We didn't have to believe anything - while we didn't actually witness the child being taken away, we had visited the site two days before the incident and received a phone call the day after the family moved to tell us where they had moved to, and why. We also spoke to the child and to the Scots Travellers who brought him back home - conspiracy theory or what?
You want horror stories - try the Brownhills eviction, well documented in Jeremy Sandford's book 'Gypsies' and his 'Songs From The Roadside' cassette and booklet (again, we spoke to and recorded some of the Travellers concerned). There, the local authorities carried out an illegal eviction on a site, towing off caravans from a site without ascertaining that there were no occupants. The result - three children (sisters) were burnt to death when a solid fuel heater overturned.
I won't even bother to go into the fire-bombings and arson attacks carried out against unofficial Traveller sites (the end result of some of these we did witness, and on one occasion - on Mitcham Common, were able to help prevent).
I suggest you people step outside your 'Dixon of Dock Green' world and take a look at what is happening in your name.
Your 'trail of evidence' assumes that Travellers are either able or willing to take advantage of the rights that the law supposedly gives them - they are not - or certainly, they were not at the time, though they are becoming more aware of them - slowly.
We do have the slight advantage of having been around at the time of the East London incident - personally I don't give a shit one way or the other whether you accept what we heard and saw or not - as far as Travellers are concerned, we are well used to people 'passing by on the other side'.
You will believe what it suits your preconceptions to believe, whereas we only have our personal experiences to go on.
Fuel and accomodation expenses, paperwork - I'm afraid you've been watching The Bill for far too long - real life just ain't like that.
It is enough to say that it is highly unlikely that there will be any Travellers on the road in ten - maybe fifteen years (being optomistic) time thanks to the treatment meted out to them by the settled community and because of the third-world conditions they experience in this 'green and pleasant' land of ours. The official mortality rate and life expectancy statistics speak for themselves.
Jim Carroll