to think that evicting hundreds of travellers from their site is unfair and immoral

[rocketty]

It's an illegal site. They didn't have planning permission. It's greenbelt...

but it used to be a car scrapyard (not rolling fields and thatched cottages then), they own the land and it's right next to a legal settlement.

They've obviously broken the law by settling here, but on balance, wouldn't it be more ethical to let them be? The children are settled at school and getting an education. Lots of people are prejudiced against gypsies and travellers but they've got to live somewhere.

I've seen the news articles about it. It makes me feel sad.

WTF has that got to do with anything? They are illegally living on greenbelt land. That's land that has been designated as not for building on. Do you have any idea what Crays Hill used to be like before the site? It may be close to Basildon, but it was a small, quiet, and fairly rural village. The sort of village that people want to retire to. Now it is a no go area, a ghetto, a blighted area that nobody wants to live in.

They broke the law. They have been served notice to leave. They should fucking well GO.

The law applies to EVERYONE who lives here. There cannot be exceptions, or that would be prejudice.

'Eventually, her answer boiled down to "Yes, but not the Travellers"'

Since it seems the potted version is all you can absorb, what it boiled down to was the question of whether planning laws are fair, and fairly applied.

If you think you can cope with the longer version, read on :
Or whether they encourage mindless and irrational fear/hatred/prejudice against certain groups to be expressed in terms of 'visual impact'.

Your question is not actually the fundamental question.

Have you ever lived near a large travellers camp mathanxiety?
I haven't, which is why I'm listening to the people who's life is being impacted by
But that is not the point.
The point is they cannot have special rights, because they are a minority group, to live on green belt land without pp.
And that is the simple truth of it.

I have no mindless and irrational fear/hatred/prejudice against certain groups

But neither do I have a mindless and irrational love/sympathy/prejudice in favour of certain groups

Do you recognise cultural prejudice? It's not difficult to see. And it prevents you dealing with the question of the impartial observation of the law.

I have as a matter of fact, in the Dublin suburb where I grew up. They had a temporary camping spot near the home of my dad's cousin and his family, basically all along the side of a narrow road on the side of a hill. Dad's cousin's family got to know the regulars quite well. Closer to my house in the same suburb there was a campsite, one of the last of its kind in the Dublin area or anywhere in Ireland afaik. It wasn't like a beach caravan park, more of a 1930s shack village, a bit like an American trailer park. Lots of down on their luck people lived there, with lots of angry, chained-up dogs about. It was bulldozed and built over during the boom years.

The simple truth is always the best truth, isn't it? Stick your fingers in your ears and say lalala when the question 'where will they go?' is asked.

PigletJohn is right. It is as morally wrong to be prejudiced in favour of someone as it is to be against.

The law is the law. We all have to abide with it. Break it, deal with the consequences and tough shit.

The simple truth is always the best truth, isn't it? Stick your fingers in your ears and say lalala when the question 'should people obey the law?' is asked.

If there was any such thing as impartial observation where the law was concerned there would be no need for solicitors or barristers, let alone judges, now would there? Half of my extended family would be out of a job.

I really do recognise cultural prejudice. It is not a pleasant sight. It comes under the guise of residents concerned about 'visual impact' and it is evident in the triumphal braying about 'the law' here. Triumphal, a if the law was some sort of nice big stick with which to keep the undesirables away from the solid citizenry; the expression of horror that the Travellers have had the effrontery to use the law to their own advantage says it all -- it is very apparent that 'the law' is considered to be the personal property of only the majority.

PJ/SS
Seriously though... where WILL they go? Realistically I mean, not where you'd LIKE them to go - I think that's clear to anyone reading this thread.

I really do recognise cultural prejudice. It is not a pleasant sight. Not least when it comes from anyone so sympathetic to one particular group of lawbreakers that she thinks they should be given special treatment and encouraged to break the law with impunity.

and the expression of horror that the majority have had the effrontery to use the law to their own advantage says it all -- it is very apparent that 'the law' is considered to be the personal property of only the Travellers.

Just read the date they are going to clear the site is 19th Sept. Should be plenty of notice. No need to pack,just hook up and travel. O, and could you tidy up before you leave please? Thank you.

Hmmm... and on the 20th they will start the whole thing all over again somewhere else, and in 10 years time we will have the same arguments all over again having spent £30 million this time in getting them evicted. Hurrrah, victory is ours.

Perhaps you're right, PrincessTamTam, and the process for dealing with lawbreakers should be speeded up.

I dare say lots of people will agree with you.

Well I'm kind of hoping the authorities have learned a valuable lesson here and won't ever allow it to get THIS out of hand again. Also hope that anyone who buys green belt land will no longer be under any illusion that you can go ahead and build on it anyway as long as there's enough of you to form a threat.

The thing to do is to use local democratic processes to increase the number of pitches locally, in a sensitive manner. What is happening instead is that local processes are being bypassed in favour of developing unofficial huge sites without any regard for anyone else at all. A larger number of properly managed, smaller sites is the most sensible solution.

If sites were smaller, and were occupied by people who also had regard for local bye laws to do with noise, bonfires, refuse collection, school attendance, Council Tax payments, property and so on, then I can't really see that the vast majority of people would have a major problem beyond the usual minor whingeing that goes on in relation to any unusual planning application. What does get up people's noses is the utter lack of respect and understanding of the settled lifestyle that is displayed in places like Cottenham and the like. It's incredibly destructive to communities and upsetting for individuals.

As everyone keeps saying, it is the anti-social behaviour and not the people that is the problem - this is what the council is addressing, this is what we would require for any group within society, and I think the five year grace period has been pretty tolerant given the circumstances.

Silly slebs who are jumping on the publicity bandwagon with regard to this ought to spend more time at public meetings working on improving relationships and collaborative solutions, and less time hand-wringing.

They have spent [how many years?] doing exactly what the law entitles them to do, that is to say, file appeals through the courts. Their case has been argued and appeals have been allowed, all the way up through the system, just as your appeal would have been allowed if a case of yours had a whiff of merit. Clearly they have had some sort of a leg to stand on for all that time. Or were all those judges just incomprehensibly wet and prejudiced?

Here's the thing, PigletJohn. They are a community that stirs up strong emotions. They are quasi nomadic. Sometimes that is by their own choosing and sometimes they are forced onto the roads by the likes of Basildon DC. They buy land, if they are allowed, and they apply for pp, because they desire to settle even for part of the year, in one place. There are children to send to school, and they need an address for post and work purposes. Sometimes, in some LAs, they are granted pp. Sometimes they are not. Sometimes they are granted retrospective pp after putting up their sites. Sometimes they are given temporary pp. The pp situation is a maze that they naturally enough are learning fast to navigate. No doubt you would too if it figured so largely in your life. One thing that is very plain and blindingly obvious to them is that the law pertaining to planning permission is a very elastic thing, and that the procedures are, unlike any other aspect of British law, subject to influence of money and of prejudice.

This is an informal description of the entire process that leads to a notice of eviction. You can probably see for yourself how it encourages the rearing of the ugly head of prejudice. However, the LA is asked to consider the harm, the need and the benefit of going ahead -- to weigh justice and mercy; in other words, to go beyond legal/illegal (recently decided) and look at right/wrong instead. To weigh the competing interests in the context of harm and benefit and determine need.

I think the particular LA should be thinking of better ways to spend the £18m in this context too.

I don't understand (genuinely - not trying to cause a ruck) why they've been getting away with staying so long. Why did Prescott allow them 2 years to leave? Two years is a hell of a long time to plan your next move and bring in your mates to add numbers.
Why couldn't the eviction have happened as soon as they moved on illegally?
Why has the situation been allowed to escalate and go on for ten years?
If anything is to be learnt by this it's that the authorities should act quicker and with, well, more authority.
I think Fellatio's posts are excellent btw.

I would say that silly politicians who are jumping on the bandwagon about this (I am referring to the PM) are revealing something very ugly and irresponsible in their character and demonstrating the exact opposite of what political leadership is all about, not to mention the contradiction of their own (highly dubious) 'Big Society' waffle. At least the celebrities who have got involved are doing it on their own dime.

Waiting with bated breath for the local or national politician to appear who will stand up for rationality, sense and the effective spending of public moneys so that Traveller communities do not get uprooted and booted hot potato wise down the road. In this climate of triumphalism where open season on Travellers has been officially declared by no less than the PM, where anyone can say anything about this particular community, speculate out loud about allowing children to witness the eviction scenes etc., there will not be many takers for the role.

The travellers are an ethnic group originating in Ireland..they've been around for centuries and largely been treated badly for that time. They are covered by the RRA
Effectively the get lumped together along with the Roma people and are often called gypsies but they are a separate group.
Strictly Gypsies are a different group altogether but most people use it to refer to the fact that they travel around largely for work or home, not that they might be a group hailing from Egypt.

I think MPs and counsellors rarely stand up for the traveller community as they are so widely vilified.

Do the travelling coomunity vote; do they register on the rolls?

They would not get uprooted and booted if they simply complied with the law, as other ethnic groups are obliged to do.

Why on earth would anyone, who believes that we are all equal, fight to give travellers special rights that are denied to the rest of the population?

My deleted post described how difficult travellers made my life at one time - it was okay for me, I was a private tenant, moving was not so hard. Tough on the non-travellers on that estate who were in social housing, and were not free to move. It is generally the poorest people who bear the brunt of anti-social behaviour, and if travellers are given special rights to live with all their kin, their history suggests that they are likely to continue to make life hell for the working class people who are stuck with them.

If I needed to extend my house for a growing family & my PP was refused then I may appeal. but I would also start on a plan B of moving to a bigger house or a house that I could get PP to extend.

Where is the traveller's plan B? They've had at least 9 years to come up with an alternative (IE buy a site where they had a chance of PP and apply for it). They haven't bothered, infact worse than that, during this time they have continued extending an illegal site, making the situation worse than it needed to be. This is why I have no sympathy. No one would get PP for a development of that size in that location, they weren't refused just because they were travellers. In fact if I understand it correctly they were allowed to extend the originally approved site & just decided to continue to extend and extend beyond the permitted development.

Plenty of "ethic groups" do find ways to lawfully live according to their culture but without causing detriment to others. I used to live on the outskirts of the mainly Jewish community in Gateshead. There were streets upon streets that were predominantly/totally occupied by Jewish familes. They didn't particularly integrate with the non-Jewish residents around them, but they were good neighbours, generally law abiding, no intimidating behaviour etc. There were never any issues AFAIK.

You only have to read the personal experiences recounted on this thread (if you get chance before they get deleted ) that SOME Traveller groups are definitely far from good neighbours. You can also read many positive experiences (I posted one of them) of gypsies, so I dispute the fact that there is a general prejudice from the settled population against those with a nomadic culture. However I don't think it's ureasonable for people to have a dislike of bad neighbours, whatever their background. There needs to be some give & take in all situations. From the group group of Travellers in question there seems to be lots of taking & no giving in return.

The law has to be upheld. They have had appeal after appeal & they have all failed.

I think historically speaking the experience of the Jewish community in trying to integrate or live peacefully with non-Jewish populations completely bears out my argument wrt Traveller integration -- they can only integrate as fast and as much as the native/settled population wants them to.

The community at Dale Farm will end up in someone else's back yard some time in the next few weeks. Maybe they will try to buy land. Maybe they will apply for planning permission. Would you like to lay a bet as to how they will succeed?