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.

Everyone should have to obey planning laws. Tough shit.

Plenty of people own greenbelt land and can't build on it. They suck it up because that's the law.

Travellers are under the law, too.

Kick them off.

TheSmallClanger
Theres many quiet respectable families and groups keeping themselves to themselves, accepting the settled peoples deal and living working and stopping in all sorts of places and causing no problem or harm. Much of the time unseen by most or only noticed when pulling off.

If people wish to see them as the same as huge disruptive groups setting up sites, then they do that because they have chosen to and want an excuse - not cause of the actions of the others.

Maybe the "decent" travellers should set up their own sites seperate from the trouble-causing ones?

Many did, as ways of living clashed but the councils said it was racist, so they where abandonded to those who wanted to be fixed enough to change standards.

The culture argument doesn't wash with me I'm afraid. You can't claim your 'culture' means that you are immune to the law of the land. There are some cultures where women are treated as inferior to men. If a male employer from this type of culture discriminated against a female employee because of her gender, he would break the law and be dealt with accordingly. He couldn't claim it was his culture and get awat with it!

I don't live near a traveller site so have no experience of how the travellers behave and their impact on the local community but the law is the law and should be applied fairly to all. I don't see this as a race issue but as one of the law has been broken. I know some MNers have had bad experiences and some good but this is about planning permission and the law being broken. It will always get people's backs up if one group of people flout the law and appear to get away with it - regardless of race, religion etc.

The council have offered to house them but this has been rejected. These are homes which are of a standard to be offered to settled people so we are not talking slums. Whilst it would be nice (for some !) to live right next to their families, for others it is not possible. We needed more space. We were turned down for planning permission. We moved (about 200 miles in the end) to an area we could afford the space we needed. Id idn't just ignore the plannig permission rejection and build anyway and I'm pretty sure if I had built the extension without planning permission it would have been pulled down.

Society needs to be based on the rule of law and equality. Whilst it would be nice to respect everyones culture, it is not always possible in a multi-cultural society.

Sorry I put that badly. Many people in smaller groups live within traditional laws, which means theyre from the same races, or parts of those races, and many of the larger groups are from a very different race, so not wanting to share the same site because of laws clashing is seen as racist by councils. Whoever minds the least keeps the site, whoever minds the most moves on.

Thanks to CurrySpice & Maryz for your contributions to this thread. I understand the situation a lot better as a result of what you said.

Well said, Poogles.

The plight of people like gentleotters family really put this into perspective

And Vanessa Redgrave. Surely she has the wherewithal to provide housing for all these people she's campaigning for on a property she'll purchase and get permission for.

Bet she'd be singing a different tune if the people had parked up next to her abode.

The BBC had a story that "Two bishops and an actress" had visited the site which sounded like the first line of a joke. What did they say to each other?

I expect they just admired each other's frocks.

That's OK ragged

I can so see both sides of this debate.

Nobody with a heart would enjoy seeing families turned out if htier homes. But equally, I know that Crays Hill has been destroyed as a comminity by the arrival of all of these people into a place which does not have the facilities to cope with them

I do have sympathy for the children, it isn't their fault. But at the same time, I can't think of any good reason why 'travellers' shouldn't have to abide by the law like anyone else. It's not anything to do with prejudice, the same consequences would apply to anyone who acted in the same way, regardless of their ethnic or cultural background.

Sorry but it sounds to me like this was a cynical ploy to deliberately break the law, in the hope that when rightly challenged they'd be able to cry 'racism/discrimination' and get away with it. If so then they are the only ones to blame for any disruption to their children's home life and education.

Not getting into the 'decent' vs 'disruptive' travellers stuff - because while it may well be true and I'm sure many travellers are lovely people, you still can't break the law with respect to planning permission, regardless of how nice and quiet and respectable you are!

I agree with what poogles said.

They've been offered housing which I think is fair. There are laws which people can't just choose to flout - I've read in the local paper of people that have built extensions to their homes and they have been pulled down - if that happens to the non-traveller community, why should travellers be exempt??

They broke the law, knew they were repeatedly delaying the inevitable by exploiting loopholes. If anyone should be apologising to the evictees it should be the travellers (weird as they seem to settle) that convinced them they would get away with it.

I think there is a wider issue here, ie do people have the right to live a nomadic lifestyle? I believe they do and that society should accomodate them.
When Thatcher removed the onus on councils to provide for this, she left all travellers, good and bad in a dilemna.
FWIW, I sympathise with people living next to some of these sites- my opinion of the Irish travellers I've come across is unprintable.

'I think there is a wider issue here, ie do people have the right to live a nomadic lifestyle? I believe they do and that society should accomodate them.'

Well, by that token, some people believe they should have the right to live in the UK according to Sharia law and not British law, including the aspects of it which are in direct contradiction to British law. You think society should support that, too? Because honestly, their rights should be no less than anyone's who wants to live a nomadic lifestyle, practice plural marriage, or just live according to their own rules.

Society shouldn't have to pay for their lifestyle though Tyr. I would object to paying council tax to provide amenities for people who've set up illegally on a site and who are not paying council tax themselves.

While people may have a right to live outside society, it should be entirely self subsidised, not paid for by us.

Since you raise the issue of Irish travellers - shouldn't it be up to Ireland to provide for them, not Britain.

'If anyone built a housing estate for that many people they would first have to have a school, a creche, a doctor's surgery, roads, lighting, sewage etc., before they could even consider getting planning permission for such a large site.'

Casting my memory back to the development of the suburb where I grew up in Dublin, all done with planning permission, I could only tick off about two of those prerequisites. Maybe the planning process (in Ireland anyway) works more smoothly if you are a developer with ties to a political party.

QOFE I agree with you, it is very hard for Travellers to get planning permission thanks to NIMBYism. They do apply, many try to do it legally. They get rebuffed a lot.

Travellers (capital T) are not 'travellers'. They used to be called Tinkers, then Itinerants. They are mostly of Irish origin, where they were mentioned back in Medieval times as a group unto themselves. They have a language, their own customs, and share certain genetic traits. It's not just a matter of a lifestyle. The Republic of Ireland has consistently resisted attempts to have them classified as a separate ethnic group under EU law.

The rebuffs come whether the land is greenbelt or not. Those who apply for pp on their own non-greenbelt land are still just as likely to be turned down.

It was since the leagl obligation of councils to provide sites for Travellers was lifted that problems really started.

Well they own sites with planning permission elsewhere. And the lifting of the legal obligation doesn't justify land grabbing.