Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Flip

1 2

Original poster

To wonder what the UN are doing in Basildon?

48 replies

Mitmoo · 14/09/2011 09:23

The traveller who aren't actually travelling and set up an illegal site for ten years, they've exhausted every legal channel and they will be forcible removed on Monday.

They've managed to get the UN involved to protect their human rights. Like what? The UN in Basildon to protect "travellers" who have been told they have to obey the law of the land that applies to all of us.

I can't believe what I'm hearing on R5Live at the moment.

OP posts:

ragged · 14/09/2011 10:15

There was a good discussion about this on radio, I want to repeat some of the things said by UN & Traveller Rep:

They mentioned the bad floods in Hull few years ago saying that the folk relocated from that ended up living in Caravans in a field and they complained after a long time & got much public sympathy, because "who would want to live like that?" Gypsy-man's point is that it's the same for travellers, they feel happy in caravans in fields but unhappy in brick houses in towns. So ... typical council housing is "culturally inappropriate" accommodation... but does that mean Housing associations should put up caravans in fields?

Talk about loss of traditional traveller sites since 1994 (loss of legal obligation by Councils to provide them with sites), how they are being driven out of their traditional lifestyle as a result. It's pretty obvious that travellers haven't been able to adapt as they were expected to.

There was also comparison with the way Chinese villagers are being forced out of their homes to make way for development, just because there was a legal process to register their land interests long ago that they didn't know about & couldn't afford, anyway.

AuntieMonica · 14/09/2011 10:16

but the travellers repeatedly contest and appeal the decisions made to not give them the permission to live there.

which they have the right to do, just as anyone does.

the issue is that the travellers are under the impression (and it MUST be pretty strong if the UN have actually gotten involved) that the permission is not given for their non-permanent dwellings (because they are, however long they live there) is that they are travellers.

the law is being used to the max, from both sides. it is there for everyone, not just those who think they are right

i'm off now, got DD chomping at my heels.

cookcleanerchaufferetc · 14/09/2011 10:18

auntie - you are brave for your comments but frankly, IMO, WTF!

Sorry but i do not have time for people who break the law, do not integrate into modern society, do not pay their taxes and rates (exceptions due to disability etc are another matter), and go around claiming they are being ethnically cleansed.....

They should travel back to Ireland.

piprabbit · 14/09/2011 10:19

Am rather looking forward to seeing some blue berets pottering around, wonder where they will come from?
Obviously somewhere with a really good record on human rights and protecting their own traveller/gypsy/romany communities.

Struggling to think of somewhere that fits that criteria.

Original poster

Mitmoo · 14/09/2011 10:22

Auntie It's not the press who will decide that people don't want to live near "travellers". It is natural that if someone goes to see the property and sees a "travellers" site nearby they won't be putting offers in on them.

How is that fair to the locals?

OP posts:

squeakytoy · 14/09/2011 10:23

Gypsy-man's point is that it's the same for travellers, they feel happy in caravans in fields but unhappy in brick houses in towns

Most of those homes on Dale Farm are not caravans in fields, they are pre-fabricated houses, that had no permission to be built there. The only way those homes can do any travelling is by lifting them with a crane onto a wide load flat bed articulated hgv. There is also no field, they have built roads and pavements.

It is little short of an illegal housing estate.

LadyBeagleEyes · 14/09/2011 10:42

The phrase 'ethnic cleansing', sickens me as well.
Serbia, Rwanda and the Holocaust was ethnic cleansing.
This is a legal dispute.

NotJustKangaskhan · 14/09/2011 11:06

LadyBeagleEyes Probably not the best thing to say since Travellers and Gypsies were one of the targets in the Holocaust. They were killed in millions. The history of traveller groups isn't about free spirited nomadic lifestyle, they travelled because they were being viciously persecuted. The current issues extend from that.

BettySwollocksandaCrustyRack · 14/09/2011 11:09

How can they be deemed as "travellers" when they have been on the same site for 10 years??

missmartha · 14/09/2011 11:12

Indeed LadyBeagleEyes, Gypsies where as big a target as the Jews during WW2, for the Nazis. Millions of them died in the gas chambers.

I'm not saying this case is comparable, but they have ben and maybe still are to some extent, a persecuted people.

LadyBeagleEyes · 14/09/2011 11:14

But not in this particular case NotJust.
It is mainly a legal dispute. I know that many gypsies died during the holocaust, but using the words ethnic cleansing in this situation is highly emotive.
I'm actually sitting on the fence on this one, I don't live near Dale Farm, and though we get travellers up here, there are usually only a few caravans and they work hard on the shore picking whelks.
But there must be a reason why so many local people are in support of the evictions.

squeakytoy · 14/09/2011 11:15

The holocaust did not involve irish travellers. It was an atrocity against Roma gypsies.

BettySwollocksandaCrustyRack · 14/09/2011 11:16

of course they are being persecuted though and TBH why not?? They think they are above the law...they set up homes where they want, dont pay taxes so effectlively live for free, when they do finally go elsewhere they leave the land in a dreadful state and go and do it all over again............

notherdaynotherdollar · 14/09/2011 11:16

shame they dont have more worthier causes to spend their cash and effort on

LeBOF · 14/09/2011 11:20

Bunfight of the day started by Mitmoo, I see. Plus ça change...

LadyBeagleEyes · 14/09/2011 12:16

at LeBof.
I'm grumpy today so in the mood for a virtual argument discussion.

onagar · 14/09/2011 12:57

What's the holocaust got to do with anything? If some of your people were killed decades ago does that make it okay for you to commit crimes now?

Some of my ancestors were killed in the war of the roses so I'm off to do a bit of burglary and shop-lifting.

SarahStratton · 14/09/2011 13:32

But about 3 weeks behind all the other Dale Farm threads BOF.

StickyGhost · 14/09/2011 13:36

Do u think the UN delegation will check if anyone has being held as a slave there in the last 10 years?
Ethnic cleansing? my bottom

SarahStratton · 14/09/2011 13:38

This thread will be being watched. So be careful what you put. I got Told Off for comments on a couple of other threads.

YouWinOrYouDie · 14/09/2011 13:43

"LadyBeagleEyes Probably not the best thing to say since Travellers and Gypsies were one of the targets in the Holocaust"

Exactly. They were killled. Millions of Jewish people, gypsies, disabled people; innocent men, women and children. Before that, their livelihoods, were taken, their property and possessions and money confiscated, they were starved and beaten in ghettos and the survivors taken to the camps to endure half-lives of excruciating torment and / or murdered.

It is hugely insulting to compare the two.

I'm of Irish descent. I would be ridiculed if I used the atrocities committed against my ancestors in order to break the laws in England and rightly so.

YouWinOrYouDie · 14/09/2011 13:44

onagar · 14/09/2011 17:25

err actually my family tree is more of a sapling or possibly a stalk. I know who my dad was, but my mum always said he was a bastard so I guess that's as far as I can go back :o

Flip

1 2