Jay Stringer

Okay I’ll make it 2 for 2 political today.

An open letter was recently sent to the President of the European Parliament Naming Britain, Slovakia and Hungary as the worst offenders of anti-Roma racism.

The Dale Farm site has garnered some publicity over recent years, but not as much as it needs. Situated in Crays Hill, Essex, it’s a site that houses over 1,000 people. Initially it was the Irish traveller community, but has since grown to take in a number of different groups into one village. It’s the largest such site in the UK.

It started in the 1970’s when the then Labour led council gave planning permission for 40 families. The main reason the population at the site has swelled so much is due to eviction at other sites. For many people, this was their last place, the one place they could go and live. The site is actually owned by one of the families, the Sheridan clan, but they have been refused further planning permission. Just to put that in context, the Commission for Racial Equality states that 90% of planning permission applications from the travelling community are rejected, which compares not at all to the 20% rejections given to everyone else.

in 2005 the now Tory led council decided that, rather than grant planning permission to the established community of legal landowners, they would rather spend 3-5 million of the public’s money on bulldozing the land and returning it to greenbelt.

This comes at a time when the government and media are keen to point the finger at other countries and use the term “ethnic cleansing.” We recoil from news footage of whole communities wandering across the land looking for a home after theirs was destroyed by some army or dictator. We feel thankful that this sort of thing doesn’t happen at home.

And yet, the eviction order stands.

Do we let this behaviour stand? Is this what we pay taxes for?

There have been numerous legal disputes, and there is an appeal lodged with the house of lords. Last week the mothers of the village gathered outside Basildon town hall to protest the eviction. They just want to keep their homes.

Just take a minute to do some googling, or blogging. Even an email or letter. Anything to keep the protest going a little bit longer.

You could write to;

Basildon District Council
Mr. Bala Mahendran, Chief Executive
Basildon Centre
St. Martins Sq, Basildon, SS14 1DL, UK
Tel:+44 1268 533333
bala.mahendran@basildon.gov.uk

And you can email the people organising the appeal, the Dale Farm Housing Association, at dale.farm@btinternet.com

It only stands if we let it.