Dale Farm: The Big Eviction

Synopsis: For ten years, 400 or so travellers on Dale Farm in Essex fought to stay on land where they were living. In October 2011, with all legal options exhausted, time finally ran out for them. As riot police and bailiffs moved onto the site, Panorama received exclusive access to the travellers’ families, their neighbours and the authorities, to film on both sides of the barricades during the months that led up to Britain’s biggest ever traveller eviction. It also follows those evicted as they set off to an uncertain future.

Described as the largest illegal traveller site in Europe, Dale Farm in Basildon is on designated Greenbelt land, and the local council said the travellers had broken the law by building on it. As the legal battle raged through the High Court and beyond, activists from across Britain converged on the site ready to defend the travellers’ right to remain. For the council, this was the culmination of a legal fight which has cost them millions. For the travellers, it was the last stand to keep their homes.
Language: English
Country: Great Britain
Year of production: 2011
Notes: Broadcast on BBC1, 27/10/2011, as a Panorama Special
Subjects: Social Studies
Keywords: housing; legal issues; travellers

Name: Hardcash Productions
Email: hardcash@hardcashproductions.com
Web: http://www.hardcashproductions.com/ External site opens in new window
Phone: 020 7253 2782
Fax: 020 7253 2761
Address: 35 Waterside
44-48 Wharf Road
London
N1 7UX
Notes: Hardcash Productions, founded by David Henshaw, is an independpent production company specialising in investigative and undercover documentary films, many of them broadcast in the Dispatches series on Channel 4. Recent programmes have studied NHS terminal care, hate and violence in Muslim schools in the UK, and abuse by employers of illegal domestic workers. The company has also built a reputation for penetrating some of the most hostile territories in the world - North Korea. Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Saudi Arabia. Sale on video or DVD.

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