Coming back to Richard's post on 26-Nov-98:

"There may be a need evidenced to know a bit more about both Romany and travelling or tinker cultures to minimise the risk of being offensive" was what you said, Richard. In the mid-70's in Walsall (England) there was an outfit called the Travellers' School. It was set up as a charitable organisation to teach the three Rs to kids of travelling people. I wasn't directly involved with it, but I used to know some of the people who worked with it. We're talking pre New Age here, by the way.

I met quite a few travellers, and they were mostly Irish - that's simply because I met Irish travellers; there are lots of people from Britain on the road as well. Now, I come from a working class background (somehow I've got more middle class over the years - sorry!), and I can't say that the people I met were any different from anyone else, apart from their lifestyle. They were people, just the same - and as diferent - as other people, but who couldn't stand being tied down to living in a house in one place: a lot had tried settling down, and had to go back on the road. The mistrust between travelling and settled people seems to stem more from reputation than experience - if you think someone is dishonest, you don't give him the chance to prove it; but neither do you give him the opprtunity to prove otherwise. When settled people do meet travellers, they are usually pleasantly surprised. Don't think I'm wearing my rose-tinted specs here, I'm not saying they're better but different, and I don't condone wrong-doing by anyone.

It's usual for travellers to be moved on by the police when they settle for a few days; they get moved to the next force's patch, where they get moved on again. There was a law passed here in the 70's to force local authorities to provide hard standing and water and toilets for travellers. It provoked a very nasty nimby reaction everywhere, and actually made it easier in law to move people on when the sites filled up. There was an eviction in a town called Brownhills that a bunch of us went to - some families were being moved off some derelict land owned by a local factory. The owners sent in a team of volunteers from their workers, with an excavator to tow out the caravans. We Saturday on the towbars or inside the'vans (it's illegal here to tow a 'van with people inside) and some stood in front of the digger. We had a local lawyer, Ivan Geffen, to see everything was legal on our side. In the end the eviction was called off. I was a little astonished to find that many of the workers (nearly all family men) get talking to the travellers and to to us, and said they hadn't realised there would be children involved. Seeing the travellers as people struggling to maintain their families instead of people out to rip off the locals changed their attitude.

It's interesting to me that travelling people don't have leaders, instead they have strong family loyalties. Leaders are 'made' at times of crisis, and then go back to being what themselves when the trouble's over. One such was Johnny Connors, who was involved in the Brownhills eviction. He is (? I don't know if he's still alive) a talented singer and writer in the traditional style, and the story is told in his song 'the battle of Brownhills'. I don't know the words, and I've no idea who might, but if you do …

McColl's song comes from his 1960's 'radio ballad' on the travelling people. It used to be available on vinyl, but I don't know if it still is - if you can't find it you can always try pestering the BBC! Here's an opportunity for someone to start a new thread - in fact I'll do it myself.

Steve