Meet the campers fighting a council eviction

“It is completely illogical. It is against humans; the council should be for humans,” says a 36-year-old man giving his name as Magic.

He’s sitting on an old armchair surrounded by an encampment of tents in a quiet, hidden corner of Riverside Park in St Jude’s, just next to the Frome Walkway on the east side of the M32, where he has been a resident for about four months.

The patch of grass is covered in a circle of tents, tables, chairs and even rugs and carpets, a little muddied from the spring.

“The police advised us to move down here because it is a quiet spot. There were like three or four tents. So we came down here and the number of tents increased,” Magic goes on.

Sitting with him around the last embers of a fire are a few more of the camp’s residents (who prefer not to be named), one of their friends, and Richard Lloyd, 45, from Bristol Housing Action Movement, who has launched a crowd-funding bid to raise legal aid to fight the council’s eviction warnings.

It’s a last-resort move for one of the last remaining mini tent villages which began to appear late last year as the city became gripped by it’s biggest homelessness crisis in decades.

The council’s warnings to leave the park also come with a threat to impose a two-year injunction which would force them to leave all council-owned and public spaces within the city of Bristol boundary.

“I’m not leaving the area at the moment. This is where my family is, so if I do stay I’m going to end up in prison if they enforce the injunction,” one of the other camp residents, a 39-year-old former soldier, tells me.

He adds that he came to the camp after returning to Bristol having had a complex total hip replacement at a hospital in the north of England.

“I was here before, my kids were born and bred here, they go to school here. I worked up at the University.

“I lived in Bristol on and off for 20 years, and a lot of the off time I was in the army.

“I moved back and council just said ‘you’ve got no local connections’, so I’m just left in limbo.”

Having a “clear local connection with Bristol” is one of the four key eligibility criteria necessary to receive housing support in Bristol. It requires applicants to have lived in Bristol for six of the last 12 months or three of the last five years, have permanent employment in Bristol, or have a close family connection with a family member who has been a resident in the area for a period of at least five years.

“The problem in Bristol, and the problem most people are facing is the local connection thing,” another one of the men sitting round the circle tells me. The 26-year-old is a friend of the camp residents and currently has a place at a night shelter.

“There are a lot of people who move to Bristol, or have lived in Bristol before, moved away and now they’ve come back. The council is not even interested in helping them at all, because they have no local connections.”

According to Magic, the local community have responded positively to their encampment. “It was nice to make good connections with the local community, we have good connections with everyone – including, cops, PCSOs. Everyone comes here, has a chat with us, shares food.”

“When you speak to Police officers, they are happy with us being here, they have less work. We experience negativity only from the council.”

He adds: “There are no problems with food in Bristol. The Wild Goose provides the homeless people with food. Some local people share food with us. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, some, mostly from islamic communities, they bring us food. Sometimes we eat together.”

The crowdfunding page set up to pay for legal representation is well on it’s way to raising the money required, with £1,223 of the target £1,500 raised already.

Lloyd, who set up the crowdfunding page, says: “We looked at the court papers and the injunction and thought, yeah that’s not right.”

“Fighting the injunction is beyond what people representing themselves in court can usually do. You can’t get legal aid for housing cases, so people just get treated terribly.”

As far as the future for the camp residents goes, Magic hopes that this case, and the press coverage it is receiving, can have a lasting effect on the treatment of homeless people in Bristol.

“I believe in people, that they will stop doing stupid things against each other. It is illogical; since when is being a gypsy illegal?

“I believe that people will wake up from this dream they’re in and realise ‘hey guys, we don’t have to do this to each other’. This is what I want.”

A council spokesman said: “We do not permit camping or sleeping rough in tents within our parks and open spaces.

“However, the council and its partners understand that sometimes tents or temporary shelters are erected by vulnerable individuals in need of help and support.

“The individuals encamped on the land have all been offered the support of St Mungo’s Outreach Team which is commissioned by the Local Authority to provide support to people sleeping rough.

“We work closely with our partners to ensure that those that are homeless are supported to access help and accommodation in the city.

“This support is ongoing but the process of removing the individuals from the land has to begin which is why notices have been served.”

Read more: Life by the side of a road