Feeble police and what REALLY happened when the Cabinet's Bruiser-in-Chief put paid to a traveller invasion

The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government spotted a convoy of 15 caravans being towed towards his local village green



The villagers of Mountnessing, Essex are pleased their MP doesn’t mind rolling up his sleeves and getting his hands dirty

Mr Pickles and the villagers were caught up in a bitter stand-off with the intruders that culminated in allegations of a shotgun and attempted theft

Standing in the shadow of the sails of a 19th-century mill house, the carefully manicured cricket ground at the heart of the village of Mountnessing offers a quintessentially English scene.

The peace and tranquillity of this Essex idyll is usually interrupted only by the thwack of leather on willow, a subsequent ripple of applause and the chirping of a variety of finches in the nearby oak and maple trees.

It is little wonder that Eric Pickles, the Brentwood and Ongar Tory MP who has a penchant for bird-watching, chose this picturesque village with its green as his constituency home. He is often seen enjoying the Coronation Playing Fields, with its dovecote, pavilion, cricket pitch and tennis courts.

The village cricket green in the Essex village of Mountnessing, which was invaded by travellers - much to the anger and action of Eric PIckles

But one night recently, as the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government was returning home from Westminster, he spotted a convoy of 15 caravans being towed by 4x4 wagons and Transit vans. Following them as they pulled off the M25, he realised they were heading for his beloved village green.

Unaware that this political heavyweight was tailing them, the 40 or so travellers smashed down a metal gate and fence and set up camp on the cricket pitch.

Acting on impulse, the minister — a Yorkshireman once known as the Beast of Bradford — challenged the travellers as to why they were setting up camp on parish council property. Mr Pickles, a man known for his imposing physical presence, cut a lonely but intimidating figure as he remonstrated with the travellers shortly after 10pm.

Weighing in: The Cabinet minister challenged the travellers

It was to be the start of an extraordinary saga that saw Mr Pickles and the villagers caught up in a bitter stand-off with the intruders that culminated in allegations of a shotgun being brandished, attempted theft — and a rock being hurled through a pub window which hit a woman on the head.

It is a story which, far from being a one-off, is an example of local battles fought up and down the country as travellers abuse the law by squatting on land where they have no right to be.

Only yesterday, the Mail reported how police had to be called in to guard a primary school in Gloucestershire this week after a group of travellers settled on private land nearby.

Itinerant children wielding sticks were said to have thrown stones at local youngsters and launched foul-mouthed tirades. When a publican refused to serve some of the travellers, he was told one of them would ‘smash his teeth out’.

After the flashpoint in Essex last month, it was actually the use of new powers introduced by Eric Pickles himself which meant the travellers were given a deadline to move on or face unlimited fines.

Even so, they exacted a cruel revenge before leaving the next day. Some — including children as young as seven — drove their vans and cars over the grass performing high-speed wheel spins and handbrake turns to churn up the pitch. Others tried to etch their names several inches deep in the crease (a ‘T’ and ‘I’ can still be seen), while enough rubbish to fill a skip was dumped there, and soil stuffed into the motorised pitch roller’s engine.

Now, residents are asking why police failed to arrest anyone for these wanton acts of vandalism. The stand-off has even led to claims that officers were operating a two-tier system, and turned a blind eye rather than confront the travellers before they eventually left.

For Lucie Harrison, her husband Paul and their three daughters, the arrival of the travellers on a Thursday night last month was particularly disturbing because their home overlooks the pitch.

‘I heard banging and clattering and the lights of their vehicles shining in through our bedroom windows. It was actually quite scary,’ she says. ‘We called police several times. We didn’t get much sleep — the travellers’ children were running around and their dogs were barking all night.

The issue of illegal traveller sites has grown ever more contentious, especially in the wake of high-profile evictions such as the one at Dale Farm in Essex two years ago (not pictured here)

‘At one point, I saw a boy of about seven or eight driving a Transit van up and down the pitch. Any of us doing that would be arrested.’

By then, Mr Pickles had called Essex police, who arrived within ten minutes. The MP also rang Louise McKinlay, the leader of Brentwood Borough Council, who sent council officers to monitor the situation, allowing Mr Pickles to make his way home.

‘The next day, we went to both the High Court and County Court to try to evict them and make it illegal for more to arrive,’ she says.

Donald Stacey, the vice-chairman of Mountnessing Parish Council, is annoyed that his calls to police after seeing people trying to break into the cricket team’s lock-up were not met with the same sense of urgency as his MP’s.

‘I made four calls to police on Friday. At one point I was ticked off for describing these people as “gypsies”, and was then told not to dial 999.

‘When police did come, they said they were worried about carrying out surveillance because they feared the travellers would confront their officer. I am 80, and I was quite happy to do my own surveillance and confront them myself. It’s infuriating.’

The following day, police issued the travellers with Mr Pickles’s new Section 61 eviction notices, ordering them to leave because the cricket club was due to play the village of Roxwell on Saturday.

It was then that the real trouble started. Pat Francis, who lives opposite the pitch, watched helplessly as the travellers wreaked their revenge.

Mr Pickles, stops short of criticising the police, but he condemns the travellers for their disrespect for the law and his fellow villagers

‘We all saw them driving round in circles doing handbrake turns on the pitch,’ she says. ‘They knew they would spoil the cricket match planned for the next day.’

Meanwhile, two traveller boys aged about 14 were turned away from the Prince of Wales pub opposite the green.

One local man drinking there said: ‘They swore at the landlord and asked whether they were not being served because they were travellers. He said they were not served because they had parked on the village’s cricket pitch.

‘They left, but then threw a rock through the front window. It hit one woman on the back of the head. She was distraught. There was shattered glass everywhere. The pub was full and people were really shocked. Everyone was calling the police, but it took more than an hour for them to turn up.’

In desperation, it appears one exasperated villager rang the police pretending to have seen a firearm on the site in the hope it would solicit a more rapid police response.

A few hours later, the travellers’ convoy moved on, leaving the local community to clean up their mess.

Mr Pickles, whose car chase with the travellers has earned him the nickname P.I. Pickles (standing for Private Investigator) in the corridors of Westminster, stops short of criticising the police.

But he condemns the travellers for their disrespect for the law and his fellow villagers.

‘I’m pleased they’ve gone,’ he says. ‘But such appalling behaviour clearly demonstrates we are dealing with a small minority of people who have no respect for the law. The way they tried to dig up the cricket pitch before leaving shows a large element of bitterness that they can no longer play the system.

‘This Government is clamping down on unauthorised traveller sites, and the public wants to see fair play and planning rules properly enforced. After seeing the trouble this has caused, I’ve never felt it more important to protect our Green Belt land and the communities who live in and around it.’

The villagers of Mountnessing are pleased their MP doesn’t mind rolling up his sleeves and getting his hands dirty. But many remain less than impressed with the police.

Karl Afteni, chairman of Mountnessing Parish Council, says: ‘You shouldn’t have two tiers to society. If I smashed my neighbour’s fence down or threw a stone through his window, I would be arrested. But there were no arrests that night.

The villagers of Mountnessing are pleased their MP doesn’t mind rolling up his sleeves and getting his hands dirty. But many remain less than impressed with the police

‘The phone lines to the police were red hot. I suspect someone got it into their head that if they said a firearm had been seen, then the police would respond quicker.’

Chief Inspector Ed Wells, Epping and Brentwood District Commander, says the report of a firearm only deflected his officers’ attention.

‘Sadly, there was a delay in us attending reports of the damage being caused to the cricket pitch because we were investigating a simultaneous report that someone had been threatened with a firearm, which clearly took precedence,’ he says.

‘Unfortunately, despite a thorough investigation, we were not able to verify the accuracy of that report. The damage caused to the pitch was utterly mindless, and our investigation to identify those responsible continues.’

Villagers hold out little hope anyone will be arrested, though, let alone charged. The woman who was hit on the head with the rock and the landlord at the Prince of Wales did not press charges, but everyone in the village knows who knocked down the fencing, vandalised the pitch and tried to ruin the roller.

For the groundsman, who does not want to be named because he fears reprisals, the wanton vandalism was particularly upsetting.

‘When I first went there, I was threatened by a few of them. It was very intimidating. They actually said: “Get off our land. Get off our camp.”

‘Out of spite for being issued with the order to clear out, they caused all this damage. There was nothing we could do. I just watched as they tried to plough up the ground.

‘I have watered, fed, mown and rolled that pitch voluntarily for the past ten years. Thankfully, it wasn’t wet, otherwise it would have been totally ruined because the ground would have been much softer.’

He fears the pitch roller’s engine, which had soil and grass stuffed into it, is wrecked beyond repair.

Not only that, taxpayers were left with a £4,500 bill for legal costs and for cleaning up the mess, while the cricket match that weekend had to be abandoned. The parish council must also pay for new steel posts to ensure the green is not invaded again.

The issue of illegal traveller sites has grown ever more contentious, especially in the wake of high-profile evictions such as the one at Dale Farm in Essex two years ago. But it is not just large encampments which bring misery to local people.