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Are
Gypsies the problem?
When
a ‘land for sale by auction’ notice appeared at the end of a
cul-de-sac in Billericay, Essex, the reaction was swift and well
organised. A letter expressing concern that the land might be bought
and occupied by members of the travelling community with a
detrimental effect on the value of their properties was immediately
prepared by two residents and delivered to 180 houses in the
vicinity. Within days a meeting was held and a limited company set up
with some 45 neighbours contributing to the eventual purchase price
of £75,000. The land purchased is part of a ‘field’,
thickly overgrown mainly with hawthorns, most of which is owned by a
property company in the anticipation that its green-belt status will
some time be changed.
Whether
or not the fears of residents in this instance were well founded, the
near impossibility of finding legal stopping places means that
Gypsies and Travellers have been forced into confrontational
situations with local authorities and with members of the settled
community in the areas where they are encamped.
It
is estimated that in England there are between 4,000 and 5,000 vans
and from 16,000 to 20,000 Travellers and Gypsies either in transit or
without a legal place to stay (Environmental Health Journal, April
2005, online). The shortage of sites means that Travellers are forced
to move on, to the detriment of their health and their children’s
education. It also means that many more than were intended are
stopping on legal sites. This for example is the situation at Crays
Hill in Basildon, also in Essex, where there are some 30 legal plots
on a site but more than sixty are occupied illegally. Similar
situations can be found in various parts of the country.
The
plight of Gypsies and Travellers is not a popular cause. In 1973 Jeremy Sandford
wrote in his
book Gypsies of the situation for Gypsies who had always been
vulnerable to attack from those who “perhaps from envy of their
free and easy ways” want to drive them from “our hedgerows,
commons and public places” but were now faced with legislation
which effectively outlawed their way of life. He also stated in his
conclusion that at the present rate of progress “it may well be
into the 2000s’ before there was a place on a site for every
British gypsy”. However far from there being progress the situation
has become much worse.
The
1960 Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act had “forced
families to move off agricultural land onto lay-bys and car parks.”
A government survey revealed the extent of traveller poverty: more
than two thirds were living on sites without access to running water
or rubbish disposal (Helen O’Nions, The Marginalisation of
Gypsies, 1995). The 1968 Caravan Sites Act had the prime purpose
of remedying this situation. Local Authorities were mandated to
provide “adequate accommodation for Gypsies residing in or
resorting to their area”. However, the sites that were provided by
councils were not necessarily to the liking of Gypsies in that they
made insufficient allowance for their lifestyle. For example the
collecting of scrap metal and keeping of animals could be forbidden,
and there would not be room for the gathering together of extended
family groups. Councils
had additional powers to remove Gypsies not on designated sites. The
Act did not work as intended, not least because councils found ways
around the duty to provide sites. By the time the Conservative
government removed the statutory obligations in 1994 one third of
Travellers had no legal place to stay. During the Thatcher era
thousands of traditional stopping places disappeared.
In
what is seen as an attempt to make Gypsies abandon the nomadic way of
life the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 ended the duty
for local authorities to provide sites and removed government funding
for them. It also became a criminal offence for caravans to stop on
the highway, unoccupied land, common land or land without consent.
Gypsies were encouraged to buy land and develop their own sites, but
because of the restrictive criteria set by councils some 80 per cent
of these applications are turned down. This is why some have resorted
to buying and moving on to land before seeking planning permission.
The position whereby green-belt land could be considered for Gypsy
sites (“a recognition of the difficulty of finding suitable sites
in suburbia”) was ended on the grounds that “Gypsies enjoy a
privileged position in the planning system”. Ironically councils
were given encouragement to allow building and development on
green-belt sites.
The
Labour government has resumed the funding of sites and has increased
the amount it intends to spend on them. However it has not put the
responsibilities of councils back to the pre-1994 position. The Housing Act 2004
placed a duty on
local authorities to include Gypsies and Travellers in their local
housing assessments and “demonstrate how these needs will be met”, with the Secretary of
State having
powers to direct a local authority to produce a plan. Brentwood is
the first council to be challenged in this way. If the Office of the
Deputy Prime Minister is successful in getting Brentwood to comply it
will encourage other councils “to get on with the job”. Many
councils do not need encouragement; the Environmental Health
Journal cites the example of Norfolk, whose Traveller Liaison
Group has already produced a Traveller protocol and has five
authorised sites and is planning a transit site.
Basildon
council has 106 authorised sites but still does not have enough
places for all of the Travellers who wish to stop in the district.
Wakefield claims to have one of the largest authorised Traveller
sites in the country and is the first council to announce plans to
apply Anti-Social Behaviour Orders to particular illegal encampments.
These require a lower standard of proof than normal court proceedings
but the Gypsy Council is advising Gypsies to challenge the orders
through the courts.
In
some instances local people protesting about illegal traveller sites
are also sympathetic to the plight of Gypsies and Travellers; for
example, the Cottenham Residents’ Association and the Gypsy and
Traveller Law Reform Coalition forwarded a joint statement to the
Government pointing out that the provision of adequate sites by all
local authorities would address the acute shortage of sites and also
bring an end to illegal and unauthorised encampments.
Whilst
emphasis is put on the problems caused by illegal sites and the
excess numbers who are stopping on authorised sites, the widespread
perception is of Gypsies and Travellers as people who live outside of
the constraints which the settled community are bound by, who do not
contribute in work or taxes but commit crime, spoil the environment
with their rubbish and generally cause trouble by their very presence
in an area.
Gypsies
and Travellers are
much like other people; most of them do work, though not necessarily
in full-time wage labour, and they do pay taxes. A study for the
Rowntree
Foundation
among New Age travellers found that nearly half of those surveyed
were in work and many more had worked at some time during the year. Most
of the accusations regarding criminal behaviour are
unsubstantiated but as in the rest of society some commit crimes.
Ironically many thousands of Gorjios (non-Gypsies) choose to take
caravan and camping holidays, and cook meals in their gardens; some
dump their old sofas and other rubbish in country lanes.
Gypsies
have maintained their identity through many centuries of prejudice
and discrimination. They may choose to call themselves Travellers but
not all Travellers are Gypsies and not all Gypsies are of a single
group. Changes in their lifestyle have inevitably been made. The
most obvious being the disappearance of horse-drawn caravans which
had earlier replaced bender tents. We
have shown some of the things which have made the itinerant life more
difficult over recent years including legal restrictions, the
disappearance of traditional stopping sites (some after hundreds of
years in use), constantly being moved on. Other factors are the
reduction in casual farm work, and restrictions imposed on scrap
metal dealing.
I
live in that cul-de-sac in Billericay but as a Socialist did not take
part in the anti-Traveller action of the others. That would be to
target a group of fellow workers for problems caused by capitalism.
Could the reasonable enough demands of the Travellers be met within
capitalism? Possibly. It may be that local authorities will be
persuaded to fulfil their obligations but, since they are faced with
competing demands on their finances, probably at the expense of other
local services. But what will never be able to be ended under
capitalism is the competition between workers for jobs, housing and
amenities arising out of the artificial scarcity that is built-in to
it and which gives rise to and sustains divisive prejudices amongst
those who are not socialists. It was precisely because there are so
many problems which cannot be solved within the capitalist system
that I became a Socialist.
PAT
DEUTZ
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