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Gypsies, Roma and Travellers portrayed negatively and inaccurately in the press, report finds

Joe Glenton

Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) people in the UK are subjected to grossly inaccurate media portrayals, a new report claims. Additionally, biased reporting means the public often don’t understand GRT issues. The Media That Moves report is a joint effort by London and Leeds-based Gypsy and Traveller organisations. The report examines how media portrayals impact GRT lives. But it also tells us what is wrong with the media as a whole.

Extremely damaging

The authors argue that deeply ingrained and damaging untruths about GRT people are constantly repeated by the powerful, shaping public perception for the worse:

Media coverage, public comments and statements from those in positions of power all reveal deeply ingrained misconceptions about, and prejudice against, Gypsies and Travellers. These are extremely damaging.

And these misconceptions have serious impacts on the lives of GRT people:

They influence interactions and policy, leading to further deprivation, alienation and poor mental health in the Gypsy and Traveller community. Our organisations have a painful understanding of the impact that media representation has on communities.

Gutter press

The report found that of 365 stories published over three years, more than half were in the Daily Mail and Daily Express . The authors said this shows “a tabloid campaign to over-represent, as well as mis-represent, Gypsies and Travellers.”

A majority of stories were about allegations of crime by GRT people and issues around GRT campsites. And stories written by GRT people were rare. Outlets such as the Guardian and the Independent did more diverse stories overall and gave more space to GRT writers. But these were outweighed by the right-wing tabloid media. And one journalist was quoted as saying the BBC , for example, were afraid of seeming too liberal in their coverage:

It actually did cause some quite rigorous conversations in the newsroom, where it was felt very much that actually we can be too soft on Gypsies and Travellers.

The report found that GRT people are reported on in ways which would never be tolerated for other ethnic groups. As a result many people did not even understand that GRT are unique, protected groups:

It is still socially acceptable to report on Gypsies and Travellers in a way that would not be tolerated if it was any other ethnic group. And, because media reporting is so poor, there is very little public understanding that these are protected ethnicities, with culturally significant ways of life, that have been part of our culture for centuries, and that most people in these communities now live in houses and pay tax.

The study suggests reporting on GRT matters is subject to cheap moral outrage and that GRT news is made overly dramatic. Additionally, GRT stories are often churned out as clickbait rather than being critically researched.

The report identifies a number of problems with media culture which make things worse. Such as lack of control which can lead to bad interviewers taking words out of context. As well as the nature of social media trolling. They also lament the use of images of litter and poverty for stories about GRT topics.

The “pale, male and stale” demographic of news editors is also a problem. The reports argues that older, white, male editors tend to not understand issues of race and representation. And diversity initiatives often don’t include GRT people:

It’s common for media outlets to have big equality and diversity initiatives, but these don’t usually explicitly extend to Gypsies and Travellers, and nor do they necessarily impact editorial decisions.

One journalist suggested improvement was partly an issue of power and workplace democracy. Bottom-up change is also tough given low union density in many media outlets:

Depending on how well unionised the paper is, that also determines how much the staff can have an input.

Policing Bill

Prejudice informs policy, as the authors point out. And nowhere is this more apparent than the Tory’s Policing Bill. Critics have long warned that GRT people’s way of life will be criminalised by the legislation.

The Canary  recently interviewed (video above) GRT journalist Jake Bowers, who warned:

It has direct parallels in history. In 1936, the Nazis passed a similar decree, which said that all Romany should stop traveling so that they can be kept an eye on by the police. This is the beginning of that thin end of the wedge of persecution. And we’re resisting it with everything we’ve got.

Media culture

Media That Moves indicts press coverage of GRT people, but it also does a lot more. The report is a wide-ranging critique of the British press. And GRT misreporting can’t be separated from the grim state of British journalism. Bad editors, media tycoons, hard-pressed journalists, clickbait over proper critical research, a lack of press regulation – all of these shape how the public see the world. And at the moment, they shape it for the worse.

Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Adam Calma/IAEA, cropped to 770 x 403, Licenced via CC BY 2.0.

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Articles on Gypsies

Displaying all articles.

gypsy travellers news

#Romalivesmatter: death at police hands raises questions about racism faced by Czechia’s Roma citizens

Dana Brablec , Bangor University

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The hidden impact of coronavirus on Gypsy, Roma Travellers

Vanessa Heaslip , Bournemouth University and Jonathan Parker , Bournemouth University

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Why are Roma people being attacked in France?

Tommaso Vitale , Sciences Po

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How planning law discriminates against Travellers and Gypsies

Martin Myers , University of Portsmouth

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Flashmobs and flamenco: how Spain’s greatest artform became a tool for political protest

Matthew Machin-Autenrieth , University of Cambridge

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EU initiative risks turning Roma into entertainers, not real people with human rights

Yaron Matras , University of Manchester

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Gypsy and Traveler Culture in America

Gypsy and Traveler Culture, History and Genealogy in America

Are you a Gypsy, Traveler or Roader, or have some ancestry in any one of such groups? This site is dedicated to you; to help you become more aware of your own rich heritage, to help preserve your traditions, language and knowledge of where you came from and who you are.

The identities of Traveling People are everywhere threatened by the flood of misinformation that is being disseminated on the web and through the popular media. This site pledges to correct such misinformation and to present an accurate and unbiased view of traveling life as it has unfolded since the your ancestors first set foot in the New World.

Preservation of your ethnic heritage and pride in your own ethnic identity are some of the most valuable assets that any parents can leave to their children and grandchildren. To be of Gypsy or Traveler background is something special, something to be treasured along with the language, customs, and cultural values embodied in a unique way of life.

If you want to learn more about your family and your ethnic group, whether you be of Cale, Hungarian-Slovak, Ludar, Rom, Romnichel or Sinti Gypsy or American (Roader), English, German, Irish or Scotch Traveler background we will provide you with an interactive forum for asking questions, finding lost relatives, guidance to accurate sources, exchanging information as well as just keeping in touch with your own kind.

To get started just send a note to ASK MATT specifying what kind of Gypsy you are and in which family background you are interested.

The foundation on which this site is built is a rich storehouse of data of every imaginable kind: documentary sources, oral histories and observations of traveling life collected in over 35 years of unpaid research by Matt and Sheila Salo. The Salos have dedicated their lives to providing a true history of traveling life in America and to dispelling the myths that are currently being spread on the web and other media.

This endeavor is based on the premise that every kind of Gypsy and Traveler has a right to his or her own identity, whatever it might be. Each of you has a unique heritage that your ancestors nurtured over centuries of hardship and persecution. Now those rich and unique identities are in danger of being lost as more and more people lose the sense of who they are; customs, language and traditional life patterns are not being passed on; some people are even becoming ashamed of their Gypsy or Traveler identities.

Again, email any specific inquiries into American Gypsy or Traveler history, culture and genealogy to Matt T. Salo at ASK MATT .

Forthcoming: This history and culture page under preparation will be divided into subject areas that you can access separately depending on your interests. If you seek information sources, have specific questions, or want to broaden your horizons by learning about other groups, we will provide the best, most accurate information available. You will not be fed speculations about Melungeons, hordes of Gypsies in Colonial America, or Gypsies and Travelers as hapless victims or criminal castes - instead all our information will be based on actual verified data that truly represents the experience of your people in America since your ancestors first arrived here.

Culture and language are not easily lost and, unless you are among those few unfortunate individuals whose parents or grandparents misguidedly tried to separate themselves and their families from their roots, you should easily be able to pick up traits of language and culture that indicate your origins. We will begin with a brief overview of the different groups to orient those among you who are not quite sure of where they belong. More detailed descriptions will follow.

Gypsy and Traveler Groups in the United States

Cale: Spanish Gypsies, or Gitanos, are found primarily in the metropolitan centers of the East and West coasts. A small community of only a few families.

English Travelers: Fairly amorphous group, possibly formed along same lines as Roaders (see below), but taking shape already in England before their emigration to the US starting in early 1880s. Associate mainly with Romnichels. Boundaries and numbers uncertain.

Hungarian-Slovak: Mainly sedentary Gypsies found primarily in the industrial cities of northern U.S. Number in few thousands. Noted for playing "Gypsy music" in cafes, night clubs and restaurants.

Irish Travelers: Peripatetic group that is ethnically Irish and does not identify itself as "Gypsy," although sometimes called "Irish Gypsies." Widely scattered, but somewhat concentrated in the southern states. Estimates vary but about 10,000 should be close to the actual numbers.

Ludar: Gypsies from the Banat area, also called Rumanian Gypsies. Arrived after 1880. Have about the same number of families as the Rom, but actual numbers are unknown.

Roaders or Roadies: Native born Americans who have led a traveling life similar to that of the Gypsies and Travelers, but who were not originally descended from those groups. Numbers unknown as not all families studied.

Rom: Gypsies of East European origin who arrived after 1880. Mostly urban, they are scattered across the entire country. One of the larger groups in the US, possibly in the 55-60,000 range.

Romnichels: English Gypsies who arrived beginning in 1850. Scattered across the entire country, but tend to be somewhat more rural than the other Gypsy groups. Many families are now on their way to being assimilated, hence estimation of numbers depends on criteria used.

Scottish Travelers: Ethnically Scottish, but separated for centuries from mainstream society in Scotland where they were known as Tinkers. Some came to Canada after 1850 and to the United States in appreciable numbers after 1880. Over 100 distinct clans have been identified but total numbers not known.

Sinti: Little studied early group of German Gypsies in the United States consisting of few families heavily assimilated with both non-Gypsy and Romnichel populations. No figures are available.

Yenisch: Mostly assimilated group of ethnic Germans, misidentified as Gypsies, who formed an occupational caste of basket makers and founded an entire community in Pennsylvania after their immigration starting 1840. Because of assimilation current numbers are impossible to determine.

This inventory leaves out several Gypsy groups that have immigrated since 1970 due to the unrest and renewed persecution in Eastern Europe after the collapse of Communism. They have come from Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, the former Yugoslavian area, and possibly other countries. They number in few thousands by now, but their numbers are likely to increase.

Copyright @ 2002 Matt T. Salo

'Death threats are a way of life': Gypsies and Irish Travellers and Muslims 'least-liked' in UK, survey finds

Abiline McShane, a British Romany Gypsy traveller, said she was not surprised by the findings - adding a drive-by shooting recently took place at a site and she often hears things like "let's blow them up in their caravans".

gypsy travellers news

Midlands correspondent @LisaSkyNews

Monday 24 January 2022 09:10, UK

Abiline McShane, a British Romany Gypsy Traveller (right) and Shazia Nasreen, a healthcare assistant in Walsall who is Muslim (left).

Gypsies and Irish Travellers are the "least-liked" people in the UK, with nearly half of people feeling "negative" towards them, according to a new report.

The statistics revealed by the University of Birmingham also found that Muslims are the second "least-liked" community.

Report author, Dr Stephen Jones, a lecturer in sociology and religious studies, told Sky News: "What's interesting is you can see there is, for example, discrimination against black African Caribbean people in the UK, but in surveys people do not express that hostility in the way that they do towards Muslims, in the way that they do towards Gypsies and Irish Travellers.

"So I think there's a certain sense in which that kind of hostility is publicly acceptable, it doesn't get the same kind of pushback that other forms of racism and prejudice receive.

"Quite why that is is a complex question, it's down to our media representation, to our political leadership to various different historical and cultural factors."

The survey, in conjunction with YouGov, took into account the views of 1,667 people and found that 44.6% viewed Gypsies and Irish Travellers negatively, 25.9% felt negative towards Muslims, 8.5% felt negative towards Jewish people, 6.4% felt negative towards black people and 8.4% felt negative towards white people.

Abiline McShane, a British Romany Gypsy Traveller (right) and Shazia Nasreen, a healthcare assistant in Walsall who is Muslim

Abiline McShane, a British Romany Gypsy traveller, told Sky News she was not surprised by the findings, and faced prejudice, and worse, on an almost daily basis.

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"I can go into a room full of people and feel hatred from that room full of people," she said.

The 54-year-old said there had been a recent "drive- by" at one of the West Midlands traveller sites where "someone just shot into the site, so you imagine people in my community don't sleep very well".

She added: "You tend to find things like 'oh let's blow them up in their caravans or let's blow up their gas bottles while they're inside' - death threats to us is like a way of life."

Shazia Nasreen, a healthcare assistant in Walsall, said she was targeted, as a Muslim, for wearing a headscarf, and had had stones thrown at her.

"They think I've come in as a migrant even though I was born in this country… I get questioned - 'Are you allowed to work? Does your husband allow you to work? Are you allowed out the house?' This is in this day and age."

Prejudice Report author, Dr Stephen Jones, a lecturer in sociology and religious studies.

Dr Jones said he found that much of the hostility was coming from the upper and middle classes.

"When one looks at upper and middle class social groups in the UK they are quite effective at not expressing their prejudices openly, as you might say," he said.

"The political discourse we've heard of so-called red wall voters, the post-Brexit socially conservative anti-immigration voter, that's created a sort of vision where prejudice is seen as to be located within working class groups rather than upper and middle classes.

"What's interesting about Gypsy and Irish Travellers and Muslim groups is that precisely because the prejudice seems to be slightly more acceptable, it seems to be expressed more often amongst upper and middle class and more educated groups too."

9 myths and the truth about Gypsies and Travellers

For starters, only a small number of travellers camp illegally

  • 00:01, 25 OCT 2019
  • Updated 15:20, 25 OCT 2019

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Travellers and Gypsies are one of the most misunderstood minority groups in the UK.

To combat this  the Travellers' Times website has created a guide, which aims to promote positive images of the Traveller and Gypsy community.

It has been written in response to hate crime and racist language directed towards their communities.

Cambridgeshire has seen tensions between the Traveller and settled communities in recent years, with caravans pitching on unauthorised sites across including Fulbourn, Papworth, Cambourne and at Cambridge Business and Research Park.

As well as causing disruption to residential communities, there can often be a hefty clean-up bill as some groups leave behind piles of rubbish.

Cambridge police say they are committed to working with local councils to tackle the problem and has previously used powers under Section 61 of the Crime and Disorder Act to order unlawful encampments to disperse.

But, as the Travellers' Times points out, a only a small number of Travellers camp illegally.

While tensions can run high at times many people hold misconceptions, which Travellers' Times hopes to dispell.

Things you should know about gypsies and travellers according to Travellers' Times

There are nine reoccurring myths and misconceptions about their culture and origins.

1) Who are the UK’s Gypsies and Travellers?

Travellers and Gypsies have a rich and varied history.

Romany Gypsies are the descendants of a migration of peoples from Northern India in the 10-12AD, who spread across Eastern and Western Europe, reaching Great Britain in around the 1600’s.

Irish Travellers – or Pavee – and Scottish Travellers - are the descendants of a nomadic people who have traditionally inhabited Ireland and mainland Britain.

Roma usually refers to the descendants of the migration of various groups of peoples from Northern India in the 10th to 12th century who settled in Eastern and Western Europe.

2) Should we use a capital letter to start ‘gypsy and/or traveller’?

Romany Gypsies, Scottish, Welsh and Irish Travellers are all ethnic minorities, recognised under UK law and the Irish government.

Therefore it is customary to capitalise ‘G’ and ‘T’ for Gypsies and Travellers.

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3) Lifestyle, ethnic group or ‘community’?

Research shows Gypsies, Roma and Travellers (GRT) should be seen as ethnic groups rather than ‘lifestyles’.

All the different GRT groups in the UK have a shared language or dialect, some shared cultural practices, most will identify as an ethnic group, and all individuals from all groups are legally recognised as ethnic minorities under the Equalities Act 2010.

4) How many Travellers live in the UK?

In the 2011 Census, 58,000 people identified themselves as Gypsy or Irish Traveller, accounting for just 0.1 per cent of the resident population of England and Wales. However the figure is likely to be much higher.

5) Traveller politics

There is a cross-party parliamentary group called the All Party Parliamentary Group for Gypsies, Roma and Travellers.

This is currently led by the charity Friends, Families and Travellers and the co-Chairs are Kate Green, MP for Stretford and Urmston, and Baroness Janet Whitaker.

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6) Where do Travellers live?

The number of Gypsy and Traveller caravans in England and Wales is recorded twice yearly.

The vast majority of Gypsies and Travellers living in caravans stay on permanent public and private sites which have planning permission, waste collection and are subject to rent (unless of course the site is privately owned by the occupier), council tax and utility bills.

7) A small minority pitch on unauthorised land

A small minority of Gypsies and Traveller caravans are classed as unauthorised and staying on land they do not own, such as roadside camps.

This minority, which will include Gypsies and Travellers with no other place to stay and also Gypsies and Travellers moving off authorised sites to go ‘travelling’ during the summer, receives the vast majority of local news coverage.

7) Criminal Justice System

Far too many Gypsies and Travellers are in prison, as many as five per cent of the population according to Government research.

Meanwhile 0.13 per cent of the general UK population are in prision.

The Irish Chaplaincy in Britain works with Gypsies and Travellers in custody. Some prisons have their own GRT Prisoner Groups. The Travellers’ Times Magazine is delivered free to many UK HMP’s and the editor receives many letters from prisoners.

gypsy travellers news

8) Nomadism

Nomadism is a shared heritage of Gypsies and Travellers and not a present reality.

Not all Gypsies and Irish and Scottish Travellers ‘travel’ – or may only ‘travel’ to traditional cultural events like Appleby Horse Fair.

9) Prejudice, oppression and the Holocaust

Many Gypsies, Roma and Travellers face daily prejudice based on negative stereotyping and misunderstanding.

This is because people generalise from the anti-social actions of a few and protect that onto the whole population.

Prejudice against them is longstanding.

In some Eastern and even Western European countries, Roma are segregated and live in camps and slums isolated from the rest of the population.

Alongside the Jewish population Roma were specifically singled out for extermination by Nazi racial policy.

Historians estimate the number murdered by Nazi and axis regimes during the Second World War to be around 500,000, although some historians say it is closer to a million.

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Gypsy/Travellers action plan: 2023

Sets out actions to help improve the lives of Gypsy/Travellers covering the period June to September 2023.

Improving health outcomes

Information on rights and entitlements.

Producing clear, accessible, and appropriate information on rights and entitlements and how to access them (for example on Patient Rights).

June – September 2023 focus

A range of work continues to be taken forward in relation to this action. 

Facebook page and other sources of information 

Managed by Article 12, the Facebook page continues to share important public health messaging with the community. 

Relevant information will continue to be shared in a number of other ways, including articles and newsletters in publications such as the Barrie News and the Travellers Times. 

Information on available health and care services 

Work is being progressed, in partnership with local authorities, to develop a leaflet highlighting local NHS services for those staying in unauthorised G/T encampments. This will be informed by findings from the evaluation of the Negotiated Stopping places pilot being led by PHS.

Scottish guide to health and care services 

Work is also being progressed to develop a Scottish version of guidance (similar guidance has previously been published in England) that will act as a guide to health and care services for the G/T community. Publication is expected in late March ’23. 

Inclusive public health messaging 

The project, jointly funded by SG & PHS and led by MECOPP, will focus on improving public health messaging for minority ethnic groups, with a specific focus on the G/T community. 

A lead for the project has been recruited and commenced their role in Dec ’22. 

NHS Scotland Gypsy/Traveller Steering Group 

PHS established a senior Steering Group in mid-2022, chaired by North Lanarkshire Director of Public Health Josephine Pravinkumar. The Group will bring together senior officers from a range of agencies to: 

  • provide a point of escalation for any significant issues raised by Scottish Gypsy/Travellers, including cross-organisational challenges, and addressing blockages and barriers to accessing NHS services or care in Scotland
  • support the development, implementation, and long-term sustainability of the Community Health Matters service, ensuring its learning and challenges are shared across NHS Scotland
  • consider the priorities, opportunities, and challenges in the implementation of the Scottish Gypsy Traveller Health and Social Care Work Plan 2022/23, a sub-section of the Scottish Action Plan for Improving the Lives of Scottish Gypsy/Travellers

Training public sector staff

Providing good quality training and advice to frontline public sector staff, on how to support Gypsy/Travellers to access services fairly (for example working with NHS Scotland and Health and Social Care Partnerships to address specific health and social care needs, with solutions co-produced with Gypsy/Traveller communities).

NHS /HSCP G/T Forum 

THE NHS/HSCP Gypsy Traveller Forum continues to meet regularly and to share information on best practice, ongoing work and arising issues of concern. Feb 2023 meeting focused on mental health. 

Agreement to develop simple directory of mental health resources. 

Recruiting from the community

Recruiting and supporting Community Health Workers from Gypsy/Traveller communities, to provide health advocacy on a wide range of health and social care issues, learning from good practice in other countries.

The interim evaluation of the community health worker programme was completed in August 2022. It demonstrates successful early implementation of the Community Health Worker service. 

Three additional CHWs were recruited by MECOPP in late 2022, taking the total number to 7 CHWs. The work undertaken by the CHWs and the wider MECOPP Community Health Matters Programme has continued to receive positive feedback and deliver significant support to the community. 

Scottish Government has now confirmed a final year of funding that will enable the service to continue for the remainder of the current financial year (2023-24).

This additional funding guarantees continuity of provision in 2023-34 as plans for mainstreaming improvements from 2024-25 onwards are made, recognising the clear need for improved services within the Gypsy/Traveller community given the specific barriers and challenges they continue to face in accessing health and other vital services.

The NHS Scotland Gypsy/Traveller Steering Group has established a short life working group which will consider how best to embed learning and best practice in Health Board core service provision, and identify the most appropriate model going forward to ensure improved access to and experience of healthcare for the Gypsy/Traveller community. Officials from Scottish Government and Public Health Scotland are actively supporting this work.

Supporting community pharmacists

Supporting community pharmacists to use health literacy tools and techniques, developed as part of the Health Literacy Plan for Scotland (2017-2025) and Primary Care Transformation.

The Scottish Health Literacy Action Group continue to promote relevant e-learning modules to pharmacists. 

Work is ongoing to raise awareness of Pharmacy First amongst the G/T community, explaining what services community pharmacists can offer the community. 

A workshop was held in Oct ‘22 with community health workers, SG officials and relevant NHS staff about pharmacy first. This enabled those developing and implementing pharmacy first to identify the barriers the community face in accessing pharmacy first services. 

Solutions to overcoming these barriers were discussed and included working with the community to develop and disseminate a pharmacy first booklet.  

Improving mental well-being

Working with Gypsy/Traveller communities to identify what information and support they feel they trust and need to improve their mental health and well-being, as part of the Mental Health Strategy in Scotland (2017-2027) and the Mental Health Transition and Recovery Plan – ‘Mental Health - Scotland's Transition and Recovery.   

Two specific SG funded projects continue to be progressed: 

Mental Health Matters 

Led by MECOPP, the project will pilot specific mental health and wellbeing support to the Gypsy/Traveller community. Two part time mental health posts (a team leader and family support worker) were appointed in June 2022 and, alongside the existing post of mental health and welling worker (adults and older people), were incorporated to form the MECOPP Mental Health Matters Team.

Progress in Dialogue

Progress in Dialogue aims to tackle hate crime, stigma and discrimination experienced by Gypsy/Travellers, via social media and mainstream media, which has such a detrimental impact on the community’s mental health and well-being. Specific work/progress has included: 

  • training and awareness sessions have been offered to a number of organisations including the TENET education network; Scottish Government Race Equality team; STV news; BBC news
  • work to plan awareness raising sessions with Secondary schools and Local authority teams in areas with large Gypsy/Traveller demographics

Community health workers 

Issues related to mental health are amongst those most frequently being highlighted as a concern by the CHWs. As such their roles have involved increasing awareness about services and support for those with mental health conditions, as well as undertaking Mental Health First Aid training and applying their learning to provide support and signposting/referring on as appropriate. 

Mental Health Equality Forum 

SG’s Mental Health Directorate has established a Health Equality Forum to hear first-hand about issues experienced by specific equality groups.

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Damian Le Bas

‘I don’t look like most people’s idea of a Gypsy’

I t is Friday night. I’m 30 years old, alone on a fake-fur blanket in the back of a cold Transit van. Most of my generation are out there in pubs, or indoors by the telly, canoodling, arguing or cooking, or going across to the thermostat to turn the heating up. I’m parked on a Cornish industrial estate with no warmth except the tiny, wavering plume of heat that rises out of my lantern. This place is so lonesome that even the doggers, boy-racers and stoners have spurned it. I curse myself silently. You’re not a Traveller, my mate, you’re a div. What sort of Traveller would come and sleep here on their own? I have covered thousands of miles in my van in a bid to uncover the history of Gypsy Britain. But the road is proving tough.

Gypsy reality is partly composed of fairgrounds and showgrounds, picturesque lakeside halts, sheltered commons, bright heaths. But it also comprised frozen copses and hilltops. Old maintenance roads with potholes and bad light. Scrapyards. Council waste ground. Lay-bys near the edges of tips. Slag-heaps and drained marshes. Fen ends. Chalk pits, yards and quarries. These are the stopping places, these fringes and in-between places. They are the places that nobody lives except Travellers – or nobody but those who share ancient connections with them: gamekeepers and poachers, scrap-metal men, horsewomen, rangers and shepherds. They are the old nomads’ haunts of the island. Many are smashed and built over; some – magically – are still more or less just as they were in centuries long past. They form the hidden Gypsy and Traveller map of the country we live in: they are the bedrock of our reality and, perhaps, the antidote to the unending cycles of romanticisation and demonisation.

I had conceived a plan to visit these places, to live in them in my own way, and see what I might learn. Perhaps I might even solve the bizarre contradiction of Britain’s love affair with caravanning, camping and glamping, and its hatred of those who were born to this life, and who largely inspired its adoption as a non-Gypsy pastime. As one Scottish Gypsy Traveller put it: “There are 80,000 members of the Caravan Club, but I’m not allowed to travel?”

There is more to this Gypsy geography than a list of physical places. The stopping places themselves are an outgrowth of something non-physical, something that is ancient, unseen yet important, precious and reviled, envied and feared. This thing is the Gypsy belief – the core belief of the culture – that it is possible to live in a different way: in your own way, part of the world, but not imprisoned by the rules. That you can know the ropes and yet not be hemmed in by them. That you can dwell alongside the mainstream, while not being part of it. Otter-like, you can live in the bank of the river and swim and hunt there when you need to, and then climb back out with equal ease and alacrity. There is no better symbol of this belief than the network of atchin tans (stopping places) laced across Britain; they are historical, topographical proof that the Gypsy philosophy has existed here, that it still does, that it still can. By staying at the traditional stopping places, I hoped to answer the questions that had been following me, on and off, all my life. What is left of these places? What might we learn from them? What redemption might lie there, in a country that still passes new legislation aimed at ending the Traveller way of life? Is it still possible to live on the road? Was the end of the old Gypsy life a tragedy, or was it a case of good riddance to an irredeemably hard and pitiless life on the edge? Above all, I hoped to resolve the biggest question: the question of myself, whether I could make my peace with Gypsy culture. My conflict seemed to echo the wider tension between nomads and settled people that endures in modern Britain.

O n the way to our regular pitch selling flowers in the marketplace in Petersfield, my elders would point and nod at empty spaces by the sides of the road, flat areas on verges and slightly raised banks, vacant pull-ins and lay-bys, and make comments as if there was something there, something I couldn’t see. They were glimmers of another world, but it felt as distant as the stars. I knew the places had something to do with the time they were “on the road” – most of my family were settled now, living in houses or caravans and mobile homes on private bits of land.

Travellers I knew from the east of England had lived rough deep into the recent past, still working the farms into the 1990s. By then, it had been the best part of 50 years since anyone in my family had depended on that kind of work. So it came as a shock to meet Travellers younger than me who had grown up picking turnips in January. They described reaching down with a gloved hand and grabbing hold of the big, leafy tops, how it would sometimes send a plug of ice shooting upwards.

Alongside selling flowers, my family had roofing and car-breaking businesses. We had a big field and a yard, a word that seemed to mean a place where all things might, and did, happen. Terriers, geese and perturbed-looking cockerels roamed in between the legs of cantankerous horses. Stables were stacked full of the musty paraphernalia of horsemanship, flower-selling, roofing and car respraying. Bits of cars lay everywhere, named as if they were the parts or clothes of people or animals: bonnets, boots, seats, wings, belts. There were brass-handled horsewhips, jangling harnesses, buckets of molasses-sprayed chaff and milled sugar-beet, bales of sweet-smelling fresh hay. But all of this old rustic stuff was stacked and wedged in among the hard and greasy gear of the family economy: gas bottles, blowtorches, leaky old engines, spray paint, rolls of lead, felt, and seemingly infinite stacks of every conceivable type of roof tile. A heavy boxing bag swung with barely perceptible creaks, keeping time in the half-light of the dusty old garage.

A palm reader’s caravan at Appleby fair.

There were caravans there that we sometimes lived in and out of, especially in the summer. We never considered this odd, even though we also had a big house on the land that my grandad had built with his men. And there always seemed to be heavy and dangerous things lying close to hand. The hard stuff of motion was everywhere, although we were settled: cars, tractors and trucks, some brand-new, others eaten by weather and time; horses, ponies, traps, sulkies and carts; scattered wheels and bolts from Ford and Bedford lorries. And, hung from a barn door like a pair of swords and scabbing to ochre with rust, there were two axles rescued from the ashes of the last wagon owned by our family.

We had a name for ourselves: Travellers. In our case, it didn’t just mean anyone who travelled around, regardless of their race: to us it meant our people specifically, the Romanies of Britain. The first Romanies probably arrived on the British mainland towards the end of the 15th century, and had been a contentious presence ever since.

W herever the Gypsies went, they took with them their strange tongue, Romani, and it was through this that the mystery of their origins was solved. An 18th-century German linguist called Johann Rüdiger overheard Gypsies talking, and was struck by the similarity of their speech to Indian languages. Later linguists, including the so-called “Romany Ryes” – rye being the Romani word for a gentleman – such as the English writer George Borrow and the Irish academic John Sampson, would identify layers of borrowings from Persian, Slavic and Romance languages in the Gypsies’ speech, using these to trace a philological map of their long road into the West. English Romani had German-derived words in it, like nixis , meaning “nothing”, and fogel for “smell”.

As for the name of the Romanies, it was derived from their own word for “man” or “husband”, rom , and it had nothing to do with Romania, which got its name from the Roman military camps which once filled its territory. The Gypsies called their language Romanes , an adverb meaning “like a rom ”. To rokker Romanes meant, simply, to talk like a Gypsy and not like a gorjer – a non-Gypsy. The word gorjies comes from the old Romany word gadje or gadzhe , and though its form has mutated with time, its meaning is the same: the non-Gypsies, outsiders, the people-who-aren’t-us.

Almost everyone who has studied Romani in Britain has remarked on how adept its speakers are at coming up with names for things. In some ways, talking Romanes means having to be constantly inventive and alert, both in terms of creating words and also interpreting the new ones that get spun off the cuff and thrown into daily Traveller conversation. There is no stigma attached to inventing words, as there so often is in English; nor are new words looked down upon as annoying neologisms that we’d be better off without. Invented words are more likely to be smiled upon or chuckled at as evidence of a witty, intelligent mind; one with a good and flexible grasp of the ancient Travellers’ tongue.

Besides, if Romani is to retain one of the functions which has kept it alive thus far – and which it has in common with almost all minority languages – namely, to stop outsiders knowing what you are talking about, then it will always be necessary to invent new ways of saying things. According to a Belarusian Romany man I once met, a word is no longer a truly Romani word once its meaning becomes known amongst the gadzhe – it is useless, dead, and best left where it is. This is an extreme opinion, but it points to a common anxiety: that the language will lose its power if it becomes too widely known. Yet words come and go as they please, like mood and temper; traded by friends, explained by lovers, and hurled across the fray. Every Gypsy who “gives away” the Romani language risks the accusation of treason.

I n the old Romany tradition, you can only call yourself a true Romany Gypsy – one of the kaulo ratti , the black blood – if all your ancestors, as far as you know, are of the tribe. I can trace my Romany ancestry back at least six generations; I was brought up to know the Romani language; to learn the old tales and to keep the Romanipen – the cleanliness taboos of the old-fashioned Gypsies. I was raised, and still live, in a Romany psychological realm; a mental Gypsyland.

I have both Gypsy and non-Gypsy blood and so, in many Travellers’ eyes, I do not have the right to call myself a true-bred Romany. It does not matter that there is no such thing as a racially pure Gypsy: over a 1,000-year migration it is virtually impossible that there will have been no mingling in the line. The mixing in my family had happened within living memory, and this meant I was at best a poshrat – a mixed-blood Gypsy – and at worst a “half- chat gorjie ” or, as a friend once memorably put it, a “fucked-up half-breed”.

I do not look like most people’s idea of a typical Gypsy, my blue eyes and fair hair belying my origins, my picture of myself. My identity was inside me and the outside didn’t match up. It imbued me with a tetchy defensiveness, and a resentment of people whom I then believed had simpler ethnicities: Scottish, Nigerian, Han.

I felt so close to my roots, and especially to the Romany women who had brought me up – my mum; her mother, Gran; and Gran’s mother, Nan. But this seemed to count for little in a world which, for all its modernity, still believed in labels such as “half-caste”, “full-blood” and “mixed race”. Later, as a teenager, I started carrying photographs of darker-haired family members in my wallet, to challenge the disbelief of those who thought I was lying about my Romany background. I lived in a world that wasn’t sure if I really belonged in it, and so I wasn’t sure, either. Regardless, it was where I was. Our family were the mistrusted local Gypsies, the bane of the decent, upstanding parish council. We were “gyppos”, “pikeys”, “ diddakois ”, “them lot”. Locally, we were infamous. The divide was crystal clear.

Damian Le Bas with his Transit van

Compared with the insults and slurs, the words Romanies, Gypsies, and Travellers were dignified, and we used all of them interchangeably. The greater part of our family owned their own yards and bungalows, but the name Travellers still seemed to make sense. There were wheels everywhere, and we were always on hair-trigger alert to hook up trailers and go when the need arose: we drove miles for a living, and had family who lived on the road. Some places with links to the Travellers were not easily romanticised. The sides of the M1, the A1, the A303 and the M25 are peppered with modern-day atchin tans . They are sites with access to opportunities to earn money, and – being less desirable to non-Gypsies – also the sorts of locales where less cash is needed to set up a camp.

Such places symbolise the misunderstood truth of many Traveller lives, which is that they are neither permanently nomadic, nor ever truly static. Howbeit, these yards provide a base, the highway is right beside them, ready for the times when family ties, work, a wedding, a funeral, the fair season, beckon. Councils refer to them as “sites close to the key regional transport corridors, favoured by Gypsies and Travellers”. Travellers call them :“Handy, being right by that main road”. Handy, yes, but still handcuffed to tragedy. Every family is haunted by stories of relatives, too often toddlers, who have been knocked down and killed by their literal closeness to roads.

The word “Gypsy” wasn’t often heard back when I was a teenager. When it was, it was usually as part of a story about the old days, where someone had shouted out, “Dirty Gypsies!” and nine times out of 10 a fight had ensued, which the dirty Gypsies – who, in my grandad’s words, were “rough, tough and made out of the right stuff” – almost always won.

In our world, arguments are often resolved by somebody leaving and the relationship being severed. If this doesn’t happen, then there will almost always be a fight. In the best-case scenario, it’ll just be a fair fist fight, nice and clean, one-on-one, with a referee to see fair play and as few spectators as possible to get sucked into the row. It can be between two men or two women: it’s usually men, but not always. These things are often organised quickly in a place right out of the way, so the law is unlikely to be an issue; plus, some police officers I’ve spoken to even seem to have a laissez-faire stance on it, possibly because they have seen worse ways of ending a row than a bare-knuckle fight. Worst-case scenario, it will not be clean and it will not be fair, and the more people that get involved, the more likely that is. If weapons come into it, then the police are especially likely to show an interest.

The proceedings of the Old Bailey from 1674-1913 are speckled with references to London’s Gypsies and Travellers. There is a website that explains why they were “over-represented in the proceedings”: they formed part of “what many contemporaries considered a dangerous and crime-prone “residuum”’, which seeped back into the city at autumn following the end of the temporary farm work. It goes on, telling how “in a working-class mirror to the elite’s “London Season”, October and November saw hundreds and thousands of men, women and children returning to the capital from hop-picking and market gardening, from touring the fairs and tramping in search of work”. It was a yearly migration from the city to the countryside and back that continued, for some, right up to the 1950s.

For all its flighty connotations, Gypsy culture can be stifling in its demands for living in line with its hidden rules. Rock stars employ “Gypsy” to mean those who have escaped from moral claustrophobia, but in reality, Gypsies are just as likely to feel confined as anybody else. In Glasgow, I watched as a troupe of little girls from the local Roma community danced in brightly coloured dresses at a community event. They clicked their fingers on outstretched arms and sang “ Ja tuke tuke ” to a furious klezmer beat. The audience clapped and twirled, unaware of the lyrics’ meaning: “Get away from me.”

N an talks of the old paradox that we have heard about all of our lives. The hardship of old times, versus the sense of togetherness that Travellers have lost. The gratitude for comforts that not long ago were undreamed of and unheard of, set against the moral corruption, unhappiness and constant malaise that have come from an overfast integration into the gorjies ’ consumerist world.

For centuries, politicians had guessed that if Gypsies could be settled in regular housing, then within a few short generations they would be just like everyone else. There would be no need for a word for outsiders, because we would be just like them. But that isn’t what has happened. Many Gypsies now live either in housing, or on permanent caravan sites, not in meadows or lanes or lay-bys or by the sides of old tips. And yet they are still what they are, changed in some ways, but different enough to draw the old line between themselves and the gorjies .

I sometimes wonder what Nan thinks I am. Of course, I am her great-grandson, born from her line, flesh and blood. But I’m not what she calls a “true Traveller”. Aside from my mixed roots, I wasn’t born to that life: I arrived into a changed era, one of stability, stasis, hot running water, and Christmases stacked with teetering piles of presents. The Romany bloodline never dies out. But the life of the Traveller changes, sometimes so much so that you could forgive the outside world for thinking the people themselves have vanished.

Lisa Wilkinson walking her horse Casper on the way to the Appleby Horse Fair

When I was small, Horsmonden in Kent was a typical Travellers’ horse fair. This meant that most people weren’t actually there for the horses. It’s true that a core of those who came, mostly men but quite a few women as well, were proper horse people. They came towing their boxes with strong cobs standing inside, tethered in the half-light; their two-wheeled sulkies – light trotting carts with a seat big enough for one or two people – and their harness, head collars and whips. But people came from far and near to the fair, and most of them weren’t interested in any equine displays. If they were, then it was simply because they provided an authentic backdrop. What they were interested in depended on the individual: but mostly, they were interested in each other. It is a quirk of our scatteredness: a few hundred thousand people at most, flecked across Britain’s damp islands, and we meet mostly at weddings, funerals and fairs. The horse trade has its ups and downs – as I write this, it’s down, the worst in my lifetime. But the horse fairs will persist, because their purpose goes beyond trade.

When the days are hot and tanned skins gleam with sweat in the sun, it is clear once again that horse fairs are shop windows for young brides and husbands. They always have been. This much, at least, is gospel, and proudly announced to journalists and inquisitive souls who come asking questions about the culture. But not every dalliance ends in a marriage, and rumours occasionally flare of unauthorised, ultra-brief flings at the fringes of fairs: dangerous liaisons that lead to bad names, fights, or worse, feuds that run on and on.

For the not so young, what they seek from each other is something subtler, less clear to outsiders, but an equally powerful draw. I suspect few would want to explain what it was, for fear of sapping its power by giving it voice. What the fairs offer is a chance to track the progress of our lives: to reminisce about previous years when we trod the same field, but equally to remark on how far we have come.

We polish and dress up our lives for the day and compare them to the lives of others, affirming their context, confirming their meaning. The fairs are where we remind ourselves who we are. It’s not that we don’t keep being who we are in between – of course we do. But the fairs provide a special concentration of Traveller experience, a tincture of what it is to be a Gypsy. At a horse fair we get to see, just for one day, what life would be like if the world shared our Gypsy priorities.

And then there are those who despise both horses and the fairs. For some families, the horse had its day a long time ago. I once asked my mate Charles if he and his family used to go to the fairs up north, which is where he comes from. He looked at me as though the question was perverse. “We don’t mind a day at the races, but Damian, can you see me or me dad, or any of us here, fucking about with horses? My great-great-grandad was a proper Gypsy man, and he was driving a Rolls-Royce a hundred year ago.”

T raveller culture, preoccupied though it can be with bygone times, has always preferred the tangible: today’s bread, the here and the now. As Nan says, “You can only eat one meal at a time.” In the past, writers took this as evidence that Gypsies inhabited a “heroic present”, lacking a sense of history and living so sharply in the moment that concepts such as deferred gratification were lost on them. I have always dismissed such ideas as inherently dangerous: they are liable to slide into essentialism, and the belief that races have irreconcilable differences. But maybe in turning so sharply away from a lie, I lost sight of a truth: that the present holds a finer promise than the past with its shadows and dust. In an inversion of the obvious, perhaps even the Traveller obsession with cemetery maintenance itself supports this view. After all, isn’t the act of placing flowers on a tomb a gesture of bringing a little life back to the dead?

After the fair at Horsmonden, I largely avoided gatherings of people, spending time in empty stopping places, visiting forlorn churches and well-kept graves. It is dawning on me that there is only so much I can learn from this. Another of Nan’s catchphrases comes to me: “There are no pockets in shrouds.” Perhaps this saying, a caution against overzealous pursuit of riches, masks a second meaning as well. There is a poverty to death; a limit to how much a skeleton can teach you about a life it no longer knows.

I realised how sparsely furnished my van was. Its naked pale blue surfaces stared at me like sheets of ice. For eight months, I had been travelling with what I thought were the bare essentials – bed, stove, wash gear, clothes and so forth. But there were other trappings of Romany life, when it was lived most richly: beautiful furnishings, gilded surfaces, portable pictures, talismans and silks. I’ve been missing a trick: the means by which a difficult life was rendered livable and even, at times, enviable.

When I asked Mum for help, she looked happy, as if pleased that I’d finally grasped the meaning of life. She gave me armfuls of folded materials. There was an Islamic purple velvet hanging, edged with golden stitching and arranged in a pattern of teardrops; matching Bedouin horse-cloths, constructed out of navy blue and orange-coloured diamond shapes of fabric; brightly coloured Indian tapestry cloths: two square ones, and one in the shape of an arch. They shouted in bright yellows and blues and greens and pinks, with tiny mirrors stitched into them alongside little embroidered birds, stars, flowers, chakra wheels and Hindu swastikas. I decorated the van, clipping the cloths to the plywood lining with bulldog clips and larger, stronger, rubber-tipped market grips.

The van was completely transformed. Its contents came together into a nomadic aesthetic all of its own; ramshackle, yet somehow making happy sense as a whole. My gran and grandad – Mum’s parents – wandered over to see what I’d been doing. They seemed stunned, but in a good way: “Looks like an old vardo ,” Grandad said, using the Traveller word for caravan. Gran remarked that the way I had hung the cloths reminded her of the inside of the Travellers’ square tents back when she was a little girl. Their approval came as a relief. I slammed the doors and smiled as I thought of the road ahead.

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This is an edited extract from The Stopping Places by Damian Le Bas, published by Chatto & Windus on 7 June. To order a copy for £10.99, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99

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Environmental racism, segregation and discrimination: Gypsy and Traveller sites in Great Britain

Critical Social Policy, Ahead of Print. This article focusses on Gypsy and Traveller communities who live on local authority managed sites around Great Britain. The subject of sites has come to the fore in the last couple of years, as the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 criminalised roadside living and therefore nomadic ways of life. Using the concept of environmental racism, the article explores the proximity of sites to environmental hazards including main roads, sewage works, industry and refuse and recycling centres. The mapping of all Gypsy and Traveller sites in England, Scotland and Wales – permanent sites (291) and transit sites (60) – shows that a sizeable proportion of sites present a risk to residents’ health due to their geographical proximity to pollutants and that many are infested with vermin and flies and separated from settled communities which can result in isolation and exclusion. Case studies of Gypsy and Traveller sites shows that the location of sites is not just a historical legacy of racism as new sites are being placed in polluted and isolated areas. Sites are locally contested and racialised language and stereotypes are used to try and stop sites being placed in certain areas. Local authority planning departments are aware of the unsuitability of some site locations and their potential risk to health. However, local opposition and a homelessness crisis within the communities can leave Gypsy and Traveller people with little or no choice about site locations which can be in places that are polluted, on the margins and away from settled communities.

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    BBC News education and social affairs reporter Teachers' "entrenched" attitudes could lead them to write off Gypsy, Roma and Irish Traveller children, "enabling prejudice to continue", MPs have said.

  15. Blanket bans on camping by Gypsies and Travellers ruled illegal at high

    The high court has ruled that local authorities can no longer issue blanket bans on Gypsies and Travellers stopping on parcels of land, in a landmark case which campaigners have hailed a ...

  16. Traveller charity accuses Dorset MP of inciting discrimination

    A charity representing Gypsies and travellers has accused an MP of "inciting discrimination". Bournemouth West MP Sir Conor Burns posted a video on social media about plans for a permanent ...

  17. 'Death threats are a way of life': Gypsies and Irish Travellers and

    Gypsies and Irish Travellers are the "least-liked" people in the UK, with nearly half of people feeling "negative" towards them, according to a new report.

  18. Kicking the can down the road: New report on site provision over the

    Today, Friends, Families and Travellers (FFT) released a new report titled 'Kicking the can down the road: The planning and provision of Gypsy and Traveller sites in England 1960-2023', authored by Dr Simon Ruston MRTPI. The report looks at the planning system's approach to Gypsy and Traveller sites since 1960 with a specific focus from 1994 onwards, following a series of legislative ...

  19. 9 myths and the truth about Gypsies and Travellers

    9) Prejudice, oppression and the Holocaust. Many Gypsies, Roma and Travellers face daily prejudice based on negative stereotyping and misunderstanding. This is because people generalise from the ...

  20. News

    News. Filter . Filter By. Wakefield Gypsy and Traveller Association going from strength to strength! 21 February 2024 . News. Read More News. It's not just Pontins though - is it? ... Leeds Gypsies and Travellers pulling together for charity this Christmas . 11 December 2023 . News. Read More News 'Kicking the can down the road' - Landmark ...

  21. Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people (UK)

    Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (abbreviated to GRT) is an umbrella term used in the United Kingdom to represent several diverse ethnic groups which have a shared history of nomadism.The groups include Gypsies, defined as communities of travelling people who share a Romani heritage, resident in Britain since the 16th century; Ethnic Travellers, the traditional travelling people of Ireland and ...

  22. Traveller charity accuses Dorset MP of inciting discrimination

    The charity's head of trustees, Pauline Melvin-Anderson, said: "The whole tone of the video is that Gypsies and travellers are a problem to be solved rather than people, individuals, families ...

  23. Latest

    Overview of the evidence about the accommodation needs of Gypsy/Travellers in Scotland, drawing on both academic and grey literature. It discusses current provision, accommodation needs and aspirations, and identifies key areas which could be explored through further research. Research and analysis. 23 October 2020.

  24. Health

    June - September 2023 focus. NHS /HSCP G/T Forum. THE NHS/HSCP Gypsy Traveller Forum continues to meet regularly and to share information on best practice, ongoing work and arising issues of concern. Feb 2023 meeting focused on mental health. Agreement to develop simple directory of mental health resources.

  25. 'I don't look like most people's idea of a Gypsy'

    Travellers call them :"Handy, being right by that main road". Handy, yes, but still handcuffed to tragedy. Every family is haunted by stories of relatives, too often toddlers, who have been ...

  26. Environmental racism, segregation and discrimination: Gypsy and

    This article focusses on Gypsy and Traveller communities who live on local authority managed sites around Great Britain. The subject of sites has come to the fore in the last couple of years, as the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 criminalised roadside living and therefore nomadic ways of life.