Victory Against Government's War On Eastern European Homeless

Paul Heron Solicitor, Public Interest Law Unit (personal capacity)

For the past year and a half the Tory government has been waging a war against European Economic Area (EEA) nationals, including locking up those citizens en masse, without charge and indefinitely. Not in the mainstream news? Of course not, those affected were largely from eastern Europe and were homeless.

I became involved in these cases after campaigners and those directly affected contacted me. What became clear is that civil liberties and human rights were thrown out of the window. To make matters worse, a scheme designed by the Home Office to sweep up homeless people was aided by leading homelessness charities.

The Home Office policy designated those European nationals sleeping rough as breaking the law - or rather by sleeping rough they were breaking European laws on the right of workers to free movement.