Tension as Dale Farm awaits the bailiffs

With little more than a week to go before evictions are due to begin from an Irish Travellers’ camp near Basildon in Essex, there is no sign of compromise, but there are fears of trouble

THEIR FIRST day of a new term completed, Traveller children in fresh uniforms emerge from the school bus outside Dale Farm, then skip away for an afternoon’s play. It is a rare sign of normality inside the camp.

Evictions ordered by Basildon Borough Council, which would clear more than half of the halting site six kilometres from the Essex town, are due to begin on September 19th. If they go ahead, they will be the culmination of a 10-year legal battle.

Dale Farm is actually two sites: a legal plot with 34 pitches, more properly known as Oak Lane, that has existed since the early 1990s; and, right alongside, two hectares of land, including what was once a scrapyard, comprising 51 pitches and housing up to 240 people.

Both sites are owned by the Travellers, but the second plot, though far from scenic, is part of Essex’s green belt and thus is legally protected from development. Such protection extends to the tarmac used by Travellers for hardstands and roads, one of which is known as Beauty Drive.

Enforcement orders were first issued in 2001, leading to a seemingly endless series of court cases in the years since. So far the case has cost the British taxpayer £2 million (€2.3 million) in legal aid for the Travellers, not to mention the council’s own legal costs.

In 2009 the high court in London ruled that the evictions were unlawful, but this decision was overturned by the court of appeal. The Travellers’ last legal stand ended in failure before Mr Justice Kenneth Parker 10 days ago.

Undoubtedly the majority of Basildon’s settled population backs the evictions, particularly the farther one goes up the narrow lane to Dale Farm, where there is rarely room for a car to pass. Increasingly, though, locals are fretting about the dangers inherent in a forcible removal.

But there is support for the Travellers, too, especially from local Catholic and Anglican priests and the Jewish rabbi, along with some of their congregations and others who have traded with them over the years.

Sitting at his kitchen table in his home next to Our Lady of Good Counsel Catholic Church in Wickford, Fr Dan Mason says he fears violence, particularly in response to the actions of the bailiffs, Constant Co. “An eviction last year at Hoefield nearby did go off peacefully, but it was a much smaller number and they were prepared to move.”

Mason acknowledges that his support for the Travellers is not universally backed in his own pews. “Basildon council just want the Dale Farm people out of the area and wash their hands of them,” he says. “This isn’t good enough. These are human beings.”

In Basildon Market, trader James Ellis, sheltering from the rain at his cosmetic stand, says: “They are really nice people. I don’t have any problem with them. They’re polite. They’ve been here for 10 years. It doesn’t harm anyone.”

Nearby, a fellow trader, unwilling to be named, says she used to write out cards for illiterate Travellers who bought from her stand. “Local people have different opinions about them, that’s true, but you won’t find anyone in the market having a problem with them.“

Smoking a cigarette during a mid-morning break, a man, again unwilling to be named, lists the downsides to eviction: an £18 million (€20.7 million) bill, the possibility of violence, the guarantee of bad publicity for the town. “There’s need for a compromise,” he says.

The Basildon Echo, however, records the visceral dislike some of its readers have of Travellers. "I'm just so bored with the whole saga, which has dragged on for 10 years and made this county look a complete laughing stock," writes one, who goes on to claim that lawyers and "misguided human-rights people" have run "rings round us all" for a decade. "It shouldn't be the responsibility of Essex to house or provide sites for these people. They should go home to Ireland."

So far, most, but not all, of the Travellers have been offered accommodation elsewhere in the borough, even though the council already has 3,000 families on its housing waiting list. The offers have been rejected as culturally insensitive.

In a pristine sittingroom in a mobile home, a great-grandmother, Mary Anne McCarthy, says that the Travellers’ refusal to take “bricks and mortar” offers will not change.

“I was offered a small house with a bed, but I couldn’t live like that, away from my family,” she says. “We would all be frightened. The way that we are being treated is just like the way the blacks were years ago. The black people got some rights since, but they had to fight for it. Travellers don’t fight for it – that’s our problem.”

But the events at Dale Farm could affect others who have never lived there. Tracey Newman is to be evicted along with her sick 23-year-old daughter, Kirsty, who has a mental age of eight and a serious heart condition, from homeless accommodation in Laindon.

“They are clearing it out for the Travellers. I don’t have any issue with them, but we are being offered accommodation that isn’t suitable for my daughter. The whole place has been like a ghost town for the last month as it emptied out,” she says as she gathers signatures for a petition outside Argos.

Officially the accommodation is being closed for refurbishment, but Basildon council does not answer directly when asked whether it will be used for emergency housing for the Dale Farm Travellers if necessary.

Relations between the Traveller leaders, including Candy Sheridan of the Gypsy Council, and Basildon council have never been good, but they went into a tailspin this week after the date for the eviction was leaked to the Basildon Echo, along with a story that the Travellers had demanded £6 million (€6.9 million) to quit Dale Farm. Sheridan insists she was given a guarantee that she would be told the news first, so that she would have the chance to tell an increasingly anxious camp.

Basildon’s Conservative council leader, Tony Ball, accepts that a guarantee was given to Sheridan, but insists that the council had nothing to do with the leak. He accuses the Travellers of seeking causes for grievance. However, the Echo’s story that the Travellers had sought £6 million has done much to stir up anger among local settled people.

Richard Sheridan, the president of the Gypsy Council, claims that the local newspaper is pursuing an agenda against the Travellers. The £6 million figure was mentioned, he accepts, though so too was another amount, of £2 million. Either way, he argues that the figures were not “compo to quit” but part of a negotiation to sell the Travellers’ land, so that they could buy a new site elsewhere in the borough.

Clearly losing patience with criticism of him, Ball claims that Basildon is not being treated fairly. He argues that, with more than 100 legal pitches, it has done far more than most councils for Travellers. The Travellers, meanwhile, point out that they paid for more than 80 of these pitches.

THE SEEDS FORthe Dale Farm conflict were sown, perhaps, in 1994, when the Conservatives under John Major repealed a clause in the Caravan Sites Act, 1968, which had obliged councils to provide halting sites. Instead, councils were to help Travellers locate and buy land, which would then be given planning permission. In the years that followed, Travellers did buy, but opposition from the settled community meant that planning permission was harder to come by.

The situation is particularly acute in the east of England, where Travellers are concentrated because it has “a good road network for work”, according to Richard Sheridan. Essex alone has 1,200 families in caravans, with more than 300 of them living on unauthorised sites where they are permanently at risk of eviction.

In Norfolk, says Candy Sheridan, Travellers act differently from those in Essex, living in small numbers on eight-hectare plots behind “gate after gate, so that the local community doesn’t even know that they are there”.

Dale Farm illustrates failures in national planning, Ball acknowledges, but he argues that he cannot be expected to solve every problem. Flats and houses have been offered to Travellers, and no more halting sites are available. “A 90-family camp is not going to happen anywhere. They are going to have to split up,” he says.

One application for a smaller site a few kilometres away has been refused. Another goes before a planning inquiry in November, though this is expected to fail too.

On Wednesday the British prime minister, David Cameron, backed Ball’s actions. “It is a basic issue of fairness: everyone in this country has to obey the law, including the law about planning permission and about building on green-belt land.” Urged by the local Conservative MP John Baron to “send a very strong message” to the Travellers, Cameron said: “Where this has been done without permission it is an illegal development and so those people should move away.”

Travellers insist that they do not want confrontation, but tempers are frayed. Meanwhile, the involvement of disparate groups of activists has introduced a note of unpredictability that is causing concern among Essex police, whether justified or not.

For Tony Ball, however, the road ahead is clear: the development at Dale Farm is illegal and must be brought to an end. “One thing I am sure about is that once this operation starts it will be brought to a conclusion,” he says.