Dale Farm prepares for its final battle

Residents await bailiffs as Basildon council starts eviction after Travellers’ 10-year struggle to stay on Essex site Mary Flynn sees – and hears – bailiffs everywhere. “You wake at 4am, you wake at 2am, you wake at 1am. If you hear the dustman coming you think, ‘There they are.’ If you hear a lorry coming, you think, ‘There they are, we’ve got to get up.’” After months of sleepless nights, the fateful knock on the door of the 72-year-old’s cream Vivaldi caravan could come on Monday. Assuming they make it past a network of makeshift scaffold blockades and hastily erected brick walls, bailiffs employed by Basildon council are due to start the £18m eviction of Travellers living at Dale Farm on Monday morning. The eviction process, which is likely to be fraught and complex, lasting several days, will bring to a close a 10-year battle by the Traveller families, numbering about 400 people in all, to remain on the site in the Essex green belt, which they own but for which they have no planning permission. Final battle lines were being drawn throughout Sunday. As teams of men in high-visibility jackets fenced off a zone around the illegal section of the community, inside which bright yellow diggers waited, those within the camp were doing their best to make the bailiffs’ job as difficult as possible. Much of the blockading, which included a platform balanced on precarious scaffold stilts about 10 metres above the main gate, has been overseen by outside volunteers who set up camp on the site over recent weeks, bringing with them expertise and tactics honed on environmental protests. These will include “locking on”, in which activists and residents will attach themselves using locks to caravans or other fixed objects. David, a 46-year-old roofer from Northumberland who was mixing mortar for a brick wall being built across the likely path of the diggers, said he was one of the few with no previous experience. “This is the first protest I’ve ever been on,” he said. “I read about what was happening in the papers and thought: this isn’t right. The idea they’re spending £18m to break up a community seems crazy.” Throughout Sunday a stream of cars and vans left the site, ferrying children, some older residents and valuables to the adjoining legal section. In the evening the main gates were closed, with supporters further reinforcing them from inside. While the Travellers are grateful to the activists – and for other outside voices of support, which have included a UN race relations committee and the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights – the abiding mood remained one of pessimism. “What am I feeling? I’m heartbroken for myself, but I’m also heartbroken for the old people and the children. How are they going to cope?,” said Kathleen McCarthy, 48, who spent the day moving her valuables and overseeing the evacuation of two infant grandchildren and a heavily pregnant daughter-in-law. She, like other residents, says she is terrified the eviction could become violent: “Whatever happens it is Basildon council’s problem. They caused it. Even now we’re pleading with them to stop all this.” Residents have submitted planning applications for smaller sites on land where the owners have signalled they would be happy with a Traveller community. McCarthy said she did not understand why Basildon had not waited for these to be considered. “My whole family is here, and just about everyone here is family. There’s my children, grandchildren, my sisters and brothers, my mother, my aunts, my uncles. How can we all live together again? Would they do this to any other group of people? Any other community wouldn’t be treated the way we are being treated.” The council, which claims overwhelming local support for its tough line, says that if bailiffs get access to the site on Monday all they will do is formally request that residents leave. Coming days will see the removal of caravans and mobile homes, after which the asphalt roads will be ripped up by diggers. Basildon says it does not believe there are any fixed homes on the site, meaning none will be demolished. The council’s leader warned of possible violence, alleging activists unilaterally cancelled a meeting with officials to discuss the eviction process. “We are very concerned that tension has increased and it may now make our job of clearing the site in a safe and orderly manner even more difficult,” said Tony Ball. “It now seems that those who claim to have the Travellers’ interests at heart are more intent on causing trouble and disorder.” A spokesman for the site described this as a “smear story”, saying the Travellers did want to meet the council but had simply requested this happened somewhere other than at Dale Farm. According to Flynn, who has osteoporosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease,, needing a nebuliser four times a day, the impending eviction has made life unbearable. When the bulldozers arrived last week, her daughters struggled to persuade their children to get on the school bus: “They are terrified. They won’t go to school. They say ‘You won’t be here when I get back. They are going to take us away from our homes. Where are we going to live?’” Most children go to the local primary school, where almost all the pupils come from Travelling families. Flynn’s daughters, Michelle Sheridan and Nora Sheridan, say they fear for their children in mainstream schools, and for their wider families if scattered around housing estates. “Everyone is scared of the race hate we’re going to get,” said Michelle. Her mother is equally gloomy. “I don’t care what happens now. I’m fed up with my life,” said Flynn. “What do they think they are doing to us? The council should show some understanding. They never did care about us. We are human beings, we are not dogs or pets.” “You’ll see people dead on the site,” said Nora. “The old people aren’t going to be able to stand it.” Dale Farm Housing Local government Race issues Peter Walker Patrick Barkham guardian.co.uk

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