Declan is punched twice in the face

This morning in the Whitechapel Mission Declan was punched twice in the face by a homeless guy, while I was taking a shower. We know this homeless well because his girlfriend gets lavished with good clothes and toiletries by both the Whitechapel Mission and the Dellow Centre – in total contrast to me, I might add.

Declan actually took the two punches with his hands down by his side because he knew that if he defended himself, which he was entitled to do, he could very well have been the one arrested by the police. Neither of us is under any illusion that Declan would not have had one single witness – homeless or staff – going with him. It was only after the second punch that the worker standing by made a move to put a stop to it.

When the police arrived this homeless just took off out of the building, but not before taking off his jacket and leaving it behind him. Are some of these homeless used to running off or what?

Declan is of course pressing charges, just in case he is now perceived as a punch bag for any of the homeless that visit the Whitechapel Mission. So, he has to give the police a statement and the police then take it from there. I don’t think this homeless guy has much to be concerned about though.

PC Stephanie Tann (737 FH), who was supposed to phone Declan in relation to the assault on him in a WLCHC rolling shelter, never bothered getting back to him one way or another. How could the WLCHC find that assault an “accident”, if there were not witnesses and the assailant identified?

With some homeless you just can’t win. If you point out that he has sat in your chair – with your coat hung on the back of it and half your belongings underneath – he takes exception to the tone you have taken with him. When you tell him he can have the chair and you attempt to move your belongings, you get punched.

When Declan complained to the manager of the Whitechapel Mission about how long it took the worker to move in his defence, she told him that staff don’t get involved in fights and that people enter the mission at their own risk … wouldn’t it be anarchy if public institutions operated this policy?

I think the Methodist Whitechapel Mission ought to be informed that they owe a common duty of care to visitors to their establishment. This is to ensure that the visitor will be reasonably safe in the premises for the purposes for which he has been invited or permitted.

Still waiting for a Lord Justice to rule

Well, I have to say that there is nothing I miss from the WLCHC (West London Churches Homeless Concern) rolling shelters: the food was bearably eatable (with the exception of their Monday shelter at the Chelsea Methodist Church); the women’s rooms were of late unheated; homeless were catching scabies off blankets and mats; and the women had to usually share toilets with the men. Then, of course, there were some of the homeless themselves. I wonder if faith-based initiatives can provide anything other than half-baked services.

From now until April, our biggest challenge is going to be the weather - apart from the usual police harassment. It snowed two nights before we had to quit the WLCHC programme on 28 January.

We have bought high quality thermals (top and bottom) for the both of us with money we earned this week selling The Big Issue. Other expenses were two seven-day bus passes (£28), plus food (lunch and dinner, sometimes breakfast). On Friday, the base of my left foot was swollen as result of all the standing around I had been doing. Anyway, if you take out the cold, and people are sauntering, we both enjoy selling The Big Issue.

Covent Garden is where we have been going on weekends – our pitches at Liverpool Street station just die for us on Saturday and Sunday. And up to last weekend we had been getting two pitches in Covent Garden that worked very well for us, while at the same time keeping our bags safe. Not any more. Yesterday, one of the Big Issue coordinators in Covent Garden informed Declan that both pitches are restricted. When Declan asked for two other pitches that have also worked for us, he was informed that one is restricted and someone had just been sent to the other.

Our new pitches turned out to be almost a washout. We didn’t know where to put our bags and passers-by were not buying the magazine. In regard to the bags, the majority of Big Issue vendors – we get on with a number of them, especially in Covent Garden – carry only a small rucksack. The reason is that they are either in temporary accommodation or hostels. But you need benefits for such placement and our claim for unemployment benefit was terminated on 27 September.

On the subject of benefits, Declan lodged his amended appellant’s notice (to include transcript of judgment) in the Civil Appeals Office in the Royal Courts of Justice on 17 January, and still a Lord Justice in the Court of Appeal has to give us the go-ahead to appeal Judge Walker’s decision of 11 December to refuse us permission to apply for a judicial review against the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Funnily enough, when Declan first lodged his application for judicial review on 24 August, he did so with an application for urgent consideration. I don’t know why they bother providing such an application when it can be so easily disregarded.

Our case certainly casts a shadow on the whole idea of the integrity of the Court, especially when the DWP can so blatantly deny us the right to the internal review process prior to irrationally terminating our claim on 27 September (because Declan did not “sign on” two days before he was due to do so on 29 September), and we are still waiting – having been forced to sleep rough – for the Court to rule on permission to appeal.

Nelson Mandela, in his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, writes: “I went from having an idealistic view of the law as a sword of justice to a perception of the law as a tool used by the ruling class to shape society in a way favorable to itself. I never expected justice in court, however much I fought for it, and though I sometimes received it.” I can’t think of anybody more qualified to make such an assessment, so I am happy to go with him.

We are back sleeping rough

Last night at 8.30pm Declan and I left our new Sunday WLCHC (West London Churches Homeless Concern) rolling shelter at Riverside Community Church in Hammersmith, never to return. We are now back to where we were before we started up with the WLCHC rolling winter shelter programme in mid-December, sleeping in the porch in Whitechapel we went into on our first night of homelessness on 3 November.

In a nutshell, the reason why Declan decided we had to pull out was because the threats and intimidation escalated to new heights last night and Declan didn’t believe he was safe spending any more time in a WLCHC venue.

I actually had a bad feeling from the start. In the queue outside the church, the women were invited as usual to go in first by the homeless while on this occasion blocking me out. The coordinator on duty also allowed one of the two Spaniards to enter drunk – in breach of their own rules.

So while Declan is sitting at the dinner table waiting for everyone to get seated, who ends up sitting in the chair next to him but the drunk Spaniard, after the white South African stood up to give him his chair.

Declan had actually to tell the Spaniard to take his hands off him and even a volunteer had to ask him to cool down. To no avail though … the next thing he does is to put his fist to Declan’s face. When Declan asked the volunteer if he saw it, the volunteer tells Declan from a few feet away that he saw the fist close to his face but not actual contact.

It was then Declan decided we had to get out from under the WLCHC – things had evidently got out of control in relation to him. So he came down to the women’s room and told me to pack up everything, and leave.

Before we left Hammersmith we went back to the local police station to keep PC Stephanie Tann (737FH) – who says she will be phoning Declan before the end of the week in relation to the assault on him on 25 January at 3.30am – updated. She wasn’t there, so Declan left a message for her and a photocopy of two police tickets we were issued on 11 November with the address of our porch and the identification of us as rough sleepers. (For the five weeks that we slept in the porch before this rolling winter shelter programme, we were visited on four occassions by the Metropolitan Police.)

Declan presses charges for physical assault

Last night in the WLCHC (West London Churches Homeless Concern) rolling shelter at St Barnabas Church in Kensington we were told by the coordinator on duty that he was satisfied the assault on Declan the night before last was an accident.

This morning – we are woken at 6.00am – Declan and I left the shelter straight away and headed for Hammersmith Police Station to press charges. Declan was given his crime reference number (6002035-07) and told by PC Stephanie Tann (737FH) that the incident had yet to be investigated by her, but that she would telephone Declan before the end of next week.

So the police have now to interview this homeless guy, and I am hoping that all of that takes place in one of the rolling shelters we sleep in at night. Perhaps that would give pause for thought to any homeless emboldened by “the accident”.

This afternoon, Declan emailed the vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton, Nicky Gumbel. Holy Trinity Brompton is an Anglican church in Knightsbridge, of whose Social Transformation programme WLCHC is a part. This is the email:

Subject: Physical Assault

Dear Vicar Gumbel

I refer to my telephone conversation this morning with your PA, Ms Roslyn Dehaan, and wish to reconfirm that I have pressed charges for physical assault on 25 January (3.30am) at the WLCHC rolling shelter at Riverside Community Church in Hammersmith.

Yours sincerely
Declan Heavey

Declan assaulted in WLCHC shelter

Last night Declan left the Wednesday WLCHC (West London Churches Homeless Concern) rolling shelter at Riverside Community Church in Hammersmith at 4.30am, and walked into Hammersmith Police Station to report a physical assault on him by one of the homeless guys he sleeps with. It may not be long now before we find ourselves back in the porch we have been sleeping in since 3 November, despite the winter weather.

I was actually totally unaware of the drama that had taken place because I was in another room and Declan didn’t want the night staff to wake me up. So when lights went on at 6.00am – I had been awake since 5.30am because I could hear the volunteers in the kitchen talking and making noise – I was told Declan had been assaulted during the night and was waiting for me out on the street.

Last week at the Friday WLCHC shelter at the Hall of Remembrance in Chelsea a homeless guy was seriously assaulted by another homeless guy in the queue prior to entry and the police had to be called to the scene. So, I really didn’t know what to expect.

As it turns out, at 3.30am one of the homeless – a black guy in his fifties, whose Lithuanian partner sleeps with me – crossed the hall to where Declan was sleeping and came down with considerable force on Declan’s crotch with a flat hand.

As Declan was telling me while we were waiting outside the gates of the Dellow Centre to do a laundry, he is well accustomed to physical conflict and injury as result of all the sport he has played, but somebody less physical could well have suffered an injury from the force of the assault. Actually that was one of the questions he was asked by the policewoman that took his statement.

What makes this assault all the more shocking is that just before dinner we had been speaking to one of two WLCHC coordinators for over 10 minutes about all the bullying we have been experiencing over the past two weeks, especially Declan, both inside and in the queue to the WLCHC shelters we have been sleeping in. This coordinator told us he would be putting a stop to it and that in future we should bring to his attention any intimidation and/or bullying that occurs.

Anyway, the incident has been reported to the police, as well as all the bullying prior to it, and although Declan didn’t receive a copy of his statement, the policewoman (PC 737FH) said the matter would be investigated by her and that Declan would be phoned with a crime reference number.

The WLCHC night duty staff told Declan that on their part they would be reporting the assault to the director of WLCHC, Michael Athienites. The coordinator we had been talking to actually asked us if we would like to talk with Athienites, as he was at the shelter. Declan didn’t think it was necessary. If only he had known!

Yesterday afternoon Declan and I delivered an envelope to a journalist containing some pages from our NAC website and documents in the case Heavey v Birmingham Erdington Jobcentre Plus and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions: his sealed appellant’s notice of 17 January together with grounds of appeal; order of Mr Justice Walker of 11 December together with transcript of judgment (see blog of 11 December “Judge Walker refuses us permission to apply for judicial review”); and grounds of resistance by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions of 14 September. I keep thinking that this is London, and that surely we can find a competent journalist that can cut an angle for publication. It is not as if NAC is not potentially a very important organisation, not only nationally, but internationally. You only have to have a look at the calibre of the NAC trustees and honorary associates to see it.

Scabies and the WLCHC

The director of the West London Churches Homeless Concern (WLCHC) Michael Athienites has put a message on Declan’s mobile today to the effect that although he is in and out of his office today he is hoping that Declan and he can talk.

Well, that is nice. Declan is going to be able to further inform him that the same scabies sufferer that scratched his back over Declan on Thursday unceremoniously bedded down next to Declan on Saturday night, with 30 seconds to lights out. He is also going to ask Athienites which of the two instructions the WLCHC homeless were given about two weeks ago should we follow in the event we catch the highly communicable mite: burn all our clothes or boil them.

Understandably, we were not overjoyed when we were given either of these two instructions. Declan (while still recovering from his pneumonia) and I spent most of the holiday period in December and early January selling The Big Issue in Covent Garden so that we could buy the clothes that the Dellow Centre and the Whitechapel Mission haven’t provided us with – but provide the rest of the homeless that attend their respective establishments.

Last night in the Sunday rolling centre at Barnes Methodist Church, Station Road, two of the homeless women I sleep with let me have a piece of their mind, although not in actual words. In the middle of the night, I woke up to find that one had moved her chair - and herself - so close to me that I couldn’t stretch my legs without bumping into the chair. The other woman had done a 40 degree right-turn and had her feet right up against my stomach. It just so happened that I had taken precautions before I went to sleep and had left some space between myself and the wall I was sleeping alongside, which I was able to use to move away from the two of them.

Because our savings have been somewhat depleted as result of Declan’s dealings with the Civil Appeals Office in the Royal Courts of Justice (more about that in the next blog), we have been selling The Big Issue at our two pitches outside Liverpool Street station between 7.30am and 9.00am, in addition to the other hours we usually sell it at. We don’t sell much so early, but £8-10 when you are homeless means a lot.

This morning after 9.00am Declan went to the Whitechapel Mission to wash while I went to the Dellow Centre to do a small laundry and have a shower. Things are even worse there than before. I waited for 20 minutes in the queue in the freezing cold and rain, when there was only 11 homeless in front me when I first arrived. I wasn’t able to do a laundry – maybe tomorrow, I was told – and the TV has been covered with a blanket and turned around so that it now faces the wall. I heard a volunteer say to one of the homeless, who was inquiring as to why he couldn’t watch TV anymore, that the management doesn’t want the TV on … management being, of course, the Sisters of Mercy.

It is an indictment, I think, of how little Tower Hamlets Council is doing to improve the conditions for homeless people that we have to queue for so long, in the heart of winter, for the little and erratic services we get from the Dellow Centre.