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A long nondescript one-track lane leads to Dale Farm, in Crays Hill, Essex. At first glance it looks no different from any other country lane until you turn the corner and head into the largest travellers’ site in the UK – possibly in Europe.

The Dale Farm site hit the headlines after Corin Redgrave had a heart attack shortly after making an impassioned speech to Basildon Council against its plans to evict the hundreds of Irish travellers who have lived at the site for the past four years.

Travellers living on 32 plots on the first part of the site have been granted planning permission. They are the lucky ones; the future of 600 people on 47 plots – who have been living on green belt land on this unauthorised site – is in the hands of Basildon Council.

As we drive around the site I am struck by the neatness of plots, which are linked up by tarmaced lanes. There is none of the graffiti that blights so many housing estates. Caravans stand next to toilet and shower portacabins, while chalets have fences or brick walls with metal gates marking out the gravel gardens decorated with ornaments and statuettes of the Virgin Mary. Although travellers no longer use horses to move their caravans, the tradition of owning them remains and piebald and skewbald cobs graze in the field. Toddlers play with dogs and there is a buzz of companionship.

I am greeted by a handful of the men but they soon melt away. Although they are friendly, it is hard for them to trust journalists and it is for good reason that they don’t want their photos taken – if they are recognised in the settled community they may be refused work. So it is left to Marie to take me to the McCarthy family’s plot as Kathleen McCarthy has become a spokesperson for the site.

As we walk through the site we pass an empty plot with blackened gravel in the shape of a caravan. Marie’s brother and sister-in-law were killed after a fire broke out in the caravan in May. Their two daughters aged 11 and 16 – Marie’s nieces – were rescued seconds before the caravan exploded. Bunches of flowers are pinned to the fence.

Marie is bewildered that the townspeople, or "townies" as she calls them, sent bouquets in sympathy yet "still have a hatred to get rid of us". When asked how she is coping, she says simply: "Antidepressants help."

Kathleen is not in her caravan so I’m taken to her mother Mary-Anne’s chalet next door. Although they look like fixed abodes, these chalets come in two sections and can be pulled apart and put on wheels to transport. Inside, the magnolia and gold interior is spotless, like a show house. There is a Christian missionary box on the mantelpiece.

Family and friends constantly pop in, mobile phones ring, and there is music playing outside. It would be hard to be lonely living here – something that Mary-Anne appreciates at the moment after her husband James died in February, aged 67.

Dressed in black for 11 months of mourning, as are all the McCarthy women, Mary-Anne isn’t sleeping well because she is worried about being evicted.

"We’ve spent all our money on this place, built roads, put in water and electricity. The bailiffs can just come in and turn me onto the road at 65. Putting us onto the road isn’t going to solve the problem, it will only make it worse."

Mary-Anne has travelled all her life. She was born in a horse-drawn caravan at the side of the road in Dublin. She was 14 when she came to England with her parents, who thought their daughter would have a better life than in poverty-stricken Ireland. She married James at 18 and had seven children.

"Travelling has been condemned for centuries," she says. "We are blamed for everything that goes wrong. We can pull into a place for the night and the next morning the police will be round saying a house has been broken into.

"Years ago we loved our life, but now we have no life on the road. We are pushed around like animals. We want to stay together for our own protection. We would like to have our own site permanently because we don’t want to be on the road anymore. We break the law because we have no choice – there are no sites for us."

Kathleen arrives, fired up to get across the travellers’ point of view. She became their spokesperson after Conservative leader Michael Howard’s foray to the site. In fact, he had just looked at the site from the back garden of one of the settled homes and then gone to a meeting about the site to which no traveller had been invited. She was so incensed by this that she got Sky and ITV to interview her.

She says that the site came about because her family had relations living on the part that has been given planning permission. The relations told her family that some of the land – a former scrapyard – was for sale, so they bought it between them.

"The council is planning on ruining 600 people’s lives, including older people, children with special needs, people with cancer and heart problems," says Kathleen. "I’m 42 and I’ve been waiting 42 years for a site.

"We have got used to settled life, we can make a doctor’s appointment, our children are educated, we have electricity and running water. We pay our council taxes, electricity and water rates."

At this, Mary-Anne shows me the receipts. Kathleen’s generation cannot read or write, so she had to get her 10-year-old daughter to write a letter for her to Tony Blair about the eviction. "It’s a bit late for me and mum, it’s not too late for our children to get a proper job and pay taxes and this is what we want," adds Kathleen. "[Eviction] won’t give our children a chance to get an education and go to college."

There has been no interference from the police, which is a first, she says – "police in this area are very respectful of us. They don’t keep coming down and saying we have to move".

They have also had support from the priest at the local Catholic church, Our Lady of Good Counsel, and its parishioners. The priest regularly visits his traveller congregation.

Kathleen would like to be able to go to nearby Wickford and say hello to settled people and for them to say good morning back, instead of looking the other way. A prime example of the distrust between the two communities has taken place at Crays Hill primary school. This is where the travelling children go, and gradually parents from the settled community have taken their children out. Kathleen, a governor at the school, is dismayed by this behaviour. She hopes that if the travellers start up a nursery the townsfolk will overcome their prejudices to use it.

Geoff Williams, a Liberal Democrat councillor at Basildon Council, is visiting the site today with his wife Linda, a special needs teacher. He supports the travellers: "There’s green belt and green belt. We are not talking about rolling virgin green fields and a messy encampment. If these good people are evicted where will they go?

"It is an unauthorised site but the whole thrust of what the government is saying is where that is the case the site should be managed in conjunction with local authorities, education authorities and the local community until an authorised site can be made available. That might mean a long time."


Williams says there are three reasons not to evict. Firstly, cost: it could cost the council £3m to evict – more than is spent on environmental health or planning permission, he says – and it would raise council tax by 13 per cent to fund this.

Second is the pointlessness of eviction: the travellers could register as homeless afterwards and then the council would be duty bound to house them. Finally, "people seem hardened to the basic inhumanitarian aspect", he says. There are people on the site with diabetes, cancer, mental health problems and two children at local deaf units. Eviction will end their continuity of care.

"I can’t believe that in the 21st century a civilized country is resorting to dawn raids and sending in bulldozers. When it happens in Zimbabwe we throw up our hands in horror."

Kathleen’s sister Tina comes in, she has been to the doctor to get antibiotics for an eye infection. She says the bad treatment of travellers has been going on for centuries, "we want to put a stop to it for our children". She sits down to watch an eviction video with me – it’s the eviction of friends at another site.

I watch angry travellers shouting at bailiffs and police who have woken them up at 5.30am to start the eviction. Fires are burning, bailiffs sledgehammer brick steps up to mobile homes before the travellers have left, bulldozers move in. An old woman is tearful and confused, children start screaming as their parents argue with police. And this is just a small site, it’s hard to imagine the distress of an eviction on the scale of Dale Farm.

Another of Kathleen’s sisters, Johanna, cleans the already immaculate chalet while we watch the video, as well as looking after her nephew John and niece Mary-Anne. Johanna lives in the chalet with her mum. Like everyone she is afraid of eviction.

"The children born here have never experienced travelling life; they’re used to using a toilet. I’ve got used to it, I couldn’t go anywhere in the open again, I would be embarrassed and ashamed," she says, shuddering at the thought. "The babies’ generation will have more choice. I would like to stay here and get to know the settled community, make friends and have different conversations."

The fact that they all want to stay begs the question, why not become part of the settled community? But to think this is to underestimate the lifestyle that is engrained in them. Although this generation of travellers have realised that if their children are going to stand a better chance of being integrated, educated and healthy they should stay in one place, part of their culture is to live together in one community. At Dale Farm, everybody is related in some way.

As Johanna says: "I couldn’t live in a house. No one would come round. Here people sit on walls chatting to each other, you can hear music and see people. After dinner on Christmas Day about 50 people come round for a drink."

Before leaving, I pop into Tina’s caravan opposite her mum’s chalet where she lives with her son John and husband Richard Sheridan. Although it is a small space for three people, again it is clean and tidy, with religious ornaments on the shelves.

Tina says: "By paying council taxes, they are making us pay for our own eviction." She cannot understand why they are so hated. She can only think it’s jealousy because of their supposed freedom.

Richard says, "I would like John to have a good education and hope he doesn’t have to go through the lifestyle I have had. We are taking the rap for New Age travellers, but this is our culture. The government has been brushing the issue under the carpet for some time."

With 600 travellers potentially about to be made homeless, it may not be able to do that for much longer.

• As Community Care went to press, Basildon Council agreed funds of £1.9m to evict the travellers. No timescale has yet been set for this to be carried out. The travellers have pledged to fight the decision through the courts
  
  
  What does the Council say
  Q: Why were some travellers given planning permission to stay at Dale Farm, but not others?
  Basildon Council's reply: These plots were granted planning permission or won appeals prior to 1994. A similar situation would have applied to other dwellings in the area, which explains why the settled community can live in the area. It should be noted that dwellings can be permitted in the green belt.
  
  Q: Why were the travellers allowed to buy this green belt land from the scrapyard?
  A: The council has no power to intervene in land sales.
  
  Q: Why were the travellers given two years to find somewhere else to go, given that this would allow them time to become settled and put their children into education?
  A: This decision was made by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.
  
  Q: How can the high cost of the eviction (up to £3m) be justified?
  A: The council is charged with the responsibility of enforcing and paying for the enforcement of planning laws. In this special case we are asking for government financial support.
  
  Q: What is the council's response that it is breaking up a community?
  A: This is a national problem and not our responsibility alone. We would like the government to ensure other local authorities share the burden. The disruption to a community is a matter of great regret but this council, which has the fourth largest number of traveller sites in the country, has and continues to be generous to travellers. This particular encampment was given an additional two years to find alternative accommodation.
  
  Q: What will happen if travellers register as homeless?
  A: Cases of travellers applying for housing will be treated, as all other 4,000 cases on our books, on their individual merits.
  
  Absence of duty
  Local authorities have not had to provide accommodation for gypsies and travellers since the Criminal Justice and Public Disorder Act 1994 repealed the statutory duty to provide static sites contained in the Caravan Site Act 1968. The idea behind repealing the act was to privatise sites by encouraging travelling communities to find land, buy it and live on it. But this has proved difficult as it is notoriously hard to gain planning permission.