From - non "Murdoch" Guardian
Jim Carroll

Yet for many travellers encamped near Firle, the police investigation has highlighted a very modern problem. Firle's 'caravan of hate' is not the first time this year that travellers' vehicles have been deliberately set ablaze in Sussex. In Peacehaven, a petrol bomb attack against Gypsies was reported to police. At Crawley, Margaret Murphy woke last April to the smell of burning. A petrol-soaked firework had been lit beneath a van next to her caravan. Within seconds, the vehicle was engulfed in flames. Her three-month old puppy, Spot, stood no chance.

'If the alarm on the van hadn't gone off, the gas canisters and petrol generators would have exploded, the whole camp would have perished. Hundreds would have been killed,' she said.

Now camped 40 miles south in a park above Brighton, she feels safe. Yet travellers nearby say that, only a few weeks ago, they were attacked with a barrage of fireworks aimed at the renovated coaches they call home. Others claim to have found stockpiles of rockets alongside petrol cans close to their camp. Bricks hurled through windows and verbal abuse are among a dossier of complaints.

Elsewhere, 'No Travellers' signs have been hung outside a launderette at nearby Hove and also at a pub in Lewes. Although there is no connection between events in Firle and such complaints, campaigners insist the occupants of the 62 official travellers' caravans in East Sussex are by far the most persecuted minority in the region.

'Attitudes towards travellers remain comparable to those experienced by Black Americans in the 1950s', said a spokesman for Brighton-based Friends, Families and Travellers.

Last summer, the 12-strong committee of the Firle Bonfire Society faced a familiar challenge to choose the 'Enemies of Bonfire', the reviled local figure or group whose effigies would be burnt and paraded along the single narrow street of their village. As always, it was a heated debate for the committee of 'everyday working folk', whose members include an electrician and carpenter. 'They're just good village lads basically,' said George, a lifelong resident of Firle.