A Voice For the Voiceless

MISSION

The Advocacy Project seeks to produce social change by helping marginalized communities to become advocates for social justice and claim their rights

They're Taking Away our School and the Children

By Grattan Puxon

Hardly back from the Brussel's Roma Summit and debating the worsening crisis across Europe, particularly in Italy, UK community spokesmen are challenging local government officials over plans to
remove a community school - and possibly the children with it.

Despite a last minute plea by Lord Avebury and a report to the Racial Equality Commission, Basildon council last week voted to use direct action to close-down Saint Christopher's at Dale Farm. A self-help project backed by Government money is simply to be trashed.

To stop this action, a judicial review of Basildon's decision is being sought in the High Court, together with an injunction preventing demolition of Saint Christopher's before the hearing.

Youngsters from the Chaveys Youth Club protested outside the Basildon Centre on Tuesday night. But along with parish priest Father John Glynn were refused admission to plead their case.

Discussion took place behind closed doors, though one councillor walked out in disgust at the forced secrecy surrounding the issue.

The day had begun well with a visit to Saint Christopher's by Prof. Stephen Heppell, a creative educationalist who is pioneering schemes in the West Indies, Australia and Kazakhstan. He says within months he can have a programme up and running at Dale Farm catering specially for the needs of children there.

They include some fifty youngsters of secondary-school age who have been unable to fit in to local schools because of bullying, racist taunts and parental worries over drugs and knives.

Meanwhile, a greater fear has been raised by well-sourced information that Essex County Council and police intend to take these children into temporary care as part of Basildon's four million euro eviction operation. This act of ethnic-cleansing, denounced by the Gypsy Council as a police-led pogrom, is presently on hold.

But if it gets the go-ahead by the Court of Appeal in December, more than 130 dwellings, including chalets, mobile-homes and caravans, will be bulldozed or removed and ninety families thrown off their own land with nowhere to go. The stress after seven years under siege can be seen on the faces of Dale Farm mothers, one of whom is expecting triplets.

"They've taking away our school," said Mariann McCarthy, who has seven adult children and seventeen grandchildren. "And it looks like they may take our children too."

Gypsy Council and other representatives, along with a member of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights sought clarification on Friday when they met officials at County Hall, Chelmsford.

It was conformed that council welfare workers would not be able to seize Gypsy children without a court order. But police can do so on the authority of the chief constable.

A spokesman said they could set up a reception centre for children and the elderly near Dale Farm in the event of an eviction by Basildon. However, children would not be moved there without parential consent.

"We would never agree to this," Kathleen McCarthy told officials. "If the children need a place of safety we can organize that ourselves through our church. What you're proposing would only terrify them."

A followup meeting between the ECC and parents is to take place at the Saint Christopher Centre in the near future. A meeting with the Chief Constable will be sought after that has taken place.

What concerns the Gypsy Council is that children have been taken into temporary care before, though not on a mass-scale  since the l980s. It fears Essex wants to turn back the clock.