麻豆社

Kirsty Wark reunites key people involved in the 2011 evictions from Dale Farm, Essex, one of the biggest Gypsy and Traveller sites in the UK.

In 1996, one Irish Traveller family legally bought an old scrapyard in the Crays Hill area of Basildon and began living on it, eventually joined by other families. As more families moved in, local tensions grew. And half the residents were on plots with no planning permission, effectively breaking the law by being there.

In an effort to ensure that planning laws were being applied, Basildon Council began a 10-year legal battle to evict the illegal residents of Dale Farm. Yet supporters and residents argued that Gypsy and Traveller families had nowhere else to go.

After taking the case to the High Court, the residents of Dale Farm were evicted on 19th October 2011, leaving almost 1000 people without a home. The police began clearing the site at 7 am, facing serious opposition from activists who had rallied to the site to defend the Travellers' rights. It was fully cleared the following day, at a cost to the taxpayer of over 拢6.5 million.

Ten years later, the site stands derelict, not returned to greenbelt as promised or developed in any other way.

Kirsty is joined by supporters of the Dale Farm site, including campaigner and member of the Gypsy Council, Candy Sheridan. Journalist Katharine Quarmby has been covering the Dale Farm site since 2006 and is the author of No Place to Call Home, a detailed account of Dale Farm. We hear from a representative of Basildon Council and activist voices, as well as the perspective of those living on the site itself.

Producer: Leonie Thomas
Series Producer: David Prest
A Whistledown production for 麻豆社 Radio 4