The travellers who were evicted from the illegal Dale Farm encampment have largely returned, parking their caravans a short distance away on the legal Oak Lane site. Over 70 caravans are now parked illegally in the area around Dale Farm and Oak Lane, similar to the number that were at Dale Farm previously. Despite the £6.5 million spent on evicting the travellers from Dale Farm, they have simply moved a short distance away, and the problems facing local residents continue.

1. Today, they’re back. The Sheridans.
The O’Briens. The Flynns and, yes,
Slattery. ‘We’re all here, every one of
us,’ he declared defiantly, pointing to
his caravan on the roadside, almost
within spitting distance of the entrance
to Dale Farm.
Slattery didn’t volunteer his name,
but the local reporter accompanying
me recognised his face from the court
case. Ordinarily, the word of such an
old scallywag might not be worth
much. However, it’s impossible to
dismiss the evidence of your own eyes.
I counted more than 70 illegally
parked caravans in the immediate
vicinity; the same number, give or
take, that once occupied the (now)
demolished campsite. Same caravans.
Same families. Same problem.
The bottom line? A staggering
£6.5 million of public money — the
combined council and police bill for
the so-called eviction process — was
spent, it now emerges, simply moving
travellers from one side of the bound-
ary fence to the other; in some cases,
just a few feet.
Little wonder, then, that Michael
Slattery, who is in his 60s, was grinning
through his missing front teeth during
our encounter earlier in the week.
Ruthlessly exploiting the system is the
stock-in-trade of many Irish travellers
like him.
Either way, it is difficult to conceive
of a more farcical, or shambolic,
culmination to a controversy that has
dragged on for a decade.
Apart from anything else, enforce-
ment action will have to be taken all
over again to remove the ‘evicted’ from
the potholed private lane leading to
Dale Farm and Oak Lane, the legal
camp next door, where the majority of
the ‘homeless’ have pitched up.
Such a course of action means even
more expense for taxpayers and the
prospect of yet more trouble. The last
showdown three months ago resulted
in apocalyptic scenes with vehicles set
on fire and police officers and officials
coming under attack.
Who can blame the beleaguered villag-
ers for thinking they were better off
before Dale Farm was razed to the
ground, a day they had been hoping and
praying for since 2001 when the six-acre,
greenbelt site began being colonised?
An estimated £50 million has
been wiped off the value of the 400
properties that comprise the village of
Crays Hill during that time and the
reputation of the local primary school
has plummeted with many pupils
being pulled out, rightly or wrongly, by
their parents because of the influx of
traveller children.
The fortunes of Crays Hill is unlikely
to change in the foreseeable future, if
ever. The place is blighted, it seems.
In fact, Dale Farm — in the heart of
the village — resembles a bombsite.
Amid the debris and rubble, some-
one has put up a sign that says
starkly: ‘Hiroshima.’
You can see why. Craters left by the
bailiffs’ heavy machinery and diggers
have filled with stagnant water.
There are rats and piles of fly-tipped
rubbish causing potential health risks
on the neighbouring legal Oak Lane
Daily Mail, Monday, January 30, 2012
site, which is separated from the old
Dale Farm site by a simple boundary
fence, and where there has been an
outbreak of chicken pox.
The Red Cross has already visited
the camp and is in contact with Basil-
don Council about possible interven-
tion to provide ‘crisis support’ such as
clothing, bedding and hygiene advice.
Meanwhile, the families say they
have nowhere else to go. The council
insists they have each been made
aware of vacant pitches outside the
area, which have been rejected.
Offers of temporary accommodation
more locally have not been taken up.
And so it goes on — a depressingly
familiar tale being repeated the length
and breadth of Britain. Except there
are few places where relations are
more toxic than in this part of Essex.
Take Len Gridley, 52, whose home
backs directly on to Dale Farm. The
human rights of people like him
seem to have been all but forgotten in
the crossfire.
He has told how he has been
subjected to a relentless barrage of
abuse and death threats down the
years for speaking out against the
illegal occupation. The intimidation,
he insists, continues.
Only a few weeks ago, he reveals, two
men in a car pulled down the window
and shouted ‘We know where you live’
when they drove past him.
Children still spit at him. His neigh-
bours, most too fearful to criticise the
travellers in public, tell of ‘being run
off’ the road.
This is the real scandal behind the
‘eviction’ of Dale Farm.
So where did the travellers go when
they left in October? Answer: round
the block to Oak Lane, at least
metaphorically speaking, moving just
a few yards across the boundary into
the ‘legal’ side of the site.
Did the council follow them? No,
because — as it was at pains to point
out — it is not in the business of
tracing the ‘movement of individuals’.
What a pity local authorities don’t
adopt the same attitude to, say,
law-abiding homeowners who
mistakenly put out their rubbish in
the wrong bins.
So almost before the TV crews had
disappeared and the ink was barely
dry on the enforcement papers, ‘they’
began to return. By mid-November,
there were reports of dozens of
caravans queuing in the lane where we
met Michael Slattery, with the council
seemingly powerless to stop them.
Other travellers were allowed to
take refuge inside the Oak Lane camp.
Hardly surprising in the circum-
stances. Practically all the families are
related by blood or marriage. The
by Paul
Bracchi
M
ICHAEL SLATTERY ‘distinguished’ himself
during the infamous ‘Battle of Dale Farm’. The
veteran traveller threw hot tea in the face of one
bailiff, and called another a ‘black b******’.
Long-suffering residents — those, that is, who pay their
taxes and live in homes made of bricks and mortar —
thought they had seen the last of Slattery (and his friends) following the
mass eviction of the illegal encampment at Crays Hill, Essex, in October
combined with his conviction for using ‘abusive, threatening or insulting
behaviour’. After all, they witnessed the riot police going in. They heard
the roar of the bulldozers. They saw a convoy of 4x4s leaving with their
dreaded caravans in tow.
What a false dawn that proved to be.
‘The land is in a
much worse state
thanitwasbefore’
The Red Cross has
offered to provide
‘crisis support’
BATTLE
Page 11Daily Mail, Monday, January 30, 2012
‘their land’. But most, like John
Sheridan, were friendly and eager to
tell their story.
Mr Sheridan, 69, spent ‘many
years’ at the illegal Dale Farm
encampment. He has moved on to a
plot on the other side (which
belongs to a friend who is in the
Bahamas) with his wife, Nora, and
daughter, Laura, 25.
Next door is his sister. His two
sons live in their own caravans on
the same plot.
All bar four families, he says, have
moved across the boundary fence
from Dale Farm. ‘Look, look all
around you. Everywhere is packed,
packed.’ Nor has he any intention of
moving any time soon, despite the
pending legal action.
‘I have been a traveller all my life,’
scale of the scandal becomes appar-
ent only when you wander through
the maze of 34 privately owned
plots, now a shanty town in all but
name. The permitted allocation per
plot is one stationary caravan and
one touring caravan. So the major-
ity of the plots are flagrantly in
breach of planning regulations.
Some have six caravans; others
five or four or three. In between the
caravans, on some plots, are expen-
sive BMWs and Mercedes. How
many people now live here — 200?
300? 400? More than that?
Who can say for sure; only they are
now crammed on to one site, not
two. That is the much less publi-
cised result of the Battle of Dale
Farm. Some of the travellers we met
were hostile and asked us to leave
he says. ‘I have gone from John
O’Groats to Lands End and I have
been in courts up and down the
country, so I know the laws of the
land. I can’t hear properly and can
hardly see [the legacy of two strokes].
Where do you want me to go?’
Almost every caravan door we
knocked on is occupied by Dale
Farm travellers.
Mary Sheridan, 21, and her
mother; another Mary Sheridan and
her four children; Mary Flynn, a
single mother of three; and Margaret
Sheridan, 30, who lives in a four-
berth caravan with her baby son
not far from Michael Slattery.
Until October, she was living on
plot 51 at Dale Farm. She moved
there from Rathkeale, Co. Limerick,
to be with her husband. They have
now split up. ‘The eviction was a
waste of time and a waste of money,’
she says. ‘Very few people [who lived
at Dale Farm] have moved away.’
In the caravan next door is her
great-uncle Tommy; two along from
him are her cousins; and her Auntie
Noreen lives there as well.
So does Margaret have a big house
in Rathkeale? Many families at Dale
Farm, it emerged last year, do own
homes there, which rather under-
mines their claims that they have
‘nowhere to go’.
Margaret said she did — but it was
the ‘family home’, where her
parents still live. ‘It’s a small house,’
she says. ‘Nothing grand.’
Back at Len Gridley’s home, the
bottom of his garden looks like a
rubbish tip. Two armchairs, along
with other detritus, have been
tossed over the metal security fence
he has just erected. It’s more like
Colditz than Crays Hill.
‘First, I was living next to a travel-
lers’ site. Now it’s a bombsite. Either
way, no one would want to buy it. In
fact, the land is in a much worse
state now than before,’ he says.
Basildon Council insists it is
committed to restoring the site to
greenbelt status. But, like every-
thing else in this sorry saga, there is
a catch. The council can’t improve
the plot because it is owned by the
travellers — not the local authority.
‘We plan to recover the cost of the
Dale Farm [eviction] operation
through the courts,’ the authority
said in a statement. ‘If the travellers
do not comply with a court order
to pay our costs, we would look to
seize the land as an asset.’
How long that might take is any-
one’s guess. But Tony Ball, the
leader of the council, has already
warned Mr Gridley: ‘The wheels of
this legal process grind slowly and
sometimes at what might seem like
a glacial pace. But it is the law of
our land and, as the local authority,
we must continue to abide by it and
work within it. I only wish the
travellers were as willing to follow
due process and obey the law.’
This will come as little consolation
to Len and his fellow residents, who
have already been waiting ten years
for progress.
Instead, what they have been left
with is the old Dale Farm site that
looks like a bomb has been dropped
on it and the same travellers living
just a few yards down the road.
Nevertheless, Councillor Ball
maintains that the operation was a
success, even describing it as money
well spent. Only a politician,
perhaps, could say that and expect
us to believe it.
Additional reporting:
JAMES HORE and PHILIP HARRISON
OFDALEFARM
‘Itwasawasteof
money—fewhave
movedaway’
Riots: A protester during last
year’s Dale Farm eviction
New home: Caravans parked up alongside the Oak Lane area.
Left, the burnt-out old settlement and the packed site next door
Clearing the Dale Farm traveller site cost
£6.5m. Three months on, the caravans are
back – some parked illegally just a few
feet away – and, as this shocking dispatch
reveals, tensions run deeper than ever
PART
TWO