Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Dukes, Squatters, Travellers and Mortgages

chris b | 22.01.2009 19:32 | Analysis | Free Spaces | Repression

Three very different and apparently unrelated housing stories appeared in
today's news: 92% rise in repossessions, parklane squatters and a High Court decision whih woll mean the eviction of Dale Farm, a Irish Traveler Site in Essex.

Three very different and apparently unrelated housing stories appeared in
today's news. The biggest, and most worrying for most people who are
feeling vulnerable to the effects of the recession, is the fact that house
repossessions are up by 92 per cent in the last year, according to figures
from the Financial Services Authority.

The promise of home-ownership for the majority of people, including a
large proportion of the working class has been the ruling classes' most
successful 'divide and rule' tactic to date. The fact that, for those
people who are not all that comfortably off, home-ownership in reality
means mortgages which are a struggle to keep up with in the 'good times',
and impossible to do so in the bad, seems to be irrelevant to the
psychology of those who now consider themselves 'property owners', but are
in fact, in the main, only owners of large debts.

Squatting of course, for many of those struggling to keep up with their
mortgage repayments seems unfair: Why should these "freeloaders" get
something for nothing ?

Another of today's housing stories was that a couple of The Duke of
Westminster's properties have been squatted. Of course, the fact that they
have been empty for 20 years or so, and the injustice that property
distribution is so uneven that one person can own most of the West End of
London, will not be included in the undoubtedly splenetic editorials which
will accompany the story.

But how did the Duke come to own all this prime real estate, and his
resulting £7 billion fortune? Well, the story starts in 1066 when a
grateful William the Conqueror grants estates (which now comprise much of
the Present Dukes' estate) in London to Geoffrey de Mandeville, for
services rendered. Between then and the late 17th Century it passed
through many hands, until Sir Thomas Grosvenor, an ancestor of the current
Duke married the heiress Mary Davies in 1677. As London grew it was
developed into the fashionable areas of Mayfair and Belgravia. So in a
phrase, the current Duke did sweet fuck all to obtain his property and
his fortune. Which must make him (to use a favourite "Daily Mail"
phrase) the king of all "freeloaders", not to mention the daddy of all
trustafarians. In fact, you could say that his fortune is based on
pedophilia since Mary Davies was only 12 years old when Sir Thomas
married her!

Those who have tried to avoid the property trap, generally come in for the
most stick, like squatters and even more so - Gypsies and Travellers.
Their transitory way of life forms the basis of hundreds of years of
unreasoned hatred. While Roma are currently persecuted in Italy, it is
Irish Travellers who are often the vocal point of this ceaseless
prejudice in the UK. None more so than the groups of Travellers who live
at Dale Farm, Basildon, Essex.

Irish Travellers (and Gypsies) traditionally lived outside the property
trap, either squatting land, or using land provided by law from Local
Authorities. However, in 1994, through the Criminal Justice Act (the same
act that outlawed raves, for those too young to remember) combined with
new local authoriy legislation removed the 'legal' sites and turned those
on squatted site into criminals who could be moved on constantly without
need for those pesky courts.

Travellers were told they should now buy their own land instead and
assurances were made that they would be allowed to settle it, despite
suggestions that Travellers find it difficult to secure planning
permission approval.

So, this is what they did. However, as most Travellers expected, local
authorities were reluctant to give planning permission. The most openly
unjust previous decision of this kind was at Woodside Caravan Park,
Bedfordshire which not only owned by the people evicted but was previously
a Caravan Park. Therefore the refusal of planning permission can only been
seen as racist one, as the Commisson for Racial Equality suggested.

Similarly, in Essex today the prohibition not to build on "Green
Belt" land has been used against the Dale Farm Travellers. Whilst it is
not in dispute that the land is within the greenbelt, the reality is that
the previous use of the site was not a pristine water meadow, but a huge
scrap
yard, containing hundreds of car bodies. Nobody, it seems, complained
during the forty years this was in operation, despite the heavy lorries
and noise.

Now today's High Court Decision, which reverses a previous court decision,
means that Basildon Council can evict the families of Dale Farm without
having to provide any alternative places for them to go, to applause of
many of the locals, not to mention the rabid local Tory MP.

So the Duke and his ilk can sit pretty, comfortable in the knowledge that
any resentment and anger resulting from the struggle to keep up with
mortgage repayments, will not be be directed at them but on those even
further down the ladder of this property-based and obsessed society.

chris b

Comments

Display the following 2 comments

  1. Fantastic! — poet
  2. The REAL parasites... — Trotsky.
Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech