End of the line

Reporting on the 1st July 2011 the Echo covered the previous day's meeting of Basildon Council which dealt with  financial arrangements to assist the police, after which the eviction of Dale Farm could go ahead. The Labour and Libdem opposition were at pains to point out that plans should not go ahead until the Council had explored the offers made by Lord Avemore to find alternative sites on  government land.So far they had dismissed this idea out of hand..In the vote that followed the Conservatives won by 27 to 12.

 Tony Ball maintains that the Council have done their utmost to find a peaceful solution and have left no stone unturned and that is why they have pressed ahead with a forced eviction because they have been left with no alternatives.This is plainly untrue and was demonstrated,one year later,when Lord Avemore visited the site and said the eviction was a colossal waste of taxpayer's money because there had been other solutions which the Council had not bothered to explore-or dismissed out of hand.

Obviously some other solutions would have involved slowing up the process and may have taken some time to implement but think of all the money that would have been saved and all the distress to so many families that could have been avoided.

Tony Ball's argument is that the Council has been more and more dilligent in its effort to seek a solution whilst the residents have been more and more intransigent and difficult to deal with but the facts do not bear this out.

The opposition Councillors were talking sense but the Tory majority were always categorized as people in a hurry to get things done and not averse to taking shortcuts.At the High Court this is something that the judges remarked upon more than once.

The residents at Dale Farm have claimed all along that they would be willing to leave if a suitable alternative was offered to them and Lord Avemore has always said he was willing to  look around and find somewhere on government owned land that would prove to be suitable.

Why would this not prove attractive to Tony Ball?

My guess is that such a move would mean the Council
 might be forced to guarantee planning permissions as part of a deal: something they would find unpalatable.They were determined to get rid of this unwelcome minority and this would be made easier if they were branded as lawbreakers.

John Baron.(Tory) in the House at PMQs looked forward to the time when the greenfield land would be returned to the law-abiding majority.