Avon police raid Irish travellers
01 January 1992
Irish travellers in Bristol believe that a campaign of hatred against them by residents and the local press is behind a series of dawn raids on December 4 in which 28 people, including four children, were arrested and three caravans impounded. Only two people have been charged with any offences, with the remainder released on police bail. The travellers believe that the raids and police comments in the media blaming them for hundreds of local crimes amount to a conspiracy to drive them from the area.
Operation Capture involved 150 police officers, DHSS officials and fraud investigators, according to the officer in charge Detective Superintendent Alun Howells. The operation, which began at 7am, raided three unofficial travellers' sites where 24 people were arrested; another three people were arrested in a raid on a private house and another man later.
Following the arrests one of the solicitors acting for the travellers said he would be looking into questions about some of the procedures adopted by the police, and expressed surprise at the length of time most of the travellers were held in custody. Some were not released until over 30 hours after their arrest.
The police raids follow almost 12 months of campaigning by local residents to oust the travellers who have been living in the area for over a year. Local Tory MPs Jonathan Sayeed and Jack Aspinall have been backing the residents objections to the creation of official sites in the Bristol area and there have been angry outbursts against the travellers at packed consultation meetings to discuss where temporary emergency sites can be provided to clear travellers from the unofficial sites.
The travellers say that they feel themselves to be under siege and accuse residents of videoing them and calling them names on the street. "The papers are making us out to be criminals", they say, but "if we had committed all those crimes, we wouldn't be living here. We'd probably be living in nice houses like them."
The travellers are demanding that action be taken to stop the invasion of their privacy by video cameras, to recover their property from the police, for false charges to be dropped and for compensation for damage caused during the raids. They also want swift action by Avon to find them permanent sites.