Dale Farm

It’s now several weeks since police stormed Dale Farm and forced most of the residents along with protesters from the illegal site, but the story is far from over. Many of the travellers are determined to stay in the area, and at the moment many are still livng just a few yards down the road, although Basildon Council is expected to try and get a court order for them to be removed. There may too be further legal actions over the way that the eviciton was carried out, and also on the wider question of discrimation against the travellers, both in this particular instance and more generally over planning matters.

Although the dispute over the site has being going on for around ten years I had not visited Dale Farm before September this year. I seldom cover events outside London – although I admittedly have a slightly elastic definition of what that is, and certainly not not unless they are readily accessible by public transport. But there was another factor in this case, in that before I decided to read up about it, I’d dismissed it as a case about planning issues – which was how our legal system dealt with it.

Once I found out more it became clear that the issue over development on Green Belt was essentially an unimportant pretext, and that the real issue is one of discrimination against a particular community and their way of life.

© 2011 Peter Marshall

I’ve long had an interest in planning issues; it was reflected in my political activities back in the 1960s and later in a number of photographic projects – such as ‘Still Occupied – A View of Hull‘ which I brought out as a Blurb book last year, as well as later work around London which you can see on the urban landscapes site. What I saw when I finally made it to Dale Farm convinced me that this was an appropriate place for the site that it would be unlikely that any unbiased planning process would have refused, particularly given that at least part of the land had been in use for some time as a scrapyard and it was Green Belt only in name.

You can read more of my thoughts on Dale Farm and see pictures from the protest march against the evictions in March Supports Dale Farm Against Evictions on My London Diary.

© 2011 Peter Marshall

I don’t know why the girl in this picture was wearing only one shoe.

Most of the children had taken off their shoes while having a short rest a few minutes earlier on the seat in a bus shelter, and some had not bothered to put them back on to run the few hundred yards along the grass verge to the gates of their school. It was the contrast between the lurid trainer and her bare foot that drew my attention. I thought she had probably rushed to join the photo before having time to put on the second shoe. Certainly she had been wearing it when I photographed her earlier.

But some minutes later I photographed her walking along the road, still wearing just one trainer. So I assume she had either somehow lost it or it had fallen to pieces.

© 2011 Peter Marshall

The protest on September 10 started at Wickford Station rather than Dale Farm, a simple and fairly short journey for me – three trains with easy changes and I was there in around an hour and a half. Of course although the march was to start from the station, it was going to end at the site, around three and a half miles away, and I would then need to get back. Not a great problem, I could always phone for a taxi, and this is the kind of area on the suburban fringes where there were likely to be plenty of taxis.

But I decided seven miles was not a very long way – the kind of distance I often do on an afternoon walk, and it was going to be a nice day for a country walk. So I added the OS map of the area to my bag, and also found that if I got tired I could take a bus back to Wickford once I got to the main road.

© 2011 Peter MarshallAt least I didn’t have a dog to carry

What I’d not taken into consideration was the weight of the camera bag I was carrying – not a huge weight, but around 14 lbs and feeling much heavier after a longish day, as well as the extra effort involved with running around and taking pictures. Walking back turned out to be something of an effort, and my planned route from the map was made longer when one of the minor roads shown on the map turned out to be a private road and I had to detour.

The route I took was pleasant enough, though made slightly trickier at one point where Basildon council’s map had put the path on the wrong side of a fence and they wanted the farmer who owned the land to pay to put their mistake right, as I heard from his father who I had stopped to ask the way. I had intended to put a picture in here, but I find I was so uninspired by the countryside that I didn’t take any.

But I was pleased after half an hour or so walking to arrive at the main road and a bus shelter, even if I had missed the bus I was aiming for and it was over half and hour until the next to take me back to Wickford. Photographers often have to wait around for things, and one of the things in my bag is always a library book, and I settled down on the seat in the shelter to read it until it was time for the bus.

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