January 2012¹  Cambridge City Council                        £500,000         15 new/additional pitches

January 2013²  South Cambridgeshire District Council  £137,982         2 new/additional pitches

South Cambridgeshire District Council  £965,874         14 improved pitches

How is this money being spent?                                           

Between 2005 and 2011, South Cambridgeshire District Council (SCDC) approved 52 pitches, 6 of these on appeal³ (out of the 110–130 needed according to the 2007 Gypsy and Traveller Needs Assessment). Last week, 48 formerly unauthorized pitches were given planning permission at Fen Road.⁴ Of the 100 plots approved by SCDC in the last 8 years, all have been for English Travellers.

71 out of the 100 pitches are for Fen Road. Time and again SCDC have fought against allowing planning permission for pitches on the edge of villages, even for longstanding sites like Smithy Fen, while closing down sites in Meldreth and Willingham.

SCDC does not appear to have ever given planning permission to Irish Travellers.⁵

Six Irish Traveller families at Smithy Fen are facing eviction after over 10 years fighting for licenses to live on our own land when not travelling (during term time). We were told we should fix up our plots and we would get planning permission. We bought land here to be with family and so our children could attend school. Many of us have never learned to read or write and we don’t want the same for our children.

Irish Travellers have been subjected to racist abuse by at least three district councilors, yet all three are still in office. In 2004, when 17 families occupied plots at Smithy Fen, it was described in the press as an ‘invasion’ of Travellers.⁶ This is an example of the alarmist language used to whip up fear in the settled community.

What are we to think when we see English Travellers getting planning permission, retrospectively and on green belt land, when the Council makes no provision for Irish Travellers and threatens to throw us out onto the road? These small patches of land are our homes. Why can’t we be allowed to live here peacefully?

We call upon the council to give planning permission for our 6 plots. We have lived for years under the threat of homelessness. Rather than spending taxpayers money on planning enquiries, they could end the terrible stress and fear that we live with every day.

We invite anyone to visit Smithy Fen in order to meet the Traveller community where you will receive a warm welcome.

For further information contact Jimmy : 07884494754

Smithy Fen Residents Association, Water Lane, Smithy Fen, Cottenham

________________________

Notes

1      http://www.homesandcommunities.co.uk/ourwork/traveller-pitch-funding  January 2012  [pdf]

2      http://www.homesandcommunities.co.uk/ourwork/traveller-pitch-funding  January 2013  [pdf]

3      FOI enquiry, February 2012.

4      BBC News Cambridgeshire [online], 3 April 2013, Cambridgeshire planners approve permanent traveller sites.

5      Tommy Wall. APP/W0530/A/12/2170121/NWF PINS Appeal allowed. 20 August 2012. Refusal by SCDC overturned. Available online at http://www.pcs.planningportal.gov.uk/pcsportal/ViewCase.asp

6      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1467489/Villagers-say-they-live-in-fear-since-invasion-of-travellers.html

Many of the families had lived in Basildon for over 10 years: their children were born in the borough, attend the local school and were the first generation in the community to learn to read and write. The bulldozers turned this once thriving and close-knit community into a virtual wasteland, creating deep troughs and huge banks of earth to make it uninhabitable.

In the 18 months since the eviction, the families, including elderly people, young children and those with serious health conditions, have been living in refugee camp conditions by the side of the road leading to their former home. They have limited access to electricity, heating, running water and sanitation.

In 2006, an official planning needs assessment stated the need for 157-163 new pitches for ‘Gypsy’ and Traveller families in Basildon by 2011. In that time, the Council provided no new pitches. Rather than help the families identify sites where they could get planning permission, Basildon Council spent a significant proportion of its budget on protracted legal proceedings, the infamous Dale Farm eviction and a recent £1.1 million contract for bailiffs to complete more evictions in the future.

Families at Dale Farm have always said that they would leave Dale Farm if there was somewhere else for them to go. The Council knows that the families have no way of ever paying the £4.3 million eviction price and have stated that they will seize Dale Farm in lieu of costs.

This is a shocking land grab by the council, who are forcing the families to pay for the unjust eviction that made them homeless.

Mary Sheridan, a former Dale Farm resident, said “Basildon Council say we have to pay for what they did to us. Imagine all the good things they could’ve done with that money, instead of making us homeless — new sites or putting it into schools or doctors for people. We didn’t choose what happened to us, they did — we’ve paid enough already, we’ve already lost our homes and had our community torn apart, but they still want more.

This isn’t really a human way to be living or to treat people. It’s not a way for government people or councils to be carrying on. It’s really horrible that in this century, people can treat people like that and get away with it. It’s absolutely horrible. I know our kids and other people in 20 or 30 years time, or 100 years from now, they are going to say ‘How did England let that happen?’”

• A petition has been launched in protest

By citing other articles from 10 and 15 years ago, he attempts to absolve the racist nature of the anecdote with a proof of his general character. However, even the most virtuous of credentials cannot absolve the content of the most recent piece. It is not controversial that racism is not limited to overt ‘racists’, but is part of the way so many of us unconsciously act and speak in our everyday lives. This is true of even the most experienced anti-racist campaigners, as many will readily admit.

Monbiot epitomises a classic justification of racism in his defense that he was ‘simply telling the truth’. We believe – perhaps wrongly – that a thousand things happen to George every day, but that some are selected as worthy of report and publication. That process of selection requires a careful examination not only of the audience for whom it is written, but also the reasons that the story may seem appealing. If it truly “sought to make no points”, then why write it?

In this instance, it is clear that the appeal of the story arises from Monbiot’s supposedly dangerous flirting with racist stereotypes. To state that he “made no generalisations, no implications, no comments on travellers (sic*) at all” purposefully misses the point of how a stereotype works. Stories are retold precisely when they fit the racist stereotypes – a crime can be reported in a newspaper as a Traveller crime or a crime committed by an asylum seeker, but would never be described as settled person crime, or white crime. And so, what Travellers face everyday, is a constant barrage of negative stories, and a constant scrutiny through the lens of these propagated stereotypes.

Monbiot acts as if he’s writing in a vacuum in which these racist stereotypes don’t exist, yet his readers easily identify the connection between anecdote and stereotype in the article; for example, one who commented “In this story we are supposed to be surprised by the fact that travellers act like travellers”, or another who wrote “The problem is, what does one do with a subculture (travellers) that is almost entirely sociopathic?” Indeed, it is hard to believe that Monbiot is unaware of the political implications of his ‘anecdote’. He is after all, a political writer, and chose to title his piece “The day my inner anarchist lost out to the bourgeois me”.

Other readers responded to the article thanking George for being brave enough to say what we were all, apparently, thinking. This false concept of the ‘bravery’ to ‘tell it as it is’ stems from the idea that we live in a world which has become too politically correct, where racism and misogyny have been stamped out, and only a few heroic voices remain to champion the forlorn traces of ‘truth’. These people labour under a misapprehension. The war has not been won: the ‘truth’ they champion reinforces a system which discriminates against and hurts people based on their ethnicity.

Monbiot’s response to our criticisms fails to understand the way that racism operates in society or to offer any apology for the contribution his article makes to the perpetuation of racism in society. As such, it was either disingenuous or woefully ignorant.

—

*NB: The terms ‘Gypsies’ and ‘Travellers’ should be capitalised. Stop Hate UK explains: “In the same way that Christians, Jews, Kurds and all other ethnic groups should receive capitalisation, so should Gypsies and Travellers. Not capitalising ethnic and faith groups treats them with disrespect. To capitalise all ethnic groups other than Gypsies and Travellers implies that you do not recognise them as an ethnic group.”

At length, Monbiot describes the Traveller man he meets as ‘filthy’, telling crude jokes, being interested only in animals, and – for the greater part of the piece – as a thief. He implies that all Travellers are stupid and bestial. This caricatured sketch of a nameless representative of an ethnic group is as venomous as far-right propaganda against Muslim or Jewish communities, and should be answered with as little tolerance and as much opposition.  The apologism he offers the reader by stating he has written about, or even campaigned against, the harassment of Travellers only serves to make this drivel appear more socially acceptable, the equivalent of stating “but some of my best friends are black.” The title essentially states that although his “inner anarchist” would like to be open-minded about Travellers, this is impossible due to the harsh facts of the “reality” he constructs through a generalisation of Travellers. One incident he recounts, in which a couple of men (who he describes as Travellers) are violent and dishonest, serves to criminalise an entire group of people: a case study in modern day racism.

The title of the piece encourages the perception that all Travellers are thieves, and that any argument to the contrary is simply ‘anarchist’ fiction. He even jokingly acknowledges that this form of racism is bourgeois, as if by sheepishly admitting that he is speaking on behalf of the police and the state he can get away with it. By contrasting the man’s experience of the police assault that landed him in A&E with his portrayal of him a thief and violent thug, he delegitimises reports by Travellers of police violence, turning the victim into the accused.

Despite having reported on years of police attacks against environmental campaigners, Monbiot has failed to allow these confrontations with the law to open his eyes. Instead, the prejudice of the police and the injustice of the state are omitted from his account; forces which would otherwise be suspect are now affirmed for the sake of Monbiot’s racist monologue.

The petty version of revenge Monbiot enacts by writing this article only exposes further the intense inequality of power between the liberal establishment and criminalised communities, an inequality which he has no desire to examine. The Guardian is also implicated in this racist drivel, which  shows it to be as blind, ignorant and malicious as the other British newspapers which continue to print the material which bolsters both vigilante and state attacks against
Travellers.

The Traveller Solidarity Network believes that both Monbiot and the Guardian Group should apologise unreservedly for the article. But beyond this, journalists should understand the situation Traveller, Gypsy and Romani people face and the role the media could play in helping to put an end to this ‘acceptable’ form of racism.

Until then, this kind of writing should be seen to be as damaging to Travellers’ lives as fascists and riot police.

The application, made by the Irish Traveller Movement in Britain (ITMB), working in partnership with Home Space Sustainable Accommodation (HSSA), aims to deliver a model Traveller site using vacant Homes and Communities Agency land at Gardiners Way in Basildon, Essex. ITMB anticipates working with Basildon Council to access substantial Homes and Communities Agency funds to pay for the development of the new site now that it has been approved by Basildon Council.

Concerns have been raised about the desperate conditions the families made homeless by last year’s eviction are living in. Since October 2011, the 83 Traveller families evicted from Dale Farm have been living in squalid conditions in caravans parked on Oak Lane adjacent to the cleared Dale Farm site, without adequate sanitation, heating, or electricity supplies. [2] Although 15 pitches will accommodate only a very small number of the remaining homeless Dale Farm families, they whooped for joy on hearing the news. Basildon Council is expected to delay plans to evict the families currently living near Dale Farm site, until those most vulnerable can move into the new site.

Mary Sheridan, a mother of four encamped on Oak Lane since last year’s eviction, said “Even though this doesn’t solve the problem for most of us, this is something good for the community – it’s a bit of hope – it will help the old people and the sick people here – it’s good news”.

Dale Farm Traveller Kathleen McCarthy, who campaigned tirelessly for a peaceful settlement to avoid the Council’s costly eviction action last year, said “This is a step in the right direction and it shows there is an alternative to evictions – this is what we always asked for. If only they could have approved a few sites like this last year, then there would have been no need to put us out of our homes and onto the roadside. This is good news, but it’s just 15 pitches, that still leaves a lot of homeless Travellers in Basildon.”

Nora Sheridan, a resident of Dale Farm spoke in support of the planning application, noting that the site would allow her children to continue their education at the local school. Not everyone was happy — Len Gridley, who has campaigned against the Dale Farm Travellers for many years spoke in opposition, saying that while sites should be made available for English Travellers, “sites should not be made available to the Irish”.  He said that they should go back to Ireland.

Yvonne MacNamara, CEO of the Irish Traveller Movement in Britain, who made the application, said[3]: “Basildon Council’s planning committee has rightly recognised that the planned site will help address the dire need for more Gypsy and Traveller pitches both in Basildon and within Essex County Council as a whole.”

Michael Hargreaves, the Irish Traveller Movement in Britain Planning and Policy Officer, said[3]: “This was the right decision. It’s an attractive, well designed scheme and an ideal site. It is on vacant, previously developed land, not in the green belt, and near local services, including the Crays Hill School that many Traveller children attend, and also to the authorized Oak Lane site. We look forward to Basildon Council supporting our bid to the Homes and Communities Agency for the funds to build it.”

Maria Stoppart, of the Traveller Solidarity Network said: “Basildon Council has made a small step towards meeting the needs of local Travellers by approving plans for culturally suitable accommodation rather than wasting more taxpayers money on forced evictions. The families parked alongside Dale Farm are seeking reassurance that the Council will suspend the planned eviction of the roadside while the new site is being developed.”

Notes:

[1] The first Gypsy and Traveller accommodation needs assessment for Essex was produced by Salford University in 2006 – assessing the total need for sites to be generated by 2011. This suggested a need for 249 more pitches by 2011 across the whole of Essex. A Gypsy Traveller Accommodation Assessment benchmarking exercise was later conducted (commissioned by the East of England Regional Spatial Strategies Board) by a team led by Pat Niner of Birmingham University and concluded that the initial Essex GTAA was a significant underestimate of requirements. Pat Niner suggested a need for 483 more pitches across Essex, including the need for 157 pitches in Basildon. The Essex authorities commissioned a further study from Fordham Research explicitly to test the Niner report findings. This suggested a need for 301 pitches (not broken down into boroughs – but still exceeding the original 249 suggested by the Salford Univesity team). A later Independent Panel report again tested the regional targets and suggested a county need for 389 additional pitches by 2011, including 163 in Basildon (plus a further 95 2011- 2021). Please contact Michael Hargreaves, Irish Traveller Movement in Britain, on: 0207 607 2002 / 07961 432 074 Email: michael@irishtraveller.org.uk

[2]  Report by members of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Gypsies Roma and Travellers ‘Visit to Dale Farm Travellers site: A year on from the eviction”
http://irishtraveller.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Dale-Farm-visit-report-September-2012-2.pdf

Related press articles:
Guardian, 20th Oct, 2012
Mental illness now blights many Dale Farm families:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/oct/20/dale-farm-families-in-squalor

Daily Mail, 21st Oct, 2012
Travellers evicted from notorious Dale Farm site ‘are suffering from mental illness as a result of stress’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2221006/Travellers-evicted-notorious-Dale-Farm-site-suffering-mental-illness-result-stress.html

[3] ITMB Press release, Dec 11th, 2012

Dear Traveller Project Team,

Subject:

Your letter dated 26th October, entitled ‘TOWN AND COUNTRY PLANNING ACT 1990
BREACH OF PLANNING CONTROL – TRACKSIDE ENCAMPMENT OFF OAK
LANE CRAYS HILL BILLERICAY ESSEX’.

What you have asked us to do:
-       You have asked us to give you information about our families, including information about our health, and our children’s education.
-       You have asked us to send letters to our GPs and to our children’s schools, asking them to provide you with personal information about our health care needs, and about how often our children attend school, how well they do at school and about their special educational needs.
-       You have asked us to return all this information to you, including information to be supplied by our doctors, and by the school, by the 23rd November, 2012.

Your letters say that you want to consider this information before deciding what, if any, action to take to enforce compliance with planning notices.

Consideration of our health and educational needs
We are very keen for you to consider our health care needs and the educational needs of our children before you decide what action to take. All the families who live temporarily at Oak Lane were made homeless by Basildon Council in October 2011 following the forced eviction at Dale Farm. We stay here so that our children can remain at their local school, and so that we can continue to access medical care. Many of us have acute and/or chronic diseases and need regular support from local specialist health care teams.

Difficulties completing the form
As you know, most of the adults in our community are unable to read or write. This means we have had to find help to read the letters you sent, and we need help also to complete the forms. There is not enough support locally available to us to complete the forms you have sent us by the deadline you have given of 23rd November, 2012. Some of us have tried, but most people have not had enough support to fully understand what is required, or by when, or to complete the forms and send off letters. We have not had time to cooperate as we would wish.

What the council suggested
The Council suggests that we try to get support to complete the questionnaires from either our solicitor, the SOS bus, or from the Project Traveller Team. The SOS visits on one day each week, and is there to give much needed health checks. There is not enough time during these visits for all the families on Oak Lane to get support from the SOS bus to complete the forms you have sent us. It is also impossible for a single solicitor to assist all the families by telephone.

What we need
We very much need support from the Traveller Project Team to complete these forms. Since we cannot read or write we need this support to be in person. As there are so many of us, and because there are many mothers with young children, and elderly and infirm relatives who need constant support, we need people from the Team Project Team to visit us at Oak Lane so that we can go through these forms in person, without having to make complicated, difficult, and for some quite impossible, child and adult care arrangements. Without this help we cannot complete these forms and certainly not by the deadline of 23rd November.

So far no one from the Traveller Project Team has visited us at Oak Lane. We do not know who is in the Traveller Project Team. Unfortunately our only knowledge of the Traveller Project Team is that this is the signature used on all the enforcement notices we have received. Some people who have rung the council and asked to speak with the Traveller Project Team have been put through to the Enforcement Team. This will make it hard for us to provide sensitive personal information, because it is hard to trust that it will be properly recorded and acted on, or properly considered by people who clearly want to evict us, but regardless, we very much need the council’s help in order to provide the information you have asked for.

We would be grateful if the Traveller Project Team could arrange to visit the site in order to support families with this process.

Responses from doctors and schools
We do not think it is reasonable to expect doctors and schools to complete the information you have asked for by the deadline you have given. There are very many of us who have the same local doctors and with children at the same local schools and you have asked for complex information, which means they will have to provide a lot of different information in a very short time.

The letters you asked us to give to our doctors and to our children’s schools
Many of us did not feel comfortable sending the letters you gave us to give to our doctors and our children’s schools because you say that we are ‘in breach of criminal law’. As you know we suffer a great deal of prejudice locally. Sending letters saying we are breaking criminal law is likely to increase bad feeling towards us, when we need greater understanding of our history, culture, and current circumstances. Without this understanding, we cannot begin to overcome the prejudice and inequality we experience. We have not been found guilty of breaching criminal law in a court and this is an unpalatable allegation.

Current circumstances
We are at Oak Lane because we have nowhere else to go. Preventing us from settling and placing us under constant threat of eviction causes us great stress and makes it impossible for us to improve our communities’ life circumstances. Constant accommodation insecurity is an enormous emotional strain. The conditions we are now living in, without proper washing or toilet facilities, or access to a stable electricity supply, increase our stress and ill health. Evictions and poor living conditions which increase the level of physical sickness and stress also interferes with our children’s education; the children at Oak Lane have experienced very many illnesses since living on Oak Lane after the eviction from Dale Farm last year.

The council has duties of care towards us as citizens with equal rights to health and educational support, and also as an ethnic minority community which experiences racism and suffers disproportionately from ill health and poor educational attainment.

More time
Completing the forms provided by the council is going to take us more time. Can you please confirm that in light of these issues, the deadline will be extended, and additional support provided to us on site to help us complete this process.

Yours faithfully,
on behalf of the Oak Lane Families