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Travellers to stay

01 July 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.