Declan Heavey, Co-Director of NAC

NAC, a non-partisan, non-sectarian progresssive humanist organisation, welcomes people with a wide variety of opinions about religion and politics. It links together individuals and groups from across the globe deeply concerned with the Vatican and the Christian Right’s tireless work to insinuate their values into every aspect of public policy debate at every level of government. NAC takes no stand on matters of theology, but serves as a think-tank to maintain the separation of church and state and the neutrality of governments in the interest of human rights. With the advent of the “War on Terror”, the role of religion in political conflicts has become paramount and NAC, responding to the challenge, has broadened its scope to encompass opposition to fundamentalism and extremism – from birth control to euthanasia – and to question the premises upon which the “war” is based.

NAC is focused on exposing the public to the scientific perspective on crucial issues of public policy, which presupposes the separation of church and state, where public policies are based on secular principles as opposed to religious doctrines. We recognise the separation of morality from religion, which can motivate immoral as well as moral actions, when the nature of morality is properly understood; and we call for the scientific and rational examination of all religions to protect future generations from the ignorance so often fostered by discrimination and abuse disguised as articles of faith.

NAC is funded entirely by donations from individual supporters. Membership is free.

The NAC website, first launched in October 2004, has been removed from the internet on three distinct occasions. (1) In March 2008, the original NAC website was suspended due to a Spamcop report that was drawn up the day after the Home Office denied that a warrant had been issued to intercept NAC communications (see NAC blog of 14 March 2008 SpamCop reports Declan as a spammer). (2) In February 2009, a new NAC website was removed within days without explanation (see blog of 2 February 2009 New NAC website is gone). (3) The new website was re-launched on 4 February 2009, funded by NAC Honorary Associate Dr. James Fetzer, who is Distinguished McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth; on 13 November 2009, Google reported the NAC website an “attack site” from the homepage despite that Google Webmaster Tools for religionandmorality.net were reporting the site clean – two days previously Dr. Fetzer had paid $150 to the site's host, SiteGround, rated the best web hosting company for 2008 and 2009, to clean all the files and to give maximum 99.99% protection to the site (see blog of 13 November 2009 NAC website has been blocked).

As Dr. Fetzer observed at the time, it appears to be the case that, in addition to the harassment of NAC by using warning notices to discourage visitors, there was an attempt on 13-28 November 2009 to give NAC a bad name by deceit and deception (see blog of 2 December 2009 NAC website is back). He remarked: "Something is very wrong here, which involves the abuse of Google for political purposes – a development that should be a source of concern, not just to followers of NAC, but to everyone who believes in the free and open use of the internet in the pursuit of truth and justice. The situation is truly alarming."

Declan and Lola Heavey, the directors of NAC, built this website from the street. Declan, 49, a former physical education teacher from Dublin, and his wife Lola, 44, a former social psychologist from Madrid, came to England in 2003 and for two years attempted to get NAC up and running. They went on benefits in July 2005. On 27 September 2006, the Department for Work and Pensions terminated Declan’s joint claim for Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) because he did not “sign on” two days before he was due to do so on 29 September 2006. He exhausted the appeals process from the street: his case was dismissed by the High Court (Judicial Review), Court of Appeal and European Court of Human Rights in spite of the fact that he was denied the internal appeal process by procedural impropriety on the part of the enforcement authority (see blog of 21 October 2008 European Court of Human Rights declares application inadmissible).

Things got serious on 12 July 2009 when police threatened Declan and Lola with physical removal from the porch they were sleeping in within 24 hours (see blog of 12 July 2009 Police threaten us with physical force at the place we sleep, Salters). The next evening, Dr. Fetzer pulled off the near impossible and found them a roof over their heads (see blog of 26 July 2009 We are interviewed on The Real Deal by Jim Fetzer). Nonetheless, Declan's joint claim JSA was not reinstated until three months later, on 9 October 2009; particularly noteworthy, he and Lola were denied access to food in a day centre for the homeless run by the RC Sisters of Mercy on 19 August 2009 in the full knowledge that Declan's benefits claim still had to be processed (see blog of 2 October 2009 Open Letter to Pope Benedict XVI). Declan and Lola were sleeping rough on the streets of London from 3 November 2006 to 13 July 2009, more than 2 1/2 years.

Despite being people at risk of becoming homeless, Declan and Lola's internet connection in their flat has been cut and for months now their bandwidths in the public libraries they frequent have been “squeezed”, whether they are on a library computer, Lola's laptop or Declan's notebook (see, for example, blog of 14 January 2nd letter to the manager of Highgate Jobcentre). Moreover, Declan was barred on 16 October 2009 from the IT centre at The Connection at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the Church of England's famous church in Trafalgar Square, notwithstanding that the Connection website explains that homeless people, people in temporary accommodation and people at risk of becoming homeless use the IT workspace to get job search support like CV preparation, internet search, etc. (see blog of 11 November 2009 Letter from The Queen).

On 22 October 2007, while still sleeping rough, Declan launched a petition to the United Nations, calling for the establishment of a reasonable timetable for a UN declaration that would draw a distinction between reproductive cloning and somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), sometimes referred to as “therapeutic cloning”, while specifically leaving it to UN member states to decide for themselves on SCNT within a regulation framework. Despite the excessive spamming of Declan's personalised emails, before he and Lola left the street the petition had been signed by 591 scientists and academics, who include recognised authorities from the world’s leading universities and research institutes, as well as 24 Nobel Laureates.

For a brief background on Declan, including his complaint of medical malpractice against the RC Hospitaller Order of St. John of God upon which the founding of NAC initially was based, visit NAC blog of 20 September 2007 Issues raised in the JREF Forum.

Page last updated: 14/1/10