Siobhan Courtney

This is the second of our occasional 'another voice' series. Siobhan Courtney reports again from Dale Farm. The outcome was not what anyone expected: the bailiffs are not getting into Dale Farm. The atmosphere here now is very different to that of the weekend, when I was able to see what life was like inside Dale Farm. The travellers, cheering with joy and hugging each other have just won an injunction preventing Basildon Council from clearing the site pending a further hearing on Friday. Blockades, scaffolding and walls erected by the travellers and protestors stand defiant.

Siobhan Courtney, who blogged for us last week, is part of our ‘another voice’ series – occasional posts from writing from lines of argument different to the ones we normally take on Coffee House. She has sent this report from Dale Farm, where hundreds of travellers are due to be evicted tomorrow. Siobhan was granted access to the site, on what will probably be its last day of existence. Irish folk music pounds out from one chalet. Women vigorously scrub the outsides of neighbouring caravans, while their children bring tea to the men who are fixing their vans. Around them, plastic statues of Mary Magdalene are firmly rooted into the gravel, draped with crucifixes, shadowed only by clothes billowing on the washing lines.