In St Peter’s Square, the fight against homelessness becomes a fight against the homeless

A little after 6:30am yesterday, removal vans pulled into St Peter’s Square. Rain was falling so hard it looked like the ground was sizzling. Bailiffs dressed in black and wearing body cameras stepped tentatively around the tents; you could see people moving inside them.

Over the last year, the encampment of red tents on St Peter’s Square has been a source of debate in the city. It was set up as a protest against the war in Gaza last March, with a mix of activists and homeless people living there. The activists eventually left, and more recently the camp has been made up mostly of homeless refugees who have the right to remain in the UK, according to Manchester City Council. 

The debate over the encampment has been between those who say the men living there have turned down accommodation from the council and should be cleared from a public square, and those who say the council hasn’t done enough to help them, and that just moving them along won’t solve the problem.

But differences of opinion are still just words. The actions that have followed — described by the MEN as a “dawn crackdown” — were rather more bleak.

The main bailiff, tall with hair slicked back by the rain, leant into one of the tents where a man was just rousing from sleep. “Good morning sir, here is a bag for your belongings. Anything that is left will go in the bin. Here is some information on where you can go for assistance. Thank you, yep, no worries, I’ll be back shortly.”

Activists, who would only describe themselves as members of the public acting in solidarity with the homeless, trailed the bailiffs and attempted to appeal to their humanity. “Don’t you see these people have nowhere to go?” One woman, in a green jumpsuit and wearing love-heart sunglasses, asked before turning to a police officer to ask him the same. 

“I’m impartial,” the officer replied. “I’m here to stop any breach of the peace.”

“No, you’re not impartial,” the woman said.

“No, I’m impartial here, thank you very much.”

Bailiffs continued to wake up the men in the tents. A small huddle formed as they tried to plead, via translators, and ask where they were meant to go. They were handed the same document, and told they needed to gather their things. “Sirs,” the bailiff said, “I suggest you start packing your belongings away”. Some took the bags, tore them open, and used them as hoods to shield against the rain. 

Two other homeless men, not part of the encampment, walked by. They were jubilant to see that the tents were being cleared. “We weren’t allowed here,” one, named Scott, shouted — presumably talking about when the tents were cleared from under the porticoes last summer. Then he said: “these n****** have been here for months.” The second homeless man asked Scott to hurry up, because he didn’t want to get nicked. The police didn’t do anything either way. 

The huddle around the bailiff continued growing: “I sympathise with you, sirs,” the bailiff said politely. “But a high court writ has ruled you can’t be here.”

A fortnight ago, Manchester City Council was granted a possession order over St Peter’s Square by the high court, which meant it could evict the encampment. The request was filed before Christmas, and in January a judge decided the council had not supplied the claim’s paperwork to the defendants, i.e. those living in the tents. The council put up the documents in five languages on the fencing behind the encampment that same month, and this persuaded the judge to grant the order. 

The Greater Manchester Law Centre (GMLC) represented 18 of the refugees living on the square, 15 of which were offered accommodation. The GMLC said, based on conversations with the refugees, that the council had not fulfilled its duty to them. Some said they were not offered accommodation by the council or by supporting services, although the council has said in multiple statements that it has offered support to those living in the encampment. 

Some 40 unrepresented refugees attended the possession order hearing earlier this month, with one telling the court: “It’s not something we chose or have the option [to do], so everyone is going through hell.” In the past few years, there has been a steep rise in the number of homeless refugee households. This was driven by the Home Office giving those granted asylum less time to find suitable accommodation outside of asylum seeker hotels and accommodation.

This may have contributed to the number of refugees living on St Peter’s Square. One Sudanese man pseudonymised as Mohammed told the refugee charity RAPAR that he was made homeless in Blackburn when he was dispersed from Home Office accommodation last September, then came to Manchester and has lived in a tent for the past two months. 

Charity bosses I spoke to last year said that some of the people living in tents have been offered accommodation and ended up back at the encampment because they feel safer there. “There are people that might have been accommodated, but in another area where they don’t feel safe. So they’re coming here (St Peter’s Square) where they feel that there’s a sense of community.”

The possession order was sought despite the fact that there is already a Public Space Protection Order in place in the city centre, which prohibits setting up tents. But as one insider told me last October “we’re not going to remove them forcibly, we don’t even want to go there.” That said, even if the council did want to go there the PSPO does not enable a blanket ban of tents — it can apply to individual cases that pose a health and safety risk, and can only request that a person move their tent, not order them. Plus, the punishment for breaching the PSPO is a fine, and the council has already decided it will not fine homeless people. But the possession order also made for better optics. After all, it wasn’t council workers evicting these people, it was bailiffs backed by a court.

Although that didn’t translate to those witnessing the eviction. “That’s someone’s home!” A man cried as two Biffa workers — bin collectors — picked up the first tent. It sagged with the weight of the belongings inside as they placed it on the back of a van. Other tents were being emptied and the ground was strewn with their contents. There were coats, flip flops, hats, yoga mats, hotdog buns, embroidered throws, sleeping bags, beer cans, tupperwares of fizzy sweets, duvets and piles of cardboard that had been used as insulation. Some moved their tents a few metres away from the porticoes, but were told, again, they had to leave. The possession order covered all of St Peter’s Square.

It began to feel like it was the Biffa workers doing the evicting while the bailiffs watched. They had to handle the activists telling them they were turfing out vulnerable people, and even calling them stupid. “We have to clean this up!” One snapped back, before taking himself to the side to calm down. 

There were moments of miscommunication amongst those in charge of the eviction. At one point, a worker began dragging a tent towards a van that, had the tent entered it, would have shut a steel door over it and crushed it. He was stopped by activists because there was still someone inside.

“You told me it was empty!” He shouted to the bailiff. 

“I thought it was!”

“Fuck!” said the woman in the green jumpsuit when she heard what had happened. “Didn’t anybody film that?”

In a statement yesterday, the council said that “people were given the choice to pack up and take their tents with them. The only tents which were disposed of were ones which had been abandoned.” But we spoke to one man from Eritrea who told us his tent and personal belongings, including his passport, were thrown on the back of a van. “I said: ‘stop, stop, stop! You’ve got my stuff!’” But he was ignored. Now he’s starting from scratch, looking for a new tent, and facing down rebuilding his life without documents. 

We also caught the end of one conversation between a homeless man and the bailiff in which the homeless man was evidently confused and angry about the situation he was in. The bailiff said to him: “Sir, I don’t have the power to deport you or find you a house. Sir, what I’m trying to explain is, seeing what has happened to other tents, do you want to gather your belongings?” 

“Where am I going?” The man asked. “Move from here? Move me to there? It does not make sense. You insult us, you make us homeless.” 

“You tried,” another bailiff said. The man walked away as his tent was dragged towards the van. 

It isn’t the first time the encampment has been removed from the square, around Remembrance Day and on New Years Eve, the council managed to get the square cleared, only for it to repopulate immediately afterwards. On those occasions, the tents tended to moved over Peter Street and set up beside the Midland Hotel. And, that’s exactly what happened yesterday. Some picked their tents up without even collapsing them and just carried them over the road, outside the demarcated zone the bailiff showed them they couldn’t sleep in. When I asked the council if it found this to be a successful outcome, it said: 

“The possession order was specific to St Peter’s Square — and the issues there — to ensure it was reasonable and proportionate. While those specific issues have now been addressed, we remain clear that such encampments anywhere in the city are not in anyone’s best interests and are not a suitable place from which to access support. We will continue to engage with the people in the tents and monitor the situation.”

Over the road from the new encampment, sat on some cardboard, was Scott — the homeless man who, a few hours earlier, hurled abuse at those living on the square. He stood up and nodded as he counted the tents, there were just shy of 20. Then he shook his head and saw more coming over the road. “It’s all happening now.”