local and regional news

hello:Objective is to examine recent events in Essex from a local point of view.This involves local TV,newspapers and police sources -dismissing for the most part the National titles.
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FOCUS IS ON CRAYS HILL WHERE A FORCED EVICTION TOOK PLACE IN OCTOBER 2011 but the activities before and after that throw light upon the event demonstrating,in my opinion,collusion between politicians and the police and the press which was highlighted in the Leveson inquiry at a national level
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THE PRESS devoted most space to the two day storming of the site and neglected the full scale swamping of the environs of Basildon by 700 officers which showed another aspect of policing which seemed to have been designed to stop Travellers from settling anywhere in the Borough.
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More lines of enquiry are now suggested.What is the history of the assistance given by protestors who set up camp alongside the residents.What relationship did they have with the local papers.They introduced themselves publicly on April 13th 2011 and stimulated headlines such as "Human shields will confront the Bailiffs." On the 31st August the Brentwood Gazette paid a visit to the Camp Constant site and published a report with many fine pictures which showed that they were operating in an orderly fashion but were worried about what might happen when the eviction took place.
A few days later in a press conference the detective in charge of investigations painted a totally different picture - the site was awash with anarchists who were threatening to hijack the forthcoming eviction and were advocating violence (Southend on sea ECHO/5th Sept.2011).
The press and police clashed in June 2011
An editor reflects on the fact that the constabulary had just been backed by HMG to the tune of nine and a half million pounds and wondered what a police eviction might look like so he commissioned Alex Leys to produce a picture.This brought a furious response from the Chief Constable who on the website declared that the editor was out of order and was promoting alarm because the police do not conduct evictions they merely attend them as bystanders ready to maintain the Queen's peace.Evictions are civil matters.
(see Billericay Gazette.9/6/2011)
The Local Tory MP and the leader of  Basildon Council were also upset according to the Chief.
The police website also boasts an FAQs page about Dale Farm which again firmly confirms the doctrine of police neutrality in civil cases.
Something extraordinary must have ocurred which made the Essex Force
give up their longstanding and much cherished reputation for neutrality at the drop of a hat.
In March 2012 the police published an INFORMATION DOCUMENT which the media took little notice of other than gathering official statistics about offences committed and arrests made.Later they added a video (soon withdrawn) but there were lots of matters unexplained.What was the chain of command?  who gave the orders to use riot squad tactics? In the Strategy document they make two claims -one that they uphold the rights of people to make protests and yet the invasion was against protestors specifically.They also claim that the purpose of police intervention is to limit disorder.
In my book the policing method to reduce the chance of disorder is to go softly,softly at the start;then summon up more assistance if needed and finally,as a last resort,call upon the heavy squad.
At Dale Farm this order was reversed. Why? On the day of the eviction a spokesperson told Aljazeera that they used so much muscle because they had "intelligence"and the only clue we have about that we can glean from the press conference of September 2011 in which Ch.Supt.Tim Stokes presided over the revelations......which his men had concocted.......of a secret army of anarchists emerging from the Essex marshes to threaten the rule of law.This tale was embellished by stories of stockpiles of weapons and noxious substances said to be buried on site. (Echoes of Iraqi nukes) Was any trace of these uncovered in Baghdad.Was any trace discovered in Crays Hill? Did they even look for them?
Another point can be made in the terminology used since the London Summer  Riots were still fresh in people's mind and the blame had been put on anarchists by the popular press even though most offenders had "form"and were minor street troublemakers easily rounded up.Even so Anarchist was a likely label you could put on various undesirables - it had been used in Victorian and Edwardian literature.(ref.Conan Doyle ).Understod by the Plod.
There is another strand left to study:The role of the Council and its leader.....
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The entire Basildon Council campaign was centred upon the six acre site being a greenfield site but a strong case can be made that it was in industrial use for decades.The previous owner used part of it as a scrapyard and he claims the Council used the other section as an unregulated landfill site and Council tip.This can be confirmed by Billericay Gazette 14/6/2012 and by the independent NUJ video j0urnalist,Jason Parkinson,who interviewed the former owner whilst he was visiting the residents in 2011.