IT IS more than bizarre that East Lancashire businessman Jim Ashworth should find himself in a Dutch auction with travellers over how much they would take to remove their caravans from his works car park - a thumping £1,200, it turned out.

It is outrageous. For this was nothing short of blackmail.

Yet where was the law to help or protect him? Its inadequacy and indifference is appalling.

Here was a man setting up at a new, purpose-built unit on a flagship business estate at Burnley - a move that had already cost him £250,000 - and suddenly he finds it surrounded by eight caravans and three trucks, as well as cars and vans.

When he called the police, they said there was nothing they could do. Useless!

The council was no help either, Mr Ainsworth was told that the officer who dealt with travellers only worked part-time - and was not in anyway. Maddening! (And, lots would say, typical). Might then decency and reason come to the rescue? Not on your life.

The travellers told Mr Ainsworth they thought his premises were unoccupied. But the manifest fact that it wasn't did not prompt them to go - quite the opposite.

They told him they knew the law and that it would at least two weeks for them to be moved on. But they would go at once for a price - hence, the amazing haggling that followed.

Whether Mr Ashworth was right or wise to pay up is one thing, but what is plainly wrong is that the law as it stands actually encourages such trespass and can be used to hold people up to quite costly ransom also.

And evidently the potential for either of these abuses of natural justice is immense - when more than six years ago, as government action was being threatened, it was estimated that a third of the 13,500 travellers' caravans in Britain were on unauthorised sites and when still the law drags its feet.

Action is needed on two fronts. Councils must be made to provide sufficient official sites. And the government must make it a criminal offence to park a caravan or vehicle used as a home on any land without the owner's consent.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.