This article is provided by the Dale Farm Action Group and all content is the opinion of that group. Any statement made is an allegation and all responsibility for proving veracity lies with the Dale Farm Action Committee.
STAND WITH THE "illegals" AND THE
HOMELESS - OPPOSE THE BIGGEST
EVICTION IN RECENT BRITISH HISTORY!
NEXT MEETING: 7pm School of Oriental and African Studies,
STAND WITH THE "illegals" AND THE
HOMELESS - OPPOSE THE BIGGEST
EVICTION IN RECENT BRITISH HISTORY!
NEXT MEETING: 7pm School of Oriental and African Studies,
Russell Square, London, 27 January. Remembering the
Nazi Genocide; opposing racism today
The Dale Farm Solidarity campaign is helping to coordinate activists' response to an appeal by residents facing eviction from Dale Farm, the largest Traveller community in Britain.
Together we are making a stand against what we feel is an act of ethnic-cleansing against Gypsy people equal in its brutality and racist motivation to the clearances of Roma camps in Italy and France, and the neo-fascist murders of Roma in Hungary, Romania and the Czech republic.
Travellers, once the most marginalist, now see themselves as part of a growing, broader upsurge of opposition to the present Coalition Government. Homeless? We have no legal place to live. Jobless? Dependent on self-employment. Going to university? Even primary school is a problem when you are moved on constantly by the police.
Remember the warning? "First they came for the Gypsies ... and I did nothing." More than 500,000 Roma died in the Nazi genocide; 100,000 were expelled from Kosova under the eyes of NATO.
This is our chance to fight back. Dale Farm Solidarity is organising human rights monitors, legal and arrestee support, action training, media and outreach. As eviction approaches, Camp Constant will be set up to provide an around-the-clock human rights watch and instant resistance to the £13m two-week eviction operation.
The Dale Farm Solidarity campaign is helping to coordinate activists' response to an appeal by residents facing eviction from Dale Farm, the largest Traveller community in Britain.
Together we are making a stand against what we feel is an act of ethnic-cleansing against Gypsy people equal in its brutality and racist motivation to the clearances of Roma camps in Italy and France, and the neo-fascist murders of Roma in Hungary, Romania and the Czech republic.
Travellers, once the most marginalist, now see themselves as part of a growing, broader upsurge of opposition to the present Coalition Government. Homeless? We have no legal place to live. Jobless? Dependent on self-employment. Going to university? Even primary school is a problem when you are moved on constantly by the police.
Remember the warning? "First they came for the Gypsies ... and I did nothing." More than 500,000 Roma died in the Nazi genocide; 100,000 were expelled from Kosova under the eyes of NATO.
This is our chance to fight back. Dale Farm Solidarity is organising human rights monitors, legal and arrestee support, action training, media and outreach. As eviction approaches, Camp Constant will be set up to provide an around-the-clock human rights watch and instant resistance to the £13m two-week eviction operation.
The UK's largest Traveller community, Dale Farm, is under imminent threat of eviction. Tory Basildon Council appear to want to force all illegal Gypsies out of Essex. Travellers have always experienced systemic persecution, and now Tory council-leader Tony Ball may appear to be exploiting the rise of anti-Gypsy and anti-migrant racism, whipped up by the worst of the tabloid press, to mount the largest eviction in recent British history.
The Gypsy-clearance specialists Constant & Co, are under contract to do the dirty-work. Their bailiffs allegedly have been investigated for arson and looting after past evictions in Hertfordshire and Essex. More recently they have had to face formal complaints over breaches of Health and Safety law where children have been endangered by alleged careless use of heavy machinery.
Travellers own the land at Dale Farm and it would cost nothing to grant them planning permission. Basildon claims it has no location for an alternative site yet it has been offered ample land for this purpose by the Homes and Communities Agency. The Travellers' own Dale Farm Residents Association has itself put in for a permit to move families to HCA ground at Pound Lane.
Instead Basildon appears to be intent on driving men, women and children out onto the road with nowhere to go. Those already evicted by Constant from homes at Hovefields, Wickford, including two pregnant women and a boy with learning difficulties, are being continually harassed by the police, using powers under the Criminal Justice Act.
There are no pitches available on council-run caravan sites and most Travellers want to provide for themselves. Everyone at Dale Farm is refusing council-house accommodation because it would mean the breakup of their community and the end of a life-style their have clung onto for centuries. But they feel Communities secretary Eric Pickles has kicked them in the teeth by removing a duty placed on Basildon under the Housing Act 2004 to allow 62 new pitches to be built in the district by the end of this year.
Dale Farm has been under siege for ten years. Now the community is calling out for help in the final showdown, a confrontation against establishment violence underpinned by a cultural intolerance that attempts to hide its ugly face behind a smokescreen of planning regulations and law-and-order victim-seeking rhetoric. This bulldozer attitude must be challenged and defeated.
Join our mailing list and text service, and prepare groups to come down to Dale Farm. Pledge to spend a night at Camp Constant when the long eviction operation, expected to last three weeks, kicks off in March or April (Tony Ball vows to have cleared all illegals by the May 8 local elections).
We can provide films and speakers for info nights and discussions - get in contact if you can help.
Dale Farm Solidarity
http://dalefarm.wordpress.com/
Facebook Pledge - If they start to bulldoze Dale Farm, I'll spend the night there.
Traveller Support Network
http://dalefarm.wordpress.com/
info, resources & text alert sign-up
tsn@lists.aktivix.org / savedalefarm@gmail.com
Facebook Group: Dale Farm Solidarity
Contact: dale.farm@btinternet.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment