Thirteenth visit by the police

Last night at 8.20pm we had yet another visit from the Bishopsgate City of London police at the porch we sleep in at night. I suppose that after being visited so many times (we’ve been sleeping in this particular porch since being made rough sleepers on 3 November 2006), we have a knack for it and can take their questioning this way and that way – well, Declan does most of the talking. In the past, we have been questioned twice by two police officers on horses, by a police officer that was mainly concerned about our welfare, by female police officers, etc.

This time, however, it was quite close to Samuel L Jackson’s S.W.A.T. squad (without a Colin Farrell): five police officers came out of a big police van that had just parked across the road and made their way straight for us. Anyway, Declan was drilled with the usual questions, except this time they wanted to know why didn’t we want to return to Ireland. Declan’s answer was that we are European citizens and waiting for relief from the European Court of Human Rights. British police have a bit of a reputation for being institutionally racist – the one that suggested we leave the UK was from the Middle East though – so we are not taking it personally.

You have to be caught begging to be arrested which is why Declan had no trouble informing them that, as a result of The Big Issue not sorting out the problems we are having on our pitches, we are being forced to beg for money (it seems The Sun tabloid newspaper has completely taken over my pitch after 11.00am, which means I can only step in to sell the Big Issue to passers-by between 7.30am and 9.15am – I say 9.15am because after 9.10am the morning rush hour dies and things don’t pick up again until well past midday). Declan did tell them that twice we have had £350 for the deposit The Big Issue requested of Declan to find us a place to live.

I don’t know which is worse: to be hungry or cold. I am quite used now to going to sleep quite hungry and, although it is not something I welcome with open arms, it has given me a sharp edge which I appreciate: I wrote the draft of Declan’s application of 8 September to the European Court and the urgent request for expedition that went with it – as early as 5.00am and sometimes until 11.00pm – and now I am going full-on to see what NAC could do in embryonic stem cell research, for private funding. So I am very much hoping that the cold won’t work against me. There is another reason why I am cold though. On 11 April I was forced to ask the nun in charge of clothes in the Sisters of Mercy-run Dellow Centre for a pair of jeans and really I am not looking forward to asking her again for clothes, this time for the winter. The Methodist Church-run Whitechapel Mission didn’t give me much either and it’s of course rather unsurprising that on 18 June we were barred from its premises, albeit because the minister’s wife was concerned about our safety.

Back to embryonic stem cell research, there was an article yesterday in The Guardian stating that according to the new head of the Medical Research Council, the UK is in danger of losing its leading position in stem cell research if the next US president relaxes federal restrictions on funding imposed by President Bush. Apparently Bush's policy on embryonic stem cell research looks unlikely to survive long after his political demise because the leading Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were both involved in trying to steer a bill liberalising stem cell research through the senate this year and Republican candidates John McCain and Rudolph Giuliani are both in favour – although in Mr Giuliani's case with reservations. One of the principal arguments of those who oppose the research is that life begins at conception, and, in effect, any embryonic cell is sacred.

The science is very complex, but the bottom line is that embryonic stem cells are what is called "pluripotent" – in that they can potentially be tweaked to form any cell structure in the human body from lung tissue to epidermal tissue or heart muscles. Adult stem cells can (mostly) only reproduce their existing form.

In Australia, the legislation – the Research Involving Human Embryos and Prohibition of Human Cloning Amendment Bill – is due to be debated within weeks, with the sitting beginning on October 9. Meanwhile, the Australian Christian Lobby – trenchantly opposed to the Bill – has directly lobbied all but a handful of state MPs.

In July 2006, the European Union agreed to allow funding for human embryonic stem cell experiments after member states compromised on the way the research is financed – Germany, which had led opposition, agreed to the compromise after a five-and-a-half hour debate while Poland, Austria, Slovakia, Lithuania and Malta maintained their rejection but lacked the votes to block it. The compromise will prevent scientists using EU cash to extract stem cells from human embryos, although they will be able to work on new embryonic cells from national and other sources.

On 22 December 2006 the Secretary General of the Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Community (COMECE) stated: “We continue to insist that the EU should concentrate its joint research efforts on research areas which do not violate deeply held convictions about the inviolability of human life. We are at a loss to understand why the European institutions insisted on allowing EU-funding for very contentious research involving the instrumentalisation of human embryos. We recall our fundamental ethical and anthropological concern regarding the pursuit of such research.”

Perhaps the final word, though, belongs to Michael O'Neill, a 21-year-old Business and Health Science student at the Queensland University of Technology suffering from cystic fibrosis, who says that those who oppose this new frontier of research "don't understand what's involved, they are not the ones sitting here in this hospital bed".

Full-time begging

Since last week my pitch has been taken over after 11.00am by a vendor of the tabloid The Sun – The Sun is owned by News International of Rupert Murdoch’s New York-based News Corporation. This distributor can plant himself, and his big patio umbrella, anywhere along the road to sell his paper but no, he is very particular about transacting his business from my spot (as a vendor of The Big Issue, I have a registered pitch in my name and can’t go anywhere I please like this lucky vendor). Declan’s pitch was also taken over by another of Murdoch’s newspapers, the free The London Paper on 30 July. The next day Declan complained to the editor-in-chief of The London Paper and sent a copy of this letter to the chief executive of News International and to Murdoch himself, having been told by the Big Issue outreach manager to phone The London Paper and/or the agency that recruits its distributors.

The issue of us not being able to stand in on our pitches to make some money selling The Big Issue – to be able to more or less survive this autumn and winter – has also been raised in Declan’s urgent application to the European Court of Human Rights of 8 September under the heading “Background of request”:

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).

As I have already written in this blog, 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. (Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon was a Prefet de Police under General de Gaulle until 1968, and a Budget Minister to President Valery Giscard d'Estaing in the 1970s. But in 1981 his war crimes caught up with him when hundreds of documents were found by accident in the recesses of a town hall. He was convicted in April 1998 for having signed orders for the deportation of 1,690 Jews between 1942 and 1944 – most went on to concentration camps such as Auschwitz and all but a handful died. The Court ruled that French courts failed to give fair treatment to Papon after his 1998 conviction, and he was awarded 29,192 euros in legal costs.)

The European Court must feel that Declan’s case is not as pressing as Papon’s had been. Or maybe it is paragraph 3 of his application to the Court, which declares: “In September 2003 the applicant and his wife moved from Dublin to Birmingham, England, where they were self-employed until July 2005. They attempted to set up an international secular humanist organisation called NAC (Network of those Abused by Church), for which the applicant’s wife developed a website at www.nac1.bravehost.com. While self-employed, they covered their expenses with savings of £44,000, the remnants of the applicant’s late father’s will.” Hasn’t a 2006 survey conducted by the University of Minnesota concluded that "Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in ‘sharing their vision of American society’”? Researchers go on: “Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry."

Back to my pitch. Declan sent yet another email on 17 September to the chairman of News International, Les Hinton, to absolutely no effect. There isn’t much more we can do, having been told by John Bird, the founder and editor-in-chief of The Big Issue, in a letter of 10 September, to more or less stop bothering him:

Dear Mr Heavey

I have employed many people over the years to do jobs related to the running of the Big Issue. I have never employed them to do my job; likewise I do not do their job.

Please bear this in mind when you are composing your letters. You do not need to address your letters to me, as it is not my job. I would only get involved if you were utterly and totally let down by those whose job it is in the Big Issue.

I hope this assist in your deliberations in pursuit of your claims.

Yours sincerely,

John Bird
The Big Issue
Founder and Editor-In-Chief

It will come to a stage when both our pitches at Liverpool Street Station will be completely taken over and I will have no option but to beg full time. (Begging is a recordable offence, and the courts may issue community sentences for those convicted a fourth time for begging. This may include community penalties for drug, alcohol and mental health treatment. Throughout the UK authorities have resorted to Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs), public order offences and civil injunctions as a means of dealing with begging.) Apparently there are plenty of homeless that have been selling The Big Issue for years – but that privilege doesn’t seem to apply to us.

Anyway, this morning when we were in Liverpool Street Station, getting ready to go to our pitches, a police officer came along and stood beside us as he eyed the floor below – where we beg. I think in fact the City of London police may now be considering having Declan hauled before the courts, so from now on it will be me the one doing the begging for the both of us. I may as well because it is now too cold to stand out on my pitch: between 7.30am and 8.30am this morning I sold no Big Issues at all and was the only one wearing a simple long sleeve shirt. I am, of course, looking at a prison cell pending a court hearing (as threatened on 13 September), but other than jump into the Thames I don’t see what else we can do.

In the October issue of Geographical, the official magazine of the Royal Geographical Society, there is a small article on a July 2006 report authored by Professor John Guillebaud, a leading authority on family planning and co-chairman of the Optimum Population Trust. The Youthquake report says that humanity is outstripping the biological capacity of the Earth by a quarter each year, and cites climate change and food shortages as consequences of a high global population and rising consumption levels. It claims that by 2050, when the world’s population is projected to reach 9.2 billion, humans will be using the biocapacity of two Earths. (The Trust suggests that governments – both in the UK and worldwide – should introduce a voluntary two-child limit, pointing to Iran, which halved its birth rate to 2.6 births per women between 1988 and 1996, as an example.) Prof Guillebaud’s concerns have been echoed by Professor Chris Rapley, director of the British Science Museum and former director of the British Antarctic Survey, who has said that solving the Earth's environmental problems means addressing the size of its human population. Writing for the BBC News website, he says population is the "Cinderella" issue of the environmental movement. "Unless and until this changes," he writes, "summits such as [the December 2005 Montreal Summit on the control of carbon emissions "Beyond Kyoto"] in Montreal which address only part of the problem will be limited to at best very modest success, with the welfare and quality of life of future generations the ineluctable casualty."

You would reckon that for once the pro-family organisations, which continue to place obstacles in the way of women who want to control their fertility, would shout up since you don’t have to be a brain surgeon to know that the issue of population management must be addressed to deal with the Earth's environmental problems. But no, they are as anti-vocal as ever. The Geographical states that the Youthquake report has come under fire from the World Congress of Families and a few minutes spent in Google lets you see that the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children and Comment on Reproductive Ethics are also doing their best to brush it off. If NAC was up and running it would have a meaningful interview with the author, postcasts, and would try to find scientists that concur with his view; and, of course, I am of the opinion that a photograph speaks a 1000 words, so I would have plenty of them to make the point of the importance of voluntary family planning … NAC would give these Christian organisations a good run around – to be honest, giving these Christian organisations and the Vatican a good run around has been my first and last thought every single day for the last eleven months.