Last updated at 1:35 AM on 6th May 2010 Any country that calls itself a democratic republic, or worse still a people's republic, is likely to be a brutal dictatorship in which the people, poor things, need passes to leave home. In rather the same fashion, Labour's Department of Communities and Local Government cares not a fig for communities. And far from promoting the right of local people to run their own lives, its mission is to tell them what Whitehall has decided should happen to them, whether they like it or not. Unwelcome: The arrival of a group of gipsies in Meriden has been met with an angry response in the local community Its latest decree - or rather, a secret directive belatedly exposed under the Freedom of Information Act - instructs regional planning officers to exercise discretion in favour of allowing travellers to establish rural sites even where planning rules do not permit them; where local residents are protesting; in the green belt; or where no farmer would be permitted to build a house for his cowman. The Department's new guidelines, issued last year but revealed only this week, favour travellers at the expense of local residents, in defiance of law and natural justice. They assert the priority of the incomers' human rights over those of the residents of law-abiding towns and villages. They declare travellers an ethnic minority, entitled to special squatting rights, just as they are also alleged to deserve a right to jump queues for schools and health care. Planning officers, says the Department, should recognise that many gipsies suffer 'an aversion to bricks and mortar', and 'the sense of enclosure can be distressing to people who have been used to outdoor living'. This may be a scandal of a familiar kind, but it is nonetheless a shocking one. A Labour government department is trampling ruthlessly on the rights of ordinary householders, to serve the interests of people who, in many cases, reject the rules and decencies by which the rest of us live. Speaking out: More than 600 people met on Tuesday in Meriden to discuss the gipsies' plans A minority is being granted privileges which inflict distress and hardship upon the majority. Does that sound overstated? It would not do so to thousands of people who find themselves living near travellers' sites, often illegal ones, up and down Britain. Homeowners find rubbish and even excrement dumped on roadsides and in their gardens. Outbreaks of theft are commonplace. There are constant complaints about noise, illegal bulldozing of hedges, rampaging dogs, intimidation and acts of violence. The police are reluctant to enter travellers' sites, far less to invoke the law against their occupants. Those who challenge travellers are often threatened and know that their property is at risk. Farmers find sheep killed, diesel tanks emptied, workshops pillaged. Of course, there is rural crime even where there are no travellers. But it is no coincidence that when travellers come, crime and nuisances almost inevitably arrive with them. Those unlucky enough to find a travellers' site next door see their house values slump, but have no chance of compensation or redress. A former Labour MP, Andrew Bennett, once made an outrageous claim to the BBC's Today programme that complaints about travellers reflect media incitement to hatred, 'the sort of thing that people did in stirring up trouble in places like Kosovo, Darfur, Rwanda'. But Mr Bennett and his friends at the Department of Communities and Local Government do not have to live beside a travellers' site. Whitehall's latest intervention is causing widespread alarm, and it is easy to see why. The familiar traveller's gambit is to buy a field, move in their caravans, lay down hardcore and then defy the authorities to evict them. It now appears that, even where the law is broken by travellers who establish illegal sites, local authorities will be powerless to get them out. Up and down Britain, local communities are struggling to resist travellers who seek to establish squatters' rights in a fashion no ordinary citizen would dare attempt. At Cottenham in Cambridgeshire, the council has been seeking to remove an illegal settlement of some 800 travellers who have occupied 20 acres at Smithy Fen since 2003. At Chobham in Surrey, 100 travellers are holding their ground pending a planning inquiry. The council at North Cerney in Gloucestershire has issued an eviction order against 50 travellers who bought a field for £34,000, but the squatters are appealing. It is the same story at the foot of Bredon Hill in Worcestershire, at North Moreton in Oxfordshire and a dozen other places. Most of the travellers come from Ireland. We should not call them gipsies, a word which conjures up a quaint vision of prettily-painted caravans and women with long black hair telling fortunes with crystal balls. These people have come here for the usual reason: back home, the Irish police vigorously enforce the law against them. The British, however, are a soft touch: for benefits, caravan pitches, access to utilities and the prospect of being spared any interference from the law or its officers, while they do whatever they fancy. The travellers have discovered that they can enjoy a glorious folk dance in Britain's courts. Legal appeals against council decisions take years. Human rights lawyers welcome the surge of new business. And the interests of the people who are forced to share their lives and districts with the travellers are deemed to count for nothing. A bitter Baptist minister, whose community near Doncaster found itself stricken by a visitation from caravan folk, said: 'The travellers know what they are about. They are not an oppressed minority. They have money and they are abusing the system at the expense of the people.' He was right about what happened at Doncaster. He is even more right now, when the Government has made a policy decision, to bend the law of the land to favour a group of its choosing at the expense of the lawabiding majority. If David Cameron forms a government after today's election, the Tories promise to pursue a new doctrine of local empowerment - letting people decide for themselves what happens to their own communities. One right they should surely be allowed to exercise is that of choosing whether or not they wish to accept a travellers' site on their doorstep. To be sure, people who wish to live in caravans and roam the countryside should be free to do so - but only if the pursuit of their chosen lifestyle does not injure the lifestyles of others. Today, it is plain that in many cases and many places, travellers' conduct of their lives is damaging the quality of life of others. Meriden in Warwickshire has this week had villagers blockading an illegal travellers' settlement, to prevent the occupants from bringing in building materials, like those at Crays Hill in Essex who have put up a warehouse, or another group near Pangbourne who have dumped 2,000 tons of hardcore to consolidate their claim. The villagers of Meriden seem to deserve the support not only of us, as fellow citizens, but of a new government. It may be argued that there are greater injustices to be remedied; that, over the past 13 years, Labour ministers have done many worse things than welcome Irish travellers into the English countryside. But this is a case where the outrage is plain, and the remedy obvious: to apply the law to illegal caravan groups in the same fashion it is applied to the rest of us. Britain has a long history of protecting the interests of minorities. But it is time for the majority to have their say, to be allowed to exercise their human rights. If travellers choose a lifestyle which conflicts headlong with that of decent rural communities, the law must be upheld, and they must go.This secret decree allowing travellers to build on green belt land is an insult to the law-abiding
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Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1273502/This-secret-decree-allowing-travellers-build-green-belt-land-insult-law-abiding.html#ixzz0n88OWtd4
Thursday, 6 May 2010
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