"Were you aware of the motion or is this just you being naturally respectful?"
MacColl, Seeger and Parker drummed into me that Travellers should be spelt with capital letters - they picked up the habit in the early 1960s when the were making the Radio Ballads

The division between the different groups of Travellers has always worried me - I'm afraid it cuts both ways Nick
Back in the early 80s Mikeen helped set up 'The London Roadside Travellers Group' in Hackney, along with English Tony (Heron ?) and a Scots family (Townley maybe ?)
The got the support of Ken Livingstone and a solicitor (Norman ?) (Jaysus - I'm losing names like mad nowadays) and after a few years campaigning the Hackney Council agreed to build a site and started to allocate places. Unfortunately they refused to deal with anybody other than officially recognised groups and gave the places to The Gypsy Council, (Hughie Smith) who distributed all the places to English families Travelling in Kent and Essex
The Families didn't really want to stop in London, so they sold the places back to the Irish and Scots Travellers who had campaigned for them in the first place
There was a little bad blood for a time, but Mikeen was never one to hold grudges and he patched things up
Not long after the whole thing exploded anyway when John Major scrapped the Caravan and Camping Act and all the Travellers with no sites fled London in panic - Mikeen ended up in Norfolk and finally Bristol, where he died


We offered our help, where we could, but Mikeen insisted that the only way the group could survive awas to develop their own skills - a very wise man
Pat took the occasional "No Travellers served here" photograph during their campaign to get the practice outlawed andwe occasioanlly helped with filling in official forms
I am firmly convinced that the future of the Travelling Communities is under dire threat and, unless they co-operate with on another, they will be swept out of existence in the not-to-distant future - a massive loss to our society and culture

Our friend, Denis Turner, who worked with us in the early days, was a headmaster at a Shepherd's Bush school when we were began recording in that area
He was once asked by one of our singer friends, "I've got a couple of hours to spare, will you teach me to read ?"
Another Buffer friend of Mikeen's got funding to buy an old London bus and set up a school for Traveller children in the area
In the end, may of the Travellers were taught to read by their children

We have great memories of that period in London - they were incredibly generous and welcoming to us
More later
Jim