I suppose I'm a bit of a left-leaning liberal, but one that gets cross occasionally with Polly Toynbee but also one that would cheerfully and legitimately kick Gideon Osborne in the nuts if I was ever sufficiently proximate - something that is about as likely as SamCam offering me style advice.To complicate matters further, I have been known to agree with Liam Fox on some defence issues and with Michael Gove on the "Free Schools" programme but throw darts at my Theresa May effigy. A union member for almost forty years and son of a Father of the Chapel, I have worked for capitalists but have also volunteered in the arts and currently do so for the National Trust. Such is the diversity that affects so many of us and confuses us as to where our loyalties and prejudices may lie.
But I simply don't get this Dale Farm stuff. It's left me cold...
I have never met a "traveller", as far as I'm aware. I suppose that's because I've largely "stayed put" whereas they travel about, as their nomenclature might suggest. Forgive me if I've got this all arse about, but the beef at Dale Farm appears that the residents want to put aside their "travelling" and "stay put". The evictions that are going on seem to mean that they will have to move (i.e."travel" a bit) thus, to the likes of me that don't get it, they'll be doing what they're supposed to do?
I apologise to any Travellers for the following on the basis of my ignorance:
This is what I understand about the issue (and none of my information comes from the Daily Mail). The Dale Farm site is in the Green Belt. The Travellers own the land. There is no planning permission for what they have placed there as residences. The council officials in Basildon have spent ten years (and a lot of public money) on legal processes to determine the legality or otherwise of the Dale Farm settlements. The courts have decided that the settlement is not in line with planning regulations. The courts have determined that eviction is an appropriate response within the law.
But there are variables, inevitably. The arguments on either side appear to be unsolvable. Stand-offs have ensued, complicated by individual histories and currencies. Nobody can win, it seems. Agencies with or without portfolio or genuine interest wade in and out. Councillors, politicians, activists and the Travellers themselves appear to be set upon conflict rather than mediation and resolution. The press take both sides. And then there's the Human Rights representatives from Europe and the UN who appear to be concerned about "race" issues and, at the odder end of the argumentative scale, an accusation of "ethnic cleansing".
I know (well, I don't actually "know" - I've just listened to and read stuff from commentators that I trust) that many of the Travellers' families include small children (and probably some large ones too), elderly and/or infirm relatives and other vulnerable people who will be compromised by eviction and having to "travel" off somewhere as a result. John Baron, the Conservative MP representing the constituency that covers Dale Farm, has acknowledged that the "vulnerable" cannot be left without necessary and, in some cases, life-preserving services, and the Basildon Council leaders have made the same assurances.
Baron also makes the point that, within his constituency, there are no less than one hundred sites for people in the "Traveling Community", which he maintains is one hundred more than neighbouring constituencies. I don't know whether that's true because I can't be arsed to research it. It's probably a little bit true, otherwise he'd be a bit of a git to come out with a stat like that if it was false.
The Council and Baron have been at pains to point out that the Travellers have been "encouraged" to "apply" for alternative accommodation through the systems that operate in every borough in the land for those that are "homeless". It's often a crap alternative, even to sleeping rough by some accounts, but it's there nonetheless and, for the most part, provides the basic bits that Maslow might have recommended on the first tier.
So the processes are in place to attend to the legal and social issues that might pertain. In simple terms: the Council evicts you and the Council is required then to house you.
Complications.
These are the bits that I apologise for unequivocally if I've got them wrong:
1) If you buy some land that has no planning permission for anything at all, the chances are that you'll get it pretty cheap. If you then go ahead and do things on that land - whether it's building things, living on it, grazing sheep or installing a waste-disposal facility - then people are going to get pissed off because they might have wanted to do something similar but, being law-abiding citizens, they didn't. Or they did, but it cost them a shed-load more money to acquire the land with appropriate permissions.
2) Having done things without legal permission, you get all uppity and attempt to use your "culture" and "race" to justify what you have done and then, having lost the legal arguments, attempt to employ Human Rights conventions and the UN Agencies with briefs on "ethnicity" when to the uninformed observer like me it looks like you're bucking every system going...it might be tricky to get public support.
3) You are about to be evicted and the local authorities are duty bound to provide, at the very least, accommodation for your most vulnerable people and seek to provide alternative accommodation for everyone else that is genuinely homeless and then some of you say that the provision of that alternative is not acceptable because it's "bricks and mortar" and not in line with your "culture" to live anywhere that is a "permanent"structure"....my guess is that that attitude might further denude public support. You add to that the "fact" that there are 4,000 other people who are not Travellers looking for council accommodation in Basildon and if you were to be given that accommodation in preference then public opinion would be turned even further against you and your comrades at Dale Farm (if that were possible).
4) You're Head of the Council / Local MP and you have the Law on your side. Decisions are taken, resources are mobilised. And like Michael Douglas in the movie "Falling Down", you stare at the camera and ask..."I'm the Bad Guy?" Yes, you must be, because you are throwing babies and geriatrics out of their homes and if one of them was to die in the next few days then you may be guilty of corporate manslaughter or maybe even "crimes against humanity" because there's a UN inspector there watching your every move as you "ethnically cleanse"the "travellers" like some latter-day Milosevic.
5) You're Eric Pickles and have just settled down after your third curry of the evening. Is this Dale Farm issue part of your portfolio, you think, after seeing your parliamentary colleague, John Baron, hauled off for questioning over his complicity in genocide? As Secretary of State for Local Government and Communities, you try to judge how the Dale Farm issue might not be a Local Government or a Community problem but conclude that it probably is. However, as the police are all over the place and there are foreigners in abundance from the UN and the ECHR, then it's best if Theresa and/or Bill take any initiatives. Time for another curry before bed, then...
OK - Having set out my daft, uninformed understanding and opinions on the problem...here's my equally stupid and uninformed solution:
Let the Travellers stay where they are with the following conditions:
a) Get a brilliant QC to draw up a document granting rights to the "Travellers" at Dale Farm to stay where they are in perpetuity and that their right to do so is so completely individual that it does not have any precedent for "Travellers" anywhere else in the fucking Universe.
b) Give the Dale Farm residents retrospective planning permissions for their residences and apply all the appropriate charges for council services (backdated to the dates of occupation) - just like everyone else has to pay and see if that makes the whole problem go away, along with the caravans.
c) Eric Pickles to tell everyone from the ECHR and the UN to "Fuck Right Off" and then take them all for a brilliant curry / TexMex in Birmingham or Bradford. I recommend Bradford - best curries in the world.
d) To drive home the political acceptance of this madness, SamCam and Ffion Hague should spend a week in the caravans at Dale Farm getting "all ethnic" with the community there. Great TV? And an opportunity for Sam to develop some ideas on accessories - I can see her new SamCamTravellerRange bags and shit hitting the boot sales very soon...
Points a) to d) above prove that there is no realistic solution to all of this. And, if there isn't, then this same thing will be repeated throughout our country for years to come.
But what do I know - my opinions, as I have already said, are uninformed.
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