The funeral of one of Parliament's most faithful attendees is being held on Wednesday. Almost every day for the past 35 years he could be seen dressed in a morning suit in the central lobby of the House of Commons.

Robert Andrews, who died on Christmas Day aged 76, was not a member of parliament, but an eccentric and much-loved homeless man. He was well known and liked by security, police and politicians alike.

His funeral is being held on Wednesday at St Martin in the Fields on Trafalgar Square and many politicians are expected to attend.

"He was a great character but he became very confused in his later years," said the Labour MP Tony Benn, who will speak at the service.

The central lobby at Westminster is where the public can meet their MPs

Mr Andrews would arrive nearly every day at the central lobby, the place in Parliament where the public can go to meet their MPs.

"He said he was writing a petition to the Queen about some electronic developments, and a defence plan that she needed to implement that had to be kept secret from the Russians," Mr Benn told the BBC.

"His defence treatise took four to five hours to recite, but he knew it all by heart," said Reverend Nick Holton of St Martin in the Fields.

Past times

Like one in four of the single homeless, Mr Andrews was an ex-serviceman. After the Second World War he went to Pakistan, where he married and worked as a lecturer in electronics for the Pakistani air-force.

When his marriage broke up he came back to Britain with his three children, and became obsessed with petitioning the Queen. He claimed that he was owed large amounts of compensation for damage done to him after the war when, he said, the secret service had bugged his house.

Mr Andrews was eventually evicted from his home, near Westminster, and his children were taken away. He began sleeping rough, first on The Embankment, and then in a doorway on The Strand.

A man with a purpose

But he never lost his dignity. Before going to the House of Commons he would wash and shave at the church and attend the 8am service.

"Unlike many of the homeless, he used to really join in the service, and stand up and sing the hymns," said Roger Shaljean, director of the social care unit at St Martin in the Fields from which Mr Andrews ran his campaigns.

The Reverend Nick Holton, who is taking the funeral service, remembers him as a "generous and lovely man", who was somewhat paranoid, amazingly obsessional, and who stubbornly resisted any kind of institutionalization

"He'd usually stay on in the church, often sleeping in one of the pews," he said.

On his way back from Parliament he would often call in at the social care unit.

"He would turn up with a portable type-writer which he would use to write up his campaigns," said Mr Shaljean.

"He was a very stooped person, and one always felt it was because he used to carry so much around with him in his bag."

For years Mr Andrews lived without any kind of state benefit. He told staff at St Martins that he chose to live on the streets rather than compromise his position, or put his claim for compensation from the government in jeopardy.

The end of the fight

Tony Benn will speak at Mr Andrews' funeral

Last year Tony Benn, who took an interest in his welfare, tried to get Mr Andrews a pension.

"We finally got him into a hostel in Lambeth last year, but I don't think he was very happy there," Mr Benn said.

Mr Andrews' health had began to weaken in the last few years of his life, but he still refused help.

Jeremy Swain from the homeless charity Thames Outreach, which eventually provided a home for Mr Andrews, first met him in 1984.

"We used to offer him shelter, but he didn't want it, and there are only so many times you can offer without being patronizing and humiliating," he said.

Eventually Mr Andrews was sectioned, and held in a closed psychiatric unit.

"It was really a device to help him move into hospital, rather than because he was a danger to himself or society," said Reverend Holton.

Even when he was based in the hospital, Mr Andrews continued to make his daily pilgrimage to Westminster when the section was lifted.

He died of a heart-attack on December 25, 1997, after having attended the morning service as usual, and then eaten Christmas dinner at the social care unit.

Reverend Holton said Mr Andrews was a very difficult man to understand without appreciating his refusal to be incorporated into any state system: "His life was very fragmented. During the service I'll invite people to put flowers in a vase, one by one, and so gather the fragments of his life."
 

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