"Jim ...our house stands on an isolated crossroads, in the early fifties the door was always open, and the travellers knew that there was always a cup of tea"
All very romantic Ake, but your earlier posting reads like the interviews MacColl and Parkerdid with householders who were claiming that "these people aren't real Travellers", and that they "don't want to live like us" and insisted that they be driven out of the society of "decent people"
One man described "the dark-haired bints in long dresses dancing around the camp-fires" wearing earrings and beating tambourines".
This is dangerous, racist nonsense and has led to the persecution of today's Travellers that we witnesses (and sometimes experienced because of our association with them), throughout the time we worked with them.
Nobody knows for certain how Travellers originated - the earliest of them probably came from Asia, but persecution, urbanisation and inter-marriage makes nonsense of claims of being "a real Gypsy" or "a real Romany" - a term used to scapegoat the Scots and the Irish, sadly, often by English Travellers.
The offensive description you give of " the scrap metal merchants, and cowboy builders who con the elderly all over this part of Scotland", is largely due to Travellers losing their traditional rural occupations, moving into cities and picking up the worst of city habits.
It may describe a small number of them, and it equally applies to groups of settled people using shady methods to eke out a living in post-Thatcher Britain.
As someone who describes himself as a Socialist, you really should be ashamed of yourself, but I doubt that you are.
I agree entirely with what Jack Blandiver said about your equally nonsensical view of the working class.
Jim Carroll