>VIGIL FOR CORIN REDGRAVEAS BASILDON DEFERS VIRDICT


A candle-lit vigil was held last night
for actor Corin Redgrave following his collapse
at a council meeting held to decide the fate
of Britain's largest Traveller community.

Redgrave suffered a severe heartattack
while pleading with councillors not to vote
for the destruction of Dale Farm. The meeting
was adjourned as Redgrave was taken to a
nearby hospital where he remains in intensive
care. He was said this morning to be in a stable
condition.

His wife, actor Kika Markham, who earlier
in the day had welcomed Dale Farm residents to
a meeting at the House of Commons, was later
at the hospital where Redgrave was on a lifesupport
system.

That morning Redgrave had chaired a packed
meeting in the Jubilee Room at the Palace of
Westminster called by Peace & Progress to try and
prevent a forced eviction. Lord Avebury urged that
a moratorium on evictions be imposed by the
government until land was made available for private
and council-run caravan parks.

"We need action right now to save Dale Farm,"
Lord Avebury concluded. "Eviction will solve
nothing. Under the Homelessness Act Basildon will
still have responsibility."

Kathleen McCarthy, chair of Dale Farm
Residents Committee, said the threatened eviction
had little to do with planning rules and everything
to do with prejudice and racism. "Just leave us alone
to send our children to school," she pleaded.

HUMAN RIGHTS IGNORED

Vice-chair of the Parliamentary Committee
on Human Rights Jeremy Corbyn said Travellers had
been denegrated and vilified in a way that would never
be tolerated in respect of other ethnic groups. He hoped
that reasoned argument and protest action would lead to
a victory of common sense at Dale Farm and an end
to the spate of evictions around the country, which
were giving Britain a bad name. The latest EU report
was highly critical of the UK record on treatment
of Travellers whose human rights were routinely
ignored.

Martin Collins, director of the Irish Travellers
Movement, pointed out that Irish Travellers were taking
the brunt of criticism with headlines in the press like
"Stamp On The Camps". He said it was within the power
of the Deputy Prime Minister to step in and resolve the
issue of planning consent.

Accusing the government of habouring a hidden
agenda, Sylvia Done, of Traveller and Gypsy Affairs, said
she feared Tory leader Michael Howard's plan for old army
camps to be turned into concentration camp-like reserves for
Travellers might still be on the books. Meanwhile, children
were being severely traumatised by evictions and many had
expressed their fears in painting depicting fires and
caravans on fire.

Nick Harvey MP likened the recent election tactics
by the Conservative Party when voters had been egged on
by racist statements against Gypsies to the situation in
Germany during the rise of Nazism in the l930s. He was
also shocked by the attitude of the Deputy Prime Minister
John Prescott whose inaction was allowing the crisis to
worsen.

Even more alarming was a conversation he had
overheard in which a "very senior politician" on the
Labour frontbench had asked whether the UK could derogate
from sections of the Human Rights Covention so as
to avoid certain obligations towards Gypsies. It
appeared some people in the Labour Party held views
similar to Howard.

CARAVANS BURNED

Referring to the immediate prospects at Basildon,
Grattan Puxon said if the council voted to attempt an
eviction by force and bring in Constant & Co. that
decision would be challenged in the courts. More than
40 Dale Farm residents had asked solicitor Keith Lomax
to represent them in an application for a Judicial Review
and an Injunction stopping Basildon from taking direct
action.

He described how Constant, a private security
company specialising in eviction of Gyspies, had cut a
swathe of destruction across Britain, destroying more
than 250 private plots in the past two years. Old people
had been assaulted, children terrorised and mountains
of property, including caravans, been burned.

"The campaign for Gypsy rights has never been
stronger nor more united," Puxon said. "But if we can't
together save Dale Farm then we have failed and this
destruction will go on unchecked."

Toma Nikoleaff, chair of the Trans-European Roma
Federation pledged his solidarity with Dale Farm residents.
He said he had been appalled to find that Britain was
treating its Roma and Traveller minorities with such
lack of regard for basic human rights.

Wickford resident Ann Kobayashi said there was
now a groundswell of support among local residents for
the Dale Farm community. A growing number of
people were saying they did not want to see the families
simply evicted and their homes destroyed. Such
brutality would cause untold harm and solve nothing.

Twenty people at the meeting put them names
forward to act as Human Rights Monitors in the event
that Constant & Co are hired by Basildon to raze
Dale Farm. The council have set aside three million
euro for the operation.

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HUMAN RIGHTS MONITORS

If you wish to serve as a Human Rights Monitor
and help stop this "bulldozer law" operation:

email:  ustiben.5.@ntlworld.com

Help with travel, food and accommodation for
those able to commit to this action and selected
by Dale Farm community for Monitoring duties.

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Messages to Basildon Council can be sent to:

 malcolm.buckley@members.basildon.gov.uk

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