A grotesquely disproportionate over-reaction

I really hope that this story in yesterday's Mail is not an accurate and fully representative picture of the facts of the affair: if I had read it on the first of April I would have been convinced that it had to be a joke.

The story involves two neighbours who sent emails to Rother council in Sussex objecting to a planning application. The applicant is described in the article as a "gypsy" which is not a description we are generally encouraged to use these days - the politically correct term usually favoured is "traveller."

Most of the objections appear to have been on legitimate planning grounds, but one of the emails used a word which rhymes - RYHMES! - with "pikey" and also contained the phrase

‘Get a job, get planning permission but more to the point get out of the neighbourhood.’

Without knowing anything of the details this latter comment does strike me as unwise.

Planning decisions often give rise to strong feelings on both sides. As a councillor I have come down on opposite sides on different occasions involving travellers according to the merits of the case. Sometimes the planning arguments in favour of applications submitted by travellers were in my view reasonable and I supported those applications even when I took flak for doing so, but on some other occasions, different groups of travellers behaved in a way which I considered unacceptable, and their neighbours were fully entitled to be upset. In one instance a traveller family repeately flouted the decisions of both the elected council and the courts so flagrantly that we ended up applying successfully to the judge to have the head of the family put in prison.

But it's one thing asking a judge to put someone in prison for breaking the law and defying both the planning authority and the courts. It's a different thing to have someone arrested for writing an email which goes over the top. And if the Mail story is accurate, that's what what happened next in the Rother case.

One of the two objectors was visited at his home on a Sunday afternoon by the Sussex police, arrested in front of his wife and son, had his and his wife's computers confiscated, was held for four hours and had his DNA taken and stored. And he wasn't even the person who wrote the email!

When he eventually managed to convince them of this, the police arrested the person who really did write the email, and took his DNA too. The Crown Prosecution Service decided last week not to proceed with charges against the author of the email, but according to the Mail, the police say that they will retain both men's DNA indefinitely.

If someone writes about any group of people, be it travellers or any other cultural religious, political or ethnic group in a way which a reasonable person would see as a threat, or an incitement to violence, then the police can and should become involved.

But if during my fifteen years or so on various planning committees I'd been daft enough to ask the police to arrest every objector who included something inappropriate or offensive when writing to the council against a planning application, and they'd been daft enough to act on those requests, it wouldn't have been one traveller I sent to jail but a substantial fraction of the population of St Albans!

It will do a great deal of harm if people believe that they cannot object to proposals for fear of being accused of racism and arrested. And in the longer term the fear and hatred this sort of incident generates will damage the very communities which the legislation under which the objectors were arrested is intended to protect.

Since Magna Carta the law has been meant to provide English, and then British, citizens with protection against arbitrary arrest. I begin to suspect that the effectiveness of those protections has diminished, is decreasing, and ought to be increased.

Comments

Jane said…
I respect travellers rights to choose their life style and recognise that Romany culture is rich. Most travellers are respectful and have a right to live their lives as they choose. This should be respected. However, it should not be taboo to criticise any individual irrespective of ethnicity or identity, when they conduct themselves in a manner that is disrespectful of other people's rights.

I cannot comment on the accuracy of the newspaper article. I would not in anyway justify the quoted statement from the objector. If however, this report is correct, the response was disproportionate. There are severe ramifications with regards to civil liberties. Someone uses a computer to make a statement deemed objectionable and the owner of the computer/receiver of the provider's service is arrested. Does that mean that anyone whose is seen to be un-PC is threatened with arbitrary arrest?

Coming back to the behaviour of travellers. Yes travellers have rights, but so do residents neighbouring the sites. Legal sites with sanitation and refuse collection need to be provided. If an illegal site needs to be cleared then a settlement is available to move people on.

As some travellers behave badly then this will only feed into prejudice and fears if the matter is not dealt with properly leading to respectable travellers being pilloried. It should therefore be acceptable to criticise bad behaviour and to object to illegal settlements where nuisance is caused to the settled community. It is a fine balance. An issue of someone's freedom ending where someone else's begins. Planners therefore have a difficult job and when looking at 'material planning' considerations do not in practice exist outside the social consequences of their decisions.

With regard to objectors insulting travellers, I cannot condone it, but can only see polarisation occurring when it becomes unacceptable to talk about the problems. Two or three months ago in a Copeland Council meeting an opposition back-bencher was not exactly shouted down, but dismissed by Labour back-benchers for daring to speak about anti-social behaviour from some elements of the travelling community and recognising the fears of the settled community, neighbouring possible sites. This is not a constructive way forward for either the Council, the residents or the travellers they are purporting to help. Yet again need for open honest discussion in plain direct English without the chimera of PC language used as an excuse to avoid responsibility.
Chris Whiteside said…
I think that's a very good point.

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