”…the most aggressively disenfranchised ethnic minority in this country today…”

Libby Brooks on Dale Farm:

The mood on Dale Farm yesterday morning was one of quiet desperation. There was frustration and disbelief at the proceedings of the previous day, when the high court rejected a last-minute injunction to prevent the eviction of the 400-strong Traveller community from their site in the Essex greenbelt…

There can’t have been that much disbelief, surely? It ought to be quite a familiar occurrence to them by now…

While the Dale Farm case has its own particular eccentricities, it can only be seen as part and parcel of a consolidated shift in coalition policy to further marginalise what is arguably the most aggressively disenfranchised ethnic minority in this country today.

Libby thinks they have an unbeatable hand in Victimhood Poker, clearly…

And it does nothing to set Britain apart from the systematic discrimination of the Roma people that has swept west across the continent since the EU's eastward expansion.

Oh, right.

I didn't realise that in Italy and Bulgaria and all those other places having problems with the Roma, the local councils did nothing for ten years, arranged 'diversity training' for their bailiffs, etc. I thought they just swept in one night and burned them out!

Silly me...

The cycle of marginalisation prevails, even though research by the Equality and Human Rights Commission found that it would take as little as one square mile of land to serve this modest need.

Great! Where do you live, Libby? We'll create the site there, eh? You won't mind, will you?

Of course there is another side to this, and those living near – usually illegal – camps complain of noise, rowdiness and unhygienic conditions. But sites needn't be a nuisance if they're well managed.

And there's the rub. Illegal sites, by their very nature, won't be. Back to that square mile of land - when are you hanging your washing out? Because that land-clearance equipment can make everything a bit dusty.

Get the kettle on - the dozer drivers take it with three sugars. You'll need about 20 mugs. Don't bother with the best china, though, eh Libby?

There are a few optimists who hope that the Dale Farm eviction will mark a watershed in Britain's relationship to its Traveller population, and that the sight of weeks-old infants and an elderly woman on a nebuliser bulldozed out of their homes could galvanise the public and politicians to finally take the huge inequalities faced by this community seriously.

Most likely, there will be whoops of joy in Essex and feelings of trepidation

Given the widespread ignorance of Gypsy and Traveller culture in this country…

Widespread ignorance? These people have lived with them for ten years and they want them gone! Everyone who comes into contact with them wants them gone! These poor souls know far more that they ever wanted to about 'gypsy and traveller culture'.

The only people who, it seems, don't want them gone are people who never, ever have to worry about them moving in, and who will be on to their next cause by the time the dust settles...

… it is convenient to dismiss this community as childishly refusing to conform to the social and legal demands of a property-owning democracy.

Convenient and accurate.

Actually, no-one cares what their lifestyles are like, frankly. Just the part where they cross over into criminality. Just like everyone else....

And it's easy to ignore the concessions many have already made, attempting to integrate into settled communities despite the hostility they encounter there, and travelling only in the holidays for the sake of their children's education .

Yes, well, there's one small problem with their 'attempts to integrate into settled communities', Libby. They usually don't end well.

In the spring Channel 4's My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, which portrayed the community at best as comedy vulgarians, unleashed a barrage of abuse that would have set the Twitterati aflame had it been directed at any other minority.

And whose fault is that? Did they not invite Channel 4 in? They weren't animals living on the Serengeti, subject to secret filming from a boulder-cam!