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Travellers to stay (1)

01 January 1991

Travellers to stay
artdoc August=1994

The government's onslaught on Gypsies and travellers, one of the
scapegoat groups targeted by the Criminal Justice and Public
Order Bill, was checked in the House of Lords in July. The Bill
intended the destruction of the travelling way of life by repeal
of local authorities' duties to provide sites under the 1968
Caravan Sites Act, combined with more draconian police powers of
moving travellers on. Government claims that the private sector
would step in and provide sites were recognised as cynical
untruths in the light of the numbers of Gypsies who, having
bought their own land, have been refused planning permission and
evicted when they have tried to live there in their caravans. A
strong campaign by an organisation of Gypsy women, and an
alliance of farmers and landowners who want travellers on legal,
public sites, blocked the proposals.
On the ground, however, the situation of Gypsies and travellers
remains extremely precarious. Councils and police have embarked
on what campaigners describe as a harassment policy against
travellers, involving blocking off traditional stopping places
with large boulders, and carrying out mass evictions and
impounding of vehicles. Travellers' supporters accused police and
authorities of jumping the gun by enforcing a law which is not
yet in force, while Sylvia Dunn, 70-year-old founder of the
Association of Gypsy Women, said: `We are being criminalised for
being gypsies. It's ethnic cleansing.'
Meanwhile, physical attacks on Gypsies and travellers are on
the increase, as anti-traveller sentiment is endorsed by
government. In Oxfordshire, a group of travellers had their
vehicles firebombed by drunks. In Middlezoy, Somerset, parents
are threatening to boycott the village school and even to wreck
the Gypsy site after their campaign to stop the building of the
site failed in the High Court in June.
Independent 13.6.94, 12.7.94; Independent on Sunday 5.6.94.

Statewatch, Vol 4 no 4, July-August 1994