This is the shocking moment a group of travellers threaten a team of bailiffs during a tense, five-hour eviction stand-off.
The bailiffs remain calm and composed while the men, one of whom is carrying a wooden bat, try to intimidate them by throwing insults and threats.
In a heated exchange, one traveller calls the bailiff a “monkey in a suit”, telling him he’s going nowhere and daring him to touch his caravan.
The traveller, who is staying illegally on the land, thrusts his forehead on the bailiff’s head before telling him to “get the f**k out of here”.
The dramatic scenes were filmed in Taunton, Somerset, during the summer by Able Investigations, a Bristol-based enforcement firm which specialises in evicting travellers and squatters.
Steve Wood, 56, who founded the company 20 years ago, released the video to illustrate the conditions bailiffs find themselves in on a day-to-day basis.
Mr Woods said: “The majority of travellers aren’t a problem but we were warned that these were potentially violent.
“We went with a team of ten and there were 15-20 of them. It was a five-hour stand-off and we had to stand our ground. They left eventually.”
The veteran enforcement officer has, in the past, worked as an undertaker, embalmer and as a police officer.
He is now one of the country’s leading experts in the field of enforcement around the removal of travellers and protesters from sites.
During his job as a bailiff he has had three guns pulled on him over the years, seen countless knives and been punched on a number of occasion.
His team of four professional bailiffs travel the country reacting to landlords who find themselves in crisis over travellers or protesters illegally occupying their land.
He said: “There are a lot of misunderstandings about travellers
“If they rock up on to private land you don’t need a court order to get them off – though local authorities tend to prefer to go down that route on council land.
“On private land, under common law, a bailiff can give travellers an hour’s notice to be moved on. We do three or four a week across the country and it seems to be a growing problem.”
He added: “Unfortunately bailiffs have this reputation of being thugs in leather jackets, and it’s just not the case at all.
“I had to study for a level two NVQ in bailiff law, go through all kinds of checks and screenings and even stand before a district judge and answer a series of test questions from him on the law before I was given a licence to practice.
“What’s more I have to renew the process every couple of years to keep it up to date. It’s a highly professional field.”
