Dale Farm Versus Nicholas Sarkozy

As I think I've mentioned once or twice Britain is currently trying to evict a traveller/gypsy site in Essex known as Dale Farm. Inevitably this has led to comparisons with the French President's mass deportation of gypsies in 2010. However there are a number of key differences between the two. Obviously I don't want to get into talking about good gypsies and bad gypsies because the entire culture is far too complex to define in such simple terms. There are though two main types of gypsy; Irish Traveller and Roma Gypsy.

The residents of Dale Farm are overwhelmingly Irish traveller. Coming from Ireland this group are strict Catholics and have been travelling around Britain and Ireland for over a thousand years. Although never exactly popular Irish travellers have always had their place in society acting as traders, especially of horses, connecting up the various remote towns, villages and farms that make up rural Britain. Their problems only really began in the 1980's when the Thatcher government effectively declared war on them making many aspects of their culture illegal and systematically denying them planning permission for new sites while evicting them from existing sites like Dale Farm. Obviously this level of animosity led to increased tensions between both sides with travellers losing all respect for a society that doesn't have any respect for them leading us to a point were travellers are pretty much the only ethnic group in Britain that it is still ok to be racist towards.

The gypsies that France deported in 2010 were overwhelmingly Roma Gypsies - a separate ethnic group with a much more chequered history. Originating almost two thousand years ago in what is now India/Pakistan/Afghanistan the Roma mainly travelled across continental Europe again acting as traders linking up different settled communities. They tended to centre around eastern Europe because it is more or less the middle of the continent. The Roma's problems really began with the rise of Nazi Germany who treated them at least as badly as they treated the Jews forcing them into concentration camps, sterilising them to stop them breeding and ultimately killing millions of them. However at the end of the second world war while the Jews were allowed to go off and set up Israel the Roma were left to live under Stalin's USSR who if anything treated them worse then the Nazis. In fact the only way that many Roma were able to survive the Communists was by carving out a niche for themselves doing the things like drug smuggling, prostitution, people trafficking and gun running that the Communist wanted doing but couldn't be seen to be doing themselves. Some Communist leaders also kept Roma gangs on the payroll in order to intimidate political dissidents and keep their populations in line. So while it's not part of Roma culture in recent years many Roma have become heavily involved in very serious and very unpleasant organised crime. Plus many people who claim to be Roma are just organised criminals trying to hide behind the Roma's status as a protected ethnic group.

After the end of the cold war and Europe's ensuing wars many of the Roma again started to travel to western Europe where the standard of living is far higher. This led to countries like France being overwhelmed by large numbers of gypsies who set up illegal camps on other peoples land and threatened to destabilise French society by bringing with them huge amounts serious and organised crime. So what Sarkozy did in 2010 was to clear all the illegal camps and deport all the residents knowing full well that European freedom of movement rules meant that they could all return to France straight away if they wanted.

While I wouldn't go so far as to say what Sarkozy did was right it did show at least some understanding of gypsy culture and was more an attempt to shake things up in order to get the community to self regulate. By contrast what Britain is doing has no interest in compromise or forming some sort of accommodation with the travellers. Instead it is just the latest effort in a long running battle to eliminate travellers and their way of life.


As for the residents of Dale Farm their next court appearance takes place at 11:30 (10:30GMT) on Friday (23/9/11) where the High Court will give it's final ruling on the restraining order preventing the eviction taking place. The temporary order was granted over fears that the council intends to do more to the site then return it to the state it was in before the travellers built on it. As that state was of an industrial site rather then a greenbelt site there is a possibility that the court could rule that the council's refusal to grant planning permission on the grounds of protecting greenbelt land was illegal therefore making the entire eviction process illegal. However the conditions of the order were that the council provides detailed, plot by plot plans of what they intend to do and the residents remove all barricades to allow bailiffs access to the site. So what is most likely to happen is that the court will rule in the council's favour and impose huge costs on the travellers. This will set in motion a race against time as the bailiffs attempt to get access to the site before the residents are able to barricade it again. So it will really be a contest of who's got the best communications between court and site, the travellers or the bailiffs.