Dale Farm travellers have denied owning homes in Rathkeale, but admitted some people have relatives there.

Site spokesman Richard Sheridan said: "Dale Farm is used only for homes.

"There would be some people with relatives in Rathkeale, but I don't know if any have homes. The old folk came from Ireland in the Sixties and Seventies, but people forget the younger generation was born here and are British citizens."

He said he was looking to sue publications making false claims about them, with the aid of organisations including the Commission for Racial Equality and Government officials.

He added: "I have been going to meetings for the past three years and have a suitcase full of different cards from people who want to help me. I have a lot of powerful people on my side."

Dale Farm campaigner, traveller Joe Jones, of International Gypsy and Traveller Affairs, said: "I have read Dillon's book and find it a bunch of hearsay - sensationalism, with no truth bought forward.

"We find it very disturbing that the Echo feels it has to rake up such rubbish."

He said reporting on the book was "scaremongering the wider community" and branded the settled population "racist biggots".

He said they were "sheep" because they aped the traveller way of life by allowing permission for caravan parks, while squeezing travellers out of society.

He said if the book's claims could be disproved, travellers would push for "racist" individuals in Essex and the UK to be prosecuted under the Race Relations Act later this year.

Campaigner Grattan Puxon added: "Dale Farm is certainly needed to provide homes for old folk and the unwell.

"I don't know that people with homes in Rathkeale set up plots at Crays Hill. I only know people go back to bury their dead. They have relations who own houses there, but it's a very big clan, with different people owning different things."