One of England's largest Traveller communities could face eviction. The council says it's the law but locals blame racism, writes Lynne O'Donnell.
John and Kathleen McCarthy, pillars of a travelling community in rural England, are on their way back to Limerick this weekend to be buried among their ancestors. They died last week when their mobile home on a controversial gypsy site went up in flames. They leave behind four children and a large community that relied on their leadership in a bitter fight over their occupation of the land.
Kathleen McCarthy (42) was matriarch of the Crays Hill gypsy and Irish Traveller compound, which stands on six hectares off a quiet road near Basildon, in Essex. It is some 50km (30 miles) east of London, surrounded by houses and businesses, many of which are also owned by gypsies and Irish Travellers.
With her death, the close-knit Crays Hill community lost a champion of their rights to a home, to education for their children, and to remain on land that is legally theirs. In the weeks before her death, McCarthy worked tirelessly to save hundreds of people living in the compound from the threat of eviction, including children, elderly and infirm.
Tensions at Crays Hill peaked last month with the expiry of a two-year reprieve from eviction, granted by deputy prime minister John Prescott, after local authorities said the site had grown beyond the permitted limit.
The council says the law must be applied even if that means evicting up to one third of the 1,000 people at Crays Hill.
This has become the latest, and most rancorous, battleground for Travellers and gypsies in Britain, where local authorities have no obligation to provide sites and where up to 5,000 travelling families have nowhere legal to live. It's a battle in which more than 90 per cent of applications by Travellers and gypsies for sites, retrospective or otherwise, are denied.
Charles Smith, chairman of the Gypsy Council, says travelling people are forced to buy land, develop it without official authorisation, and restrospectively apply for planning permission. "Every single plot has been fought for," he says.
Such is the case at Crays Hill, a thriving community that stands behind the large private homes, catteries and kennels lining Oak Road, near Basildon in Essex. The houses have names like Adelaide Hills and Oak Cottage, and in many of the gardens caravans stand ready for traditional travelling trips.
Smith, who lives nearby, says gypsies and Travellers have lived there for generations. He thinks the size of the Crays Hill site "has come as a culture shock for the council".
Until 1994, local councils were required to provide designated traveller sites, and when the law was abolished Basildon had 55 approved plots, the leader of Basildon County Council, Malcolm Buckley, says. "We then couldn't control the expansion." Basildon now has 105 approved plots, "making us the largest in the east and the fourth largest in England", he says.
According to Smith, "because local authorities don't provide sites, Travellers and gypsies have no alternative but to live illegally on other people's land, or buy and develop their own land and then get planning permission. The development of the Crays Hill site is not illegal, it is unauthorised - no different to someone putting an extension on their house and getting permission for it later".
Before it was purchased by gypsies in the mid-1990s, the Crays Hill site was used as a scrap yard for 20 years - built without council authorisation on green belt, Buckley says.
It has been transformed into a self-contained compound of paved roads and homes behind gates, where visitors must negotiate speed bumps to ensure children can play and ride their bikes in safety. The site is subdivided into blocks, each road with a name - Bewley Road, Carmella Drive - each plot numbered. There are caravans, chalets - large trailers with wheels that can be moved from site to site - and bungalows. The place is clean and tidy; cars are parked off the road.
Before her death, McCarthy declared Crays Hill the "safest place in England."
THIS WEEK, AS friends and family arrived from Ireland and across Britain to pay their respects and lay flowers along the fence of the McCarthys' plot, firemen were still hosing down the smouldering remains of their chalet, five days after the fatal fire.
"We've never dealt with anything like this in our lives," says Kathleen's cousin, Margaret Gammell, who lives opposite the McCarthys on Bewley Drive. "We only want to stay here and fight for our land. This is where Kathleen wanted to live, to get her kids educated and to be close to her family and her community."
Her seven-year-old son, Dennis, had been taken by his grandmother to her home in Birmingham, she says, "because he's having nightmares about this business. Kathleen used to bring him sweets over every night."
No one knows yet what started the blaze that destroyed the McCarthys' chalet, though neighbour Nora Egan guesses it might have been the candle Kathleen lit each night while she said the rosary.
"We're Catholics, you know," Egan says, as she sits at the table of her own spotless chalet, a three-foot-tall statue of the Virgin Mary filling a corner behind her.
As she bustles about wiping away non-existent dust and trying to stop her four-month-old puppy carrying in pieces of wood to gnaw, Egan outlines the aspirations of the people who have made their home in Crays Hill.
In her thick Irish burr - which "breaks in from the background" despite her being born in England - she describes her first 30 years as "hell".
"No water, no electricity, no toilets. Travelling life was hell, I tell you. I travelled all my life, until I was about 30. I like being here because it's home for my kids, my children are going to school. We've settled down," she says.
Her younger daughter, Gabrielle (eight), wants to be a nurse. Patrick (10) wants to be a solicitor. Diane (12) "don't know what she wants to be". But they all know the value of learning to read and write, something their mother, like many of the adults at Crays Hill, never learned to do. Unemployable as a result, they live on government benefits - and pay council taxes.
AS SHE BRACES for eviction, Egan fears her children will never get the education she so desperately wants for them.
"I'm going to do my Lord's best to keep my kids in school," she says. "These days you've got to read and write, because it's all computers."
The decision on whether or not to send in the bailiffs will be made on June 8th, when Basildon county council's development control committee meets to decide on planning applications. Malcolm Buckley says that if the applications are turned down, the council can decide from among a number of options - eviction, fines, imprisonment.
The council has allocated £1.5 million to cover the cost of dealing with the Crays Hill case, he says, including eviction, if it comes to that. He says the council is not obliged to provide alternative accommodation for gypsies evicted from their homes, despite laws designed to protect evicted people from homelessness.
Buckley calls on the government to spread the responsibility for providing sites for gypsies and Travellers.
"We can't be, and won't be, the only place providing for the needs of travelling people. This site [ Crays Hill] represents one third of unauthorised pitches in the district. Were we to authorise, what do we then do when another group comes along and says they want to stay? We have limited green belt.
"It's not a question of unfair treatment. Whenever we have granted consent, the number of pitches has expanded well beyond the number of pitches we have given permission to," he adds.
For Charles Smith, and many of the people at Crays Hill, it's a matter of racism.
"Where people are living in unauthorised accommodation elsewhere, local authorities are not allowed to evict people, there is no provision for eviction. It can only legally occur with gypsies and Travellers, because of special provisions in the law. And it's because of racism."
Smith suggests American-style trailer parks, where mixed communities of Travellers and gypsies, and others who enjoy a travelling lifestyle, could pitch up at will and stay as long as they liked.
"There are many people who live like this, not just Travellers, and people who choose a nomadic or semi-nomadic life need somewhere to go. But it's not an idea that is acceptable in this society," he says. "Why not?"