UPDATE ON SAVE DALE FARM CAMPAIGN
Gratton Puxon gives an overall picture of the Save Dale Farm Campaign as it enters its seventh year and prepares for a likely series of eviction attempts against hundreds of so-called illegal residents at both Dale Farm and nearby Hovefields.
1 A huge housing/homeless process is underway in which residents are being assisted by local church volunteers and a team from Essex University Law Clinic.
Basildon council has already disqualified a number of people by claiming they rendered themselves intentionally homeless by leaving housing accommodation or council-run caravan sites, sometime in the past.
These disqualifications are being challenged by Davis Gore Lomax, solicitors representing residents. Reviews of unacceptable housing /flat offers are also being demanded, along with requests for land rather than bricks-and-mortar acommodation.
2 At the same time Basildon is trying to avoid the obligation to provide land for at least 62 new mobile-home pitches. A hearing may be pending in the High Court.
Residents are applying to be represented at any hearing on this issue, saying they were counted as among those in need of legal caravan park accommodation under the 2004 Housing Act.
3 Small-scale meetings continue to take place between BDC officials led by Dawn French, nominated project leader, and Gypsy Council and CEHR members representing Dale Farm. However, the BDC says no discussion of the 62-pitch provision can be included on the agenda of these meetings.
4 An initial meeting with Chief Insp Simon Dobinson is taking place this week to begin a review of a whole raft of issues around past and future policing of eviction operations.
In the past Constant bailiffs have been allowed to ignore safety procedures and their destruction of private property has gone unchecked. Anyone who has seen the Meadowlands eviction DVD will have an idea of the terror instilled in children in particular by the use of riot police and hard-hat bailiffs. Be aware of the warning issued by Basildon Primary Care Trust doctors of the inevitable trauma and injuries that will occur if and when Constant are again unleased.
To counter this situation, the campaign is seeking followup meetings with senior Essex police officers at Basildon police station and with the Essex Police Authority in Chelmsford, as well as with Health and Safety Executive staff and senior Essex County Council officials.
A hot line has been sent up with the HSE, so that inspectors can be quickly notified of safety breaches.
Several Traveller organizations and support groups have said they want to participate in these meetings, and supply monitors to help oversee compliance with any agreements reached.
Specific issues include:
a) the requirement on the BDC, Constant and police to produce a Risk Assessment report before an enforcement operation, and the right of residents facing eviction to scrutinze that report and if necessary challenge its conclusions.
b) the extreme breaches of safety law that Constant has committed in the past (at Meadowlands, Twin Oaks and Hovefields among many other locations) by employing heavy machinery in close proximity to small children. And arising from this the need to reach agreement on proper policing of future evictions, including prevention of heavy plant (bulldozers, cranes, low-loaders) onto sites while children and vulnerable elderly and sick persons are present.
c) adoption of the plan put forward by Wickford churches to make available church halls as places of shelter during the initial phase of any eviction operation at Dale Farm. In particular some mothers with small children, and pregnant mothers, may wish to be evacuated to the church halls before Constant bailiffs and anti-riot police, and their accompanying vehicles and machinery, approach.
d) the role of the UN Eviction Observer Team and Human Rights Monitors.
e) access for international media and reporters (a number of whom will be embedded at Dale Farm)
NOT TO BE REVEALED are the preparations made for the nonviolent but direct physical defence of Dale Farm, and the role of those willing to join a human shield-type strategy, which will be needed to protect some of the elderly residents and babies and small children not taken to church halls (bear in mind no agreement on the use of the halls has yet been reached).
The aim of defenders will be to challenge the right of the BDC to use private roads (outside the illegal part of Dale Farm) and to hold up the operation long enough to allow time for an application to a judge in chambers (duty judge) for an injunction halting the eviction, on the grounds of safety violations, ongoing danger to children and others and unnecessary destruction of property.
Please email with your comments and suggestions as we need to fine-tune plans as quickly as possible. No eviction operation will be launched before dispatch of a 28-day warming notice to those being targeted for forceful removal.
19 January 2010
