A Voice For the Voiceless

MISSION

The Advocacy Project seeks to help community-based advocates produce, disseminate and use information, and so become more effective advocates for human rights and social justice

Personal Account: In Harm's Way

My name is Margaret Quilligan. Until our family was evicted, we were living at the Twin Oaks caravan park, near Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, England. I own a plot of land there, which I think was numbered Plot 11. It was given to me by my brother Patrick Egan.

I had been living there for about four years and was looking after our mother, Mrs. Ann Egan. She is 67 years old and in very poor health. She has a weak heart and last year underwent an operation for a shattered gallstone. Due to complications that arose during the surgery, she had to undergo a colostomy. She also has a heart condition. Ever since her operation, my mother has needed constant care and can only move around wheelchair. The day of the eviction she had an appointment at the hospital.

I did not take part in the meetings with Hertsmere District Council but my brother Patrick did. I was kept informed by Mrs. Sylvia Dunn, Mr. Joe Jones and Mrs. Bridie Jones, about their meetings in Borehamwood. From what they told me, I had believed that the council was giving us more time. Patrick was looking for an alternative piece of land that we could move to and had found someone who was interested in buying our Twin Oaks property. He is still following up on this. I also know that Mr. Jones had found a piece of land in the Canterbury area but that was too far away for us.

I know that the council was told of my mother’s appointment and shown the letter. I also understood that the council had agreed not to evict us, especially in view of this appointment, and that another meeting with the council scheduled (our last meeting had taken place Christmas). I also know that Mrs. Dunn had asked the council to give us another eight weeks until early March. We wanted them to set specific date, to give us a deadline.

Some caravans had already been removed by their owners. But the mobile home, or chalet, in which my mother was living belonged to a Mr. Jenkins. He provided it privately and the council were paying him for it because my mother could no longer live in a caravan.

It was about 4 am or 4.30 am that morning when I heard the dogs barking. My father, William Patrick Egan, was living in a hut nearby. Although it was dark when I looked out the window, I could see the policemen approaching. I could not believe how many there were. It seemed like there were hundreds. I was very frightened about what they were going to do to us.

I was especially worried about my mother and my 12-year old son, Thomas, who is diabetic. For the past four years, he was a student at Hertswood secondary school. The teachers were very good to him and were giving him extra help to catch up with his age group.

Before we moved on to Twin Oaks, he had had no regular schooling. This is because we were constantly forced to move. We couldn’t stay anywhere for more than a few days, sometimes even a few hours, before the police would come and tell us to move on.

I have a serious thyroid problem and I was unable to get proper treatment for this condition until we had settled at Twin Oaks. For the first time I was able to see a doctor and get the treatment I needed at Barnet hospital. The doctors there were very good.

When the police approached our home, I stayed inside to look after my mother. She sat in an armchair shivering with fright. I was afraid that all the shock and commotion would bring on a heart attack. As I said, her heart is very weak. The police were followed by bailiffs. They started to force us out by knocking on doors, shining lights with powerful lamps, and shouting at people to get off the land.

They removed our gas bottles so that we couldn’t make a cup of tea or cook. I couldn’t make any breakfast for Thomas, nor for my mother or myself. This lasted from about 4 am when were awoken by the police until about 2 o’clock in the afternoon. At one point, I don’t remember the exact time, I heard our neighbor Dolly Slattery shouting, "They’re killing Micky!" Micky is her husband. He’s an old man who suffers from cancer and diabetes, so my mother and I were obviously very alarmed and upset.

I went outside to see if I could help. There was a crowd of police around him. He was on the ground and several police were on top of him. They were kneeling on him. One was needing him in the back. Others were on his legs. They handcuffed him (I know that someone caught what was occurring on video).

When he was finally allowed to stand up he was shaking. What there were doing to Micky was totally unnecessary as he had already sold his mobile-home and was ready to move out.

I got him a glass of water. All during this time I was aware that my mother was watching what was happening from the window of our mobile home and she was getting more and more distressed by it all.

I felt that they were punishing us because we hadn’t gotten the proper planning permission to set up our home. It was just a regulation; but they were treating us as if we had committed some major crime. It was our land and were just living there quietly and peacefully. We’d had no trouble with our neighbours and my father was well liked.

We knew we had to go and we were doing our best to move. However, we could not move that morning because again, my mother had the hospital appointment. As I said, she is critically ill.

My brother Patrick asked the head of the police and the head bailiff to leave my mother alone. He asked them to just leave her for 24 hours in the mobile home and that he would arrange to have it moved. The head bailiff (or that’s who I thought he was), a stout man with a beard, told me and my mother that they would leave at least leave my father’s hut, but not our home, standing until Sunday.

As a result of this, I thought it would be safe to put our things into the hut. I began to move everything I could from the mobile home into the hut, so that the it could be taken apart and moved in an orderly fashion. We were trying to get the police and the bailiffs to stop acting rough and allow us to get our things together and move ourselves in a dignified way. There was no need to do what they were doing, bullying everyone and destroying everything.

Anyway, I took as much as I could and put it into my father’s hut, like pieces of Crown Derby china, some of which very old and had been passed down to the family. We have a tradition of passing this china down from one generation to the next. In addition, we had pieces of expensive Waterford crystal; most of the bedding, a new micro-wave oven, a glass table, a television-set, and a special orthopedic bed of my mother’s (it cost £500).

In addition, outside was our fridge. Also, there were my mother’s two battery-operated wheel chairs; one was a really good one that must have cost £1000 and the other had been bought second-hand for £250. My mother could not move without them. Instead of allowing us to put them in a van and move them away, they just picked them up with a mechanical grab and just crushed them. There was no need to break them like that.

All this time Hazel was making a video film of what was happening (I can identify the man who was in charge). My father had a three piece suite in his hut, his own television set, a fridge, a washing machine, an electric cooker and all his clothes and bedding, pictures, floor coverings, his bed and personal papers.

Instead of leaving the hut as promised, and allowing us to move all our things, they just burned the hut and everything that was in it. When they came to my mother’s mobile-home she was still sitting in her armchair. Instead of making sure that she was safely out, I heard some of the bailiffs climbing on the roof and start o break our home apart.

My mother was terrified as we could hear the wood breaking. The bailiffs were carrying what looked like short crowbars and were using these to break apart the two section of the mobile-home, which are carefully sealed together. It’s quite a job to take these apart and putting them together again can take at least four hours.

They were in a terrible hurry and just breaking the fabric, taking no care whatsoever. My mother’s appointment at the hospital was at 11 am but the time just went by. Some of the bailiffs came to the door of the mobile home and I spoke to the stout man with the beard, telling him my mother was critically ill (which the council already knew) and asking them to take care.

My two other sons, Daniel, aged 21, and Simon, aged 20, were also with me and they made the same request to the bailiffs. Nevertheless, the bailiffs came in and started pulling out the fridge in the kitchen area, ripping out the pipes and bursting the connections without any consideration or care whatsoever. I was then torn between trying to save things by moving them into my father’s hut and staying with my mother to look after her.

Her condition was getting worse and I became fearful for her life. With the exception of Hazel, who came across the fields from the back, no one was being allowed onto the site, not even the television people.

Finally Michael Slattery’s 22-year old daughter Margaret managed to call an ambulance. But the ambulance was also not allowed on the site. It stood out on the road. The paramedics came into our mobile home to examine my mother. They checked mother’s heart rate and it was very high. They wanted to put her on a stretcher and carry her out to the ambulance and take her into hospital.

But at that moment she did not want to leave her home, even though the bailiffs had started to pull it apart. She refused because she did not want to be separated from the rest of us; although she was in a bad state and shaking, she seemed to believe that if she left, they would treat the rest of us even worse. Not that it could get much worse.

But from her behavior, I knew what she was thinking. During the eviction, no one from the council was present that I’m aware of. But there were some housing people from the council in a van that was parked on the road. At the end, they came to the door and asked us if we wanted to stay to a bed and breakfast.

I told them no, that I couldn’t leave my sons. In the end, my mother allowed my two older sons, Daniel and Simon, to lift her up and carry her out of our home. They put her into the back of Daniel’s car. By then it was past one o’clock and we all drove together to Essex and moved to a place that has no planning permit. However, this is also illegal and we are in the same position as before, facing eviction.

I would like to say that my father is not well either. He is elderly and has a number of medical problems.

Kathleen Egan, my sister-in-law, was away on that day. She also had a mobile home that was also supplied by Mr. Jenkins, opposite my mother’s. She has three children; two girls and a boy. I saw they were already tearing it apart. I had no key so I broke a window and Thomas, my 12-year old, climbed in through the window to help save what he could. This was about one o’clock. I carried out some of her Crown Derby and Waterford Glass and stored these pieces in my father’s hut. Everything I put in there was lost when the hut was burned.

Kathleen’s home, like my mother’s, was placed on low-loaders and taken to the pound.

Both my brother Patrick and Mr. Cliff Codona, one of the Human Rights Monitors who came to witness the eviction (he was not allowed near us until about 1 pm) asked the asked the men from Constant and Co. to make sure that they covered our homes with plastic sheeting to protect them from the elements. Once mobile homes are broken apart into sections, they are vulnerable to the rain and wind.

I understood that the men from Constant had made a promise to do this and take proper care of the mobile homes and caravans. But when my brother went back a couple of days later to check whether this had been done, he discovered that no plastic sheeting had been placed over them. As a result, the wood got wet, leaving it warped and twisted. I doubt that our homes will ever be able to be restored. They are ruined.

Margaret Egan, my 24-year old sister-in-law, was also away that day. She has four children. She had her own mobile-home, which is also in the pound and suffering exposure to the weather. I managed to remove some of her valuables through the window. I also put these items in my father’s hut for safe keeping. Hazel was filming this.

But again everything was lost when the hut was burned. At the end, my son Daniel hooked up our caravan and towed it off the site himself. With my mother in the backseat of the car, he drove over the Hertfordshire county boundary and into Essex. Some of the Hertfordshire police followed us to the border to make sure we did not try to stop on any land in their jurisdiction.

For the moment, Daniel has set up our caravan on another site in Essex, which also lacks a planning permit, and is overcrowded with people with people who have been evicted.

I believe that some of them came from a private caravan site called Cows Roast, which was razed in a similar manner by Constant, and from as far away as Coventry; north of Coventry, the Bulkington Fields caravan park was also demolished by Constant last year .

I don’t know what is going to happen to us if this continues. We were advised by the Government to buy our own land and build our own caravan parks, after the responsibility by local councils to build sites was lifted. Like us, a lot of people believed this was the right thing to do.

We didn’t understand anything about planning permits. We just bought land and did everything ourselves. When we found out that permits were required, we did our very best to comply and get the permission. But they would never give them to us. We appealed directly to Deputy Prime Minister Prescott, but he turned us down as well.

We offered the Hertsmere council a land swap; our piece of land for one of theirs. We know that Hertfordshire county councils owns 10,000 acres of land. All we need are a couple of acres. If they only would allow us to do an exchange with a guarantee that the land we receive contains the proper permits, we would have given up our Twin Oaks property.

Despite what we have been put through, we are still ready and willing to do that.