Another voice: An afternoon inside Dale Farm

Siobhan Courtney, who blogged for us last week, is part of our ‘another voice’ series – occasional posts from writing from lines of argument different to the ones we normally take on Coffee House. She has sent this report from Dale Farm, where hundreds of travellers are due to be evicted tomorrow. Siobhan was granted access to the site, on what will probably be its last day of existence.

Irish folk music pounds out from one chalet. Women vigorously scrub the outsides of neighbouring caravans, while their children bring tea to the men who are fixing their vans. Around them, plastic statues of Mary Magdalene are firmly rooted into the gravel, draped with crucifixes, shadowed only by clothes billowing on the washing lines.

I’m inside Dale Farm in Basildon, Essex. I have been given access to the UK’s largest and one of Europe’s biggest Traveller sites. Four acres of this secluded field have been home to over 400 Irish travellers for the past decade, but not for much longer.