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Home
| Friday 16th May
2008 | Issue 632
BASILDON FAULTYDale Farm, a large traveller community living on land they own – albeit without planning permission - near Wickford, Essex (see SchNEWS 578), won an important court decision last week. A judicial review at the High Court has halted Basildon Council’s plan to evict the 86 families – effectively a village of 1000 people - and also ordered them to find an alternative site for the residents. This comes after the council ordered the travellers to leave because they didn’t have planning permission in 2005. Justice Andrew Collins came out against the draconian and ethnic-cleansing aspects of the Dale Farm eviction, saying that the travellers are victims of a ‘high degree of prejudice’, and were only on this site because they couldn’t find land elsewhere. Collins rebuked Basildon for not finding alternative land for the community, and also urged the council to not use the bailiff firm Constant & Co – the self proclaimed ‘Gypsy eviction specialists’ (See SchNEWS 519) – after seeing their violent handywork in a video of another eviction. Meanwhile at Dale Farm, a new community/IT centre has also opened, called St Christophers, which has been built using a £12,000 grant from the Essex Racial Equality Council – without planning permission, yet opened by a member of the House Of Lords, and blessed by a local Catholic priest. Local MP for Billericay, John Baron, predictably came out on the side of the tax-paying rednecks, saying that “...supporting a community centre on an illegal site shows a clear bias and discriminates against the law-abiding majority. The Equality Council should provide fairness for all. By backing this centre, it has contributed to community tensions.” But Europe-wide support is building for Dale Farm. Today (16th) Richard Sheridan, president of the Gypsy Council, will speak about it at a Russian-organised conference to protect ethnic minorities in Europe. Dale Farm residents have been to other gypsy/roma sites in Spain, Italy and Germany, and several are due to visit Essex including Roma MPs from Serbia. Next month as part of national Gypsy Month, Romani's from Turkey will and discuss twinning Dale Farm with Europe’s oldest Roma community, Sulukule in Istanbul. Up against fervent ‘not-in-our-back-yard’, racist campaigns and council prejudice around the country, the claim of ‘ethnic cleansing’ is apt seeing as traditional travelling communities are continually kicked off sites and not catered for with council park-up land. Their only recourse is to buy land and move onto it – as happened at Dale Farm – with or without planning permission. * See www.gypsy-traveller.org
 
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