Travellers deny eviction battle will turn violent

Travellers who have vowed to fight a move to evict them from the UK’s largest illegal site have denied their protest has been infiltrated by anarchists.

Basildon Council is going ahead with plans to send bailiffs to remove hundreds of people from Dale Farm, near the Essex town, despite criticism from human rights groups and a United Nations committee.

The residents have been joined by protesters from around the country, and their arrival at the site has prompted fears of violent confrontation with bailiffs and police.

But the two groups presented a united front at a press conference on Friday, and insisted that they were committed to non-violent resistance.

Resident Kathleen McCarthy said: “These supporters are welcome here and we remain determined to stay. We will resist the bailiffs and build barricades but none of us have weapons or anything like that. Anybody who is welcomed on this site will resist in a peaceful way.”

We are a proud community and we are absolutely not interested in anyone who wants to come on here and cause trouble. Kathleen McCarthy

She added: “We have gas canisters but they are for fuel and will absolutely not be used as weapons.

“We are a proud community and we are absolutely not interested in anyone who wants to come on here and cause trouble.”

One supporter, who gave her name only as Marina, said specialists in peaceful resistance were training travellers in how to defy the bailiffs peacefully.

She said: “We would urge anybody who cares about human rights and peaceful resistance to join us. This eviction is a form of ethnic cleansing and we are determined to stop that.

“We have been made so welcome by the travellers and this is a community which deserves protection.”

The local authority is due to begin eviction proceedings over the coming weeks after a last-minute High Court injunction bid by the travellers failed.

Planning for a multi-million pound policing operation – which Essex Police say will protect travellers and supporters as well as bailiffs – is under way.

It follows a decade-long row over unauthorised properties on the former scrapyard. The travellers own the land and are entitled to live on half of it, but do not have permission to dwell on the rest of the farm.

The group say that hundreds of children and infirm elderly people face losing their homes and will be forced out of the community they have lived in for ten years.

On Friday the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination issued a statement saying: “We call on the Government to suspend the planned eviction, which would disproportionately affect the lives of the Gypsy and Traveller families, particularly women, children and older people.”