“I gave the youngest part of my life to the Queen and country, and I’ve been treated like a piece of crap by the government and the Ministry of Defence. The worst thing is when politicians say they are sorry, and they understand what we went through. They don’t understand. They’ve weakened that word, sorry,” he said. “I was so broke that I didn’t buy a bed for this flat until last year. I still don’t have carpets or curtains because I can’t afford them, and I don’t use the heating. I had to sell my computer and my bike. It was really humiliating.”
Williams had never had a British passport. He travelled during his army service in Cyprus, Germany and Belize on a Jamaican passport which he had lost some years earlier ....
.... “They [his then employer] asked me to leave the premises and wouldn’t pay me for the month of work. That was a kick in the nuts,” he said.
When he tried to sort things out with the jobcentre, he was told that “as far as they were concerned, I was a person from another country. They decided I had no right to benefits.” He had a small army pension of £120 a month, but for the first year until he got some support from the council he struggled to juggle council tax, rent and utility bills. He received a series of eviction notices.
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