For the moment, the eviction notice served to the Dale Farm community of Irish Travellers in Essex, U.K. for Aug. 31 has not been enforced and the threatened families are carrying on with life as usual.
Dale Farm in southeast England is home to the U.K.’s largest community of Travellers—a group similar to Roma and Gypsies. For years they have been in a dispute with the local council over the legality of their settlement. The latest round of the battle was supposed to come to a head on Aug. 31 when the council said it would bulldoze all illegal dwellings.
Half of the land at Dale Farm where community members are living, cannot technically be used for residential purposes, because it is designated as a Greenbelt by local authorities. That means it can only be used for activities like horse rearing, agriculture, and renting vegetable gardens.
According to Jake Fulton, a spokesperson for the community living in Dale Farm, the bailiffs that were supposed to arrive by midnight Wednesday to physically remove the Travellers from the site never did.
Blockades will be placed on the roads around Dale Farm, something Fulton said will constitute a "significant violation of human rights."
Fulton said the Dale Farm residents are waiting around, occupying themselves by doing trench work and building up camp centers. He confirmed that the bulldozers, which had been predicted to arrive, also never showed up.
The Travellers do not know what will happen, according to Fulton. "The Council is not likely to tell us anything. They’re just going to start doing things on their own," said Fulton.
But although the eviction hasn’t happened yet, the Travellers are not reassured. “A lot of them are fairly upset,” said Fulton.
Dale Farm’s website describes the Travellers as “increasingly sleepless and stressed but undefeated” by the threat of eviction.
Pressure has been placed on the Basildon Council, the local government entity responsible for the evictions, to provide the Travellers with more alternative places to go.
The Travellers now say that they would be willing to move if an alternate site with planning permission was provided. They reject the Council’s previous offer of ‘bricks and mortar’ housing however, because of a cultural preference for caravans and small chalets.
The U.N., whose Special Rapporteur on housing previously wrote a statement to the U.K. government, released a stronger statement on Thursday condemning the eviction. The statement came from the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
Basildon Council originally gave the Travellers a 28-day eviction notice but it was extended to two months after concerns were raised over the number of sick people and young children on the site.
