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Petition to Save Dale Farm

The UK Association of Gypsy Women, an AP partner, have been lobbying the Council of Europe and the UK Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott to push for greater housing protection of Gypsy-Travellers in the UK. This correspondence was drafted by Grattan Puxon, media officer for the UK Gypsies, Travellers and Roma to galvanize support against a planned eviction of 1,000 Gypsy-Travellers at the Dale Farm housing site in Essex. In September 2005, Basildon Council voted in favor of evicting the Travellers from the site. Council members again voted 4-1 in favor of the eviction in early February 2006. Travellers are awaiting a judicial review from the British High Court in the case. Meanwhile, John Prescott is proposing that an alternative site be provided for the Travellers in an area called Pitsea, in Essex. Tory MP John Baron is protesting the move.

****Petition to Save Dale Farm****             To be presented to Basildon Council on Roma Nation Day on April 8, 2006.        We, the undersigned, condemn all acts of ethnic-cleansing and forceful removal being            perpetuated against Roma and Travellers.   But in particular, we wish to draw attention to the courageous stand being made by the residents of Dale Farm who, despite a vote by Basildon Council to destroy their homes, continue, in the name of Travellers everywhere, their non-violent campaign to save their community from the bulldozer.   We call for common sense, reason and tolerance: Please leave Dale Farm alone.   To add your name to the petition, please email:  dale.farm@ntlworld.com

Dale Farm Eviction: Is This A Case Of UK Ethnic Cleansing?

By Grattan Puxon
Media Officer
UK Gypsies, Travellers and Roma Forum
01206 523528

For many, the UK is one of the last places where we would expect to find ethnic-cleansing going on. Some may not like Prime Minister Tony Blair's foreign policies, especially in regards to Iraq. And asylum-seekers have been getting a rough time. But we still associate Britain, perhaps, with those hard to define English attitudes towards fair-play, tolerance and justice.

However, there is one minority, in England for 500 years, which has always suffered from the intolerance, prejudices and racial discrimination of the majority: the Romanies, or Gypsies, and the Travellers who still cling to their way of life in the UK today.

In the 16th century you could be hung for being a Gypsy. Today, even when settled on their own land, many face the bulldozing of their homes.

For forty years, since the foundation of the original Gypsy in 1966 and five years later the historical 1st World Romani Congress in 1971 in London, we have been campaigning for a better deal. Though not a born Traveller, I have been part of that campaign, as secretary of the GC and organiser, and later general-secretary of the Congress.

I helped make the famous stand with 400 Travellers at Cherry Orchard in Ireland back in the 1960s; having joined them to avoid military service which I opposed on pacifist principles. After two years living in a field, without water, electricity or sanitation, we won the campaign for the first council-owned caravan site at Labre Park. And currently, with the grandchild of some of the same families, I'm once more at their side in their resistance to eviction from Dale Farm.

So what has happened in 40 years? And why are we making this final stand at Dale Farm?

In the 1960s and 1970s, Travellers had no choice but to trespass on municipal land, or common land, to place caravans on a dangerous roadside, or pull into a farm's field. You were moved on every week, sometimes more. I was once moved on by police four times in ten days. Through a hard campaign of grass-roots resistance to evictions, the Gypsy Council gained the passage of the l968 Caravan Sites Act. This eventually led to the provision by local council of some 400 caravan sites. It was not enough but this represented big progress - at the time.

However times have changed. Many Travellers do not like the restrictions imposed by living on council-owned sites. Many of them are badly run. A growing number have been closed down. Finally, a powerful blow has been dealt against the Travelling way of life by the l994 Criminal Justice Act. This not only revoked the Caravan Sites Act but gave extra powers to police and local councils to move-on and evict Travellers.

In an ironic twist, Travellers were advised by the Government to buy their own land and set up their own caravan parks. Many have done so. But the catch is that you cannot get planning permission to reside in your own caravan on your own land. Councils in Britain refuse permission to Gypsies nine out of ten times.

Evictions have become worse since the coming into prominence of the private bailiff company, Constant & Co. Mr. Constant's firm has earned millions of euro moving families on and carrying out large scale evictions from land owned by Gypsies. Thus Cliff Codona, now a delegate to the European Roma and Travellers Forum in Strasbourg had his model Romani heritage centre, in Bedfordshire, bulldozed last year. Fifty families were forced back on the road. He is still fighting his case.

Worse than this in its destructive brutality was the eviction by Constant for Chelmsford Borough Council of 20 families from their own Meadowlands Caravan Park, in January 2004. In the course of this, conducted with the help of riot police, Kathy Buckland's mobile home was burned, another caravan burned, and a lot of property needlessly destroyed.

The same has happened to many hundreds of families in other parts of England, Scotland and Wales. Official figures show 3,000 families have nowhere legal to live.

At Twin Oaks Farm, owned by members of the Sheridan clan, a police-led eviction commenced at 4 am on 6 January last year. Again property was burned, including the chalet of 71-year-old Patrick William Sheridan, whose wife Ann was due to go into hospital that day - and the Hertsmere Borough Council knew this.

The police escorted families driven out of Twin Oaks Farm from Hertfordshire over the border into Essex. Most of them then took refuge at Dale Farm, in the Basildon district.

Dale Farm is currently the largest Travellers' community in the UK. It was started in the l970s when Basildon District Council, under a Labour Party administration, gave planning permission to some 40 families. With evictions taking place like that at Twin Oaks and Meadowlands, "internal refugees" began to arrive in increasing numbers at Dale Farm. Now, however, Basildon was under a Conservative administration head by Malcolm Buckley.

Together with Conservative MP John Barron, he began to wage a virulent anti-Gypsy campaign. Part of his "case" is that Basildon has already "provided" for many Traveller families. Only this provision consists of no more than planning consent for private development. We ask what other ethnic-group is restricted or "rationed" as to how many can live in the district?

The recent extension of Dale Farm has taken place mostly on land that was previously a licensed scrap yard. Hundreds of old wrecked car bodies were piled there. They have been removed by the Sheridans and replaced by well-kept yards, with ornamental walls and gates, neat new chalets and mobile homes, and new caravans.

The response of Basildon council has been to refuse all planning applications and issue countless enforcement notices. Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has helped Dale Farm by giving us two years "temporary" stay. This expired in May 2005.In June last year, the council's Development Control Committee recommended the expenditure of up to £3 million (roughly five million euros) to bulldoze Dale Farm and "return it to greenbelt".

This recommendation was endorsed by the full council, with a majority of just four votes. Both the Labour Party and Liberal Party members are opposed to forced eviction. Labour Party head in Basildon Nigel Smith says force should not be used and the expenditure of so much money to "restore" a small area of greenbelt is disproportionate. He says the decision "could be racially tainted".

Meanwhile, the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) has joined with Dale Farm families in a Judicial Review of Basildon council's decision (due to be heard on 14 March). And fresh planning appeals were due for hearing, starting 21 February.

Eviction Violence

The constant threat of eviction is causing enormous stress to all the families at Dale Farm, in addition to those in two smaller Travellers' communities at Five Acre Farm and Hoverfields Avenue. The total number of people involved is over 1,000. Is this a case of ethnic-cleansing? It is perceived as such by the victims, including nine pregnant mothers.

If the eviction took place, an entire school, Cray's Hill Primary School, where all the children but one are from Dale Farm, would close. Everyone, the old and sick, the young and vulnerable, would be thrown onto the road with nowhere legal to live. They would end up in caravans on a supermarket car-park or side of a dangerous road.

The Brentwood, Billericay and Wickford Primary Care Trust has issued a statement warning an eviction will result in violence and that women and children will be physically injured. In addition, the children witnessing such violence, including the leveling of their homes, will suffer psychological damage.

This warning has been considered but overruled by Basildon council in favour of "preserving" a few acres of so-called greenbelt land.

The UK Government has again intervened with a proposal from Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott for an alternative piece of land to be provided for all the families at Pitsea, a village on the other side of Basildon. The response by John Baron MP has been to collect 5,000 names on a petition against this proposal, despite the fact that the land at Pistea is in a "brownfield" zone set aside for industry - and is not in the "greenbelt".

However, it must be said that the families at Dale Farm, who have invested so much in creating a community there, do not want to have their clan-home split into two.

For half of Dale Farm is now "legal" and half is regarded as "illegal". Their hope is that Mr. Prescott can be persuaded on appeal, supported by an international petition by the IAI, to grant permanent planning permission and save them from the bulldozer.

Stated simply, we want Dale Farm to be left alone. And we are making our stand here in the hope of ending evictions of our people all over Britain. We want the ethnic-cleansing to stop. Please help us.

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