IN RECENT weeks, the McCarthy sisters, resplendent in brightly coloured blouses, have become a frequent sight outside the Royal Courts of Justice as the eviction battle between the travellers and Basildon Borough Council ground on relentlessly.
Yesterday, Kathleen McCarthy came on her own, dressed in a black shawl.
Even before Lord Justice Sullivan gave his final ruling before 5pm it was clear to all in the crowded court-room that the Travellers’ case was lost.
The words finally came, as the bespectacled Lord Justice Sullivan said: “I refuse permission to appeal and I refuse permission for a stay”.
Outside the court-building a few minutes later, Ms MCarthy accused the judge of being prejudiced and insisted that the bailiffs would be resisted once they try to enter the camp: “We’re going nowhere,” she declared. “We’ve been left with no choice – we really have nowhere else to go. Do you think we’d put ourselves through this if we did?
“The law is prejudiced against Travellers. We were told 15 years ago to get off the road and buy our own land.
“Now they are forcing us and our kids out on to the road again. The barricades are all that stand between us and homelessness now. Living on the road was all right when I was a kid, but it isn’t safe for anyone now,” she said.
During the earlier rounds in the court battle, Basildon council’s chairman Tony Ball was always in attendance, visibly becoming frustrated as the Travellers’ lawyers expounded new arguments in the challenge.
Yesterday, he did not turn up, clearly feeling the end was in prospect.
Instead, he issued a statement within minutes of the judge’s ruling, appealing to the Travellers to leave Dale Farm quietly and peacefully.
“I also made it clear that the so-called supporters should also pack up their belongings and leave the site. If they have the Travellers’ best interest at heart they will either leave the area now or confine their activities to helping the travellers to leave over the coming days,” he said.
However, neither the Travellers, nor the protesters appear to be listening.
Ms McCarthy encouraged “anyone listening to me on radio, or watching me on TV who agrees with us to come to Dale Farm and help”.
If the Travellers are angry, local residents in the area are pleased.
One of them, Mike Beiley, who was in court yesterday said: “It was a predictable result, but one that was a long time in coming.
“But it was decisive and I am glad that it was, and it has partly restored my faith in the British judiciary. If the Travellers now break the law then they will, I hope, suffer the consequences of doing that.”
