UK: Assault on gypsies
01 November 1992
'A modern-day charter for the persecution of gypsies' is how the President of the National Gypsy Council described the consultation paper, Reform of the Caravan Sites Act 1968, published by the Department of the Environment in August 1992.
The central "reform" proposed by the government is to abolish the way of life of gypsies. It plans to do this by abolishing local authorities' obligations to provide sites for gypsies, and the funds to provide them; by making it more difficult for gypsies who own land to get planning permission to park caravans; and then by criminalising gypsies who park on common land, land by the side of roads or who park without permission on private land, and by seizing their caravans if they persist.
The proposals have been greeted with outrage and disbelief. Luke Clements, a solicitor in Hereford who has worked on behalf of gypsies for several years, doubts that the consultation paper can become law. "It will never get past the EC" he says. "It is a fundamental breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. It's like trying to enact apartheid."
In an editorial of 28 August Police Review condemned the proposals saying: "It is a source of alarm that the legislation has been drafted in a manner designed to drive 13,000 gypsy families into non-existent council houses ... at worst [the plans] can be construed as direct discrimination against a minority, a discrimination that would not be tolerated if gypsies were black, came from another country or were homosexual."
It is hard to fathom what lies behind the consultation paper. There was the usual summer panic about "new age" travellers, but these provisions are not primarily designed to combat them (they are to be dealt with separately). The government seems to have been persuaded by those authorities which have persistently refused or failed to comply with their obligations under the Caravan Sites Act - over three-fifths of all local authorities - that the Act is unworkable. While the Act is not perfect, it is the only positive law for gypsies ever passed, and it has provided a measure of security for a majority of the 13,500 gypsy families in Britain. 6,000 pitches have been provided under the Act since 1968, at a total cost to the government of £56m, with another 3,000 provided by the private sector. Before it came into force, pitched battles between gypsies and police and bailiffs evicting them were common. This scenario seems set to repeat itself if the consultation paper is enacted into law. For, as Police Review comments, "the only way for a caravan to park legally in the future will be for a sympathetic landowner to seek planning permission for it to be allowed onto his or her land" - a not too common event.
Gypsy bashing, Luke Clements, Legal Action November 1992.