Campaigners occupying a make-shift camp set up to monitor an unauthorised gypsy camp in Warwickshire are marking their 300th day of protest, writes Donna Bowater.
Protester Theresa Towns heaps more timber onto a makeshift wood burner.
“When we started this last year, we never thought we’d still be here 12 months later,” she says.
It is a damp February afternoon and Theresa, her husband Keith, and Londoner Jerry Coffey are manning the protest camp where residents have been keep a vigil since a group of travellers set up camp on green belt last May.
“But we’re still here and we will be here until it’s all finished,” she adds.
The trio is gathered around the fire, donated to campaign group Meriden Residents Against Inappropriate Development (RAID), to keep them going through the winter.
Residents take shifts at the camp in Eaves Green Lane in Meriden, each for about two hours, and this week marks 300 days of protest.
The campaigners are fighting an attempt by the 43 travellers to set up a permanent gypsy site on the land they currently occupy.
There is at least one protester keeping patrol from a caravan 24 hours a day – including Christmas Day – and everything is captured on CCTV.
David McGrath, chairman of RAID, says the group is monitoring the site for any breaches of an injunction preventing a permanent settlement.
He said: “The purpose of the vigil is first and foremost to monitor that there are no further breaches and no further unauthorised developments.
“This is green belt and no one, under ordinary circumstances, would be allowed to develop on it.”
They have been here, on borrowed farmland, since moving from their original camps at opposite ends of the village, which they named Camp Nancy and Camp Barbara after the villagers who opened up their gardens to the cause.
But they could only impose on the two ladies for so long, and transferred to a more central site opposite the gypsies.
And while many local campaigns to save land from development might waver after two or three months, the residents of Meriden are still fervent in their commitment.
There is not a gap in the rota for at least two weeks and dozens of people give up their time to maintain a visible opposition to the gypsies who want to settle.
The dispute will soon reach a head at a planning appeal next month after Solihull Council rejected the travellers’ original planning application to stay.
Members of RAID have pledged to keep up their stake-out through the hearing.
Mrs Towns said: “There’s got to be somebody here because otherwise it is open to anything.
“It is manned 24 hours and it will be until the finish. Even when it was -11C we were all here.
“Someone stayed here on Christmas night and there was a crowd of about 40 here on Christmas morning. They brought turkey and sausage rolls down and they even had some wine to toast Christmas Day.”
The grandmother-of-two is confident she knows why villagers are prepared to spend two hours in a partially open camp site with a rented portable toilet and a caravan for a base.
“It’s the camaraderie,” she said. “It has been brilliant. We will look back on this and think, ‘we will remember this for the rest of our lives.’
“We’re here to preserve the greenbelt. And I don’t know what the birds will do when we go – everybody feeds them.
“Two hours goes quite quickly and we usually have a natter, and people call in and stop and say hello. One chap comes down with his laptop and does his work through the night.”
A RAID supporter is expected to attend for at least some of the planning appeal, which is expected to start on March 22 and last for five days.
Solihull Council’s current development plans do not include a policy to provide sites for travellers but it said it would review the provision of sites under new plans called a Local Development Framework – a set of documents that will outline the future of Solihull until 2026.
A spokesman said: “As with all planning applications, we take into account a range of considerations before making a decision including protecting the green belt, safe highway access, sustainability and the protection of other important conservation sites.”
During the afternoon, the Meriden watchmen take delivery of a truck-load of firewood donated from a nearby building site.
Everyone helps off-loading the timber, which fuels the fire and stokes the villagers’ determination to see out the campaign.
