everyone.

                                  (2)  NAC mission

I regret that it has not been possible to answer so many important questions in one place.

My wife and I are deeply concerned with the resurgence of Protestant and Catholic right-wing groups, and their alliance with political-ideological movements to block public policies that are at variance with religious doctrine. Together with the Vatican, these fundamentalist forces are thwarting intellectual and social progress through their unflinching and tenacious commitment to dogma.

It is because of it that NAC (Network of those Abused by Church) champions public policies that are based on secular principles, not religious doctrine; works for the separation church and state; and calls for the scientific, rational examination of religion to protect future generations from the ignorance so often fostered by religion hiding behind doctrinal smoke screens.

NAC has been set up to bring together organisations, groups and individuals from across the globe who advocate liberal reforms strongly rejected by the Vatican and the Christian Right, with a view to supporting them and promoting their views. We achieve this mission by:

1.  Committing to campaigns and initiatives that attract, welcome and support advocates.

2.  Producing action alerts which can help advocates who need the public to send emails or faxes to decision-makers on critical issues.

3.  Bringing together the latest news and views from advocates.

4.  Issuing a newsletter, "NacNet". Sent monthly to email subscribers, it will highlight the campaigns and projects of NAC and advocates.

5.  Producing a forum where members can discuss issues, make announcements or share views.

Thank you everyone.

I am severely assaulted while sleeping

Last night I was “severely assaulted” – well, that is how the police officer that took my statement described it. He also said it was quite a disgusting assault because I was a woman and I was asleep. Basically I was the victim of a hate crime and a threat to kill (Crime Reference No. CR/007884/07). It is not the first time I have been attacked in the porch though. On 4 May I was assaulted twice: at 11.30pm, while sleeping, some guy dragged me out of the porch by the ankles and at 3.45am I was kicked in the back. Most recently on 7 September some guy threw a glass of beer all over us as we slept (I actually woke up because I felt my face wet).

This guy that assaulted me had two friends with him, although they did not participate in the assault nor did they pull him off me. Declan sleeps on the inside protecting all our belongings, which include all our documents, and was concerned the friends wanted him to stand out. There is CCTV all around the area – it’s the business district after all – so it shouldn’t be difficult to pick up the assault in question. This is the statement which was written this morning by the police officer on my behalf (I was given a copy):

STATEMENT OF MARIA DOLORES HEAVEY

I am the above named person. I have been a resident in the UK for about four years. Since 3 November 2006 I have been sleeping in the porch next door to Pret A Manger on …, London. At about 05.00 this morning the 22 September 2007 I was asleep in the porch with my husband Declan Jude Heavey. I was facing towards the street in a sleeping bag and hood which concealed my face.

I was woken by the sound of shouting which I ignored. There was then a period of silence for about two seconds. I then felt a heavy blow to my upper left arm which felt like a kick. This was followed immediately by a similar blow, both of these blows felt like kicks and were delivered with some force. I then heard a male voice shout “FUCKING TRAMPS”. Declan then shouted “THIS IS A WOMAN”. I then felt Declan put his arm on me. I then removed my hood from my sleeping bag and unzipped it slightly. This was in order to see my attacker. After I had removed my hood from my sleeping bag my attacker stamped on my upper arms and chest a further 5 times. The blows were delivered with a great deal of force.

I looked up and observed my attacker and two people standing with him. I would describe my attacker as a white male aged about 25 of slim build and about six feet tall. He had an angular face with high cheekbones. He had short, light brown hair, he was clean shaven. He was wearing a thin materialed top but I do not know what colour. He was wearing light coloured jeans which were loosely fitting. He was wearing trainers but I don’t remember the colour. He had an English accent.

My attacker then stopped stamping on me and shouted “I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU” before walking away in the direction of … before turning right towards ... About eight minutes later one of the attacker’s friends who had been watching the incident came back from the same direction and passed by and said “sorry”. He walked past me and turned back at Pret A Manger, walked past me again and said “sorry”. I would describe this man as white in his mid twenties of medium build about 5’8 inches tall wearing a long sleeved, stripped blue and white top with no buttons. I do not believe this was a football top. He was wearing blue jeans and light coloured trainers. He had light brown hair. He then walked away in the direction of … and turned right towards ... About three minutes later the second witness came back from the same direction. He walked past me twice on the same side of the street as me. He looked in my direction but did not say anything. I could describe this person as a white man, probably about 27 or 28 of a heavy build but not fat. He had light brown hair about collar length at the back. He was clean shaven. He was wearing a light pink shirt, short sleeved, buttoned all the way down with a collar.

He then walked off in the direction of … before turning right in the direction of ... I observed him cross the street and turn left. I could see him through the windows of ... I had observed all three men for a period in total of about 30 seconds. I observed my attacker in total for a period of about 4 seconds. Throughout the attack there was no natural light. However, the street was illuminated with street lamps.

I would recognise all three individuals again. None of the three men smelt of intoxicating liquor and my attacker’s speech was not slurred. I feel the attack was premeditated because my attacker was careful not to kick me in the head. The blows were deliberate and aimed at my upper body.

This incident has left me upset and very angry as I feel my personal space has been violated. Although at this stage I have no bruises I feel this is due only to the fact that I had on at the time 5 layers of thin clothing and was in a sleeping bag. I have been a victim of crime before but this incident has left me upset and angry because it was completely unprovoked. Should it prove necessary I am willing to attend court.

Signature: Maria Heavey
Signature witnesses: PC Stuart Thomas (409C)

Declan has also written to the Registrar of the European Court of Human Rights. As I have already stated in this blog, if Declan’s urgent request for expedition of 8 September to the Court is granted (Declan’s main application of 8 September can be read here), it is not beyond the realms of possibility that things could be resolved in just a few months. The case of Papon v France was expedited by the Court under rule 41 of the Convention because of the advance age and ill-health of the applicant in prison: the case was lodged on 12 January 2001 and on 23 January the Court asked the respondent Government to submit information and comments about the applicant’s conditions and regime. I hope the European Court doesn’t respond to Declan’s application while I am lying in a hospital bed with broken ribs. This is the letter he sent:

Application no. 22541/07
Heavey v. the United Kingdom

                                RULE 41-URGENT

Dear Sir/Madam

In further reference to my urgent request for expedition under Rule 41 of the European Convention on Human Rights made on 8 September 2007 (with particular regard to the reasons cited for the necessity of expedition), I enclose for the attention of the Court copy of my letter and enclosures of today’s date to Chief Superintendent Ken Stewart of Bishopsgate Police Station regarding my (illegal) begging and severe assault on my wife.

I beg to again point out that under the heading “Necessity of expedition”, the aforementioned urgent request for expedition states the following:

An urgent expedition is necessary in this instance because of the violations of the applicant's human rights already existing and are likely to be even greater. The right that will be violated is the right to private and family life by the threat to the applicant of being severely assaulted, becoming seriously ill and/or being reduced to begging. This would constitute a threat of irreparable and serious harm. Being reduced to begging is a threat that is imminent given that the applicant’s savings have already been exhausted.

Yours faithfully

Declan Heavey

Enc