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Basildon Drops "Bullyboy" Bailiffs Booked for Big Dale Farm Eviction

Dale Farm News #2, April 3, 2008

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Essex, U.K. April 3, 2008.  A town council which has spent some £2m trying to expel a thousand unwanted Gypsies has now decided instead to drop the bailiff company it had hired to complete the eviction work.

Basildon District Council says it may hire an expert to advise them on future direct action operations against the thousand residents of Dale Farm, Cray's Hill; the largest Gypsy community in Britain.

Criticised for his hard line towards his Gypsy and Traveller residents, Basildon council leader Malcolm Buckley has authorised a statement saying it has not yet appointed bailiffs to attempt what would be the biggest eviction of an ethnic minority in recent UK history.

"The council is considering appointing an independent expert to advise on the methods and procedure of the eviction," its latest press release states.

Yet it has for the past two years employed a notorious outfit called Constant & Co., which specialises in anti-Gypsy evictions. This company has crushed a number of homes at Gypsy Hill, Wickford, barely two miles from Dale Farm.

The rationale for destroying these homes is that they are located in the rural greenbelt and put up without planning permission. However, Britain's Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR), which sided with the Travellers in a recent high court test case, says Basildon is biased.

The town is currently preparing to surrender greenbelt land for some 11,000 new homes. It is also under a duty imposed by new government guidance to find space for at least 80 new mobile-home plots for the accommodation of its Gypsy population, half of whom have nowhere legally to live.

The CEHR has faulted Basildon for not carrying out an impact study on race relations in the town. But Dale Farm residents go further saying no proper assessment has been made as to the risks inherent in such a large-scale and probably violent eviction.

"We fear that a child will be killed if heavy machinery is brought in here," says Kathleen McCarthy, a spokeswoman for Dale Farm Housing Association (DFHA). "The bailiffs are a bunch of bullyboys who ignore all the health and safety rules."

A plant-hire company which previously lent machinery to Constant has now withdrawn. The director of H.E. Services, Mr Hugh Edeleanu, says he won't allow his cranes to be used by the bailiffs because the work is too brutal.

The DFHA has sent a 20-page dossier to Basildon council listing incidents of alleged misconduct by Constant bailiffs. These include the burning of caravans and huts, looting of personal property and rough handling of children, the elderly and pregnant mothers.

Bailiffs routinely fail to observe health and safety laws, the dossier alleges. In one incident at Gypsy Hill, a bulldozer crashed through fencing of a property then under protection of a high court injunction.

Video film of a mobile-home on fire after an eviction and a pregnant woman being pushed to the ground has been viewed by a high court judge. Mr Justice Collins stated after seeing it that he was minded to call for a re-think on the use of bailiffs.

Now the DFHA intends to submit a formal complaint against Constant & Co., demanding that the bailiff's operating licence be withdrawn from the firm. It is also insisting on its legal right to be consulted over risk assessments due to be carried out by Basildon before any operation at Dale Farm.

"It is unlikely we will agree with these reports," said Grattan Puxon, secretary of the DFHA. "In which case we will pass them on to the government's Health & Safety Executive for scrutiny."

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