THE MOOD changed within minutes. Before 4.50pm, residents of Dale Farm had fretted that the bailiffs, feared since 8am, would still come, despite the hour. And then word trickled through from London that they had won a high court injunction.
Mary Slattery emerged in a rush from her chalet, hurrying to tell neighbours of the news with her fists raised in the air: “We’ve won an injunction, we’ve won an injunction until Friday. For us, every day is a bonus.”
The legal action was one of two in play yesterday. The first, arguing that sick people on the illegal Travellers’ encampment could not be moved, was quickly dismissed; but the second, challenging the legal grounds for evicting some of the occupants of the 51 pitches, was accepted by a judge.
However, even if it is successful, it is far from clear if it will benefit everyone equally.
Nevertheless, within minutes, the road around the barricaded gate was filled with Travellers and supporters, some of whom had lain prostrate all day chained to a car wreck as they waited for the bailiffs.
Expected from 8am, the bailiffs had finally approached the gate in mid-afternoon, with a politely phrased request to the residents inside to dismantle a scaffold tower because it posed a health and safety risk.
“Do you hear what they are asking us? A health and safety risk?” scornfully replied one of the dozens of protesters who have come to offer support to the Irish Travellers facing eviction from the Basildon lands.
Up to now, Basildon Borough Council has said Travellers and supporters will first be cleared before work begins to remove caravans, chalets and mobile homes and to dig up hardcore and tarmac over the subsequent five to six weeks.
Early on Joseph Jones of the Gypsy council, had – unlike some – put his faith in the court, but less so in an offer of talks to Basildon council, which quickly faltered. “The only purpose is delay,” said the council spokesman, Dubliner Cormac Smith.
Trouble is still possible if the evictions take place, unless the mood of many inside the camp changes dramatically. Piles of bricks cut in half lie in heaps, while a disused caravan has been pulled behind a barricade ready, it seems, for torching.
Up to 5pm, however, few of the Travellers had any illusions about the days ahead. One man, greeting another on one of the lanes, said: “Well, Harry, how’s it going?” “I suppose we’ll have to go,” said the other. “Aye, it’s looking dodgy.”
Many of the activists, who have come to Essex from other countries to oppose the evictions, sleeping in sheds, tents and a marquee in their own camp-within-a-camp (Camp Constant) – donned black balaclavas to taunt the bailiffs, shouting: “Bailiff scum!”
A slogan on the wall outside Camp Constant, where press are not wanted unless accompanied, if even then, illustrates the attitude of some of them as it proclaimed: “Vandalism – beautiful as a rock in a bailiff’s face.”
However, the Travellers insist they are in control: “They keep saying that the activists keep coming to them, saying, ‘Can we do this? Can we do that’?” said Wickford resident and supporter Anne Kobayashi, a Fairview-born Dubliner.
Traveller Mary Flynn, who arrived in Dale Farm on 9/11, agreed: “We wouldn’t have been able to do anything like this without them. They were the ones who suggested the scaffold tower. It’s great to have them here.”
The Church of England’s Rev Paul Trathen, who got to know the Travellers during four years in Wickford, walked around, chatting with residents: “I think this is going to happen, yes, and I think it will be horrible,” he told The Irish Times.
“There has been a very single-minded approach to pursue this way of dealing with matters, and not compassionately either.
“Doing things this way just exacerbates the problem and pushes it down the road,” said the cleric.
His bishop, Most Rev Stephen Cottrell, said that Dale Farm exposed national problems with planning, not just problems in Essex. Justice needs to be tempered with mercy, said the bishop, while the evictions fundamentally mean that some human beings are less than human beings, while nobody should be able to use planning laws “to disguise their prejudices”.
If evictions occur, the church plans to open its halls in the daytime to offer some relief to the Travellers “who may be on the side of the road”, said Rev Trathen. That offer of partial refuge will now not be needed until Friday, at least.
