The Age of Evictions … and Resistance!

Two dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties. One liv­ing in Clifton Man­sions, an inner city block of long term squat­ted flats in Brix­ton, south Lon­don. The oth­er made of 90 fam­i­lies part of the UK’s largest Trav­eller com­mu­ni­ty in Dale Farm, a for­mer scrap-yard pur­chased by the Trav­ellers ten years ago near Basil­don, Essex.

They both now face one com­mon prob­lem: the threat of evic­tion. Dale Far­m’s long bat­tle has now reached a crit­i­cal point as Basil­don coun­cil yes­ter­day served a final notice of evic­tion giv­ing fam­i­lies until mid­night on August 31st to aban­don their homes. The com­mu­ni­ty of squat­ters of Clifton Man­sions have learnt that the police is plan­ning to block off Brix­ton’s Cold­har­bour Lane on Tues­day 12 July to enforce the evic­tion of all the peo­ple liv­ing in the 22 flats.

See calls from both com­mu­ni­ties for sol­i­dar­i­ty in resist­ing the planned evic­tions: Clifton Man­sions | Dale Farm

Clifton Man­sions:

Clifton Man­sions On Cold­har­bour Lane is a com­mu­ni­ty of squat­ters in the heart of Brix­ton. Squat­ted since the 1990’s the 22 flats are home to a large and diverse group of peo­ple. The res­i­dents have repaired and main­tained the prop­er­ties after Lam­beth Coun­cil left them emp­ty and neglect­ed. Clus­tered around a cen­tral court­yard Clifton Man­sions is a safe and vibrant com­mu­ni­ty where vio­lence and abuse are not tol­er­at­ed.

On Tues­day 12 July 2011 the police plan to block off Cold­har­bour Lane and enforce the evic­tion of all the peo­ple liv­ing in Clifton Man­sions. Mak­ing the aston­ish­ing claim that evict­ing Clifton Man­sions will some­how solve the prob­lem of drug crime in Brix­ton, the police failed to con­sult with local coun­cil­lors before push­ing ahead with this plan. Clifton Man­sions res­i­dents have received only two weeks notice that they are to be evict­ed from their homes.

Fol­low­ing the evic­tions, Lam­beth Coun­cil will pay Camelot, a pri­vate com­pa­ny, to pro­vide “live-in guardians” to occu­py Clifton Man­sions. The squat­ters have been pro­vid­ing a free guardian ser­vice for years. Why make peo­ple home­less and then pay a multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny to occu­py their homes?

Even­tu­al­ly Lam­beth wants to sell Clifton Man­sions to prop­er­ty devel­op­ers, fur­ther reduc­ing Lam­beth’s social hous­ing stock in cen­tral Brix­ton. Clifton Man­sions will be turned into lux­u­ry flats priced well beyond the means of the local com­mu­ni­ty.

Please con­tact the coun­cil and the police to let them know what you think.

Show your sup­port on evic­tion day:
12 July – 8am – Clifton Man­sions – 429 Cold­har­bour Lane

They’re clos­ing the street so lets have a par­ty!

Dale Farm:

Dale Farm, in Crays Hill, Essex, is the UK’s largest Trav­ellers’ com­mu­ni­ty, con­sist­ing of near­ly a hun­dred sep­a­rate prop­er­ties, lying well out­side the vil­lage and made up of extend­ed fam­i­ly plots or yards.

Most are owned by Trav­ellers of Irish her­itage, although some Romani fam­i­lies also own yards. The estate is divid­ed in two sec­tions, the front part (about 45 plots) has plan­ning per­mis­sion; while the back part (52 plots) despite numer­ous appli­ca­tions and appeals, has been refused plan­ning con­sent, even though the site was pre­vi­ous­ly a dis­used scrap yard! 90% of trav­eller plan­ning appli­ca­tions are ini­tial­ly reject­ed com­pared to 20% over­all.

Cav­ing in to racial prej­u­dice, Basil­don Dis­trict Coun­cil (BDC) has set aside 9.2 mil­lion pounds to demol­ish the homes in the back 52 plots and have asked the Home Office for 10 mil­lion more. This could hap­pen as ear­ly as June. We view the destruc­tion of half this com­mu­ni­ty as eth­nic cleans­ing.

The plan­ning his­to­ry of the area has shown that the site had been used with­out plan­ning per­mis­sion since ear­ly 1990’s for a vari­ety of indus­tri­al uses. In 1992 BDC issued Enforce­ment Notices against var­i­ous unau­tho­rised com­mer­cial activ­i­ties that were being pur­sued on the site. Part of the land at the east side of the site was pre­vi­ous­ly the sub­ject of two tem­po­rary con­sents for the break­ing of motor vehi­cles, sale of vehi­cle parts and deal­ing in scrap met­als. This use ceased fol­low­ing the vaca­tion of the?land by the busi­ness pro­pri­etors in 2001.

When the unau­tho­rised devel­op­ment of the appli­ca­tion site first came to the Council’s atten­tion in Sep­tem­ber 2003, the land to the east of the site had been used as a scrap yard from 1978 until 2001 under a per­mis­sion grant­ed by the Coun­cil to be used as such. If an excep­tion was allowed for the scrap met­al yard, sure­ly an excep­tion can be made for a vul­ner­a­ble minor­i­ty group to con­tin­ue to live there, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en that many of them have already been through trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ences of forced evic­tion.

In May 2005, the BDC vot­ed to take direct action, set­ting aside some three mil­lion euro for an evic­tion and demo­li­tion oper­a­tion. Res­i­dents sought a Judi­cial Review of this deci­sion and won in the High Court. This judg­ment was over­turned by the Court of Appeal on 22 Jan­u­ary 2009. An appeal to the House of Lords was denied on 14 May 2009. After exten­sive research into the needs of Trav­ellers and Gyp­sies in the UK, on 20 July the Depart­ment for Com­mu­ni­ties and Local Gov­ern­ment informed BDC and the Gip­sy Coun­cil that the Dis­trict Coun­cil is required to pro­vide suf­fi­cient land for 62 (six­ty two) addi­tion­al pitch­es. This require­ment can be eas­i­ly met by BDC if it decides to grant plan­ning per­mis­sion for the 52 (fifty two) unau­tho­rised pitch­es already in exis­tence at Dale Farm.

As men­tioned before, the main desire of the fam­i­lies is to not move from Dale Farm; they wish to get plan­ning per­mis­sion for per­ma­nent res­i­dence to con­tin­ue liv­ing in the site they pri­vate­ly own.

We say no to home demo­li­tions, and no to eth­nic cleans­ing!