THE man who stopped bailiffs entering Dale Farm three weeks ago has said a 15-year-old planning row spurred him on to take on Basildon Council.

Stuart Hardwicke Carruthers, 52, has put together the case which got a temporary High Court injunction against the eviction last month and went on to safeguard five of the illegal caravan pitches.

Mr Carruthers, from Harleston, Norfolk, said a personal dispute with South Norfolk District Council over a £1million property in 1996, led to him “standing up” to councils across the country.

He also said his family had ties with gipsies and he developed a “social conscience” when he lost his leg to cancer aged 11 and was told he was not expected to live past the age of 25.

He said: “Well I got to 25 and thought I’d better do something.

“The consequence is I have a bit of a social conscience.”

While some may see Mr Carruthers’ cause as a man with a grudge, he sees it as the little man taking on the council.

He added: “It is about fairness really.

“Councils can overwhelm people and be very intimidating if people don’t know how to fight back, but what they do to people is not always right.

“I have shown that you don’t have to give in to them.”

The former European Commission civil servant, who was also a key player in developing IT systems for local authorities in the Nineties, said his involvement with taking action against councils began in 1996.

It was the year South Norfolk District Council issued a demolition order against a listed property he was in the process of purchasing “two weeks before completion”.

He said the situation led him to years of legal battles against that council, costing him £50,000 in solicitors’ fees.

He lost the property and that council got two civil restraining orders against him, to stop taking legal action, and tried to ban him from communicating with the authority four times.

He said: “I have had a very expensive apprenticeship.

“The house should have been worth about £1m, and it was a devastating blow to our capital.

“The judge gave a very strong warning that I needed to not focus on the council, as being the legal cause of the problem.”

Despite this, he says the case is ongoing and gave him a taste for being a layman legal advocate.

He has since filed numerous complaints to the Local Government Ombudsman, often on others’ behalf, and says he has had a number of wins, including the latest Dale Farm injunction.

He also said his family had ties with gipsies, which go back years in Norfolk.

He said: “My grandfather was the biggest credit draper (he sold clothes on credit) in the area, so lots of his clients were gipsies.

“My father joked there were thousands of gipsies at his funeral, who paid their respects, but not their bills.”

He said his dad would help local gipsies to read paperwork in return for his drive being surfaced.

In 2002 he was approached by a gipsy family from the Denton area facing eviction orders from the same council.

The site was cleared, but Mr Carruthers is still involved in legal action amid claims the action went over and above the enforcement orders served.

This was the basis for his recent injunction against Basildon Council.