The Travelers' Travails

And there's undeniably much ill will toward the Travelers, who are blamed for forcing down land prices, dumping garbage on public property and driving too fast along country lanes. One local official described relations between the Travelers and locals as "pure poison."

Still, for all the uncertainty, Dale Farm has brought some stability to the Travelers and has shown how they might be brought into the mainstream of society. All the families have registered with local doctors, and when health officials have been able to provide preventive care, they've achieved results. One anti-smoking clinic got 200 Travelers to quit in six months.

This modest progress would be brutally interrupted by eviction. Once on the road, the Travelers would be barred from receiving regular medical treatment, because Britons need a fixed address to register with a doctor. The children's education would come to a grinding halt. Not only would eviction not "solve" anything, it would simply shift the burden and create new costs for British society as a whole.

None of this seems to worry the Basildon council or its combative leader, Malcolm Buckley, who is openly exploiting local prejudice against the Travelers. (Buckley's office declined to comment to me while the High Court case is pending.) Under a 2006 government regulation, the council is required to assess the housing needs of Travelers in its area, but it hasn't done so. It has challenged an order from its own regional governing body to find 81 new housing plots. It is lobbying hard against a face-saving formula offered by John Prescott, a former deputy prime minister, to relocate the Travelers to nearby Pitsea.

This appears to be a calculated snub to the Labor government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The government has no wish to reward illegal behavior, but in a sharp departure from the 1990s, it has also accepted a clear obligation toward Travelers and gypsies. It has asked local councils to help find authorized sites for these groups, to respect human rights, to promote race relations and to reduce homelessness. Buckley and his council ignore all this.

There is a solution for Dale Farm, as there is for the Roma "problem" throughout Europe, but it will require hard work and common sense on both sides. The Basildon council could simply legalize the entire Dale Farm site. If it's concerned that this would be seen as "rewarding illegality," it should find another site, at Pitsea or elsewhere. In return, the Travelers would have to accept greater responsibility for education and stewardship of the land. This would also open the way to a belated investment in health and education and some community bridge-building. Dale Farm could yet become an example of racial harmony in Europe.

Will it happen? Brown would certainly pay a short-term political price for taking on the Basildon council and, presumably, the Conservative opposition. But the alternative would be worse: the deepening marginalization of a vulnerable minority and damage to Britain's international reputation. It should not be a difficult decision.

iain@advocacynet.org

Iain Guest is director of the Advocacy Project, a Washington-based organization that advises community-based human rights advocates, including the Dale Farm Housing Association.