"they are being evicted because they do not have planning permission to place their caravans on the land."

Seems simple enough. Why should travellers have the right to put their caravans on Green Belt land. I want to see this vital natural rescource being protected for everyone not just travellers. 90% of applications are turned down because travellers continue to make applications on unsuitable land.

If 'travellers' showed more respect for the places they stayed at I would feel more sympathy for them. Its not just that they descend on parks and quiet green spaces and effectively remove them from common use-- functioning like a kind of nomadic bunch of privatizers. They also are very destructive-- cutting down trees, driving through hedges, leaving behind them incredible quantities of litter. I have lived near a couple of places where they have invaded, and they quickly turned them into squalid dunghills, which they then calmly drove off and left behind for the rest of us to live with and clean up.

Their way of life was fine when all they left behind was horse manure. The problem with Travellers is that they combine a pre-industrial nomadic lifeway with a post-industrial petrol-fuelled plastic-dumping commodity culture.

Until I see Travellers/Gypsy activists changing the predatory and wasteful way their communities behave towards the other people who inhabit this island, I just can't get too bothered about their situation

Those are fairly extreme points of view which make huge generalisations and totally miss the scary realitites of the situation. Travellers/gypsies what ever you want to call them are being systematically subjected to complete denials of basic legal and human rights in this country. They are denied access to water waste disposal and a whole host of other services. This happens throughout the country and is certainly a result of extreme discrimation.
I say this as someone who has never lived on a travellers site, merely observed through some years of living and working in the south west and objecting to the histronics and racism of local councils.

Im writing here because Im sick of the fascists and liberal NIMBYS that populate this forum dominating discussion.
People in nuneaton trying to cope with yet more shit that you dont need, we hear you. Right now personally I can do very little, beyond bearing witness and passing on information because I have other priorites, but my thoughts are with you.
m

in reply to "duh"

well if you go to any area outside any major town or conurbation and you will find vast swathes of green belt land used to build commercial entities such as all of the out of town super stores , supermarkets, cinemas, mcdonalds, b and qs etc

so it alright to have bullshit capitalist developement on the green belt

but its not alright for traveller families to purchase land fix it maintain and have a stable base from which to send their children to an education.

90% of traveller planning applications for caravan parks are turned down, yet each year in the uk hundreds of caravan parks for settled people are given planning permission

evicting traveller families has fuck all to do with protecting green belt, so get yer head out of yer arse "duh" et al

it has everything to do with ethnic cleansing and destroying anything slighty alternative to capitalist modes of existence

yes and some traveller sites are messy with rubbish etc but are settled people any better most people i know just dump their rubbish outside their house hoping some other fuker will deal with it

despite the changes in law

despite asbos

despite baliffs

despite ethnic

the traveller life may change but it will never die

... for YOU TWITS sitting pretty in ur happy happy? concrete prisons ... it ain't happenning to you is it?

These are PEOPLE who feel and suffer like YOU are only choosing to escape from CONCRETE-MENTAL DEATH ...

Stop complaining about the "rubbish" and stand up and fight for HUMAN LIBERTY!

What's up with the "ethnic cleansing" ? Is it fashionable ?
I guess people don't move off their arse for less nowadays.

"Ethnic cleansing" is what happened in ww2. "Ethinic cleansing" is what happened in America, Kosovo, Rwanda, ... Hundred of thousands of people displaced, killed, tortured, interned.

Bad as it is, what is happening is not "Ethnic Cleansing". Remember what they said about crying wolf ?

As for the rubbish problem, well, yes, some people living in caravans do that. But so do people who do not live in Caravans - except they are not as visible. A bit of rubbish is a pain when you live there, but look at the quantities thrown in the countryside, in the ocean, buried as nuclear waste.... Who's to blame ?

Look, there is clearly a problem in terms of how the traveller/gypsy community is sometimes treated ... there are human rights issues (although "ethnic cleansing" is a stupid exaggeration of the problem). There are campsites throughout the country open to travellers --- but the travellers/gypsies often prefer not to use these, and instead to drive their vans and caravans into green spaces (farms and parks and river banks) in which other people have an interest.

In any society, your right to freedom is limited by other people's rights. Your right to take over a park and cover it with polluting motor vehicles and generators and garbage interferes with the rights of the people who live there 12 months a year to have a quiet safe clean place where their children can play in the green. The "freedom" of people cannot damage the rights of others.

Yes we all generate rubbish, but most of us put it in bins and put it out to be collected by the council on garbage day, or drive to the recycling centre to dispose of it. We don't just dump our waste and move on, leaving it for someone else to worry about. Of course I am willing to accept that perhaps not all travellers/gypsies do this, but to be honest every time I've seen a traveller/gypsy encampment this has been a problem. Some education needs to be done within the traveller/gypsy community about its responsibilities to the society which surround it: at the moment they tend to behave with what seems to be contempt for those who live in the communities they pass through. Yes there is massive corporate abuse of the greenbelt, but all you are saying then is that many travellers/gypsies are just the lowtech populist version of the same predatory relationship to the environment: neither is a good thing.

Just as we need to limit the "Freedom" of capital to express itself by grabbing public resources for its private benefit, so we need to limit the "freedom" of private individuals (even if they are poor and marginal) to grab and abuse what should be public goods for their common interest. Anarchism doesn't mean anything goes, it also involves a sense of responsibility and care towards others and the public interest.

Just to point out many people around this debate simply use the word 'travellers' - end of story. It's a bit like saying americans, or jews, or albanians, or assylum seekers or protesters or whatever, and then making wide sweeping generalisations. Wake up you fuckwits, otherwise you're on a very dangerous and slippery slope...

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/01/283768.html - 18k

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/coventry/features/stories/2004/01/the-bulkington-travellers.shtml

well check the links

the travellers and many supporters successfully resisted eviction on the 12/01/04, they stood up to the fucking more or less fascist balliffs the riot cops. The travellers stood behind their own banner which read STOP ETNIC CLEANSING, the point they are being forced to move on simply because they are travellers, that is because of their etnicity.

this week alone has seen really racist articles in the daily mail and evening standard

the BNP have won tree seats in epping forest and have vowed to evict traveller families there