NEW FORMATION LEADS
ANTI-RACIST CAMPAIGN
By Grattan Puxon
Press officer
for UK delegation to ERTF
Likely to be hailed as an historic leap forward, a new formation has emerged this weekend to spearhead the campaign against a dangerous tide of anti-Gypsy racism now apparent in the UK.
United by the need for a fresh initiative to overcome denial of basic human rights in the areas of security of life and land tenure, education and health, representatives of a dozen groups have decided to set up a permanent umbrella organisation.
As a first step in combating the menace of racism through international action, the assembly on Saturday (8 oct) elected delegates to the new European Roma and Travellers Forum.
"Those living under this threat are best qualified to speak for their communities," chairman Cliff Codona, of the National Travellers Action Group, told the meeting at Fenstanton, Cambridgeshire. "Our voices will now be heard."
Codona said he had recently been thrown off his own land because of anti-Gypsy prejudice. It was time people like themselves stood up and took a front row position to end this long-running harassment that denied them even a place to live.
Now that the Travellers' civil rights movement had truly taken root nobody could stop its further growth, he declared.
Kay Beard, of the UK Association of Gypsy Women, elected with Codona as a primary delegate to the ERTF, along with six deputy delegates, said previous UK governments paid years of lip-service to Travellers rights. "They listen to us," she commented. "But for so long took no notice." She said lack of government action had precipitated a worse crisis, with caravan parks and private yards being closed and more families pitched back on the road every day. That is why in the first place she had gone to the Council of Europe to complain. Speaking for Dale Farm, the village created by Travellers at Basildon and now threatened by £3 million demolition operation, Richard Sheridan endorsed the view that one effective way to put pressure on councils and the government was through Strasbourg.
"We're not getting respect," said Sheridan. "And we're certainly not getting even basic rights." It was time the UK stopped preaching to other countries about how to treat Roma and did something at home, Janie Codona, of the Trans-European Roma Federation, a deputy delegate, told those present. She had found being evicted back onto the road, without water, electricity or sanitation, a hard ordeal. Such inhuman treatment showed Britain was one of the worst countries in its suppression of the Romani way of life. Giving a European perspective, long-term Romani activist Siobhan Spencer, said she wanted to help reverse the eradication of the Romani language and culture. "We are one nation with one language," she declared.
In her election speech, Bridie Jones said if she went to Strasbourg she would want to concern herself with the problems faced by Roma all over Europe. Living the life of an Irish Traveller, among English Gypsies and Romanian Roma in the south of England, she would have a lot of issues to raise with the Council of Europe. "As well as all else," she Added. "I'm likely in the future to be evicted from my own land." Her husband, Joe Jones, of International Gypsy and Traveller Affairs, said health, accommodation and education were all fraught with difficulties and barriers for every single Gypsy and Traveller in the country. The first session of some 75 elected delegates of the ERTF, drawn from 35 countries, is scheduled to take place in Strasbourg during December. A general meeting of the new umbrella organisation will be arranged before the departure of the UK delegation.
Message from Cliff Codona UK delegate to the European Roma and Travellers Forum codona9 ( a t ) aol.com Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 14:43:41 -0400 Subject: Please Join This Group! I'd like you to join an online Group, called "ERTFmembers". Click here to join now! Joining is completely free, and it lets us share messages, photos and more through a private Web page! You can wait up to four weeks to join. After that, you will not be able to join the Group without receiving another invitation. If you do not want to join, simply ignore this email. When you join, you will need to agree to some basic Guidelines that help make sure the Group is a good experience for everyone. AOL will also save you time by automatically adding me and other Group members to your Buddy List. You can change these settings later by clicking Setup from your Buddy List window.
I hope to see you soon!
Your Groups: See What's New
Ustiben report
MOTHER TELLS TRIBUNAL:
MY CHILDREN TERRORISED
A mother described at a tribunal
yesterday (30 Sept) how her home was
bulldozed and her children terrorised
because people in a picturesque English
village didn't want Gypsies as
neighbours.
Margaret McCann, aged 33, who is bringing
up three children on her own, told how her
brother had paid $30,000 for a plot of land
so that she could start a secure life in
the village of Little Waltham, Essex.
Three times planning applications had
been sent in to Chelmsford borough council.
But each time chief planning officer Christine
Lyons had found a technical fault in forms
submitted and rejected them, said her
representative Dr Donald Kenrick.
It was not until six months after
evicting Mrs McCann and 20 other families
that the council even considered their
planning permit cases.
"We were following government advice when
we bought that land," Mrs McCann told planning
appeals inspector Mark Beard at Chelmsford
Civic Centre. "My property ended getting smashed
and looted by the bailiffs, my children
terrorised by the riot police."
She said the bailiffs hired by Chelmsford
to bulldoze Meadowlands, Gypsy removal specialists
Constant & Co., had burned everything on the
mobile-home park and, she alleged, stolen many
things. A new quadbike, generator and refrigerator
of hers had all gone missing.
The tribunal heard that unlike many others
this was not a case of Travellers trying to
settle in a designated Greenbelt area. The
field they purchased at Cranham Road, Little
Waltham, was common agricultural ground.
Since the eviction in 2004 in which a mobile-home
and two other caravans were burned, Meadowlands has
been severely damaged, according Grattan Puxon, author
and veteran Roma rights activist. The owner of the
mobile-home, Kathy Buckland, was currently suing
Chelmsford for damages.
"Pig slurry has been pumped onto the land to
render it uninhabitable," he told the inspector. "The
entrance has been illegally blocked with concrete
cylinders and a four-metre earth bank erected around
the entire perimeter, without the owners' consent or
planning permission."
In response to these allegations Mrs Lyons, an
anti-Gypsy enforcement officer for the past l6 years,
did not deny that topsoil had been destroyed and that
the field was now constantly flooded. She said the
council put up the banks to keep the owners out - but
intended to removed them within the next few months.
PROTEST ACTION
After the hearing, Mrs McCann and her children
led a protest outside the Civic Centre, holding Stop
Evictions posters and raising a large flag, logo
of the EU-sponsored European Roma and Travellers Forum.
Standing among a crowd of Essex students who joined
the demonstration, she said she would continue her
campaign for the right to live on her own land.
Puxon said the Meadowlands eviction, one
of the most brutal in recent years, showed that private
companies, such as Constant & Co., habitually ignore
safety regulations and endanger the lives of children
and elderly people while demolishing mobile-home parks.
In the past two years, hundreds of privately-owned
yards have been bulldozed, he said. It was in his opinion
a case of local council using, or rather abusing, planning
regulations as a smokescreen for wholesale ethnic-cleansing.
Another thousand properties were in-line for
bulldozing, including over l50 homes at the virtual
village known as Dale Farm, built by Travellers at Crays
Hill, Essex. Basildon council has voted to spend $5 million
to raise the village and force families out of the district.
Mrs McCann's appeal will now be forwarded to Deputy
Prime Minister John Prescott, with a recommendation from
the inspector. But even an unlikely recommendation to grant
her a permit may not help. Last week Mr Prescott ignored such
advice in the case of an appeal by four families in the
London borough of Bromley, who face immediate eviction along
with their 31 children.
Subject: STOP ETHNIC-CLEANSING
Date: Sun, September 25, 2005 10:28 am
Ustiben report
DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER
AIDS ETHNIC-CLEANSING
By Grattan Puxon
Despite an official recommendation, the UK
Deputy Prime Minister has refused permission for
another four Gypsy families to live on their own land,
fuelling allegations the Blair Government is aiding
ethnic-cleansing by local councils.
Travellers purchased land at Layhams Road,
Bromley, and move on in their caravans. When
planning permission was refused by the local
authority, Andrew Cash and others entered an
appeal.
After a public inquiry, an inspector submitted
a report to Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott
favouring a three year permit. But Prescott has
now rejected this proposal, sending 31 children
back to a dangerous life on the roadside.
"We need Prescott to give a lead," said veteran
planning activist Donald Kenrick. "This does not
augur well for other appeals, including the big one
for Dale Farm."
As a result of planning refusals more than
300 families have lost their homes in the past 18
months. Another 10,000 Travellers will be driven
off their own land unless the UK Government acts
to reverse present local council efforts to ethnically
cleanse Gypsies from gentrified white districts,
usually designated as greenbelt.
In Essex county the crisis is reaching a head
with several thousand Travellers facing eviction. A
programme on BBC 3 at 10 pm tonight (25 Sept)
entitled Gypsy Wars shows how a thousand
residents at Dale Farm are campaigning to save
their homes and community from the bulldozers.
Meanwhile, Margaret McCann, a mother whose
home was destroyed last year in a violent eviction
operation at Little Waltham, is giving evidence at
a public inquiry on Thursday (29 Sept). She will
show what Constant & Co. and other contractors
hired by Chelmsford borough council did to her
property.
Bulldozers removed top-soil and pig-slurry was
pumped onto the land to render it uninhabitable,
according to documentary evidence. Four-meter high
earth-banks, erected without consent of the owners,
now surround the site, blocking rightful access and
causing flooding.
"This will be another test-case," commented
Kenrick. "When will the government pay heed to
what is happening to Britain's most persecuted
minority?"
*********************************
STOP ETHNIC-CLEANSING
Protest against eviction of Travellers
and bulldozer vandalism in rural Essex
12 noon to 2pm Thursday 29 September
Civic Centre, Duke Street, Chelmsford
Gypsy & Traveller Affairs and
National Travellers Action Group
Supported by East Anglia Social Forum
Contact: 01206 523528
**************************************
Subject: NAZI HUNTER SIMON WIESENTHAL
Date: Sun, September 25, 2005 8:03 am
Ustiben report
SIMON WIESENTHAL: WE WILL NEVER FORGET HIM
By Grattan Puxon
It was a strange, almost sinister experience, visiting Simon Wiesenthal in
his
well-guarded Vienna office, some 25 years ago. Closed-circuit television
cameras, not
so common then, watched my approach up a bare flight of stairs from the
steel
re-enforced street door.
Wiesenthal, behind his crowded desk, surrounded by bulging files and
photographs,
gave one the unwelcome impression of a man of cold intensity. The interview
was
hardly warm yet what flowed from it showed Wiesenthal to be perhaps one of
the greatest
champions of the forgotten victims of Nazi genocide - the Romani people.
I had done some four years research into Nazi crimes against Roma, and
written with Dr Donald
Kenrick the book Destiny of Europe's Gypsies. Published in 1972, this
included references
from Simon Wiesenthal's The Murderers Among Us (1967).
As we sipped coffee together and talked of his then current search for
Josef Mengele,
I became to get a measure of his profound commitment. The so-called Angel of
Death, who
had selected Romani child-twins for monsterous medical experiments, was
traced a few years
later to Brazil.
The least sentimental person I ever met, Wiesenthal uttered one remark
which revealed
a side of him infrequently seen. "They were forced to play at executions,"
he said of Romani musicians
in Auschwitz. "I can still hear those violins."
It was not difficult after that to prevail upon this very busy man, a
workaholic in the cause he
single-mindedly served, to participate in the 3rd World Romani Congress,
held in Gottingen
in l981. By leading the seminar of the Romani war crimes commission,
Wiesenthal added his
considerable authority to what then was still a little recognised issue.
However, that was not the end of his intervention. In the mid-1980s,
following the
opening of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles, California, he again
lent a hand.
Under the auspices of the Wiesenthal Centre, the California Romani Council
performed its first
war crimes commemoration, chaired by the late John Marino.
Wiesenthal lived long enough, unhappily, to see anti-Roma racism rise
again in Europe to
levels comparable to those of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Gypsy pogroms in
Romania and
Bulgaria, genocide in Kosovo; police and immigration round-ups in western
Europe lead
to force move-ons and mass deportation.
Roma are again being murdered by fascists in Slovakia and Serbia, and
hounded out of Russian
cities. In the UK ethnic-cleansing hides behind a smokescreen of planning
regulations, driving settled
families from their own yards back into an insecure life on the road.
In my own part of England, families have purchased land and built a
village. But Dale farm is
a community living in fear. A dozen people have died in as many months due
the the anxiety engendered
by by Basildon council which wants to bulldoze their homes in a five million
Euro eviction operation.
One aspect of this settlement would have been familiar to Wiesenthal: the
barbed-wire. Only at
Dale Farm it has been erected - three kilometres of it around the perimeter
- to protect those on the
inside from a racially-motivated yet legally-sanctioned attack.
His successors say they will continue to investigate war Nazi crimes and
have 380 suspects on their list. Never
forgetting Simon Wiesenthal's example, let us root out all those who today
promote racial hatred and terror against
our people - especially where their deeds are masked behind a veil of law.
For myself these are The Murderers Among Us who need to be exposed.
Subject: MP VISITS TRAVELLERS
Date: Sat, September 3, 2005 7:19 am
Ustiben report
MP VISITS TRAVELLERS
TO SUPPORT CAMPAIGN
By Grattan Puxon
MP Bob Russell (Liberal Democrat)
will be visiting Travellers shortly
to show support for their campaign
for legal places to live and education
for their children.
His first call will be to families
who have just re-occupied the closed
Essex county council caravan site at
Haven Road, Colchester, in his own
constituency.
"This site was shut down four
years ago," said Mr Russell. "They have
been dragging their feet about opening
a new one to replace it."
He also feels that the present Labour
Government has delayed far to long in
formulating policy on the needs of the
Travelling community. Russell believes
land must be set aside for more council
and private-ownership mobile-home
parks.
Starting with the stand made by 85
families who own land at Dale Farm,
Basildon, the campaign in Essex is now
rapidly broadening. Yard-owners at
nearby Hovesfield Avenue, like those
are Dale Farm, have obtained the
protection of a High Court injunction
preventing their eviction by force.
The decision to destroy some l50
homes on private land at Dale Farm and
Hovesfield Avenue is to be the subject
of a judicial review.
Basildon district council has set aside
some five million Euro to bulldoze their
homes. It has employed "Gypsy eviction
specialists" Contant & Co., who in turn
are hiring the heavy bulldozers from
H E Services.
Chairman of this company Mr Hugh
Edeleanu has been asked by Jewish Human
Rights Monitors to stop making his
machinary available for the destruction
of homes. He has so far not responded.
"We are going to court on Tuesday,"
said Travellers' spokesman Martin Ward,
at Haven Road. "Hopefully we can get a
similar injunction and maybe a judicial
review."
They have applied for legal aid through
the Community Law Partnership, in
Birmingham, who have agreed to take up
their case. Essex county council is applying
initially for re-possession of the land.
**********************************
DALE FARM CAMPAIGN
AT ST PAUL'S CATHEDRAL
Dale Farm residents and other Travellers
will join Roma in St Paul's Cathedral, London, for
the Tenth Annual Racial Justice Sunday 5 pm on
11 September, at the invitation of Churches
Together through Toma Nikolaeff, chair of the
Trans-European Roma Federation.
A SAVE DALE FARM banner, along with a
large blue and green Romani flag, embossed with
a red wheel, will be paraded through the cathedral.
Those who would like to participate can
email Michael Sheridan dale.farm ( a t ) ntlworld.com
***************************************
Subject: FW: H.E.Services and eviction work
Date: Mon, August 29, 2005 8:10 am
----------
From: dale.farm
on 2/8/05 11:22 am, ustiben.2 at ustiben.2 ( a t ) ntlworld.com wrote:
Ustiben report
DALE FARM DEFENDS LAW<
AS BASILDON DEFY COURT<
By Grattan Puxon
Residents at Dale Farm, the biggest
Travellers' settlement in the UK under siege from
an extreme-right wing-led local council, were furious and
fearful this week following a bulldozer assault by Constant & Co.,
the 'gypsy eviction specialists', on a nearby trailer park.
During the partial eviction of Hovefields at
Wickford on Tuesday (26 July), Mr Constant in
defiance of a High Court judge, sent a giant JCB
bulldozer through a private yard which had been
placed under the protection of an injunction.
Extensive damage was done to the Ash View
property including destruction of fencing.The owner
is expected to pursue a claim for compensation
against Basildon district council.
Challenged by this writer immediately after
the incident, Mr Constant, standing within yards of
the crushed fence, admitted the invasion contravened
the court order."It should not have been done," he conceded
weakly.
A Dale Farm legal representative, appraised of the
incident, commented, "Mr Constant should be hauled
before the High Court judge and imprisoned for
contempt."
Chief Supt Sheldrake, the senior police officer present
during the 'direct action operation' at Hovefield appeared
to justify the intrusion by maintaining that Constant needed
access across Ash View in order to clear Dunroamin, a
plot adjacent to this yard.
However, it was pointed out to Chief Supt. Sheldrake
that other vehicles, including a second JCB, were entering
Dunroamin by way of Hovefields Drive, without
encountering any problem.
DALE FARM IN DANGER
Meanwhile, notice had been served by Constant bailiffs
on Dale Farm that a large-scale direct action operation
would be mounted against their homes unless they quit by
midnight on 31 July. They were further advised by Essex
welfare authorities to consider allowing the children and the
infirm to be taken to places of safety to avoid the trauma
of a violent eviction.
Physical as well as mental injury to women, children and
the elderly would be the inevitable result of the five million
euro bulldozer-led assault on the 120 chalets, mobile-homes and
caravans in the Sheridan-clan settlement, according to an assessment
by Wickford Primary Care Trust.
Only at the eleventh hour residents' solicitor Keith Lomax,
briefing barrister Alex Offer, was successful in obtaining an
injunction extending protection to a number of yards at Dale Farm.
An order by Mr Justice Richards was "intended to maintain the
status quo" pending a decision on an application for a judicial
review of Basildon's l8 to 21 vote to destroy the entire settlement.
That decision was based upon the racist boast of Basildon
Tory leader Malcolm Buckley to rid the district of all 220
'unauthorised' caravans.
In what is regarded by lawyers as a further obstruction,
Basildon council refused to accept the initial injunction as blanket
coverage despite a letter (30 July) from Mr Lomax to Samuel Grindal,
in their legal department, expressing the view that, "it would be
contemptuous of the Council to proceed".
He further submitted that disregarding the injunction was
itself a breach of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human
Rights both of the 85 families on Dale Farm and the 50 families
on the adjacent authorised Oak Lane site.
"I remind the Council that the right is of respect to family
and home," stated Mr Lomax. "The decision to refuse to give an
undertaking not to take action with respect to the entire site whilst
an injunction was in force for the sample 26 claimants was one
which no reasonable authority would make."
It clearly failed to take into account the impact on the
families and the breach of their rights under Article 8. Lomax
pointed out damage had already been caused by placing the
population at Dale Farm under enormous stress.
He urged them not to make the same mistake that Leeds
City Council made exactly five years ago on 1 August 2000 when
it evicted James Connors and his family. That eviction resulted in
the decision of the European Court of Human Rights (27 May 2004)
which now stands as authority on the issues that will clearly come
into play should the council proceed with direct action on or after
Monday,1 August.
RESIDENTS FACE EVICTION
"We're nearly out of our minds with the worry," said
Kathleen McCarthy, chair of Dale Farm residents'committee,
on the eve of the eviction deadline. "The council won't accept
the injunction and after Hovefields we can't trust the police
to uphold the law."
In response to an appeal by Richard Sheridan,
spokesman for Gypsy andTraveller Affairs, more than a dozen
Human Rights Monitors, including a strong Jewish contingent,
stayed overnight at Dale Farm. They were in place on Oak Lane
when police arrived early on Monday morning.
Enlarged copies of the High Court Injunction together
with the final Lomax letter had been posted at a temporary
road barrier. I explained to the sargeant that vehicles, other
than those of residents, required the authority of the owners
of the private road if they wished to proceed into Dale Farm.
Permission was presently being withheld due to the emergency
created by Basildon council's failure to accept the terms of
the Injunction.
After brief further discussion, the squad car was turned
around and driven away. An hour later, a police request to Essex
Fire and Rescue to remove the barrier was firmly refused. But
to the relief of residents, Constant & Co. made no appearance
and by 10 am, with the danger clearly passed, traffic was again
flowing freely. Pending the Judicial Review hearing, life for
the 600 residents had returned to something like normal.
Subject: [Tsn] ILLEGAL EVICTION AT HOVERFIELD
Date: Wed, July 27, 2005 3:16 pm
Dear comrades,
Dale Farm is on Crays Hill in Basildon, Essex
Nearby families at HOVERFIELD were brutaly evicted YESTERDAY -
EVICTION AT DALE FARM POSSIBLY NEXT WEEK
CONSTANT VIOLATES INJUNCTION<
preliminary report from Grattan Puxon
01206 523528
** The question is what action can be taken
** over Constant's blatant
** violation a High Court Injunction.
I received a phone call from Joe Jones
and got to Hoverfield Avenie about 10.30
with Richard Sheridan and Jimmy Sheridan
(from Dale Farm).
Mrs Doran, a client of Jeremy Brown
(01494782244) came and told us the bailiffs
were breaking down fences and that she was
afraid they would damage her property, which
was also protected by the Injunction.
I went with her, bringing an ITV Anglia
reporter and camera, and Gina Marden, chief
reporter of The Enquirer.
Entering the yard between Mrs Doran's (Long View)
and one of the plots being evicted - that of Mr Martin Sweeney)
I saw the track marks of a JCB and a large gap of
broken fence on Mr Sweeney's side. The
track went diagonally across the land and
through the fence at the top, where another section
of fence had been broken down.
It was clear that a JCB had driven across the
land of Mrs (Killiney?), destroying fencing (wooden
fencing with concrete posts) and damaging the
top soil on the land.
She herself was absent, with her four children.
Her husband died about two months ago.
I later saw several Constant baliffs in her yard,
standing next to another section of torn down fence
and moving a large oil-storage tank (which belonged
to Mr Sweeney, I believe).
At about 11.45 I approached Insp Thomas
and told him about the breaching of the Injunction
and he said it was a matter for the council and the
civil courts. He said "We wouldn't have done anything
to prevent them (meaning stop Constant going onto that
plot). We're only here to prevent a breach of the peace."
At about 12.l5 I approached Mr Constant, who was
with other bailiffs on Mr Sweeney's plot. I pointed
out the broken fencing (only yards away) and said that
a JCB had obviously driven through the next plot.
I said, "Are you aware that the Injunction has
been violated and that your people should not have done that."
He said, "No, they should not have done that."
At about 12.30 I approached Chief Insp Sheldrake
and pointed out to him what had been done. He
said. "They needed access" When I pressed him pointing
out that the JCB could have got access to the land by
driving up the lane (upper part of Hovefield Avenue,
I believe) as other vevicles had, including the other JCB.
He said, "It's up to the courts" I said I wanted him to take
note of my complaint.
The other person evicted was Judy Casey (07899685183)
and I understand Constant cleared her land, as well as moving
two caravans from her plot onto another unauthorised
plot at Hoverfield.
According to Mr and Mrs Berry at
Home View (the further side of Mrs Doran's)
Constant damaged their water supply by breaking
pipes on Mr Sweeney's plot.
The two JCBs were from H.E.Services.
I took snap shots of the broken fences,
the presence of bailiffs on Mrs Killiney's (?) land,
and of the two JCBs while they were working
clearing the Casey's land, which adjoins hers
at the top. That plot, I believe, is Dun Roamin.
In the afternoon, about 2 pm, I met
Mrs Ann Kobayashi (01268767138), one of the
local people who has volunteered to act as a
Human Rights monitor, with Anne Matthews, and
Zelda (01268457938), together with
two members of the Basildon Islamic Centre
(who are also members of the Minority Rights Group),
Sister Serafina and Brother Sarwar.
Richard Sheridan drove them to Hovefield.
They found that one mobile-home was still on
Mr Sweeney's plot. Mrs Koyayashi and Zelda
decided to make a protest and sat down infront
of the mobile-home and held up a small banner
saying "Protect Human Rights".
They were almost immediately removed bodily
by police officers and told they would be charged with
obstructing the police and obstructing bailiffs "going
about their lawful duties".
They were taken to Raleigh police station
and released at about 7.30 pm (five hours later)
without any charges being made. While at the
police station they heard an officer say, "We're
doing Dale Farm next week."
Ann Kobayashi says the action
of the police was "wholly disproportionate."
A large mobile-home was towed off
Mr Sweeney's plot with the intention of taking
it to a council-owned site at Peckham. For a time
it was wedged at a corner and could not be moved.
===================================================
Also updated FREEDOMMARCH2005 Site with Notes from meeting at parliament
on 6th June 2005:
http://www.geocities.com/freedommarch2005/6-6-5.txt
CONSTANT VIOLATES INJUNCTION
Date: Wed, July 27, 2005 7:42 am
CONSTANT VIOLATES INJUNCTION<
preliminary report from Grattan Puxon
01206 523528
** The question is what action can be taken
** over Constant's blatant
** violation a High Court Injunction.
I received a phone call from Joe Jones
and got to Hoverfield Avenie about 10.30
with Richard Sheridan and Jimmy Sheridan
(from Dale Farm).
Mrs Doran, a client of Jeremy Brown
(01494782244) came and told us the bailiffs
were breaking down fences and that she was
afraid they would damage her property, which
was also protected by the Injunction.
I went with her, bringing an ITV Anglia
reporter and camera, and Gina Marden, chief
reporter of The Enquirer.
Entering the yard between Mrs Doran's (Long View)
and one of the plots being evicted - that of Mr Martin Sweeney)
I saw the track marks of a JCB and a large gap of
broken fence on Mr Sweeney's side. The
track went diagonally across the land and
through the fence at the top, where another section
of fence had been broken down.
It was clear that a JCB had driven across the
land of Mrs (Killiney?), destroying fencing (wooden
fencing with concrete posts) and damaging the
top soil on the land.
She herself was absent, with her four children.
Her husband died about two months ago.
I later saw several Constant baliffs in her yard,
standing next to another section of torn down fence
and moving a large oil-storage tank (which belonged
to Mr Sweeney, I believe).
At about 11.45 I approached Insp Thomas
and told him about the breaching of the Injunction
and he said it was a matter for the council and the
civil courts. He said "We wouldn't have done anything
to prevent them (meaning stop Constant going onto that
plot). We're only here to prevent a breach of the peace."
At about 12.l5 I approached Mr Constant, who was
with other bailiffs on Mr Sweeney's plot. I pointed
out the broken fencing (only yards away) and said that
a JCB had obviously driven through the next plot.
I said, "Are you aware that the Injunction has
been violated and that your people should not have done that."
He said, "No, they should not have done that."
At about 12.30 I approached Chief Insp Sheldrake
and pointed out to him what had been done. He
said. "They needed access" When I pressed him pointing
out that the JCB could have got access to the land by
driving up the lane (upper part of Hovefield Avenue,
I believe) as other vevicles had, including the other JCB.
He said, "It's up to the courts" I said I wanted him to take
note of my complaint.
The other person evicted was Judy Casey (07899685183)
and I understand Constant cleared her land, as well as moving
two caravans from her plot onto another unauthorised
plot at Hoverfield.
According to Mr and Mrs Berry at
Home View (the further side of Mrs Doran's)
Constant damaged their water supply by breaking
pipes on Mr Sweeney's plot.
The two JCBs were from H.E.Services.
I took snap shots of the broken fences,
the presence of bailiffs on Mrs Killiney's (?) land,
and of the two JCBs while they were working
clearing the Casey's land, which adjoins hers
at the top. That plot, I believe, is Dun Roamin.
In the afternoon, about 2 pm, I met
Mrs Ann Kobayashi (01268767138), one of the
local people who has volunteered to act as a
Human Rights monitor, with Anne Matthews, and
Zelda (01268457938), together with
two members of the Basildon Islamic Centre
(who are also members of the Minority Rights Group),
Sister Serafina and Brother Sarwar.
Richard Sheridan drove them to Hovefield.
They found that one mobile-home was still on
Mr Sweeney's plot. Mrs Koyayashi and Zelda
decided to make a protest and sat down infront
of the mobile-home and held up a small banner
saying "Protect Human Rights".
They were almost immediately removed bodily
by police officers and told they would be charged with
obstructing the police and obstructing bailiffs "going
about their lawful duties".
They were taken to Raleigh police station
and released at about 7.30 pm (five hours later)
without any charges being made. While at the
police station they heard an officer say, "We're
doing Dale Farm next week."
Ann Kobayashi says the action
of the police was "wholly disproportionate."
A large mobile-home was towed off
Mr Sweeney's plot with the intention of taking
it to a council-owned site at Peckham. For a time
it was wedged at a corner and could not be moved.
STOP DALE FARM EVICTION
Date: Sat, July 23, 2005 3:42 pm
SENDER: ustiben.2 ( a t ) ntlworld.com
when you have read this report
please consider the following
ways that you might help:
1 volunteer as a Human Rights Monitor
2 protest to doug.smith ( a t ) basildon.gov.uk
3 provide material support (list on request)
4 attend one of the regular Tuesday meetings
at Dale Farm (12 noon onwards)
The "human shield" in defence
of homes and human rights will be conducted
LEGALLY on parts of the Dale Farm/Oak Lane complex
which are NOT subject to the direct action eviction
operation - but which bailiffs Constant & Co will have to
cross in order to reach those plots/yards they are
authorised to bulldoze.
WE WILL NOT MOVE! THEY SHALL NOT PASS!
WARNINGS OF VIOLENCE AS MASS EVICTION VOTED
By Grattan Puxon
An unprecedented mass eviction
of a whole community, inevitably involving
injuries and trauma to women and children;
that's how a Labour Party councillor
described the "direct action" operation
voted through by Tory die-hards at a
Basildon council meeting last night (l4 July)
By the narrowest majority, after a heated
two-hour debate, Malcolm Buckley's boast to
rid the district of over 220 "unauthorised"
caravans got the backing he wanted. The
price-tag of five million euro, plus
incalculable legal costs, appeared to be
no deterent
The Tory block, sitting block-faced and
largely silent, chose to ignore the dire warnings
of the Wickford Primary Care Trust that a violent
eviction by the notorious "Gypsy specialists"
Constant & Co. must leave a trial of trauma
and destruction unprecendented in UK local
authority history.
"By this callous decision," said Cllr
Sultan Nandanwar, "you are letting lose your
bullyboy bailiffs to intimidate women and
children."
Describing this as the darkest day since
the creation of Basildon Newtown, another
Labour member said the council needed instead
to do what was morally right and provide an
alternative for the 120 families at Dale Farm.
He reminded all present that the Government
had offered at the eleventh hour to provide
funding for the acquisition of alternative land.
Instead the Tory party, following the lead
of Michael Howard, was pushing through against
the will of the majority of the tax-payers of the
district, "an obscene" expenditure on an
eviction which was to be placed in the hands
of a cowboy oufit called Constant & co. "I have
seen the videos of this crew at work and they
will not give Basildon the national profile we want."
He then asked if Constant employees had
been checked through police records for any
previous convictions for violence.
Dale Farm residents crowded the limited
public seating and overflowed into an adjoining
room as Buckley swept aside twenty questions
put by Travellers and supporters. One local
resident said there could be a council-tax strike
if Buckley went ahead and squandered millions on
an eviction which was unlikely to have the
result he wanted.
Buckley admitted he had been turned down
flat in his last-minute attempts to get the Government
to foot the bill. "They are washing their hands
of this," he commented.
However, it was revealed that the Office of the
Deputy Prime Minister was offering funding and
help with a land search through the English
Partnership.
Cllr Geoff Williams (Lib-Dem) said only that
morning a human rights group in Washington had issued
a statement condemning the threatened destruction of
Dale Farm. He branded Buckley's methods as something
from a"Lewis Carol world" and his wasting of resources
the economics of a madhouse.
"We stood up just now to remember the victims of
terrorism," commented another Labour member. "Yet
within the same breath you are asking us to vote to
destroy people's lives."
Subject: SAVE DALE FARM COMMUNITY
Date: Fri, July 22, 2005 7:53 am
SAVE DALE FARM COMMUNITY<
(just like Magabe - bulldozing homes)
STOP UK ETHNIC-CLEANSING<
We are facing a mass eviction and the
bulldozing of our homes. Please come and
help us protect our women and children
from Basildon council, which is acting
like the Nazis did in Germany when they
started killing off all the Gypsies.
The council - by just three votes - has
decided to spend three million pounds to
destroy our entire community
of over1,000 people.Yet they won't
spend a penny buying alternate land for us,
though we have found two places they could buy.
We are peaceful people but they are driving
us to extremes and now our backs are against
the wall - the walls of the homes we have built
and paid for.
For the first time, our children are in school, more than
200 of them, and our sick folk are getting the
medical treatment they need. But this will all
end and we will be living at the side of them
road again - if the Constant & Co bully bailiffs
succeed.
PLEASE COME AND JOIN US!
Come and be Human Rights Monitors and join the
"human shield" called for by Corin Redgrave
and help us legally defend our homes and our
human rights (we have taken legal advise
on what we can do).
We have just been given NOTICES
to quit by mighnight on 31 July or
face eviction by force.
Richard Sheridan
residents committee
Dale Farm
Crays Hill, Basildon, Essex
Mobile: 07747417711
ADD YOUR NAME TO "RED ALERT" LIST
TO BE CALLED WHEN EVICTION IS ON:
Our phone contact is 01206 523528
(leave your number on the answering machine)
email: ustiben.2 ( a t ) ntlworld.com
Subject: DALE FARM: ALERT
Date: Wed, July 6, 2005 10:08 am
RE: DALE FARM: ORANGE ALERT
People who feel that they want to ask Basildon some
questions about the intention to bulldoze all
the homes, and hopes, at Dale Farm - should go
ahead.
Email: lesley.stott ( a t ) basildon.gov.uk
She is the meetings manager looking after
arrangements for the l4 July council session
which, it is understood, will now have agree
to an expenditure of £2.9 million, the police
having put a price-tag on their attendance
of £1 million - just possibly as a deterrent.
indicating they are not keen on the "direct action"
operation.
Lesley assures us that ALL questions (when not
duplicates of others) will be answered in
writing - even if you are not attending the
meeting.
Your questions, and the answers, may be of
use to Keith Lomax (k.lomax ( a t ) dgllaw.co.uk)
as points to be included in his Judicial
Review application.
This will go in shortly after the l4 July meeting.
Meanwhile, the Judicial Review application for
Hovefield, Wickford, was rejected yesterday by
Judge Sir Richard Tucker. Those who have not
already left face imminent eviction.
While having great confidence in the case for
Judicial Review being put forward on behalf of
Dale Farm residents,I must say we all of us now
have to consider what the situation will be should
this application also be turned down.
Therefore those who have volunteered to act
as Human Rights Monitors in the event of the
direct action operation going ahead, ought now to
BE PREPARED TO MUSTER AT SHORT NOTICE<
Accommodation, hot drinks and food will be
provided for those staying overnight.
The presence and role of the monitors is to be
discussed with council officials and senior police
officers. One of the questions already posed
concerns just this.
I would be grateful if those on this list
contemplating coming to Dale Farm would now
drop me an email to confirm.
The hour of greatest need may be at hand.
Grattan
Subject: DALE FARM: CRUCIAL VOTE
Date: Fri, July 1, 2005 7:49 am
DALE FARM: CRUCIAL VOTE<
Malcolm Buckley, Tory leader of Basildon
district council, whose wife Sylvia chairs the
development control committee which has
recommended bulldozing Dale Farm, says
in theory the full council could refuse to
vote the £1.5 million needed for the job.
Can theory become the reality? That
is a challenge surely all of us in this human
rights campaign should eagerly take up!
That crucial meeting is taking place
in Room 1 at the Basildon Centre, St Martin's
Square, Basildon, on l4 July (starts 7.30 pm).
Room 1, the regular council chamber, is far
smaller than the adjoining theatre used for the two
previous committee meetings - including that
on 8 June when Corin Regrave suffered a severe
heart attack while pleading for the rights of all
the families at Dale Farm.
Unlike at those committee meetings, members
of the public will not be allowed to address the
council. But they will be permitted to put
questions - provided the question is submitted
in advance.
Word is that if sufficient numbers of us put
in questions, the council will probably have to provide
a larger venue. And I'm sure a lot of those in the
campaign can think up some effective and hard-hitting
quiries for this council which is bent on inflicting
brutal, and to my mind fascist-style, punishment on
people who are simply in breach of a planning
regulation - because the same council has chosen
to put them in that position.
Your question should be emailed to:
malcom.buckley ( a t ) members.basildon.gov.uk
with copies to officials:
graeme.bloomer ( a t ) basildon.gov.uk
doug.smith ( a t ) basildon.gov.uk
You might also send copies to
geoffwilliams ( a t ) cix.co.uk
the Lib-Dem councillor who is opposing
the eviction and has volunteered to act
as a Human Rights Monitor.
Grattan Puxon
Subject: OPPOSE BULLDOZER LAW
Date: Fri, June 24, 2005 8:38 am
Ustiben report
DALE FARM: BULLDOZER LAW<
DENOUNCED BY TRAVELLERS<
By Grattan Puxon
In what must go down as the most notorious
decision by a local council in the history of the
Gypsy civil rights movement, Basildon councillors
voted late last night to bulldoze Dale Farm,
Britain's largest Travellers' village.
Many wept openly as Nora Gore, a young woman
suffering from diebetes, begged chairman Sheila
Buckley not to push through a decision which would
cost her both home and health - and possibly her
life.
But when the packed meeting overflowed
into Basildon town square, the people of Dale Farm
vowed to continue the fight. Their next hope is an
application for a judicial review, allowing a British
high court to rule on the validity of a council
motion which one speaker called an echo from
the era of the early years of Nazi Germany.
Tory councillors sat poker faced when a local
resident pleaded for a deferrent of the eviction
option until Dale Farm home-owners could be
found somewhere else to go. A petition signed by
some 350 people in the parish appeared to cut
no ice.
Certainly the stakes have now been raised
in what has been a long drawn-out drama. More than
130 homes, including chalets, mobile-homes and
caravans, stand in the path of the giant JCB
excavators set to be deployed for the demolition.
Ostensibly to return a bit of ground to greenbelt
status, most of which had been a scrapyard, Basildon
is paying Gypsy eviction specialists Constant & Co.,
private-sector thugs, an initial three million euro
to do their dirty-work.
But the cost in terms of bricks and mortar
is as nothing compared with the terror and destruction
to be wrought in the lives of nearly 200 children
who make up the innocent of this close-knit community.
Their lives are to be mercelessly trashed - unless a judge
or - can we even hope? - the British government
intervenes.
It is within the remit of Deputy Prime Minister
John Prescott to put on hold what is techically a planning
policy issue. A delegation is going to 10 Downing Street
to seek just such a reprieve.Todate however Prime Minister
Tony Blair, while meeting anti-Gypsy MP John Barron,
within whose constituency Dale Farm stands, has refused
even to receive Traveller spokesmen and is unlikely to open
his door on this occasion.
*************************************
WHAT YOU CAN DO
TO HELP DALE FARM
Email messages to:
Basildon District Council at
malcolm.buckley ( a t ) members.basildon.gov.uk
Office of the Deputy Prime Minister at
trevor.diesch ( a t ) odpm.gov.uk
Join Human Rights Monitoring team
to be present at eviction:
ustiben.5 ( a t ) ntlworld.com
*************************************
Download this as a file
Subject: DALE FARM: EVICTION ILLEGAL<< From: "ustiben.2"
Meanwhile, an appeal is being made to Basildon
councillors by members of the Jewish community not
to go ahead with evictions. Ruth Barnett, who escaped
the Nazi persecution in Germany, says she is concerned
both for the families involved and for the reputation
of Britain.
She is asking members of the council committee
which meets on Tuesday (21 June) to think again about
the families at Dale Farm, in particular the children, and
not to make a decision they could later regret.
A Jewish human rights monitoring team is
being formed to witness the direct action operation
by Constant & Co., a company which styles itself as
Gypsy eviction specialists. The firm has submitted a
blueprint for the domolition of what is virtually
a village at Crays Hill, Essex. It carries a price-tag
of three million euro.
Others preparing to observe the mass-demolition
include Liberal Democrat MP Nick Harvey. Some members
of Basildon council have expressed their opposition to
the operation and a petition signed by local residents
is to be presented soon.
Roma representatives will be reporting on the
crisis to the Romanu union parliament meeting in
Belgrade on 1 July. The planned destruction of Dale
Farm has been condemned by Romani organisations
in France, Germany and Serbia, as well as the US,
Canada and Australia.
Subject: OPPOSE BULLDOZER LAW
Date: Fri, June 10, 2005 7:26 am
VIGIL FOR CORIN REDGRAVE<
AS BASILDON DEFERS VIRDICT
A candle-lit vigil was held last night
for actor Corin Redgrave following his collapse
at a council meeting held to decide the fate
of Britain's largest Traveller community.
Redgrave suffered a severe heartattack
while pleading with councillors not to vote
for the destruction of Dale Farm. The meeting
was adjourned as Redgrave was taken to a
nearby hospital where he remains in intensive
care. He was said this morning to be in a stable
condition.
His wife, actor Kika Markham, who earlier
in the day had welcomed Dale Farm residents to
a meeting at the House of Commons, was later
at the hospital where Redgrave was on a lifesupport
system.
That morning Redgrave had chaired a packed
meeting in the Jubilee Room at the Palace of
Westminster called by Peace & Progress to try and
prevent a forced eviction. Lord Avebury urged that
a moratorium on evictions be imposed by the
government until land was made available for private
and council-run caravan parks.
"We need action right now to save Dale Farm,"
Lord Avebury concluded. "Eviction will solve
nothing. Under the Homelessness Act Basildon will
still have responsibility."
Kathleen McCarthy, chair of Dale Farm
Residents Committee, said the threatened eviction
had little to do with planning rules and everything
to do with prejudice and racism. "Just leave us alone
to send our children to school," she pleaded.
HUMAN RIGHTS IGNORED
Vice-chair of the Parliamentary Committee
on Human Rights Jeremy Corbyn said Travellers had
been denegrated and vilified in a way that would never
be tolerated in respect of other ethnic groups. He hoped
that reasoned argument and protest action would lead to
a victory of common sense at Dale Farm and an end
to the spate of evictions around the country, which
were giving Britain a bad name. The latest EU report
was highly critical of the UK record on treatment
of Travellers whose human rights were routinely
ignored.
Martin Collins, director of the Irish Travellers
Movement, pointed out that Irish Travellers were taking
the brunt of criticism with headlines in the press like
"Stamp On The Camps". He said it was within the power
of the Deputy Prime Minister to step in and resolve the
issue of planning consent.
Accusing the government of habouring a hidden
agenda, Sylvia Done, of Traveller and Gypsy Affairs, said
she feared Tory leader Michael Howard's plan for old army
camps to be turned into concentration camp-like reserves for
Travellers might still be on the books. Meanwhile, children
were being severely traumatised by evictions and many had
expressed their fears in painting depicting fires and
caravans on fire.
Nick Harvey MP likened the recent election tactics
by the Conservative Party when voters had been egged on
by racist statements against Gypsies to the situation in
Germany during the rise of Nazism in the l930s. He was
also shocked by the attitude of the Deputy Prime Minister
John Prescott whose inaction was allowing the crisis to
worsen.
Even more alarming was a conversation he had
overheard in which a "very senior politician" on the
Labour frontbench had asked whether the UK could derogate
from sections of the Human Rights Covention so as
to avoid certain obligations towards Gypsies. It
appeared some people in the Labour Party held views
similar to Howard.
CARAVANS BURNED
Referring to the immediate prospects at Basildon,
Grattan Puxon said if the council voted to attempt an
eviction by force and bring in Constant & Co. that
decision would be challenged in the courts. More than
40 Dale Farm residents had asked solicitor Keith Lomax
to represent them in an application for a Judicial Review
and an Injunction stopping Basildon from taking direct
action.
He described how Constant, a private security
company specialising in eviction of Gyspies, had cut a
swathe of destruction across Britain, destroying more
than 250 private plots in the past two years. Old people
had been assaulted, children terrorised and mountains
of property, including caravans, been burned.
"The campaign for Gypsy rights has never been
stronger nor more united," Puxon said. "But if we can't
together save Dale Farm then we have failed and this
destruction will go on unchecked."
Toma Nikoleaff, chair of the Trans-European Roma
Federation pledged his solidarity with Dale Farm residents.
He said he had been appalled to find that Britain was
treating its Roma and Traveller minorities with such
lack of regard for basic human rights.
Wickford resident Ann Kobayashi said there was
now a groundswell of support among local residents for
the Dale Farm community. A growing number of
people were saying they did not want to see the families
simply evicted and their homes destroyed. Such
brutality would cause untold harm and solve nothing.
Twenty people at the meeting put them names
forward to act as Human Rights Monitors in the event
that Constant & Co are hired by Basildon to raze
Dale Farm. The council have set aside three million
euro for the operation.
****************************************
HUMAN RIGHTS MONITORS
If you wish to serve as a Human Rights Monitor
and help stop this "bulldozer law" operation:
email: ustiben.5. ( a t ) ntlworld.com
Help with travel, food and accommodation for
those able to commit to this action and selected
by Dale Farm community for Monitoring duties.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Messages to Basildon Council can be sent to:
malcolm.buckley ( a t ) members.basildon.gov.uk
****************************************