During his 20 years in the RAF, he rose to the rank of squadron leader, was an expert in air defence missiles and worked on what he calls ‘Nato Afghanistan intelligence-type operations’.
So Tony Nelson, 52, who’s now a design engineer for the latest Navy vessels, sounds like just the sort of man you’d want on your side in a sticky situation.
Which is good news for the residents of Bristol fighting to protect the city’s picturesque Downs from an invasion of van dwellers who, they say, are turning the beauty spot into a rubbish-strewn ‘no-go zone’, treating it as a latrine and defiling it with anti-social behaviour.
The numbers of people living in vans and caravans in Bristol – where figures from the Office for National Statistics show the average monthly private rent is £1,746 compared to £1,339 across the UK as a whole – have grown with the city’s housing crisis and spiralled after the Covid pandemic.
There were an estimated 150 vans or caravans being lived in on the roads of Bristol in 2019, but now the council estimates there are between 640 and 680.
More than 130 of those are thought to be parked on roads that criss-cross The Downs, with many of them showing up only in recent months to make it one of the largest van-dwelling sites in the country.
Amid mounting tensions and sometimes inflammatory scenes, Mr Nelson, leader of the Protect The Downs campaign group since it was formed three months ago, has kept a cool head, articulating residents’ frustration at Bristol City Council’s historic inaction over the long-running issue and, what some argue, was its ineptitude when it was Labour-run.
Using the military slang ‘voluntold’ – when someone is pressured into taking up a ‘voluntary’ position – he says he was chosen to head the campaign by residents after helping restore order at a heated public meeting about the issue. While 450 people living around The Downs packed into St Alban’s Church in March, there was anger among the 150 more who couldn’t get in because it was full – and it was Mr Nelson who helped to calm passions.
The van dwellers are a highly emotive subject as The Downs, secured as a place of recreation for the people of Bristol to enjoy by an Act of Parliament in 1861, are hugely beloved of the city’s residents, be they dog walkers, runners, footballers or people simply looking for a place to relax and clear their heads in the open air. Indeed, the 442 acres of grassland – made up of Durdham Down and Clifton Down and stretching from the cliffs of the Avon Gorge to the edges of the affluent Victorian-built suburbs of Clifton and Redland – has long been dubbed Bristol’s ‘green lung’.
The campaign group’s Facebook page has around 2,000 members and its online petition – calling on the council, now largely Green- controlled since the May 2024 local elections, to ‘remove van dwelling encampments from The Downs before more irreversible damage is done’ – has been signed by more than 7,760 people from 44 different countries.
The petition, started by Mr Nelson, argues that the council’s ‘permissiveness’ is ‘not only worsening conditions on The Downs but attracting more van dwellers from across the UK to the city, not just The Downs’.
One comment on it, from a life-long Bristol resident in her 70s, reads: ‘As a child we had picnics, played games and flew our kites… I want The Downs to be available for all the generations that follow me without the eyesore it is today.’ Another says: ‘I have seen people using The Downs as a toilet, taking drugs, been threatened while walking past a van, my partner has been flashed by someone urinating against a tree from a caravan.
‘This is supposed to be one of Bristol’s top places to visit. The council are just letting people treat it as a toilet.’
Residents claim there is also ‘slum-letting’ of caravans – the renting out of vehicles that don’t meet regulatory standards – drug-dealing and soliciting.
Avon and Somerset Police say they are aware of public concerns relating to antisocial behaviour and have urged members of the public to report crimes to them ‘ideally while they are taking place’ so they can take ‘robust’ action and secure evidence.
There was a vivid illustration of how febrile the atmosphere has become, earlier this month. While Mr Nelson was being interviewed by a BBC TV news crew, a man living in a van stormed up, shouted at him and accused Protect The Downs of spreading ‘hate and violence’ against van dwellers and said the two sides were ‘well past talking to each other’ before striking the camera.
Then on June 12, around 300 members of the Protect The Downs group held a protest walk on the affected area, after posting online that the land, ‘once the jewel of Bristol’, was ‘being usurped by individuals taking public parkland for themselves’.
Mr Nelson, who lives near The Downs, says his group is not targeting van dwellers and that its aims include ‘trying to find the people who are truly vulnerable [the homeless among them] so we can get them the help they need’.
He told the Mail this week that a van dweller had posted comments online before the walk including the inflammatory line, ‘let’s bring back rioting’, and he had been concerned that things could turn nasty. ‘But the police were here and I tried to reach out to the van dwellers, saying we wanted them at the walk so we could hear their side and have an adult conversation,’ he says.
‘Going for a walk resolves so many things. It’s the old British culture of have a cup of tea and a chat. If you bring people together and look each other in the eye you get a very different conversation.
‘The walk was successful in terms of calming everybody down, allowing everyone to express their views and be heard, keeping the conversations reasonable and remembering what the group is here for – to get to the bottom of why nothing has been done about the van dwellers for years.’ When the Mail last week visited Parrys Lane, which cuts across the north of The Downs and where a string of caravans and mobile homes line the roadside, we found people living there for various reasons: some with jobs who say they cannot afford the city’s sky-high private rents; some desperate homeless folk who appear to have no choice other than to live in ramshackle vehicles; and travellers who have chosen to live a ‘nomadic’ lifestyle.
Daniel, 30, who says he has a degree in town and country planning from the University of the West of England, has lived in a van for a year and works in a call centre. He argues that the ‘conflict is getting blown up online’.
‘There’s always somewhere else to go in Bristol,’ he adds. ‘If the council did kick us off The Downs we’d find somewhere.’ A woman, also 30, who did not want to be named, says she’s lived in a van for two years after renting privately and works as a cleaner.
‘I can’t afford to rent anywhere – the rent is ridiculous,’ she says. ‘If there were legal pitches with loos and water and you could pay a fee to be on them, a lot of people would do that for security.’
A little further down the road, a man in his 40s, who also did not want to be named, says he used to be a tree surgeon. He tells a harrowing story of how he’s been living in a ramshackle caravan for four years after having a ‘very hard life’ and ending up homeless.
‘I’m not a criminal, I’m not abusive, I want to be around people because it’s nice to be able to talk to people occasionally,’ he says, explaining that he suffers from PTSD among other medical conditions. ‘I’m not the problem, I’m not dumping litter,’ he adds pointing to the Waitrose trolley in which he puts his bags of rubbish to stop them blowing away. Distrustful of authority, he wonders what would happen to him and where he would go if he was ordered to leave.
‘I’ve hit rock bottom and this is where I am until some miracle happens,’ he says.
Then there was Jacob, 30, who spoke as his Staffordshire terrier, Sergeant, chewed on a stick. ‘I’ve been a traveller my whole life and we’ve always dealt with discrimination,’ he says.
‘I work – I’m a landscape gardener and I don’t want to hurt, bother or antagonise anyone.
‘I understand Protect The Downs are proud of their city and its green spaces. It’s a battle. I don’t want to fight them, but it’s going that way. Some of the stuff they’re saying online is hate crime in my opinion. They’re tarring everyone with the same brush. They’ll say anything they can to get us moved on.’
As a few joggers and dog walkers passed by on the sunny Tuesday afternoon, another young male van dweller was sitting on a wooden armchair in the shade of one of the horse chestnut trees that line the road. ‘We get blamed for everything,’ he says. ‘The council should give us bins. I live here and I want to keep it clean.’
Some of the caravans have broken windows, crudely covered with masking tape or wood. One is painted in a camouflage pattern. As early evening approached, another van dweller sitting in the sun flashed a ‘peace’ V-sign.
A middle-aged woman who lives nearby and is out walking her dog says she has some sympathy for the van dwellers: ‘I can see both sides. There’s some live in them because the housing in the city’s too expensive.
‘But some of them defecate in the bushes and they litter. It’s a health and safety issue for them and us. Residents are going to get fed up with it and I think there’s potential for trouble.’
The council last week successfully applied for an injunction that could help them move van dwellers – but only if they are parked on grassed areas of The Downs.
Barry Parsons, chairman of the homes and housing delivery committee, has also said the council is working on longer term solutions including making about 250 spaces available on so-called ‘meanwhile sites’.
These are temporary sites set up on land due to be developed, which have access to toilets and running water. It is also hoping to establish a permanent site where it can help people with their health and getting access to
housing. Tony Nelson says he is pleased with the progress his campaign group has made in a relatively short time, but admits there is still a long way to go.
‘People come to enjoy The Downs from all over Bristol. There are a lot of people now saying they’re too scared to come. You’re walking past a lot of very threatening caravans and if you’re a lone female or an elderly person that’s scary.
‘The perception within the community is that 100-plus van dwellers are being prioritised over 30,000 local residents. From the conversations I’ve been having with the current council administration, it seems they are trying to turn this ship around but it’ll take a long time and it’s not easy.
‘It’s very easy for areas like this to become a slum if you don’t act and I think Bristol has become a bit of a soft target. How long would anyone last in a caravan in [London’s] Hyde Park?’
Does he have a message for van dwellers? ‘To those who say it’s their right to live a nomadic life, have some dignity in the way you behave – and remember it’s our right to have access to a lovely, clean park.’