Travellers are battling against eviction and injustice
A very moving short film about Dale Farm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/14/roma-deportations-france-eu-disgrace
Hovefields travellers apply for status as homeless
Village of travellers without planning permission demolished. The travellers were Bedouin, and the ethnic cleansing was carried out by the Israeli government, but it won’t look any different if it happens in Essex:
Dale Farm Travellers: ‘We won’t just get up and leave’ – The Guardian
Work to clear illegal traveller pitches in Wickford begins
Response from a couple of Dale Farm supporters to Councillor Mackenzie’s letter 8th Sept
Dale Farm Solidarity 
‘childish legal actions’
Your words again. Childish!!!!! How childish is is to fight for a life as you know it! What have you fought for? A parking space? We are talking lives here, real lives, does that mean nothing to you? Lives that have been wrecked and missplaced, people (including women) in hospital, just because of a tiny little detail – planning permission that has been refused by councilors that earn a lot more than you do by shaking hands and smiling in the right places!
‘in fact it was incredibly irresponsible to move vulnerable people in to such living arrangements to begin with.’
Your words. So why in the hell did they? Whose fault is this really. These travellers for taking advantage of a system that stinks of corruption. The type of corruption that says ‘we can’t afford to move them now, but we will let them get settled and cosy for 10 years, make lives for themselves, let them have children, let them make relationships, friends, real homes, and then go in and pull the cosy rug from beneath their feet’. You talk absolute tripe!
Law? Whose law?
Ok, so maybe they aren’t begging on the streets but isn’t that what a lot of homeless people do? How many people are now homeless because of this senceless bully-boy situation? How many homeless charaties that get NO help from the government are now going to step in to help? How many of those homeless charities are going to be on your christmas list? Not one, I would imagine.
I can’t reiterate enough – what harm were they doing where they were? Is it less harm and less costly to the tax payer and local council to either leave well along (give them planning permission and facilities), rather than this highly expensive opperation. Possibly having to rehouse so many people, etc etc etc? Loosing the numbers in the local schools? Loosing the spending in the local shops? The only reason they were breaking the law is because they didn’t have planning permission! So the council have now made a rod for their own backs or the tax payers! Well there we are you have what you wanted – and now maybe roads/education/health will be cut back on so you and the fat cats could have their way.
I can bet my last pound coin on the fact that there is something else behind this. Just watch in the years to come how this land is going to be used.
Travellers! If they hadn’t been hop pickers etc, at certain times of the year, like my relatives in the past, your pint would have been more expensive. Sorry, I forgot, you drink wine.
A lot of travellers do the jobs you would sneer at and not even think of getting your hands dirty for – next time you pick a nice plump vegetable or fruit off the supermarket shelves I hope you realise that it was a traveller – european or not, that helped put it there, taking crap wages and working – yes really working hard! In all weathers. You should bow your head in shame while you taste the ‘fruit’ of their labours!
I fear that you might be missing the point. You ask what harm were they doing where they were?
Well, clearly no physical harm, however, the law is there for all of us. Unfortunately it seems what they were asking for as well as many of their supporters was for them to be exempted from the planning laws.
Thats not how it works and if that had happened then it would have opened the flood gates for every person who has been refused planning permission in the past to take legal action for losses incurred.
In effect the planning laws would have ceased to have had any meaning and Im sure that you realise that this would be awful for everyone.
I think the idea that somehow this was all about discrimination is a red herring. Half the site in Dale farm is occupied legally by travellers. No-one is suggesting that they should be moved. I certainly would stand up and fight their corner if this was the case.
Oh for goodness sake – so what happens with this land now? Yes, you said it you are middle class – and with a university education – you have put yourself in that bracket – a bracket of class restriction! It was working class and what you would have called lower classes that built your comfortable country.
Ok, so they have in the past been offered council accomodation – so that the ‘dear’ Mr Ball said on the news. Put yourself in their shoes. you live in a closely knit community for 10 years, you have relationships, and yes arguments, you mix them up a bit, people marry or live together, have children, loads of friends and then along comes this BIG gesture – a council house here then one ther miles apart! Granny then lives the other side of the city in a high-rise away from all of her siblings, Families are split up, freinds are lost – and why? Just to make a point? What point? This land is needed for something else? What? High-rise flats for people like them? Or a pretty housing estate for people like you – yes, those whos’e BMW’s maybe get paid for one day? Or those that pay rent to the council while working in a highly paid job – so highly paid in fact that they could afford to buy a property.
What is your problem? – yes, either you like travellers or you don’t, but what use will this place be now. Surely these people were best left in their homes, their community, rather than be offered homes that other homeless or young families could have had? Which the council have magiced from thin air when so many people are in hostels or on the council list. You are the balmy, crazy people. Will you be offering them coins when they beg in the street, and wonder if they were better off in Dale Farm? Shame on you! May you loose your houses, friends and family to what we now call democracy in this country, and feel the pain these genuine people have felt today just by needing somewhere to live on a spot that will now be quite useless to you and yours! You are bullies in the extreme. When you complain about bullies in the playground you should look to yourselves to see where the bully culture originated!!!
You either follow the law or you don’t. You can’t make concessions for one group without impacting the rights of others. It would certainly be easier to leave law breakers be. If someone has stolen something it’s often more trouble getting it back. If someone speeds and doesn’t cause an accident then what’s the harm?
The issue is they knew when they settled it was illegal, the fact that it took the law far too long to follow up on that doesn’t change the fact they broke the law. People with Grandparents don’t get a free pass, in fact it was incredibly irresponsible to move vulnerable people in to such living arrangements to begin with.
They don’t need to beg on the street they need to stop breaking the law. The community on the legal plot seems to get by just fine. That’s the example they need to follow. My generation is very aware of the costs of housing and we manage to not build homes illegally or if we did, we’d expect the same treatment and without costing the tax payer in childish legal actions.
You don’t think the rest of us wouldn’t like to take whatever we need to make our lives easier? As I said Dale Farm illegal settlements and Bankers … same sense entitlement expressed in different ways.
Spoonguy, you and I need to go out for a beer. Well said!
Ok, i can picture it now – those against Dale are so sad. If there are problems there – as there are in all groups of people – yes, I mean all, even in your middle class perfect life! – Then we should help get those problems sorted. Instead of going against people whose life isn’t the norm to you, why don’t you get involved on a positive note and help make things right. If there is rubbish, fly tipping and scrap cars, why can’t they be dealt with in a civilised way.
Be careful who you s*** on on the way up people, you may meet them again on the way back down – don’t forget – in our economic climate nobody is safe now – except a bank of course!
When your credit card company is screaming at you and you have your HP car repossessed – remember this moment.
What do you want then? All of these people, their children and their pets sitting around on your streets with signs up saying help the homeless. You would complain just as much then wouldn’t you? Some people are never happy. Just a question of ‘not in my back yard’
Don’t moan – get involved – or are you too scared to do even that? Maybe you just like something to moan about or it doesn’t make your day complete!!
I live on a farm – and the land here is wasted. Why when people need somewhere to live? I’d rather have travellers on my land than a snotty nose, snobby housing estate with BMWs that will never get paid for and neat little gardens that never see a vegetable grown on them!
I’ve got no debts and come from a working class family. I paid off my student loan; I worked my way through university. I live in a nice town. I volunteer for several charities. I didn’t buy a car until I could afford one. I’d say I’m pretty middle class as it goes.
That said, I don’t take what I want from my community, I earn it. I don’t keep to the laws that suit me and break others. I have no problem with travellers, what I object to is the presumption that they get to bypass laws they disagree with on cultural grounds.
If travellers are having trouble finding places to live that is a serious problem. That doesn’t mean they get to break the law, although they are welcome to try and change it.
From the view in the middle both bankers and the illegal settlement at Dale Farm are taking what they have no right to and are as bad as each other.
It’s the middle class that often represents the working class who’ve struggled and achieved, don’t be so condescending to think we’ve all borrowed or been given what we have.
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If the police and evictors pull this off, then more anti-Gypsy actions will fall upon our brethren in eastern Europe, simply because they know they can get away wit it.
This is another Gypsy Holocaust in the making…
My prayers go out to the Dale Farm travellers, and may God be with you all in this battle for freedom and justice, it’s time we made our stand…
“what is it that festers in the heart of the gorjas to want to make us suffer and persecute us? is it jealousy? Is it because we, as one time nomads experienced total freedom, instead of giving 40 years of our lives to the bank for just an ol’ house? I think this is the case.”
Nope, its the fact that most of us evolved to respect the laws of the land and can deal with that fact. Building barracades and protesting when a legal decision doesnt go your way is just an evolution of throwing your dummy out of the pram.
The Dale Farm residents and other traveller/gypsy communities are the victims of a co-ordinated propaganda and smear campaign. BTW – I’m not a traveller or gypsy, I just dislike prejudice and injustice in general.
Nine ‘slaves’ return to Leighton Buzzard travellers site
Man helped from Travellers’ site brands Leighton
Buzzard arrests ‘rubbish’ as nine men refuse to help investigation
Alexandra Topping – guardian.co.uk – Monday 12 September 2011
The police investigation into a suspected slave camp at a Travellers’ site in Bedfordshire has
been challenged after nine of the 24 alleged slaves refused to help police with their inquiries.
One of the nine accused the police of heavy-handed tactics and described the five arrests as “complete rubbish”.
At the well-established Greenacre caravan park in Leighton Buzzard, which has 16 mobile homes, one of the men taken by police, who did not want to be named, said he had been living in a caravan on a Traveller plot for several years, working as a paver and was being paid £50 a day.
“I think it’s all a load of rubbish and they just hate Travellers,” said the man, who is in his 50s. “Plenty of men who were here wanted to be here and they were getting paid. The police
coming in heavy-handed like this is just wrong.”
More than 200 police officers raided the site in the early hours of Sunday, aided by a helicopter
and dog patrols. Armed officers were also present.
SOURCE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/sep/12/rescued-man-criticises-slavery-raid
Britain has become a corrupt, crony capitalist police state.
All the best to my friends in the traveller community.
OK, it was only FOUR vulnerable human beings being forced to work Macgregor – not 9 – what an over reaction! Of course, that puts an entirely different complexion on it , they don’t matter at all.
audacity supports the Dale Farm residents, who have been treated appallingly by the fickle Local Planning Authority of Basildon Council, targeted by local MP John Baron – a man who knows a great deal about property development – and attacked by Eric Pickles as Sectretary of State for Communities and Local Government for the “unauthorised development”. Half the building at Dale Farm is planning approved. The other half is not authorised only because the Local Council decided to refuse all applications after 2000, when they had previously encouraged the residents to buy and build on their own land. This forced eviction is entirely the making of local politicians, and the Minister responsible for planning.
See http://www.audacity.org/021-Crays-Hill.htm