| Dear friends,
It is with heavy hearts that we write to announce that our father, the Reverend Paul Nicolson, died peacefully on Thursday 5th March. The deluge of thoughtful messages from his diverse community of colleagues and supporters has been a massive comfort. ‘Bloody-minded', ‘fearless' and ‘a fighter' are some of the common words surfacing from those who knew him. We are deeply proud to call him our Dad.
If you have your own stories of Dad you'd like to share, please comment on TAP's Facebook or tweet them using the hashtag #RevPaul. We would love to hear them. Let's comfort each other with our shared love of this exceptional man.
Dad's rare and singular character brought about a spectacular amount of positive and meaningful change to a vast number of people. We want to honour his magnificent legacy and we know that you will want to do the same. We have set up a GoFundMe fundraising page for the two organisations he established: Taxpayers Against Poverty and Zacchaeus 2000 Trust. Our target is £10,000, which seems a lot; however, if all of his Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn followers gave just £1 each, we could more than double that.
Many will be aware of the protest our father made outside Church House just last month. In solidarity with our street-homeless comrades, Dad sat in the cold for hours and begged for money to compel the governing body of the Church of England to make better use of its own land in tackling homelessness. On the day he was taken ill, Dad was planning to do the same outside Number 10, to bring attention to Taxpayers Against Poverty's Elimination of Homelessness Bill.
At the launch event for the Bill in December, he said: “If you can save the banks through quantitative easing, you can save the homeless through quantitative easing”. We wholeheartedly agree and, therefore, with your help, we intend to fulfil this idea by organising a mass begging protest later this year to serve as an active and living memorial to his name.
In the meantime, Dad's funeral will be at his local church, St Paul's, in Tottenham. We want everyone who wishes to say farewell to be able to do so and we shall announce details shortly.
He requested that no flowers be bought. Instead, please support his great work by donating to eliminate homelessness and aid the most vulnerable here: GoFundMe.
Paul's caring and campaigning work will go on, and we will update you soon in that regard.
Thank you for your love and support,
Krissie, Claire, Tom, Hugo and Rod
Taxpayers Against Poverty
Taxpayers Against Poverty's Elimination of Homelessness Bill
Zacchaeus 2000 Trust
https://www.gofundme.com/f/rev-paul-nicolson-legacy-fund |
Bless Him – what a star, and what an inspiration. He makes me question what my contribution to all this is and rightly so.
Paul was an amazing man
The term gentle giant could have been made for him
But he was also tireless
And fuelled with a righteous – and spiritually driven – anger that endeared him to me – and maybe vice versa, I hope
An in all it he was genuinely humble but unafraid to seek publicity for a cause – if necessary with his dog collar
Pilgrim we can all ‘always do more’. But as long as we do something, it can make a difference. Also we can support and encourage those who do worthwhile things.
I came across Paul Nicholson through his letters to the Guardian: I always enjoyed them as well as being in agreement with whatever he wrote. He will be sadly missed and I for one will miss him: there are too few of his ilk in this world.
I agree