Dale Farm Travellers Last Stand in Court to Stop Eviction

[mark at tlio.org.uk]

this email contains the following sections:
1). DALE FARM: TRAVELLERS IN COURT TO STOP EVICTION
2). UN urges UK to halt Dale Farm Eviction
3). CAMP CONSTANT solidarity camp (& donation support)
4). Road Block Warnings
5). First They Came For the Gypsy/Travellers
6). Background of what's happened at Dale Farm:
7).  Demonstration: Saturday Sept. 10th.




1).
DALE FARM: TRAVELLERS IN COURT TO STOP EVICTION
  
Dale Farm residents are going to attend a high court hearing on 
Wednesday (31 August) in a final bid to stop the bulldozing of their 
homes.
  
They are calling on supporters join them outside the Royal Courts of 
Justice, in the Strand, London, at 12 noon. (There is also a demo on 
Sat 10th Sept - details below).
  
"This is our last chance to appeal to a judge to stop the eviction", 
said Kathleen McCarthy. "We hope British justice will see fit to save 
us from this act of ethnic-cleansing."
  
Final notice to quit their land at Dale Farm, Basildon,Essex, expires 
at midnight on Wednesday (31st - going into Thursday 1st Sept). 
Eviction is expected any day thereafter.

The Dale Farm estate is a former scrapyard bought by Traveller 
families and has existed since the 1970s. Basildon Council has 
targeting half the community for destruction (the other half have 
planning permission), and has failed to provide alternative sites for 
families to move to. Families have been given until midnight on August 
31st to abandon their homes or have them bulldozed. Basildon have 
voted to spend a third of its budget — £8 million demolishing the 
estate and turning people out onto the road. The policing of what 
could be a three-week operation has an additional price tag of £10 
million, of which £6 million is being provided by the Home Office.


2).
UN urges UK to halt Dale Farm Eviction

UN experts have urged the UK authorities to halt the evictions process 
and to pursue negotiations with the residents until an acceptable 
agreement for relocation is reached.
Ref: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=39241&Cr=housing&Cr1

The Council have released information that they intend to cut water 
and electricity supplies from Dale Farm after the eviction notice 
period expires on midnight 31st August. This will leave sick, elderly, 
young, and pregnant residents without access to water or electricity.

Richard Sheridan as president of the Gypsy Council has been involved 
in eleventh-hour negotiations with the UN Commission on the 
Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Geneva; the Special Raporteur 
has already entreated the UK Government to cease the evictions and to 
ensure the families at Dale Farm are offered viable culturally 
appropriate alternative sites.  On Thursday, 25th August Lord Avebury 
accompanied residents to present a petition to the PM calling for the 
eviction to be called off. (Ref: 
http://dalefarm.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/dale-farm-petition-to-no-10-and-meeting-with-un/)

Amnesty International has sent a call out to all their many thousands 
of supporters, condemning a forced eviction which would leave families 
homeless, when no alternative culturally appropriate site has been 
made available. This follows last week’s letter from the UN Special 
Rapporteur to the UK government, expressing concern that the planned 
forced evictions will be a clear breach of human rights legislation, 
if families are not offered an alternative site before forced 
evictions take place. See the Essex University Human Rights Clinic for 
more information on this.



3).  CAMP CONSTANT solidarity camp (& donation support)

CAMP CONSTANT a solidarity and resistance camp for supporters of the 
Dale Farm community, gathered this bank holiday weekend. See 
http://dalefarm.wordpress.com/activity for more information.  Email 
contact: dale.farm AT btinternet.com
For a map: go to the following url & scroll to the bottom of the page: 
 http://london.indymedia.org/articles/10075

Donations are also being gratefully accepted, please do so here:
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=9G9BTVTPK7GXA&lc=GB&item_name=Dale%20Farm%20Housing%20Association&currency_code=GBP&bn=PP%2dDonationsBF%3abtn_donateCC_LG%2egif%3aNonHosted 
Even small amounts help, and please forward this request to your 
friends or any lists you are on.



4). Road Block Warnings
The eviction is expected from the first of September onwards (likely 
to be on the 2nd Sept or one of the following days, judging by recent 
road notices). ROAD BLOCK WARNING: Notices have gone up along Oak 
Road, adjacent to Dale Farm, saying that the road will be closed to 
all but residents from Friday, Sept. 2nd. See 
http://dalefarm.wordpress.com/contact for details. Both ends of Oak 
Road will be blocked (blocking access via both Hardings Elm Road and 
Gardiners Lane North). Additionally, the lay by on the southern end of 
Oak Lane (leading on to the A127; by the white ‘Basildon onion’ water 
tower) will be blocked. There will be a no stop zone on the footpaths 
on the A127 between A176 at Billericay and A132 at Wickford. Residents 
are feeling under siege, with children asking how many more nights 
they are going to be able to sleep in their beds. Dale Farm is a big 
site, so it should be possible to find routes in, but be advised that 
after Sept. 1, it will be harder to get in, and likely impossible to 
get vehicles in.


5). First They Came For the Gypsy/Travellers

The long-term trend of cultural apartheid against the gypsy & 
travelling community through subjective discriminatory intepretation 
of changing government policy over the years started with local 
authorities' enthusiastic adherance to implementing section 23 of the 
'1968 Caravan Sites & Control of Development Act' which gave powers to 
close commons to travellers whilst section 24 of the same act to 
provide traveller sites was widely and systematically ignored. It 
resulted in long-running displacement and ostracisation of the 
culturally diverse gypsy & travelling community. The result has been 
the ghettoisation of the travelling community to marginal bits of land 
around the country, and in some cases, the abandonment of a cultural 
lifestyle and retreat to conventional housing. Then, things stepped up 
a gear with the passing of the Criminal Justice & Public Order Act 
1994 by the then Conservative Government, which repealed the duty of 
local authorities to provide sites, stating that gypsies and 
travellers should buy their own land. However, many travellers were 
excluded from access to a planning process subject to highly complex 
procedures and a dearth of advice - with the result that many were 
stranded in a kind of legalistic limbo and compelled to live on their 
own land without planning permission. The culmination of a wave of 
enforcement actions over failed planning applications occurred 
especially from the late 1990s onwards (there are many travellers who 
are said to have just walked away from land they purchased). It 
resulted in a spate of brutal and violent evictions across the country 
over recent years, most notably Meadowlands in Essex in 2004 and Twin 
Oaks Caravan Park in Ridge in Hertfordshire in Jan 2005. Dale Farm 
became a refuge in the last few years for families evicted from other 
sites. (see background info below for a brief more detailed historical 
overview of what's happened at Dale Farm).

Human Rights activist Grattan Puxon: "Travellers should not have to 
live in constant fear of eviction with their lives and communities 
under constant threat. They should not have to be forced out of their 
homes and off their land by bulldozers and police. This constant 
hounding, marginalisation, and lack of provision is how rural England 
does ethnic cleansing. It is time for a resurgence of support for 
Gypsy and Traveller communities. Time to stand against the extreme 
racial discrimination faced by Gypsies and Travellers. Time to defend 
the right of Gypsies and Travellers to land, life, respect, and 
dignity."




6).
Background of what's happened at Dale Farm:
Dale Farm, virtually a village established in rural Essex, is the home 
of some one thousand Travellers and Gypsies, recognized as ethnic 
groups under UK law.

In May 2005 Basildon District Council voted to clear a large part of 
Dale Farm and nearby Hovefields Avenue, and set aside a fund of three 
million Euro for this purpose, claiming that the hundred families 
involved had developed their homes without authority and were residing 
in a restricted greenbelt zone. The site was in actual fact brownfield 
- a large disused scrap yard - within a greenbelt designated area.

Travellers across the country have faced impossible odds in actually 
receiving planning permission for Traveller sites over many years 
(over 90% rate of refusal).  Yet, Gypsies and travellers had been 
encouraged by the Tory Government in the early 1990s to buy land and 
create their own caravan sites. With many travellers having been 
excluded from access to a planning process subject to highly complex 
procedures and a dearth of advice - the result was that many were 
ostracised and compelled to live on their own land without planning 
permission. A resulting wave of enforcement actions over failed 
planning applications occurred especially from the late 1990s onwards 
(there are many travellers who are said to have just walked away from 
land they purchased). It resulted in a spate of brutal and violent 
evictions across the country over recent years. Dale Farm became a 
refuge in the last few years for families evicted from other sites.

The enlargement of Dale Farm came about through the closure and 
subdivision of the scrap yard. New 95ftx45ft plots were marked out and 
sold to Sheridans, McCarthies and related families desperate to get 
away from harassment by notorious baliff company Constant and Co, who 
have displayed a seemingly personal vendetta against the Irish 
traveller community over recent years. See: 
http://www.advocacynet.org/ website for footage of previous evictions 
by Constant.

Enforcement Notices served upon the community were successfully 
contested in the High Court when in a judicial review ruling, Mr 
Justice Collins made it clear no eviction should take place unless 
acceptable alternative accommodation was provided. In his ruling on 
the 9th May 2008, Justice Collins was particularly critical of the 
violent methods used by Constant & Co., the firm of bailiffs that had 
carried out previous evictions and urged Basildon Council not to hire 
the firm again. Justice Collins writes that he watched video footage 
of one eviction and found the bailiffs' conduct "unacceptable." Even 
the presence of police had "failed to curb the excesses", he wrote.

However, on Thursday 22nd January 2009, BDC sucessfully won their 
appeal against this ruling, claiming that it is unable to accommodate 
the several hundred persons who would be rendered homeless, who 
include some 150 children and young people.
  
			

7).
Demonstration: Saturday Sept. 10th.
Join us at Wickford Train Station, a mere 30 minutes by train from 
London Liverpool Street Station. The march will then proceed to Dale 
Farm and Camp Constant, a base for human rights monitors and those who 
will engage in civil disobedience to stop the bulldozing. This demo is 
supported by Dale Farm Solidarity, Barbed Wire Britain, Campaign to 
Close Campsfield,Feminist Fightback, London No Borders, No One is 
Illegal, Southall Black Sisters,  Unite Against Fascism, Oxford & 
Cambridge Trade Councils, Anonymous Promotions.
Ref: http://dalefarm.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/demo/
Please spread the 
word…https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=245406565483199