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Dale Farm Protest

Friends of Dale Farm!

We're facing a new CRISIS.

I write this partly for your information, so that you are kept up to date, but also to ask whether you feel inclined to come to the special meeting of Basildon’s Development Control Committee, when the committee will be reviewing their earlier decision to bulldoze Dale Farm.

The meeting is at 7.30pm on Tuesday, 24 January, at the Basildon Centre. A picket protest with candles will start outside at 6.30 pm.

And if you want to send a message to the Tory leader, email Malcolm  (alternate email).

Also, please copy Dale Farm(for media use).

Our lawyers believe the purpose of the meeting is to prepare the council’s case for when they have to appear in the High Court for the Judicial Review on March 14. And of course they are trying to beat the CRE rap that this has long been a racist decision having little to do with the Greenbelt.

The proposed alternative site at Pitsea is NOT Greenbelt and was a legal Travellers site in the 1970s - but the council OPPOSES this site too and has said planning permission will be refused.

Almost certainly, the committee will reaffirm its decision to employ the private security firm Constant & Co to evict Travellers at a cost of £2 million.

But there are at least four new factors to consider in addition to the Wickford Primary Care Trust’s letter expressing concern that: a) women and children will be injured; b) there will be harmful physical effects on those forced to witness violence; c) there will be harmful effects on families, especially young children forced to live on the roadside; and d) difficulties of persons with health problems on the roadside will experience difficulties getting medical care.

The four new factors are as follows:

1) John Prescott (on appeal) has given 10 yards another 12 months to December this year.

2) The other 40 yards will submit appeals on 27 Feb for the same 12 months or two years, on the grounds that it will need this much time for:

3) John Prescott’s new proposal that an alternative site be provided at Pitsea (also in Basildon and also opposed).

4) Dale Farm now has stout defenses (barbed-wire, scaffolding, multiple steel gates, etc.) and with nonviolent resistance and a "human shield" an eviction attempt might well be defeated.

If you are unable to attend in person, you might want to put a question down and issue a statement for the media (the main reporter is Jon Austin on the ECHO, 07791883707).

In a recent article entitled "Actress supporters her brother’s call for a human shield,” Jon Austin wrote that Vanessa Redgrave has backed calls for a human shield around Dale Farm.

May I suggest a statement along the following lines:

"The Commission for Racial Equality, in seeking a judicial review of Basildon's decision to deny planning permission for Dale Farm and, instead, to drive the 600 residents from their own land by force, has implied that it actions are racially motivated.” The Wickford Primary Care Trust has expressed its fears that if bulldozers are sent in to destroy the 90 homes, women and children will be injured. For this reason, I continue to oppose the use of force. In the changed circumstances which now prevail, it makes no sense to employ Constant & Co., the bailiff company, which has a dubious reputation as self-styled Gypsy eviction specialists. John Prescott has given 10 yards another year’s grace period, and the other 40 yards are almost certain to gain a similar reprieve when their appeals are heard next month. Mr. Prescott himself has proposed that an alternative site be prepared at Pitsea. In view of these new factors, I urge that the council postpone direct action until full consideration of the Pitsea site, including a planning appeal, has been given.”             

Here also is a proposed question that can be delivered to Mr. Buckley and the council if you are coming in person:

"In view of Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott’s proposal that an alternative site be provided at Pitsea, will the committee please consider postponing enforced action against Dale Farm until full consideration of the Pitsea site, including a planning appeal, has been given."

All the best,

Grattan
01206 523528

The Advocacy Project
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