Dale Farm: a traveller's tale

Last week, the decade of legal battles over half of the traveller site at Dale Farm culminated into a physical one. Tony Balls, the Tory leader of Basildon council, has defended this eviction on the grounds of “fairness” – that the law must apply to everyone – which has been backed by his party’s leaders. However, this neglects the different starting positions: travellers are not treated like everyone to begin with. It’s like making someone start a game of Monopoly with half the money of everyone else and then complaining that it’s not fair when they start nicking money from the bank when people aren’t paying attention.

Travellers are persecuted in this country; no one wants them as neighbours. This has lead to the UK being short of thirty thousand traveller pitches. Councils have a set quota of traveller sites that they must provide; one which they tend to ignore. The government, instead of strengthening this quota, to make sure enough sites are available, are looking at abolishing it. This will stop the creation of new sites. Travellers repeatedly try to establish their own sites, but whereas the settler community (us) have around 20% of our planning proposals rejected, travellers have 90% of theirs rejected. The lack of planning permission granted forces travellers to build their site and ask for permission later.

Retrospective planning permission is not unusual. It is regularly given, and it is only through our institutional racism that travellers rely solely on it. Furthermore, the details of this case highlight the hypocrisy of Basildon council. The reason planning permission is not being granted is because it is apparently greenbelt. However, before the traveller’s arrival, this site was a scrap yard – not exactly green pasture. In fact, the council laid the hard ground, so the travellers did not carry out the original development. Also, currently, Basildon council are granting planning permission for development on agricultural land nearby, highlighting the double standards of their greenbelt argument. Adding insult to injury, the Tories are currently undermining the preservation of greenbelt land through changes in the planning laws, whilst so violently protecting the “greenbelt” of Dale Farm.

Even with the obvious double standards of this eviction the travellers were prepared to move if the council found them a local site. Even though local MEP Richard Howitt found a paid for site from the Homes and Communities Agency, the council have refused permission. They will not allow the travellers to stay in Basildon. This goes far beyond planning laws; it is pure racism. Currently, neighbouring councils are digging up roadsides to prevent the travellers stopping there. All the council has done is offer them housing, an insult to their culture and way of life. This has caused both the UN and Amnesty International to condemn this eviction with comparisons to Zimbabwe, as no culturally appropriate alternative is given. They cannot legally stay and they cannot legally travel.

Although this is the largest traveller site in Europe, I have been there and it’s tiny. The illegal part is two or three football pitches in size. The fact that it’s the largest shows only how little Europe accommodates its traveller community. Also, at a time of austerity the cost of eviction is thought to be approximately £20million, making this a very expensive scrap yard.

This may be shocking in its persecution of a minority, but it is also inspiring. For the first time large contingents of the settler community have supported the travellers. Ordinary people were locked to the caravans, including Ann and Myra, both in their late 70s, who are completely repulsed by this racist act.

The day of action resulted in physical violence between the supporters and police (though I think Ann and Myra had little involvement in that side of resistance!), but if you condemn this response then try and imagine whether you would not want physical support when being removed from your home. All action was done with the knowledge and support of the travellers and the support was commendable. Two people ended up spending Wednesday night with their arms in concrete barrels as the temperature nearly reached freezing, with imminent arrest once removed from the concrete. However, it didn’t have to be this way. Even if it was felt vital to remove them from Dale Farm, a traveller site could easily have been built in the vicinity. With this the travellers would have left peacefully and quickly. The violence seen on the TV could have been prevented. Instead, our hatred of travellers causes councillors to chase them out of town at high human and financial expense to preserve the votes they would have lost if travellers stayed.

When I discuss Dale Farm with people, upholding planning law is always given as the first reason for evicting them. However, quickly the discussions degenerate into false assumptions on the welfare dependency of travellers (not an issue I’ve ever heard outside of ill-informed debate), how they live and how they would not want travellers in their own back yard. When discussing this issue, please replace the word traveller with African, Polish or Chinese and see whether you think these arguments are appropriate and not utterly racist. Whatever arguments you hear on planning permission, please remember that when it comes to travellers, it is never truly about planning permission. It is because they do not live like us and we do not like that. If we cannot accept them as part of our society then they will be forced to live outside of it, breaking the law as a necessity.