Coming to a field near you?

I AM bouncing along a potholed lane in rural Essex when suddenly, rounding a muddy bend, I see a car bearing down on me, seemingly without a driver. Alarmed, I pull over to avoid the runaway vehicle, but as it passes I see that it's being driven by a grinning, shirtless boy, no more than eight years old, whose head barely clears the steering wheel.

For an instant I am mortified. But then I remember where I am: on the perimeter road of an Irish travellers camp at Cray's Hill, the largest illegal encampment of travellers in the South-East, where normal rules of conduct do not apply.

To my left, the landscape is littered with discarded fridges and dozens of Calor gas cylinders. To my right, an acrid plume of black smoke billows skyward from a bonfire of discarded sofas. Ahead of me are hundreds of caravans and transit vans, packed tight as teeth, among dozens of illegally constructed brick bungalows.

And in the middle of it all is a giant marquee piled high with three-piece suites imported from Poland, still in their wrapping.

This teeming "greenfield" site - situated on the edge of the village of Cray's Hill, three miles from Billericay and 25 miles from the M25 - is regarded as a dangerous no-go area.

Even trading standards officers - anxious to interrogate the travellers about what they describe as "an extremely lucrative Pounds 4 million-a-year illicit trade in cheap plastic sofas" - are too afraid to set foot there.

But this illegal encampment of 500 Irish travellers is far from an isolated occurrence. Rather it is part of a disturbing trend which we see repeated in Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, in Eckington, Worcestershire, and in Pangbourne, Berkshire. In each case, the travellers' tactics have been the same. They quietly buy up a greenfield site on the outskirts of a village, and then illegally build on it, applying for planning permission retrospectively.

When they are invariably turned down, they buy time by lodging an appeal, usually on human rights grounds. The appeals process, they know, is a tortuous one, and in the meantime, hundreds more travellers arrive, setting up more illegal settlements, to the acute distress of the local villagers who find themselves swamped, virtually overnight.

The villagers want to know why there should be one rule for legitimate, taxpaying inhabitants, who say they can't even get planning permission for a garage extension, and another rule for illegitimate, taxdodging travellers who seem to be able to defy the law with impunity.

In Cray's Hill, tempers are running high. The latest furore is over the local primary school which has been overrun by gipsy children, precipitating an exodus of villagers' children and throwing the future of the school into doubt. Three years ago, Cray's Hill County School had 210 pupils, but with the arrival of the Irish gipsies in 2001, numbers have dwindled to just 63, two-thirds of whom are travellers.

Things came to a head when the head teacher, Sarah Gallagher, resigned in protest against budget cuts caused by the declining pupil roll, followed by the resignation of nine out of 14 of the school's governors.

In the public slanging match that ensued, the villagers have been accused of racism, and the travellers of a laundry list of antisocial and criminal behaviour, ranging from flytipping to intimidation of local shopkeepers, illegal business practices and unlawful occupation of the land.

THE villagers - led by David McPherson-Davis, one of the former school governors and parish council chairman - deny racism, and argue that locals have withdrawn their children because many traveller children are illiterate and they are legitimately concerned at declining educational standards.

"We villagers are a cosmopolitan lot, many of us commuting to London, and we are not hostile to outsiders," insists McPherson- Davis. He adds that for more than a decade, they have lived harmoniously with a small g roup of English and Romany gipsies, whose site is one of 11 official traveller sites provided by Essex County Council.

"We have nothing against legal travellers. People on the legal site pay rent and rates and contribute to the community. However, the illegal travellers pay nothing and have no right to be there. We are just 2,000 villagers and we cannot be expected to absorb 500 travellers."

How do the travellers defend their behaviour?

With nobody prepared to speak publicly on their behalf, I decide to negotiate the sprawling camp on foot.

First, I am stopped by two men in a transit van and told it would be "safer to leave" and then suddenly, I am rounded on by a snarling dog which sinks its teeth into my jeans.

I am looking for Margaret McCarthy, whose son, Jim, goes to Cray's Hill School. She emerges from her caravan, toddler in arms, and ushers me into her brick-built "dayroom" with its fully equipped kitchen and living room, replete with widescreen TV and creamcoloured plastic sofas. (The caravan parked alongside is where the family sleep.) Margaret, who looks considerably more worn-out than her 38 years, and who has four children, begins by telling me in strong Irish brogue that she "can't talk to media". But three hours later, I am still there, joined by her brother, sister, father, mother, various cousins and neighbours who, in the course of the afternoon, "pop in" for a "backbite" on the "villagers".

"The McCarthys," begins Margaret, lighting up a cigarette, "are the second biggest family on the site.

My parents come from Ireland, but many of us, like myself, were born in England. The biggest family here is the Sheridan family, but there are also a lot of McCarthys married to Sheridans - we all marry each other - so we're all related.

"We bought our plot from John Sheridan," she continues. "I paid him ..." she glances at her brother for reassurance ... "I'm not telling," she clams up.

"No comment."

Three years ago, for a pittance, John Sheridan bought the entire site - comprising 90 plots - from a local farmer, acquiring it cheaply because it was "greenfield", and then sold off the plots to his fellow gipsies who began to illegally develop them.

Local villagers protested at the flagrant breaking of the law, and Basildon Council planning officers stepped in and ordered the travellers to leave, but the travellers appealed to the office of the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, that they have nowhere else to live.

APUBLIC inquiry followed in May 2003, which the travellers lost, but they did win a reprieve of two years, resulting in a unique bubble of time, ending in May 2005, in which they can illegally develop their land and the authorities can do nothing to stop it.

This has left villagers exasperated.

"The litter they leave is disgraceful," says Lynn, a shop assistant in the petrol station. "When they come in here to buy things, they rudely refuse to queue and try to barter - offering you four quid for five quid's worth of petrol. They intimidate us and are arrogant. Sometimes they go down the side of the shop and urinate against the wall. It's not surprising that house prices have plummeted."

Why are the travellers keen to stay in one place, I ask Margaret, when their very name - and philosophy - embraces the nomadic call of the road? "Because we are fed up with travelling," says Margaret, lighting up another cigarette.

"My parents were travellers, and their parents before them. Life on the road is hard.

Before we came here, we were in Wolverhampton, in Basildon, hundreds of places. But all the official sites are full. You end up in a ditch beside the highway with no hot water, no electricity, no food. Then the police move you on."

The travel lers invariably claim to have been born in England but when I ask one man for d o c u m e n t a r y proof, he produces a tattered driver's licence which is u n m i s t a k a b l y Irish. Deception, I learn, is regarded as a virtue in the traveller community. Perhaps this is a consequence, for so long, of being outsiders. They have no comprehension of the impact their lifestyle has on those around them. Or is it they just don't give a damn?

Adept at changing the subject, Margaret jumps up and switches on the light.

"Look! Electricity!" She animatedly flicks the switch, then shows me her toilet. "See how it flushes, see, we're normal!" (Never mind that council officials are keen to discover where the sewage goes.) Neither Margaret, nor her parents, nor any of her seven siblings, have bank accounts or passports or ever went to school. "I can't spell, can't read. I count money, not too good."

It turns out that Margaret has never heard of George Bush, Osama bi n L ade n , a l Qaeda or Michael Howard. Tony Blair - "he be the Prime Minister" - she knows, but she can' t name his party. "We know nothing about politics," she says.

"This is why we need our children to go to school - to go one better. But the villagers think their children are too good for ours.

They call us gipsy scum."

As she's talking, we are joined by a chatty group of young girls, including Margaret's teenage daughter, all wearing makeup and skimpy outfits, who at this hour of the day should be in school. (Contrary to the law, most gipsy children never attend secondary school.) I ask about the girls' dress-code.

Margaret emits a raucous laugh.

"Oh, they're little posers. Girls outnumberboys here three to one.

They dress sexy to find a husband.

If you're not married by 17, you're all washed up."

How did she and her family make a living? "None of your business," says Margaret.

Was it true that John Sheridan was the travellers' leader? Trading standards officers have tracked up to eight shipments a week of large containers of Polish-manufactured sofas passing through Dover, each carrying 33 suites, and delivered for "cash" to one name in this traveller community, who then distributes them all over the country. And Basildon police say that since the arrival of the travellers, there has been a large increase in crimes of deception with elderly villagers the most likely victims.

Is there someone who orchestrates all this?

"It's not like that - we have no leader," Margaret insists. "We are just one, large happy family. There is no rapes here, no paedophiles, no criminals, just ordinary people trying to live decent law-abiding lives."

How can she say that when I witnessed her fellow travellers illegally burning sofas, causing noxious fumes to pollute the village? " Burning sofas?

No, we wouldn't do that," she says, becoming hot and flustered. "You write anything bad about us, and you better not set foot on this site again." And with that I am shown the door.

(c)2004. Associated Newspapers Ltd.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.