Dale Farm – the final battle
Francis Sedgemore, Wednesday 19 October 2011 at 11:40 UTC
Now let me see if I’ve got this straight. The UK state, in the hands of its rightful proprietors, the Conservative and Unionist Party, is intent on overhauling planning laws so as to boost economic growth and facilitate housing development on non-urban land. As part of the government’s so-called ‘localism’ agenda, which is made possible through some typically Tory centralisation, housing development companies, among whom are some notable Conservative Party doners, will only be prevented from carrying out their plans if there is is an overwhelming case against (read: one that cannot be kept under the radar of community and media scrutiny). Government policy includes measures to fast-track the usual planning and consultation process, which is music to the ears of the ‘entrepreneurial’ class.
On the other hand, another group of entrepreneurs, this time in the form of a traveller community living in one of the grottier bits of Essex, is being met with all the obstructive powers that the state can muster. As I type, Dale Farm is being trashed by police and local government agents, and residents’ blood mopped up in advance of the arrival of the world’s television news crews and human rights inspectors. In addition to truncheons, fists and boots, police tasers were used at dawn against those defending the site. This is in contravention of Home Office guidelines which state that the ostensibly non-lethal firearms are not to be employed in crowd control situations.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not defending the Dale Farm community’s building of housing structures on land they own, but for which there is no legal planning consent. There is a good argument for granting consent, but there is also due process, and travellers are not known for respecting such niceties. I can admire and respect the travellers for their creative contempt for authority, but the consequences are clear enough. If you pick a fight with the state, then for goodness sake ensure that you possess superior firepower, both physical and rhetorical. Fail to do so, and you will at the very least get a severe kicking from the state’s uniformed enforcers.
The Dale Farm community may not have a legal leg to stand on, but their moral case, while a little frayed in places, is sound, even if they are taking liberties with it for PR effect. This case has even attracted the attention of a senior UN adviser who accused Basildon Council of having broken human rights laws, and drew parallels with China and Nigeria.
Basildon Council offered alternative, bricks-and-mortar accommodation to the travellers, displaying a typically bourgeois British racism against gypsies and travellers. “We will socially engineer you out of existence,” the ruling class are saying in effect.
After lengthy legal toing and froing, the travellers lost their final appeal against eviction, and were left to await the inevitable. They and their crusty supporters then hunkered down for a final battle, but the writing was on the wall, and more than figuratively speaking. Before dawn this morning, the Essex police tooled up, beat their chests and shields, and steamed in through a back gate while a few suits and senior plods distracted residents with discussions at the front. Further proof, if proof be needed, that the state has no sense of honour or decency.
Is hatred of gypsies the last form of acceptable racism in Britain?
Feed the writer! 
Wednesday 19 October 2011 at 15:10 UTC
Great picture – looks like a remake of The Seventh Seal.
Wednesday 19 October 2011 at 15:48 UTC
[...] problems facing Gypsies and travellers, and the second is by the journalist and science writer Francis Sedgemore, from his blog, in which he highlights the hypocrisy of the government, comparing and contrasting [...]
Wednesday 19 October 2011 at 17:10 UTC
Is hatred of gypsies the last acceptable form of racism in Britain? Sadly so I guess.
Wednesday 19 October 2011 at 17:53 UTC
Kellie – that was my thought too. There is more drama in that one picture of what appears to be an ardent catholic traveller wielding her crucifix as a talisman against the dark forces of the state, than in those of tasering cops and handcuffed herberts.
Wednesday 19 October 2011 at 17:54 UTC
Jams – it is, and it’s worth reading what my journalist colleague Andy Worthington has to say in his blog post linked above.
Wednesday 19 October 2011 at 19:07 UTC
Very well worth reading Francis. Thanks!
Wednesday 19 October 2011 at 21:21 UTC
[...] problems facing Gypsies and travellers, and the second is by the journalist and science writer Francis Sedgemore, from his blog, in which he highlights the hypocrisy of the government, comparing and contrasting [...]
Thursday 20 October 2011 at 08:47 UTC
I must enter a note of dissent here. There’s nothing in your posting that relates to the rights of the residents of Crays Hill or any feelings and views they any have about a ‘community’ of self styled travllers who have arrived, occupied land and settled in their midst. There’s a great deal written and broadcast about the culture and rights of travellers but presumably the folk who live in what you rather snobbishly call one of the grottier parts of Essex have no rights; they shouldn’t be heard because arguing against an unplanned descent in your area is racist. Is it?
Thursday 20 October 2011 at 10:05 UTC
If you actually read what I wrote, Richard, you will see clear reference to (some of) the Dale Farm travellers not having a legal leg to stand on, and the need to follow “due process”. But then, with hindsight, I think I’m being rather unfair on them, given that the vast majority of planning applications submitted by travellers are refused. Give us a level playing field for all in our glorious property owning democracy, and I’ll happily join in the rhetorical kicking of those who refuse to play by society’s rules.
As for the “feelings” of the residents of Crays Hill or anywhere else about a handful of travellers descending on their area, I really couldn’t give a toss. Throughout my life I’ve witnessed popular prejudice against gypsies and travellers: the white, non-Jewish untermensch of European society. As a child in a genteel, aspirational southern suburb of Dublin in the early seventies, and more recently in southern England, I’ve seen expressed the most vicious popular racist sentiment against ’filthy pikies’, including from those who would normally support right-on causes, and never dream of saying anything derogatory about a black or Asian person.
Just as antisemitism has never lost traction within petite-bourgeois society, anti-traveller racism is alive and kicking. Even on the BBC’s Newsnight, where last night we witnessed the Basildon MP bang on about “the law-abiding majority”. This obnoxious buffoon browbeat UN representative Anastasia Crickley from the get-go, only to be joined by an audibly sneering Jeremy Paxman as soon as Ms Crickley raised the subject of “culturally appropriate accommodation”. Nice boots, Mr Baron.
When it comes to culturally appropriate accommodation, this is not an easy issue to discuss, let alone resolve. While most travellers, er, travel, some live in static houses. But even where they do reside in bricks and mortar, travellers are subject to cultural and racial prejudice from their neighbours. In the case of Dale Farm, this racism is to be found not only among the travellers’ immediate geographical neighbours, but spread far and wide across cyberspace. Who needs the Daily Heil when we have Comment is Free?
Finally, this talk of Crays Hill residents having “no rights” is no different from the “I’m not a racist, but…” complaints of BNP supporters.
Shame on us!