MARTIAL arts clergyman Derek Hailes is relying on more than divine intervention to keep him safe on the streets of Bury.

The 63-year-old parish priest from Bury's Holy Trinity Church plans to use tae kwon do techniques to defend himself after street skirmishes which left him feeling vulnerable.

In addition to having a lobbed half brick narrowly miss him during six years at the Spring Street church, the Reverend Hailes has been pelted with gravel, and threatened on his own doorstep.

He is now one of a pioneering band of clerics set to begin a physical "disengagement technique" course with the clergy and church workers branch of the union Amicus. Father Hailes said: "It's really about giving yourself the chance to beat a hasty retreat from threatening people rather than about flattening them.

"Most clergy have these sort of problems from time to time and you never know when it's going to happen. It could be anywhere.

"Just wandering about wearing a cloak and collar seems to upset some people if they're that way inclined, and it's very difficult to pin down why they do it.

"A lot of the time it is to do with someone knocking on the door and asking for money or food. It can turn nasty if they don't get what they want."

The problem is far more widespread than Bury, said Father Hailes, who was threatened by a man with a climbers' ice axe at a former parish in rural Nottinghamshire. He believes that self-defence should be an essential part of the curriculum at theological colleges.

Father Hailes added: "You never know who's coming to the door and when you go out in the middle of the night you often don't know who you're going to see or why you are going. Hopefully this will help."