Two dozen slaves freed from traveller encampment

[Stephen Morgan]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14873537

Mostly English and a few foreigners. Apparently there's a Slavery and Servitude Act 2010.

Five arrests in 'slavery' raid at Greenacre travellers' site

It is thought some had been kept against their will for up to 15 years

Twenty-four men suspected of being held against their will have been found during a raid at a travellers' site.

Four men and a woman were arrested on suspicion of committing slavery offences in the raid at Greenacre travellers' site, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, on Sunday.

The men, who are English, Polish and Romanian, were found in "filthy and cramped" conditions, police said.

Det Ch Insp Sean O'Neill Bedfordshire Police

Those arrested are being held on suspicion of committing offences under the Slavery and Servitude Act 2010.

They are being held at police stations across Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire.

Weapons, drugs and money were also found at the site, police said.

More than 200 officers were involved in the raids.
'Shockingly filthy conditions'

The men, all believed to have been victims of slavery, were taken initially to an undisclosed medical centre for treatment.
Shed at Greenacre travellers site The men were kept in appalling conditions, police said

They have been placed in the care of the local authority.

Det Ch Insp Sean O'Neil said: "The men we found at the site were in a poor state of physical health and the conditions they were living in were shockingly filthy and cramped.

"We believe that some of them had been living and working there in a state of virtual slavery, some for just a few weeks and others for up to 15 years."

He added that the men appeared to have been "recruited" from soup kitchens and benefits offices and included people with problems such as alcoholism.

He said: "They're recruited and told if you come here we'll pay you £80 a day, we'll look after you give you board and lodgings.

"But when they get here, their hair is cut off them, they're kept in in some cases [in] horseboxes, dog kennels and old caravans, made to work for no money, given very, very small amounts of food.

"That's the worse case. Some are treated a little bit better, but they were told they could not leave and if they did they would be beaten up and attacked.

"But in fact some people did leave and told us what was going on and when we looked back since 2008 we were aware of 28 people who had made similar accusations."

Police have appealed for help and ask anyone with any information to contact them in confidence.

During the operation, Bedfordshire Police were assisted by officers from the UK Human Trafficking Centre.

Police joined forces with dog handling sections, helicopter and firearms support units, to execute search warrants at the traveller site.

Only took them a couple of years to spring into action, then.

[bks]

"We believe that some of them had been living and working there in a state of virtual slavery, some for just a few weeks and others for up to 15 years."

He added that the men appeared to have been "recruited" from soup kitchens and benefits offices and included people with problems such as alcoholism.

I wonder what mode did this recruitment took? Was anyone at those benefit offices in on it, selecting recruits for the lack of family resources or other indicators of social isolation? Be interesting to see the specifics of those 28 complaints.

[norton ash]

I fuckin' hate pikeys.

[semper occultus]

wonder if the Co$ Rehabilitation Project Force falls foul of that act...people been on that for 15 yrs or so they do say.....

who are you quoting Norton...morgan ?

[Stephen Morgan]

Gypsies and travellers do seem very unpopular. There's some controversy over this story now as some of the rescued slaves are refusing to help the police with their inquiries.

[norton ash]

who are you quoting Norton...morgan ?

Morgan's much too good to ever speak/write like that.

It's an oft-repeated line in the Guy Ritchie film Snatch.

[semper occultus]

one can always rely on the unparalleled wit & wisdom of Guy Ritchie to furnish just the right bon mots for almost any occasion......



....it's been emotional....

[gnosticheresy_2]

one can always rely on the unparalleled wit & wisdom of Guy Ritchie to furnish just the right bon mots for almost any occasion......



....it's been emotional....

It's a deal, it's a steal, it's sale of the fucking century

[AhabsOtherLeg]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14873537

This is the Big Society, Stevo. This is Care In the Community, as it actually works in reality, with care for the vulnerable being provided on a voluntary basis by whoever happens to wander by.

You know it all makes sense. Economic sense. For the employers. Whoever they may be.

We should not stand in the way of the small businessmen and local entrepreneurs who create jobs and provide employment for the most vulnerable people in our society, irregardless of the perennially unpaid wages, the squalid living conditions, and the rampant malnutrition. Unpaid labour is what made this country great, after all. There were no volunteers in the British Navy below the rank of Marine - and the Marines were there to make sure the non-volunteers, who could neither leave nor protest, kept working at their stations till they grew too weak or died. It is traditional.

I'm wondering about something, though: - was this police raid deliberately timed to coincide with the upcoming forceful mass eviction of travellers from the Dale Farm site?

Because the Dale Farm people have a fair bit of public sympathy on their side right now (and no wonder - they have paid for the land, and legally own it) but a really really good "evil gyppo" story could turn all that around. Suddenly the Dale Farm evictions won't look as bad as when France expelled the Roma, because gypsies and travellers can all be portrayed in the press as gang-masters and slave-owners, as well as thieves, cheats, prostitutes, layabouts, liars, idiots, thugs, and whatever else they normally call them.

I have no doubt whatsoever, though, that this really was a slave camp of vulnerable and learning-disabled guys being run, with extreme brutality, by gypsies. It's ... probably not a unique case.

[Stephen Morgan]

No-one I know considers themselves racist, or is racist in any other way, but they all dislike gypsies. There's a local encampment which is blamed for every bit of thieving in town. They got raided once, but no slaves, just hundreds of stolen push-bikes. Just parts of the bikes, in some cases. They also own the land, a great big swathe near the town centre which they use for horse pasture and for their stationary caravans. They won't be getting evicted because they have planning permission. The source of the wealth behind their land is unknown, as they always plead poverty, a large proportion sign on and no bugger will hire them.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

I've got nothing against them, used to work with (and for) a few gypsies back in the day. Always got paid (in cash too, of course, which was both their and our ideal - no mucking around with banks). Maybe that's why some of them are quite wealthy. Countless generations of living in a cash-only economy, with no rents, rates, mortgages, direct-debits, etc. At least we never had to worry about getting a bloody cheque off them - though to be honest, I'd have been very worried indeed if they'd tried to pay by cheque. Kind of...awkward...that'd be. Of course, when buying land for a site, the whole community pool their resources, savings, earnings, etc. or just chip in whatever they can afford. A few hundred or thousand people who've been saving for a while (possibly for generations) should be able to afford a decent-sized bit of brown-belt land.

I wouldn't say they're just like everybody else, because they're - sometimes deliberately, sometimes unavoidably - not like everybody else, but there should be nothing wrong with being different. They tend to get treated shittily wherever they go, and scapegoated for pretty much everything that happens in an area, but, well, some of them also nick a hell of a lot of stuff, and are seemingly quite proud of it. The attitude to property is... different. But it's mainly the "out of control youth" that do the thieving, and it's not like our more settled communities don't have the same problem.

Overall I have a lot of sympathy for them. You look at how they were treated at the Battle of the Beanfield and various other camp evictions and police confrontations over the decades ... it's clear that the state feels it can treat them however it likes, and the press will quite happily go along with it. No wonder their youngsters don't feel too bad about nicking from all us "gorgers" every now and again.

Still... well... not too surprised by this case.

[semper occultus]

I've got nothing against them, used to work with (and for) a few gypsies back in the day. Always got paid (in cash too...

good grief Ahab - count youself lucky you didn't end up as some drunken incoherently-rambling derelict, imprisoned in a caravan & living off dog-food...still 1 out of 3 ain't bad...

[AhabsOtherLeg]

The Coalition government have promised me the full hat-trick, if I can just buck up my ideas and get with the programme.

Seems the Dale Farm evictions have been postponed after the traveller's won an injunction. There'll be another hearing at the High Court on Friday. About half of their homes are actually illegal, but after hearing the councillor who wants to evict them talking about the issue on Five Live last week I can't help supporting them anyway. He came across like a mixture of Hyacinth Bucket and Alf Garnett.

Odd that some of the slaves so far rescued are refusing to cooperate with police, though I can think of a few reasons why they might not want to or feel "safe" to.

[semper occultus]

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

Political Planning
by craig on Sep 20th in Uncategorized

The Daily Telegraph yesterday published satellite images of Dale Farm from 1999 to 2011. These clearly show that, contrary to propaganda spewed on all media, the site has neither expanded nor used up any green fields. You find them at 14.15 on that long Daily Telegraph blog post.

I am fascinated by the campaign to use respect for planning law as the justification for racist bile. Planning law is a very political area indeed. The government is seeking actively to relax the protection of green belt land- we are going to see homes built on actual green fields, not on the wasteland Dale Farm plainly was in those Telegraph images. Of course, they will be for middle class people – I shall be fascinated to see how many people posting here so keen to see families evicted from Dale Farm, are going to be out protesting as real green fields get concreted over.

Like most people, I have encountered planning regulations several times in my life. The first time was in Gravesend. I used to live at No 3 Portland Road. The owners of No 5 Portland Road built a two storey extension, in order to convert it into flats. This brought building right on to the boundary line and substantially diminished my sunlight and amenity in a number of ways. It was also very ramshackle and ill-looking construction. I was away serving abroad while it was built. On return I contacted the Council planning department, and discovered that it had been done entirely without planning permission, as indeed had the conversion into flats in a zone excluded from multi-occupancy. But Gravesham Council did absolutely nothing. (NB the owners of 5 Portland Road have since changed and the current owners were in no way responsible).

I was further unlucky in Gravesend because my house, No. 3, was semi-detached with No. 1. That was bought by The Kenward Trust, for use as a hostel for recovering drug addicts on release from prison. That seemed to me not a good use for a semi-detached property adjoining a young family, and we tried to fight it. However it turned out that under “Care in the community”, a hostel for 5 people or less did not need planning permission, as the use was considered still that of an ordinary family home.

Before coming to 1 Portland Road the inmates, on release from jail, spent time in Kenward House, a Kent mansion. The Kenward Trust is an evangelical christian organisation, and the anti-addiction programme consisted of christian indoctrination and happy clappy songs. Most of the inmates had criminal records in addition to addiction, and not always was the crime related. While we were trying to fight their taking over the other half of our semi, one of their inmates from Kenward House raped a passer-by there.

Inmates succesfully “treated” would come on to 1 Portland Road, as kind of halfway house. There they would get food, a tiny living allowance and a weekly visit from a warder – which involved more happy-clappy christianity. While I still maintain this was a crazy and reckless thing to put in a semi with a family home, I got to know some inmates over the years and some were nice enough. They were all entirely cynical about the happy clappy stuff.

They were also very aware of the massive amounts of government money the Kenward Trust was receiving for each inmate – ten times the cost of housing, feeding and their allowance. Very occasionally directors of the Kenward Trust would turn up in huge BMWs. Their salaries, expenses, vehicles and free accommodation were amazing. Damn clever, these Christians. Anne Widdecombe was their patron.

Ada and Mabel in Blackburn had a similar experience to mine over unauthorised building extensions by neighbours. I am sorry to say that both in Blackburn and Gravesend the real reason the council did nothing was because the illegal building was done by members of ethnic communities whose electoral support New Labour – which ran both councils at the relevant time -was eager to buy locally. Just as at Dale Farm the planning enforcement is against an ethnic community which the council feel it will be electorally popular to persecute.

Planning law and its enforcement is a deeply political matter. Care in the community, going easy or hard on specific ethnic minorities, these are purely political decisions. The idea that Dale Farm is an impartial piece of administration aimed at upholding the rule of law, is such balderdash is it scarcely worth addressing.

This is politically decided ethnic cleansing.

[gnosticheresy_2]

Overall I have a lot of sympathy for them. You look at how they were treated at the Battle of the Beanfield and various other camp evictions and police confrontations over the decades ... it's clear that the state feels it can treat them however it likes, and the press will quite happily go along with it. No wonder their youngsters don't feel too bad about nicking from all us "gorgers" every now and again.

Still... well... not too surprised by this case.

Battle of the Beanfield wasn't the gypsy Irish/ Romany descended travellers who are hitting the news at Dale Farm and who've been in the UK for hundreds of years but rather what were later labelled as "New Age" travellers who first started out on the road in the late 60s/ early 70s. Not to say there wasn't any crossover between the two, because there was (as well as some antipathy), but the two are quite culturally distinct.