31 Aug 2011

Dale Farm travellers await High Court eviction ruling

Actress Vanessa Redgrave is leading last-ditch efforts to stop 86 traveller families being forced to leave Dale Farm in Essex, asking “in a homeless time why should they be disintegrated?”

Dale Farm protest posters. (Getty)

Basildon Borough Council is expected to enforce the eviction process at Dale Farm at midnight unless an application for a temporary injunction, which would preserve the site, is granted at the High Court.

It follows a decade-long legal battle. A statement on the council’s website reads: “There are now 51 illegal pitches involving 240 people on this site. If the travellers do not leave, the council will enter the land after this date and remove all portable and fixed structures.”

Actress Vanessa Redgrave is one of the campaign’s high-profile supporters. Outside court she told reporters there were “contradictions” throughout the council’s case.

She said: “Before they [the travellers] came it was a scrap yard, an asphalt-covered car park.

“Now there are good homes… and in a homeless time why should they be disintegrated and sent out on the roads?”

Another resident, Kathleen McCarthy, said: “This is our last chance to appeal to a judge to stop the eviction. We hope British justice will see fit to save us…”

Fate of 72-year-old Mary Flynn

The latest phase of the case hinges on the circumstances of 72-year-old resident Mary Flynn who suffers breathing problems and uses an electric nebuliser. She has lived at Dale Farm for eight years.

Lawyer Michael Paget said that European law required that, where someone’s home or home life was being interfered with, there should be an independent consideration by the courts of whether the action was proportionate.

He said: “We accept that it is lawful to bring an enforcement procedure against us under English and Welsh national law and we accept that our Article 8 rights (which affect private and family life) have been considered by the local planning authority.

“But no judge has determined whether it is proportionate to use this process to evict Mrs Flynn from her plot.”

The contested application continues.