4:10am Tuesday 3rd March 2009
By Jon Austin
TRAVELLERS are more confident than ever of continuing their fight against eviction from the Dale Farm campsite.
They say they have now been granted legal aid to take their case to the highest court in the land.
Law Lords will consider an application for an appeal against the eviction.
If successful, the case may be among the first to be heard by the Supreme Court, a new body which is being set up by the Government to act as the country’s final court of appeal.
Representatives of nearly 90 families at the Dale Farm site at Crays Hill, near Billericay, have issued a statement saying their case is now likely to go before the court, which is due to start hearing cases in October.
Grattan Puxon, a campaigner for the families, said travellers would be asking the court to end “a policy of physical exclusion which has afflicted gipsies in Britain for generations”.
He said: “Thousands have been evicted from their own land and tens of thousands of children denied a chance to go to school.
“Old folk and the sick have been left to perish, because medical care has been unobtainable in what is supposed to be a welfare state. A few of those internal refugees have sought refuge at Dale Farm.”
At a meeting at Our Lady of Good Counsel Catholic Church on Saturday, church leaders agreed plans to help the most vulnerable Dale Farm residents should an eviction go ahead.
And the Children’s Commissioner has asked Basildon Council for details of its eviction plan.
Specifically, the commissioner wants to know what would be done to avoid trauma to the 150 children who live at Dale Farm and where they would live.
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