Ruth Wyner and John Brock

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The Cambridge Two
Nick Cohen's article in the Observer (May 7)

Death of charity

While New Labour locks up care workers, drugs addicts die on the
streets for want of a helping hand

Nick Cohen
Sunday May 7, 2000
The Observer (London)

Louise Casey, the Prime Minister's Homeless Tsarina, told a recent
conference of those working with drug addicts a terrible story which
made a mockery of can-do ministers' orders to produce joined-up
government.

Her Imperial Highness had learned of a Birmingham woman who was so far
gone she was injecting heroin into her groin. The wretched creature
was living on the streets. You didn't need to be a clairvoyant to
realise she wouldn't last long. Casey asked why she hadn't been moved
into a hostel. The rules forbad the housing of addicts, came the
reply.

Just before Christmas, Casey said it was impertinent to blame the
sight of beggars in London doorways on social and economic policy.
Do-gooders were the culprits. The Salvation Army, the Big Issue and
other 'well-meaning people' were encouraging cadgers by giving them
nourishing soups and wrapping them in luxurious sleeping bags. If the
busybodies behaved like honest citizens and wasted their powers
getting and spending without a thought for others, tourists wouldn't
leave with ugly memories and the luckier natives would be far more
comfortable.

Now, in the Midlands, she had found further proof that homelessness
was the fault of those hypocrites who purported to be concerned.
'Where the rules are creating obstacles,' she announced, 'we need to
be breaking the rules.'

She should know that the case of the Cambridge Two - Ruth Wyner and
John Brock - revealed that taking in addicts had become a dangerous
business. The criminalisation of the desperate has been followed by
the criminalisation of those who help the desperate. Wyner and Brock
were given five and four years respectively for permitting the use of
heroin in the Wintercomfort hostel in Cambridge. There was no evidence
that they had stood by while drugs were taken - they had expelled
dealers - but dealing was happening without their permission. To make
matters worse, they protected client confidentiality by not giving the
names of suspects to the police. These failures were enough to bring
them sentences far longer than most smack sellers receive.

The charitable world has been electrified by the punishments for
following Casey's advice to break the rules. Although toughness is an
attitude struck by those who proclaim their familiarity with the 'real
world', in reality a large majority who live rough take solace from
drugs for reasons anyone who can put themselves in their place can
comprehend. The verdict meant volunteer or low-paid staff had to
become police officers. If they found or suspected drug use - a
laborious job, users can be ingeniously furtive - they were meant to
throw the culprits out and call the law. The ejected might well become
more desperate and commit more crimes. They weren't meant to think
about consequences.

Even the advisers of addicts trying to get off drugs, have been
endangered by the verdict. The manager of a Birmingham hostel - no
names, charity is now a quasi-criminal activity - found a young man
who wanted to quit. He booked him a place on a rehabilitation
programme. Because we spend a fortune on the unwinnable war on drugs
and peanuts on relieving its casualties, there was a six-month waiting
list. He wanted to give the addict shelter. But it was clear drugs
would be guzzled until treatment came. Rather than risk arrest, he
abandoned him to wander who knows where and do who knows what.

Elementary public health precautions have been pushed to the fringes
of legality. Officers of Relief, a drugs advice service, have spent
months dashing round the country trying to persuade councils and
voluntary organisations not to remove their 'sharps' - bins for used
syringes. The argument that there had once been bins in Wintercomfort
had been used to prove Wyner and Brock were looking on drug dealing
with an indulgent eye. (Wyner removed the bins in 1997, by the way,
because, as she told Cambridgeshire police, she felt clients might get
the wrong idea. Her precautions did her no good. Many in Cambridge
catch a bad smell from her prosecution as a result, and point to the
vocal protests from well-padded nimbies about the planned building of
a new Wintercomfort hostel as an alternative explanation for the
police's refusal to applaud her co-operation.)

'If the bins go, addicts dump needles in parks, where children can
pick them up, or stuff them down the back of sofas where someone else
can hit them accidentally,' said Kevin Flemen from Relief. If,
however, you try to prevent innocent by-standers being infected, your
bins might be taken as evidence that you worry about residents
shooting up - which, indeed, they are.

The Rev Ian Harker, a drugs' worker at the Manor day centre in central
London, said the most pernicious effect of the Wintercomfort verdict
is that the National Homeless Alliance and others are recommending
with reluctance that hostels abandon 'open door' policies. One of the
many ways in which Wintercomfort was hoist with its own petard was
that the apparently admirable attempt to offer a welcome to those who
had nowhere else to turn was made to sound sinister. The criminal
bastards weren't checking. Dealers were getting in, and they just
didn't care.

Open doors are slamming now. The vicar says the justifiably paranoid
response to the sentences is deterring many from seeking assistance.
The picture painted by the Cambridgeshire police notwithstanding, most
of the homeless aren't monsters from a bourgeois nightmare, but
chaotic people, scared of just about everyone in authority. If they
can slip into a centre quietly, they might find the confidence to
accept help. If they are asked for their name, rank and serial number
at the door, they might run away.

Harker and Release are dealing with the mess of addiction. Their lives
would be a lot simpler if they adopted the crystal dogma of the
political class. By parroting 'Just Say No' they could avoid all kinds
of difficult questions. Is it more sensible to accept that drugs are
being taken and try to coax people off them slowly, than threaten to
call the police? Would it be wiser to abandon American prejudice and
retry the old British system of prescribing heroin and cocaine on the
NHS? It may not be a satisfyingly totalitarian policy, but it would
stop addicts committing huge numbers of burglaries and slow the
accumulation of gangsters' wealth and its corruption of the criminal
justice system. In this instance, only the permissive are tough on
crime.

A neighbour of Wyner and Brock, the Rev Tony Barker, embraced the
American model at the Baptist Jimmy's hostel in Cambridge. He followed
zero tolerance to the letter. The merest hint that a tramp took drugs,
and out he went. Barker was one of the few charity workers to
sympathise with the police. He fell into the degraded Westminster
language of gestures and signals when he said that Wyner and Brock's
deployment of sharp bins - for a while, at any rate - convinced him
they 'weren't sending a clear message against drugs'.

Robin Thacker, a 37-year-old, was expelled from Jimmy's on 11 April
because he was abusive. He took drugs, but not very often. He went to
a park and gave himself a large dose. The shock was too great. He
staggered to the one place he felt would help him - the Wintercomfort
hostel, by a neat coincidence. He dashed for the toilet. The staff
heard moans and retching. The door was forced, but they were too late.
He was dead.

(c) Copyright Guardian Media Group plc. 2000




Maintained by David J.C. MacKay
Last modified Thu Nov 8 18:41:22 GMT 2001