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'Would you leave your home peacefully?' asks Dale Farm resident
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As Basildon Council bailiffs prepare to clear the UK's largest unauthorised Travellers' site, there is no sign residents of Dale Farm in Essex are willing to move aside and give up their homes.
Lawyers today launched a last-ditch attempt to prevent the eviction of 86 Traveller families from the site in Essex after they settled on the former scrapyard more than a decade ago.
The High Court application for a temporary injunction to preserve the existing situation hinges on the circumstances of 72-year-old Mary Flynn who suffers breathing problems and uses an electric nebuliser.
The contested application is likely to last all afternoon.
Basildon Council has insistsed that planning laws have to be upheld as the site - which is on 'greenbelt land' - was occupied without planning permission in 2001 and has grown in the past decade.
Council officials, supported by Essex Police, are expected to take action to clear the site next month if the Travellers do not leave by midnight tonight, after the Court of Appeal ruled in 2008 that the council's decision to clear the unauthorised site was lawful.
Dale Farm resident Mary Ann McCarthy told the BBC: "How can you just ask someone to leave their home peacefully. Would you leave your home peacefully? No-way, you'd be an awful coward if you didn't put up a fight."
The council says it has spent the last 10 years trying to avoid a forced clearance. It says it has offered - and will continue to offer - those Travellers about to be moved help with accommodation.
It says it's aware of issues around elderly and very young residents on the site, and says it "will work to ensure the clearance is carried out in a fair and transparent way".
Basildon council leader Tony Ball said: "Our bailiffs are carrying out the decision of the courts to clear the site. If there is disorder that's when the police will step in."
The eviction and the police operation supporting it will, together, cost an estimated £18 million, which is more than one third of the council's annual budget.
