THE campsites of Manchester are about to disappear. The homeless will have to move. 

The nuisance they create now outweighs any value they have as a protest. 

The City Council have released this statement. 

Cllr Nigel Murphy, Executive Member for Neighbourhoods for Manchester City Council, said: "We are pleased that the courts have granted the exclusion order we asked for, which is specifically designed to prevent the recurrence of camps and not targeted at individual rough sleepers.

"The court found in our favour after listening to the evidence we presented about the amount of disruption these camps have caused to residents and businesses, as well as anti-social behaviour including the burning of bonfires, vandalism, street drinking and the intimidation of members of the public. We hope the decision to grant this city centre-wide injunction will put an end to this disruption.

"We will now be working with Greater Manchester Police and court bailiffs to regain possession of the site as soon as possible. Our homeless team will also be visiting the camps - as they have done since the tents first appeared on Albert Square back in April - to offer support, guidance and accommodation to anyone who requires it."  

.Protest outside Civil Justice Centre

Liam Curtin, artist, attended the hearing at the Civil Justice Centre, and doesn’t share the council’s opinion. He wrote to Confidential saying: “I attended court yesterday to witness the City Council evict the homeless from their tents it has really angered me. When the homeless are evicted from their last shred of shelter, a tent, it fails to solve their problem and the city's. I heard no arguments as to why an injunction against tents in the city centre would help anybody, rather I heard a series of precedents from other councils who had been successful in such matters. 

“The council claim to have offered them alternative hostel accommodation, the vulnerable young people on our streets have declined to accept due to fear of the criminality that exists there, feeling safer on the street. The council claim to have spent over £100,000 in their efforts to move the campers, a figure if more sensitively applied could have gone a long way to providing homes for these people. 

"These people are refugees within their own country, now without even the right to camp. They have been criminalized, facing a two year prison sentence if they break the injunction. Manchester has adopted the same stance as the government, demonise the poor.” 

It’s a tough case this one, a case that polarises opinion as evidenced above. While people naturally feel sympathy for the homeless who are camping in the city, the behavior of some of their number has scarcely encouraged sympathy. Meanwhile after four months of occupation these camps have raised as much awareness of the plight of homeless and the issues surrounding their treatment and housing as they could have done. In which case Confidential thinks it's time they went. The nuisance they create now outweighs any value they have as a protest. 

.St Ann's Square camp